Apple TV+

Dear Edward

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This all started back in the COVID Times, 2020-2021, back when we lived in Klamath Falls. We still were getting our monthly haircuts and stopping at the local bookstore, Canvasbak Books, and I picked up a book called “Falling Woman.” It told the story of one person who may have survived the midair explosion of a passenger jet on a cross-country flight and the NTSB agent who searched for them. I thoroughly enjoyed that story, so a couple months later when I found another book along the same lines, I snatched it up.

This one was called Dear Edward and is about a 12-year-old who is the lone survivor of another cross-country air disaster. I also enjoyed the heck out of this book too. In this book we get the backstory of his family and several other passengers too. It follows our survivor and what happens in the aftermath. We also get the stories of the other passengers before and their families afterwards. The title stems from the letters our “miracle boy” gets from around the world asking if he saw their relation onboard and other questions. His aunt and uncle kept him in the dark about them.

On another splunking expedition poking around on Apple TV+ I found a limited 10-part series called Dear Edward. Yup, it is based on the book. So of course I started watching it. Aside from the ludicrous-looking plane crash site and the finding of Edward, it started out pretty good. In the book Edward and his next-door female friend, Shay, discover the letters he’s been getting and decide to write back to some and even physically meet some.

The show really highlighted a lot of the survivor’s feelings in the aftermath. The letters get a brief mention in episode two, and he finally gets his hands on the letters in the last 5 minutes of episode nine. He and the cohort actually start the reading of them in the last 5 minutes of episode ten, the last episode. Around episode five I started anticipating the letters’ plot line. Around episode number seven I was going to bail entirely on the show, but I stuck it out just to see where the letters got into the hands of Edward and Shay.

I think I’m going to re-read the book again to maybe get the sour taste out of my mouth.

Bad Sisters Redux

Today’s post is sort of a callback to something I said back in July of 2024:

I’m a little disappointed in Bad Sisters. The show itself was great: humor, pathos, an extremely unlikeable villain, and a great twist at the end with the perfect ending. So why am I disappointed? They have greenlit a second season, and what the heck could it possibly be about?

Last time I was subscribed to Apple TV+ I started to watch the first episode of that second season. I made it less than halfway through the 1st episode before turning it off. I am now resubscribed to watch the 3rd season of Shrinking and I gave Bad Sisters second season a second try, and I made it all the way through episode one. But couldn’t go any further.

Well…guess what? I was poking around on Apple TV+ looking for something else to watch, and failing to find anything, I thought maybe I’ll just go ahead and just watch the rest of season two of Bad Sisters. It turned out to be a pretty decent watch. In all, it paled in comparison to the first season, but I don’t regret watching it. Plus, I had developed a pretty big crush on Bibi played by Sarah Greene. I think it was the eye patch…

Lost Time

And when I say “lost time,” it has nothing to do with the obsession I previously had for the TV show called LOST. It also has absolutely nothing to do with a previous post called Lost Time, which was about a work boo-boo I got passing through the die-cast machining department at ASCO in 2007. This is about “Where did the day go?” and “Second time’s a charm.”

Today is Wednesday, and that means a new episode of Shrinking on Apple TV+. I watched it while eating lunch, and when the show and my sandwich were finished, I scrolled around looking for something else to watch. I landed on Your Friends & Neighbors. There is a new season starting on Friday, and I thought maybe I should give it a second try.

I had started watching the show last year when it first premiered, and I only got partway into the first episode. The start grabbed me, the protagonist’s backstory was well plotted, and I kind of dig a show with voiceover. But when John Hamm started rifling through a friend’s house, poking at stuff, I bailed; it just seemed too creepy.

You know the whole alien abduction thing, right? Usually, explicit memories of the abduction experience will not be present, and the abductee will only realize they have experienced “missing time” upon checking a timepiece. That’s kinda what happened to me; I started rewatching episode one, and the next thing I knew, it was dark outside, and I had watched all nine episodes.

And just like my experience watching Deadloch a couple weeks ago, there were spots that I’d swear I’d known the line before it was said or a scene felt very familiar. Either I’ve seen so many clips on talk shows with all the main characters on their publicity tours, or I have a very strange type of dementia. The only other option is that I have watched Arrival so many times that I have learned the heptapod language, and like Amy Adams’s character, time is no longer linear for me.

That Didn’t Work Out So Well

I’ve been watching the FRS play baseball for a week now on MLB.TV, so yesterday when I tried to watch all I was offered was the audio. WTF. Turns out the game was on Apple TV+, who has worked out a deal with baseball to broadcast 2 Friday games every week.

Let me go and see if I can get a free trial just so I could watch the game. I already was a subscriber about a year ago, so I thought maybe if I use Donna’s name and a different email I could get one. Wrong, they are smarter than me I was denied. Might have worked had I used a different charge card…

Well, the lure of the game made me plunk down the one penny less than a 10 spot for a month of Apple TV+. My reward was after watching 5 wins in a row on MLB.TV, the Red Sox lost the Friday game 9-2 to the San Diego Padres.

The $9.99 is not a total loss though as now I can watch the third season of Slow Horses.

Bye-Bye Miss Apple Pie

Just a week ago I marveled at my free trial of Apple TV+ and how Ted Lasso was my new favorite show. Well, not only is the honeymoon over, but the divorce was just finalized. I cancelled the last six weeks of available streaming today.

The overweight Bedouin seated on the camel’s back was that I ran out of shows or movies I was interested in. I tried out over a dozen series or movies on the service and watched only two things in their totality, Shrinking and Slow Horses.

If they do a second season of Shrinking I won’t miss seeing it, but Slow Horses was a different story because I’m a sucker for British TV. There were two series of the show and I liked the first better than the second, but that was pretty excellent too. They have renewed it for 2 more seasons and when those are produced I might just create a new Apple ID to get another free trial.

But the straw that actually broke the camel’s back was last Wednesday’s episode of Ted Lasso, it was an utter turd. The folks at IMDB who rate the show gave it a 6.5 out of 10. Of the 29 episodes up until last Wednesday, 3 were in the nines, 20 of them were in the 8 range, with a smattering of them in the sevens. There was one episode that was rated 6.8 in season two and it was pretty bad too, but the one before it was a 9.0 and the next two were in the middle eights. If I remember, I’ll look at the next episode’s rating on IMDB.

Ted Lasso Erases A Week Of My Life

In a couple of day’s ago post I mentioned watching the Red Sox playing on MLBTV. Well, one of the commercials in between innings was an offer for a 2 month free trial of Apple TV+. I had the commercial on mute, so I didn’t hear what they were on about, but I thought, “Hmmm, I’ve wanted to check Apple TV+, but never pulled the trigger for one reason or another. This looks a pretty good deal.”

So, I went to apple.co/mlbgift and signed up (offer is good until July 7th if you are interested.) Turns out the reason is that Apple TV+ has the rights to one Friday night baseball game, chosen by MLB maybe, for the season and they also have a 30 minute nightly MLB recap. I have not bothered with the recap show, but I did watch an inning or two of last Friday’s Dodgers Cardinals game. I may keep and eye out for Red Sox game on Fridays between now and June 24th when my free trial ends.

So, anyway, the first show I wanted to check out was this Ted Lasso show all the cool people were talking about. Tuesday night the 18th I watched Season 1 Episode 1. I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about, it seemed like just another fish out of water story and Jason Sudeikis’s character seemed too broadly drawn and the accent was kind of over the top. I wasn’t going to watch anymore, but as I was talking to Donna about it, I suggested watching Episode 2 on Wednesday at lunch and if she seemed interested we would watch the show together.

She was not interested, so I figured that was that. Later that afternoon, with nothing else going on I thought, let me watch episode three and if I don’t get into it, I’ll move on. After that third show I watched the fourth. I got interested in the arcs of the cast of characters that surround out titular hero and I am a lover of listening to the accents when the Queen’s English is spoken. And I’d become used to the Ted Lasso character.

On Thursday I watched the next four episodes, this left only two episodes of the first season for Friday which lead to rolling right into season two. The only time I came up for air over the the weekend was Sunday night to watch Thursday’s new episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel my previous favorite show.

Sometime on Tuesday I ran out of episodes when I finished episode 6 of season three. So now I had to wait until the next day for Apple TV+ to release the next show and after that I’d stuck waiting a whole week between new episodes. I briefly considered waiting for 6 weeks so I could binge those last set of season three’s shows, but couldn’t do it, I watched episode seven the next day when it became available.