Spring TV Show Lineup

BY LUKE DROESE '24

As I’ve grown older, I have realized that my entire childhood has consisted solely of PBS Kids. Although I loved Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, it has left me missing out on some shows that my friends swear by or shows that I haven’t been able to watch due to being caught up with work (we love that academic grind yippee). Here are some of the shows I’ve watched recently and whether they are mid or not.

​Ted Lasso: First, I noticed that the show was infected with an exuberant amount of cheeriness. The show is about a college American Football coach (whose name is so obvious but I’ll let you guess anyways) who is offered to coach an English Soccer team. Over the course of his time coaching, he helps to bring everyone out of their shells and lead the team to success. Ted is quite possibly the most uplifting protagonist I’ve seen in any media ever. Ted’s assistant coach, Beard, is one of my favorite characters in the show. His stoicness makes every scene he’s in ten times funnier and his episode in season 2 is my favorite out of the entire series. Danny Rojas is such a ray of sunshine and I laugh every time he is on screen. The show does a great job getting you to care for all of the characters in the show. Especially Nate.

Oh Nate.

The show is currently slated to air its third and potentially final season on Apple TV in mid March.

Although I typically watch more sci-fi/fantasy shows, Ted Lasso definitely is one of the rare few outside of that category I enjoy. 8/10.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: After years of my friends swearing by Avatar: The Last Airbender and begging me to watch it I finally caved. The show starts off with two teenagers, Katara and her older brother Sokka, who are out fishing when they stumble upon a boy glowing in an iceberg. After they get him out, he becomes conscious; he explains that he is Aang, a twelve year old who has been frozen in the iceberg with his flying bison Appa for the past hundred years. He is the Avatar and is supposed to bring balance to the world via ending a war by defeating Fire Lord Ozai and mastering all four elements (water, earth, fire, and air). 

The first half of the first season is very much dated in terms of jokes and honestly I was very close to dropping the series, but I kept watching and I’m glad I did. The series has a ton of great characters like Iroh, Sokka, and Toph and the story is very well written. Iroh is a very funny character who is calm and collected, in contrast with his hot-headed nephew, Zuko. Sokka starts off making sexist comments but after he realizes that he’s wrong, he truly grows - treating his friends equally, regardless of gender. Although he is often the butt of the jokes, he is smart and loveable. Finally, Toph Beifong is a twelve-year-old blind girl who hates being protected due to her blindness. Thus, she is self-reliant and doesn’t open up to anyone--Aang, Katara, and Sokka help her learn that she has a shoulder to lean on. The different bending styles are also fairly well animated for the show being made in the early 2000s and look like a moving painting at times. 

The series ended in 2008 with three seasons under its belt, a live action movie based off the series which has much critical acclaim (trust me), and a spin off series named The Legend of Korra. Currently, there are three spinoff movies and two spinoff series all releasing before 2028.

I’ll have graduated college by then…

I feel old.

If it wasn’t due to the lackluster first half of the first season the show would be a 10/10 but because of that the show is knocked to a solid 9/10.

Welcome to Wrexham: I haven’t really heard many people talking about this show so I’m here to change that. The show is about actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds purchasing Wrexham Football Club, a Welsh football team that is in a bad spot being one of the lowest ranked teams in the nation and how their first year of managing the club went. From signing on new players to the ups and downs of managing a football team; you get to learn about the personal lives of the players, fans, and people who work behind the scenes. Overall, it helped me to learn about football and Welsh culture as I have never had an interest in either. 

The show has been renewed for a second season that will probably air at some point this year.

As I said before I’m not a huge fan of sport centered shows or docuseries but the show was good. There were some episodes where I was waiting for us to go back to watching the matches and talking with the players, but the show was able to spend an adequate amount of time with the team. 6/10.

These were definitely a good batch of shows overall. Avatar definitely shined bright with its character arcs, Ted Lasso with its kindness, and Wrexham with being able to make a sport I didn’t know anything about make sense. See you for the grad ‘23 issue.