Getting caught up on the DVR
After getting really dreadfully behind with the new job and faire hitting me at the same time, I’ve been slowly cleaning the backlog of recorded shows off DVR over the past couple of weeks.
[Spoilers Ahoy, well, only if you’re behind on your TV like I was] Sherlock (Series 4) - I liked the first two episodes, but the third was one of my least favorite types of stories, the psychopathic villain. I really do not find stories (TV or movies) about sociopaths killing random people because they can't feel emotion to be entertaining. Why does Hollywood keep writing them? Once you figure out that the person is truly insane, all the tension goes out of the story because you know they’re just going to kill any hostages, because there’s no reason for them not to.
Taboo (season one) - After three episodes of dirty, dark, underlit London, thick English accents and muttered dialog, and a lead character who alternately glowers and has hallucinations, I gave up. I just wasn’t enjoying this mess of a show. Not even Tom Hardy’s handsome mug could make me keep watching it. And I’d already figured out what the Taboo was (incest).
The Royals (season three) - Still lots of soapy fun! This season Prince Robert returned from the dead, spoiling his little brother Liam’s romance with Kathryn (who was Robert’s girlfriend first). Although I’m not particularly happy about our hero Liam seemingly going over to the dark side, the show is still fun for me.
Timeless (season one) - Time travel shows are always hit and miss. Will they do the research? Or will the scripts make me cringe as only Hollywood can? The pilot on this one was fabulous, they went back to 1937 and the Hindenburg disaster. They tried not to change history, but of course they ended up changing things. And when they got back home, our heroine Lucy’s sister was missing. And her sick mother was in perfect health. I keep waiting for another one of their jumps to shift “current time” the same way, but so far they haven’t made that sort of dramatic shift again. Which is a shame, because that’s one of the ways they could be ramping up the tension, if every time they came home it was different and they had to adjust again.
But the time periods they travel to are interesting, and the costumes are reasonably well done, and they haven’t shied away from the fact that their pilot is black, and every time he jumps backwards he’s taking a huge risk (and having to deal with either being a slave or being horribly discriminated against). The episode where they jumped back to 1969 and met one of the NASA women from Hidden Figures (Katherine Johnson) was especially satisfying on that count, because she saved the day. The show isn’t as complex as it could be, but I’m still enjoying it quite a bit.
The Expanse (season one and two) - Wil Wheaton raved about The Expanse, so I set the DVR for it when they did a marathon, but didn’t get around to watching it until just before the second season started up in February.
I love scifi, but so often they do stupid things, like create huge open areas inside spaceships (all that space to heat and oxygenate) and completely ignore the laws of physics. While The Expanse does still indulge in huge spaceships and impossibly large open spaces on their space stations, they also pay attention to some of the important things, like that air and water are precious commodities in space. People die for lack of air (and not just by being thrown out of airlocks, although that happens too). People struggle to get clean water. And they actually go weightless on the show often enough to make it feel like we’re really in space.
The show starts out with a mystery, a missing woman, and a worn down beat-cop who is trying to find her. There are also mysterious happenings in space, that threaten war between Earth and Mars, with the “belters” stuck in the middle. We bounce back and forth between the cop, a ship full of strangers thrust together by circumstances beyond their control, and UN politicians on Earth. I especially adore Shohreh Aghdashloo as the UN Assistant Undersecretary. I could listen to her deep voice all day, and the clothes they dress her in are just exquisite. The rest of the cast is very multi-cultural, it’s not all white guys, there are a variety of women and people of color. There's a Canadian-Iranian actor, a British-Dominican actress, and now they've added a New Zealand-Samoan actress for season two.
[Spoilers Ahoy, well, only if you’re behind on your TV like I was] Sherlock (Series 4) - I liked the first two episodes, but the third was one of my least favorite types of stories, the psychopathic villain. I really do not find stories (TV or movies) about sociopaths killing random people because they can't feel emotion to be entertaining. Why does Hollywood keep writing them? Once you figure out that the person is truly insane, all the tension goes out of the story because you know they’re just going to kill any hostages, because there’s no reason for them not to.
Taboo (season one) - After three episodes of dirty, dark, underlit London, thick English accents and muttered dialog, and a lead character who alternately glowers and has hallucinations, I gave up. I just wasn’t enjoying this mess of a show. Not even Tom Hardy’s handsome mug could make me keep watching it. And I’d already figured out what the Taboo was (incest).
The Royals (season three) - Still lots of soapy fun! This season Prince Robert returned from the dead, spoiling his little brother Liam’s romance with Kathryn (who was Robert’s girlfriend first). Although I’m not particularly happy about our hero Liam seemingly going over to the dark side, the show is still fun for me.
Timeless (season one) - Time travel shows are always hit and miss. Will they do the research? Or will the scripts make me cringe as only Hollywood can? The pilot on this one was fabulous, they went back to 1937 and the Hindenburg disaster. They tried not to change history, but of course they ended up changing things. And when they got back home, our heroine Lucy’s sister was missing. And her sick mother was in perfect health. I keep waiting for another one of their jumps to shift “current time” the same way, but so far they haven’t made that sort of dramatic shift again. Which is a shame, because that’s one of the ways they could be ramping up the tension, if every time they came home it was different and they had to adjust again.
But the time periods they travel to are interesting, and the costumes are reasonably well done, and they haven’t shied away from the fact that their pilot is black, and every time he jumps backwards he’s taking a huge risk (and having to deal with either being a slave or being horribly discriminated against). The episode where they jumped back to 1969 and met one of the NASA women from Hidden Figures (Katherine Johnson) was especially satisfying on that count, because she saved the day. The show isn’t as complex as it could be, but I’m still enjoying it quite a bit.
The Expanse (season one and two) - Wil Wheaton raved about The Expanse, so I set the DVR for it when they did a marathon, but didn’t get around to watching it until just before the second season started up in February.
I love scifi, but so often they do stupid things, like create huge open areas inside spaceships (all that space to heat and oxygenate) and completely ignore the laws of physics. While The Expanse does still indulge in huge spaceships and impossibly large open spaces on their space stations, they also pay attention to some of the important things, like that air and water are precious commodities in space. People die for lack of air (and not just by being thrown out of airlocks, although that happens too). People struggle to get clean water. And they actually go weightless on the show often enough to make it feel like we’re really in space.
The show starts out with a mystery, a missing woman, and a worn down beat-cop who is trying to find her. There are also mysterious happenings in space, that threaten war between Earth and Mars, with the “belters” stuck in the middle. We bounce back and forth between the cop, a ship full of strangers thrust together by circumstances beyond their control, and UN politicians on Earth. I especially adore Shohreh Aghdashloo as the UN Assistant Undersecretary. I could listen to her deep voice all day, and the clothes they dress her in are just exquisite. The rest of the cast is very multi-cultural, it’s not all white guys, there are a variety of women and people of color. There's a Canadian-Iranian actor, a British-Dominican actress, and now they've added a New Zealand-Samoan actress for season two.