Category: Good Watch

Neat Watch: Brave New World @peacockTV #GoodWatch

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NBC Peacock offered their original series, Brave New World, free of charge last weekend. I liked it a lot. The episodes are between 40-50 minutes long, and there are nine of them. From the Peacock website:

In a utopia whose perfection hinges upon control of monogamy and privacy, members of the collective begin to question the rules, putting their regimented society on a collision course with forbidden love and revolution.

In a sense, it was a horror movie for me, but I don’t expect everyone to feel that way. This is probably best described as science-fiction, though it’s also referred to as Utopian or Dystopian. I think of it as trying to achieve the same sort of vibe as Westworld. It’s a different story, and they carve their own path, so I’m not accusing them of doing anything wrong. Among the show’s stars are three actors with whom I’m familiar: Alden Ehrenreich, Hannah John-Kamen, and Demi Moore.

There’s a scene near the end of episode 4 that really hits me. I’m not sure if this is the intention, but it basically says (to me) that you don’t need soma (their mood-improving drug) because there’s music in the world. I doubt that was the precise intent, especially in light of a scene in episode 5, but that’s at least close (or part of) what they’re trying to say.

Is it good? Yes. I liked it a lot and will watch subsequent seasons. However, there’s too much good stuff on Peacock, as well as the other streaming services for which I’m already paying, for me to add another bill. I’ll probably join for a month and spend a weekend watching season 2 and a couple of other shows.

Unfortunately, if you want to watch it now, you’ll have to subscribe to Peacock’s pay service. As always, YMMV.

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Neat Watch: High Score @netflix #VideoGame #GoodWatch

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Netflix has a new limited series called High Score. It’s the story of video games, and it’s fascinating. It’s 6, 40-minute (or so) episodes, and it gives you a great sense of how much video games have evolved. For example, I played the stand-up games in the arcade. Almost 20 years later, I was working on the patents that made Final Fantasy possible. Only 2-1/2 episodes in, and they’ve already covered all that ground. I constantly asked, “Where do they have to go from here?” Every episode, they showed an innovation that changed everything. As a result, you see just how far along video game technology and culture have come in about 40 years.

Even for someone who doesn’t play video games anymore, this was a neat show. As always, YMMV.

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[Yawn] Watch: The Business of Drugs @netflix #Netflix #GoodWatch

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This seems like my kind of show. Inexplicably, it isn’t. The show carves out the path that raw and refined materials take to bring illegal drugs from the fields to your dining room table. I don’t think I’m in a depressive state, but for some reason, the Business of Drugs just couldn’t keep my attention. I made it through two out of six, 40-minute episodes, and then I tapped out.

As always, YMMV.

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Whacky Watch: Zardoz @hulu #movie #GoodWatch

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This movie was from 1974, but I had never seen it, and when I found out this past weekend that it was on Hulu, I knew I just had to watch it.

My online conversations leading up to my viewing were interesting. One friend suggested that Zardoz was “a fairly effective antidote to the Bond stereotype which is what I recall Sir Sean was going for.” Yet another claimed,

Only one person seemed to like it, referring to it as “awesome,” but as I said, I had to watch this. It didn’t take long for this to get weird. I have so many questions. Were those plants sighing? Did the Good Place base its last season on Zardoz? Was the Vortex founded by Princess Leia? How much did they have to pay Connery to wear a wedding dress?

“Zardoz says . . . .”
“What does Zardoz say?”

Well, let him finish the sentence, and you’ll find out, dipshit.

This film was made by John Boorman, who made the equally weird (but magnificent) Excalibur. This film at times uses cheesy, heavy-handed, and downright stupid dialogue to get across its point, but as far as science fantasy goes, it’s not nearly as bad as I’ve heard. It actually raises some interesting philosophical issues (one of which is shared by the brilliant, the Good Place), just raising them in the most awkward way possible. If you can look past the weird, you may find yourself enjoying it as much as I did.

As always, YMMV.

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Decent Watch: Project Power @hitRECordJoe @iamjamiefoxx @Domfishback @CourtneyBVance @netflix #Netflix #GoodWatch

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Project Power is a sci-fi drama about a drug that grants its user a random superpower. Sign me up.

The story follows a New Orleans cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He’s trying to find the supplier for the drug. Each person that takes the drug reacts to it in a way specific to themselves, such that they develop a particular superpower each time, but it varies from person to person. The cops don’t seem concerned with the buyers or users, but only the supplier, seeking to cut off the monster at the head. The question is, who’s that? I won’t go into anything else with the plot for fear of giving away too much.

It’s two hours long and doesn’t waste a lot of time before things get going. It doesn’t need to because the genre is so predictable that the filmmakers can assume the audience can figure out the basics. It’s a decent enough story with some small level of originality — it doesn’t take much originality to justify copyright 🙂 — so I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t recommend you prioritize it, but if you’re looking for action with a sci-fi angle, you might like it.

As always, YMMV.

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Good, Not Great, Watch: Devs @Nick_Offerman @fxnetworks @Hulu #FXonHulu

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To start, I want to say that I liked Devs, which is basically a Black Mirror episode spread out over a season. This post isn’t meant to slam it. The cast is a good mix of established actors and new (to me) ones, and I liked the writing and overall story line. There are however, two reasons I suspect are reasons why I didn’t have the same reaction as others.

First, it was built up. It’s difficult for any show to live up to the kind of hype this one was given. It almost always results in disappointment, which in turn taints your view of an otherwise good (or even great) show. I should probably tell you that it sucks, but that would turn you off to watching it. Instead, I’ll (honestly) say it was good.

Second (bear with and pardon my arrogance), I have an undergraduate degree in physics and often do some reading to keep some things sharp. While I’m far from qualified to work professionally in a lab, the issues raised in this show don’t wow me like they may wow others. They’re obviously interesting to me, which is why I can say I enjoyed the show, but I’m not learning about the concepts for the first time, and at one point knew a lot about it. My lack of amazement perhaps places a limit on my enjoyment that others may not have. Moreover, these ideas are the new thing among movies and TV shows. Been there; done that. That may apply for those without any science background at all.

Obviously, my perspective says nothing as to how much you’ll like it. I was certainly wowed by these ideas when they were first taught to me.

The season is 8 episodes, each of which is between 42 and 56 minutes long. As you know from past posts, I prefer shows with 20-25 minute episodes even if the total amount of content is the same, but I can certainly find time for longer episodes. I watched this season over the course of three days (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday).

I suspect that the average person would at least like this show but maybe love it. As always, YMMV.

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Insane Watch: Eraserhead @DAVID_LYNCH @hbomax #Eraserhead #movie #film

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What?

Here’s the tagline from HBO Max:

A printer named Henry Spencer is on vacation when he learns that his ex-girlfriend, Mary X, has given birth to a terribly deformed baby. Henry marries Mary and the two try living together, but it does not work out. So Mary leaves and Henry begins to care for the baby. After this, several bizarre events take place.

Wait, what? After this things get bizarre? Haven’t you been paying attention up to this point?

There are visions of a woman in Henry’s radiator who dances and crushes small, tadpole-like creatures. Henry has a tryst with a woman who lives across the hall, and he has a dream that his head is being used to make pencil erasers.

Did I like it? I don’t know. I saw it three days ago and am still trying to figure out why’d they even let the mother take the baby home. Where did the baby’s poop go. Could all that oatmeal be the poop that was stored under pressure?

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I want to see a sequel called EThead. That baby looked like an human/ET hybrid. As always, YMMV.

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Surprisingly Good Watch: Umbrella Academy, Season 2 @AidanRGallagher @DavidCastanedaJ @ellenpage @emmyraver @justinhmin @katewalsh @Ritu_Arya_ @RobertSheehan @Tomhopperhops @SteveBlackmanTV @UmbrellaAcad @netflix #UmbrellaAcademy

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I wasn’t a fan of season 1 of the Umbrella Academy but found myself watching season 2 anyway. I’m delighted I did. There was something about this season that was completely different for me. I had much more sympathy for the characters (which snowballed as it went on) and was fascinated by the story. Unlike Agent Carter, I had an immediate, positive reaction to the heavy-handed political history that was on display (i.e., African Americans dealing with open, systemic bigotry; and women brushed aside as unimportant and non-threatening). Colm Feore was brilliant as Sir Reginald Hargreeves, but smartly wasn’t given a big enough role to overshadow the main players (who were also pretty damn good).

I also have a thing for alternate history. This season picks up from the cliffhanger from season 1, with the adoptive siblings being teleported back in time to the early 60s. I don’t want to spoil the story, but they get involved with a major historic event that they didn’t realize was part of their own history, while trying to stop yet another apocalypse that never happened in their timeline.

There were two things I didn’t like. First, the soundtrack. The music should have been appropriate for the period (1963). Second, episode 7 requires the characters behave quite stupidly in order to keep the season from ending after 7 episodes. I hate that kind of writing.

Don’t care. Great ending. Great season.

If, like me, you weren’t impressed with season 1, give this series another shot. They really got it right this time. As always, YMMV.

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Disappointing Watch: Agent Carter @disneyplus #AgentCarter #Marvel #DisneyPlus

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I was recently encouraged to watch the Disney TV show, Agent Carter. When I heard that it had been cancelled, I was disappointed. I assumed Marvel would do a great job of it. They didn’t.

The cast was good, the cameos were fun, and the acting was at least decent, but these things were wasted on terrible, and at times nonsensical, writing. Much like horror movies, the plot — sometimes even individual scenes — depended on incredibly stupid actions of the characters. This was made possible by staffing the nation’s most important intelligence agency with people who were so bad at their jobs that they couldn’t tell when a child was pretending to be scared. Seriously. This is literally a scene in the first season. In general, I kept asking myself, “Why did he/she do that? That makes no sense!” Additionally, hypnosis is a suspect concept, but giving it the full benefit of the doubt, Agent Carter takes hypnosis to an even dumber level, and that’s a major plot point. This wasn’t dramatic license; it was a case where the writers lacked the competence to tell their story without including utter bullshit.

Season 2 wasn’t any better. “Don’t tip the [thing] over! Just put it in the case.” The whole time, I was thinking, “But how are they going to carry the case out of there if the contents can’t be tipped?” Sure enough, once the [thing] was in the case, they just casually walked away carrying the case by the handle, jostling it as they went. This is just one example of incredibly stupid writing throughout the series. It’s especially stupid considering that a single line of dialogue could have eliminated the stupidity. And while I liked the actor who played Jarvis, I stand by my position.

The show had very good Rotten Tomatoes scores, but I suspect that’s because, like me, people wanted to like it. The truth, as evidenced by the ratings, is that overall they really didn’t.

I’m not surprised it didn’t receive a third season. As always, YMMV.

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Heavy Watch: Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak @netflix #science #virus #flu #COVID-19 #pandemic #PickleRick #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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I do not want to discuss politics on this blog (or the GSLLC twitter stream), so I always do my best to avoid it. I will fail miserably tonight.

Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak is streaming on Netflix, and it’s a good look at the work that the relevant health workers and scientists do to keep the next, big, contagious disease at bay. This involves both the natural and political forces that work against vaccines and other forms of treatment. It’s a limited series of six episodes, each of which is less than an hour.

Much of the episodes discusses influenza (i.e., “the flu”). During the debates over SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19, I hear many people reference the flu, asking, “How is this any different than the flu? Why don’t we make a big deal out of the flu?” Forgetting the medical differences between those viruses, the key takeaway from the discussions on the flu is that we really should be making a bigger deal out of the flu, if for no other reason that it will help us develop better strategies against even more serious diseases. However, the flu is certainly worth wiping from the face of the planet. It’s bad enough on its own.

I’m a science guy, but for what it’s worth, I thought this was an important show. As always, YMMV.

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Pickle Rick! (Seriously, if you don’t like masks, make them fun.)

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