9-1-1 needs to recruit Henry Winkler because this show is really jumping the shark. First they had a 3 part episode ripping off the Poseidon Adventure and now they have to make one of the lead males bisexual. Come on, I’m a “do what you want but not in the street where you scare the horses” kind of guy, but I’d rather the show be about people doing stupid shit and hurting themselves rather than turn into yet another cookie cutter check all the boxes relationship show. Interracial couple…check. Handicapped kid… check. Lesbian couple…check. Bisexual lead… check. Too contrived.
I’m enjoying the series Heartbeat on Britbox. They recently added new seasons. Everybody is nice on the show, including the lovable rogue Greengrass. The crimes aren’t terribly complex, some of the crime shows really overdo the complexity of the crimes. Just a feel good show.
Season 2 of Tokyo Vice wrapped up with all the plot threads neatly put to bed. I’d like to see a Season 3, if the knucklehead lead took a back seat to the dozen characters more interesting than him.
Season 2 of American Rust is now on Prime. Dark and gritty, almost humorless, but pretty tense and interesting. Old favorites Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney star.
I watched Renegade Nell on Disney+. It’s about Nell Jackson, a woman in the early 1700s who is forced to rob stagecoaches after she’s falsely accused of murdering the local lord. Nell has a very powerful protector when attacked, turning her into a super woman as she tries to clear her name. She also becomes in uncovering in a plot to depose Queen Anne by the Jacobite Earl of Poynton, who is using dark magic to achieve his goals.
Nell is played by Louisa Harland (of Derry Girls) and is spectacularly good as the heroine. Poynton is played by Adrian Lester (Hustle) with intense menace. All the characters are strongly drawn, most notably Charles Devereux/Isambard Tully (Frank Dillane) as a noble/highwayman and Sofia (Alice Kremelberg) who knows Neill is falsely accused but won’t come forth in order to push her own agenda. There’s also Billy Blind (Nick Mohammad), who is Nell’s guardian.
Strong writing and plenty of humor in the situation really makes the show stand out.
I note that the original title was The Ballad of Renegade Nell, which is strangely reminiscent of the title of the poem “The Balled of Eskimo Nell,” something that’s the complete antithesis of Disney. I’m not sure if that was deliberate or not.
We watched the first four and a bit episodes of Death and Other Details and decided to drop it.
In general, I’d say that it’s not too horrible but it all felt pretty fake and stylized, the only likable characters are the older detective and the victim, but one is dead and the other is a background character who pops in every once in a while to say something all-knowing and mystical (they couldn’t get Morgan Freeman, I guess) then disappear again for most of the episode. If it all seemed more real, maybe the mystery would have been more gripping. But minus that, a slow pace, and no one to care about, we simply felt like there was probably something else we could watch that we’d like more.
Really the only mystery we cared about was the question of the Ukrainians. Maybe we missed a line of dialogue but the script seemed to assume that being Ukrainian was a crime, and such a grave one that they’d certainly be killed (? something horrible) if Interpol got them. But, obviously you need to save these people, and are a hero if you do so. But, even though Interpol wrongly wants to hunt down these people, the main Interpol lady is alright and cool to hang out with.
What?
I feel like the script was partially generated by AI. It’s taken snippets of who knows what from who knows where and stitched it together, randomly.
It makes you doubt that the whole thing will pull together in the end.
We’re almost done with Ken Burns’ seven-part series on the Roosevelts on PBS. Three amazing people (Teddy, Franklin, Eleanor), hugely influential and tremendously inspiring despite their flaws.
As soon as I saw the giant wave I said to my wife “are they going to…? They are! They went full Poseidon Adventure!!”
I was disappointed that none of the characters mentioned it. I mean come on, somebody should have said “it’s a real life Poseidon Adventure!” The show must be set in an alternate universe where TPA was never made, just like how the ‘Walking Dead’ universe never had Romero movies, so nobody called the walkers ‘zombies’.
I was not terribly impressed with the pilot episode of “Elsbeth” last month, mostly because I found her incredibly annoying. The endless popups did nothing to endear her to me. Nevertheless I did watch the first of the two episodes that aired last week, and found it a little better. I haven’t yet watched the second, which will probably be the tipping point on whether I remove the series from my DVR.
S2 of Cardinal is mostly annoying. Whoever thought that adding that stupid emotive music in the background of every scene should never be hired by anyone ever again. Also, the secondary actors are, with few exceptions, terrible. And then there’s the plot, which I won’t get into. Sadly, the wife wants to see it through to the end. I’ll be in my chair, fighting desperately not to plunge knitting needles into my eyes.
Nearly done. Great show and it feels like real Walking Dead because it is about Rick. I’d check it out if you watched Walking Dead back when Rick was the main character.
We’re watching and liking it. I started watching because I loved her character on The Good Wife. At first I didn’t like that you know who the perpetrator is in the beginning but know I’m kind of liking it and how she puts it all together at the end.
I don’t really notice any annoying popups because just about everything I watch on TV has been recorded so I zip through the commercials.
The pop-ups are during other shows, not commercials. She appears on the bottom of the screen covering part of the show. It’s been especially annoying during Survivor and The Amazing Race and has made me not want to watch.
I’ve been watching Shogun and at first really liked it. But the writers are introducing too many changes and altered plots. The book is so intricate and things interwoven that to make too big of a change in one place will not work, for me at least. I’ll probably finish watching but I hope the story gets more on track.
Rewatching Band of Brothers right now. I just got past the part where Jimmy Fallon bops into the story with a jeep full of ammo. I am happy to report that he did not corpse during the scene and now I can get back to the story.