There was a stretch of time — roughly between Breaking Bad and The White Lotus — when I forgot how to enjoy anything that wasn’t bleak.

I blamed taste. Or adulthood. Or maybe I just wanted my entertainment to feel important. But really, I was just tired in the wrong direction. I mistook misery for meaning.

Somewhere along the way, “good television” became synonymous with “trauma with a colour grade.”

The golden age of television taught us to equate darkness with depth. The more cynical, morally ambiguous, or narratively grim a show was, the smarter we felt for watching it.

We binged murder, corruption, family trauma, emotional decay — and called it character study. Every antihero was “complicated,” every bleak monologue “Shakespearean.” It was cultural homework we convinced ourselves we enjoyed.

And I did enjoy it, in that masochistic, awards-season kind of way. There’s a thrill in watching the world implode beautifully. But I forgot how to feel joy that wasn’t curated through suffering.

We spent years dissecting stories until sincerity started to feel embarrassing. Every emotional beat became a meme. Every show needed a layer of self-awareness, a wink to remind us it knew it was art.

Somewhere in the middle of all that cleverness, we got allergic to warmth.

I started flinching at earnestness like it was a jump scare. If a character expressed hope without irony, I assumed the twist was coming. I didn’t trust anyone who smiled for more than three consecutive frames.

Prestige TV made us fluent in detachment. But detachment doesn’t make life easier — it just makes joy harder to access.

Lately, I’ve been sneaking back to the shows I used to mock. Gilmore Girls. Parks and Rec. The Good Place. The kind of TV where the stakes are emotional, not existential. Where love isn’t punishment, and nobody’s dying for symbolism.

And honestly? It feels radical.

Wholesome art hits differently when you’re exhausted. It’s not naïve; it’s restorative. It’s the emotional equivalent of lying on the floor after a long day and letting something kind wash over you.

Sometimes I want the art to hold me, not haunt me.

There’s something deeply uncool about choosing kindness in an age of cynicism. It feels risky to admit that you want gentleness, that you want to believe people are capable of goodness without a twist ending.

But maybe that’s the rebellion now — sincerity. Empathy. Characters who grow instead of collapse. Stories that let light exist without apologising for it.

The truth is, the world’s already hard enough. I don’t need my art to punish me for caring.

Maybe we got it backwards. Maybe the bravest thing a story can do isn’t break you — it’s comfort you.

I used to think the mark of great writing was despair dressed as realism. Now I think it might just be hope that doesn’t feel fake.

I’m not saying I’ve given up on the darkness. I just want to balance it with something tender. Because if life is going to keep being a prestige drama, the least I can do is let my TV be kind.