The essays in this collection analyze a variety of contemporary television shows to argue for the role that TV plays in moral identity formation. Audiences take from television viewing a better sense of what matters to them, ways of relating to others, and a moral sense of the world they inhabit.

Watching television need not be a passive activity or simply for entertainment purposes. Television can be the site of important identity work and moral reflection. Audiences can learn about themselves, what matters to them, and how to relate to others by thinking about the implicit and explicit moral messages in the shows they watch. Better Living through TV: Contemporary TV and Moral Identity Formation analyzes the possibility of identifying and adopting moral values from television shows that aired during the latest Golden Era of television and Peak TV. The diversity of shows and approaches to moral becoming demonstrate how television during these eras took advantage of new technologies to become more film-like in both production quality and content. The increased depth of characterization and explosion of content across streaming and broadcast channels gave viewers a diversity of worlds and moral values to explore. The possibility of finding a moral in the stories told on popular shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Good Place, as well as lesser known shows such as Letterkenny and The Unicorn, are explored in a way that centers television viewing as a site for moral identity formation.

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Martin Shuster

Introduction: Television: What is it Good For?

Steven A. Benko

Chapter One: Sleeping with Fishes and Talking with Horses: Animality, Identity, and Vegetarianism in The Sopranos

H. Peter Steeves

Chapter Two: The Bigger the Lie, the More They Believe: Morality and Ethics in The Wire

John Hillman

Chapter Three: The Two Walters: Walt Whitman's Poetry and the Moral Vision of Breaking Bad

Douglas Rasmussen

Chapter Four: Check Your Settings: Change to a Democratic Framework for Feminist Subtitles

Leigh Kellmann Kolb

Chapter Five: "The Lord of War and Thunder": The Morality of Nemesis and Retributive Justice within Justified

James L. Shelton

Chapter Six: Law and Loyalty in Hellcats

Matt Hummel

Chapter Seven: Justice is Served: Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and the Evolution of Cultural Morality

Douglas L. Howard

Chapter Eight: What Made the Devil Do It?

Matilde Accurso Liotta and Martina Vanzo

Chapter Nine: Letterkenny: Tolerance Meets Tradition

Dutton Kearney

Chapter Ten: Morality versus Mortality: The Meaning of (After)Life in The Good Place

Jill B. Delston

Chapter Eleven: How Television Produces Invisible Communities in an Age of Loneliness. A Detailed Look at 13 Reasons Why

Denis Newiak

Chapter Twelve: Can Watching TV Make Me a Unicorn? TV and the Ethics of Decency

Steven A. Benko and Eleanor Jones

Chapter Thirteen: The Baby Yoda Effect: A Kantian Analysis of Mandalorian Ethics

James Rocha

Chapter Fourteen: “So, a Black Captain America, huh?” Race in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Alisa Johnson and Steven A. Benko

Index

About the Contributors