Screen time does not have to be alone time. There are times when you want to do screen activities alone. Obviously playing casino games and taking advantage of Grand Vegas no deposit bonus codes in one of them.
But what about those times you’d like to watch as a family?
What is FreeVee?
Freevee is owned and run by Amazon. It is a streaming service that follows the model of traditional TV, where you (the consumer) can watch a TV show for free, but you will have commercials. So if you do not mind watching commercials, it is a very inexpensive option.
Well, you still have to have internet access and since the income is based on ad revenue, if a person does not live in the area where the ads apply, you do not get access to free TV or movies.
For example, Verizon Telephone is only available in the United States, so if you live in France, Verizon gets no benefit from you watching their ads.
Since Amazon requires a company to spend at least $15k to run their ads, that gives you an idea of the type of companies you will see ads from (not your local community store).
Benefits of watching a TV series as a family
Watching as a family allows you to talk about “stuff”. The conversation might start by talking about something that is happening in the TV show, but where the conversation ends up … who knows.
I have been doing this with my family since my children were very young. When they were really little, we would watch the whole series of “Star Trek Movies” or “Star War Movies” or “Harry Potter Movies. We may not watch the whole movie in one night.
Maybe we will watch half of it and then continue the rest on another night. When my kids were younger, we could usually find something that the whole family wanted to watch together. But as they got older, it would end up being a group within the family that wanted to watch a series.
We never forced anybody to participate who did not want to participate. But we did have the rule that if somebody was part of the group that wanted to watch a specific series, nobody else would continue to watch the series if everybody who wanted to watch was not available. So no spoilers.
Even with our kids away at college, we still did this — although with there being weeks between visits, it can take a while to get through a series now. But everybody still enjoys doing it, so we continue doing it.
What are some good TV Series or Movie Series to do a family event?
We have 4 boys, so that is reflected in our series choices.
Little House on the Praire
The Little House books were written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura kept a journal of her life in the mid-western United States during the late 1800s (1870-1894). “The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” was named after her. The first award was given in 1954. It was changed to the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award” in 2018. Originally it was awarded every 5 years, but now it is awarded every year.
The award was renamed because Native Americans and African Americans do not like the way that Laura portrayed them in her books. According to the ALA website: “ALSC had to grapple with the inconsistency between Wilder’s legacy and the association’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity, and respect, and responsiveness through an award that bears Wilder’s name.”
About the books … I have read every single one of Laura’s books. Yes, it was wrong for Laura to talk about a baby Indian as if it was a doll she could “buy”. Talking about a baby like a child would talk about wanting their parents to buy them a puppy at a pet store. But her mother immediately scolded her and told her it was wrong to “buy” a baby.
As for Black people, I do not have any memory in her books about her even interacting with Black people. There were very few Black people in the areas of the United States where Laura grew up. I am kind of surprised that nobody talked about how Laura did not support “giving women the right to vote”. She was not actively against it. She just thought it was silly because men and women live together as a family and should vote as a family unit.
But we are talking about a woman who was raised in the late 1800s, in a late 1800s society. We cannot expect her to have the values of a child raised in 2022.
As for the TV Series, it should probably be described as a “historical fiction” genre, where the story is based on historical events (time period, how society was, etc), but it is still fiction. You look at some of the stories in individual TV episodes, and it definitely shows 1970s society in an 1870s setting.
So is it worth watching as a family event? Yes, because even if there are issues with events or how characters are portrayed even from the 1970s lens vs the 2022 lens, it can be a starting point for conversation.
One example that comes to my mind is when Laura says “I wish I was a boy” because she wanted to do “boy things” (play in the mud, go fishing, dress in play clothes so she could play sports, etc). When she is 14 and starts to fall in love with Almanzo, she looks back at her childhood and comments about how she was a Tom Boy, but she could never let Almazo know.
She was changing from a little girl who liked to play in the mud to a young woman who wanted her “love” to see her as a woman. It made me think about what is happening in schools in 2022, and if a teacher overheard her 10-year-old self say “I want to be a boy”. Would they have understood that she was just saying that she wanted the freedom to “play in the mud”, “get dirty”, and not worry about “spoiling her clothes”?
Emergency!
I do not know if I would describe this series as “Historical Fiction”. Emergency was created on January 15, 1972 – May 28, 1977. In the very first episode, the storyline was about the “The Wedsworth-Townsend Act”. This was a law (proposal at the time) to allow paramedics to be paramedics. Before that, they had to have a registered nurse with them. Before that, there was nothing. People died because help could not get to them fast enough.
The goal of the producers of this series was to educate the public about the paramedic program. In 2022, seeing paramedics is an everyday thing. We can not imagine a time when there were no paramedics. Why would anybody be against paramedics when they do such great work?
Well, everything that is new has a beginning. After Korea and Vietnam, the soldiers who came home saw on the battlefield that immediate help saved lives. They wanted a similar type of program implemented in civilian society.
And as for the stories in each episode, they are 100% true stories. For every “emergency” that happened in the Emergency TV Show, the producers required that it had to come directly from an official fire department, paramedic, or police call. Not one single story in the whole series was made up (was fiction).
Since every story is a true story that actually happened in real life, it would be a good starting point for family discussions.
Summary
“Little House on the Prairie” and “Emergency” are two great TV series to watch as family events.
