Making Media choices, part 2

Continuing yesterday's reflection on how we use media:

I recently fielded a question on Facebook from someone who perhaps just needed to hear herself express the doubt in order to know her own mind. I'll share the exchange here, since it was in a public forum. Please weigh in with your own feedback on this.

Hi, I really like this TV show called "Pretty Little Liars". I was wondering if watching this show is sinful. It has sex scenes, homosexuality, evil themes, etc. I am not led to sin in any way but am I sinning by watching it?

I do not know the show you mention, but you could simply ask yourself: Is this show all about sex, homosexuality, infidelity, and evildoing? If so, then what it is doing is filling your mind and imagination with those things, and bending your heart toward them. Even if you do not directly sin during or after the show, you are being "conditioned" to familiarity and comfort with them. This "normalization of evil" is the precursor to a very dangerous situation for your mind, heart and relationships.

• Do you really depend on this particular show for entertainment?
• Why?
• What void does it fill? (This is a super important question to reflect on.)
• What else can you watch--or DO--to relax, that does not regularly depend on themes that are unwholesome?

There are some programs that are spectacularly well-written, but in which there

are definite portrayals of evil. (One example would be "Breaking Bad.") In shows like these, the characters are extremely well developed, real "persons" with stunningly good qualities, who make choices that led them, little by little, in the direction of evil. The harmful consequences of their choices is also very clearly portrayed in the show: there is no "glamorization of evil" such as  you often find in afternoon TV dramas ("soap operas"). Evil LOOKS like evil. It makes you feel ill. That is an appropriate portrayal of evil. Even though the whole story line depends on evil, it is not an evil that captures your imagination in a way that stirs desire, but that tells the truth: evil makes us less and less human, less and less like God.
Is that what "Pretty Little Liars" does? Even the title makes me doubtful of that. 

These are questions to ask about any media choices.