Every year I say “this is golden age of television,” and it only gets better. We are watching the last season of Better Call Saul, and it’s perfect.
We also watched You, which is aimed at woke millennials. We are non-woke Genexers, and it’s fun to ridicule the younger generation.
Before that, we did Longmire, and it’s less recent but deeply enjoyable.
Fellow fans, feel free to make yourselves known.
Also, on the subject of kids’ movies, I’m starting to get annoyed by the deluge of movies where the kid protagonist only has one parent and it’s not explained in any way what happened to the other one.
Clarissa's Blog 
Big fan of Better Call Saul. Need to catch up on the last season. 🙂
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“I’m starting to get annoyed by the deluge of movies where the kid protagonist only has one parent and it’s not explained in any way what happened to the other one.”
Oh, that’s like 98% of all kids’ movies. Cannot have an intact family and be worthy of a movie, apparently. Or most books. So brace yourself. Orphans and single-parent families as far as the eye can see.
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“Cannot have an intact family”
Not new at all in American popular culture. Look at shows from the 1960s (esp sitcoms). Widows and widowers (and occasionally orphans) all over the place.
The Courtship of Eddies’ Father (widower with a son)
Julia (widow with a son)
Partridge Family (widow with 5 kids)
Ghost and Mrs Muir (widow with a couple of kids)
Family Affair (bachelor takes in orphaned nieces and nephew)
Andy Griffith Show (widower with a son)
Bonanza (widower with three sons)
Brady Bunch (widow marries widower)
Here’s Lucy (widow with two grown children)
Tarzan (orphan hangs out with Tarzan)
Daktari (widower with adult daughter and later an orphan)
That’s without thinking too hard…
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At least in the old sitcoms, the protagonist was married to the children’s other parent at the time the children were born (and presumably when they were conceived). They were not anti-marriage or anti-family. And there were many shows with two married heterosexual parents — Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, etc. Are there any like that now? (That’s not a rhetorical question; I truly don’t know. I’m an ignoramus when it comes to modern television programs.)
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BlueBloods has intact married couples that interact in a semi-normal way.
I think the reason why we see so many shows with a single parent is that many children grew up with divorced parents or from single parent households. The old adage “write what you know” seems like it would ring true in this instance.
Many kinds from my era say they were traumatized by the death of Bambi’s dad. Even that movie had a single mom. But if you ever start to understand Disney rationale or the covert programming behind todays television programs for children, let me know. I think it’s all programming. Hook them while they’re young and spew propaganda at them until they are convinced. We are currently living out that notion.
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I was born in 1954, when divorce was still rare in most of the country. All of the fatherless kids I knew personally were fatherless because their mothers had been widowed. The old stigma against divorce certainly served a useful purpose, by making divorce rare, but it made things even more difficult for the children of divorce (as if having your parents split up isn’t traumatic enough). I remember hearing an interview some years ago with a celebrity whose name I can’t recall, whose parents divorced in the days when divorce was still rare and stigmatized. He talked about how isolated and alone and downright freakish he felt, because he didn’t know anyone else whose parents were divorced. But then at some point he discovered the world of theater, and all of a sudden he found all kinds of people who came from broken homes, and felt as though he finally belonged. I wonder if many of the people currently controlling the world of entertainment (especially children’s entertainment) had roughly the same experience.
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I loved the first season of You but then it took a turn towards the woke drain. The third season was practicallly unwatchable. I like Better call Saul. Can’t wait for the new season to come to Netflix.
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Loved Longmire!!!! I also enjoyed Goliath.
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Goliath sounds great. Thanks for the recommendation.
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