Indian soap operas (though wildly exaggerated) focus on the Sanskar —the family honor. Meanwhile, Nordic noir ( The Legacy ) focuses on the cold, brutal efficiency of how families fight over art and real estate.

The shift occurred in the early 2000s with shows like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under . Tony Soprano isn't a mob boss who is mean to his family; he is a depressed mother-son case study. Dr. Melfi’s office became as important as the Bada Bing. We saw the panic attack. We saw the inability to cry.

The "drama" is often just the echo of the grandmother’s trauma bouncing off the mother and hitting the daughter. Complex stories don't just show the fight; they show the history of the fight.

The answer, usually, is both. And that messy, gorgeous, infuriating "both" is why we will never stop watching.

There is no love quite like it, and no hate quite like it either.

From the moment Sophocles wrote about Oedipus unknowingly murdering his father and marrying his mother, to the sprawling, multi-generational sagas of HBO’s Succession or the emotional wrecking ball of This Is Us , one truth remains self-evident: The family unit is the perfect storm for storytelling.