saccharine

It never lingers too long and is just sweet enough in its displays to avoid any saccharine aftertaste or eye-rolling sentiment.

But your homemade meals don’t have to resemble a frozen TV dinner, with its segmented tray of meat, an amorphous sauce, a scoop of peas or rice and a mysterious, saccharine lump of... jello?

“I always describe the bags as being like beautiful white jawbreakers with saccharine colors all over them,” says Liana Satenstein, 35, a writer who focuses on the vintage market.

From villains to prey, tragic backstories are mandatory — and what once felt like sweet empathy now smacks of artificial saccharine.

But even that easy target could be dull and saccharine, bringing us back to the docuseries’ greatest triumph.