It gives its earnest young doctors and rock 'n' roll renegades equal sympathy.
But instead of pulsing with freewheeling energy, it sags under its earnest polemics.
Still, there's a lot of potential here, and if 'Once' can figure out how to add more suspense and complexity to its earnest narrative, it could be a keeper.
Though the original series of Star Trek, which premiered in 1966, only ran for three short seasons (its ratings, believe it or not, were terrible) its fantastical adventures combined with its earnest humanity has earned it generations of loyal fans.
It has often been mocked: Terry Castle says that "like many bookish lesbians I seem to have spent much of my adult life making jokes about it", and Mary Renault, who read it in 1938, remembered laughing at its "earnest humourlessness" and "impermissible allowance of self-pity".
In its earnest flashbacks to childhood trauma it is weirdly like a superhero origin myth – and maybe Ben Affleck might be better off doing a couple more Accountant movies than anything else from the Batman franchise.
But it doesn't pull its reportorial punches, either, and its earnest, careful, straight-ahead reporting seems to have earned it the respect of the Texas political class across the spectrum — left, right, far right, and batshit crazy right.
It might also be a reason that its earnest political discussions aren't attracting a larger audience.
The album's soft illumination and pop inflection hardly disguise its earnest intent, and you might reasonably have expected it to inform Mr. Metheny's stand at the Blue Note this week.
Would its earnest retelling bring a deluge of ridicule or would it lose its resonance with modernization?
My favorite aspect of the show was its earnest and welcome depiction of Detroit's Muslim community, though it has some ways to go to equal the complicated take on Juarez and the border region in "The Bridge".
