The sibling bond and the dating world

The show: Casual, Season 1, Episode 1 (CraveTV/Hulu) The moment: The opening scene Valerie (Michaela Watkins) and Alex (Tommy Dewey), brother and sister, are at their father’s funeral, talking smack. “Her husband tried to kill himself last year,” Valerie says about one woman.

“That makes sense,” Alex responds, then gestures to his dad’s corpse. “He’ll be forgotten in week.” He wakes with a start. It’s just a dream.

Later, Alex — a louche bachelor who’s created a dating site — relates the dream to Valerie, a psychiatrist who recently separated from her husband and moved into Alex’s house with her teenage daughter.

“Everyone’s so awful, it’s impossible not to s--- on them,” Alex says. “Even in my dreams I don’t relate to people.”

Valerie’s equally damaged. When Alex urges “Go be with somebody,” she replies, “I don’t know if I can.”

As they say in screenwriting, Theme Stated. In a few swift scenes, we know exactly what this series, from creator Zander Lehmann and producer Jason Reitman, is about: A relationship that’s rarely explored on screen (brother/sister) is the only one these two can manage. We’ll watch for its snappy one-liners —“The whole faculty is depraved,” a high-schooler says. “They’re like Eyes Wide Shut on minimum wage” — and to see if the two leads will soften and grow.

Also interesting: Cynicism and un-likeability used to be the purview of film, while half-hour sitcoms were populated by fluffy characters we chuckled with. The proliferation of streamed TV (Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, et al) is changing that faster than you can say Flaked, You’re the Worst, Hello Ladies . . . et al. Casual streams on CraveTV. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.