Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-04-08 (Monday)

On Tue, 9 Apr 2024 22:30:42 -0700, Arthur Lipscomb
<arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

On 4/9/2024 5:35 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

I focused yesterday on finally, completely catching up on grading since
Spring Break (I believe I succeeded!). So I got through very little TV -
almost nothing at all. No, I did not watch the March Madness final, etc.
 
All I got through was:
 
soaps: DOOL - (Mon's ep.) A mostly pointless episode. There was nonsense
among NuTheresa, Alex and Brady (Alex correctly calls out Brady for
still being interested in Theresa, but Brady denies it). Steve admits
his role in Clyde Weston's escape to Kayla, who chews him out.
Constantine continues to work on dumb, naive Maggie. John talks over
being a "Manchurian candidate" assassin with Harris. Only thing of
interest: at the end, Clyde calls up Ava, so she still seems to be on
the hook to Clyde...
 
There was no Monday episode of GH on Hulu (was Monday's GH actually
preempted by dumb eclipse coverage yesterday?!?!!), just a teaser for
Tues' episode.
 
I also saw possibly one of the worst episodes of "Wheel of Fortune" I
have ever seen last night.
 
I didn't watch anything else - just left LMN movie on as background noise.
 
What did you watch?
 

>
Not much.  I'll try to do a catch up tomorrow.

I worked through the first four episodes of PARASYTE: THE GREY which
was South Korea's take on the manga about parasites that appear out of
nowhere which infect and take over humans. There was a two part story
out of Japan a few years ago which I enjoyed a bit more as both start
off with a similar premise.

The parasites enter a person's body, eat the brain and then simulate
the original person, but not well. They can manipulate their bodies as
though made out of plastic to attack others and eat human heads as a
food source. In the stories one person fails to get fully consumed by
the parasite. In the case of this story a young woman is attacked and
stabbed multiple times before being infected. The parasite tries to
save the woman and so being uses up all of it's energy so it can't
consume the brain and so just becomes part of her face. The story then
revolves around her dealing with this change and with the other
infected humans who regard her as a mutant.

What stands out to me most is the lady who is in charge of The Grey, a
special unit brought together to fight the parasites. The first couple
of episodes introduce her and her unit. What makes her stand out is
that she performs like a kid in a high school play told over and over
she needed to emote more until she lets it all out on the stage. (Or
if you need another example think Who's Line Is It Anyway when Colin
is the director telling the others they need to ham it up.)

What makes her stand out is that she's doing these presentations about
the parasites to the local cops and is truly going over the top in her
presentation while the rest of the cast is treating this like a
standard drama with no over acting. Which makes the lady's performance
stand out so much more. Then in the third episode she is back to
performing like everyone else. I get the feeling that she filmed her
part in the first two episodes in one day and was doing what she was
told. Then for the third episode someone up high in the production had
noticed how out of touch her performance was in comparison to everyone
else and said she needed to pull back her performance.

As for the show, it's okay. Not a great show but it watchable. Though
if you saw the original Parasyte films this story, while different,
isn't bringing anything truly new.

Oh, and for those worried about the film being Korean, you need not
worry. It's available with sub titles and with dubbed audio. A decent
dub if I do say so.

Other than that I haven't watched much other than Youtube clips over
the past few days.

What did you watch?