11 Netflix originals to binge in October

Raising Dion: Season 1 – October 4

Michael B. Jordan produces this new Netflix series about a young boy who develops superpowers and his single mother who struggles to raise him. There is an emerging genre that examines the real-world implications of people with powers, especially how to hold them accountable to laws when their powers make them unenforceable. In this case, the question is how you raise a child with powers when you don’t even understand those powers yourself?

Children are sometimes unpredictable and volatile and don’t understand the consequences of their actions, so if you sometimes have trouble disciplining an unpowered child, how do you safely discipline a powered one? This is only a small part of the narrative, of course. It’s mostly about the child’s mother protecting him from powerful government agencies and becoming part of an underground community of powered people.

Rotten: Season Two – October 4

We all love to eat our favorite foods, even if we do suspect that everything we eat may not be as innocent or pure as we would like to think. Rotten is here to destroy our blissful ignorance and confirm our worst fears about the foods we love to eat. Not that the Netflix series is meant to ruin the joy we take in food, only to open our eyes and make us more informed, ethical consumers.

At best, we’re not always getting what we pay for. At worst, our eating habits enable the poverty of the native people who can no longer afford the staple foods they harvest and export to us. Of course, there’s more to the story of our food than that and plenty more unethical and underhanded practices to uncover. This season will include episodes on avocadoes, wine, chocolate, edibles, bottled water, and sugar.