Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-30 (Thursday)

On 1/31/2025 5:46 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/31/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 Another day where going into work for a little bit turned into going to work for half a day. So, yesterday I only got through soaps, and then decided to close out the day as "mildly" as I could by watching "Shifting Gears":
 soaps: DOOL - Wed's ep. OK, this is kind of amusing - Belle is appalled that she and EJ had sex, so they bicker, then have sex *again*! and then get caught by Marlena! Marlena is disgusted and chews Belle out and kicks EJ out of her place! And Shawn witnesses it! Meanwhile, Chanel wakes up at Shawn's wondering if they slept together, and he tells her that they did not - that she just "slept it off" at his place. Shawn then encourages Chanel to "forgive" Johnny [roll], and later Chanel tells Johnny all of this... More shenanigans, as the Lady in White holds Ava captive, and sends Brady a text telling Brady that Ava has gone to Hong Kong indefinitely. (Can't wait until Ava gets free and clocks this bitch!)
    GH - Thur's ep. A scattered episode... Boooo! Brennan and Carly don't "do it", when she pumps the breaks! - Instead, they have cocktails in the snow, and Carly mostly pumps Brennan for info on/history of Brennan and Valentin... Jason doesn't believe Sasha's claim that Michael said she could raise the baby alone, and goes to discuss the situation with Diane Miller. Cody overhears part of Jason's convo with Sasha, and assumes Jason is the father, telling this to Maxie and Lulu... NuNuNuMolly again clashes with Cody, finding him disagreeable (which in soapland means they are destined to "do it" soon!). Later Alexis tells Molly and Kristina (who is annoying about it) that Sam was murdered... Brook Lynn has a long, rambling conversation with Lois (who is visibly uncomfortable by the topic) and Brook Lynn eventual decides to tell Chase that she gave a baby up for adoption (Gio!!) two decades ago.
 Then, because today is the first full "teaching day" of the semester, I needed to watch something "mild" before bed, so I watched "Shifting Gears":
 Shifting Gears (Hulu) - Episodes #2-4.
    The networks (this one is ABC) are up to their old tricks again, as episodes #2 and #3 were clearly shown out of order (IOW, flipped order). I thought ep. #4 might have also been shown out of order, but Wiki seems to confirm that it was supposed to be ep. #4 (even if it felt like ep. #2 in the order!).
    I thought all of these were better than the pilot - ep's #2 & #3 actually managed to do a better job of working in Seann William Scott and Daryl 'Chill' Mitchell into the action - though ep. #4 was the weakest of these and wasn't much better than the pilot (if at all!).
    The best of these was ep. #2, which apparently had Brenda Song as a guest star (she looks so different that I didn't even recognize her!), which probably explains why ABC showed this episode second, even though it should have gone third.
    The show is mostly following a pretty familiar formula where Allen "crotchety old guys" some conservative viewpoint or old guy behavior, which Kat Dennings needles him for, though she usually also gets hers by the end.
    This is breaking no new ground, but it's like a pair of comfy old socks, which makes it perfect for "mild" TV viewing when you don't want to be challenged by your TV show.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Babylon 5 (blu-ray) "Revelations" - Season 2, episode 2. This episode wraps up the left overs from the season 1 finale with Garibaldi waking up from his coma and identifying his attacker.  This one wasn't on my best of list.  Taking a closer look at my list, it only had 6 episodes for all of season 2. Season 2 has way too many good episodes.  I'll probably be adding episodes as I go.
"The Geometry of Shadows" -  Season 2, episode 3. Londo tries to get an endorsement from a Technomage (who looks remarkably like a famous TOS era Klingon).  Meanwhile Ivanova tries to keep the peace between the "Green" and "Purple" Drazi.  This isn't on the best of list either.  At this point I'm literally just reading the Wikipedia episode summaries and going with what looks like a good one.
"The Coming of Shadows" - Season 2, episode 9.  Londo  asks Mr. Morden for a favor to get rid of a Narn colony and now the Centauri and Narn are at war.  And so it begins.
Gropos - Season 2, episode 10. B5 is used as a staging ground for a Earth military operation to help prop up an alien government.  I was on the fence about watching this one.  Ultimately I decided to watch it because it starred Paul Winfield as the commanding officer of the military campaign, and I thought there was going to be some action scenes showing the invasion.  Unfortunately, not much in the action department, but if I had skipped it, it would have bugged me.
Companion (theatrical) This is a hard movie to discuss without spoilers.   Even discussing the genre could get into spoilers.  I'll talk around the plot.  The first trailer for this was extremely vague.  It said the movie was from the team who made, "Barbarian" and the tone of the trailer was nonstop scenes of violence.  The money shot in the teaser trailer was probably Sophie Thatcher sitting at a table with one arm handcuffed and the other extended as Jack Quaid moves a candle under her hand setting it on fire as she leaves her arm there burning while silently crying.  They should have stopped there!  Unfortunately they released a second trailer which got into heavy spoiler territory.  The second trailer also reminds me of that fake trailer for "The Shining" that presents it as a romantic comedy.  That's basically what they did with the second trailer. I think that's the advertising campaign they are going with now, that it's a comedy.  AVOID the current advertising campaign!  This is a movie that it's best to go in not knowing what to expect.  That being said, even the second trailer did not spoil everything.
This is well worth going in knowing as little about it as possible.  But if you want a peak, the teaser trailer gives a pretty good idea of the tone without actually spoiling any plot details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhcLjiVtgco