The early days of television were often an idealized version of middle-class life, an aspirational counterpart to the American Dream. The art form has gotten darker as it has matured though, and since the turn of the millennium, TV has been more concerned with depicting the failings of our society in the here-and-now than providing a pleasant vision of the future.
In the 2000s, television was filled with symbolism that reflected middle-class uncertainty. Show after show depicted people whose lives appeared secure and full of certainty suddenly falling through a trapdoor into some sort of bizarre and threatening underworld. Walter White, Nancy Botwin, and even Tony Soprano were all characters whose comfortable, normal lives are snatched away in an instant—and in a way that could just as easily happen to you, the viewer. [...]
Like any other narrative form, TV has long embraced the supernatural. But its presence has largely been limited to what we might call “genre” TV: horror-based shows such as The Walking Dead, fantasy worlds like Game of Thrones, and all sorts of other unrealites. Now, the supernatural and surreal are seeping into the world of “normal” TV, wherein the lead characters and their backstories are as seemingly average as you or I. As with the literary genre, magic realist TV isn’t fantasy as such—instead, it presents a naturalistic world where fantastical things happen, often for allegorical or narrative purposes.
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