Babies

Just eggheaded enough to engage those of us who want to put a smidgen of math behind the overwhelming flood of emotional sludge we parents feel when we’re being parents, or thinking about being parents, or generally existing as parents.

“Babies” is akin to watching a documentary about falling in love that spotlights couples but also leans primarily on the testimony of dating app experts. There’s a story to tell there, but the priorities seem skewed.

Ultimately, Babies is a lovely inclusive celebration of humans in their most compact, adorable form that slightly irritated me. While it is exciting that babies learn and know more from a very early age than we ever thought possible, it is also stressful. And it never seems to lead to a greater valuing of parenting, which is mostly done by women.

There was much food for thought in the series for anybody about to embark on parenthood. And although the whole thing could have been compressed into half the length, perhaps it all moves at the right, soothing, gooey-eyed pace for those whose brains are currently being pureed by newborns.

I often felt as though it could use less science and more … babies.

Babies takes a non-linear approach when highlighting the families, editing in footage of infants and toddlers as dictated by the episode's theme, not the chronological progress of the child. ... This choppiness ultimately denies viewers the opportunity to bond with the babies as characters, so we instead start seeing them as objects to "prove" the developmental theories proposed by the episode's featured researchers.