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Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: anonymouse1
Date: September 26, 2024 07:25PM
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Dad TV Is for Everyone Now The irresistible optimism of a competent hero working to restore the social order defies age, gender, and parental status.
Portrait of Kathryn VanArendonk
By Kathryn VanArendonk, a Vulture critic who covers TV and comedy

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Apple
The old-school vision of Dad TV is literal and concrete — TV viewed by actual dads, typically featuring male protagonists, who go about their lives in problem-solving mode. Sometimes this means they solve crimes in an hourly fashion. This is the Procedural Dad TV model, the world of NCIS and JAG and Blue Bloods and SWAT, but not Law & Order because it’s too much about moral ambiguity and the endings can be left open-ended (and we all know SVU is for the ladies). Sometimes the problem solving is on a broader, more abstract scale, as with a show like The West Wing, where fixing a problem is about romantic visions of national identity and the best tool for the job is a persuasive bit of rhetoric, not investigative skills or a carefully constructed timeline. Sometimes the problem solving happens in other genres. Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance, is a show about a loving and stern Space Dad who encounters a problem over and over and helps his space family solve it. Sometimes they solve it without him, or for him, but this too is the essence of dad. What could be more fatherly than the pride one feels when one’s kids get the job done?

This traditionalist vision of the Dad TV show is rooted in the concept of a specific viewer (an actual dad) and revolves around a core set of values to which that viewership adheres. Dad TV is about competence, process, optimization, a fundamental trust in or desire for functional social institutions, and the bone-deep belief that good drama comes from taking something broken and fixing it. But a strict textualist interpretation of the Dad TV constitution feels inadequate in 2024: It’s no longer just the purview of dads or even of men. According to Nielsen streaming data, the extremely Dadcore show Bad Monkey actually has an even split of male and female viewers, and the Sad Feelings Dad show Shrinking has slightly more female viewers than male. TikTok, not an app particularly known for its heavily dad user base, is home to an intense Criminal Minds fandom. As Dad TV has proliferated across platforms, the audience has ballooned and so the genre has followed, expanding into a supersized Dad+ TV of the streaming era.

This makes the definition of Dad TV a little more complex these days. The core ideas are here: Dad+ TV viewers still long for competence. They want characters doing the best possible version of their tasks, preferably via nitty-gritty depictions of a well-designed process lovingly planned and enacted. And so the dads at the center of these shows (whether literal or symbolic) believe in big institutions that provide order and a system that keeps everyone functional. Think of shows like Reacher, The Night Agent, Jack Ryan, Tokyo Vice, @#$%&, and The Terminal List, where at some level there is “the government,” or “justice,” or “the way things should be,” a broader framework of status quo these series’ protagonists seek to support or restore. Of course, their commitment to the idea of social order tends to leave a notable loophole regarding their own actions. In the pursuit of competence and order and fixing broken things, sometimes somebody’s gotta break the rules so they can put the rules back together the right way. And that somebody? It’s gonna be a dad — or rather a person of any age, gender, or parental status who is so naturally trusting of the Establishment that when they have misgivings, well, that must mean something.

Because in Dad+ TV, femininity is no longer a barrier to being Dad. Consider Julia, the Max series about Julia Child’s transformation from housewife into international culinary megastar. Superficially, nothing could look less like Reacher (aside from the coincidence of Julia Child and Jack Reacher both having notably capable, broad hands). One’s a show about a guy using those hands to punch people in the face; the other’s a show about a middle-aged woman massaging butter into a chicken. Julia’s impetus, though, is a woman who sees a need in the world. She believes in her unique ability to fulfill that need, and she rallies her circle of friends, family, and colleagues to institute widespread change based on her own remarkable and unflagging competence. Julia is a paean to the deep-down certainty that hard work and goodness will win the day and that the process of practicing and perfecting something is the route to the best possible result but also an experience that’s worthy just for the process of it. And, if anything, her position as a woman forced to battle against 1950s sexism only provides another anchor for her Dad TV cred: She believes in the possibility of the social system, but the current version of it is flawed. You know who can fix it if she bends the rules a little? Julia, Neo-Dad.

There’s Dad TV in some form or another on every streaming outlet, but the locus of contemporary streaming dadness is Apple TV+. In Dad+ TV, the stories unfold over the kind of long-season arc that tends to define a streaming season, rather than the rhythms of procedural, episodic problem solving. But the goals remain the same. The easiest show to point to is Ted Lasso, a towering monument to the importance of doing your best at work and in life with its ambitions stretched over the slower-burn development of multiple years of personal growth, rather than a game-by-game chart of wins and losses.

From its launch, Apple has had a deep bench of programming that fulfills the tenets of this genre in both its traditionalist and more contemporary versions. There are classic dude-protagonist shows that overlap with the general dad preoccupations, including See, Manhunt, and Masters of the Air. Hijack is the pinnacle of Apple’s accomplishments in this zone — a dad, doing his best, is the only person capable of foiling an elaborate plane-hijacking plot, which he has to do through ingenuity, courage, and a combination of emotional intelligence and physical prowess. He is played by Idris Elba in prime fatherly form, reassuring his family over the phone even as he’s coordinating the passengers to work alongside the one insightful ground-control staff member and take down the baddies. He’s Dad Extraordinaire, firm and encouraging and unshakably certain he can get everyone home safe.

Neo-Dad is where Apple really shines, though. It began with For All Mankind, one of the platform’s earliest original shows, which starts from pristine Dadcore obsession with all things space-race related, then twists it through the distinctly girl-dad wife-guy prism of an alternate American history where women shape the most important developments in technology and ingenuity. Apple has Lessons in Chemistry, its own version of Julia with even more of a Women in STEM valence. What could be more Neo-Dad than the proud celebration of gender parity in the sciences? Apple has Slow Horses, which asks the daring question of what happens when the competent, heroic spies are also total messes who can barely tie their own shoes. Neo-Dad thrives by questioning old-school, default assumptions about masculinity and strength. There’s Sugar (caring, driven noir detective is an alien, staring soulfully at humanity and longing to assimilate), and Presumed Innocent (Dad’s a flawed guy, but he loves his family and he loves the truth), and Foundation (humanity can be saved if only we set up Dad’s very important archive), and Shrinking (Dad’s a mess, but he loves feelings and he’s doing the best he can), and Black Bird (Dad’s a broken mess, but maybe he can redeem himself by bringing down a bad guy … except he’s also the bad guy). The height of this mode on Apple TV+ is Silo, a sci-fi adaptation where the whole system is both mysterious and corrupt, but the intrepid, highly skilled, and unflappable protagonist played by Rebecca Ferguson is undaunted in her need to figure out what’s really going on.


From NY Magazine’s Vulture
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: davemchine
Date: September 26, 2024 09:35PM
What the what?



Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: freeradical
Date: September 26, 2024 10:27PM
confused smiley
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: RAMd®d
Date: September 27, 2024 12:37AM
Somebody was paid by the word.






I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: gabester
Date: September 27, 2024 08:05AM
I did not know "dad tv" was a thing much less that it had such specific characteristics. It's like the author took an Onion article and then expanded on it, expounding and legitimizing the joke into a serious intellectual tour de force with scholarly backing.



g=
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: Blankity Blank
Date: September 27, 2024 08:25AM
I've heard of the "Dad TV" concept. Just felt like more of the usual marketing speak with loose ties to the real world.

I struggled through a skim of the wall of text, but it was still tl;dr. Here's a link to the more digestible online article.



A priest, a rabbit and a minister walk into a bar.
The bartender asks the rabbit "what'll ya have?"
The rabbit says "I dunno. I'm only here because of Autocorrect.



National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
As of July 16, 2022, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is now available by simply dialing 988. The previous number, 1-800-273-8255, will remain active.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2024 10:44AM by Blankity Blank.
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: Schpark
Date: September 27, 2024 09:50AM
TLDR
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: chopper
Date: September 27, 2024 10:20AM
What the hell is that? AI? Was it posted here because someone found it compelling or interesting or is this a joke I'm not getting?
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: NewtonMP2100
Date: September 27, 2024 11:07AM
…..dad…..bod…….hot…….



_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: rz
Date: September 27, 2024 01:40PM
TL;DR
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: TheCaber
Date: September 28, 2024 07:11AM
Too woke for me. I'm just gonna watch what I like, damn the critics and full speed ahead.

The short version is:
1. Read the first sentence.
2. Skip to last paragraph and read that.

Good luck, all!



=TC
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Re: Interesting take on (most of) Apple TV
Posted by: RAMd®d
Date: September 28, 2024 11:46AM
TL;WR






I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.
Options:  Reply • Quote
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