I'm so weary of gratuitous smoking, drinking, violence, nudity, and shocking cruelty in TV shows. I keep my remote in my hand every time I watch Game of Thrones so that I can skip over the pointless and dreary bedroom scene or pornographically drawn out torture session (even faster if it's both).
Season one of Granite Flats is a bit drab with its endless references to scripture and the overtures to the roles women and children are said to have embraced during the "prosperous and therefore divinely blessed" golden era of the nuclear family. But it is the only season where the adult drama is far less compelling than the kids' drama.
The kids solve mysteries in the first season. The adults create the running story lines.
After that, however, while I did enjoy the reduced dependence on a sledge hammer to get the religious message across, I missed the fun escapades of the kids. It got super serious super fast in season two and then season three was pretty damned dark – at least for a family show without a single expletive, love scene, cigarette, alcoholic beverage, or unrepentant bad guy.
Christopher Lloyd in season 2 onward joined by Parker Posey in season 3 add a sense of the cultural shift streaking through America during the period. He's an old-school free- thinker emerging from the scourge of McCarthyism and and she's a modern day Pythia. They satisfy my desire for the show to be more in line with the reality of the period than with its common fantasy of a cultural high-point for America.
In the end, I really like this show and I hope season 4 can bring back some of the fun, kids-solving-mysteries aspects while holding onto the improvements. It has an overall message that no one is easily defined through religion, ideology, skin tone, or background, and we have more common values than differences to focus on in our efforts to be better as a community of people.
Season one of Granite Flats is a bit drab with its endless references to scripture and the overtures to the roles women and children are said to have embraced during the "prosperous and therefore divinely blessed" golden era of the nuclear family. But it is the only season where the adult drama is far less compelling than the kids' drama.
The kids solve mysteries in the first season. The adults create the running story lines.
After that, however, while I did enjoy the reduced dependence on a sledge hammer to get the religious message across, I missed the fun escapades of the kids. It got super serious super fast in season two and then season three was pretty damned dark – at least for a family show without a single expletive, love scene, cigarette, alcoholic beverage, or unrepentant bad guy.
Christopher Lloyd in season 2 onward joined by Parker Posey in season 3 add a sense of the cultural shift streaking through America during the period. He's an old-school free- thinker emerging from the scourge of McCarthyism and and she's a modern day Pythia. They satisfy my desire for the show to be more in line with the reality of the period than with its common fantasy of a cultural high-point for America.
In the end, I really like this show and I hope season 4 can bring back some of the fun, kids-solving-mysteries aspects while holding onto the improvements. It has an overall message that no one is easily defined through religion, ideology, skin tone, or background, and we have more common values than differences to focus on in our efforts to be better as a community of people.