What TV SHOWS are you watching?

The stars lined, up and so I saw a childbirth scene in a tv show for three consecutive days. Girls, then The Head, and finally Star Trek Next Generation. The one on Girls was weird, the one on The Head was suspenseful, and the one on Star Trek was amusing, because Worf was handling the situation based entirely on one holograph experience during a Starfleet Academy class on first aid.

I watched Slow Horses after a trusted friend recommended it. It's very much a British spy series along the lines of John LeCarre, but with relationship drama. Slough House is where spies who have screwed up get sent. Gary Oldman plays the broken post-cold war supervisor, and is wonderful. He is an alcoholic and just wants to be in a place where he can't hurt anyone after some massive failure in Berlin or somewhere. I couldn't stop watching it.

I also binge-watched Shrinking With Jason Segal, Harrison Ford, and other actors I should know. It's an extended love letter to therapy, about Jason Segal trying to recover, poorly, from his wife's death by a drunk driver, played by that angry soccer player in Ted Lasso. It has been called a dramedy. It's sort of therapy porn, with characters hurting each other, but then forgiving, learning and moving on, often within a single episode.

The janitor from Scrubs is in it, as is Perry Cox's ex-wife, Jordan Sullivan, who I didn't realize I was in love with until this show. It can get a little sappy, and I wish I had progressed as much as these characters after a year of therapy with a student therapist (it was still good), but I like the characters a lot and am looking forward to the third season. Harrison Ford plays the gruff head of the clinic. Jessica Williams as the other therapist is hilarious and Luke Tennie as the Iraqi vet with anger management issues is also solid. I'm not saying it's perfect but it was compelling and fun.

One question I have is, "Do people casually drop the f-bomb this frequently in everyday life, or is this just lazy dialogue?"

Shrinking is good. It's a little OTT on the whole up and down drama, but it's to good effect for the show. I think the acting is pretty good overall. It's hard to turn down a Bill Lawrence show for me, it hits the right notes to make me like and familiarize myself with the characters, which as a certain type of person really helps me laugh at the comedy beats... same with Ted Lasso, same with Scrubs.

Speaking of AppleTV+ shows, my wife and I are both deep into Severance. Man, what a crazy fun show. My wife and I rarely have the same taste in TV shows. I think the last thing we watched together was Justified (and I think the only reason she watched that was because of Timothy Olyphant and his hat). It's really nice to have a show that we both like, and to look forward to the new episode every week, and then to talk and theorize about it afterward. Reminds me of those long-ago days of our Lost obsession.

Also on AppleTV+, I'm catching up on season 2 of Silo. I'm about half-way through the season, and it's pretty good. But it's suffering a bit from not enough Rebecca Ferguson. She OWNS this show, and it has sidelined her for big chunks of the story. Not a good decision, because nobody else on this show is a fraction as fun to watch as she is. Just watching her engineer her way through shit is great. Anyway, still a cool show that seems like it has a pretty firm grasp on the mystery-box nature of its plot (unlike the aforementioned Lost).

AppleTV+ is a hidden gem in the streaming wars. Great content, especially for sci-fi fans. No ads, and about half the price of what Netflix is charging these days.

Huh. I've been really underwhelmed by almost everything on Apple+, with the notable exception of Severance. The first season was excellent and the second has been solid so far. But everything else has been really "meh" for me. I was excited about the idea of Foundation, since I've read the books, but the changes they made to it in order to bring it to this medium just kinda left it feeling dry. I got four episodes in and just didn't feel compelled to come back. Similarly, things like Slow Horses and Invasion that would normally be really interesting to me just haven't hit me for some reason. I've watched a couple episodes of both and just walked away.

I can understand the challenges that Foundation represented (timeline of millennia; Asimov writing that is often two people talking in a room (about high concept stuff, admittedly, but still)) but the rest of it just seems like it lacks edges when it comes to storytelling.

Always late to the party, I am watching Twin Peaks. I caught part of an episode way back in the day, and dismissed it as using slow pacing and studied cinematography to constantly give the misleading impression that something important was about to happen. Now I am watching it with fresh eyes and I am uncertain how deep I will go down this rabbit hole. The first two episodes delivered a murder mystery with somewhat slow pacing and banal dialogue that was awkwardly delivered. But there was also good cinematography and pretty faces. The third episode started a downward spiral into weirdness, but the basic structure seems to be a combination of murder mystery and soap opera, with eerie overtones. I am guessing that Dark Shadows and Archie comics were both influences on David Lynch and Mark Frost while they were working on this show. Now I am partway through episode 4 and feeling hooked, but it seems possible that the overt weirdness could completely derail the narrative at some point and drive me off.

Season 2 is somewhat weak, but if you can make it to 3, the whole thing comes together in a pretty marvelous way

I watched the entire original series, but I recall by the end thinking "fuck this nonsense"

Did you watch season 3, Mark? Came out in 2017.

I started that, and fell off after a couple of episodes.

Finished the season of Dexter: Original Sin. It went some dumb places, but overall I liked it. Looking forward to more.

Watched the first two episodes of the new season of Yellowjackets... and it's.... fine. Nothing great. This show has never approached the highs of season 1.

I am six episodes into the second season of Twin Peaks. It's better than I expected. The last two episodes of season one were very enjoyable, as a whole bunch of schemers crashed into one another. Season two is still intriguing, but the pace drags at times as Lynch strains to stretch out the story for a full 22-episode season. This is a show made for binging, as immersion in the show helps in keeping all the characters and plots straight. It also makes the weirdness less off-putting.

Yellowjackets is still on my radar, but I feel like I don't want to watch it at the same time as Twin Peaks, despite the definite differences between the two shows.

My wife and I are rewatching Northern Exposure, using an episode guide my college buddy wrote that tells us which episodes can be skipped. Some of the better episodes are like quirky little indie films.



This is neither here nor there, but in the time I have been visiting this site I have lost the ability to distinguish the edit icons without the aid of reading glasses. Also, I picked up my first pair of hearing aids the other day. In a week I get an MRI of my prostate. Carry on my wayward sons.

Northern Exposure was pretty good. I should rewatch it.

I have been thinking about Northern Exposure lately, while watching Twin Peaks. My distant memories of Northern Exposure are of a show that is similar to Twin Peaks, only replacing the dark and eerie elements with more lighthearted humor.

Second season of Twin Peaks held my interest, though it got strange near the end. Then I watched the movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It partially clarified a couple of weird things from season two and faithfully delivered a Laura Palmer prequel. But the show was a dark, eerie parody of a soap opera, while the movie was a strange horror movie. Now I am on to the third season of Twin Peaks.