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(I tried the Emgality. The shots were the most painful thing I have ever experienced, but I have never had major surgery or given birth. Like liquid napalm under your skin. It also didn’t reduce the number of migraines I had.)

Ginny & Georgia Is So, So Much. Truly, So Much.

For me, the booze and drugs were happening, but from my perspective any significant teen sex was happening offstage. Way offstage. Couldn’t tell you why. A lot of us (for example) took acid for Senior Night at Disney, but I can’t recall any (for example) pregnancies, major scandals, love triangles, sex happening at house parties, etc. Some people were paired off and mostly stayed paired off through high school, but that was it. Any romance in my life was strictly occurring onscreen in John Hughes films. 🙂 (The EZ access to drugs may have been because this was south Florida during the Miami Vice days.)

Wasn’t expecting a cliffhanger. Annoyed now. Everything rides on Netflix picking it up for a season 2, but I assume that’s probably a given. I’ve been more focused on the teens than the adults, because I really didn’t want Georgia to turn out to be a serial killer, but I guess we’re here now. I imagine we’re supposed to be sympathetic because the dudes were rapey/gropey jerks. Or maybe we’re not, since Ginny took off. They had to go to some great lengths to reach “Ginny is young Georgia” at the end. Like where is she even going to go? Also: her motorcycle helmet was beat to shit. That’s not safe! I lost track of who Creepy Austin’s dad is. From this thread I gather he’s still alive and some kind of threat. (Austin himself is deffo going to be a serial killer someday too, right?) If the show had stayed in the Gilmore Girls space and not gone all White Oleander, then Zion is Christopher, Joe is Luke Danes, and Bland Paul is Max Medina. (Honestly I’m super confused why they threw Joe into the mix at all, but he’s nice to look at.) For the kids, I guess Hunter is Dean with money and talent, but I was constantly distracted by the side-shave/ponytail. Marcus is just a pretty cipher by the end. Not edgy enough to be Jess. Sorry, Marcus. (On that note: It’s getting weirder these days to watch teen sex scenes without feeling ... weird, but Normal People ruined it all for me anyway. I think this show could have used their intimacy coordinator. Or some intimacy coordinator.) I needed fewer musical numbers and flash tap mobs and whatever. I sort of appreciated this glimpse into some weird high-income/diverse/liberal community I have no personal experience with, but I don’t know where that place is or if it really exists outside of television. I did appreciate the diverse cast, and the younger actors were all pretty solid. For all her scenery chewing, I liked Max a lot. They gave her some pretty bonkers material to work with and the actress pulled it off.

No idea (no kids here), but HBO’s Euphoria makes modern adolescence look about 10x darker than this, so this show was actually a bit of a relief for me after watching that one.

I thought the fight with Ginny and Hunter was interesting, and also showed us a side of Hunter we haven't seen before (i.e., anything other than 'perfect boyfriend'). I loved Georgia's impromptu slam poetry performance about finding Marcus climbing in through the window. The actress’s delivery is everything. I have weird defenses against/intense dislike of shows trying to sell me a 'redeemed bad boy love triangle' arc, which obviously has been coming all season, but I'm beginning to cave a bit with Marcus. Of course, that's only happening because they've done a 180 on his personality. From apathetic d-bag to sobbing romantic to injured victim. Which I guess is why I hate these arcs. I appreciate the way we are seeing Abby slowly crumble in the background, while no one notices. They've been relatively subtle (for this show) with it. With some of the ways she acts out, I wonder if she's secretly in love with Max. Ginny's self harm: I have a feeling I missed a scene or two. I recall the self-harm PSA tags on earlier episodes, and not being sure why they were there. The stuff with the lighter came out of nowhere for me. I guess this episode wasn't its first appearance? A couple of episodes to go, and still way more invested in this show than I would typically be for this kind of offering. (I admittedly have to ignore the whole "Georgia is a serial killer" arc, because nah.)

I guess I'll be alone over here at the 'never seen any Degrassi' table. 🙂 I actually don't recognize any of these performers except the actress from Schitt's Creek. Antonia Gentry (Ginny) reminds me of someone though, and it's driving me nuts. At first I thought it was Lenora Crichlow, especially her earlier work in Sugar Rush (anyone remember that one?) and Being Human UK, but when I look at stills from back then, the resemblance is pretty superficial. Gentry seems to have almost no acting gigs prior to this, so it isn't that I've seen her somewhere else either.

I am weirdly hooked on this show even though I can see right through all of its carefully targeted machinations. Good cast, I think, which is helping. (It’s a bit of mindfuck to watch it right after watching season one of Euphoria, which is basically: “teens: the darkest timeline”. Maybe that’s another reason I’m enjoying this bit of fluff.) Tonally, it reminds me of Teenage Bounty Hunters.

Former USA Gymnastics coach charged with human trafficking, sexual assault

As for the latter, I think we got that with Roscoe? (Not placing any value judgements on 'slutty'. I think he himself says something like "how can I be negative, I slept with everyone". BUT I could be thinking of another character, or even a character on Pose (which I started rewatching after watching this series). Things are a blur lately.

The group house reminded me superficially of the group house in Pose. That show also deals with the AIDS epidemic in the 80s/90s, but is not about the AIDS epidemic the way this show is. (Pose spoiler) They really caught me off guard with Colin. At the beginning, you're of course trying to figure out who is safe and who isn't--I actually thought the curveball might be that Jill would become infected. I forgot to worry about Colin, while worrying about literally everyone else. On that note: I wasn't sure how to read the flashback scenes where Colin was sleeping with his (boarding house co-guest?). Was that consensual, or not so much? I unabashedly love Keeley Hawes because I'm one of the three people who thought Ashes to Ashes was better than Life on Mars. But The Durrells puts me to sleep.

Finished season one, had some stuff to type out about the messiness and how the overall quality feels like a broadcast show, especially the heavy-handed dialogue and plotting, but I’m too busy laughing about that teaser scene at the end with the plutonium ship launching from underwater. Good grief. Ron Moore isn’t my favorite showrunner ever, but this was all surprisingly sloppy for him. In the podcast interview I listened to he mentioned having to get notes/approval from “Cupertino”, so I wonder if he lost a certain amount of creative control due to the Apple+ platform. I wonder if that Aleida plotline can be salvaged. Cringefest so far.

Ron Moore was on the only professional TV podcast I can still find (TV’s Top Five), pushing season 2, and when some of the cast members were mentioned (I.e., Joel Kinnaman), I decided to check the show out. I think I also wasn’t aware of the alt history aspect. Just got done with the pilot. I’m not a huge “space program” buff, just familiar with the history and the main films: the right stuff, Apollo 13. Watched Astronaut Wives Club (think I am skewering the name). So: I know the main players and broad strokes, but I’m not always 100% sure if a given character is a real historical character or made up for the show (have had to google a few times). They got me with the ending—I was sure the first landing was a goner, did NOT see it coming when they re-established communication. I felt stuff. Some things seemed a little tonally weird to me, probably based on nothing other than the other astronaut pop culture I have consumed. I got chills when they were racing the Corvettes early on, but probably any scene with people racing vintage Corvettes would have done the same thing to me. But later in the bar, I wasn’t buying that they would all be singing along to that particular song. It was like half a step too far. Ditto with (Ed?) spilling his guts to the reporter. These both seemed out of character for “astronauts”. I’m not clear on who Boss Lady Astronaut Wife was, but when it looked like the landing crew was dead and she was organizing support groups, she seemed just a little too perky and smiley. I get that the wives had responsibilities (in terms of supporting each other and dealing with the press), but she was awfully blasé about it. Just the actress’s facial expressions. Interested for now and will keep watching.

I made it about halfway through the season, but then increasingly had to fast-forward because a lot of the overly artsy stuff was lost on me. I was invested in the characters, and always wanted more of Jules on the screen, but the directing and editing were at odds with my impatience to just find out what happens. The finale especially, with the fractured timeline and the endless scenes of makeup application, so many lingering ultra tight shots, had me both impatient and confused. It admittedly takes a certain kind of show to wow me with both stylistic and direct narrative storytelling (Legion and Queen’s Gambit are the only two that come to mind), so maybe it’s a deficiency or at least a taste mismatch on my part. I think I wanted these characters and this story, I just didn’t want to watch them with the acid-trip music-video aesthetic and pacing. To me the whole thing just got in the way of itself.

I'm thinking the same makeup department that created Lorne could probably handle applying a little dermablend to her wrist.

Replying to an old post but. I think the show said it was a Sandals resort, which are all-inclusive. And they do have family resorts. Pina Coladas are pretty much pure sugar and coconut cream (if it’s not something worse out of a premix at the resorts). So she basically drank 70 milkshakes in a week, plus the buffets and whatnot. 20 is a lot but there is also the general vacation bloat. In my mind she probably lost about half of it soon after, but stayed on a heavyset trajectory.

(I’m not the mod of this show, but it should be fine. You could edit your top post to include the original airdate.)

Yikes, I’m not sure if it’s been long enough since Girls for me to see Jemima Kirke as anyone but Jessa.

It’s funny, I’m so stressed out by the pilot that I was thinking “I miss the relatively innocent days of Skins”. I’m about two-thirds through and I feel like I’m watching a mashup of Queen’s Gambit and I May Destroy You, and my neck muscles won’t unclench. Edit: It took me until episode three to realize Jules was trans, In the pilot, I assumed the hip injection was (I don’t know, insulin?, it kind of went right past me). I noticed the slight panty bulge but was bizarrely unable to put two and two together. I say bizarrely because I’m always interested in trans performers, trans portrayals, and had just watched Disclosure (Netflix doc, highly recommend) for the fourth time. I was kinda “she’s so thin the fabric is bunching up I guess?” None of this is commentary on the show/character, more bemused that it just whiffed right over my head even though the show was showing me. (Probably because I was so busy worrying that everyone was about to be raped and murdered, perhaps on a livestream.)

I won’t lie, I kind of need a Cecil Hotel-inspired Fargo season now, starring Rhea Seehorn.

I'm skimming through some second-tier Arrowverse shows lately, because why not, and this is a big theme. "I know she's a murdering supervillain who lied to you about everything and put your life in danger, but she's still your mom!"

The “just a joke” defense reminds me of this recent gem from the gaming community: https://mobile.twitter.com/negaoryx/status/1354147400160403457

Triggered! I’m a long time true crime follower, but there are certain cases where you can see that a lot of people have bought into a certain narrative and will never, ever look back. If I had a dime for every time I’ve typed “no, the tank wasn’t closed, and no the tank was not inaccessible, there was a ladder ...” to someone on Reddit or elsewhere ... sigh. (Did they frame it as a reveal at the end? Because I thought the maint worker says pretty early on that it was open, but they blip past it pretty quick, and it might have been with subtitles (I can’t remember if he was speaking Spanish or not.) I did not watch the whole thing/didn’t see the end. (But I already knew the hatch was open, so maybe I’m misremembering seeing him say it early in the doc.) I think people get spooked, enjoy feeling spooked, and then the brain functions cut out. I made it though about half the doc, until they started to lean into the YouTuber stuff. (As you can see, I’m way too familiar with those theories.) I’m glad it sounds like they admitted that it was most likely not a murderer or a ghost. Edit: actually, I remembered the exact moment I turned it off: the “LAM ELISA”/tuberculosis stuff. I can’t. Not in 2021. I actually kind of liked the hotel manager. She was pretty straightforward and realistic about the hotel and the events. (And I agree with both the “Rhea Seahorn” and “Fargo character” comparisons). She and the surprisingly not-terrible voiceovers of Elisa’s journal were the only reason I made it through more than one episode.

I’m mostly immune to the Star Wars IP, but I watched The Mandalorian S1 for the spouse’s sake. About ten minutes into the actress’s first couple of scenes, I was on google trying to find out what her real day job had been, because it obviously wasn’t acting. Then I had to work hard to keep my comments to myself (the spouse is *not* immune to the Star Wars magic). (I only heard about this whole thing because a coworker mentioned in slack that anyone with Disney stock should sell, because they were going to take a huge hit over the “Mando controversy”. After I stopped laughing, I had to look up what the controversy even was, and then I laughed some more. Not that the issues involved are funny, just that someone believed that one character in one show in one of Disney’s IPs was going to permanently move the needle on Disney stock.)

I genuinely don’t understand why it should be impossible to mine a good TV show out of this IP. I know that Terry Pratchett was one of a kind, and that his *voice* is impossible to replicate, but it wasn’t just his humor and his voice; he created unbelievably detailed settings and characters. There is just so much material to work with. It seems to me like the key to a successful adaptation would be to focus on getting the characters just right, pull in as much original dialogue as you can without resorting to voiceovers/narration, and not worry too much about getting the big, fantastical elements on screen. A certain percentage of people are never going to get past “flat world elephants turtle”, so stop trying to figure out how to nail the imagery and CGI on that one, and instead open with a perfectly-cast Granny Weatherwax trying to figure out what to do about Eskarina Smith. Age up Esk just a few years, and the miniseries (teen girl wizard who shouldn’t exist?) practically writes itself. (I know Tiffany Aching is supposed to be the YA heroine, but I think starting with the earlier, more straightforward books would be easier.) (I still can’t read Shepherd’s Crown, and now I’ve made myself sad.)