The document discusses 5 TV shows: - Medium is about a woman who uses her intuitive dreams to help solve murders. She struggles with job loss and needs assistance at times while raising her family. - Raising Hope is about a young man raising his baby daughter with help from his eccentric family. They are poor but close-knit. - The Middle portrays a working class family struggling with low-paying jobs and three kids, including an autistic son. - Parenthood shows different branches of the Braverman family dealing with various challenges like careers, parenting, and health issues. - Roseanne depicts a working class family similar to the author's own upbringing, dealing with

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.

6. 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. 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.