TV

When Mulan was born we put our TV away in storage.

TV is great for zombie-ing in the evening after working hard all day.  It's not so great for having quality time with family.

But we didn't stop watching visual entertainment.  We still watch stuff on the computer.  It has just meant that when we watch something it's about intentionally picking a show rather than passively letting show after show happen in front of us.

However this has meant that lately we haven't watched many TV series.  Generally we watch movies  (I wrote about it here and here).

But now, as Mulan (and Miya) get older, it is useful (and fun) for us to watch together some TV (but not too much!).  Last year, when we set up our Covid-safe classroom, we bought a multimedia projector.  We now often watch big-screen-style projected onto our wall.

Over the past several months we've watched a few TV series together.  We generally watch while we eat at lunch and/or dinner.

Early series we watched included Mystic (a teen horse story), AFK (suppose you suddenly appeared in the body of your avatar inside your computer game) and K-Pop Academy (reality TV!).

We also watched almost all of the 90s series Highlander.  It's fairly simple and formulaic, but it was fun and entertaining and a good introduction for Mulan into the structure of TV storytelling.  There are also a few thought-provoking moments with justice, morality, death and the meaning of life (Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever).  As the actors point out, the six seasons was a single story arc examining the tragedy of eternal life, and the process of arriving at never-ending loss and regret.

When we signed up for Netflix last month we started watching two TV series, The Good Place (our lunchtime watch) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (our dinnertime watch).

We've now finished the 53 episodes of The Good Place.  In my opinion, it's amongst the best TV series I have watched.  First up, it was funny and entertaining, with a great story.  Unlike many TV series that reset each week, the story progressed in new ways throughout the four seasons.  Each season was set with a new and different main issue, developed from the previous season.  But as well as good storytelling, the show did an awesome job of introducing moral philosophy (that's something we don't see much in US sitcoms!).  Over the course of the show it explicitly introduced many of the main issues that we would typically encounter in a first-year intro to ethics course.  And it managed to do it in a real-life way without being boring.  Good job writers!  It's interesting to see how both Highlander and Good Place address the question of eternal life in their own ways.

We've also now finished to the end of season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There's seven seasons of this, and then another seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so we've still got some watching to go (we probably won't bother with any of the other incarnations of Star Trek).  While there is the occasional weak/silly episode, on the whole TNG is a good watch.  Most episodes have good storytelling, and many are thought-provoking and/or inspiring.  In my opinion, TNG and DS9 sit well together.  As I see it, TNG sets up the optimistic attitude, then DS9 challenges this with a more Greek tragedy-style storytelling.  Both aspects are equally needed in life.