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Belgium does have rural areas but it's much smaller than France. So maybe comes down to costs. They're both quitting their jobs and they can buy properties large enough for running a B&B in France more easily than in Belgium, perhaps. The place itself doesn't seem to be much of a draw, other than people wanting a real slow pace holiday along the river. But it's not too far from more popular tourist destinations so maybe that's the idea. I think they said he at least spent time in the summers with his family in the south of France? So maybe they have enough familiarity with the area. It doesn't have appeal to me, doesn't seem to have as many amenities as more popular areas. But I remember my grandparents talking about just getting away from the city and spending summers in the country, not doing things but just spending slow, long days. They once took me to a place with no electricity and I HATED it, even as a little kid. No TV or anything but pitch black by 8 PM. Good if you want to stargaze and maybe take photos of galaxies but not good for anything else.

Charante, France the main thing is the river? I don't remember the main town they were talking about, was it Fléac, which is near the Charente river. But that area seems to be away from bigger tourist draws like Boreaux 90 minutes to the SW, Cognac about 45 minutes to the west and Limoges, 90 minutes to the east. So prices are relatively low, buys a lot of property. I wonder when they launched their B&B. During the pandemic, would they want to live next to their guests, even have common areas like a lounge in which to mix with strangers? Plus the set up was that some of the rooms would have to share bathrooms. Even before the pandemic, that wouldn't be so appealing. The one they chose had the best location and probably best living situation for them. She didn't like the second one with a curtain separating the bed from the lounge. I don't think the monkeys are native to this region or France. It sounds like they brought them in to preserve some endangered species as well as become a tourist attractions. Wiki refers to 5 births of some endangered species but the rest probably would have been imported.

Liked the pilot, it doesn't feel like any current BD show, despite Aesha. The captain is a real hands on guy. When he sees something dirty, he wipes it down himself. Says he wants to be more like a brother to them than boss. However, he sees his first-time bosun Jamie, a former cop, doing some deck work rather than delegating so he tells Jamie to get the deck hands to be more proactive and address things that are obvious without being ordered to. And on the very first day of charter, the thrusters of the 50-meter yacht fail to work so they get out the jet skis and Ben, one of the deckhands, decides to go with one of the female guests because she was nervous about driving the jet ski. Big no no. Interesting because the previous day, Ben was kind of acting like a sad sack to Brittini, another deck hand, about the recent loss of his parents. But he's whooping it up on the jet ski and when Jamie takes him aside about work, Ben says he doesn't like the formal authority thing and that he's here to have a good time. Like when he was stuffing his face with the food in the galley while the chef was still plating and the stews were serving the first dinner. Ryan the chef is a Philly boy and he doesn't want guest input on his menus. His strategy is to tell the guests what they will be eating as they're serving the food. Aesha doesn't fight it for the first day of charter but she worries that it will cause some friction with guests. For the preference sheet meeting, they don't discuss the kinds of foods the guests want or what they don't want. They wanted a toga party and that was it. Ryan rolls his eyes at them calling themselves foodies -- who are people who put up Yelp reviews according to him. Ryan does sound like he's going to bring the traditional BD drama. Meanwhile Captain Jason explains that the marinas they're in are not very deep and at low tide, they have minimal clearance from the bottom of the marina, meaning they could be stranded in the marina or they could risk damaging the underside of the boat, including rudders, hulls, etc. So he's going to attempt to get out of the marina at night, near low tide, just so they don't lose a full day of charter. The pilot episode ends with them moving out of the marina. It sounds like a far more challenging and risky maneuver than anything they've done on the other BD shows, which are mostly about them parking in the marina. So maybe these people will eventually start to suck, like the other BD casts. But the captain seems like a solid guy, not preoccupied with coming up with some folksy bon mots. He's been unable to see his daughter for a year because of the pandemic. I also wonder about them filming in that specific location. Very beautiful but it sounds like the area isn't suited for super yachts. They show a lot of underwater photos of the area and it's teeming with colorful fish and other marine life. You wonder how jet skis fit into that environment. It appears snorkeling will be a popular activity, so hopefully more of that than jet skiing. They are in Airlie harbor, which is 600 kilometers south of Cairns, which is suppose to be the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. The Whitsunday Islands appear to be very underdeveloped, beautiful islands near the coast in that part of Australia. In Google Maps, you can see that the reefs go from off the NE coast of Australia and run southwards for hundreds of kilometers and the Whitsunday Islands are about where they end. Very good start but then the original BD and even the first season of BD Sailing Yacht started with a different feel than what they are now, after Bravo assimilated them and cast party animals. No doubt there will be some crew drama, including on their off days when they will be plied with booze. But it doesn't quite feel the same. Other than the captain and Jamie, it doesn't appear any of them are Australians. Maybe Ben is as well.

Maybe their daughters were socializing with other kids who had iPhones already. I think it's a valid reaction, not to want to give their young kids an expensive piece of technology. They could hand down their older phones like many people do. But maybe they just didn't think it would be good for their kids at their ages. There has certainly been media coverage about how things like phones and social media had adverse effects on emotional health of young teen girls, for instance.

I watched the first two seasons before the start of this new season. Each season is from a different book but it's clear that some of the things which happened in season one, when they were like 10 years old or less, still reverberate in season 3 when they're in their early 20s. Lenu is a college graduate, was headed towards being a teacher but now looking at being a writer. Lila is a mother already. This show came from books but they take a real novelistic approach, covering so much of their lives, with the narrator periodically explaining what Elena was thinking. Slow-burn shows like this aren't going to get a large audience. They have broad acclaim but people don't watch. The Wire was similar, though at least they had some action which appealed to many American viewers, especially male viewers. I suspect that this show appeals much more to a female audience.

She is going to be in recovery but playing spy at the same time? What kind of spy agency would hire her? Or maybe they do the recovery scenes early in the season and then drop it.

Did Butters pinch the girl in the butt? He came up behind her, didn’t raise his arms so his hands would have been below waist level? If he pinched her in the arm, would SP still have gone with the little boy committed sexual assault line? When Randy was going on about white culture and white holiday, they could have gone on about white nationalism but they didn’t. Or have the cops respond to it since many policemen are implicated with white nationalist groups. The other thing is, Irish immigrants along with Italian immigrants were subject to a lot of discrimination until blacks and Latinos became the primary targets, often from Irish and Italian-Americans. But these kinds of issues would get in the way of SP caricature.

Sam must not see her mother or her daughters as being in bad or poor situations. Unless "Better Things" is meant to be ironic. Guess she's mostly a happy person. Some of the antics of the daughters would make other mothers pull their hair out and probably clash with their children. But Sam half-heartedly tries to talk some sense, is rebuffed, drops it. So "Better Things" is about denial and conflict avoidance? I think the show is suppose to be "real" slices of life from a family of quirky people, starting with the gimmicky male names. So all these scenes don't have some meaning other than people bicker a bit with each other but they love each other and get on with life, as these "real" moments in the show demonstrate. Must be working though 98% RT over 5 seasons, 100% for Season 5.

All those homes in Nosara were too small for that family. In 5 years or so, the oldest girls would be complaining about having to share rooms and one bathroom for 4 girls. But husband talked up investment when choosing that container home so maybe they expect to make money on that home and move up to a larger home. She talked about downsizing and simplifying their life, getting rid of "things" and how if they stayed in California they'd have to get more things for their children, like technology. OK it sounds like money is tight, not just that they want to go Green Acres or Mosquito Coast. Maybe 4 children was more than they bargained for? The girls are always wearing the same outfits. Maybe they got a good deal on those swimsuits or clothes or maybe they were home-made?

Yes it was some sociology PhD and someone derisively described his dissertation as "why my show is educational" because it was about Fat Albert or one of his other early shows. But you know what I mean, there are celebrities with all kinds of honorary doctorate degrees.

But who would look it up? If Branagh wanted to be introduced as a Sir, either Bill's staff or KB himself could have asked that he be introduced with the title. Seems like an honorary title, kind of like doctorates that famous people get from many American universities. So pretty much all successful or famous people in the UK seem to get knighted. It's basically the British Crown saying we approve of you for being successful. Who the fuck cares? Unless Liz was bestowing a stipend, like those who get the MacArthur Foundation Genius grants, it doesn't mean dick. At least those give people who aren't necessarily rich a chance to pursue something they are interested in without worrying about making money for awhile. Seems like most UK celebrities don't really insist on title when they appear on American TV. They'd look stuffy too if they did, kind of like Dr. Cosby or other celebrities with fake PhDs insisting on the title.

S03.E03 The Treatment Lenu is trying to get Lila medical care and never returning to the factory but Pasquale wants Lila to be some symbol for oppressed working class people. Pasquale accuses Lenu of only caring for her friend rather than the working classes. Wow these communists ... Lenu and Lila decide to get birth control pills, which must have been very new at the time in Italy, even though neither were married, which was supposedly a condition for getting a prescription. Lenu writes an expose on the salami factory and pressures Bruno into giving Lila full backpay. With that money, Lila wants to move back to the neighborhood, into some apartment even in worse condition than the one she's living in near the salami factory. Her father ignores her and tells her son that his mother is a whore but she wants to put up with the abuse there. Lenu tries to gauge the temperature, how the Carracis and Solaras might react to Lila moving back. Alfonso, who got a girl pregnant, tells Lenu that he's gay. Then Lenu visits Gigiola, who's about to marry Michele, in a villa with a view of the ocean. But she says Michele tells her he doesn't love her but he has to have a wife and kids and the only woman he really loves is Lila. First Marcello, now Michele wants Lila. Feminism can not come soon enough to Italy but who knows if they will show it this season. The girls are so smart that they recognize they're too good for the neanderthals in the neighborhood, though Lenu can't help but want Nino. Kind of amazing that she has chances to get away from this neighborhood, though it looks like she won't be treated much better by the supposedly more enlightened Pietro.

Max still doesn't tell Sam about the abortion? When Sam tells her "I know" I thought she was going to reference the abortion. Sam's finances are scrambled because those daughters are exhausting. Now the young one is turning into a mopey teenager, feels inferior to her older sisters, who aren't so great. The blunt truth is the old one is a screwup, passed up a chance to go to college and is setting herself up for a life of dependence on her mother and whatever inheritance she's expecting. The middle one is also aimless. She wants unconventional pronouns -- WTF is FAK? -- but as we saw from the previous episode, her peer is going to some Ivy League school and Sam believes Frankie is just as smart, could also be going to a good university. Is she going to blow off college as well? The young one was low drama compared to her sisters but seems to be headed towards being another PITA. Fortunately this is the last season so we won't see that transformation. OK, these episodes are 45 minutes long. What are they doing with the extra time? Earlier they had another scene of her cooking. This time, it's her making cocktails or margaritas from scratch. Then the whole scene in the cemetery of the rich and famous was filler. Glad they appreciate the expensive and elaborate headstones for celebrities and some well-off people but what is it, another slice of life that means little other than this is how they spent their time this one day? Or Duke and her friend in the antiques shop, with Duke not "getting it" until she saw that chest of old photos of strangers. At least museums have some historical and cultural context, some chance to derive meaning. There are Holocaust museums showing objects from the everyday lives of people who were sent to the camps, because these objects humanize otherwise faceless people who were victims of one of the greatest tragedies in history. The antiques shop was about the possessions of random people whose belongings their survivor families sold off. Do antiques collectors care that much about previous owners of these objects unless they were famous?

The most loathsome character on My Brilliant Friend: https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/my-brilliant-friend-season-3-on-hbo-tvs-most-legendary-sleazeball.html The Guardian review of season 3. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/10/my-brilliant-friend-review-this-gorgeous-drama-is-television-at-its-best

Will only stream on Peacock in the US.

Peacock app doesn’t show it. suppose to premier Friday.

Mini series, next project by David Simon and George Pelecanos.

Starts streaming 4/7/22. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tokyo-vice-cast-1235014949/ The notable thing is Michael Mann is running it? Must be ancient by now.

Seen it described as a rom-com in space. Premiers 3/31/22. Haven’t seen any promos. Trailer. Don’t recognize the leads, Zach Braff is suppose to be in the cast though no sign of him in the trailer.

Never seen Sofia Helin in anything else than The Bridge. should be interesting.

Ratings are huge, they're comparing it to Game of Thrones. Way bigger than Succession, which got a lot of promotion and hype coming into season 3. One theory was that this is like soft core or some sexy scenes appealing to Gen Z and Millenials. But I think the HBO demographics tend to skew old, though maybe HBO Max subscribers are younger? It's not one of the cheaper streaming subscriptions out there. One way you know if a lot of younger viewers are watching is if people are streaming to their phones rather than watch on linear cable.

Producers probably invited them back. They love guests who make waves or cause drama.

OK, you knew the Olympics plot would end eventually since LA, not NY, will have the games in 2028. The IOC isn't going to switch the host city because of some allegations of corruption. There may have been bribes but Chuck has absolutely no proof of such since Colin Drache off the grid. But the ICS, which is the fake IOC, will switch host city because Katerina "call me Miss" Britt is supposedly some pure bureaucrat in a sport which is notorious for corruption? The carried interest gambit was BS too. Most of these rich people pay more in federal, not state taxes. NY can't tax them high enough nor can those other states. Carried interest has survived at least 3 presidential campaigns, it isn't going away. We're suppose to believe Prince's A-team caved and made up some claim that they can't back up about corruption? In any event, why would the governor go along? It would be humiliating for the city and the state to lose the Olympics after getting it. It's one thing to lose out the bid and never get it but to get it and then lose it? Politicians in NY would be pissed at Chuck for using state resources to have the Olympics taken away from the city and the state. The Hypersonic gambit was ridiculous too. No way they make some startup with unproven tech the official airline of the Olympics, just to carry 75 passengers? What a joke. And Taylor would object not because the tech and the claims are flaky but probably because it's bad for climate change, to burn all that fuel to carry so few people. But Philip's play was dumb too, self-driving cars chauffeuring Olympians around the city? Wendy was pissed, dumped all those athlete analytics in the trash right away. You'd think she'd have to have it shredded because that's some confidential info. Andy is leaving NYC, going to Colorado and then LA, where the Olympics will be held. Tells Prince that he could visit her in LA now. She's not that into you bro. Prince seems to get it, says he can't come next weekend.

Yeah never heard of her either. Her arguments among others is that journalists got too educated and they're elite so they can't understand the life of the working class. Like she does. Looks like she was wearing some kind of bling with the Star of David? She also said something about how the educated elite media have been a very "corrosive" force. Really? It's the liberal educated reporters that's the problem, not Fox News, not Breitbart, it's the reporters at the NY Times, Washington Post which are causing polarization? Because they are so woke or repeatedly wrote articles about people of color and other progressive concerns? Again, nothing wrong with Fox News and similar ilk but it's the mainstream media that's the problem. 🙄 So she didn't go to college?

Problem is you're competing for housing with an international market, so you hear about the oligarchs and sheiks in London but probably a lot of mere millionaires come from similar countries and bid up prices. Does she work in an office or planning to work from home? I guess he's working from home. If she has to go into the office, even during pandemic times, it makes sense for them to be in central London. Otherwise, if she only went into the office once or twice a week, they could have been further out.