tv_talk | Speak Up Saturday

Let's see...

1. The Residence - which I've been slowly watching, each episode is like its own separate movie. It's kind of Knives Out meets Upstairs, Downstairs in the West Wing, albeit with a mostly Black and LGBTA cast. Also a few Australians.

2. Andor - which I plan to start this weekend, although I may need to re-watch the last few episodes of the first season prior. It's been awhile since I saw it.

3. Wheel of Time - I need to catch up though, I'm two seasons behind, and I don't quite remember most of the first season, which I watched a while ago.

4. Etoile the new series "about ballet companies that trade their star dancers is Slings and Arrows plus Call My Agent! plus Bunheads plus Luke Kirby, who’s yelling at Simon Callow, who plays a knockoff David Koch. If you’ve seen an Amy Sherman-Palladino show before, it’s like that except 400 percent more" - according the television critic from New York Magazine.

5. Hacks - continuing with the third season, which is hit or miss, when it hits - it's excellent, when it misses, sigh. About a twenty-thirty something bi-sexual female comedy writer working for a sixty-something comedian. Stars the brilliant Jean Smart.

And.. looking forward to continuing my re-watch of Buffy, I'm on S2, which is by far the better season. It has the unprecedented (at the time) flip of the romantic hero. It flips the whole Beauty and the Beast trope - in this the Beast is "cursed" with a human soul. Break the curse? He reverts to being pure evil. I am skipping some episodes here and there, and you can tell which episodes were written by the better and more seasoned television/screenwriters. Say what you will about Whedon - he was good at dialogue, so was Greenwalt. Some of the other writers...eh, not so much. There's some episodes that are cringe. Although, they apparently knew how to write for Dru and Spike, or the actors just were able to change or make the lines better.

I started watching Andor too. I was so confused as to what was going on. Maybe I should go back and watch some of the previous season. I don't know why they didn't do a recap.

I rewatched the 1st Season when I watched the 2nd. I kind of wish I'd rewatched it all before the 3rd but I'm enjoying it.

I love your description of Etoile. I loved Bunheads so maybe I should try that. I saw Etoile advertised and it didn't really interest me but it could be good. I miss Bunheads.

I need to get back to Buffy.

Hubby and I finished watching Tulsa King S2 - that cliffhanger at the end was certainly... a choice. I think it soured both of us on continuing on with S3 (if there is a S3), but we had mindless fun while watching it, so it wasn't bad all things considered.

Back into Stargate: Atlantis S4. I find it odd that they would make that decision with one of the main characters and hope it's not a permanent choice, but Sam's here now!! :D

Also watching Weiss Kreuz which is so bad it's incredibly good.

I actually hated the cast change up of SGA S4. But I got used to it and then it was fine. I miss that show too.

I finished re-watching S1 of Andor just before I could watch the season premiere. It is still so good, especially the prison episodes are amazing television. I'm slightly obsessed with the show at the moment.
The first three episodes of S2 were great and covered a lot of ground. I'm not sure how I feel about Cassian's story, it seemed to go on for a bit too long, but it gave us an interesting look into where the rebellion is at this moment. Apparently, the batches of three episodes released each week will always be one arc, so next week we should get something completely different again. I can't wait to see how this season feeds directly into Rogue One which I will be re-watching once the season is over! I've always loved the movie, but the show+movie has the potential to be my favorite Star Wars thing ever (sorry, Mando).

Speaking of amazing television, I take back what I said about the season premiere of The Last of Us. I'd like to have "slightly disappointed and annoyed" back, please. I was not okay after watching that. It's not just the THING, everything in this episode was a lot but so well done. Despite the fact that I was spoiled, it did not diminish the emotional impact of the whole episode.

The latest episode of The Studio was great. The episode made a great point about the arts vs. sciences. I feel like they could have also made a similar episode about the use of AI.

The latest The Handmaid's Tale's episode was June doing June things. Last week it was already obvious what she would try to do. I'm looking forward to what will happen with Lawrence though.

Despite the fact that I was spoiled, it did not diminish the emotional impact of the whole episode.

Ahh, that's good to know, thank you! I'm on the fence about watching season 2 (because I got upset about the ending of season 1), so I semi-deliberately spoiled myself, but I'm generally someone who dislikes spoilers immensely.

I was pretty much spoiled as soon as S1 was over. I'm not a fan of spoilers, but if it's an adaptation of book, game, or a remake, I'm not too mad.

I did watch actual shows this week, I just can't remember what!

Sort of joking. I started season 3 of Dark Winds and am very much enjoying it. I also watched a couple of episodes of season 1 of Sloborn, a German drama about a deadly virus that infects a small community living on the island of Sloborn between Denmark and Germany. Because I just can't get enough global pandemic into my life, haha. Season 3 of The Piano started up, so have been enjoying that. Ditto season 7 of Black Mirror (although I may have started that the previous week, I really can't recall). And the weekly installments of Will Trent and FBI.

And baseball and tennis.

I also actually watched a movie, which is a pretty rare occurrence for me. Some months back -- last fall some time, I heard about a film about a meeting of the G7 where the leaders realize they're apparently completely alone -- and weird stuff starts to happen. It looked amusing, so I sort of kept an eye out for it, but forgot about it. Then I saw something about a film on Amazon Prime called "G20" and thought that was the film. I started to watch it, but it wasn't the film. The G20 film is about a meeting of the G20, but it's an all out action film. I watched about 30 minutes of it before I fully realized this was not the film I had wanted to watch. So anyway, I found the actual film, called Rumours and watched THAT one.

It was... odd? It's sort of a dystopian horror political satire comedy? Has an interesting cast. Cate Blanchett plays the German chancellor (with heavy shades of Angela Merkel). Roy Dupuis is the Canadian Prime Minister -- an overly sentimental hottie who has clearly had an affair with the UK PM (a woman) and the German chancellor, and the president of the EU. The oddest casting is Charles Dance as the US President. He plays a sort of Biden-like president -- old guy, keeps falling asleep during meetings, etc., and never makes a single attempt to not have a British accent. At one point in the film, the Italian PM basically asks him "What's up with the accent" and the President starts to regale him with the "interesting story" behind that when some dramatic thing happens that quickly puts an end to that, so we never find out why the US president is British. Or at least sounds British. Anyway, I mostly enjoyed it, but it's probably not to a lot of people's tastes. Or interests.

Certainly odd about Charles Dance -- so many Brits do a good American accent, seems odd they'd choose to cast one who didn't.

What makes you think he can't do one? I'm assuming if they really wanted an American accent, they would have cast an American, or had Dance do one, or cast a non-USian who could do one if Dance really couldn't. The entire movie is absurd, so to me this was deliberate, not a failing on Dance's part.

Will Trent and Dark Winds are two of my favorites right now. I also love High Potential and I'm watching season one on Hulu. Its great fun.

I've been rewatching a telenovela I first saw when I was kid/teen, Yo Soy Betty, La Fea. I think overall I prefer the reboot (Betty en NY) but I still absolutely love the original cast of characters so much. And regardless of the version, I always get such a kick out of Armando's dramatics and angst, with the way he talks about heartbreak as if it's the most devastating tragedy of all to ever befall a man.

I plan to watch the Ecomoda spinoff after, and then the revival that came out recently (Betty La Fea: La Historia Continúa). :D

I just rewatched season one of Timeless. Wow, I'd forgotten how that went from optimistic to dystopian in one 45 minute episode. I might need to take a break from the grim. I am not watching season two of Andor. I have stopped watching season three of Dark Winds. I might resume watching Will Trent. I watched the first episode of Wheel of Time with my son. Lots of death and violence. It's bad for my mental health. I think it's going to have to be HGTV and reruns of sitcoms for awhile. Old movies on TCM?

I can understand that -- might be a good time for a rewatch of old favorites.

You - Binged season 5. It was ok. I didn't really like the way it made me root for Joe and villainised the female characters. But that aside, it still was just ok. I thought certain things were obvious from the start, so the "twist" wasn't unexpected.

Alone (Australia) - I binged season 1 and it was great. I learned that if I was forced to survive alone for months in the wilds of Tasmania, I would probably die pretty quickly lol The current season is S3, so I'll probably binge s2 at some point and then catch up with s3.

otherwise its just weekly stuff nothing notable except:

Dope Thief - Season finale. The entire season was so good, I'm disappointed there aren't more eps this season. Also Kate Mulgrew was awesome in it.

The Last of Us - I was expecting the thing that happened to happen at some point, just didn't think it would this early in the season. Also it felt a little too similar to a similar event in the walking dead imo. I get that it happened that way in the game, but still, it didn't have the same emotional punch because of that I guess. (And also because it was too early imo.)

I still have Etoile to watch.

I tried out some new game shows but most of the week was taken up with an unplanned rewatch of Veronica Mars. I talked about all of that in a separate post.

In terms of continuing stuff, a few more episodes of L.A. Law, $20,000 Pyramid and Celebrity Jeopardy. Watched the season finale of The Floor. One of the final two contestants (out of 100) was an animator who talked about how he had been living out of his car earlier in the year. When asked what he'd do with the big prize he said he would help out fellow animators as the industry had been decimated and he knew a lot of people were in trouble. Sadly he just missed out as the final playoff category was international foods and his opponent was a chef.

I also saw the first 3 episodes of Andor. I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I like where they're going with it, and the various details of the emerging Rebellion. I remember the first 2 episodes of S1 seemed slow to me and these seemed slower still, which was a surprise since I'd assumed much of that with S1 was because of setup. Whereas in S2 so far we're focusing on well established characters from last season. It may have something to do with the frustration of watching the leaderless guerilla cell being relentlessly useless and self-defeating. I value the inclusion of this storyline in the larger story the show is telling but it doesn't make that part any more watchable for me.

Nonetheless I'm on this train until the end so we'll see what the next set of episodes brings.

Oops, I missed last week's post again - but I am really very slow at watching things these days and I was on vacation to boot, so even in two weeks, not all that much has accumulated.

I've now seen 9 eps of The Pitt and enjoying it a lot, but that's not telling anyone anything they didn't know before. Everyone loves the show as far as I can tell. :D

I continued Dark Winds, but I'm still in early s1, so that'll take a while.

Still enjoying Doctor Odyssey, although there was only one ep last week (and now they're on a two week Easter hiatus), and that was one that had been planned for earlier in the season and got moved back due to necessary reshoots, so it didn't really fit the season's ody3 character arc. Renewal/cancellation is still unconfirmed at this point (but viewer numbers are rising because apparently the throuple made enough people take notice).

I also tried to find Justice in the Dark, the Chinese BL that has now been released in Japan, and while I did find it, I only watched about a minute of it. The auto-translated engsubs are so terrible that I decided to wait for better ones to come along.

While scouring youtube for more stuff that Mehdi Nebbou was in, I somehow found *three* things!

Couples, a German Arte production that takes a humorous look at couples, and it's set up like conversations with a therapist. Each couple only gets five minutes or so, and there are only ten couples in the first season, so it's a very short watch. Some of them are... ehhh questionable, but I liked them overall. You can watch them all on youtube (in German): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjqdif7wT03ds2d06O0JnIIXgjrsBiNRZ

Les Heures Souterraines (somehow translated into German as "Die Tage Unter Null" which... wtf, it's about people having a bad time and not about temperature, and it's exactly one day, not more. I've seen some bad German titles but this one's even worse than usual.) That said, the movie wasn't all that good either imho. It just follows two people around the city of Paris for one day. One of them is a doctor who does house calls, and the other is a woman who has to contend with gaslighting at her job. It wasn't terrible, but it was also not very satisfying. I felt like the author (it is based on a book) needed to write that topic to get it off her chest, and that's perfectly fine, but it does not make for a good movie, unless you're a victim of gaslighting yourself, maybe? What made the time worth it for me is that it's (to my knowledge) the only movie in which Mehdi Nebbou dubbed himself. The original production is French, but there's a German dub (as usual with movies released in Germany) and he did the dub for his character himself. If my lackluster review hasn't deterred you, you can watch it here (in French or German) at the official site: https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/054789-000-A/les-heures-souterraines/

And then a fellow HPI fan pointed me towards Cookie, another French movie with Mehdi Nebbou (from 2013), in which he speaks Chinese. I also found that on youtube, but it was a very LQ rip, not an official release. It's about a woman who suddenly has to take care of a six-year old Chinese boy. It turns out that his mother (the main character's cleaning woman) was in France illegally, and she's been picked up by the police. The movie can't really decide whether it wants to be a drama or a comedy or a romance, and the plot basically consists of the woman and her sister (and her husband and her ex) trying to reunite the boy with his mother (in an absolutely impossible way omg i want to rant about this it's so illogical). I still did not regret it because I did get to hear Mehdi Nebbou speak a few lines of Chinese (uuuuuuuh, understandable but terrible), and watch him kiss one of the women. So, for me, A++ experience. :D I would not recommend the movie for anyone else.

That's it! Not much for two weeks.

Edited 2025-04-26 21:28 (UTC)

Oh I forgot! I watched 2 episodes of Doctor Odyssey. This show is like a crack fanfic, I swear.

IKR? I used to read fanfic at first, but then the show went and made everything I wanted canon, so now I don't need the fic anymore. :D

I still did not regret it because I did get to hear Mehdi Nebbou speak a few lines of Chinese (uuuuuuuh, understandable but terrible), and watch him kiss one of the women. So, for me, A++ experience. :D I would not recommend the movie for anyone else.

Hee! *hearts*

choosing my battles lol :D

My partner and I are halfway through Tale of the Nine Tailed, a Kdrama about an immortal fox-spirit ex-mountain god, the reincarnated love of his life, and his bratty little brother. It's a rewatch for me, and I'm enjoying it very much, mostly for Lee Dong-wook being foxlike, trickstery and devoted.

We just watched episode 2 of Sherlock & Daughter, which is enjoyable and engaging. (I'm not big into Holmes-related shows, so factor that into my assessment.)

Also, the latest Doctor Who episode. More Krapopolis. Half of a film about pangolins on Netflix by the guy who made My Octopus Teacher (we'll finish it tonight, probably). More of a Deadloch rewatch. And more Jentry Chau vs the Underworld -- which I keep trying and failing to have feelings about.

And I'm watching Heesu in Class 2, which is about a very clueless high school student in a m/m, m/f love quadrangle.

I was busy half the weekend so I didn't get a lot watched but Saturday I got in some of The Pitt.... I'm still waiting for that to grab me and I'm thinking even if I finish the season I may never watch it after that. I'm not enjoying it. I think the way it is set up makes it hard for my brain to follow.

I also watched Andor's first 2 episode of the new season and I was super mad that the second episode was pointless filler. But still I'm enjoying being back in the Star Wars universe.

Oh and last night, I got in the newest episode of Tracker. So good. I love how cops are always suspicious of him and by the end they want him to impart all his wisdom. I am going to binge this show all over again when the season ends.

I was surprised that Andor's first episodes were as frustrating as they were, mostly because shows may be slow their first few episodes due to setup. But the same characters were back again and various events were continuations from where we left off in S1 (such as the wedding). So I didn't see why the pace wasn't faster.

That said I found the whole wedding aspect rather fascinating to watch, both because of the lavish production involved and also because it's something we haven't experienced before, certainly in such detail.

I don't always need fast pacing. I actually really loved the first season but the whole ship thing and the people Cassian ran into. That was mind numbingly dumb.

I did like the wedding stuff because in is interesting to see their cultural rituals. I really don't mind that stuff. I think it is just that we have only a few episodes total and all that stuff with the rebels fighting wasn't even important.

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