Thanksgiving is particularly tense during election season, and this year is no exception. Yet discordant times make leaning into family gatherings matter even more.

Most of the time at Harmony Labs we focus on learning how people are different from each other by looking at how they assemble into media audiences. Analyzing what people consume helps us understand where they come from, and where there may be bridging opportunities. In aid of your Thanksgiving survival, we analyzed what audiences that are most distant in their values have in common in their TV consumption.

We cannot solve your family dysfunction in a blog post. But we can tell you how we train media makers to connect with audiences they don’t understand yet.

• Make a connection. Beginning with an understanding of who you’re talking to can help, so begin by taking our audience quiz yourself and imagining from the audience profiles who you’re talking to. Use the profiles to think about what events in your family members’ lives have shaped them and how their worldviews and heroes show up in the stories they love.

• Pick a story. Choosing stories as a way to connect with family is low stakes because no one needs to be right. We can all see different things in the same stories, and, when it’s a story about a world far, far away, those differences in perceptions can feel fun rather than existential.

• Build a bridge. Resist the urge to be correct or to resort to critical consensus when you respond (“ugh, that show is terrible” or “The Tomatometer on that was 3%!”). If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that “good” and “bad” and “true” and “false” aren’t useful ways of talking about stories. What’s important is what touches something in us and why.

Based on this, below we make a few recommendations for what shows you might safely be able to talk about and find common ground in.

People Power or Don’t Tread on Me, Start here

The audience we call People Power care about community. Their superpower is caring about the Earth for its own sake and about people they don’t know. They watch dramas about people who succeed in or are corrupted by rigid social structures like House of the Dragon, Bridgerton, and Suits.

The audience we call Don’t Tread on Me care about command and authority. Their superpower is action in an emergency. They watch thrillers with individual, maverick heroes who break just the right rules at the right time to save the day like Trigger Warning, One More Shot, and The Equalizer.

These two audiences have a hard time connecting because they care about very different things, but high-concept, high-stakes shows about systems and leadership can form a bridge:

 

If You Say So or Tough Cookies, Start here

The audience we call If You Say So cares about autonomy. If You Say So’s superpowers are enjoyment and excitement (known to the less enjoyment-gifted among us as “fun”) and skepticism or the insistence on researching and knowing for themselves. They watch animation, including animation made for young audiences like Shrek and for adults like Family Guy. They are especially drawn to main characters who transgress or break rules in order to achieve for themselves and provide for their families, like the characters in Shameless.

The audience we call Tough Cookies care about the opposite of autonomy: social order. Tough Cookies’ superpowers are helping through service and keeping traditions. They watch law enforcement procedurals like Law and Order: SVU and The Equalizer, daytime dramas like The Young and the Restless, and cozy family sitcoms where everything comes out OK like Reba and The Nanny.

These two audiences can also feel far apart, but stories where exceptional individuals help navigate dangerous or messy situations to solve problems can bring them together:

 

Keep Going

If these aren’t the stories you can connect through, there will be others. Try asking everyone what movie had the biggest impact on them or whether they’ve seen any of these. And try asking who their favorite character is.

We don’t think that asking “so, what is everyone watching on TV” is a recipe for healing all that ails us, but it’s a great way to understand the people in our lives who can, at times, seem so different from us. And, on top of that, you will end up with a watchlist for when you’re streaming and chilling with leftovers on Friday.