Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture – mostly film, TV, and books – with some music and games thrown in. We’re here every Sunday night at 7 pm.
In this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about shows that shed light on issues of the day.
The show Lou Grant did that from 1977 – 1982, until the star, Ed Asner, spoke out against U.S. involvement with repressive governments in Latin America, and Lou Grant was cancelled.
Alaska Daily is a network TV show on ABC that addresses social issues, in the same vein as Lou Grant.
Hillary Swank plays Eileen Fitzgerald, a former high-profile investigative reporter in New York who gets knocked down from the big leagues and starts over working for the Alaska Daily newspaper. She teams up with Roz Friendly, an Alaskan Native and star reporter whose focus is on missing and murdered Indigenous women in the state of Alaska.
According to Wikipedia, the series credits indicate the program was inspired by the 2019 Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica article series Lawless: Sexual Violence in Alaska, as well as subsequent related reporting by the project’s lead reporter Kyle Hopkins.
And another example. I caught up on some episodes of Gray’s Anatomy this week.
At least two episodes were focused on Dobbs and what’s coming / already here as a result of that, with an episode showing the characters filming sex education videos, surely trying to get good information out there, and another episode where they were transporting a woman with an ectopic pregnancy over the state line because the doctors wouldn’t treat her where she was, and it ruptured while they were en route to the clinic where they could help her, and she died by the side of the road. Not subtle at all.
I think shows like these can make a difference, at least in getting the word out. What do you think?
What other TV and streaming shows highlight issues of the day? Dobbs. Racial inequities. QAnon. School shootings. Corruption in politics…
philpm
Got introduced to Alaska Daily last weekend by my SIL, since it was too cold to do anything outside. We were very impressed with the writing and acting. Not thrilled that we have to wait until February to see the last four episodes of the season, but am definitely looking forward to it.
I hope the show can get more traction in the lower 48 of the MMIW crisis. That fact that so little attention is being paid to it by the local and federal governments is horrific.
Wyatt Salamanca
I’ll leave it to others to cite current shows and just mention these oldies:
East Side/West Side aired on CBS aired for one season 1963–64
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_West_Side_(TV_series)
East Side/West Side was an American drama series starring George C. Scott, Elizabeth Wilson, Cicely Tyson, and later on, Linden Chiles. The series aired for one season (1963–64) and was shown Monday nights on CBS.
Shannon’s Deal aired on NBC from April 16, 1990 until May 21, 1991
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%27s_Deal
Shannon’s Deal explored various aspects of the law as Jack Shannon took on police and government corruption, union disputes, child custody, the murky underside of creative ownership in the music business, and even the viability of the church as sanctuary for an illegal immigrant.
raven
The Wire
Phylllis
I just finished Sherwood, streaming on Britbox. It was a dramatization of two murders that occurred in Nottinghamshire (yes, near that forest). A major plotline was the breaking of the coal miners union by Thatcher’s government and Met police officers working undercover for blatantly political purposes. Well done, with terrific performances all around, in particular from Leslie Manville and David Morrissey.
Oh, and I loved Lou Grant back in the day.
Phylllis
@Wyatt Salamanca: Has it been that long since Shannon’s Deal aired? I remember the great visual of him limping after an ambulance in the opening credits.
WaterGirl
@Phylllis: I would watch Lou Grant again. I have no idea if it’s streaming anywhere, but I like to think it would hold up well.
UncleEbeneezer
Sexism/Misogyny:
Handmaid’s Tale,
GLOW,
For All Mankind,
Mad Men,
Good Girls Revolt
Criminal (In)Justice/Policing:
Dahmer,
We Own This City,
The Wire,
When They See Us,
Unbelievable,
The Night Of
Class Divisions:
White Lotus (S1)
Everything on PBS, lol
LGB(especially)T-phobia:
Pose
Issues Facing Adolescents:
Sex Education,
Euphoria,
Never Have I Ever
Native/Indigenous Issues:
Reservation Dogs,
Borgen (Inuits of Greenland),
Three Pines
Racism/Inequality:
Snowfall,
Queen Sugar,
Atlanta,
Abbott Elementary
Social Media/Consent:
I May Destroy You
TheOtherHank
We just finished watching Three Pines. It stars Alfred Molina as a Quebecois cop investigating murders. There are murders that are the focus of the episodes but stitching the series together is the search for missing native girls and the people who killed them. It’s good.
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s a lot of shows!
Do you think any of them make a difference?
Phylllis
@WaterGirl: I agree. Looks like it’s only available on DVD.
WaterGirl
@TheOtherHank: Three Pines is on my list.
WaterGirl
@philpm: For anyone not already familiar:
WaterGirl
@Phylllis: That’s too bad.
Wyatt Salamanca
The Defenders ran on CBS from 1961 to 1965
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(1961_TV_series)
Father-and-son defense attorneys who specialized in legally complex cases, with defendants such as neo-Nazis, conscientious objectors, demonstrators of the Civil Rights Movement, a schoolteacher fired for being an atheist, an author accused of pornography, and a physician charged in a mercy killing
A 1962 episode entitled “The Benefactor”—in which the father–son legal team defended an abortion care provider—was the most controversial; all of the series’ three regular advertisers (Brown & Williamson, Lever Brothers, and Kimberly-Clark) refused to sponsor the episode, so it was only transmitted after a last-minute sponsor was found, [Speidel Watches], for a discounted advertising rate. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation banned this episode when it was first shown on April 28. In 2008, this incident was used as the basis for a second season episode of the drama Mad Men, set in the 1960s
Room 222 September 17, 1969 until January 11, 1974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_222
The themes of the episodes are sometimes topical, reflecting the contemporary political climate of the late 1960s and early-to-mid1970s, such as the Vietnam War, women’s rights, race relations, and Watergate.
Baud
All in the Family was the quintessential social issue show back in the day.
Amir Khalid
Nobody in the viewing public anticipated what Lou Grant was or became, I think, at least partly because the other spinoffs off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show were half-hour sitcoms like the mother ship. Lou Grant himself was a comedic grumpy TV newsroom boss on that show. On his own show he was a very different version of the character, a hardnosed newsman leading a Los Angeles newspaper’s city desk.
I will also never forget the show’s opening credits, which tracked in detail a newspaper’s progress from tree in the forest to birdcage liner.
Scout211
@Wyatt Salamanca: I was about to post The Defenders. What an amazing show. It really affected me and educated me as a teen.
Shows like all the Law&Orders tackle these issues today. But this show was in the 1960s!
MomSense
As it happens, tonight one of my dearest friends is on 60 Minutes discussing her struggle to access prescribed medication for obesity. She should be on shortly – Maya Cohen. We are watching together.
ETA Alaska Daily is fantastic.
philpm
@WaterGirl: Thanks! I should have made that clear in my post.
MomSense
The series Unbelievable is a must watch. A difficult but must watch.
RaflW
For those with a long memory, I recall James at 15 tacking youth social issues in non-sensational, non-comedic ways. (Wiki tells me it was ’77-78, which jibes. My older brother loved the show. It was a little over my head but I’d watch. I just remember my mom dipping in one week and kind of being appalled at how frank it was about James trying to decide wether to have sex. She didn’t forbid us to keep watching, not her style, but there was definite eye rolling and a bit of angst over ‘appropriateness.’)
Scout211
And since I’ve already consulted the way-back machine, The Mod Squad was another series that tackled social justice issues (1968-1973).
prostratedragon
@UncleEbeneezer: To this comprehensive list I’d add Twin Peaks for, among other things, deconstruction of social roles and the impulse to appropriate — other people, property, the land.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Boy, you are right about that!!
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: You made some great points. You were able to watch Lou Grant? Small world indeed.
Lou Grant was a great show for a lot of reasons. I can’t believe no one is streaming it. Bastards!
Phylllis
@RaflW: We are really hitting the wayback machine tonight. Also around that time, The White Shadow. Somehow I think the story lines would be just as topical today.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: It seems crazy that that would be an issue. What problems does she run into?
Brachiator
@Wyatt Salamanca:
My mother was a big fan of The Defenders and even though I was a little kid I would sometimes watch episodes with her. Many flew over my head, but the theme of trying to do the right, just thing had an impact on me.
I recently watched some episodes of Route 66. The series was about two guys, one from a rich family, one from a poor background, discovering America as they drove Route 66 in a Chevy Corvette.
One memorable episode featured a young Robert Duvall as a heroin addict. The episode was grimly realistic about someone trying to kick heroin. I had no idea that at the time there was practically only one government medical facility where you could go to enter a supervised treatment program.
ETA. For me, it was weird to see Robert Reed go from the Defenders to The Brady Bunch.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@UncleEbeneezer: I was under the impression that Euphoria season 3 was coming soon. It may be a year or more. I love that show but it is disturbing on every level
Edit to add my wife bought me the Beastie Boys Book for x-mas. I could not read it fast enough. An amazing journey down memory lane.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
The cost for mediation, it the insurance company will approve it, makes the medication unattainable. The work around is to prescribe a medication that is used for the treatment of diabetes and now diabetes patients are facing shortages of the medication.
WaterGirl
@Scout211:
I had no idea.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I think she is on in the next segment.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator:
Seems like that would be a big step down!
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Pretty sure 60 minutes is over here – it started an hour ago. Unless everything is running late?
edit: yes, it started late.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
There was a football game so it didn’t start at the usual time.
Phylllis
@WaterGirl: Delayed due to the feetsball.
schrodingers_cat
In its 3rd season Battlestar Galactica took on the Iraq occupation from the POV of the Iraqis. That was brave and hard to watch.
Tamas (Darkness), a miniseries about the Partition of India from the POV of the displaced people based on a boom by Bhisham Sahani, himself a refugee from Pakistan and directed by Govind Nihlani who was born in Karachi and was 7 when the Partition happened.
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: I remember it that way too. It was like ceding ground.
oatler
Rossi!
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Star Trek
MASH
Car 54 Where Are You?
dm
How about the Daredevil and Lucas Cage series on Netflix? Both of them dealt with issues like gentrification and corrupt urban development, though tangled up in the costumed vigilante stuff of Marvel. They had a genuinely positive view of the urban poor, muckraking journalists, and urban reformers.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: It’s all about the Benjamins.
WaterGirl
@dm: I have never watched either one, but knowing that makes them more appealing.
Mike S
I just started watching The West Wing again. Watching again makes me think that Stephen Miller watched it and decided he needed to be the antithesis of Toby when he moved into the west wing.
WaterGirl
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch:
Star Trek. Yes.
MASH. Definitely.
Car 54 where Are You? Really? Can you say more?
WaterGirl
@Mike S: That man is evil reincarnated. And I don’t mean Toby. :-)
UncleEbeneezer
@WaterGirl: I don’t think any single show will make a huge political difference nowadays, only because there are so many viewing options that they just will never have the huge audience of say Roots or The Day After. But I do think that all of these shows can help people better understand issues and change our perspectives on political questions and they all can cumulatively move the Overton Window. I don’t think The Wire magically changed the way everyone views our police/criminal justice system, but I think that it along with all the others combined really deal a devastating blow to the myths of US Policing/Justice being color-blind and fair. Especially when series’ like When They See Us, We Own This City, Dahmer and Unbelievable are all based on true stories.
I think that some shows highlight history in a way that also really helps our side. For example: The Watchmen, Lovecraft Country and Them all highlight historical events of exactly the type that anti-CRT people are desperately trying to keep people from acknowledging. I know many people who were first exposed to the Greenwood (Tulsa) massacre via Watchmen/Lovecraft, making it that much harder to white-wash that stuff from public knowledge.
And I think that series’ like Pose, Sex Education, Euphoria, Sense8, Orphan Black, P-Valley, Queer As Folk, The L-Word etc. are doing great work simply by normalizing LGBTQ/Non-Binary people in a way that breaks stereotypes and humanizes them for millions of viewers.
UncleEbeneezer
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I tried one episode and couldn’t hang. Too much Girls In Vulnerable Situations for my blood. Visually stunning, but it was just too heavy for me at the moment (which is saying a LOT because I usually love really dark stuff). Likewise we’ve been staying away from this season of Handmaiden’s Tale because as much as we’ve loved the series so far, after Dobbs etc., it’s hard to go back to that sort of series. At some point we will though.
MomSense
That was amazing. Maya is a rock star.
Here’s the link
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/weight-loss-obesity-drug-2023-01-01/#app
JPL
@UncleEbeneezer: Truth be told, soaps did a better job than most TV series.
rikyrah
I like Alaska Daily.
lgerard
I binged watched Lou Grant 2 years ago. Pretty interesting
Most of the episodes are available on You Tube, though not the highest quality as they are derived from VHS tapes
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I will have to watch it now with so many recommendations!
BTW I made shami kebabs with beef in the air fryer, it was my best air fryer dish so far.
middlelee
Wind River–Indigenous women murders.
UncleEbeneezer
@JPL: At what, in particular?
Sure Lurkalot
Julia with the amazing Diahann Carroll. African-American woman main character…in 1968. Upwardly mobile professional.
I wanted to be a nurse from watching that show as a young teen though a couple of years candy striping dissuaded me from that….
WaterGirl
@middlelee:
That’s kind of cryptic, can you say more?
UncleEbeneezer
I used to love the show Picket Fences which was about a small, quirky town where lots of weird stuff is always happening. Every episode seemed to confront/explore any of a number of the current issues facing America at any given time. I was a kid, so I have no idea now, how well it did that (or was it hopelessly BothSides/problematic?, def possible) but I wonder if there are any shows out there now that do that.
Gvg
@WaterGirl: cost probably. My doctor is trying to proscribe some for me and even if insurance “covers” any of the obesity aids I have checked so far, the price is unaffordable. There are also a lot of production shortages. Problems with manufacture, and more people want them than they planned on. It’s not considered very important until you are hundreds of pounds overweight.
Most things don’t work too
WaterGirl
@Sure Lurkalot: I don’t think I have ever heard of that show. What’s it about?
WaterGirl
@Gvg: That makes no sense. To a pharma company, people wanting your drug is a good thing? Why make it impossibly expensive?
Because they can? How does a drug like that even work?
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Her specialist prescribed medication and her insurance company (Anthem) denied it calling it a vanity drug.
It’s a great segment. Worth watching.
raven
Frank’s place had a place.
JPL
@UncleEbeneezer: Outside my element recently, but I can remember my grandmother telling me stories about characters in the sixties. Most had to do with relevant topics. In the seventies and eighties, it had to do with teenage sex.
middlelee
@WaterGirl: It is about the murder of a young Indigenous woman on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Writer/director Taylor Sheridan said he wrote the film to highlight the number of Indigenous girls and women who are raped and murdered both on an off the reservations. Many of the women simply disappear and law enforcement off the reservations is apparently reluctant to investigate.
RaflW
@Phylllis: Yes! It was a good show, and while we enjoyed Welcome Back, Kotter, White Shadow wasn’t going for taglines, gaffes and laugh track.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I set Tivo to record what was left of 60 minutes, so I will watch it tomorrow.
So her insurance company surely doesn’t cover the little blue pill then, right?
Insurance companies have way too much power.
WaterGirl
@middlelee: is it streaming somewhere?
Yutsano
Before Pose, before even the British Queer As Folk, before even Ellen came out, Showtime had the balls to air a show that had a gay main character. It’s entirely possible that depiction is “dated” but the fact that any show* put up a gay main character in the 1980s was quite the shock for the time.
*Yes I know there was Soap but that was much more an ensemble show.
EDIT: ERFOLG!!! (Also: FYWP)
Kent
@WaterGirl: Wind River is a movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_(film)
Sure Lurkalot
@WaterGirl: It was a comedy about a widowed nurse and her son. I haven’t seen it since I was like 14.
I see on Wiki that there was some controversy about the show because some felt the character was whitewashed and that not having a male black lead made it more homogenized. Pretty fair criticism. But I didn’t see this as a 13 year old…I thought Julia was cool.
BeautifulPlumage
OT, but re: shows dealing with abortion…I came across the original Peyton Place novel and was amazed that it dealt with that. Growing up with soap operas in the 60’s & 70’s, I considered “Peyton Place” to refer to general drama. Reading the book was eye-opening.
HinTN
Anybody mentioned This is Us?
kalakal
British TV has done some pretty good ones over the years
From back in the 60s Death do us part, Steptoe and Son, Dad’s Army. The first 2 became All in the Family and Sandford and Son over here. The 3rd, which occasionally showed real teeth behind the comedy, has probably the best take down of the British class system I’ve ever seen. The Thatcher years had some great shows about social problem eg The Boys from the Blackstuff about unemployed/casual labourers in Liverpool.
Soap operas such as Coronation Street and Eastenders have been pretty good at exploring topics such as racism, substance abuse, unemployment as well as LGBTQ issues.
There has been some great satirical comedy eg Spitting Image in its heyday.
British TV isn’t allowed to put on anything remotely political in the week before an election. In 1987 one minute after the polls closed ITV put Spitting Image on with this prediction of the consequences of a Tory win
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ohhib
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
My bike shop was a couple doors from a biotech startup company that opened about a year after I did. It takes a lot of people, effort and money to research and develop a new working drug, and often the payback time is still quite a ways down the road. Lot of steps in the entire process, any one of which can grind the whole thing to a very expensive halt. The number of people that worked there that never saw a lab or production line was amazing. One of my customers did some of the work getting the drug and the market for the drug together. The biggest road block as I understood it was red tape, not the development or production.
zhena gogolia
@Wyatt Salamanca: I loved East Side / West Side. Cicely Tyson was the first Black woman I saw with a natural hairstyle. Soon they were all over the place.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Thank you.
Kent
Here is a recommendation that is kind of out of left field. But I would recommend the series “The Bridge” which is a murder mystery about a dead body found in the middle of the bridge between El Paso and Juarez with an American detective (Dianne Kruger [I know] and a Mexican detective Demián Bichir having to work together to solve the crime. It is actually a remake of a Danish/Swedish series of the same name.
It gets deep into all kinds of border issues, immigration, racism, and the drug war. It was an FX show but you can stream it on Hulu: https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-bridge
WaterGirl
@HinTN: No. Interesting choice. Which plot lines are you thinking of?
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@WaterGirl:
I was being satirical with the last selection.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
“Maude” was a big one
WaterGirl
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: That obviously flew right over my head!
A few other shows that have been mentioned are shows that I recall liking when I was young but I don’t have any recollection of them taking a stand on social issues. So I thought maybe I had missed something. Duh.
VOR
@WaterGirl: I donate to a charity called “Women Count“. Their goal is to create a database on women murdered by men, including in domestic violence.
Suzanne
Haven’t read too far in this thread, but one show that I used to really enjoy was this super-weird show called Picket Fences. It dealt with all kinds of topics. There was one episode I remember in which the youngest son appeared to experience stigmata. And it became this really interesting episode about religious belief, and agnosticism, and it did not end with an answer.
Murphy Brown, of course. And Designing Women did a whole episode about Clarence Thomas.
My So-Called Life was great for issues for teens. Hell, even the first couple of seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210 dealt with a lot of that material.
CaseyL
@WaterGirl:
Not to speak for @HinTN:, but This is Us was topical on nearly every issue; it seemingly was designed to be.
Some of the most powerful (to me) scenes addressed the challenge of raising a non-white child as one’s own in a white family. Randall had (what seemed to be authentic) conflicts around how he defined himself in and beyond the context of Being a Pearson; as did his parents in struggling with how to support him to “be Black” when they weren’t Black and couldn’t understand (no matter how they tried) that specific type of alienation. (The scene with Jack doing pushups with Russell on his back always makes me cry.)
Kate/Toby: Fat issues, self-worth, assumptions about love and how often you can find it, questions about love and whether love is worth giving up everything else.
Every character on the series was an opportunity to explore a facet of how the world treats us, how we treat one another, how we treat ourselves.
I mean, there’s a reason you needed a box of kleenex for every episode, because there was a lot that made viewers cry. But nothing about the show was cheaply manipulative.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Homeland
Seasons 6 and 7 from 2017 and 2018 is a story arc of a right wing coup, comprised of military and politicians using the help of Russia using social media, driven by hatred of a female president.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: You are so right. Thank you.
Gvg
@WaterGirl: maybe because it really does cost that much? Not all high prices are arbitrary markups by greed heads. New drugs had expenses and companies need to get paid. In fact, they also had failed drugs they need to get paid for. Real research and development has guaranteed multiple losses for every drug to market. And the ones that go all the way can be really costly. Costs go down over time as ways to produce it cheaper get found and the market proves itself stable.
Past weight loss drugs have mostly not really worked in real tests so any that have actual test results and facts have a lot. The cost to produce needs to get brought down though and the supply needs to stabilize.
Mousebumples
@WaterGirl: A few pharmacy perspective points (*I don’t agree/endorse all of these, for the record) –
1) Pharma charges as much as they think they can get away with. For drugs that have multiple uses (eg Diabetes & Obesity for GLP1 drugs like Ozempic/Wegovy – same active ingredient at different doses), if pharma charges less for 1 vs the other, they won’t maximize the rewards to their stockholders.
2) A lot of employers don’t want to cover “lifestyle” medications. This might include weight loss, erectile dysfunction, or fertility treatments – among others, but those are the big 3. Also an “easy” place to draw the line an exclude coverage to save money. (*note – The Little Blue Pill {Viagra} is generically available now and much cheaper for people to pay out of pocket, if they’d like)
3) I’m hoping that the cost savings from covering weight loss will eventually lead to more widespread coverage. (eg similar to how more treatments for smoking cessation are covered now) Obesity is associated with adverse health outcomes and costs, but change can be slow.
4) As for why pharma doesn’t have enough supply – unexpected boosts to use likely caught them off guard. Also may be some covid related supply chain throttles? 🤷♀️ They want to sell drugs to make money, and I think they’re working to fix this.
CaseyL
I remember some of the earlier (1960s-1980s) shows that have been mentioned in this thread. Looking back, it astounds me how much reach those series had, because there were only three major networks. Four, if you include PBS.
For that reason, it’s incredibly difficult for a modern TV show to have the same effect. The offerings are so varied across so many sources, and the audience so splintered.
One other thing those long-ago programs had going for them: good-to-excellent writing, casts, and production values. You have to grab your audience and hang onto it; you need characters the audience cares about, and stories that are interesting, and well told.
Mousebumples
On topic – Longmire (tribal issues), and agree with the previous mention of Pose (LGBTQ/HIV). The last season of Brooklyn 99 took on some of the police brutality stuff, too.
Jacel
An early 1960s TV show that helped build my interest in politics and how government functions was “Slattery’s People” focusing on a California state legislator and his constituents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery%27s_People
middlelee
@WaterGirl: $2.99 to rent on Amazon Prime. I saw it in 2017 on a big screen.
NotMax
Haven’t yet read thread, so unaware if any of there have already been cited.
Going quite a way back, Leave It to Beaver had an episode which addressed alcoholism. Too (but gently) , any number of Captain Kangaroos. On Mr. & Mrs. North she was the much more adept sleuth than was he, and they were pretty upfront about drumbeating that. Also too would shoehorn Decoy (about a plainclothes policewoman) into the category. IIRC, The Goldbergs didn’t shy away from the topic of anti-semitism now and again. And shall toss The Defenders into the mix.
Movies from back when? Off the cuff gotta say The Grapes of Wrath, Crossfire, Black Legion, Fury, Gentleman’s Agreement, To Kill a Mockinbird and Make Way for Tomorrow
NotMax
NotMax
there = these
NotMax
@middlelee
Free (with ads) on the Roku channel.
RaflW
I just watched S.1 Ep1 of Lou Grant (free!). I’m sure I watched a few random episodes back in the day, but it held up remarkably well
Maybe my partner being a former newspaper editor & reporter, and having friends still in the business helped me stay interested. Also, gotta wonder what (if anything) Katherine Graham, the owner of the Post thought of the woman owner/publisher of Lou’s paper.
rikyrah
@JPL:
The thing about soaps…they had the opportunity to take younger characters that the audience has grown up with….
Thinking about HIV/AIDS, part of my viewpoint on it comes from sports and soaps…Magic Johnson and the General Hospital character of Robin Scorpio.
Who, when he announced his HIV, that Magic would still be here. I know I didn’t. Yes, he has access to the most advanced medicine, but him still living and flourishing. Living long enough to become a grandfather.. Never thought that it would happen.
Robin Scorpio was a bold choice. A Legacy character, whose portrayer had been on the show since she was 6. As an audience, we literally saw her grow up. When the show decided to give her HIV, it angered some of the audience. But, watching the character deal with it, learning about the new medicines available and the protocols by watching her storyline. And, that it’s not crazy for Robin to still be alive in 2022, and she was diagnosed in 1995.
Every soap was able to take one of their Legacy children and present the storyline that they were gay. Most notably was having the great Erica Kane’s daughter, Bianca, a lesbian.
Had one of the first transgender stories on The Bold and the Beautiful.
Having these stories come into our homes, day after day, broke down all kinds of barriers.
rikyrah
@CaseyL:
You are right about This Is Us
Expletive Deleted
Orange is the New Black went pretty deep into the sausage making of the prison system, with some time for other issues.
Rutherford Falls brings the Mike Schur sensibility to the issues of coloniamism, the current and historical relations between a small town and the reservation it borders.
It’s a Sin is about the height of the AIDS crisis.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt & Jessica Jones are two very different takes on PTSD and violence against women.
Honorable mentions to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (mental health), Ted Lasso (masculinity),
tandem
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s a great point on the 3rd season. And the whole story arc explored the role of religion in government in society, the pros and cons of civilian control of the military, the consequences of inequality, the pitfalls of democracy . . .. We re-watched all the episodes during the pandemic, and the show was as on point as it was when it first aired. Still didn’t like the ending though…
stinger
Long-dead thread — did I beat out JR in WV? — but I must mention Gabriel’s Fire, about a police officer recently released from prison against his will after serving 20 years, having been wrongly accused of murder. Starring the great James Earl Jones. Criminally, the show ran only one season.