Tag Archives: family

This Is Us

Title: This Is Us

Date: 2016

Media type: Television

Format: Episode

Rating: PG – Parental Guidance Suggested

Audience(s): College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: English

Source: Hulu, NBC

Film/Episode Summary: An American TV Series that is aired weekly on NBC, characters in a family find themselves venturing through experiences from childhood to adulthood, all the while trying to define what “family” truly means.

Comments or Recommendations for Teaching: The show introduces a family in the mid seventies, a white American couple who decided to start a family and ended up pregnant with triplets. Unfortunately, the couple lost one of the babies during the delivery. When the father was looking over the two who were healthy, he saw that one African American baby was next to them, and asked who he might be. When the father found out he was just dropped at the hospital, abandoned by his biological father, he took matters into his own hands and adopted the child as their “third.” When the family took the three newborns home, they decided to call them “The Big Three” one of the first types of dynamics within the family that the parents subconsciously implemented.

Source: Hulu, NBC

Contributor: Lillian Wiener

This is Us

Title: This is Us

Date: 2016

Media type: Television

Format: Episode

TV Season-Episode: Season, Episode 1-4

Rating: PG 13 – Parents Strongly Cautioned

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: English

Film/Episode Summary: This television show follow the lives of a couple, Rebecca and Jack, and their three children. Two of them, Kevin and Kate, are twins. They were triplets but one died in child birth. The third sibling, Kyle but later Randall, was adopted and is a child of color. We see how Rebecca and Jack raise the children and who they become as a result. The series shows us flashbacks of the past and tells the story in the present to have a better understanding of the family.

Comments or Recommendations for Teaching: I suggest discussion questions related to adopting a child of color, raising more than one child together, family communication, and how death of a family member impacts the family.

Places to view: Vudu, Hulu

Contributor: Linda Thao

Stranger Things

Title: Stranger Things

Date: 2016

Media type: Television

Format: Episode

Rating: PG 13 – Parents strongly cautioned

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: English

Source: Netflix

Film/Episode Summary: Stranger Things is an American horror filled science fiction/thriller that pays homage to cult classics of the eighties. The plot follows the mysterious disappearance of Will Byers, a 12-year-old adolescent from the fictional town of Hawkins, the small but enterprising town’s people fighting to get him back, and the supernatural forces surrounding his disappearance.

Comments or Recommendations for Teaching: Analyze the parenting styles utilized by Joyce, one of the main protagonists of the show.

Places to view: Netflix

Contributor: Nasiha Abdi