Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

[Dalisclock]

Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space(Netflix)

I'm not sure how to describe this show. It's a full season version of a web series from like 10 years ago but effectively this is a remake series that covers the original web series in the first 3 episodes and then some. But whatever, it's a show by a series of Adventure Time Alumi and at times it kinda feels like Adventure time but with animation that looks more like Studio Ghibli. It also has a more focused cast and setting, all more or less taking place a weird little island town and generally about Bee, a rather weird lady who gets hired and fired from Temp jobs on a regular basis and her...pet(?) called puppycat.

It's almost like a magical girl show at times because Bee and Puppycat often get called on to work Temp Jobs...in what amounts to other dimensions not unlike Super Mario Galaxy planets(there's a literally a giant toilet "planet" just floating in space) and they get costumes to match the jobs, but otherwise it's almost like a slice of life show with Bee, Puppycat, their 5 year old Landlord named Cardamom and the family of weirdos who live in the rest of the apartment house. Also an insane wrestler lady who keeps smashing through walls to Harass people(well, one person in particular, played by Ashley Burch, possibly the biggest name in the cast) and everyone is just cool with it.

Really, a lot of weirdness exists in this show and in general people just kind of brush it off. Especially early on where the show reveals that Bee is actually a robot or artificial human of some kind. Several people seem to be aware of this and nobody really seems to find it remarkable or even comment on it and thus I'm not even sure if it's worth being called a spoiler

And having watched the episodes a couple of times(my kid loves the show), it's weird how much foreshadowing and environmental detail there is on repeat viewing that provide build up for some of what happens in the last episode, though as of now the season/series finale just leads to as many questions as answers.

But a fun watch for sure. I hope it gets another season hoping some of the mysteries get explained, but also because it's fun to watch Bee and her weirdass adventures.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space(Netflix)

The art style and animation have piqued my interest, but the voice acting is throwing me off.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Castlevania season 3

Liked: Bellades and Belmont!
Disliked: Alucard and Hector just seemed like the show spinning its wheels. A bit true for Isaac, too.
The show seems to have suffered the loss of momentum with the death of Dracula. Everybody says season 4 is better so hopefully that means a unifying, driving force to drive the plot and characters together better.

The show is making me want to play some games in the series. I plan on getting a Steam Deck soon, I'm assuming I can get some Castlevania on that?

 

[Dalisclock]

Castlevania season 3

Liked: Bellades and Belmont!
Disliked: Alucard and Hector just seemed like the show spinning its wheels. A bit true for Isaac, too.
The show seems to have suffered the loss of momentum with the death of Dracula. Everybody says season 4 is better so hopefully that means a unifying, driving force to drive the plot and characters together better.

The show is making me want to play some games in the series. I plan on getting a Steam Deck soon, I'm assuming I can get some Castlevania on that?

There are currently 2 Castlevania collections available on steam to my knowledge and between them have quite a few good ones in there.

Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night are still MIA on PC

 

[Dalisclock]

The art style and animation have piqued my interest, but the voice acting is throwing me off.

If it's Bees VA that bothering you then there's not much to tell you. That's pretty much how she talks and yeah, it sounds off. I suspect it's intentional and adds to Bees general weirdness, but I don't know Bees VA from anywhere else so maybe that's her normal speech pattern.

It's probably one of the things that sticks out about the show is how often wierd shit happens and most of the characters just kind of ignore it, until someone points out that a lot of this shit isn't normal.

Like when the poor kid pulling duty as a landlord starts having a breakdown about having to hold a landlord job as a 5 year old and nobody around him seems to care. At which point it goes from quirky to kind of heartbreaking. Especially since he's doing this because his mom is basically in a coma.

 

[gorfias]

Dragons house season finale

snip

I cannot believe I am watching this after the disappointment of GoT. It's as if they came out to a prequel to LOST.

But the trip in GoT was a hoot, especially Seasons 1- 4. And so far, I am liking this.

…in 2024! This is the issue with shows like this ending on cliff hangers. People forget they’re even hanging after a certain point, and risk the possibility of falling off the longer the wait.

Agreed he should’ve had an adult escort but not sure what other dragon riders were available? Aemond is a giant A-hole too even if he didn’t intend for that to happen. With the time jumps, it also looks like he’s way too old compared to the kid if that’s really supposed to be who cut him. Like this kid looks like he would’ve been an actual baby next to how much they aged Aemond.

Anyways, it goes to show these dragons can and will have a mind of their own, likely putting self preservation above the needs of the pests on their backs. Vhagar is still a dick though, but then again this wouldn’t have happened if A-hole didn’t take her from Rhaena.

Sad to write, I loved Season 1 and 2 of "Legion". Only this year, about 3 years after it came out, did I even know there was a Season 3. It's on Hulu and I am glad I caught it.

 

[Xprimentyl]

The Patient: Ep1-3 (Hulu Original) Really Good / Great

Steve Carrell plays a therapist who finds himself kidnapped by one of his patients (Domhnall Gleeson) and shackled to a bed in a remote house in the woods. Carrell soon learns this patient of his has been less than honest with him and, in fact, has some very disturbing secrets, and this kidnapping is a desperate-if-twisted cry for help.

So far, it's really good. Lots of tension with every episode this far ending on the kind of cliffhanger that makes the waiting game for the next agonizing. Gleeson plays the kind of psychopath roiling with demons who's constantly teetering on the edge, and you never know what's going to send him over at any given moment. Recommended.

The Patient: Ep4-10 (Hulu Original) Really Good / Great

Synopsis above still applies, just following up as I've completed the limited series. Highly recommended now that you can watch all 10 episodes without the week-long nail-biting anticipation between episodes. It doesn't end at all as you'd expect, but soon realize it was probably the most likely way it could have ended.

 

[Dalisclock]

Paper Girls(Amazon)

Based on a Comic by Brian K. Vaughn (of SAGA fame), this is about four 12 year old girls who are out on a paper route on the day after halloween, 1988 in some Cleveland Ohio Suburb. Initially it starts out with the girls meeting because of the shitty vandals running around that night, it sounds gets crazy with Time Travelers showing up, fighting a time war, and then they end up through a series of Shenanigans in 2019. Not an alt timeline(as far as I know), but just 2019. Which apparently is a bit disappointing other then the Internet because most things look the same.

So half the story is the girls, some of whom barely know each other, coming to terms with their future selves 30 years on and what happens to them and their familes and this is the really interesting part. Notably, Erin meets her Adult self first, and her adult self is not nearly what she imagined herself to be in 30 years and it's a very hard pill for her to swallow that instead of being a Senator with 4 kids, her adult self is a paralegal who is still single and hasn't been able to keep a relationship going for any real length of time. Just an example, but it's a good example of the kind of issues all the girls end up dealing with.

The other and arguably less interesting half of the story, at least for me, is the Time War, which is fine. We get a little bit of background on it but we have no way of knowing if anyone is actually being truthful about it. One side wants to preserve the timeline and another wants to change it but beyond that we know very little. The Change side says the future is pretty bad, the preservers are the elite of that future and that's what their trying to prevent but we have the word of one guy and nothing else to go on, while the preservers are dressed all in pretty white uniforms and want to keep the timeline from breaking apart from too much rewriting, per their take. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if there were more to it. Also the leader of the preserver faction is played by Jason Mantzoukas, still with that big ass beard he has in every show I've ever seen him in(The Good Place, Brooklyn 99)

Unfortunately, Amazon only gave it one season before canceling it and the season ends on a cliffhanger, so unless someone else picks it up the story is only half told at the end. It is interesting while it lasts though and I did enjoy it.

 

[Hawki]

The Boys: Season 1 (3/5)

Can't say I liked this much.

I'll give this show some credit, the idea of "corporate superheroes" is fairly unique. "What if supes were evil?" is a question that's been done to death, but marry the existence of supes with corporate sponsership, and you get something that's fairly unique, along with social commentary. Commentary that isn't particuarly deep or insightful, but it's something I guess.

That being said, the show just didn't really jive with me that much, and here's some reasons as to why:

-Most of what happens feels anemic. I'm not talking about apathetic characters (a lot of them are apathetic by design), but there's a lack of 'spark' to a lot of what's going on, even down to the camerawork. It's hard to explain, but it's like the writers and/or directors were just bored, and just did things by the numbers. Of course, I've got no hard proof of that, but there was very little in season 1 that made me really feel, and among the stuff that did, a fair bit of it was just gross (e.g. Homelander's relationship with Marilyn). Of course, there's stuff that made me feel in a good way (such as when he lets the plane crash), but most of the time, I just didn't feel much.

And look, maybe that's intentional - maybe of the fuckwits in the series are apathetic douchbags by design, so maybe the writing and directing are meant to reflect this, but I dunno.

-Kiriko is basically a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to Frenchie. You could remove her from the season entirely and not really lose anything.

-There's little sense of consistency in a number of areas. For instance, the first and second episodes end with credit songs eerilly fitting the situation, but then that stops. Butcher's chain of revelation goes from "I'm a CIA agent" to "actually I'm not" to "actually I am, but not officially." The penultimate episode ends with Starlight being shot by a high-powered rifle, but come next episode, when she talks with Hughie again, this is never brought up (you could cut out that aspect entirely and lose nothing). A key plot point is that Vought wants its supes in the military, but the supes are already (supposedly) doing "secret missions," and seem to be universally bulletproof regardless of their skillset, so why WOULDN'T they be in the military?

Anyway, it's okay, but in the end, it was just "meh."

 

[Piscian]

The Boys: Season 1 (3/5)

Can't say I liked this much.

I'll give this show some credit, the idea of "corporate superheroes" is fairly unique. "What if supes were evil?" is a question that's been done to death, but marry the existence of supes with corporate sponsership, and you get something that's fairly unique, along with social commentary. Commentary that isn't particuarly deep or insightful, but it's something I guess.

That being said, the show just didn't really jive with me that much, and here's some reasons as to why:

-Most of what happens feels anemic. I'm not talking about apathetic characters (a lot of them are apathetic by design), but there's a lack of 'spark' to a lot of what's going on, even down to the camerawork. It's hard to explain, but it's like the writers and/or directors were just bored, and just did things by the numbers. Of course, I've got no hard proof of that, but there was very little in season 1 that made me really feel, and among the stuff that did, a fair bit of it was just gross (e.g. Homelander's relationship with Marilyn). Of course, there's stuff that made me feel in a good way (such as when he lets the plane crash), but most of the time, I just didn't feel much.

And look, maybe that's intentional - maybe of the fuckwits in the series are apathetic douchbags by design, so maybe the writing and directing are meant to reflect this, but I dunno.

-Kiriko is basically a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to Frenchie. You could remove her from the season entirely and not really lose anything.

-There's little sense of consistency in a number of areas. For instance, the first and second episodes end with credit songs eerilly fitting the situation, but then that stops. Butcher's chain of revelation goes from "I'm a CIA agent" to "actually I'm not" to "actually I am, but not officially." The penultimate episode ends with Starlight being shot by a high-powered rifle, but come next episode, when she talks with Hughie again, this is never brought up (you could cut out that aspect entirely and lose nothing). A key plot point is that Vought wants its supes in the military, but the supes are already (supposedly) doing "secret missions," and seem to be universally bulletproof regardless of their skillset, so why WOULDN'T they be in the military?

Anyway, it's okay, but in the end, it was just "meh."

I'm 3 seasons in. I'm not 100% certain why I still watch it. I suppose it has it's moments and it's the only superhero show on worth watching. That said, it is very inconsistent. It's very clear the writers haven't read the comicbook or have any interest in it. They just copy/pasta those major themes, vapid superheroes made by a corporation. Without that the show doesn't really have much of a central focus and spends its time spinning around in circles with meandering subplots like the "will they won't they" of frenchie and kiriko. Hughie's general whininess and uncertainty about everything, The various trashie superheroes trying to make it in this "big ugly world".

Some will make the argument that the comicbook was one dimensional gorefest and that the show is better because it's developing these characters where as the book was literally just a group of bloodthirsty vengeance fueled mercenaries murdering awful people in superhero costumes for 60 someaught issues. The problem is that none of the characters motivations in the show are particularly consistent and there's rare to no payoff for any of it. If you squinted hard at season 3 you may have to question whether the story has actually gone anywhere in 3 seasons.

The show reminds me a lot of this wave of pseudo prestige television. Everybody wants to be Breaking Bad, but they don't have the vision or craft to pull it off so instead they shoot for profound "moments" like "Oh isn't this crazy the superman guy is masturbating on a roof!!?" to shock the audience rather than any of it being clever. This is not Better Call Saul, this is The Walking Dead. It gets pretty groan worthy when they start dumping in political tropes with the Diversity movement or BLM, but they don't say anything meaningful they just re-enact news headlines from FOX or CNN and slap a superhero world sticker on them calling it a day. I'm actually weirdly insulted that they do it, because some of the things they copy are important issues and they are using it for cheap gags and lazy satire.

As far as whether or not the show gets better? *shrug*, if you stick with it there's some fun in the start of season 2 then a long stretch of season 2 where essentially nothing happens, its quite painful, then it has an ok ending. Season 3 moved along at a more rapid pace. I think they got the hint that Season 1& 2 was a slog. There's more action in Season 3, but fair warning the "will they wont they" for every single character on the show continues. Literally everyone gets a subplot and its very tiresome.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

The Boys is one of those things where I'll agree with every criticism and still consider it one of my favorite shows. As the man says in Pulp Fiction- personality goes a long way.
I just love it's whole funny, cruel, messed up vibe and I don't think about the plot or whatever. It's a hang-out show. Hang out with these hilarious miserable f***s

So I checked out the first one of Guillermo Del Torro's Cabinet of Curiosities.
An anthology horror/spooky miniseries. It was ok. I kind of like the idea of <1hr creepy little stories so I'll check 'em all out.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Star Wars Tales of the Jedi

Fun, short, beautiful, nostalgic. Nothing mindblowing, and probably won't mean as much to you if you didn't follow The Clone Wars. But hey, if you don't like it, it was just 12 minutes of your life. I'd prefer if all Star Wars projects were like this, instead of drawn out garbage with some good bits mixed in.

 

[Hawki]

The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power - Season 1 (5/5)

Okay, I'm cheating here, but the review I started writing was over 1500 words on the Word doc, and I just don't have the time or energy to complete it (true of a lot these days). Just going to let the score stand for itself, which likely puts me in the minority, but meh, what else is new?

 

[gorfias]

The Patient: Ep4-10 (Hulu Original) Really Good / Great

Synopsis above still applies, just following up as I've completed the limited series. Highly recommended now that you can watch all 10 episodes without the week-long nail-biting anticipation between episodes. It doesn't end at all as you'd expect, but soon realize it was probably the most likely way it could have ended.

Me and mine loved it. Got 7/10 in IMDB ratings. I'd give it an 4/5.
I am reasonably satisfied with the ending.

Spoiler

I would have liked to have seen mom better indicted for enabling all of this. Her son's murderous activities, what was happening to Alan, not stopping her son's abuse. She, at least, is called out. Do you think Alan was stopped from killing her by Sam, or did he stop himself and was then killed? He did stop to imagine a woman being murdered in a Nazi death camp. I do like that ambiguity.

I did like how much IS resolved in the last episode.

 

[Piscian]

Me and mine loved it. Got 7/10 in IMDB ratings. I'd give it an 4/5.
I am reasonably satisfied with the ending.

Spoiler

I would have liked to have seen mom better indicted for enabling all of this. Her son's murderous activities, what was happening to Alan, not stopping her son's abuse. She, at least, is called out. Do you think Alan was stopped from killing her by Sam, or did he stop himself and was then killed? He did stop to imagine a woman being murdered in a Nazi death camp. I do like that ambiguity.

I did like how much IS resolved in the last episode.

I think what makes it difficult for me to recommend the show is the lack of personality between the two leads. These are both very milquetoast people. Theres nothing seething about the patient hes so bland and Carrell plays a pretty normal run of the mill inoffensive therapist. Its only when hes really starts to come apart that he has anything profound to say so the show is largely just sitting there being sad. Theres not consistent highs and lows in every episode. Very slow burn. So quality or not there was a span of a couple episodes where I stopped watching because I just wasn't in the mood to be depressed for thirty minutes.

I actually felt like the end was extremely rewarding however. Maybe Im jaded but I just never saw that coming and I think it added so much to steves character.

I think steves dreams were him acting out his unwillingness to face conflict. The jews in his dream not doing anything to save themselves (in his dream, Im not stating that as historical fact. Obviously they fought back irl.) represented him not doing anything about his relationship with his son or trying harder to escape. I think in his final moment he was malnourished and weak from being chained up he spaced out one last time in his unwillingness to kill the mom, seeing that woman just standing there in the gas chamber. Thats when the patient rushes over and strangles him. Its interesting that he was successful in his death. He ultimately forced the patient to reconcile with his trauma and stop killing. To start developing empathy. Its sad to think about how much people do these days thinking its by choice with its really them acting out trauma over and over.

Great show 8-9/10 but definitely nothing exciting or cheery. Its a hard watch.

 

[Dalisclock]

LOTR: Rings of Power: Season 1(Amazon):

It's hard to really sum up this show into a paragraph or three so just gonna run over a few things.

It looks really good in general and the acting is solid if not good. The first season (of five?) is a pretty good setup for the most part, laying seeds for stuff that will happen down the line. I definitely enjoyed this more than Wheel of Time.

That being said, the pacing is SLOOOWWWWW much of the time. The first few episodes are particularly bad about this but there's a serious case of "4 lines, all waiting" at play here, where there are like 4 plots running side by side and none of them run very fast or get much screen time in a given episode. There's also a lot of characters introduced and to be fair I still don't remember some of their names, like healer lady from the Southlands arc.

I am willing to put up with it because it's a Tolkien epic fantasy and such things often take their time to develop and a lot of the tone is meant to reflect that(obviously YMMV how well it works) but still it seems it feels like it could move faster at times. Like watching a Wagner Opera, you could tell the same story in half the time by just chopping out some of the dead air or cutting down on some of the focus. Also, stop with the random Slo-Mo shots. Slo-Mo has a purpose, but a slo-mo shot of a guy on a boat or Gadariel riding her horse isn't needed and just slows things down, even more then they already are.

That being said, there's a number of moments that just feel odd or out of place that feel like they break the illusion. Off the top of my head:
-The elves on the boat in episode 1. That boat has no seats. They presumably just stood there for days waiting to reach the big heaven portal. I know it looks cool but I'm pretty sure a couple of benches would have been appreciated because I'm sure elves sit down at times.
-The "Elves are gonna take our jorbs" thing felt super out of place. It's been a long time since I read the Silmarillion but it doesn't sound like something Tolkien would write and just feels very anachronistic. This is Tolkien, not Fritz Lang, guys.
-So the Mt Doom thing is very cool looking, but Its annoying how it's set up. So the big creepy key opens a dam which floods the valley below which then dumps water into the volcano and then......causes a Catastrophic nuclear winter type eruption that turns the Southlands into a the Death Land of Morder in a couple of weeks. The Volcano thing I can roll with, it's the whole "Dumping water into volcano causes catastrophic eruption that forever alters the land" thing I'm having a hard time buying, because while I'm not a geologist, I'm pretty sure that's not how volcanoes work. At best you'd probably get a ton of steam before all the water would boil off and then slow to a trickle as the water above the dam was expended, and even a catastrophic eruption should last maybe a couple days.
-I have to credit Honest Trailers for this, but it was weird healing them dance around the idea of creating the rings."We'll make a magic crown" "Well, we don't enough to make a crown, so something smaller" "Maybe a couple smaller things". Guys, just say 'Rings" it's not a secret to anyone watching because it's in the damn title and playing the pronoun game with each other feels really dumb in retrospect.

Otherwise I rather enjoyed the show even if it missteps at times and runs a bit slower then I'd like. Ir's also a bit fond of it's mystery boxes, considering how many "mysterous strangers who could be sauron" show up in season 1. The fact this is setup to what I presume is the defeat of Sauron and Isildur taking the one ring(and then failing to dump it back in Mount Doom) helps me tolerate the slow parts.

 

[Samtemdo8]

LOTR: Rings of Power: Season 1(Amazon):

It's hard to really sum up this show into a paragraph or three so just gonna run over a few things.

It looks really good in general and the acting is solid if not good. The first season (of five?) is a pretty good setup for the most part, laying seeds for stuff that will happen down the line. I definitely enjoyed this more than Wheel of Time.

That being said, the pacing is SLOOOWWWWW much of the time. The first few episodes are particularly bad about this but there's a serious case of "4 lines, all waiting" at play here, where there are like 4 plots running side by side and none of them run very fast or get much screen time in a given episode. There's also a lot of characters introduced and to be fair I still don't remember some of their names, like healer lady from the Southlands arc.

I am willing to put up with it because it's a Tolkien epic fantasy and such things often take their time to develop and a lot of the tone is meant to reflect that(obviously YMMV how well it works) but still it seems it feels like it could move faster at times. Like watching a Wagner Opera, you could tell the same story in half the time by just chopping out some of the dead air or cutting down on some of the focus. Also, stop with the random Slo-Mo shots. Slo-Mo has a purpose, but a slo-mo shot of a guy on a boat or Gadariel riding her horse isn't needed and just slows things down, even more then they already are.

That being said, there's a number of moments that just feel odd or out of place that feel like they break the illusion. Off the top of my head:
-The elves on the boat in episode 1. That boat has no seats. They presumably just stood there for days waiting to reach the big heaven portal. I know it looks cool but I'm pretty sure a couple of benches would have been appreciated because I'm sure elves sit down at times.
-The "Elves are gonna take our jorbs" thing felt super out of place. It's been a long time since I read the Silmarillion but it doesn't sound like something Tolkien would write and just feels very anachronistic. This is Tolkien, not Fritz Lang, guys.
-So the Mt Doom thing is very cool looking, but Its annoying how it's set up. So the big creepy key opens a dam which floods the valley below which then dumps water into the volcano and then......causes a Catastrophic nuclear winter type eruption that turns the Southlands into a the Death Land of Morder in a couple of weeks. The Volcano thing I can roll with, it's the whole "Dumping water into volcano causes catastrophic eruption that forever alters the land" thing I'm having a hard time buying, because while I'm not a geologist, I'm pretty sure that's not how volcanoes work. At best you'd probably get a ton of steam before all the water would boil off and then slow to a trickle as the water above the dam was expended, and even a catastrophic eruption should last maybe a couple days.
-I have to credit Honest Trailers for this, but it was weird healing them dance around the idea of creating the rings."We'll make a magic crown" "Well, we don't enough to make a crown, so something smaller" "Maybe a couple smaller things". Guys, just say 'Rings" it's not a secret to anyone watching because it's in the damn title and playing the pronoun game with each other feels really dumb in retrospect.

Otherwise I rather enjoyed the show even if it missteps at times and runs a bit slower then I'd like. Ir's also a bit fond of it's mystery boxes, considering how many "mysterous strangers who could be sauron" show up in season 1. The fact this is setup to what I presume is the defeat of Sauron and Isildur taking the one ring(and then failing to dump it back in Mount Doom) helps me tolerate the slow parts.

In the Silmarillion, The Elves (well some of them) viewed the race of Men as usurpers, to replace the Elves as rulers of Middle Earth

Meanwhile in the Akkalabeth, Men (well some of them) grew envious of The Elves' immortality.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So I checked out the first one of Guillermo Del Torro's Cabinet of Curiosities.
An anthology horror/spooky miniseries. It was ok. I kind of like the idea of <1hr creepy little stories so I'll check 'em all out.

Yeah same here. The second one wasn’t as interesting. I hope all of these aren’t just going to be *insert some fucked up creature* horror.

Was really looking forward to it but so far it’s like Del Toro saying, “Hey, remember Tales from the Crypt?” assuming that audiences haven’t learned anything in over two (or three?) decades.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

She-Hulk - 6/10

It seems when there's a decent amount of people that hate and love something, I usually fall into the middle and basically think it's average and what all the hubbub is about. And the same thing is true for She-Hulk, it's fine. I like the lead actress a lot and wish there was less She-Hulk actually (in the general work settings) as the CGI isn't that good. I kinda feel making the show animated would've been far better not only with not needing CGI then but also allowing the show to be wackier as I think it's too, I guess, standard overall. The ending episode was pretty fun and I'm surprised a Marvel show would ever go there. I didn't like how she got in massive trouble just for breaking some TVs though.

 

[Kyrian007]

Paper Girls(Amazon)

Based on a Comic by Brian K. Vaughn (of SAGA fame), this is about four 12 year old girls who are out on a paper route on the day after halloween, 1988 in some Cleveland Ohio Suburb. Initially it starts out with the girls meeting because of the shitty vandals running around that night, it sounds gets crazy with Time Travelers showing up, fighting a time war, and then they end up through a series of Shenanigans in 2019. Not an alt timeline(as far as I know), but just 2019. Which apparently is a bit disappointing other then the Internet because most things look the same.

So half the story is the girls, some of whom barely know each other, coming to terms with their future selves 30 years on and what happens to them and their familes and this is the really interesting part. Notably, Erin meets her Adult self first, and her adult self is not nearly what she imagined herself to be in 30 years and it's a very hard pill for her to swallow that instead of being a Senator with 4 kids, her adult self is a paralegal who is still single and hasn't been able to keep a relationship going for any real length of time. Just an example, but it's a good example of the kind of issues all the girls end up dealing with.

The other and arguably less interesting half of the story, at least for me, is the Time War, which is fine. We get a little bit of background on it but we have no way of knowing if anyone is actually being truthful about it. One side wants to preserve the timeline and another wants to change it but beyond that we know very little. The Change side says the future is pretty bad, the preservers are the elite of that future and that's what their trying to prevent but we have the word of one guy and nothing else to go on, while the preservers are dressed all in pretty white uniforms and want to keep the timeline from breaking apart from too much rewriting, per their take. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if there were more to it. Also the leader of the preserver faction is played by Jason Mantzoukas, still with that big ass beard he has in every show I've ever seen him in(The Good Place, Brooklyn 99)

Unfortunately, Amazon only gave it one season before canceling it and the season ends on a cliffhanger, so unless someone else picks it up the story is only half told at the end. It is interesting while it lasts though and I did enjoy it.

I watched it a while back. I thought it was interesting, but not anything standout. It was a probably almost unique time travel story, at least I can't think of another story focused on bystanders in a time war. There wasn't anything I complained about, everyone involved did a good job. But it just didn't "grab" my attention. Solid show though, I hope it picks up somewhere.

As for me

The Midnight Club - 6/10 (Netflix)

Watched "The Midnight Club" with my niece. I gave her all my YA books (actually she moved into the room I used to live in when I was a kid, and I didn't bring that section of my bookshelves when I moved out) years ago, so she was familiar with the works of Christopher Pike.

Sue me, I had a lot of books when I was a kid. Pizza Hut was doing the Book-It program and I really got hooked reading because I liked those personal pan pizzas back then. And working on my family's farm kept me first in comic books, then cheap paperbacks when I was a kid. And after 2 older brothers, my hobby of reading was quieter than any of their hobbies. My mom and dad would rarely refuse buying me a book if I asked, it was kind of a break for them.

Anyway, back to the review. Not terrible. Those kids would be insufferable with their teen angst level... if they weren't all dying of various terminal diseases. As it is... we can put up with the drama as the "main" story unfolds around the mystery at the hospice where they live. But that winds up being... not exactly the highlight of the series. That goes to the anthology portion of the show. The setup is, they secretly meet at midnight to tell scary stories. So every episode, there is an extended short horror story where the cast plays various characters in the retellings, based usually on how they are feeling about one another at the time.

And that's the strength of the show as a whole. The main storyline and plot are frankly just interesting framing for a pretty solid anthology series that it takes too long to get to each episode. The anthology stories are the real strength of the show. It isn't Twilight Zone... but what is? If I were still teenage me, probably 9/10. As it is, not bad really.