Category: Television

The Acolyte Episodes 1 and 2 Mini-Review

It’s always a good day when there is new Star Wars content to devour. Am I right, or am I right?

Being sick in the springtime absolutely sucks, and last night I went from feeling like I might be getting better to feeling like I was definitely getting worse. I was exhausted after a long and stressful afternoon at work and when I tried to watch the two new episodes of the new show I found myself nodding off. That is not a review of the quality of the episodes, but a comment on the poor quality of my brain last night.

I made it through the first episode and about half of the second when I gave up and went to sleep. This morning while doing my morning exercise silliness I started over and watched both episodes all the way through.

My spoiler free review is that I am intrigued. I like it so far. I am looking forward to seeing what comes next. Is the dude with the red lightsaber a Sith or is he something else? Who is he? We haven’t even seen his face yet (and we saw him in the trailer so his existence is not a spoiler). Also, what did the victims of the crimes being investigated do to earn what they’ve gotten? What’s the back story? They gave us a tiny bit of motivation but there has to be a lot more.

I’m really looking forward to seeing more of this show. I needs to know what’s going on, and I needs to see some lightsaber fighting. Use the Force, folks!

I like that we’re seeing a period in Star Wars history that we’ve never touched on before. We saw the Jedi and the Republic in the prequels, but the wheels were already coming off the wagon by the time those stories start. This new show takes place about a century earlier, when the Jedi were at the top of their game and the Republic wasn’t a political mess yet. I want to see more.

Okay this part is going to get a little spoilery, so if you are being cautious about such things and haven’t watched the first two episodes yet you might want to stop reading now.

I will be as vague as I can, but there will be spoilers after this point.

You have been warned.

My one issue is not with the show, it’s with the fandom. I have watched some youtube videos and listened to some podcasts in prep for this. There is a book series and some comics and some other extended universe things dealing with the High Republic period, and many of the preview things I read/saw/listened to reference those stories extensively. One common thread was how the Jedi were different than they were in the prequels, and many referenced characters that we knew were crossing from books to the show.

One frequent comment from one youtube source kept harping on how the Jedi aren’t as hung up on attachments being bad during this period. Then in the first episode there were 3-4 moments when one Jedi says to another, what’s up with you being so attached to this person/place/thing. Don’t you know that’s bad and will lead to problems? Heh. I guess they are has hung up on attachments after all, eh? Another talked about how one character was this amazing warrior and how we were all going to love getting to see that character do some kick ass Jedi-Fu and how awesome it would be… then six minutes into episode one that character is gone. HA! I guess we won’t be getting much excitement watching that particular Jedi kick ass, eh?

My point being is that expectations are silly. It’s a new show, a new time period, and I don’t care how many novels or comics you’ve read, it’s a new setting and new characters. Unfortunately there will now be a significant chunk of what is already a super toxic, asshole fanbase who are going to HATE this show because it isn’t exactly what they expected after reading the books. That sucks, but we all know it’s going to happen. My hope is that I can avoid such negativity and just enjoy the show for what it is. Something 100% brand spanking new.

Can’t wait to get episode three next week. Bring it on, Disney+.

Correction… Already

Hey, remember that post from earlier today when I said we were planning the next two vacations already?

We’ve already scrapped one of them. California in the fall has been eliminated. We might do a staycation at that time, or maybe something short that’s close to home. The reason? The second planned trip, Florida early in the new year, is morphing into a major deal. We’re going to take the budget for Cali in the fall and roll it in to Florida in the winter. We have buy in from one of the kids. The other one will still be in school but might be able to come along for part of the time. That would be awesome. Awesome, I tells ya!

In other news that is also related to that same post from earlier today, I feel sick! My head cold was much better yesterday, then a little worse throughout the day today but not too bad. Around the time I sat down to dinner it decided to kick me in the balls and it got so much worse. I can’t breath through my nose anymore. It feels like my nasal passages have been completely bricked up. This sucks. Even worse, dinner went bad on me tonight… twice. Twice? WTF, bypassed stomach? Two bouts of the foamies complete with portions of dinner coming back for a return visit? (TMI, I know) All while being unable to breath through my nose? WTF, body?

The good news is, the first episode (or is it episodes?) of the brand new Star Wars show The Acolyte was supposed to be released on Disney+ about 23 minutes ago. I’m off to get my Jedi Knight fix on, kids! May the Force Be With Us, and our vacation plans, and my nose! Ah-Choo!

What Am I Doing?

What am I doing? I don’t know. I feel like the universe is in a weird place right now (yes, I know that mathematically that sentence does not make sense). I don’t know.

I had the opportunity to play my guitar tonight and I sat on my ass on the couch watching TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood. I’m trying to get back into that. While I was on the AppleTV app formerly known as HBO Max I figured I’d maybe start watching The Leftovers again. I watched the first episode. I’ll go to my grave saying that the second season of that show is television perfection. The first and third seasons are great too. The first season is just so soul crushingly depressing though. It is tough to get through and I suspect that watching one episode is part of the reason why I feel like I am in a screwy state of mind right now.

The point of all of this though is that I could have played guitar tonight and I did not. Ugh.

I had two slices of a small pizza for dinner tonight. The second one came back for another view. Oh yeah, TMI Alert here. Yeah. It went down, but it didn’t stay down. Shit. I ate too much too fast and paid the price.

I’m on the youtubes right now watching a photography channel. It’s a pro photographer telling me I should use Aperture Priority instead of Manual Mode. But what if I want to use Manual Mode? I use Aperture Priority a lot with one of my film cameras. The term Aperture Priority wasn’t invented yet when the camera was built, it’s called Auto on the camera, but it’s the same thing.. I use it because the light meter inside the view finder is often hard to read. I like using Manual though. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. The video also says to keep the aperture away from the extremes. Don’t use f2.0 or f16, use f5.6 or f8. You don’t get the blurry background as much as you do with f2, but you get some which is more than f16 gives. The video says the images will be clearer in the middle ground apertures. I think I had figured that one out on my own and was starting to come around to this way of thinking. Then again… I really dig all that blurry background.

Miss Robin Sparkles says hello.

It’s Monday night, just about bed time. Almost 10:00pm. At this time four days from now we’ll be about seven hours into our road trip to Florida. That’s the main reason why I am in such a weird headspace tonight. I just want to go. I want to leave now. I don’t want to worry about work or anything outside of travel. I just want to go. I have a shit load of stuff to do before we go, but I just want to go.

Ugh… I should just go to bed.

Looking ahead to tomorrow. There is likely going to be an NHL predictions post for the third round. I am hoping the Edmonton Oilers will win their game seven tonight against Vancouver. If that happens there will be exactly one team that I kinda like in the Conference Finals. If they lose, there will be three teams I hate one one team I don’t care about. My heart is officially no longer in the NHL playoffs at all.

Also, expect lots of posts where I talk about how I just want to jump in the car with Jen, my wife, and head out on our trip. I have vacation-itis right now. Big time.

New Who

Two new episodes of Doctor Who were released last night. We just watched them both.

Spoiler free mini-review:

The first of the two, Space Babies, is good. Adorable and a little dark at times. Good stuff.

The second episode, The Devil’s Chord… not so much. I found myself looking at my watch a lot and thinking, “is it over yet?”

Down By One in the Second

We’re about five minutes into the second period and The Bruins trail the Panthers 1-0. We’re going on the power play though, so let’s be optimistic.

Jen and I watched The Offer on Paramount+ this week. It’s actually the second time we watched it. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the story of the making of The Godfather. Now that we’re finished with the show we’re watching the movie. Clemenza just left the gun but took the cannoli’s.

The Godfather is on the living room TV. The Bruins are on my iPhone via the streaming app formerly known as HBO Max. I’m trying to multitask over here, but it’s tough when the movie is so legendary and the iPhone screen is so teeny tiny. Even if it is an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The Bruins did not score on the power play. Crud.

Early Game Three Stress

The Bruins vs Panthers series comes home to Boston for game three tonight. The Bruins took game one down in Florida, then got smoked in game two. The hope is that Pastrnak’s late third period fight in game two might be enough to wake everyone up after the bad game. Maybe that, plus a little home cooking… We need a win tonight, Bruins.

I haven’t been able to actually watch any of these games yet as we no longer have a functioning cable TV account. The games have been on ESPN and I can’t stream that network at the moment. Tonight’s game is supposed to be on Max, but we’ll probably be blacked out. Maybe I can setup a VPN somewhere?

We’re still about four and a half hours away from puck drop, but my nerves are already gearing up. The playoffs stress me out, man. I tells ya.

In other viewing news, the new season of Doctor Who hits Disney+ tonight at 7:00pm Eastern. I believe we’ll get two episodes today. Dark Matter on AppleTV+ has released two episodes and I am hooked. The premise is very similar to the recently released Constellation, except (to this point at least) Dark Matter is about 123612346147134 times better… and I liked Constellation. Here’s hoping it stays good.

Another down side for tonight’s Bruins game (pardon me for steering things back onto the target topic) is that I am totally freakin’ exhausted right now. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stay awake until the end of the game. I got six hours of sleep last night, which is usually enough to get me through the next day, but I feel like I needed 16 hours last night. Whether I am watching the game or just following the play-by-play updates on NHL.com, I will very likely be out like a light before the game ends. 9:00pm bedtimes are common for both middle school kids and middle aged red heads.

Go Bruins.

Magnificent!

The concert tonight was incredible. We didn’t think we were going to see Bellana at all, but Jen ran into her on the way in and we both saw her on the way out. She was smiles from ear to ear. I am so proud of her! She’s amazing!

Now we have to turn our attention to the friggin Bruins who are scoreless after two periods. Also, TBS is celebrating Star Wars day by playing all of the movies. We’re back in the hotel room watching Return of the Jedi. The Ewoks are about to capture Chewbacca and his stomach. I have the game on in a browser. Hopefully the hotel’s shitty wifi will be up to the challenge.

Suddenly Best Friends

This morning they were chasing each other around like maniacs, each trying desperately to kick the other’s ass.

Now?

In unrelated news, I mentioned earlier that I finished Star Wars: The Bad Batch this morning. Last night I finished Penny Dreadful. The night before I finished Snowpiercer. I’m halfway through season eight of The X-Files. Last night I started season two of Extraordinary. New episodes of Star Trek Discovery come out on Thursdays so there will be a new one tomorrow. I started watching Baby Reindeer on Netflix because I heard it was excellent. I’m halfway through and I think it’s good… maybe? It’s really tough to watch though. By design, I think. I also started re-watching The Last of Us and speaking of tough to watch. It is fantastic but gut wrenching even on the second view.

I feel like I am running out of shows to obsess over. Star Wars: Tales of the Empire comes out on Saturday. The new season of Doctor Who kicks off one week later. Maybe I should get back to Torchwood and Pennyworth again. I don’t know why I stopped watching those shows, but it has been a while. I guess I’ll just have to poke around Netflix and Hulu and find a couple more shows. This is the golden age of television, after all.

The Bad Batch is Over

This morning, while doing my usual morning exercise, I watched the new episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch that was released today. Not only is it a new episode, it’s the last new episode. Ever. The series finale wrapped everything up nicely.

Well… nicely may not apply to everything it wrapped up. No spoilers, but some of the stories didn’t so much wrap up as just end. It was a good episode and it closed out a very good season. The first two seasons were a little on the hit or miss side, though more hits than misses, but season three was a banger from start to finish.

There was a lot of speculation on spin offs and it does open the door to something, but not any of the things people were guessing. Those things could still happen as there is a lot of ground to cover. I’m still hoping for a Ventris/Omega buddy cop show, but today’s episode didn’t hint at anything in that direction.

There were a couple of dark moments, but nothing even remotely close to what I had predicted. When the first episode of the first season premiered, I made a prediction on how I thought the show should end. I expected it to answer the question, why are there no clones around in the original movies? The reason, of course, being that George Lucas hadn’t come up with the idea of a clone army yet. He mentioned The Clone Wars in the original movie but never gave any details at all. It wasn’t until the second of the prequel movies that we learned what that name meant. Back in the 70’s and 80’s? Ol’ George didn’t have a clue.

That’s the real reason why there are no clone troopers in episodes 4 through 6, but what is the retconned story reason? My prediction, after watching season one episode one of The Bad Batch, was that the ending to the series would include The Emperor giving an order along the lines of Order 66 which would result in all of the clones just dropping dead. Poof, all gone. Dead clones everywhere. No muss, no fuss, no clones around for A New Hope. That would have been dark. Really dark. Alas I was wrong with my prediction (big surprise there, right?) and as the series ended there are still clones all over the place.

Maybe if there is a spin off my predicted Order 67 (or whatever) might come to pass. We’ll have to see, my fellow Star Wars fanboys and fangirls. We’ll have to see.

I Forgot!

There’s a new episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch today and I haven’t watched it yet! I forgot! What’s wrong with me? I am going to have to turn in my Star Wars Uber Nerd membership card after a failure like this.

While doing my faux jogging thing this morning I watched an episode of The X-Files instead of watching The Bad Batch. I am so sorry, oh my Star Wars overlord and master. I have let you down.

I am going to watch it now though. I just cut a sliver of sugar free chocolate cake to eat while I watch. We should all watch it together. I’d set up a watch party but that would take too long. Instead, everyone just go to Disney+ right now. Bring up season three episode 13 and hit play on the count of three.

Ready?

1…

2…

Five! (Three, sir) THREE!