DanaK

I didn't like learning history in school because it was just a big info dump and test kind of thing. I started to become interested in genealogy and history after watching the original Roots miniseries and even more so after watching Ken Burns’ The Civil War on PBS in 1990 and really got into historical documentaries after that. I didn’t start fully researching my family tree until the late 90s but have loved genealogy ever since

I would what the Mexican government thought of these folks coming into town annually to spout anarchist bs?

I’m not sure about this show. It has some funny spots, but it’s very formulaic, especially with the listing of clues and the chief going over them and announcing the killer, which is saying something given the guest star doesn’t have the script and it’s overall very awkward

Yeah, that totally didn’t sit well with me either

She mentioned after the charges were dropped that she needs to get back into PCU, so it sounds like the school had already expelled her

Definitely wow. Variety reports that it’s not a workplace-related issue. I liked the actor in the role quite a bit. Jon’s chill yet not chill attitude towards everything was fun to watch ETA: According to comments in the article, Jordan has been open about struggling with his mental health and has apparently been seeking help in the past couple of months

I too am glad that Trina is no longer under threat of jail and that, as some of you call him, Robert Effin Scorpio came to the rescue by getting Oz on the stand and then deciding to drop the charges.

Final episode thoughts: John’s grandmother and mother seemed like really good people, especially the former. Too bad it was John in part who was preventing Lily from contacting her dad. Lily looks so much better without dreadlocks. I wonder if she was taking care of them correctly because they didn’t look good on her or John. She does seem like she’s found some measure of peace Berwick sounded like he was starting to edge towards getting involved in the men’s movement or at least espousing their views. “Men need to become much stronger men again” I think you can create a community from ad hoc circumstances, but I’m not sure the leaders, like Berwick, really cared to do so here. He just seemed to want to preach his philosophy Now that I think about it, it’s not clear to me if the annual conference ended

The previews show Robert showing up tomorrow

Why did Berwick get the last word though? I haven't fully seen the last episode yet, but though I initially thought 6 episodes would likely be too much, it ended up being just about right, even if the subject matter was somewhat obscure

Renewed! https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/silvia-martinez-wins-pbss-first-national-search-for-the-great-american-recipe/ Expected to air in Summer 2023

I enjoyed this, especially since I like learning about different people and their history, but I do agree they could probably change some things. I would maybe like to see a bigger group of judges, composed of ordinary people who have cooked and make them diverse and have the contestants win them over. Or maybe small teams of contestants with similar ethnicities or from similar regions and see how they differ in their individual approaches. I also like the idea of having, for at least some of the challenges, the contestants start with the same dish and put their own ethnic or regional spin on it

Really good documentary

We need to see at least one of Martin’s ex-wives at some point

Is this the season finale or the mid season finale?

Phyllis I think owns the bar doesn’t she? So Kristina would help manage it I think As for why we don’t see Kristina more, isn’t the actress really busy with other work?

Man, lots of crazy stuff in this (Aug 9) episode. I hope the defendant who set his followers to riot in the courthouse and have a guy try to murder a witness goes away for a long, long time in Federal prison. Callan and the feds were certainly cooperating at the end. Hopefully all the injured good guys don’t die, but that ADA guy didn’t look good. I hope Lola’s marriage didn’t just get torpedoed

On the latter, people get greedy or they don’t really understand investing very much and it sounds good to them The lady who readily forgave the guy and was ok with stocking shelves sounds like the type who too easily forgives, which is to her detriment since she’s stocking shelves instead of being retired

Episode 5 thoughts: We talked about Ericka being one of those who wanted to help rather than ignore members of the group in need. Author Thaddeus Russell seemed to go further and understood how crappy Lily was being treated and tried to get the community to help. He indicated in his interview how dangerous it was to be an anarchist in Mexico and said how easy it was for crypto billionaires to escape governments, banks and states but very hard for people like John and Lily with far less resources to do so. And he nailed it right there. The rich folks could do what they wanted without much consequence while the poorer folk couldn’t. People tend to want to rely on community no matter the ideology and rich douches doing their own thing and looking the other way when people are in trouble while supposedly building up a community spoil that. Berwick was a prime example of that crappy attitude. I really disliked him. I felt the same way about the Freemans

Airs today. Interesting interview

For those who want to watch at least some of the documentaries on the event, there's 2 major ones, called "The Cave" from 2019, and "The Rescue" from 2021 by National Geographic

I really enjoyed this even though I was one of many who followed the real life events closely as they were happening and I watched at least 2 of the documentaries on this. I knew about how they drugged the boys before this to get them out so little of what the movie showed surprised me (though I didn't realize how much the boys were restrained), but it still managed to be suspenseful and emotional (and I watched it twice). I think they did a really good job showing the chaos and difficulty of the situation and the tension between the Thai Seals and the cave divers. It really was a miracle that they got all the boys and coach out alive given how dangerous and difficult the situation was. I liked that the movie didn't solely focus on the cave divers, but also included stuff on various Thai, including the Thai SEALS, the boys and their parents, and the poor governor who was directing things (and would have been the fall guy if things went wrong)

The HBO one, under the umbrella series title of “Music Box”, is called “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” and is streaming on HBO Max. Note that it’s one episode vs 3 here and the runtime is about 1hr 50min. It probably wouldn’t hurt to watch both if you have enough interest to get some different viewpoints