Star Trek. It taught me to dream big, recognize bigotry, embrace diversity, and show what a post scarcity future can actually look like and what we could accomplish if we try to.
Definitely Next Generation. The world could be a nicer place if everyone watched and paid attention to it.
Duet from DS9 is still one of my favourite episodes of anything, ever. Could easily be in a lot of other shows/settings too
Star Trek, the next generation, without a doubt. Get my entire sense of ethics and morality from that show. It was amazing. I still rewatch it quite often.
Probably The Good Place. Made me question what matters for being good or bad, or just being well intentioned.
Have you read ‘How to be Perfect’ by Michael Schur yet? The Audiobook even has cameos by most of the cast.
Star Trek TNG for sure.
Anything from PBS like Reading Rainbow, Nova, Bill Nye, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers etc…
Star Trek TNG, pretty much formed my ethics and moral compass. Pretty much the same can be said for deep space nine
Captain Picard very much became a Captain to all of us, I think.
Of course he’s got some flaws for sure (his stubbornness, for one!) but he really set the bar for what a civilised person and a good leader should be.
He’s principled, fact-based, fair in his judgement, respects the differences of others (both individually and culturally), solves problems with understanding and empathy rather than force, and he’s forgiving of mistakes.
And he does all that while still being a “strong” man. In fact, it’s these very traits which earn him the respect of his crew.
I’m glad I had Captain Picard as an influence in my childhood, rather than whatever youtube channel trying to make me angry for all the wrong reasons.
I can live with it
Mythbusters.
Some science mixed in with copious amounts of blowing things up and wild problem solving.
The difference between messing around vs science is writing things down!
Cringe answer but Bojack Horseman was like looking into a mirror for the first time in my life and realizing my hair looked like shit
Same for me. It didn’t even click in the beginning, I just enjoyed that the show seemed to be ultra relatable, and as things went on it started to feel all ooooo this isn’t good I can identify with this many things.
It’s just way easier to identify problems in others than in yourself because you have all these internal justifications and false ways of remembering events to your own benefit, but seeing it laid out neatly in a show and where the consequences are much more immediate and spelled out, it made me start self-reflecting on my own life.
It got me to the point of understanding and admitting that the depression I had carried around most of my life wasn’t normal and that I was the main destructive force in my life at that point.
It was also nice the show covered a lot of different types of depression and anxiety. I feel most shows wouldn’t have handled Princess Caroline, Mister Peanutbutter, or even Todd the way that they did. And nobody was up or down the entire time, which was another thing letting me tell myself I didn’t have severe depression, because I had plenty of good moments too.
The show handled everyone pretty respectfully and gave them all realistic but positive outcomes, but didn’t smooth over anything that would be pretty irreparable in real life. Things like Hollyhock needing to keep her distance or Dianne still being glad they met but knowing that she can’t be around him felt very real and sincere, not placating by having everyone make up at the end.
I will say I just finished a rewatch, and parts of the last season did trigger me in a way I hadn’t had to deal with in years now. I’ve been feeling more depressed this year than I have in a long time, and while a lot of the show made me glad of how far I’ve come, there’s still plenty in my life I don’t want to own about my past and it still makes me feel sometimes that I don’t deserve to be happy and that I’m a bad person. It really put me in a dark spot for about a week.
Tuca and Bertie was another great one and carried on a good bit of what Bojack did, and I’m upset it got cancelled right as it was getting into the traumatic stuff. I would have liked to see that get the same chance to tell its story as it was telling a similar story but from a female perspective and having something similar for people dealing with the fallout of sexual assault could be helpful in the same way BJH helped people understand depression.
Same. It was great watching a show about a character dealing with depression (amongst other problems) in a realistic way.
I don’t think this all that cringe. I’ve still not found a show with such great character development for literally every character. Even the monkey who gives him advice on his first run. He’s there from the very first episode.
Futurama got me out of a cult by making fun of the moving goal posts of the missing link. I always liked science before that, but probably because the religion was so against it I kinda avoided discussing evolution, and a lot of the rest of at least basic science could be rationalized or twisted to kinda agree.
I personally at the time had no issues with the age of the Earth(was told the 7 days were metaphorical and the incorrect orders wasn’t really discussed), didn’t have any issues believing in dinosaurs (there was iirc some argument that God used them to prepare the earth and intentionally had em die out) and other stuff, plus they tried to use stuff like how much Earth is in a “perfect” distance from the sun.
All that aside, human evolution can’t work even with some of the creation myth being metaphors, because said cult also used the Adam and Eve story to justify why God permits evil. If that is just a metaphor, then the problem of evil became too pronounced.
If you want to know the argument I was sorta ok with at the time, it was basically this: Satan convincing humans to disobey God basically put the challenge that humanity didn’t need God and can rule themselves. While several thousand years of allowing atrocities seems long, in the age of the Earth (and theoretically, God) it isn’t much time at all, and the belief God would resurrect all those deserving meant to me at the time that at max 100 years of suffering would be eventually forgotten as we lived eternally after the resurrection (another belief of the cult).
For me, evolution being more accurate broke me out of that logic error, and Futurama was the delivery method that got through the standard mental defenses.
I’m curious: was there a specific episode about this that got you thinking, or was it more the exposure to the whole of the show which kept joking in that particular direction?
What OP’s describing sounds a lot like this scene in “A Clockwork Origin”.
That is absolutely golden. Thanks!
Surprised nobody here has mentioned Mr Rogers Neighborhood yet.
As a little kid, Mr Rodgers was pretty boring. As a bigger kid, it was below my level.
I fully support the show and what it stood for, but Sesame Street was much more entertaining.
Yeah I greatly appreciate the show existed, but it was far too mild for me. I needed something wackier to hold my attention.
Mythbusters and Star Trek have already been mentioned, so I’m adding Babylon 5. Fight fascism!
The Muppet Show.
The perfect show for a creative, empathic, and deeply weird kid like me.
Late Night with Craig Ferguson.
Rules can be broken and having fun isn’t that hard, you just have to be real and honest with people and then magical things can happen.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 taught me to relish the joys of bad media and riffing on bad media.
It’s something that is hard to learn for some people, me included. That something can be bad but still fun. Will Farrell movies were that to me, I hated him because I was a pretentious douche who thought anyone who liked him were just morons. Turns out no, you can think the movie is both stupid as hell, but still have fun
I’m at the point now where even if it’s “bad”, I have a great time if it felt like the people making the work were having a blast doing it. :D
Exactly.
Probably Mr. Robot, considering the others would be South Park and Rick and Morty. And it taught me … to not take adderall ig.
The last Airbender
