Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-05-25 (Sunday)

On 5/26/2025 4:33 PM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 5/26/25 8:38 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
 

What Did You Watch?

 Yesterday was the first day in months where I did no "active" work. (I did have to go into work for an exchange of graded materials, and ended up running into the graduation party for this year's science grads, but I did no actual work.)
 So, after that and errands, I watched:
 DOOL - Fri's ep. I feel really cheated here. The news articles stated that DOOL's producers were happy "because they were able to film final scenes for John Black". The articles clearly implied that they got dying Drake Hogestyn to come into to film some final scenes. But this is not what happened at all. Instead, they got an obvious stand-in to awkwardly try to film John Black's final scenes. As it is clearly not Hogestyn in these scenes - in fact, it's not even his voice - and so these scenes are not working for me at all. And this is all, unfortunately, carrying over into Monday's ep, and beyond...
    Anyway, "John" helps the others get the drug to save Bo's life (Peter Reckell actually shows up this episode, as does Kristian Alfonso), but in the process, "John" gets burned to a crisp (which is how they can avoid having Hogestyn in the scenes) saving the drug, and lies near death.
    But this is the other thing that bothered me - Hope pops in and out of this episode, and in and out of Salem! like she's still in town, but I want to say that last we heard Bo was being treated in *Europe*, or at least not anywhere near Salem! But Hope is there in back in, like, 5 minutes! Any Hope - via inter-dimensional travel, apparently! - gets Bo the drug (and saves him?!...).

Yeah that was a bit confusing, but today they mentioned that she was at a nearby clinic. With BO. However, it doesn't make sense that he's on death's door and they move him halfway across the globe?

 Andor (Disney+) - Episodes #2.1-2.3.
    I assume this was in glorious 4k, but I noticed repeated visual artifacts while watching these episodes. At first I thought it was a consequence of using ILM's "The Volume" background tech, but by later episodes I concluded that wasn't the problem and something else was causing the problems. I guess I'd better check both my Apple TV OS and the Disney+ app to make sure they are fully updated before watching the next batch of episodes. (Otherwise it might mean the OLED TV is the problem!!)
    I felt like this was a slow start to the season, but season #1 also had a slow start, so we'll see how it goes.

Yeah, this seemed really slow up til about halfway. Maybe by then you get accustomed to all the characters and get a clue about what's going on. So it did seem to pick up.

    This picks up a "year after" season #1 (and 4 BBY!), and like d*cks!! they don't give us a "Previously on 'Andor'..." teaser to remind us what happened in season #1!
    The gist?
    Andor steals a prototype TIE-fighter, but both the "caper" and the "handoff" go wrong, trapping Andor.
    Bix and co. are hiding out (as migrant farm workers!!) on another planet (is this the same planet that Ezra Bridger from "Rebels" is from?...), and Bix seems to be suffering PTSD. (I remember she was captured and tortured in season #1 - did something else happen to her?!)
    And Mon Mothma is forced to throw the wedding for her dumb daughter (Bronte Carmichael) that she doesn't want to throw, with Luthen breathing down her neck about her reluctant "accountant/lawyer" dude (Ben Miles). But, don't worry - Luthen is going to "take care of it"!
    Finally, the Empire needs to strip-mine a planet (for the Death Star, 'natch!), and so EVOL!!1! Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) has been assigned the task to make the planet's native population go POOF!
    This was all just OK - nowhere near the best of season #1. But it's still early yet, so hopefully they'll ratchet things up from here.
 What did you watch?