#gt:tv

It’s a Sin Review: Russell T Davies AIDS Drama is a Soaring Tribute

What makes a great children’s TV show?

Is it the colorful aesthetic of the world on-screen? Is it the funny voices of the cartoons and the playful interactions they have with one another? It’s all that but it’s also more. Good children’s shows understand that young ones are intelligent enough to grapple with concepts like right and wrong, friendship, family, and what it means to be creative. Kids are far more shrewd than adults give them credit for, therefore making a program for an age group that we have been out of touch with for decades presents a myriad of challenges.

Once in a while there is a show that understands all of the above and for kids who grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was nothing like Nick Jr.’s Blue’s Clues...

“Gganbu” isn’t the Squid Game episode with the highest kill count. It’s not the episode when we finally discover the man behind the deadly competition, or its ultimate winner. It is not the most fast-paced or action-driven of the Netflix series’ nine installments, nor is it the bloodiest. Instead, it is a relatively quiet hour that divides its characters into teams of two, with each pair acting as their own mini-social experiment. If the “deadly competition” trope is designed to reflect on the inherent goodness or not of humanity, then Squid Game‘s most articulate answer to the question of what humans will or will not do to survive comes in “Gganbu,” and it is as nuanced as it is heartrending...

If you’ve been watching Star Trek: Lower Decks, then you’ve probably noticed that Dr. T’Ana is clearly based on the notorious Dr. Pulaski from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s not that Gillian Vigman is trying to channel the performance of Diana Muldaur—because she’s clearly doing her own thing—so much as the entire vibe of Dr. T’Ana is as though our collective opinions about Dr. Pulaski were channeled into a cranky, sentient cat-alien. Pulaski was human, but if you were going to reboot the character as an alien species in Star Trek, everyone would choose to make her a Caitian, or perhaps, the other cat aliens, the Kzinti. (There are a lot of cat aliens in Trek!)

The larger point is simple: Dr. T’Ana is, in some ways, a hilariously exaggerated version of Pulaski. But I’m here to argue that the actual character and impact of Dr. Pulaski are both much more nuanced than anyone remembers. Here’s why Dr. Pulaski was surprisingly pivotal for The Next Generation, and why you should never talk bad about her ever again...

Superman & Lois Episode 1: DC Comics and Movie Easter Eggs