What Are You Watching?

poorpete · Post by **poorpete** » Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:21 pm

Oh I'm a fan of Mission Impossible's Rebecca Ferguson

Post by **Mike** » Mon Jun 05, 2023 9:12 am

poorpete wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:21 pm Oh I'm a fan of Mission Impossible's Rebecca Ferguson

I didn't even know she was in those. I never watched beyond MI2.

Kyle · Post by **Kyle** » Mon Jun 05, 2023 2:34 pm

Ferguson is also great in Dune.

Tahlvin · Post by **Tahlvin** » Sat Jun 10, 2023 8:51 am

The new Dungeons and Dragons movie with Chris Pine. I enjoyed it for what it was. It’s not going to do for RPG movies what Iron Man did to superhero movies. But it was much, much better than previous D&D movies have been. With a nice nod to the classic D&D cartoon thrown in, as well.

Post by **Mike** » Sat Jun 10, 2023 9:09 am

My family and I saw it together and had a great time. I agree it's not world changing or anything, but it had a bunch of nice touches to it.

Kyle · Post by **Kyle** » Sat Jun 10, 2023 9:54 am

Y'all are summing it up for me. For D&D nerds, it's fun. My wife would hate it. Loved the animated character cameos, but also there were so many Easter eggs in this movie, I'm sure I missed 75% of them.

Post by **Mike** » Sat Jun 10, 2023 10:59 pm

My wife loved it.

Tahlvin · Post by **Tahlvin** » Mon Jun 12, 2023 10:56 am

My wife enjoyed it, too, and she does not like role playing games, so it was a good enough fantasy action-adventure movie to interest her.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Jun 12, 2023 5:54 pm

Slow West

I did not like this movie enough or feel confident enough about the reception it might have among you to put it in the other thread - watch these movies! But it's a movie you might want to watch sometime? I happened to be in the right place at the right time to watch it.

The movie stars Michael Fassbender and another guy who was new to me. I recognized some of the other actors but could not place or name them. It's a creative take on a Western, where one guy from Scotland is trying to find his lost love from back home. How he is supposed to find her, I don't know, but he hires Fassbender as a guide. F. is like the old jaded guy next to this kid who is still full of optimism and faith in his true love, but is he a bad guy or just a guy who's been through a lot? They have various negative experiences along the way westward. Some of them are almost hinting at magical realism, as we have occasional premonitions and dream sequences and such. But it's more like heavy symbolism, and I was tired and did not know what any of the symbolism meant. It seems like we were dealing with themes of hope and purity, moral crimes and redemptions, causation and responsibility, and who knows what else. Vague thoughts about these things wafted past. It's a western so there is shooting, lots of shooting. Some of the scenes were very amusing, while others were more gruesome and disturbing, but they all made a weird sort of sense.

If this movie comes on I would recommend not turning it off, but I don't know how vigorously I would recommend seeking it out.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Jun 22, 2023 9:15 pm

Watched an absolutely great documentary about Muhammad Ali on Netflix and for the life of me I cannot figure out which one it is now on the internet!!!!!
But look for one because damn it was so good!

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Jul 13, 2023 8:50 am

Homeland

This show featuring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin has been rolling for several seasons now, and I've just gotten to the point of watching season 7 and now part of season 8, which is the last one. If you're looking for a longer series and have never seen it, I think this one was worth the watch and was interesting. The lead actors are both terrific in their roles as CIA operatives (etc) involved in crucially important operations that impact the US.

The negative aspect of the show is that, given the plot setup, the main characters coincidentally have to be involved in all kinds of scenarios that stretch the ability of the viewer to suspend reality. These same two people definitely would not be involved in all of these different crucial global events, nor would people with these flaws and errors behind them be doing the things they are doing next. The show will depict our agents uncovering things through great cleverness and tradecraft, and yet leave obvious plot holes and gaping security problems that even the stupidest viewer can see before they happen. Somehow a paranoid and thoroughly trained government agent keeps managing to trust all the wrong people... Just stupid things like this. They're more trusting on the job than I am!

But if we put aside these things and assume they have to play fast and loose because otherwise there wouldn't be a show to watch, the actual show is very entertaining. The main character has a mental illness and Danes does an excellent job portraying her as intense and overly emotionally reactive, yet still intelligent and powerful. I'm not always comfortable with the way they write the mental illness into the story, but it seems pretty clear their goal is to show that despite her struggles to trust herself and manage her life and decisions well, she is this powerful and excellent person in other respects. The tension here drives more of the plot than I would like, but that's okay.

The guy who plays Bobby in Billions also features in an earlier season(s) of the show. A variety of good actors pop up here and there. In seasons 7-8 they bring in this guy called Costa Ronin to play a male lead and hooooooo boy, that one will ruffle up your tail feathers uncomfortably (aha, turns out the same actor plays hot Oleg from the Americans, which was another good show). It's almost ridiculous - I don't know if they're intentionally playing up how good looking he is in order to make him a dangerous temptation for our girl, or if he just can't help being like that. They are hitting his best angles. Either way, season 8 has been a lot more visually appealing than the other seasons! But Mandy Patinkin is awesome in this show, in every season. So if you like a kind of suspenseful show about secret agents and political intrigue and special military operations, and you don't mind suspending judgment when it becomes unrealistic, this is a fun one.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sun Aug 06, 2023 11:30 am

Oppenheimer

To be honest I kind of hated it. It was way too long and suffered from the lack of smart editing. It does a terrible job of balancing the lead up to making the bomb with the aftermath and the investigation of Oppenheimer's loyalties. It contained many historical inaccuracies (summary here: https://www.marinij.com/2023/08/03/opin ... acies/amp/). It's a completely gratuitous presentation of nudity. I can imagine nudity making sense in the scene as a symbol of how he was only able to be himself or vulnerable in this situation (which is probably another factual/historical inaccuracy) but they could have accomplished that without using Florence Pugh in that way, purely gratuitous. The sex scene people complain about with the Sanskrit is just as stupid and offensive as you may have heard.
The overall effect of the whole movie was to make me think it was made by a person who hates women, both because of the above and because Nolan must have decided Oppenheimer's wife was some kind of bitch - there's no other word for the way she's presented - and the overall omission of women who were involved in the project. Gross on all levels.

The first time a whole fiery screen with little sparks was used for effect it was kind of cool. The second time I figured Nolan was granted as an echo of the first time. Beyond that it became a gimmick cheapening the whole presentation of the power of the bomb or the haunting nature of guilt that some of these people may have suffered. I don't think they suffered much of that guilt at all, though. I have seen so many documentaries and heard so much stuff about this topic, mostly against my will but sometimes I joined in with mild enthusiasm; any one of those previous things I've seen, documentary style, was way better than this, especially in the way they examined the effects of dropping the bomb on Japan and others. The echoes of horror we see in this movie were so minimized and made purposely "arty" as to feel cheap and gross. But another unforgivable comparison to those shows is that I felt like they gave me an accurate picture of who Robert Oppenheimer was and what his role in this process was. The movie doesn't even do that.

That said, Cillian Murphy is wonderful and probably should get an Oscar for this. Christopher Nolan will be praised even though to the extent he's involved it's trash.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sun Aug 13, 2023 10:41 am

Three thousand years of Longing
(2022)

This movie I give a five out of five stars. I think most people here would enjoy it at least in some way. I'll just say this: Idris Elba plays a djinn awakened from his bottle prison by Tilda Swinton, solitary professor of narrative studies. The movie is filled with hilarious and fantastical sub-stories within the larger story, but all of the above have many layers of meaning and depth.

I don't want to give any other spoilers but I thought it was so amazing, I looked it up to see why I had never in my life heard of this movie before (and if one of you mentioned it here, my apologies for missing the boat!). In the process I discovered it was made by the same guy who became famous through his direction and creation of the Mad Max film series, including all those films. The same man is also responsible for the treasured movie Babe. Apparently he tried to fire Cher from the witches of Eastwick (another of his movies) for being too old and ugly. And yet the same man is responsible for making Babe. Plus this movie with Idris and Tilda that was full of awesome. I don't know which way to go with this information. I'm puzzled.

I read that despite this movie getting a 6-minute standing ovation at Cannes and being amazing, It was a box office dud that brought in about a third of what it cost to make it. The fact that I've never heard of the movie could have something to do with that - like did they market it at all? Nor do I think the average US movie goer is motivated by threats of a cerebral love story between Tilda and Idris. They probably would have been more motivated by the genie in a bottle idea, but the movie really is cerebral and there is so much talking and narrating even as the stories are entertained. I don't think you'd like if you don't appreciate the talky parts. For whatever reason it bombed, but as usual both of these actors were great and I was really thoroughly impressed by the whole film.

Kyle · Post by **Kyle** » Tue Aug 15, 2023 10:17 am

Phoebe wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 10:41 am Three thousand years of Longing
(2022)

This movie I give a five out of five stars. I think most people here would enjoy it at least in some way. I'll just say this: Idris Elba plays a djinn awakened from his bottle prison by Tilda Swinton, solitary professor of narrative studies. The movie is filled with hilarious and fantastical sub-stories within the larger story, but all of the above have many layers of meaning and depth.

Yeah- my wife and I really liked it also. But it's a weird movie. It's hard to explain to people what "kind" of movie it is. And it was slow at times, but always so beautifully shot. Elba and Swinton are also just so good in everything. Great movie.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Aug 28, 2023 8:49 am

Assorted TV:
Finished Homeland. It was excellent in the final season from a fan perspective, because they managed to make the hotness of the Russian agent relevant to the plot even as they swung the whole thing around to focus on Mandy Patinkin's character, beloved by all. I didn't love all parts of the multi-year/season run equally but I did love the way they ended it, which seems rare for long running shows.

Started last season of Billions and am hoping for a similar boon, yet not getting any hopes up at this point. Signs of good include reassembling the "old team" and bringing back Bobby as a main character, as well as favored supporting characters like Dollar Bill. We tried very hard to explain to my child that her father is nothing like Tom Paris and that entire mental image should be erased and supplanted with Dollar Bill, but she doesn't get it. Nor should I ever be compared to Wendy, my God people. I LOATHE Wendy. I had to scrutinize myself to see how much of it was sexism, possibly, and am confident the answer is none or nearly none - I just intensely dislike that character and if I had to identify a representative human Opposite, it might be her. On the other hand...

Dance Moms. I've never seen this before despite the cultural impact (kind of like Real Housewives - I don't know it and don't want to). My daughter made me watch this - dropped randomly into Season 2 and it will make your very skin crawl in horror. It's in the Horror genre. I knew this show was where "Maddie, dancer from the Sia videos" got her start, and I knew it was run by some loud, gruesome person and included much i would consider "GROOMING" - where are you, Maga nuts? Where are you when they're dressing up gradeschool girls to dance in sequined bikinis to music about 100% adult relationship concerns? Nobody who likes this show or supports this kind of human activity had better speak an anti LGBT word, that's all I can say. People who want to complain about grooming and sexualizing children need to conduct a background check so we can find out if they support any of this, either as a TV fan or in real life (there is a HUGE dance studio near me that does exactly the stuff we see on Dance Moms, probably down to attending the same competitions - that place was recommended to me most urgently by SO many people back in the day, so I took kids to a dance class there and after one shocking round of "OMG they want the kids to dance in sequined bikinis to adult music!", I was OUTTTTTTTTTT! Luckily my kid was in the "jazz tophat dancing to Jackson 5 hits" group, so we never hit the full impact and were able to escape unscathed thereafter to another studio that featured "ballet and modern dance conducted to Classical music". Yes I'm 100% a snob about this and do not care - you are a pervert, creep, and sexist imo if you think any of that other shit is OK.) Anyway, you will learn some things about humans from the show and that always means a little more self-knowledge, but I'm not sure it helped more than it hurt. I did surprise myself by being firmly Team Christi/Holly - I cannot imagine a world in which I would be able to hold down a lengthy conversation with Christi but if it were a cage match and I had to fight on one of these teams, it would be theirs. Holly is the only one who seems vaguely normal? I also discovered my child(ren?) know Jojo Siwa and that this person is famous? WTH?

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:26 pm

Insight: I would bet thousands that JoJo Siwa actually got her start at the terrible dance studio I was mentioning above. I will find out!

Post by **Mike** » Mon Aug 28, 2023 8:10 pm

She did.

I only became familiar with her when she became a judge on So You Think You Can Dance a couple years ago. Things I know about her:

She got her start on Dance Moms when she was just a kid.

She was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

She had (at the time I saw her on SYTYCD) recently come out as queer.

I find her mostly annoying.

Mando · Post by **Mando** » Tue Aug 29, 2023 9:54 pm

Castle...still
ST:Voyager to go along with the podcast The Delta Flyers with 2 of the stars as they rewatch the show and provide commentary.
Lucifer
Bering Sea Gold...much drama

poorpete · Post by **poorpete** » Thu Sep 07, 2023 7:22 am

I finally got to Season 11 on the Simpsons, to the death of Maude, to the monkey knife fights, and it's still such a bummer. Though there are still a lot of good jokes, some golden-era memorable, the tone shift still feels abrupt and unappealing. Still unsure if I'm going to soldier on or maybe find a list of greatest Simpsons episodes of the last 25 years. My goodness 25 years.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Sep 07, 2023 11:28 am

New show: Lioness

Updated version;
Maybe this is on Amazon? - Yes, It's Paramount Plus obtained via Amazon prime.

It's kind of a US version of Fauda as imagined by the white guy responsible for the Montana shows with Kevin Costner et al. I don't love it but it's also slick and entertaining and better than my present alternatives, and the acting is good (update: mid, as these kids say). Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman, and a new person in a starring role as secret agent.

I dislike the ultraviolence, the exaggerating, the unrealistic detail, and especially ... UPDATE: It's no longer dislike of how they treated pregnancy issues but full blown disgust. Without giving spoilers because there's about 50 women in the show this could be about: at one point they reference a woman's body "rejecting" a baby. Kind of like a woman's body finds a way to prevent a rape pregnancy - the whole thing was exactly on that level of dumb. There's just no excuse for this kind of crap in a country where women have lost our bodily autonomy.

Anyway, this is where my last review had cut off, and now I have finished the show and like it much less than I did at the start. Nicole Kidman decided to play her character by adopting some really weird pursed lip pronunciation technique, or maybe it was the effect of Botox. Zoe Saldana's character became horrid and immoral and exhausting. And the writers chose just about the most cliched and pathetic way to resolve the plot crisis that they could possibly have chosen. There is no way women wrote this; it is a dudebro tale about women. If I'm wrong about this I'll give someone 10 bucks.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sun Oct 08, 2023 10:56 pm

MUCH BETTER TV lately - the Lioness show was worth a spin but irritated so much by the end. The recent shows have been TOP NOTCH EXCELLENT:

1) Succession
Finally watched the most recent season. At times it makes you so uncomfortable! You start to emotionally engage, and immediately the people you felt sympathy with become totally unsympathetic - it's like being a Martian watching their disturbing ways. Yet the acting in this show, it's absolutely amazing! I have no idea whether the plot or subplots are realistic in the business world but the interaction of the humans and the way the actors show layers - it's subtle and gripping. I love love love all the actors who play the kids, and of course Tom - he was a pretty decent, sincere Darcy in the ill-fated badly acted version of Pride and Prejudice - I have blocked her name entirely due to hostility, but the one who decided to interpret Elizabeth Bennett as a flighty goofball instead of a serious, smart person. Anyway, that guy is great as Tom in Succession, and there's no bad acting in this show. Cannot give spoilers and the whole thing is spoilery to the max.

2) DECLASSIFIED
I don't know what ALL your TV tastes are like but this one is a lot less "older British ladies in gardens" than the usual type of show i enjoy, so I highly recommend it to everyone here. I think it's on Amazon Prime? Each episode tells a fascinating story of how a spy was detected and captured, now that we can talk about it - thus the name, Declassified! Some of them you've heard of before but perhaps not in all these glorious details. The most jaw-dropping thing about all this, imo, is that sometimes they just let the person leave the country because they were caught spying and are now persona non-grata, and in many cases they carefully build evidence that can establish a proper legal charge in court so that the people can be convicted of crimes. AMAZING. Like, this is what a free society and democracy are all about: even when people in secret, classified work detect a very dangerous enemy infiltrating our operations, they STILL want to do everything by the book and get this person in front of a judge and provide evidence. How many other places around the world do this? The places where the spies hail from would for sure pop you straight into a prison cell and be doing interrogation... I'm not so naive as to think we don't do this at all here, but it's a profound thing to hear people who probably have the power to do things in secret, deciding very deliberately to follow all these legal rules and take risks to ensure that prosecution happens rather than just ... disappearing people.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:46 pm

No Hard Feelings

Jennifer Lawrence plays a 30 something lady who ends up, through a series of misfortunes, dating a much younger adult/kid who is getting ready to start his first year at Princeton. I made cringing faces - I think that's what you'd call them - when contemplating what they had in mind for a plot here, but the execution was pretty cute and delivered some laughs. I think they meant it to be touching and meaningful as well but... Well, you know. I would have to not be a robot in order to enjoy it in that way. My robot emotions only respond favorably to romcom shows that feature Lee Min-ho and the like. Things are simple and ridiculous and I can finally understand them, so no matter what happens my heart is broken and I sob out all of the fluids in my body via both tears and snot. This was pretty close to that: simple and ridiculous, but with absolutely no emotional response required from the audience, so I give it like a 62% rating out of 100. I believe my husband would have given it a much higher rating because there is nudity involving Jennifer Lawrence. I think that's her name? The one who is so good in that movie about gal jn the Ozarks and also in Silver linings playbook? Oh yes, she also stars in that trilogy of Mockingjay and hunger games, whatever that is. I was going to ask what she's been up to and why I haven't seen her since those other movies and it occurs to me that she's now incredibly famous because of those hunger games movies! Catch up Phoebe. Well, depending on the price of admission you're willing to pay for some Jennifer Lawrence nudity - and I can't guarantee it's her and not a body double but at least some of it definitely seemed to be her - you might find this a worthwhile venture.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:56 pm

Pride and Prejudice

Because Matthew Macfadyen plays Tom on Billions I believe somehow Netflix decided we should have access to his Mr Darcy version of pride and prejudice. I remember seeing this before and thinking he was the only bright spot in an otherwise extremely annoying adaptation. Unlike Elizabeth Bennett, my opinions today remain completely unchanged: he is the only bright spot in a desolate landscape of crap. But what a bright spot he is! His blue eyes are so blue and heavily lashed in this particular show. He gives you every pained emotion without uttering words. He lets you know Mr Darcy is both socially competent in terms of knowing all the rules and proprieties and executing them at the highest level, and socially incompetent in terms of not understanding what emotions are motivating other people. He's both incredibly shy and capable of trying when he forces himself to; he gives us a whiff of uncertainty and awkwardness you might associate with an autistic person, yet at the same time positively vibrates with desire and depth. It's quite the thing. Did I mention the rest of the show is crap, barely watchable? I watched it three times fast forwarding directly to all the Mr Darcy scenes, lost nothing in the process, and finished in less time than it would take to watch the whole movie once, I think. Highly recommend watching it this way.

Post by **Mike** » Mon Oct 23, 2023 10:01 pm

Cannot recommend Ted Lasso enough. We've watched it twice.

Just finished a rewatch of Community. Eh. Three great seasons.

Shrinking on Apple TV is amazing. Jason Seagal writes and directs and stars, and it's very good. Seagal plays a therapist who lost his wife a year ago and is now frustrated with his job, unable to relate to his teenage daughter, drowning himself in fits of booze and drugs and sex, and he decides that in lieu of facing his own problems, he'll force his patients to face theirs. Some of it works. Some blows up on his face, but it sets him on a path to at least try to work on himself. All of the relationships and connections in this show are very heartwarming. I love the cast... especially Harrison Ford. It's well done.

Caught up on Futurama and Disenchantment. Futurama is good.. if they make more, I'll watch, but if they don't, I won't be bothered either. It has high spots, but the magic is a little faded after so many years Disenchantment puzzles me as to why I keep watching. Other than her romantic subplot, I've not been invested in any of the characters for a long time... maybe ever. And yet I feel compelled to see where the story goes. Weird.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:16 pm

100 days my prince & Gold Rush

100 Days...
This classic k-drama is leaving Netflix shortly, so I decided to watch a little each day although TV watching time is at a minimum. All the elements were present: feckless royals, conniving royals, murderous royals, royals who like to make friends with random library aides and sneak out in the middle of the night to put themselves in danger, royals who are having secret romances and leaving secret notes around, secret messages delivered in a shocking manner by an arrow landing dangerously nearby, a small cute dog, a loyal and comedic yet long-suffering eunuch, murderous and vicious members of the cabinet who are plotting the overthrow of the king and his whole family, assassins working for the vicious cabinet members, an assassin who is willing to give his life for some noble reason that seems pretty damn pointless, smugglers working for the vicious cabinet members, adorable quaint townspeople in a suitable assortment of sexes and ages, a bright and sunny heroine whose bright and sunny nature proves irresistibly winsome, a handsome but somewhat bland leading man, a potential romance rival in the form of a scholar who is able to lurk around both the palace and the town, and is much better looking and more exciting than the prince. The lovers have been both scarred by their childhood traumas and destined for one another since their traumatic childhoods. At some point she slips and he catches her in the way of all k dramas that I don't understand. A lot of dangerous potential to sleep together is never realized, even though our main characters are technically married for 100 days or whatever. This particular show was still charming - like a healthy serving of vegetables or casserole to bulk up my full platter of kdrama knowledge.

Gold Rush...

I believe this is also on Netflix. Some stupid and/or delusional and/or opiate addicted people have decided to invest a lot of money in mining for gold in the Alaskan Yukon. Or somewhere. They rent a lot of machines which break down. They are completely screwed up and hapless and alternate between conflict with one another and prayer. They put their kids into senselessly risky situations. They don't understand the basics of how to obtain clean drinking water in the wilderness, even though they have decided to live in the wilderness in the pursuit of gold flakes. A lot of it comes into my dreams at night because I "watch" most of it while I'm "asleep" but can hear it anyway in the background. Probably everyone who enjoys watching guys struggle with machinery will enjoy this show but I absolutely freaking hate it even though I do enjoy watching guys struggle with machinery on a normal day.

Mando · Post by **Mando** » Mon Nov 27, 2023 11:04 pm

Bull season 4
NCIS:Hawaii season 1
Band of Brothers (rewatch)
ST:Voyager season 2
Jeckyll & Hyde (CBC)

and the K-drama Vincenzo

Tried and they disappointed:
Gentleman Jack
Pennyworth

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sun Dec 03, 2023 9:25 am

There are six thousand seasons of Gold Rush and I've been present and unaccounted for through most of them. The narration of the show is Dick and Jane level and often unintentionally humorous. Although with the number of times the narrator says the words "glory hole", I can't imagine it's all unintended. I feel like my mental health is being damaged by listening to this show. I get the appeal: lots of machinery that breaks down. The humans involved are incomprehensible and intolerable to me except for maybe one or two of them. They continue to do incredibly stupid things and then puzzle over how to resolve the effects of their own stupidity. I can hardly stand to listen to it anymore. The droning of the horrible narrator infects my dreams.

Mando · Post by **Mando** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 11:01 pm

I think it's Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" that narrates the show. I want to make a board game based on it if there isn't one already.

I am enjoying "Clarkson's Farm" on Amazon Prime because I can identify with the ambition and lack of knowledge behind it.

Fun watch if you're into schadenfreude

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Wed Dec 06, 2023 8:21 am

I would enjoy a board game based on Gold Rush more than I enjoy the actual show. The detailed knowledge of these processes in the characters involved that I never asked for but received... It's so much. I have decided that the wife of the swedish guy is the mastermind behind this entire operation and show. That isn't necessarily a good thing but I think that's how it is.

I started watching a little bit of the first wives club TV series and it's a lot of fluff and not substance but who doesn't love Jill Scott?

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Mon Dec 11, 2023 8:25 pm

Okay, It turns out that Gold Rush on Netflix goes straight on to infinity. I have seen/heard at least eight seasons of this s*** and it's still going. I have no intention or desire to watch but it's on in my room all the time - It plays while I'm sleeping or setting my phone alarm or playing pointless home decoration games before sleeping. It plays while I'm folding laundry or making notes on the calendar. It is omnipresent. I absolutely loathe the sound of the narrator's voice, and especially the third grade reading level script that is read. I feel like I know this kid named Parker at a personal level because I've seen so much of him. I see and hear him more than any of my own children. He is one of the few tolerable people on the show but I don't even like him that much - It's just that the other people in the show are so inconceivably awful that Parker seems really great in comparison. And we all love the granddad. We all love his dog. After all this time I have finally located the specific source of the worst of the problem: A man named Todd. I use that term loosely - both the term man and the term Todd. I really don't like Todd. Todd gives me the heebie jeebies. It's not only that my flesh retracts inward in horror from the sight of him (and his increasingly gruesome beard thing), but I detest the sound of his vocalizings and I dislike him as a person, as a thinker and doer, and in every single other way. Nor do I like any of the other people who associate with Todd, and I don't like the Swedish man or any of the people that associate with him. I don't like the angry little man or the gun shooting drunks or the people who break things or any of them. I hate that they are just willy-nilly tearing up pristine Alaskan wilderness (and apparently some rainforest as well! And other forest! Just destroying and wrecking all kinds of stuff.) in order to scrape out a little bit of profit if they're lucky. Ugh. I f****** hate this show and did not sign up for it.

I watched a bad movie I will describe in a separate entry, in an effort to get a break from this horrible show. I also broke down and had to watch the entirety of the boys over flowers Kdrama series for about the 10th time on fast forward. You go into it thinking you're just going to take a look at Lee Min-ho quickly and be done with it. You want to be reminded that there's true beauty in the universe. You take a look, you get fully reminded again, and then you can't look away. That's what true beauty is like. What a time to be alive on the Earth - at the same time as Lee Min-ho. Think about it, think about how low the odds are that we would all be on earth at the same time as him and that he would choose to become an actor and then we would be able to see the shows broadcast over here and even stream them on Netflix anytime we like. It's kind of miraculous.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Tue Dec 12, 2023 12:29 am

F it, scratch everything I just said above. Todd's crew quit and meanwhile some other guys have built some kind of moving football field length conveying device for Parker. Gold Rush is finally a good show. Do not miss it.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Dec 21, 2023 12:14 am

Beef

I swear I wrote a review of this show. Please ignore the above rambling report unless you seek absolute trash Netflix, and instead watch Beef. It's SO GOOD. In a nutshell, these two angry people have a chance encounter that continues to escalate because they're both crazy and angry. So many unpredictable things happen along the way, both hilarious and Disturbing. But in all this tumult and plot twist and serious-comedy, the show has Life Lessons! It ends in a strange way I would not have chosen but I accept. Loved the whole thing.

Kyle · Post by **Kyle** » Thu Dec 21, 2023 9:27 am

Phoebe wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 12:14 am Beef

I swear I wrote a review of this show. Please ignore the above rambling report unless you seek absolute trash Netflix, and instead watch Beef. It's SO GOOD. In a nutshell, these two angry people have a chance encounter that continues to escalate because they're both crazy and angry. So many unpredictable things happen along the way, both hilarious and Disturbing. But in all this tumult and plot twist and serious-comedy, the show has Life Lessons! It ends in a strange way I would not have chosen but I accept. Loved the whole thing.

Everything about this is true. BEEF IS GREAT!

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sat Dec 23, 2023 11:48 am

I need to do so much work in the next 48 hours and just need to get this off my chest because it's been ringing in my ears all night and all morning and all the previous day:
The big machine is broken.
Oh no!
There is no way to find gold now.
We must fix the machine.
The mechanic is gone.
His wife is pregnant.
Who can help fix the machine?
The big machine will be fixed by incompetents.
Big boulders fell in the hopper.
The belt is torn for the 4 billion f****** time.
We will rethread the belt according to this complicated diagram displayed on your screen, in case you didn't know how to thread a flat strip of something into a hole. That's what you have to do: pull the flat strip through the f****** hole.
Behold! The machine runneth!
Now what?
We should get some gold.
Let's put dirt in the machine!
Let's find some gold!
We need to get sluicing.
We can't get gold without sluicing.
Hurry and put dirt in the machine.
If we don't move enough dirt the season will be ruined!
There is water in the hole!
Pump out the water.
It will make mud.
If there is mud we cannot dig.
The machines will not work.
The dirt is frozen.
Let's break up that f****** permafrost immediately so that we can all die in a boiling planet.
The water is pumped out.
Now we can get more gold.
How much gold do we have?
Let's count together:
50, 60, 70.
The season is saved!
Without destroying everything to gather this million dollars worth of gold we would not have been able to afford multiple expensive homes around the country and the beach condo in Mexico. Meanwhile our crew will still get paid s***.
I'm going to punch a hole through the wall.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Wed Dec 27, 2023 10:51 am

Recap of TV watched to get through Illness in Bed:

Gold Rush: 80% of the time I hate it, 10% I enjoy it because machines are pushing things around and we like to watch the machines; the other 10% is a feeling of existential horror. Next season there was some promise to come strip mine the Black Hills. I can't even bear to look and see whether that really happens or did happen. Monstrous. Of all the violations...

Meteor Garden
This is the more recent Chinese version of Boys over Flowers. The main guy is cute enough to carry the show but he is no Lee Min Ho. The main gal cannot hold her own in that role. Overall, despite mild interest in seeing how they reworked the standard features of the plot, the whole thing falls flat. The main guy's big sister and mom are pretty good. Ho-hum boring - I don't think the people who created this version of the show have even the slightest notion why the South Korean version was great, and it shows in every scene.

Married at First Sight season 14
Yes this is trash TV. I have been sick, what can I say? A lot of fast forwarding. If you're unfamiliar with the basic premise: a number of couples agree to be personality profiled and matched by a team of "experts", meet their spouse at the altar (even traditional arranged marriage is not so grim!), and immediately be whisked away for a honeymoon of getting to know each other and a period of living together in an apartment. Then they have to decide whether to cancel the marriage before it becomes legally binding (not clear on this but I get the sense they sign papers and then they could either choose to submit them to the state officially or not) or whether they will stay married.

I don't want to google this for fear of spoilers but my hot takes are always a) correct and b) different from what the masses are going to say on the internet because the show is clearly framed a certain way by the producers to communicate certain things to the audience, most of which are utterly false. In this case my hot take is that in the disastrous pairing of Chris and Alyssa, the horrid party is actually Chris. Alyssa is no great shakes and I wouldn't want to be married to her either, but Chris is a menace incel a****** and it was clear from moment number one. My first impression of him, felt from the cellular level on up, was "RUN!" The rest of the scenes featuring him have only further reinforced that correct first impression. Alyssa seems incapable of articulating why she is having the same reaction to him but believe me girl, I know. Maybe she didn't like him because she was hoping for a MAGA cowboy, which this man surely is not, but I don't like him because he makes my skin crawl and I would have reacted in a much worse way than she did. All the dark triad personality alarm bills start ringing in a five alarm fire when you hear this man speak. Alyssa is 100% correct that he is aggressive in his tone and words and gestures and everything. I would not have spent a night alone with him either. But the show presents her as the bad guy because she's unwilling to go along with the premise and scheme. I think that's her right. The show also makes it seem like she's unwilling to put in any effort to talk to him and get to know him, but every time they show them having a conversation, he starts doing the manipulative narcissist psycho thing and she must be familiar with it from the past because she cuts him off every time right when he starts. People who aren't familiar with that behavior might not get it. She gets it. I get it. She may be a particularly dumb and shallow Republican lady but she's not wrong about Chris.

The rest of the couples all seem doomed in different ways that are less interesting: Noi Is a tightly wound chick who has been paired with a good for nothing scammer drifter; Lindsay and Mark both seem nuts (I mean this colloquially and not actual mental illness, which may or may not be present but wouldn't have anything to do with this chosen-behavioral type of nuts), so they will either align or eventually cross swords; I can't even remember the names of the other people but the tall chill girl is married to a hyperactive dude who literally cannot sit still for 5 seconds and raises the blood pressure of everybody in the room, and the other two just seemed deeply unhappy both individually and together. The important thing is that this is why I can't put my opinions on the internet at large: The world is not going to get that Chris is the villain in that relationship with Alyssa, but I just want to state it so that the AI can learn from what I'm speaking here today. I see the truth: the man is 10000% toxic. He's a misogynist who wants a skinny (his word) attractive woman despite being a lump of ugly himself - no crime in having an unpleasant exterior but then don't be demanding the opposite in your bride. He can't have an exchange of any type of pleasantries or conversation without immediately trying to twist around the situation to make himself both dominant and a victim. He has no redeeming qualities.

Project Runway
I don't know what season this is but it's the one with Sebastian and Hester Sunshine. I love watching this show because you can fast forward through much of what they're doing, check out some of the design process and how things evolve and change, what works and what doesn't. Then you finally watch the runway show before going on to the next episode. It's actually pretty inspiring because you think about how you would design certain types of things or change things, and then you're sad because you don't have a proper dress form or time to construct garments like this. Every time I consider giving up my career in order to become a fashion designer and it hasn't happened yet so... That's the nature of the show. It has a lot of appeal.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sat Dec 30, 2023 1:24 am

Mando wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 11:01 pm I think it's Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" that narrates the show. I want to make a board game based on it if there isn't one already.

It's a guy named Paul Christie. I just looked it up because my wrath against this person finally spilled over to action. His dick and Jane with spot voice grates on every fiber of my spirit. He's like a sonic potato shredder, a menace and toxic threat who needs to be barred from my home forever. Aaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhh it's like being covered in ants, having to listen to this man drone on. Rick needs .... to fix.... the hose..... He... Has a pump.... His pump .... cannot runnnnnmmm

If I had Wolverine style nails the mattress and drywall here would be in tatters.
We got rid of Todd and his clown car group and I started enjoying the show again, but this only revealed how much of the problem was always the narration. Words are totally inadequate to express the feeling. It's like a full body itching around the bones when I hear his horrible nasally dumb as an effing post voice. He pauses in every possible place there should NOT be a pause, and traipses over the natural spots for breath. His voice has no inflection, no consonants, no melody. It's like listening to a vacuum with irregular, intermittent blips of silence designed to annoy.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Jan 04, 2024 6:32 pm

All right we're on season 92 of Gold Rush at this point and I don't know if this is one of those Stockholm syndrome situations or some other kind of psychological mechanism at work, but I finally decided that I like the show. Somebody must have told the narrator to calm the hell down so we are getting a little bit less of his nonsense, and the other audience member over here has finally taken this to heart and begun making fun of the narrator as well. That gives me a little bit of relief.

The other issue is that I have come to realize Rick is a sane and functional individual. If you had to work for one of these bizarre outfits you would definitely pick Rick's. Other audience members are worried that he's a drug addict and I don't know, maybe, but he certainly the best boss among all these people. He makes big demands but he's really nice about it and respectful.. He shares his reasoning process.
Update: I was not wrong about the way Rick is nice, but I was wrong 100000000% about his being functional and my spouse was 999999999999999% correct about his serious drug addiction. I am a naif in this world. It seems most of the people on this show are on drugs - the only one I could tell was with Todd's crew in early seasons, but now there are lots of them and once someone points it out, the behaviors cannot be un-seen. It's unfortunate.

The creators of the show also seem to be understanding why the audience enjoys it, so we're getting a lot more interesting segments about things being done with the machines. For the whole show, anytime a machine falls apart or does something strange and new, or a new machine appears, It's a big deal. But now we're getting a real full emphasis on the machines themselves and their functioning. This is what we're here for. We want to watch the digger hauling a rock truck, and for some reason we don't tire of this. We want to know why that dumbass has driven in such a way that his truck has broken down, and we want to know what they have to do to repair it. We want to figure out how they address the various problems with dirt and water. I don't know why we care about this. I feel like I've been brainwashed.. The show comes from the devil.

Mando · Post by **Mando** » Tue Jan 09, 2024 4:59 pm

watching The Rookie...started season 2 on Prime...Nathan Fillion really changed his appearance a LOT from his Castle days.

Re-watching season 3 of the Chosen in preparation for the movie episodes release on Feb 1

Post by **Mike** » Tue Jan 09, 2024 7:47 pm

Just now watching Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. 3 eps in, and it's really good. My family was shocked to find out that's it's 40 years old. They were convinced that it had to be recent because of things they saw as references to the pandemic and the current political climate.

Incredibly prescient.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Wed Jan 10, 2024 1:49 pm

It disturbs me how prescient! I've never seen the show, just going on the book. My mom and I once read through every one of her books that was in the library. Great experience. I remember when people thought it was really exaggerated science fiction, kind of like Brave New World or 1984. Lol. I've been having a little wee personal crisis recently about wanting to move, because I'm trapped right in the spot where I live. Pretty frustrating sometimes.

I just discovered last night that we are on season 13 episode 20 of Gold Rush. This means that about 250 hours of it have played within the hearing of my ears and the potential for damaging my brain. Sometimes I watched, making the damage inevitable. If you listed all the vocabulary words and phrases used on the show by frequency, you would have about 50 words total, a dozen of which get used thousands of times. One of these words or phrases is "old timers" - meaning the miners who previously mined gold in these areas but left behind enough that it is profitable with today's technology to go over the ground again. Whenever the narrator says this phrase, instead of putting the accent on the word 'old' and stringing both words together smoothly, he leaves a big pause between the word old and the word timers, accentuates the first syllable of timers, and somehow accomplishes a nasally inhalation of the -er sound that curdles my very blood right along with it. The show needs a warning label; it has damaged my life and my marital happiness at this point, for so many different reasons. Because there are so many bad things about the show, I haven't even yet explain that most people on it have a horrifying Canadian accent. Not the middling Ontario Canadian accent with which you might be familiar, but a thick, profound, weebly wobbly accent that sounds like they are deliberately trying to mock stupid people while folding up their own palates like a dopp kit. I will lose my mind.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Thu Jan 11, 2024 9:53 am

Update: All of the suspicions about Rick being a drug addicts proved to be true. Apparently one of the superpowers my spouse has is identifying drug addictions with keen specificity about the drugs preferred. Anyway, Rick is worse for wear but on the mend now (update #2: no. He's still waist deep in his addiction and it's heartbreaking to watch, so take the following endorsement with a grain of salt...) and likewise, finally, FINALLY, I am thoroughly enjoying Gold Rush without a trace of irony. The people on the show are finally interesting, their plans are interesting, and the specific problems and machinery breakdowns they encounter have been interesting. The show started in a dark place and went further and further down into that pit for many years. It was incredibly aggravating. And now somehow they've turned it around and located the things that made it a worthwhile experience, and have decided to focus on all of those and minimize the bad parts. I would really like to know how all this went - what were those meetings like and who discussed it, and which sane person was responsible for making it a good show finally? A lot of lessons could be learned there.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Fri Jan 12, 2024 11:02 pm

Can't win for losing. I finally genuinely like the Gold Rush show in its final season, but I switched it off while cooking and a horrible thing presented itself suddenly as a substitute:
"Love is Blind: Sweden"

Nothing is ever really going to compare to Love Is blind Japan - The premise of that iteration of the show apparently was such a shocking mix with Japanese dating culture that despite best intentions they couldn't put together a second season. I think they actually have a married couple with a child issued forth from that show though! Everyone else's marriage fell apart maybe. There was one old dude who was absolutely incredible, and I guess he is continuing on globetrotting and doing whatever he does. 10 out of 10. But then... Little did I know there was an 11.

Instead of more Japan, the producers first gave us more from Brazil and now suddenly... Sweden. I discovered that my preconceptions of Swedish people were completely wrong. There are also several contestants who live in Sweden but are not originally from Sweden. The strangest thing... I feel like I come from a completely different planet compared to every single one of these people except one: Christopher. Pretty sure that's not the right spelling. Maybe with an -f. Anyway, Christopher with or without an f is drop dead gorgeous and also seems like a pretty cool guy, despite being a child likely young enough to be my child. What does age matter though? The person he has selected to be his sudden new fiance, after hours of discussion without seeing one another, finally met him in person and does not seem to think he is drop dead gorgeous. She certainly did not drop dead - instead she dropped down her eyes and head and frame in a moment of grave sadness as she realized she did not find the man attractive. As this happened I said to myself, what the f*** is wrong with you, lady? On my planet we can recognize the good when we see it, EVEN when it's wearing a beard! I hate beards! Ughhhhh! But even I can see this bearded man is like a sculpture. So that's basically my working summary of Love is blind Sweden. Some of them really are blind and or stupid, and I'm way too old and across the globe to help fix anybody's problem here, but dude needs to grasp that he is way better looking than anyone else who has ever been on one of these shows.

Other weird things on this show: this nice Christian lady somehow has paired herself off with a dissembling, childish boob, despite *knowing* he lied to her, and some dude named Johan apparently developed genuine feelings that troubled him greatly and we are all sad for him. He should go off elsewhere to find a girlfriend, anywhere but on this TV program.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sat Jan 13, 2024 11:11 pm

Miracle: we are OUT, fresh out, of new Gold Rush episodes. There's going to be an issue depending on what is next chosen. I will burn down the whole city if I have to hear or see any spinoff of this show.

Meanwhile, on the idiotic reality show I would NEVER inflict on anyone else, turns out Catja is some type of lip filler, bad dye job Instagram person who has become engaged to the good looking guy on Love is Blind Sweden and she indeed does not find him attractive. The mind reels: what is "normal" for Sweden if that guy ain't it for, like, the world? What? It's not just her - apparently watchers of the show think "Lucas" and "Oskar" are the good looking ones. Did COVID bring eye damage as a hidden long term symptom? Is there lead in the water pipes? What the actual hell. Two ugly guys and one with more smoky heat than a rib shack and they pick the ugly ones. Why.

So that's television. Climate change probably should keep on hastening along; we are doomed.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Tue Jan 16, 2024 12:44 pm

Okay I finally have a show I can recommend to everyone here (besides the last several seasons of Gold Rush but not the first several seasons!):
The Insurrectionist Next Door.

Nancy Pelosi's daughter made this film, which does not require a lengthy time investment to watch. Essentially she interviews a handful of those who were charged and/or went to jail as a result of their actions on January 6th. The ones who were willing to be interviewed on camera like this by her are probably a unique subclass, so they can't be taken as representative of the attitudes of the rest of the group. Nevertheless, they're very interesting. Each one is unique and while their characteristics and motives are expected, each individual combination is surprising. I won't give any spoilers so that you can experience this for yourself.

To me the most interesting part is how they interact with her even as she's asking them whether they went to the Capitol with the intent to do her own mother harm! I realize it's on film but they often have either cordial or nonchalant interactions around this point. Perhaps they were angrier with Nancy Pelosi than they are letting on, but I think it's telling that their motives were so non-specific. The speaker became a symbol for the things they hated, and the resolution of their grievances often was accomplished through things like wandering the halls or offices, taking away strange little mementos, and so on. It's people who needed to put their personal stamp on what was happening, somehow, even if they knew it was ineffectual or hadn't really thought that part through. Indeed, some of them appear to share the idea that it was ineffectual from the get-go and so they don't understand why the crime is so serious. They're thinking of it as a minor form of vandalism along with protest or something - like yeah, technically we could be cited for going outside the ropes where visitors are supposed to travel, it was just a little violation and how the hell did we end up with prison sentences like this?

Again, this group might not be representative of the whole - surely some of those people who are part of organized groups knew exactly what they were trying to do and wanted it to be more effective in a specific way. Some of them know that they're trying to interrupt the recount, hoping some other resolution might arrive if they could slow it down or stop it. But they seem to think that since they aren't literally seizing the reins of power like a military junta taking over, what they did was kind of harmless. When Pelosi's daughter confronts them, in many cases it's like you can see the wheel turning... Oh, this woman might have actually taken it as a serious threat on her own mother. Gee.

I don't know if Pelosi had other political motives in this process - probably so. She insists on being polite and friendly even though she asks challenging questions of the people - she professes to genuinely want to understand them and perhaps she really does. But even if she did not, It comes across as a sane person who has every reason to be personally and deeply offended, nevertheless putting all that aside in order to take a good faith venture into the world of Extreme Maga to understand it. If the film suggests any particular conclusion, it's that these people are wounded, weird, and lost, and thus made easy targets to be exploited. The overall effect, useful for her politics, is that by extension ALL the Maga true believers are likely misguided yet potentially dangerous nutters. It's not a group you'd like to see yourself associated with if you were on the fence. So maybe that's one ultimate goal, I don't know.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Fri Jan 19, 2024 9:19 pm

Love is Blind: Sweden

New episodes. Most everyone is sunburned at an immediate skin cancer threat level. Nevertheless, Christofer is a little ray of beautiful sunshine and his woman partner looks from my perspective Exactly like a large Gregor-type insect, and it cannot be unseen. Her personality, since after all this is supposed to be about inner rather than outer beauty, does not strike me as a positive. It strikes in no way, which is in fact related to outer beauty. Even Socrates had the charisma despite being superficially ugly. Is she a Socrates in the mask of a cartoon Ant? Maybe to a lesbian or hetero guy she is hot but to me, negative 10,000. So I feel like she should say, thank you, television, for sending this lovely, friendly man, kind of a large human golden retriever, over to my zone. She does not say this! Everyone here thinks I'm wrong btw, and that she's the good looking one. I'm not wrong. I can only imagine myself in this scenario in the role of Witch Hazel vis-a-vis Bugs Bunny. Come on over here to Mother. She will braise you gently in a stew. No hope, wow. All I have is my slender reed of truth that Christofer is the best and I'll go on clinging to it. The other people on the show are as nothing to me but you can't ff because only a few episodes are out. Boo.

UPDATE: I was given another episode, in which my theories above were definitively proven. The woman, with her sour face, lip silicone, and bad hair dye, rejected our man heartlessly. This led him to do things that secure his status as the absolute superior male who has ever been exhibited on one of these programs. I feel like I could give spoilers and it wouldn't matter, but maybe one of you will be forced to watch this and any possible enjoyment you might have had would be derived from seeing how this man reacts to being rejected. Note for humanity: this is how one should react to being rejected. This woman is absolutely going to look like Grandpa bullfrog in the morning light and by this time next year and for the rest of her life, so I don't know what special fancy feeling motivates her unpleasantness. Anybody has electric blue eyes when they wear fake contacts, kapiche? But if you stare at people like a grumpy bullfrog, doesn't really matter what color your eyes are. Somewhere in Sweden there's a man in his 30s - IE young enough to be my actual child and qualify me legitimately as a creepy old woman creeper - who is in fact among the top five best looking people on this earth. Good luck to you man - as you despairingly asked what women want, I tell you: pick even a slightly kinder woman and you won't have any problems in life. There is nothing you could do better. This man was doing all the cooking and cleaning and giving this woman a hand and foot massage everyday and telling her how beautiful she is. He's some kind of independently wealthy man from a charming family that lives on a frozen lake. He came from outer space because he's more beautiful than the other humans and it doesn't make sense that he is one of our species. (Oh and I forgot to add they had some kind of discussion of their sex life and apparently it was off the charts good even for her!!!) The problem is not with you, buddy. What the actual hell.

Further Update: It's just occurred to me that this man has a full beard on his face. If you know me and my tastes, you know the beard is at the bottom of the list. I'm not into facial hair at all - and I apply this policy fairly to myself as well! I hate it by far the most if I see a visible hair in the wrong place on my own face! So I'm not being hypocritical here. The sensation of a beard rubbing on one's skin is not it - and some ladies love it! Do not shy away from having a beard because many or even most of the ladies love it! I am the minority here but I do not love it. And this man, this Christofer, has a beard and makes it a thing of beauty somehow. I looked right past the beard. I didn't even notice it for a long time. That's how good looking he is. I would let the beard touch my actual body.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Tue Jan 30, 2024 8:50 pm

Griselda

The show was very popular on Netflix, which does not always bode well. Yet my husband, eagerly seeking a show that I would have no interest whatsoever in watching, thought he would give it a whirl. I came to awareness of it somewhere in episode 2. In general I think the idea is that this woman survives a very difficult past and maybe works as a prostitute or maybe she's the madam, but somehow she starts dealing drugs. And then she becomes a really big time drug dealer through hook and crook and all kinds of violent grisly murders. I think that sets you up pretty well. The grisly murders are tastefully presented, as are the moments of not safe for work activity of another type. It's all very tasteful. The show explores universal human themes, like how we emotionally get over the dirty business of needing to kill people to achieve our professional goals, or how drug abuse is probably not a lot of fun for the people who hang out with you at some point. There's a character I particularly enjoyed from the moment he appears and she pops open his glove box to reveal his reading Labyrinths by Borges. He is probably the most murderous psychopath of all of them but he has a certain artistry to his ways. Nevertheless, I watched this show right up until the last episode, during which I conked out like I had been hit over the head and chloroformed. And it's lucky that I did because the report back is that I wouldn't have wanted to see it because a real pinnacle of grisly violence was achieved. There you go: I think I've given you a full account yet not really given spoilers. Enjoy!

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Tue Jan 30, 2024 8:59 pm

Dusty Slay

This is a Netflix comedy special I stumbled across randomly: I literally sat on the remote accidentally with my butt while I was in the Netflix landing screen and talking to my daughter, and this show started playing. I guess a higher power was looking out for me because a kind of needed the laugh and this thing is freaking hilarious. You know how porky pig is a monk in that one Looney tunes segment, and he's watching Daffy duck and laying on the ground and rolling back and forth with his little pig belly shaking and his little hands and feet helplessly flailing about? That was me. I don't even know why I found it funny because it's just not even close to my cup of tea but... The guy has a style. He's soft-spoken and has a kind of mellow delivery, which at first may not seem impressive but he has a good way of cycling around to his punchlines. I don't laugh that hard during the first 15 minutes or so but then it starts to creep up on you, at that point everything just becomes nearly painfully funny and the tears are rolling.

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Fri Feb 02, 2024 12:04 am

Love is Blind: Sweden: The Reunion

If you've been tricked or forced into watching any of these absurd programs, you know they love to have a messy, dramatic reunion episode after the normal.arc ends. Well. I have never. I usually hate these and skip or skim but in THIS case, you know I wasn't about to let my young Swedish boyfriend be on an hour of television I declined to watch, you know?

This cannot be done without spoilers, so hide your eyes if you cannot take it because I can't figure out white text without bifocals at my age - Christofer will be able to read the fine print for me once we get together, no worries:

Three of the five couples are still together. One of them had rather shocking news - I was actually shocked, not by the first revelation they all marveled at (the real shock would have been if nothing of the kind had ever happened to that guy), but the SECOND revelation. My jaw fell off.

And twas just as well to be missing a jaw after that point, as my poor Christofer was ill used by all these yahoos and clowns, even as he sat there patiently glowing and twitching lightly with irritation like the superior being he is. He even had a little blue hair in his man bun - people, the fact that I, Phoebe, have accepted him even with his Full Beard and Man Bun! Can you imagine, can you even fathom how impossible it is?! For me? Yet here we are. Love is indeed blind, because some people are so good looking that their beauty blinds you even to a beard and man bun. Who cares! Look at his eyes, like burning coals from the sun's core and yet... Somehow blue, even so? Marvelous. What facial hair? Do you think maybe if he has his own facial hair, he'll understand that a woman of my delicate age sometimes has to tweeze a single erratic, excessively powerful hair out of her own face? Because after all these years on Earth, Winning, my powers are so great that they occasionally force a single hair to pop out unbidden and unwelcomed?

Either way, the important thing is, I hope this man understands how lucky he is to have dodged the absolute ding dong he was paired with during the show. Probably most heterosexual men would consider her attractive, but as she remarked in a rare display of insight, some of the moments on the show made her look very b*****. Indeed. But none so much as this particular episode!

In a nutshell: she rejected the perfect because supposedly it didn't look good enough for her in its perfection (though she was perfectly happy to use it for sexual purposes anyway), and then she decided to start dating this absolute doofus instead. There is really no need for me to insult the doofus's appearance but suffice to say it's not the embodiment of masculine perfection. She could have had that, but no, and then she blamed it first on the perfect one being too nice to her! Too nice! Saying too many nice things and cooking too many meals and giving too many foot massages and being too pleasant! He was trying too hard! But then - and this I consider really unpleasantly mendacious - having realized that attributing your breakup to the other person being a too nice try-hard does not adequately allow a person to play the victim in public, she intimated that he was verbally or emotionally abusive to her to the point that he scared her and made her didn't feel safe - although she was very quick to point out that she was yelling at him and that he never touched her. Um, what?! Those are some pretty hefty allegations to wield - nice of you to stop short of the actual defamation, after trashing his character because you see how badly you came off looking after the fact. Oh, It was quite the drama. The way that man squinted his eye and looked at the ring and then just pinged it into the water. He's a champion in my book no matter what. Is this evidence that I like the toxic guys? No. It's just evidence that I'm a toxic guy. Honestly it's no different from me having a crush on Donny Osmond when I was a 5-year-old - It's just that the age gap has been reversed now. This is also why you shouldn't make your wife watch every goddamn episode of Gold Rush, because all that suppressed affect is going to come out in some unexpected way, and here we are.

Mando · Post by **Mando** » Tue Feb 06, 2024 7:07 pm

Adding The Book of Boba Fett

Phoebe · Post by **Phoebe** » Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:17 pm

Miss Julie

I clicked on this because "period piece with Colin Farrell and red haired woman who is always in the Oscars somewhere". Not unreasonable of me to hope!

Oh yes, I said, this movie is based on some kind of Scandinavian play. Not Ingmar Bergman... Those were movies too! Some earlier Scandinavian playwright, with lots of gritty realism and abstract ideas? Strindberg. Yet this looks for all the world like a relaxing period piece with gardens and wildflowers! Hm. Is it going to be terrifyingly grim existential angst, or is it going to be wildflowers? It's going to be both.

Bad instincts! Bad plan! I'll sum it up for you: Darkness! Extreme Weirdness! Rapey! Definitely not relaxing!
People (at least one, maybe more) have fallen in love (or something less positive in that vicinity) with a person they absolutely should not have. This never ends well. It's a whole object lesson in how poorly that ends! Don't ever do that, kids. Love the one you're with! Don't force your fiance to jump over a stick so that he dumps you! Don't fall in love with your servants! Don't ask them to do sexual things with your shoes. Pick a good love object and stick with it, because only suffering comes from screwing up that task. This movie will teach you!

People are then having incomprehensible reactions to strict social class hierarchies - how would any of us know whether this is realism or insanity, not having experienced it? Well, let me put that another way: everybody in this movie is definitely insane. But whether that is happening because of the rigid social class hierarchies or because they're just f****** insane is less clear.

If you would like to unintentionally distort your facial muscles into a grimace of horror and suspicion for 2 hours, while your blood pressure goes up, this is the show for you. Absolutely nothing positive will reward your effort, although yeah, tour de force of acting on display here. Can't fault the actors for this one - in much the same way that genius makes being an evil genius that much more evil, good acting has made absolute batshittery that much worse. This movie does not really have sex in it despite having sexual themes - It has something bad that falls into this zone, but it's not something you'd ever want to do or have done to you, either way. So it's not a movie to have on around the kids, but neither is it a movie to have on around the adults.