Screen time— it’s a modern day parenting fixation. How to strike that perfect balance between not raising miniature zombie couch potatoes and utter survival? Research shows the magical number is two… as in no more than two hours a day.
Which at our house generally translates into two shows. Shows are 23 minutes, which makes me feel slightly overachieving and less guilty when a game on my phone is the last remaining thread connecting us to household sanity.
Over the years we’ve covered a bit about the latest television phenomenon ’round these parts. There were the days of Handy Manny and Max and Ruby. The good ‘ole days. And there was a fairly long obsession with the educational nature of Wild Kratts. But these days everything has turned into a blur of ninjas and Rangers and battles and “light-savers” and karate.
James has attempted to balance the physical violence-inducing shows with a fair measure of caring story lines involving emotional dilemmas and morally strong characters. It’s slow going.
One day after school James tried to get Jake to choose a “loving” show over a “fighting” show. Jacob misheard “loving” as “lovely” and so now, as we’re waiting the one hundred hours for Netflix to load, he routinely asks me, “Mom, do we have to watch a lovely show?”
Lovely shows are not just the yin to the Fighting shows’ yang. They’re veggies versus treats. Pocket shirts versus cool shirts.
James and I have also been bouncing back and forth between Lovely shows and the Antithesis of Lovely shows. There was Narcos, the true story of Colombian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar. If you weren’t sure, that’s a Fighting show. We followed it with a really heart-warming and uplifting run of Parenthood, a family drama in Berkeley. *sigh* We still miss its lovelinees. But then we watched a documentary called Making a Murderer, which left me feeling sad and disturbed by the criminal justice system. We caught-up on a few episodes of Top Chef— lovely— but then finished a series last night called Happy Valley.
Two minutes of Google research from the couch had identified Happy Valley as a Netflix British thriller with outstanding acting. Plus it was called Happy Valley, which as a native Happy Valleyian I could not dismiss in good conscience.
On the third to last episode I was pretzeled-up on the couch with my ears plugged and my eyes covered and an infinitesimal peephole through my fingers.
“James, is it over?” …silence…
“Are you sure we finished the entire six seasons of Parenthood? I don’t remember what happened to Joel and Julia… James? Hello?”
Happy Valley was more gripping than the first True Detective, which is saying something. The bad guy was too believable. Overall an impressive show, but it may take me months, possibly years, to recover.
Lovely.
(Now say it again, but with a British accent. OK, now I feel slightly better.)