What got me started on this? Mind Your Language, another old series, British. We were having dinner at Ah Ho's place when we decided to try out the adaptor that we had gotten for George to mirror their iPad on the TV. Yup, you can mirror the iPad on the TV or projector. That's why it makes a great education and entertaining tool.
One of the things they did was go onto YouTube and played Mind Your Language. Show played smoothly. And it made me think of the old series that I used to watch as a kid. I remembered The Brady Bunch. I think it was one of my favorites, together with Eight Is Enough.
And so I went onto YouTube and watched some of the old series.... they are still nice. Clean and good entertainment. The kids were like kids. In one episode, Greg was grounded after his brother inadvertently told their parents of his carelessness while driving. In another, he wanted to drop out because he thought he was going to be a star baseball player. Those episodes might be found draggy and boring by today's generation. No matter how fictitious or how perfect everything seems to work out in the end, one thing stands out, they were good wholesome family values. Lots of good advice in there. That probably catered to a generation who was more willing to be 'advised'. These days everyone talks about personal space, we know better etc, etc. We generally steer clear of each other's space.
In a later season, when the kids were mostly older, you see wholesome family values. Sibling rivalry is there but generally you see the older ones playing their older brother and sister roles. Kids were really innocent. Boys gila sports and frogs; girls had their ballet lessons. Today's TV kid casts generally show more sophistication..... and are like adults before their time. These days they all siao the opposite sex as soon as they hit the teens.
But those shows had set gender roles. You have a cut, go run to your mom or in the case of the Bradys, when the boys had no mom, they went to Alice, their housekeeper. The men can't seem to take care of the kids if their spouses are dead. Mrs. Brady on the other hand, lived with her parents after her husband passed away. Women still need to be taken care of. If sons had problems, dads must pick up the pieces. Dad goes out to work, mom stays at home. In today's generation, the women seemed to have moved on... they can now take care of themselves....
I was trying to think of a nice family drama series today.... couldn't think of one. Maybe family drama series don't sell airtime. The nearest I could think of was Desperate Housewives. I only watched a few and it seemed to encourage deceit and lies a lot. I can't comment much since I stopped watching it after a few episodes. Didn't like it.
I thought some of the episodes of The Brady Bunch are good enough to use as class lesson material, like The Dropout where Greg wanted to stop high school because he was going to be a pro baseball player.
And so with YouTube and other sites which make all these TV shows available, there is no lack of entertainment. Why pay so much for ASTRO and get mostly reruns? You can watch all the reruns you want at your convenience. Might as well pay more for a faster internet line and have control over the content you view than be controlled by the content. You turn into a couch potato much faster if you adopt the latter cos you have to sit down and watch all those silly advertisements on paid TV.
I enjoyed watching The Brady Bunch.... they were nice.
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