For years leading up to starting this newsletter, I’d been threatening to write about “woke” teen TV, but I wasn’t able to work up the courage until late 2021. Most of my journalism career explores much heavier topics, from human rights issues in Latin America to health and disability justice to workers’ rights to the Covid-19 pandemic. But my friends know that beyond these serious topics, I’m also obsessed with television, and started this newsletter to scratch that itch.
In this newsletter, I overanalyze and evangelize a bunch of TV shows I hope other people watch, and consider why some shows work and others don’t, the depth and shortcomings of these shows’ attempts to weave politics into their plots, how this shift came about (“Orange Is The New Black” was an absolutely critical moment for television, and how it all ties to the broader political and social culture. For all of the references to Me Too, Black Lives Matter, and getting out the vote, there are few occasions in these shows in which we see any broader critique of capitalism. I’ll be talking a lot about that too.
Since I started this newsletter, its scope has expanded to cover shows that aren’t only about millennials, but are perhaps targeted to them, or focus on young people in a different era. I’ve also begun comparing different mediums more often, weaving in popular novels and music in my takes.
Though I do earnestly believe in the power of television to shift our culture, I don’t intend for this newsletter to be too serious. Mostly, I’m hoping to become more successful in my #1 favorite hobby of evangelizing television shows to friends and strangers, and have a platform to write about this stuff instead of clogging my friends’ iPhones with messages live-texting my reactions to shows they don’t watch.
This newsletter is free!
