Tag: Television

A Pretty Good Sunday

Things that were good today, not in order of importance:

  • I finished this year’s RPM Challenge
  • The Bruins beat the Rangers
  • We got a new waffle iron and it made some really good waffles.
  • Also in food news, Jen made a roast tonight and it was scary how good it was.
  • The Red Sox played their first Sprint training game. Sure, they lost to the Twinkies, but the important thing is that they played.
  • The Walking Dead came back.
  • My father, who went into the hospital on January 29th, came home. I mean, he’s going back in on Wednesday but the point is he finally came home. My father went home today!

Bed Time

I had a crummy nights sleep last night and the night before. I should have gone to bed two hours ago but what can you do? Looks like I’m in for crummy sleep again tonight.

But at least there’s a new WandaVision out tomorrow.

Sweet dreams, everyone!

TV and Stuff

There’s a new episode of WandaVision out. I haven’t watched it. Hopefully later tonight. We’ll see how the time works out.

I just finished my pointless rewatch of The Flash. That show comes back soon. The Walking Dead comes back soon. There’s a new Superman show on CW that premiers this week. That could hold us over until Supergirl comes back, but the idea of Superman as a dad to two teenagers… I don’t know about that. Batwoman is back, but they are already rebooting and it’s only season two. Season one was okay, but was it good enough to justify coming back after rebooting? I don’t know. I haven’t watched any of season two yet. That might be a clue as to how interested I am.

What shows should I hyper focus on for the next stretch of Covid lockdown?

I heard Resident Alien was good. I might check that out. I never got around to the second season of Altered Carbon, so that’s a possibility. I hear The Expanse and Snowpiercer are good. Handmaid’s Tale is a possibility. I was afraid to watch that during Trump because it felt too close to home. It still does, but maybe I should try it? Ozark? Breaking Bad? Lost? Mindhunter?

I don’t know… WandaVision, The Flash, and The Walking Dead (along with Falcon and Winter Soldier, once WandaVision ends) are a lot. They should be enough. They don’t give me the option of putting it on Netflix and letting it run all day while I do other things though. Unless I start The Walking Dead from the beginning, the way I just did with The Flash. Maybe.

Maybe I’ll just put The Mandalorian on and let it run on a loop 24 hours a day. That’ll work.

Dental/Cardiac Relationship

Did you know that your dental health is a factor in your heart health? I sure didn’t. My father found out today when they took out some of his teeth in preparation for upcoming heart surgery. Who knew?

Subject change: Rush Limbaugh died. When I was a kid I was taught that if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. So there you go.

Subject change: We got the expected date of my step son’s high school graduation ceremony. Mid June. Please, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, get all of us our respective Covid-19 vaccinations by then. Please, Covid-19, don’t ruin this for him on top of everything else.

Subject change: I had a really crummy nights sleep last night. I went to bed about 10:30, woke up a little before midnight, and didn’t get back to sleep until after 2:00. Today is shaping up to be a rough one. I need a nap. A long nap.

Subject change: I’ve got nothing else to say right now. I read this morning that we’re supposed to get another snow storm later tomorrow. I want Spring. Now. I want my whole extended family, including everyone in my step kids’ other house, to get their vaccine shots. Now. I’m tired of all of this crap. I want my father’s medical ordeal to end. Now. I want everything to go back to pre-March 2020 normal. Now.

The Stand: Not Quite Spoiler Free Review

I’ve already written one mostly spoiler free commentary about the new CBS mini series version of Stephen King’s The Stand. Now that the final episode is out I can give another mostly spoiled free review that briefly covers the whole thing.

I’m trying to stay spoiler free, but I can’t guarantee success. If you want to watch the series and you don’t want even vague hints at how it goes then you should stop reading now.

Last warning.

Okay, kids. Here we go.

The best part of The Stand is that it’s over. Good lord this series is awful. Just terrible. Like, I’ve read the book (both the original and the expanded versions) multiple times and I can’t even begin to imagine how they could have missed the mark so thoroughly and completely and massively screwed up such a fantastic story. The level of awful cannot be overstated.

The first half of the book is the world falling apart. The second half is putting it back together while the good guys face off with the bad guys. In the series it opens up in the second half of the story and gives a few flashbacks to the first half. It basically skipped everything you wanted to see. In the book the good guys congregate in one city and the bad guys in another. In the series, literally everything that happens in the bad guy city is so horribly bad it is unwatchable. The setting, the mood, the dialog, the acting, the casting, the writing, it’s all so bad it was painful to sit through. The good guy city is better, much better, but they still miss all the things that made the book so good.

The best parts of the series, with a couple of exceptions, are boring. Not bad per se, just boring and uninteresting. The exceptions being the final episode, which was mostly pretty good. We knew going in that King had written a mostly new ending. It’s not that good, but it’s okay. the other exception is Greg Kinnear who is excellent as Glen. When he’s on the screen it’s almost good enough to make up for everything else being so boring.

The worst parts of the series are so far off the mark they made me feel sick. In the book the bad guy sets up a society that is basically a police state. Law, order, peace, safety, all paid for by the removal of all human rights and freedoms. Trump would have loved it. In the movie his town is depicted as one part orgy and one part gladiator blood sport. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So instead of Flag being this menacing behind the scenes villain, he’s a pimp. They couldn’t have made it worse if they actively tried. Even the climactic ending was depicted in such an absolutely stupid way that I was thinking about offing myself so that I wouldn’t have to watch it all the way through.

All of that is maddeningly terrible, but it’s still better than whatever the hell Ezra Miller was doing. To say that his performance is the worst display of acting I’ve ever seen is possibly the biggest understatement in the history of language.

If you’ve read the book, I recommend that you never, ever try to watch this series. If you haven’t read the book, I still recommend that you never, ever try to watch this series. I don’t think it is humanly possible to tell the story of The Stand and make it worse than this. It can’t be done.