Tag: Television

The Handmaid’s Tale Finale

The final episode of The Handmaid’s Tale is out. I watched it before work this morning. I have two spoiler-free (or if not spoiler-free, then spoiler-light) thoughts.

First, I was curious about how they were going to set things up for the sequel show, The Testaments. I thought maybe they would resolve some story lines in ways that would change things for the next show. They did not. They left almost everything right where it should be. I was of two minds on that. On the one hand I thought it was good because I want the next show to succeed. On the other… I really wanted to see some happy endings that would have ruined The Testaments. Maybe not ruined, but significantly altered. So… yeah.

The other take away is pretty much the same as last week’s episode. Did I ball my freakin’ eyes out while watching it? Why yes, yes I did.

I seriously hate what this phenomenal show does to me. I don’t want to feel those feelings. I don’t want to live in a world that is sliding out of control toward the seemingly inevitable Gilead outcome. Can’t reality just fast forward through all of that shit and treat it like an archeological study?

Yeah, it’s a fantastic show and my tears and I are going to miss it when it’s gone.

Art Imitating Life

Sometimes I hate it when art has to imitate life. I hate it even more when the people being called out metaphorically by said art are too fucking stupid to realize the art is talking about them.

Mild spoilers for Andor season two episode nine. If you haven’t seen the episode, or if you haven’t seen Star Wars Rebels season three episode 18 (I think that’s the one), stop reading. You have been warned.

Last chance to bail (Bail Organa, if you will)…

In Star Wars The Return of the Jedi, a rebel leader gives a briefing spelling out the details of the second Death Star. It’s the “many Bothans died” speech. That character’s name is Mon Mothma. She was a senator who became one of the primary leaders of the Rebel Alliance. She shows up in a deleted scene in Revenge of the Sith, then she shows up for real in Rogue One and Rebels and Ahsoka and she’s one of the main characters in Andor. In a novel that is canon and takes place after Return of the Jedi she is actually elected to be the first Chancellor of the New Republic. Pretty sure that’s the job she’s doing in her brief scene in Ahsoka, but I have to go back and watch that entire series again just to be sure.

In Rebels we learn that her last act as a senator was to give a speech where she called out the Emperor as the bad guy for the whole galaxy. She gets chased out of the capital and smuggled to the rebel base by our Rebels heroes. Once at the rebel base she gives another speech that basically calls for revolution and the rest is Star Wars history.

This week’s third episode of Andor gave us the speech at the senate. It was perfect. Both in terms of the story itself and for our current shit show of a country. Replace the name Emperor Palpatine with Donald Trump, or even Orange Shit Clown, and it stops being fiction and starts being reality.

The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

“This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Palaza. What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we’ve helped create, the monster who will come for all of us soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”

Like I said… I hate it when art has to imitate life, and I hate it even more when the monster and his cult are too fucking stupid to realize they are the monsters and not the heroes. Fucking maga cult bullshit.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Season Two Episode Eight

Two new episodes of Andor down and still one to go. My spoiler free review of episode eight:

HOLY SHIT! Andor s2e8. Was that the most intense 40 minutes of television ever? I say again, HOLY SHIT! I swear my heart rate increased by about 300% over the course of the episode.We are the Gor!

— Rob (@robj1971.bsky.social) 2025-05-07T03:16:48.385Z

I was planning on watching seven and eight tonight and then watching nine in the morning. It’s 11:20pm now and I cannot wait until tomorrow. On to episode nine, right now. HOLY SHIT!

Another Crazy Day

Hope you are all having a happy, fascism-free Tuesday.

I was having a calm, yet somewhat productive day today. The minute I finished lunch all hell broke loose. It became a crazy, hectic, tense, productive day. You know how it is.

Now I am about 20 minutes away from the end of my work day and hopefully things are calming down. Everything seems covered at the moment. Breath in, breath out. You’ve got this, Robert.

I have half a personal day booked for tomorrow. Robin the Cat has a vet appointment. Just her annual check up. I have meetings booked all afternoon though, so it’s going to be busy tomorrow too. At least I’ll have three episodes of Star Wars Andor to plow through before the work day starts. They come out at 9:00 Eastern time tonight. I am ready. There was a new episodes of The Handmaids Tale over night last night. I watched it while doing my morning exercise today. It was excellent. Here’s hoping Andor holds serve on the which-show-about-people-fighting-fascism-is-more-awesome sweepstakes. At this point it’s anyone’s game.

Oh good. 10 minutes away from quitting time and it just started to rain. It’s freakin’ pouring out. Good, good.

No Spoilers

It’s frustrating. I watched last night’s three episodes of Star Wars Andor and I want to write a 100,000 word essay on how incredible the show is right now but I don’t want someone who hasn’t watch the new episodes yet to accidentally come to this page and read what I wrote and get spoiled.

I want to talk about what’s happening on Ghorman. I want to share what I was thinking about Bix’s future and how wrong I was (for now at least). I want to rave about the Krennic/Mon scene and how fantastic it was. I want to praise Disney for the Vel/Cinta scene and Vel’s rant at the end. I want to mention how weirdly relieved I was when Syril went home to Coruscant. I want to admit that I had to fight back the urge to literally cheer out loud when Bix and Cassian completed their mission at the end of episode six.

I suppose I could go to reddit and find their Andor sub and write it all out there, but there has been so much shit posted on the other Star Wars shows from people who hated the show based on things that had nothing to do with the show (looking at you, assholes who spewed bile at Acolyte). I just don’t want to be any place that would draw people like that. I am sure I could find other forums somewhere but I don’t know.

I am listening to a two hour podcast episode recapping episodes four, five, and six (Children of the Watch). Once that’s finished (about 25 minutes from now) I might just start watching the three episodes again. I am that invested in this show right now. I just don’t want it to end.

In the Office

Today is Wednesday and Wednesday is an in-the-office-day. Welcome to Wednesday in the office. Here’s a cat:

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Did you see the season premier(s) of Star Wars Andor last night? Three episodes. I watched them all before I conked out for the night. I only got about five hours of sleep because somehow I managed to get up when my alarm went off without hitting snooze 10 times. How did I do that?

My spoiler free review of Andor season two episodes one through three, which covers the year BBY4 (four years before the first Death Star battle from the original Star Wars movie [so… 1973? Haha!]):

I dug these three episodes so much that I cannot wait for the next three episodes that are coming out next Tuesday!

There you go. There’s my review. Let’s celebrate with another cat pic:

I took that picture last night while sitting up in bed watching Andor on my laptop. The cat is laying against my foot. Perv.

Okay. Time to publish this puppy and dig into that customer issue that I am covering while the assigned programmer is on vacation. Nose to the grindstone. Crack that whip (give the past the slip).

Three Minutes

It is 8:57pm. In three minutes Disney+ is going to release the first three episodes of season two of Andor. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stay awake long enough to watch all three, but I am sure as hell going to try.

Three episodes tonight, three episodes, next Tuesday, three episodes the Tuesday after that, and then three episodes the Tuesday after that. We are effectively getting a new Star Wars movie every week for four weeks.

I am not one to put too much faith into reviews, but season two of Andor is currently at 98% on rottentomatoes.com. Yeah… it’s going to be good. Really good.

It’s now 9:00pm on Tuesday April 22, 2025. Those first three episodes should be out now. I’ll let you know how they go. No spoilers, of course.

Patriots Day

Happy Patriots Day. No, we don’t have a holiday for a shitty football team. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a state holiday to remember the start of the American Revolution. Fucking irony, eh?

Today is Marathon Monday in Boston. As a result, it is also the day we have the weirdness known as the 11:00am Red Sox game. The game starts early so that it ends at about the same time the Marathon runners are reaching Kenmore Square. You go to Fenway Park, watch the Red Sox, leave Fenway Park and head for the Green Line station and catch the leaders as they fly by. I’ve only participated in this once but it was a really cool experience.

Every year when Patriots Day comes around I go to work like it’s a normal Monday but I promise myself, I full on swear to myself, that next year… next year I am going to go to the North Bridge re-enactment of the first shots of the American Revolution in Minuteman National Park in Concord, MA and then I am going to go to the Red Sox game and then I am going to watch a bit of the Boston Marathon and then I will still be home before dinner.

And then every year I forget all about it until I wake up and realize it is Patriots Day again and I forgot about all of it. Oh well.

So the Pope died on Easter Sunday, eh? Wouldn’t it have been more on brand if he had died on Good Friday? Sorry… too soon?

I can’t help but be flippant about everything on Earth today. On top of the continuing collapse of American Democracy, I watched season two episode two of The Last of Us last night and it absolutely destroyed me. I knew from talking to a gamer player a few years ago that last night’s twist was coming, but I didn’t know when. I figured it would be late in the season, maybe in the finale. Nope. Episode two. On top of the twist, the whole thing going on in the town (no spoilers!) was maybe the most intense episode of television I’ve ever sat through. Damn. Just… damn.

In an attempt to calm myself down after watching that show last night, here’s a cat.

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That didn’t fix me so here’s another cat.

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Nothing to Say

I feel like I should be saying something tonight but I really have nothing to say.

Between the executive branch deporting innocent people to foreign prisons and ignoring supreme court orders to return them to the bullshit save act passing the house to the blatant insider trading that tanked the US economy in order to help a few billionaires steal money from random americans… yeah… things absolutely suck right now.

My wife and I had some discussion on things for the future today that felt like the opposite of what’s going on outside of the house. As awful as the world is, our talk was positive. No spoilers though. You’re going to have to wait to hear about this stuff, if you ever hear about this stuff. You’ll probably never hear about this stuff. Suffice to say, optimism abounds.

What else… the third season of Yellowjackets wrapped up today. As always, no spoilers. I will say that at the end of the episode the adult version of Shauna can be seen wearing a Throwing Muses t-shirt. Hell yes. Great show.

What else… what else… nothing. I think that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll write something else before bed tonight, but probably not.

New Episodes

Hulu released three new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m a few minutes into episode two. The best description of the first few seasons that I heard was “misery porn.” That is accurate. Painfully, crushingly accurate. The current season is not expected to tow that line. Instead it’s looking like it might be “revenge porn.” Given the state of the real world… here’s hoping.

The Handmaid’s Tale this morning, Daredevil tonight, Doctor Who on Saturday, and The Last of Us on Sunday. Hey television world, why not spread out the riches a little. Share that wealth with the rest of the calendar.

Something is up with my Flickr account. Yesterday my hit count was about 10 times what I usually see. This morning before 7:00am it’s already more than yesterday. I think some bot somewhere is crawling me. It might be time for a new backup. Just in case. I hope the bots enjoy all of the cat pictures.

Okay, I have to post this now. I can’t keep typing up brain droppings while hanging on every word of one of the best television shows Earth has ever produced. Seriously. A million years from now some alien species is going to find our remains and turn our planet into an archeological site and watch this show and think… those beings were seriously fucked up but I cannot stop watching.