TV Shows that I am watching
Here is a list of TV shows that I have been watching recently. In the last ten weeks, I've by necessity scaled back due to work. But if we open it up to the last twelve months, then we can get a more accurate broad-spectrum sampling of my TV viewing habits.
The Crown- Started watching this show with Phil Kopp and his parents at his house in 2017. Claire Foy as a young Queen Elizabeth II. John Lithgow as Winston Churchill. Jared Harris as King George VI. Watched part of the pilot with them on Netflix and I was transfixed. Watched part of the coronation episode and I was hooked. Got it for my dad on DVD last Christmas. Got to watch the first episode in full, most of the way through the second episode.
Stranger Things- Took from February of 2017 all the way through New Year's Eve to get through the first season. I haven't gotten around to the second one yet. But I will. Speaking of Will, Will Byers was one brave little child who survived, on his own, in the Upside Down World. Dustin, Lucas, Michael, and Eleven are the best friends he could possibly ask for. They stood down bullies. They hid the little girl who had been used as a guinea pig to explore this surreal alternate universe of cobwebs and slime, and was doing her best to outrun the big state agency so that she could continue to help her new friends. Then there's the parents. The Hawkins chief of police whose daughter he loved so dearly passed on, and the young boy who he hopes so dearly to save to compensate for the daughter that he could not. Once I reactivate my own Netflix account, I bingewatch. Probably over Christmas.
The Good Cop. Josh Groban plays a detective. A straight-laced detective. He speaks and thinks quickly. And he uses the higher register of his voice to come across as a nerd. When I sat down to watch the first episode with Sara, I had to take a second look at his face to assure that I was not crazy, that was Josh Groban playing a police officer. With glasses. A haircut. A shave. Because I would have thought his voice was overdubbed. His speaking voice does not at all sound like his magnificent singing voice. But this is a hilarious show! Filling in the show-hole left by The Office and The Newsroom, what with an adorable Young Professionals Find Love in the Workplace, I have watched three full episodes. I am on the fourth one. His lady friend passed the Detective Exam after the pilot and they are examining a murder together at the bowling alley. He finds a quarter. He's determined to find the person who dropped the quarter. Keeping it would cause the whole system to collapse. His lady partner, exasperated, just tells him "you know what? I just remember! I dropped the quarter!" She snatches it while he looks on helplessly. It's brilliant.
Anne With an E- This one can at times be too painful to watch. I watched a couple episodes of Season 1 with Sara over the summer. Her first Day at School episode was the one that hooked me. The mean girls aat school whom nonetheless had to adhere to the social mores of the time period at which it was set. Anne with her French braid pigtails. The friend boy who gets bullied. Anne kind of likes him. The popular girls who pretend to befriend Anne only to throw her under the bus. The young male teacher that I could barely even look at because he was having a romantic relationship with one of his teenage students, and yet all the while disciplining his students like they were a bunch of little children, shaming them and belittling them. You'd think he'd realize they had leverage over him, peaking through the window blinds, and that he'd treat them a little more like adults if he had that kind of leverage over him and his secret life. Over the course of about three or four episodes, I came to the conclusion that the show wasn't so much about its own time. It was a reflection of ours.
Mozart in the Jungle- I watched five episodes last month getting ready for my Hispanic Heritabe month project on Gael Garcia Bernal. He's a supporting role in the show. It's about a young oboist named Hailey, played by Lola Kirke, who gets a position in the New York Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. She is thrilled at first, then finds out about all the politics and gamesmanship. The senior oboist who acts like she slept her way to the top, and casually berates her, like an insult is actually a friendly joke. And she meets a nice dancer from Juilliard. And her female roommate is a trainwreck who makes her take shots and makes her compete with another musician by playing various styles of music that they land on when spinning the wheel on a gameboard. Then there's Bernal's character, Rodrigo de Souza, who has replaced a long-serving conductor of the Orchestra played by Malcolm McDowell. They clash instantly. But McDowell makes racist remarks in the pilot, and Souza with his drug use and bourgeois bohemian lifestyle is so unconventional in his rehearsal and performance methods (he has them rehearse in a vacant lot; he suggests a bring your pet to the met day), not everyone in the orchestra is onboard. But I am. Had some trouble buffering in the sixth episode, so I missed the last part of it, but then my computer resumed streaming while I wasn't watching, so I accidentally watched ahead to the 7th.
I wish Amazon would let a cable station marathon it. I'm watching back episodes of The Office, Season 9, that I happened to miss. And they're excellent.
A Million Little Things- I have tried to get into this show. I watched the first two episodes. The first one, where Perfect Jon, the guy who looks out for everyone, dies suddenly when he jumps off of the balcony of his office. The episode features everyone asking why Jon would ever do that, but for the viewers, some of the answers are staring us in the face. One of his best friends is sleeping with his wife. He's actually in bed with her while Jon kills himself. Also, Jon appears to be close with his assistant. Also, his assistant gets a goodbye note. The assistant. Not everyone else. And it instructs her to delete a bunch of files from his laptop. How quickly she deletes these files indicates corruption and malfeasance. But let's get back to Jon and his family. His friend Eddie actually has the gall to show up at Jon's recently widowed wife's door, right after the funeral, and make her choose whether or not they're going to continue to be romantic. Dude, the answer is put things on hold. Don't even talk with eachother until weeks and weeks have gone by! But the second epsiode was really good. The daughter does the father daughter dance. Eddie steps in to learn the dance from Rome, who had taught it to Jon. But obviously it was Rome that Jon intended to have trained to dance with his daughter. I fell behind. But I'm told there are some pretty big twists in the three episodes that have aired since.
Other shows I am watching or getting caught up on, or watching when I'm with Sara:
The Office (as we speak)
The Newsroom (never did catch the last two minutes of the final episode)
Chicago Fire
Chiago PD
Bones (streamed with Sara)
NCIS
Blue Bloods
Criminal Minds
Food Network: Cooks Vs. Cons
Splitting Up Together
The Crown- Started watching this show with Phil Kopp and his parents at his house in 2017. Claire Foy as a young Queen Elizabeth II. John Lithgow as Winston Churchill. Jared Harris as King George VI. Watched part of the pilot with them on Netflix and I was transfixed. Watched part of the coronation episode and I was hooked. Got it for my dad on DVD last Christmas. Got to watch the first episode in full, most of the way through the second episode.
Stranger Things- Took from February of 2017 all the way through New Year's Eve to get through the first season. I haven't gotten around to the second one yet. But I will. Speaking of Will, Will Byers was one brave little child who survived, on his own, in the Upside Down World. Dustin, Lucas, Michael, and Eleven are the best friends he could possibly ask for. They stood down bullies. They hid the little girl who had been used as a guinea pig to explore this surreal alternate universe of cobwebs and slime, and was doing her best to outrun the big state agency so that she could continue to help her new friends. Then there's the parents. The Hawkins chief of police whose daughter he loved so dearly passed on, and the young boy who he hopes so dearly to save to compensate for the daughter that he could not. Once I reactivate my own Netflix account, I bingewatch. Probably over Christmas.
The Good Cop. Josh Groban plays a detective. A straight-laced detective. He speaks and thinks quickly. And he uses the higher register of his voice to come across as a nerd. When I sat down to watch the first episode with Sara, I had to take a second look at his face to assure that I was not crazy, that was Josh Groban playing a police officer. With glasses. A haircut. A shave. Because I would have thought his voice was overdubbed. His speaking voice does not at all sound like his magnificent singing voice. But this is a hilarious show! Filling in the show-hole left by The Office and The Newsroom, what with an adorable Young Professionals Find Love in the Workplace, I have watched three full episodes. I am on the fourth one. His lady friend passed the Detective Exam after the pilot and they are examining a murder together at the bowling alley. He finds a quarter. He's determined to find the person who dropped the quarter. Keeping it would cause the whole system to collapse. His lady partner, exasperated, just tells him "you know what? I just remember! I dropped the quarter!" She snatches it while he looks on helplessly. It's brilliant.
Anne With an E- This one can at times be too painful to watch. I watched a couple episodes of Season 1 with Sara over the summer. Her first Day at School episode was the one that hooked me. The mean girls aat school whom nonetheless had to adhere to the social mores of the time period at which it was set. Anne with her French braid pigtails. The friend boy who gets bullied. Anne kind of likes him. The popular girls who pretend to befriend Anne only to throw her under the bus. The young male teacher that I could barely even look at because he was having a romantic relationship with one of his teenage students, and yet all the while disciplining his students like they were a bunch of little children, shaming them and belittling them. You'd think he'd realize they had leverage over him, peaking through the window blinds, and that he'd treat them a little more like adults if he had that kind of leverage over him and his secret life. Over the course of about three or four episodes, I came to the conclusion that the show wasn't so much about its own time. It was a reflection of ours.
Mozart in the Jungle- I watched five episodes last month getting ready for my Hispanic Heritabe month project on Gael Garcia Bernal. He's a supporting role in the show. It's about a young oboist named Hailey, played by Lola Kirke, who gets a position in the New York Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. She is thrilled at first, then finds out about all the politics and gamesmanship. The senior oboist who acts like she slept her way to the top, and casually berates her, like an insult is actually a friendly joke. And she meets a nice dancer from Juilliard. And her female roommate is a trainwreck who makes her take shots and makes her compete with another musician by playing various styles of music that they land on when spinning the wheel on a gameboard. Then there's Bernal's character, Rodrigo de Souza, who has replaced a long-serving conductor of the Orchestra played by Malcolm McDowell. They clash instantly. But McDowell makes racist remarks in the pilot, and Souza with his drug use and bourgeois bohemian lifestyle is so unconventional in his rehearsal and performance methods (he has them rehearse in a vacant lot; he suggests a bring your pet to the met day), not everyone in the orchestra is onboard. But I am. Had some trouble buffering in the sixth episode, so I missed the last part of it, but then my computer resumed streaming while I wasn't watching, so I accidentally watched ahead to the 7th.
I wish Amazon would let a cable station marathon it. I'm watching back episodes of The Office, Season 9, that I happened to miss. And they're excellent.
A Million Little Things- I have tried to get into this show. I watched the first two episodes. The first one, where Perfect Jon, the guy who looks out for everyone, dies suddenly when he jumps off of the balcony of his office. The episode features everyone asking why Jon would ever do that, but for the viewers, some of the answers are staring us in the face. One of his best friends is sleeping with his wife. He's actually in bed with her while Jon kills himself. Also, Jon appears to be close with his assistant. Also, his assistant gets a goodbye note. The assistant. Not everyone else. And it instructs her to delete a bunch of files from his laptop. How quickly she deletes these files indicates corruption and malfeasance. But let's get back to Jon and his family. His friend Eddie actually has the gall to show up at Jon's recently widowed wife's door, right after the funeral, and make her choose whether or not they're going to continue to be romantic. Dude, the answer is put things on hold. Don't even talk with eachother until weeks and weeks have gone by! But the second epsiode was really good. The daughter does the father daughter dance. Eddie steps in to learn the dance from Rome, who had taught it to Jon. But obviously it was Rome that Jon intended to have trained to dance with his daughter. I fell behind. But I'm told there are some pretty big twists in the three episodes that have aired since.
Other shows I am watching or getting caught up on, or watching when I'm with Sara:
The Office (as we speak)
The Newsroom (never did catch the last two minutes of the final episode)
Chicago Fire
Chiago PD
Bones (streamed with Sara)
NCIS
Blue Bloods
Criminal Minds
Food Network: Cooks Vs. Cons
Splitting Up Together