Speak Up Saturday

[misbegotten]

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week?

Bonus question: Who was your favorite performer this week?

Comments

[queer_scribbling]

Wrapped up their current seasons: S.W.A.T., Fire Country. (Tomorrow night, Tracker will also wrap up its first season.)

S.W.A.T.

I dunno if they just want to bring it back for a full length season for their final season, but the end of this season returned to the premise of a police procedural being in tension with the writers trying to engage with the lead being a Black man in Los Angeles, California. Hondo has been wondering if he's actually changing anything within the LA PD since the season where they touched on George Floyd protests, and having this big clearly evil eco-terrorist group in the season finale just feels like a police procedural trying to justify maintaining itself. In terms of writing a story, it's understandable, but I don't know how long the show can return to this tension before it feels more satisfying to just have Hondo seriously consider retirement.

Fire Country

Gabriela married Diego in the season finale, and I really hope the narrative will move on from Bode/Gabriela. It spent, like, nine out of the ten episodes in this short season with some amount of trying to at least nudge (if not push) them back together, and I've reached a point of post-shipping them. I don't care if someone new has to be introduced for Bode, but it feels like there's so much that we could be covering if the narrative would stop focusing on that ship.

While Three Rock turned out to say goodbye to Bode as he was officially released as a parolee, it kind of felt flat when Bode was only ever shown positively interacting with one other inmate there this season. Did he actually have any acquaintances or friends there? [Someone having a sorta friendly conversation in an episode where he gets a terminal diagnosis and panic-runs away from camp isn't what I mean.] I can understand why we're not seeing fully fleshed out stories for all 10-15 other men, but with this season including a brief arc to save Three Rock from being closed, it just seemed like we could've seen more about inmates other than Bode.

Sharon just magically is completely fine in a post-organ transplant life, and while I wouldn't want to see complications just to spice things up, it's like there's absolutely nothing about adjusting to having gotten a transplant. Considering that this season introduced a work injury to Vince [electrocution] that led to heart issues, there could've been something about Sharon understanding why he was clinging to being able to work so much. S1 showed her already being treated for kidney issues, so we didn't really find out if she had a phase of being in denial. I dunno, it just feels like we definitely had a short season that didn't actually address certain things.

Clearing out recordings: Tom Jones, a four-episode miniseries that's probably been on the DVR for a while. None of us were familiar with the original book source, and it was certainly different.

Also clearing out recordings, but also a partial rewatch: We did S1E1 of Sherlock, since we apparently have had the first season there for a bit. Number one question from someone who hadn't already seen the show was whether Sherlock was always going to be so rude. (From what I've heard, we might enjoy Elementary more.)