Editing Central Theme (section)

== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Criminal Minds]]'': Why do people do terrible things?
* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'': Everybody lies.
* ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'': Life and death are not opposites. Life, death, and rebirth are the opposites of stasis.
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'': [[Crapsack World|Life sucks]]. [[True Companions|Family]] is the only thing you can really count on.
* ''[[Degrassi]]'': Dealing with adversity can be tough, but if you work hard and believe in yourself, you can prevail. "Whatever it takes, I know I can make it through."
* ''[[Dollhouse]]'': What is the human identity? Is it tangible? Can it be destroyed?
* ''[[Glee]]'': Popularity is a fleeting and unsatisfactory thing, and the more you try to achieve it the more you'll hurt yourself and others.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' overall could be said to focus on pacifism ([[Depending on the Writer|whether]] [[Technical Pacifist|technical]] or otherwise), the question of where "home" really lies and the ever-changing nature of reality. But breaking it up for each Doctor (mainly taken from the ''[[Doctor Who]] Ratings Guide''):
** ''First Doctor Era'': The meeting of the primitive and the advanced.
** ''Second Doctor Era'': The dangers of technology.
** ''Third Doctor Era'': Authority.
** ''Fourth Doctor Era'': Survival at all costs, climaxing with [[Grand Finale|Season 18]]'s message of 'change and decay' (Season 12 in contrast had an underlying theme of 'rebirth').
** ''Early Fifth Doctor Era'': "We're all in the same tribe!".
*** ''Late Fifth Doctor Era'': [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|The failure of peaceful methods in a corrupt, violent universe]].
** ''Sixth Doctor Era'': Life under surveillance.
*** Also, as an extension of the "Late Fifth Doctor Era": What methods ''were'' necessary to exist in a corrupt, violent universe, and the toll this could have.
** ''Seventh Doctor Era'': "Unfinished Business".
** ''Eighth Doctor Era'': Having all your responsibilities cleared and being free to move on.
** ''Ninth Doctor Era'': "Everything dies. Everything has its time" along with [[He Who Fights Monsters|Battle Not With Monsters]].
** ''Tenth Doctor Era'': Life after the funeral.
** ''Eleventh Doctor Era'': Women are full of great mystery (especially the impossible ones).  "Time can be rewritten".
** ''Twelfth Doctor Era'': (wild guess before the season even starts: [[The Homeward Journey]])
* ''[[The Goodies]]'' used its central theme [[Drunk with Power|(Everybody goes drunk with power)]] to kick off silly, wacky plots involving violence and slapstick.
* ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'': The only way to deal with the horrors of war without going completely crazy is to let yourself go a ''little'' bit crazy instead.
* ''[[Firefly]]'': Faith in all its permutations. The terrible and glorious things faith can motivate people to do, how they react when their faith is taken from them, and the forms that faith comes in (religion, family, heroes, causes, love, friends, and so on). Faith ''itself'' can be more worthy than whatever symbol it's placed in.
** ''[[Serenity]]'', though touching on that theme in the Operative and Mal's character arc, has a different one that may have surfaced if the series had continued, which is this: Flawed humans can't create perfect humans or a perfect world. The death of what is considered 'sin' would be the end of the human race; without evil, without wrong, without the ability to ''choose'' to be good (rather than being good because that's all we can be), we may as well be dead.
* ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'': True heroism sometimes means doing things people won't like.
* ''[[24]]'': How far will you go to see justice done?
* ''[[Angel]]'': Redemption. Specifically, how it's hopeless, thankless, endless and painful. Seek it anyway; there is nothing more beautiful than compassion without any expectation of reward.
** Angel lays it out explicitly a couple times, first in "Epiphany" when he talks about the existential reasons for being kind even if you know it won't change things, and again when Faith and Angel and Angelus are having a fight inside Angel's mind. Angel saves Faith and himself by admitting that he doesn't believe in redemption any more: the point is to do good for the sake of doing good, not to win some epic, endless battle. Evil triumphs not when good people do nothing but when people don't do good things. Not ''because'' they're good people. Just because it's right.
** To put it simply, in the words of the series itself: If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.
* ''[[Merlin]]'': Power (including magic) does not make a person good or evil, it is what a person chooses to do with it that defines them.
** Parents cast long shadows over their children.
** Secrets are destructive, especially when they exist between friends and family.
** Social status is not an indicator of worth and blood is not necessarily [[Thicker Than Water]].
** [[You Can't Fight Fate]] and [[Because Destiny Says So]].
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': [[Growing Up Sucks]]. We will lose the ones we love eventually.
* ''[[Dead Like Me]]'': Picking up the pieces of your life.
* ''[[The Wire]]'': Every human institution is run by petty, selfish human beings, and is therefore doomed to mediocrity.
** The effect of the drug trade and the resulting War on Drugs on society as a whole.
* ''[[Chuck]]'': [[I Just Want to Be Normal]] vs. [[I Just Want to Be Special]]
* ''[[The X-Files]]'': You can only trust very few wholeheartedly (and you should); everyone else shouldn't be trusted at all. Believe in something but question everything; regard authority in particular with absolute suspicion, for it will lie to and manipulate you if it thinks it is able to get away with it. The Truth will always remain out there but it's no reason to stop looking.
* ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' and ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]'': Overlaping theme of tradition vs progress, showing that mindlessly climbing to either is bad.
* ''[[Early Edition]]'': How a single act can change the lives of others, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|or make it worse]].
* ''[[Friday Night Lights]]'': Redemption and [[The Power of Friendship]].
* ''[[Life]]'': The difference between forgiveness and revenge.
* ''[[Cold Case]]'': No crime stays unsolved forever.
* ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]]'': Man's growing independence from superstition.
* ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'': True pacifism and redemption.
* ''[[The Sopranos]]'': [[Being Evil Sucks]].
* ''[[Andromeda]]'': Old fashioned heroics in a world lacking heroes.
* ''[[Without a Trace]]'': [[Hidden Depths|You don't really know someone until the day they disappear]].
* ''[[American Horror Story]]'': Everyone is haunted.
* ''[[Castle]]'': In the ongoing story-arc, what cost seeking justice for the wrongs of the past can have on the present and / or future. In general, the perils and opportunities of opening yourself and your heart up to someone else.
* ''[[Community]]'': [[The Power of Friendship]]; what brings together different people, forces them to bond together into a [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|community]], and ultimately holds them together?
** Accepting your friends, flaws and all.
* ''[[Foyle's War]]'': The moral and ethical price of fighting a war on the people living in the home front. Can even murder be considered a crime when thousands more are dying through warfare every day?
* ''[[The Collector (TV series)|The Collector]]'': Is a decade of happiness enough to [[Deal with the Devil|trade in your soul]], the only thing about yourself which will last for eternity?
* ''[[Black Mirror (TV series)|Black Mirror]]'': The ambiguity between the benefits and drawbacks of modern technology, and what kind of impact it's having on modern society and those who live in it; [[New Media Are Evil|are we becoming slaves to new media? Is it changing us and how we look at the world around us for the worse?]]
* ''[[Yes Minister]]'' and ''[[The West Wing]]'': The conflict between political idealism versus political realities, and how politicians and civil servants navigate and exploit this conflict in order to ensure the most favorable outcome for them. Interestingly, each series is set at opposite ends of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]].
* ''[[The Office]]'' (Both UK and US): The demoralising and crushing tedium of white-collar work.
* ''[[Homicide: Life on the Street]]'': The effects that investigating murder and being surrounded by death can have on those who are charged to investigate them.
* ''[[Jericho]]'': What ordinary people are capable of when they are put in desperate situations.
* ''[[Peep Show]]'': The differences and conflicts between the appearances we present to the world and our secret inner thoughts.
* ''[[Breaking Bad]]'': What is the toll that doing evil will take on your life, family and soul, even if it's initially (apparently) for good reasons?
* ''[[Smallville]]'': Finding your calling.
* ''[[Tru Calling]]'': Everyone can be saved.
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': The triumph of the human spirit.
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'': The really, ''really'' long path to true love. Or more generally, [http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/12/06/143195693/how-i-met-your-mother-the-optimism-of-inevitability how everything that has happened to you and everyone who came into your life is part of the story of how you got where you are today.]
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'': [[Beware the Superman]].
* ''[[The OC]]'': Starting your life over.
* ''[[The Prisoner]]'': The conflict between the individual and authority.
* ''[[Friends]]'': Friendship in all its forms (friendship among men and women, friendship that is broken and reforged, friendship that blossoms into romance).
* ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'': Maintaining professional integrity.
* ''[[Nip Tuck]]'': hiding the ugliness of people
* ''[[Mad Men]]'': The contradictory roles men and women are ''supposed'' to play in society.
* ''[[Spaced]]'': What it means to be a young adult in the early twenty-first century, and how that means figuring out who you are and what you want to do.
* ''[[Seinfeld]]'': How some people just will never learn a lesson, if there's even a lesson to learn.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]'' (Reimagined): The need to survive at all costs. The power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
* ''[[Burn Notice]]'': [[The Power of Friendship]] in contrast to the "lone super spy" cliche.
* ''[[The Good Guys]]'': Crimes can't be solved without getting one's hands dirty.
* ''[[Mr. Bean]]'': Thinking outside the box, for better or worst.
* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'': [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]].
* ''[[Oz]]'': Does man have the capacity to change his wicked ways?
* ''[[Dharma and Greg]]'': Opposites attract.
* ''[[CSI]]'': There is no perfect crime. The suspects always leave a clue behind.
* ''[[Will and Grace]]'': The evolution of a friendship (from romantic to platonic to familial).
* ''[[Law and Order]]'': The imperfection of the criminal justice system.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'': The possibility of friendship among races.
** ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'': Whether it is possible to break free of the past, or whether people/civilizations will be forever chained by it, at least early on. Later seasons address the [[Godzilla Threshold]], and whether it is possible to hold onto morality in the face of certain doom.
* ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'': Conflict between duty and self-interest.
* ''[[Six Feet Under]]'': Human mortality, the inevitability of death, and the effect it has on those still living.
* ''[[Smash]]'': [[Technician Versus Performer]]
* ''[[Psych]]'': The power of keen observation.
* The BBC's ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'': For the first two seasons: what's more important, the needs of the individual or the impersonal greater good?
** For the third season: fight the good fight, even if (or when) it costs you everything you hold dear.
** The relationship between an individual man, the people in his life, and the legend that builds up around him (as epitomized in the gang's [[Catch Phrase]]: "We are Robin Hood".) With that in mind...
*** No matter who dies, legends will live on, and ensure that there will always be people willing to fight against [[The Man]].
* ''[[Wilfred]]'': The conflict between what one wants (animal instinct) and what one is supposed to do (human conscience).
* ''[[Scrubs]]'': When the power to save or destroy people's lives rests in your hands every day, you need your friends to help you handle the responsibility, because you ''can't'' do it all on your own. After all, you're no Superman.
* [[Sex and the City]]: Never losing hope or becoming jaded in the search for love.
* ''[[Mission: Impossible]]'': People using each other as pawns.
* ''[[Touch (TV series)|Touch]]'': People are all connected (a favorite Tim Kring theme). Seeing things that others can't.
* ''[[Gossip Girl]]'': Taking charge of your life. Ironically, the characters lives are all being manipulated by a blogger.