I watched seven episodes of Hijack on Apple TV and what a waste. They could have wrapped that up in two episodes. The reason for the hijacking is one of the stupidest reasons I ever heard of for hijacking a plane. Here's a link to a review with spoilers if you're interested. Dusty thinks it's better than I do, but we agree on the ending.

Catching up on Grey's Anatomy and Aggretsuko. I think I've reviewed Aggretsuko before - it's an anime about a red panda who works as an accountant during the day, and at night sings death metal karaoke. There's a love story in there too. It's really cute and amusing. It's josei anime, which basically means it's geared toward adult women.

I took a break to watch another short josei anime, only 12 episodes. My Happy Marriage is basically a Cinderella story, with some magic and demons thrown in. It's set in approximately early 1900s Japan and is very interesting for that reason as well as being satisfying in a modern Cinderella kind of way.

All of these are on Netflix.

I’ve been watching Killing Eve on Pluto. Pluto usually plays a couple seasons of a show from CBS, Showtime, and BET to get you hooked, hoping you’ll subscribe to the streaming series, but they’re showing all of the seasons of Killing Eve. This works for me because I can catch episodes that I didn’t fully watch or understand the last time around.

The acting is good and the killings are usually surprising, creative, not too gruesome and even fun. Some of the killings don’t seem to be deserved, but every serial killer can’t be a vigilante like Dexter.

The scenes are dominated by women. There are men with important roles, but most of them rely on smart women who are decision makers. It's one of the subtle things I like about this series.

I started watching Young Sheldon on Netflix. I hate to sound like a fuddy duddy…. But I love the wholesomeness of it. I only gave a cursory glance at Big Bang because I found Sheldon so annoying! I wanted to see how his personality was formed. It’s been very sweet thus far. His sister, Melissa, steals the show!

I've been watching a slew of holiday movies with LGBTQ+ characters:

Exmas - Amazon Prime Video
A family that's really into the Christmas holiday invites their son's ex-gf to share in the holiday. She's been part of the family for 5 years, and the son has to stay out of town to work. He goes home at the last minute and hilarity ensues. His sister is a lesbian going through something similar, and that story gets plenty of screen time. This is a good one.

Christmas is Cancelled - Amazon Prime Video
Girl comes home for Christmas to find her dad is dating her high school nemesis. The bff is gender queer. I didn't mind spending 2 hours on this, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea.

The Happiest Season - Hulu
Gf loves the Christmas holidays, while her gf is ambivalent and content to stay home petsitting. 1st gf convinces other gf to travel home with her for the holidays, but doesn't bother to tell gf she isn't out to her family until they are on the road. I enjoyed this, although - lots of angst.

Let It Snow - Netflix
A group of teenagers tries to throw a Christmas party at the local Waffle Town. A couple of teens are lesbians and they spend the movie trying to get their act together. All the other (straight) teens do the same. This was a pretty good movie.

Idk if YouTube counts, but I discovered an amazing channel that I’m fascinated by.

It’s called Banijay History. It basically follows true cases that are being investigated by a forensic anthropologist in the UK. The difference is, she and her team investigate cases of the long dead. Like 400 years or more 😳 I admit, I stay up far too late watching. But it’s just fascinating. The science, the stories….

I watched Little Reindeer on Netflix because I found the idea intriguing, but also because of the hype. It is deeply disturbing, triggering, cringeworthy and NOT what I would call "dark comedy", as Netflix has billed it. It's just dark.

Basically, it's about a bartender/comedian who gets a stalker. Complexly, it is about so much more: abuser grooming and rape, questioning one's sexuality, mental illness, the people in his life who try to save him, self-worth, the unhelpful police system. What really makes this miniseries a serious contender for an Emmy, however, is the ending. So much becomes clearer - and even more complex - at the end.

Little Reindeer is definitely worth watching if you can work yourself up for it. It's only 7 episodes, so at least you get through them quickly. I highly recommend it. Now that I've read some reviews, I'll probably watch it again to catch all the things I missed the first time around.

I've been watching The Conners on Netflix. I never really got into Roseanne, because I just don't like the kind of "humor" that Roseanne Barr does. But ever since IRL she opened her mouth about some conspiracy theory (I think) and she went so far that the network (Spoiler Alert) killed her off, the show is much better. It's still about a dysfunctional family that (most of the time) does the best they can, but without so much hurtful sarcasm.

I've been watching Madam Secretary on Netflix, and it's really good! I never thought I would be able to get into it, but I don't know why - I was a huge fan of West Wing. It's not quite as good as WW, but what is?
Anyway, it's about an academic who gets called on to step into the Secretary of State role when the current SoS gets killed. She's smart and good at her job. She has a semi-functional family. She's friends with the president. I'm only halfway through the first season, but so far so good.

Another YouTube channel captured my attention. The channel is called Wes Wherever. It’s a young man who stealth camps in very strange and interesting places. The first episode I watched involved him camping on a rotary (also called a round about I learned) on the Cape. Very cool stuff.

More YouTube:

Old New England houses….about the obvious

And

Chateau de Purnon: about the lengthy renovation of an ancient, but badly neglected, chateau. Amazing history. Definitely educates the viewer about architecture and 18th century life.

Come As You Are
 

Come As You Are

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6722726/

Showing on Hoopla, Kanopy, Starz.

Three young men with disabilities hit the road in search of a brothel catering to people with special needs. Remake of the acclaimed Belgian film 'Hasta La Vista.'

Starring:Grant Rosenmeyer, rHayden Szeto and Ravi Patel
With: Gabourey Sidibe and Janeane Garofolo

Really enjoyed this.

I re-watched Cocktail. I wasn't especially wanting to watch Tom Cruise, but I'm really looking forward to my upcoming beach vacation, and I wanted to see something with the ocean in it. I had forgotten that most of this movie takes place in New York City, but there were some good tropical scenes.

I've also been watching Bahamas Life on the Roku Channel. It's one of those shows where a real estate agent shows a couple three different properties, and they pick one. It's pretty good for that kind of show. They show a wide range of prices, depending on what the couples want. It's got me thinking I want to retire to the Bahamas.

This was playing on the plane when I came home from Paris. I didn't like how it looked. However ...don't judge a movie by the title! Lol
I had to be talked into watching it. This is a movie, I bet my Mom watched, and we never talked about it. She would have told me it was good. Smiling.

I've been watching Anne Rice's The Mayfair Witches on Netflix. In a way, it's kind of disappointing, in that way that complex books that are condensed into a shorter film are disappointing. Several important plot points were deleted, several of my favorite characters were merged into a single role, and I'm not sure that someone who hadn't read the books would completely follow the movie. But still, as a reminder of a great series of books, it's a really good adaptation.

It's reminiscent of American Horror Story in tone and execution. Either there's a lot of CGI, or they spent a fortune on sets. Anne Rice's house on 1st Street in New Orleans is in the movie, although I don't know if they used it for the interior shots. The interior of the Pontchartrain Hotel looks authentic except for the interior of the elevator (which I have seen in person - and if you follow the story you will realize why they wouldn't want to use the original elevator in the film). If you like watching movies with actual historic filming locales, there's lots of eye candy in this film series.

For fans of the Anne Rice books, I definitely recommend it. For fans of AHS I recommend it, and for lovers of all things NOLA I recommend it. For people who are wary of the horror genre, I still tentatively recommend it; I would call it "horror lite". It's exciting, sexy and creepily beautiful, all at once.

We went with the Disney Channel today. Robin Hood (the cartoon) was cuter than I remembered. We're about to watch The Apple Dumpling Gang - who can go wrong with Don Knotts?

It's hard to find, but I finally caught the documentary The Six. There were eight Chinese passengers on the Titanic; six survived the sinking (hence the title). When the rescue ship landed at New York, these passengers (all men) disappeared. Researchers and historians in several countries tried to track them down.

To paraphrase it, because of exclusionary immigration policies, the six Chinese were not allowed to remain in the U.S, nor return to England. All six were put on a cargo ship bound for Cuba. One died there in 1914. Two others eventually returned to the chaos of China and disappeared. One other had too common a name to definitely trace.

That left two, one of whom did manage to get into Canada where he ran a restaurant for many years.

The most interesting was the last; a man in Wisconsin found that his father had in fact been on the Titanic from another relative. He had no idea, there was no speaking of it. All that time he thought his father was in China (the man himself was born when his father was already in his 70's.) With the researchers, he traced his father's early life in China and found distant relatives. The unassuming Wisconsin man was very moved from what his father had gone through.

The documentary was beautifully done and was an indictment on the long history of exclusionary policies that persisted into the 1940's.

I've been rewatching the last few seasons of NCIS, and I finally got to season 22, the last one and only one I haven't seen. Man, these people have gotten old! Of course, it's been 22 years. And, at the end of every episode there's a memoriam for someone who passed.

I sure am going to miss this show when it ends. I Googled it and no one seems to know if CBS will renew it for season 23.

I found out Northern Exposure is on Prime now….

I’m totally binging….

I love that show...

I'm watching JAG on Prime. It's interesting, but it's a little hard to take some scenes because there are always misogynistic men who give the female lieutenant a hard time. She always gets her own back, (including some fight scenes! she's really a badass - but a cutesy badass, sort of like if Julie-Your-Cruise-Director had a gun and knew some karate) so it's really kind of annoying in places. I don't know how long I'll stick with it.

I'm still binging JAG. It got much better after the first season, so much so that I bought the DVD set so that I can watch the episodes that are missing from Prime.

I just finished all 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory. I've been watching it forever, because I only watched one or two episodes a day with my morning coffee. It was so funny, made me really happy and gave me a great start to each day. I'm sorry to see it end, but they wrapped everything up well.

On: Kanopy
 

An afternoon watching a Jack Nicholson movie from 1990:

The Two Jake’s. :hangloose:

I’m watching Designated Survivor. I’ve tried to watch it twice now. This time I’m definitely getting into it.

I started watching Mobland on Prime. I got through two and a half episodes before I decided I couldn't go any farther. I like mob series and movies, usually, but not one single character in this show has any humanity whatsoever. I can't sympathize with a single one. If there really are people like this in the world, they should all just blow each other up. Anyway, I'll be re-watching some episodes of Queer Eye to get happy again and then moving on to something else.