TV Shows

Lucky Ducky

Chill Review, TV Shows

I know the show Lucky got mixed reviews, but I quite liked the first episode.

Sure, it has a lot of clichés but they are executed well. And Anya Taylor-Joy is always captivating to watch. Is it high art? No, certainly not. But it manages to be fun and entertaining, which is more than I can say for most shows.

And the conversation Lucky has with her imprisoned dad while she’s fleeing on the bus was incredibly well-done. It’s hard to write realistic dialogue. Or at least dialogue that feels real. And then to deliver it well. The writers and ATJ managed both perfectly.

However, the FBI does not shoot at fleeing suspects who are not an imminent threat to anyone. That was just stupid. Can someone please do some research?

But the fight where Lucky lights the road flare off in the moving car was really fucking good.

Cold Calc

Chill TV Shows

I tried to watch Bates Motel but that was a no-go for me. Though I love Vera Farmiga and she was excellent in it, her manner and affect reminded me too much of my own mother’s cold, calculating, manipulative nature. (Which, you know, figures, given what the show is about.)

So that’s a “no thanks.” I already lived that life. And I didn’t even have a creepy-cool old house to do it in.

Five Days at Memorial

Chill Review, TV Shows

I didn’t watch this show for years because I didn’t think I could handle it.

After more than two decades, I’m still angry about how we chose to treat our fellow Americans post-Katrina and about George W. Bush’s utter incompetence. However, even in the first episode it’s a good look at the lack of preparedness at all levels, and how none of the interlocked systems of our society really had any plan for a disaster of that nature.

And it’s very human. I recommend it, though it is fraught with recapitulation of the pain of a very bad time in American history.

Shannon Dot

Chill TV Shows

Dot Campbell is one of the few characters from a TV show I think about fairly frequently. Shannon Berry is just so fucking good in that role in The Wilds; one of my favorite TV performances.

And I identified with Dot, of course. She’s someone always underestimated, invisible to her peers, but on top of things. Always watchful and always a bit apart. That’s me, basically.

Mia Healey also did a great job with Shelby Goodkind. The whole cast of the first season of that show was top notch, actually. They elevated the show beyond what it should have been.

But it’s only Dot that I think about sometimes. She seemed completely real to me.

Mass Movement

Chill TV Shows

Midnight Mass Rewatch.

Why do all my favorites have to get canceled? Midnight Mass was better than nearly all the other Mike Flanagan works. It was so textured and it had a frame story and was just so much fun.

And with The Peripheral being renewed and then canceled, I am truly verklempt. In that show I dearly love the scene where the protag Flynne gets annoyed that when she is not occupying it they keep her robot body in some ugly wooden crate. I don’t know what she was expecting with that.

Flynne was such a great character and one that I wish I’d gotten to see more of. However, I wouldn’t want some creepy empty body staring at me either, so I would’ve also stored her peripheral out of sight when not in use. But perhaps not in a wooden box.

To be more serious, Flynne feels it’s dehumanizing that her peripheral be stored in an ugly crate as the body she occupies is her for all intents and purposes. And that’s what makes it a great scene and setup: We can understand both her point of view and that of those who toss her empty vessel in a crate when she’s not “there.”

Two of my favorite shows, both nuked before their times.

Trypan Out

Chill Cool, TV Shows

The most evil TV villain ever? Alien: Earth’s ‘demon sheep eye’ is a work of true genius.

That thing is pretty damn chilling. Though it’s physiologically utterly implausible, it works on screen. I also like how they incorporated a little physical comedy into its methods and interactions. That is rare in anything that tries to be as serious as Alien: Earth does.

Trypanohyncha ocellus is better than the boring xenomorph by far.

Nothing Remaherkable

Chill TV Shows

All TV shows with a studio audience work this way. I’ve been to a couple of live filmings and that’s just how it’s done.

Plant

Chill TV Shows

Sydney Chandler does such an amazing job in Alien: Earth of duplicating the mannerisms of a child in an adult’s body.

(The backstory is that she’s a terminally-ill kid transplanted into a synthetic body. Since synths don’t grow, they migrate her consciousness into the body of fully-adult-mimicking synthetic body.)

She gives my favorite performance I’ve seen lately. Sydney manages to perfectly reproduce the gawky impulsiveness and awkwardness of a ten-year-old without overdoing it or seeming like an adult pretending to be a kid. She just gives total “kid” aura. It’s quite amazing.

Like, damn girl, leave some talent of the rest of us.

Not Pittiful

Chill Review, TV Shows

The Pitt is a good show. It reminds me of the first few seasons of ER1. It’s repetitive but that’s something to like about it in this rare case.

And more impressively, more than 90% of the medical terminology and practices are correct (though more rushed than most in real life). It’s worth watching.

  1. Which is not surprising as it’s from the same creators.