This document summarizes 5 TV shows: Medium, Raising Hope, The Middle, Parenthood, and Roseanne. Medium is about a woman who uses her intuitive dreams to help solve murders. Raising Hope is about a young man raising his baby daughter with help from his eccentric family. The Middle portrays a working class family struggling with low-paying jobs and three kids. Parenthood shows different branches of the Braverman family dealing with various parenting challenges. Roseanne depicts a working class family that strongly resembled the author's own upbringing.

1. My Five TV Shows
Ellyn Stangle-Bellesine

2. Medium
Medium is about a woman named Allison who dreams intuitively to help solve
murders for the DA. She is married to Joe with 3 girls. Joe works as a
engineer. They start out as a middle class family and go through
struggles of job loss periods. They wind up needing food assistance and
help from family at one period of time. Allison is a strong woman figure in
the family. She is often portrayed as passive, and aggressive. A lot of the
times very emotional about the well being of others. Even though they
are portrayed as middle class, Allison drives a very old Volvo station
wagon. Many of times she says she loves that car and couldn't drive
another. Allison also gets to experience the upper class when she works
a couple weeks for a big corporate company. They buy her a new car
and clothes. That is only lived for moments, because Allison was not
going to help the company hide their dirty secrets. Even if it means they
could take everything she and her family had.

3. Raising Hope
Raising hope is about a young man, Jimmy Chance, raising a baby girl on his
own, and lives in his grandmas house with his parents. His mother
Virginia, is a maid. His father Burt, runs his own lawn and landscaping
company. They had him as teenagers. Jimmy knocked up a serial killer
unknowingly. He is now responsible for this baby and takes up
responsibility. He learns the kinds of things his parents did in order to
raise him and keep the roof over their heads. He makes a conscious
effort to make sure Hope is raised differently than he was and give her
the best things in life. Grandma is completely nuts, and has to be taken
care of. Which shows the values of taking care of your elderly family,
when they can not take care of themselves. This family is close knit and
fun loving but poor. That does not mean that they wouldn't do anything to
get rich quick. There are many adventures of that. The men in this are
treated like they are stupid and the women are shown as the ones who
wear the pants in the family.

4. The Middle
The middle is about a typical working class family with low
paying jobs. The couple struggles to raise their three kids
in chaos. The kids consist of the mean older brother,
middle dorky sister, and the younger autistic son. They
can never afford a new car, fixing the dishwasher,
replace the roof, and much more. They have lil tricks to
rigging a fix for everything. Dad is the strong typical
father figure type of what we see in many shows. The
typical men don't cry, and having the most authority.
Their kids do not get everything they want, but the
parents sure do try to make them happy.

5. Parenthood
This is a show about different parts of the Braverman family raising their
different families. Some of them are middle class, and some of them are
working class families. Grandma and Grandpa are retired and
somewhere between retired working class to middle class. The oldest
son, Adam, is married with 3 children. He shares the ownership of a
record company with the youngest brother and even though they are a
middle class family they have struggles. Their middle son is autistic and
requires lots of attention. The eldest daughter is in college, and mom
gets cancer at the same time she goes to college. It seems that TV is
trying to normalize and teach society about autistic children. There is one
in almost every show anymore. The Braverman's next daughter,Sarah,
lives with them in her fathers office. She is a single parent with a
deadbeat rock star ex husband. She often is emotional about the bad
choices she made in life and worries about what people think of her. Yet
in her late 40's she is trying to make something of her life.

6. Parenthood Cntd.
The next Braverman daughter,Julia, is a lawyer and her husband is a
contractor. Her husband started out as a stay at home dad of one
daughter. Later on they adopt an older boy. They live in a great big
house, and have all the things we all wish we could provide our
children with. The younger Braverman brother,Crosby, worked as a
producer and lived in a boat in the beginning. He now is married to a
beautiful African American ballet dancer. They have two kids
together. These families show different family structures and the
parenting styles that can be related differently. They all share the
same type of values that come from the original Braverman Parents.
Family, education, and health are deeply valued.

7. Roseanne
Now here is a show that is not so new. I grew up watching this show with my
family. Roseanne Barr's TV family strongly connected with how I
portrayed our family. In fact all my life I wondered if my mom and her
were twins. They were a working class family, raising their children the
best they could with the resources they had. Roseanne always seemed
to wear the pants, just like my mother. Father was just made to believe
he wore the pants. The personalities of Becky, Darlene, and D.J
reminded me of my siblings and myself too. The order in which they
ranked, and how they acted was typical of my family. Even towards the
end of the season when they won the lottery. Growing up, that is what I
often heard in conversation with my eldest sister, and parents. They
knew that would be the only thing that would drag us out of poverty. If it
wasn't for my parents working hard, and their house already bought for
them, we may have easily been on the streets. This show gave us
something to connect with and hope for the future of our family.