Star Trek. It taught me to dream big, recognize bigotry, embrace diversity, and show what a post scarcity future can actually look like and what we could accomplish if we try to.
Definitely Next Generation. The world could be a nicer place if everyone watched and paid attention to it.
Duet from DS9 is still one of my favourite episodes of anything, ever. Could easily be in a lot of other shows/settings too
Probably The Good Place. Made me question what matters for being good or bad, or just being well intentioned.
Have you read ‘How to be Perfect’ by Michael Schur yet? The Audiobook even has cameos by most of the cast.
Everyone should watch this show
Mythbusters.
Some science mixed in with copious amounts of blowing things up and wild problem solving.
The difference between messing around vs science is writing things down!
Star Trek TNG for sure.
Anything from PBS like Reading Rainbow, Nova, Bill Nye, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers etc..
Surprised nobody here has mentioned Mr Rogers Neighborhood yet.
As a little kid, Mr Rodgers was pretty boring. As a bigger kid, it was below my level.
I fully support the show and what it stood for, but Sesame Street was much more entertaining.
Mythbusters and Star Trek have already been mentioned, so I'm adding Babylon 5. Fight fascism!
Futurama got me out of a cult by making fun of the moving goal posts of the missing link. I always liked science before that, but probably because the religion was so against it I kinda avoided discussing evolution, and a lot of the rest of at least basic science could be rationalized or twisted to kinda agree.
I personally at the time had no issues with the age of the Earth(was told the 7 days were metaphorical and the incorrect orders wasn't really discussed), didn't have any issues believing in dinosaurs (there was iirc some argument that God used them to prepare the earth and intentionally had em die out) and other stuff, plus they tried to use stuff like how much Earth is in a "perfect" distance from the sun.
All that aside, human evolution can't work even with some of the creation myth being metaphors, because said cult also used the Adam and Eve story to justify why God permits evil. If that is just a metaphor, then the problem of evil became too pronounced.
If you want to know the argument I was sorta ok with at the time, it was basically this: Satan convincing humans to disobey God basically put the challenge that humanity didn't need God and can rule themselves. While several thousand years of allowing atrocities seems long, in the age of the Earth (and theoretically, God) it isn't much time at all, and the belief God would resurrect all those deserving meant to me at the time that at max 100 years of suffering would be eventually forgotten as we lived eternally after the resurrection (another belief of the cult).
For me, evolution being more accurate broke me out of that logic error, and Futurama was the delivery method that got through the standard mental defenses.
I'm curious: was there a specific episode about this that got you thinking, or was it more the exposure to the whole of the show which kept joking in that particular direction?
What OP's describing sounds a lot like this scene in "A Clockwork Origin".
The Muppet Show.
The perfect show for a creative, empathic, and deeply weird kid like me.
Star Trek, the next generation, without a doubt. Get my entire sense of ethics and morality from that show. It was amazing. I still rewatch it quite often.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 taught me to relish the joys of bad media and riffing on bad media.
It's something that is hard to learn for some people, me included. That something can be bad but still fun. Will Farrell movies were that to me, I hated him because I was a pretentious douche who thought anyone who liked him were just morons. Turns out no, you can think the movie is both stupid as hell, but still have fun
I'm at the point now where even if it's "bad", I have a great time if it felt like the people making the work were having a blast doing it. :D
Exactly.
Probably Mr. Robot, considering the others would be South Park and Rick and Morty. And it taught me ... to not take adderall ig.
Late Night with Craig Ferguson.
Rules can be broken and having fun isn’t that hard, you just have to be real and honest with people and then magical things can happen.
The last Airbender
Byker Grove taught me to never play paintball without eye protection.
