Sat 12 April 2025

I keep finding more of these blog challenge questions, and I totally love them.

This one comes courtesy of Andreas' blog.

Like Andreas, I'm not a big TV watcher. I think I formally quit watching TV in 2003. I did watch a few things on Netflix and Amazon Prime over the years, but not a ton. Most of my answers are going to be based on things I saw as a youngster, or on very recent streaming series.

What TV Character From A Beloved Show Do You Wish You Could Be Best Friends With In Real Life?

I'm gonna let my teenage-self's nerd flag fly, and say it'd be ST:TNG's Jean-Luc Picard.

Of course, there were other characters I related to a lot more when I was younger, but as I age into Picard's apparent age from the (original) show, I relate to him the most. His wisdom and reserve (in almost every sense of the word) are very appealing as we sail into very murky waters at this point of history.

The only thing that gives me pause is the "best friend" part of the question. Jean-Luc Picard does not have a best friend. He's not a best friend sort of fellow. If he deigns to drink an ale with you, you can count yourself lucky.

I... am not nearly that aloof, but I don't have a best friend, either, so I guess it fits.

If You Could Binge-Watch An Entire Series Again For The First Time, Which One Would You Choose And Why?

There's one that's at the forefront of my mind: The Chosen.

I tried to think of a secular answer, but honestly, there's just no comparison. Even if I could binge ST:TNG again for the first time, or watch the Star Wars movies again for the first time, The Chosen was just way more impactful to me.

I've literally watched the series six times (seasons 1-3), and recently completed my third watch-through of season 4.

The thing about a series like this is that watching it is a little like reading the Gospels again for the first time. It really captures the imagination and engrosses the heart.

Highly recommend.

Name A TV Show That Changed Your Perspective On The World Or Taught You Something Valuable.

Just shy of ten years ago (*gulp*, man, Father Time is a freaking ninja!), I took an undergraduate literature class on Anime. The entire class was incredibly eye-opening and... well, entertaining is too meager a word. It was fascinating. One of the miniseries we watched was Haibane Renmei, a 2002 series by yoshitoshi ABe.

The way this series got under my skin really surprised me. We watched other Shōjo anime like Magical Girl Madoka which I... just got through, somehow. But not Haibane. It grabbed me by the lapels and sent me on a journey.

The anime deals with really deep and heavy topics, but simultaneously has such a light mood, look, and music.

I think a big part of why it was so beautiful and surprisingly impactful is that the creator didn't have the story all mapped out. He just sort of explored the subject in semi-real-time, and let the story develop organically. That's not usually a formula for success (Star Wars Sequels, lol), but in this case, it made for a beautiful and haunting corpus that is as haunting as it is enjoyable.

It's been ten years, I should really watch it again.

Addendum:

A comment from Michał reminded me of some aspects of Haibane Renmei that I forgot to write about in this post:

Something from that class that really amazed me, coming from a slightly sheltered Christian background: the way the ABe (in Haibane) and Kenji Miyazawa (in Night on the Galactic Railroad) combined Christian and Buddhist concepts in a way that was honoring to both, yet new and unique.

I told my prof that I was astounded that it took an anime to introduce "this generation" to the concept of sin (Christian perspective) and pollution (Buddhist perspective, I think). People had heard the same drum about sin and guilt beaten over and over and over again that they were completely deaf to it — not that I was wanting the drum beats to become effective again, but only that I was sad that there was no concept of it anymore, because it's still a valuable concept, even if it has been tragically abused and effaced by clueless religionists and hypocrites.

One thing I forgot to mention in my blost is that watching Haibane actually motivated me to write some of the best poetry I've ever written, which got me extra credit in the class 😁. I think I sat down in my room for 2-4 hours with a single song on repeat until that poem came out of me. I have a snippet of it here.

—(Me)

100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 21

P.S., want to grab a copy of the questions from this post? Just run:

curl -s https://rldane.space/blog-questions-challenge-tv-shows-edition.html |grep "<h3>" |sed 's/<[^>]*>//g; s/^/### /'

Category: Entertainment Tagged: 100DaysToOffload Beauty Bible Christianity Entertainment Life Non-technical post Philosophy Science Fiction Video