Showing Up in the Middle

I was recently served an old Gomer Pyle, USMC episode. What stayed with me was not a lesson about a particular decade or a claim that television used to be wiser. It was the simple dramatic choice: someone had a chance to answer humiliation with force and tried conversation instead.

That choice can look soft until we need it. It is not. Talking, listening, and holding a boundary can require more nerve than escalating a conflict for an audience.

What I Mean by the Middle

The middle is not a demand that every dispute split the difference. Some conduct needs to be challenged. Some harms need to be named plainly. Some people are not safe to engage without support and distance.

I mean the space between withdrawal and contempt: the space where we can say, “I disagree,” ask a hard question, acknowledge a fact we missed, and still leave room for another person to remain human.

Stories can make that practice easier to imagine. A show, a book, a game, or a short video can model repair, curiosity, accountability, and the difficult work of staying in relationship after an argument. It can also model the opposite. Neither outcome is automatic; it depends on what creators choose to make and what audiences choose to reward.

Better Examples Are Worth Making

I do not want content stripped of conflict. Conflict is where characters and ideas become visible. But the answer to conflict does not have to be humiliation, certainty, or the most cutting line in the room.

Creators can show people changing their minds without making them fools. They can show consequences without treating cruelty as the only proof of seriousness. Recommender systems can make room for work that asks people to think, laugh, or repair—not only react.

That is not a nostalgic program for returning to one kind of television. It is an invitation to make the examples we want available now.

Showing Up

The same practice is available off-screen. We can reward a careful correction. We can ask one more question before sharing a claim. We can leave a conversation that has become unsafe without making contempt our only language.

Showing up in the middle means refusing the false choice between surrender and escalation. It means practicing the kind of disagreement we hope will still be possible when the argument is over.