We’re watching Testaments and man, it really is just the next season of Handmaid’s Tale. I mean, we’ve mainly moved on from June, but it is more of the same.That’s fine, I guess.
I guess watching this show explains why they did not wrap up the daughter-kidnapping storyline in the main show.
Fuck this show. What are you writers even doing.
Yes, it’s boring, and we quit. The music was good though.
New series Not Suitable For Work. Watched the first episode and the first few minutes of the second one, but bailed on it. No interest in any of the characters or their lives.
We watched the first ep last night. Yes, I found every character annoying, and every line that came out of their mouths sounded overscripted and phoney.
We’re hanging to the end, which is only two eps away. No idea WTF is going on, though.
It wasn’t a series, but we watched the new Jack Ryan movie that spins off from the John Krasinski series. It was just okay - plenty of fun action scenes, good banter between Ryan, Greer, and November, and promises of more to come.
I decided to watch Firefly (2002) for the first time in 15+ years. As Disney + lists them in the correct order, not the messy order that Fox used, I watched “Serenity” first last night. Other than the special effects looking a bit dated, the show holds up well and is still enjoyable. Joss Whedon is an ass but he is an excellent writer.
I will watch the remaining 13 episodes over the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have any streaming services that offer the Serenity movie.
I was a bit skeptical when I started to watch Shangri-La Frontier; I find some fantasy series annoying with tedious battles that go on and on. But the main characters in SLF don’t treat it very seriously so that makes it a lot breezier to watch. And whoever translated the script for the dubbed version did a great job with the gamer-speak and pop culture references.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on Apple+. A surprisingly well done series about a woman, her “camboy”, her ex, the cops, murder and betrayal. There is enough humor to make it interesting without hijacking things, the acting is excellent, and the background music is good. I’m on E5 and it’s still holding my interest.
Now that S4 of Resident Alien is available on Netflix, we decided to go back and watch S3 since we’ve mostly forgotten/ lost track of what happened. Luckily it’s a short season, only 8 episodes, so we should get caught up pretty quick.
I’m finding S4 fairly tedious and have stopped watching.
For those watching Taskmaster, the most recent season just wrapped up. Overall I really liked this season and the last episode or two (specifically a few tasks) reminded me a lot of the early days where anything goes. Also, Joel really surprised me. I’d never heard of him before this show, so I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest, I didn’t care for him all that much at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle of the season something clicked (and I could probably pinpoint the exact moment) he suddenly started getting in these really witty zingers and call back jokes and overall seemed much better.
Anyways, for the next season we have Chloe Petts, Isy Suttie, Matt Lucas, Nina Conti and Richard Ayoade.
The only two I know are Matt Lucas and Richard Ayoade. And Matt I really only know from a few movies he had bit parts in (Bridesmaids and Shaun Of The Dead I think).
Richard should be interesting. I’d swear he had been on before but I must’ve been thinking of Jon Richardson. Maybe he’ll be like Noel Fielding, surprisingly good at everything and considerably better at sports than you’d expect.
Getting back to this season, it’s moot, but I was worried Kumail was going to have an unfair advantage considering his knowledge of TV production. And, you could tell he was using that knowledge when they’d have any type of task that involved filming yourself or making a little movie. The production value of his would skyrocket given that he knows what kind of editing tricks could be done in the allotted time, he knew how to position cameras etc. I thought it was funny when, after the last group task, someone (Joel) mentioned that as soon as Alex started the task, Kumail went into director mode and started telling everyone what to do.
TLDR (Chloe may or may not be they, not she)
Before I posted that, I looked up Richard since, like I mentioned, I thought he had done this before. The first result I got was a reddit thread, with a deleted OP that must have suggested some transphobia from Richard. Best as I can tell, he did a positive book review while distancing himself from the author. The author being Graham Linehan, an anti-trans activist and (co)creator of The IT Crowd, Father Ted, Black Books and some other shows. One person suggested Richard may not have wanted to turn his back on the person who arguably launched his career with The IT Crowd.
In any case, the top comment is “Chloe went by “they/them” and was absolutely fine being alongside Richard”. Presumably that person is either somehow associated with the show or was in the audience since it hasn’t aired but they finished filming in March.
Here’s the reddit thread.
Here’s Chloe’s wiki page, which does use the pronoun “her” (and they) and starts off with " Her act includes discussion of transphobia from her perspective as “a six-foot lesbian from Kent who is often mistaken for a man”."
I started this out with a reply that could’ve just been “them, not her” but the more I read the more I realized that it’s possible the reddit OP was someone that found transphobia where there wasn’t any and assumed Chloe was trans when she isn’t.
So…nevermind?
But I’m leaving this ramble up since this is the first time I’ve heard of Graham Linehan and he seems like a shitty guy that calls himself a TERF ally. Looks like an episode of The IT Crowd was pulled over because of some anti-trans humor. I’m not sure if I’ve seen it.
I have to strongly disagree. I came across some of her numerous YouTube videos a while ago, and found her extremely inventive and funny. One of her unique bits was turning audience members into her puppets with masks whose mouths she controlled. (She’s also done some weird videos that appear to be mock therapy sessions that I didn’t care for.)
Here’s a short clip that gives a sense of her humor.
That was great!
For those patiently awaiting the new series of Ludwig, a very brief and largely content-free teaser trailer has just been released.
Still watching The Pitt which continues to drop weekly in the UK.
In the most recent episode there is an elderly couple struggling on their own and a daughter who lives far away. I swear that the whole conversations about going into assisted living were almost verbatim the same ones my sister and I had with our parents only a few years ago. It was kind of eerie.
Testaments
Highly recommended.
Watch The Handmaid’s Tale. This is the continuation and is effectively the next season of it. I don’t think it stands alone all that well. Having said that part, the show is absolutely excellent. I liked it as much as the main original show.
I’m hoping over the course of this show that they do take down Gilean permanently. It’s been a long time coming.
I thought Dann Florek had the best performance of the season.