Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-08 (Wednesday)

On 1/9/2025 10:04 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/9/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 Unfortunately, I started getting sick and feverish yesterday evening. So I feel like crap.
 

I didn't feel so well myself yesterday and spent a good chunk of it it bed.

Before that, I had a work meeting yesterday.
 So I primarily continued catching up on soaps, and got through another (lousy!) Lifetime flick:
 soaps: Y&R - I think I may be all caught up here. Primarily these episode concerned the Newmans (and Mariah) confronting EVOL! Ian Ward. Auntie Jordan doesn't murder Sharon, deciding to keep her for insurance... Just as Filis[sic!] swears off revenge against Sharon, Ian and Jordan intend to frame Filis for Sharon's murder!... P.S. This incarnation of Faith is kind of whiny and annoying.
    DOOL - Chanel is a dope, and quits the soap-within-a-soap over Johnny's and Joy's "cheating" (they didn't even do the deed!!). The new Lady Whistleblower continues to cause havoc in the soap-within-a-soap, and dumb Stephanie has been tasked with figuring out who the new Lady Whistleblower is. The identity of the new Lady Whistleblower is revealed, and it's exactly who you would think it would be. Bonnie wants to get Hattie her old job back on the soap.
    GH - Still not clear if they are going to kill Michael off, or put him in an indefinite coma or something. But most of this episode is people like Carly, Josslyn and Nina & Willow finding out about Michael's severe burns... Joss wants revenge against Dex's killer... Brook Lynn and Chase discuss with others their difficulties in getting pregnant - they remind us that Brook Lynn (and Dante) had a baby years ago that was given up for adoption - could it be Gio?!
 Vanished in Death Valley (LMN via OnDemand) - First off, Spectrum OnDemand is actually the worst at ad-insertion in stuff like this: they're worse than Pluto or Hulu or whoever - ads get dropped randomly into scene, and most of the ads are very short - only like 5 seconds long - which just breaks up the flow of scenes.
    Aside from that, this flick wasn't very good.
    Based on the opening, I was hoping the two storylines would merge with the two teen girls being kidnapped by the same people. No such luck.
    Instead, they went with the much more cliched story - bratty teen (Ava Bianchi) of mean mom (Aryè Campos) disappears in Death Valley when kidnapped by the mean mom in the film's opening (Katherine Joan Taylor) whose fight with her bratty daughter (Brinly Marum) led to the latter's accidental death. So mean mom in the film's opening is determined to "replace" her dead daughter with Bianchi's bratty teen.
    This was nothing we haven't seen before from Lifetime/LMN, and done better before.
 The last Lifetime flick I need to go back and catch up on, "Dressed to Kill" (2025), is not available OnDemand, so I will have to record its reairing on LMN this Sunday night.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Abbot Elementary (ABC) - "Volunteers" - Season 4, episode 9.  This is the crossover episode with "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."  The gang from "Sunny" are sentenced to community service and spend it volunteering at Abbot Elementary.  Wackiness ensues.  It was OK.
The Bear (Hulu) "Braciole" - Season 1 finale.
SPOILERS!
This episode opens with Carmy giving a 7-minute-long dramatic monologue at an AA meeting.  I guess this dramatic monologue is what won Jeremy Allen White his Emmy for best comedic actor.  Anyway, earlier in the season Carmy learned that his brother borrowed $350,000 from a family friend (Oliver Platt) who I guess is also a criminal of some sort. Carmy discovered that his brother hid the money instead of spending it. I have *no* idea what he hid the money or what the original plan for it was.  But Carmy decides to take the money so he can open a new restaurant called, The Bear.  And Syd forgives Carmy and returns to the restraint for a happy ending.
I then binged several episodes of season 2.  So far season 2 has been a whole other animal compared to season 1.  If I was watching weekly instead of binging all at once I probably wouldn't have kept with it. While season 1 was an interesting drama about the owner/staff at a greasy spoon restaurant trying to be more, season 2 so far has been about Carmy and Syd trying to open a new restaurant.  The staff are more like afterthoughts now and have to be written into the episodes in convoluted ways.  The second season isn't bad, but it feels so slow and drawn out.  The second season is also full of celebrity cameo episodes that have nothing to do with the restaurant.  There was one episode, "Fishes" that was just a dramatic dinner with a bunch of celebrity cameos playing Carmy's family and none of the regular restaurant staff. This episode earned Emmy Awards for Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis for their dramatic performances in this "comedy" series.  I probably don't need to mention there was not a single joke in that episode.  This is a *drama* series!!
I made it to episode 7, "Forks" which is probably the best episode so far. "Forks" takes place at a fancy restaurant that Richie visits to observe how they operate but instead of appreciating the opportunity he complains and treats it like punishment. The number of strings Carmy would have had to pull to get Richie in that restaurant to observe their operation went right over his head. It's mind boggling he would consider it punishment.