Serious issues handled brilliantly on TV shows

TV shows and sitcoms are meant to distract us from reality, giving us an escape from work in our monotonous life. Watching our favorite show at the end of the day helps us relax and forget our worries for a short amount of time before we get back to the harsh realities of life. However, with the sheer increase in the amount of content and the number of sitcoms or TV shows, it is not possible to maintain a similar genre throughout all of them. As more and more people start watching TV shows, more kinds of genres arise based on the preferences of the audience. Some like to watch light-hearted comedy, some like watching mystery or thriller, some enjoy true crime or horror, and so on. 

Of late, we see more and more TV shows tackle serious and dark issues with either a hint of comedy or in a way that does not seem forced. It flows organically into the storyline and makes the experiences of the characters feel real. It makes us relate to the characters and feel empathy towards them. 

The penultimate scene of Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black’s” fourth season dove into institutional issues in the US corrective framework when a security guard accidentally killed a popular character.

Comedies such as ABC’s “Black-ish” have delved into the subject of police brutality, while the second season of NBC’s “The Carmichael Show” was about the Black Lives Matter movement. 

In ‘Outer Banks’, the character JJ opens up to his friends about the bruises on his body being inflicted by his father. The show did a truly great job at demonstrating the effect that JJ’s abusive dad had on him. The brutal and forceful conduct was damaging toward JJ’s character, and it truly affected how he treated himself and others. It represented how a few people in abusive households manage their trauma and uncovered how simple it may be to conceal that piece of their lives from every other person.

The show ‘One Tree Hill’ had a heartbreaking episode of some of the main characters being trapped in school during a shooting. It was hard to watch for many because school shootings are increasingly common in the US. The episode was a look into the minds of the children and teenagers who experience the trauma. ‘BoJack Horseman’ is a popular animated show with talking animals and the depiction of the glamorous Hollywood and might seem like a children’s show at first glance. However, the show touches on serious issues quite skillfully. In one of the episodes, the main character BoJack goes through self-doubt and depression and we see him thinking negative thoughts about himself. It was an amazing depiction of what one hears inside their head when suffering from depression or anxiety.