TV

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.

Eight for Friday

What a slug. I grocery shopped, worked a little on a jigsaw puzzle, and then watched an FRS spring training game. I had soup for lunch and started looking for something to watch. And like a couple weeks ago’s finding of Yellowjackets, I got anchored to the couch for the rest of the day watching Deadloch. I found this on Prime listed as New, with a 7.5/10 IMDb rating, #4 in drama TV shows, a tag that said ‘Comedy,’ and New Season.

Interestingly, when I selected season one to look at the episodes, there was a line under Episode 1, but I didn’t remember watching the show, and usually if I watch a complete episode, I keep going… And when watching the show, there were spots that seemed familiar, but on the whole, I’d swear I hadn’t seen it1. It is set in a small seaside town in Tasmania. Some of the accents were kind of thick, and maybe I should have put on the closed captions, but almost all of the humorousness was understandable, and I didn’t have any trouble keeping up with the plot.

There were 8 episodes in season one, and they all clock in at around an hour. Besides a quick dinner, bathroom breaks, and drink refills, I spent from 12:30pm to 9:00pm hardly moving. That new season has just 6 hour long episodes, so you know where I’ll be tomorrow afternoon.

Very Losty

While trolling Netflix for something to watch, I came upon Yellowjackets and I remember there was good buzz about the show when it first came out in 2021. It had a 7.7 IMDb ranking, so I started watching it late Thursday night; I stopped after two episodes. On Friday I did my morning grocery shopping and watched the other 8 episodes of season one. Saturday passed in a blur of all 9 episodes of season 2.

When I say, “Very Losty, I mean like the show LOST. I’m talking about a plane crash, scenes of the past, of being in the wilderness, followed by scenes of the same characters in the future, plus lots of questions about what is going on, and whose answers pose more questions. None of that mattered; I was sucked right in and buzzed through the show in two hazy days on the couch.

Now there is already a third season done, and the fourth series has just started shooting. The show is a Showtime feature, so #3 is available on Paramount+. Should I wait on watching season three until the 4th (and final) season?

Hammond, LA Day 3

No Boiled Seafood Allowed

How about fried seafood?

Spent most of the morning wrestling with hooking up a new LED TV for Sally’s mom. It is a Fire TV recommended by her son-in-law. The only way forward past picking out English for your language is signing into Amazon. She wasn’t sure she had an account. We tried signing up using her email – xxxxx.webtv.net – and she had some vague idea of a password once used many a year ago. This, of course, did not work. So I signed in as me, and after setting everything up, I logged out.

The real fun began when I had to replace the small TV in her bedroom, which looked like a 17″ computer monitor, with the 32″ Sharp-Roku TV from the living room. First off, she really doesn’t use the Roku end of it; everything comes in via the HDMI cable from the Direct TV box. To turn on the TV, she uses the Roku remote, then uses the DIRECTV remote to change channels, and then goes back to the Roku remote to control the volume.

The way this TV was working was, they’d turn it on, and when the Roku TV showed the “installing update” whirly thing, the TV would be turned off and then back on to get rid of the update prompt. Unfortunately, there was no way to get to the Roku settings to fix this; the TV booted up to the HDMI input, and hitting the Home button did nothing. When I moved it to the bedroom, for some reason the sound would come on at a level, and it wouldn’t vary with the remote like before. I tried unplugging it for a minute and plugging it back in with no success. I next tried to reset the TV by holding the power button for a minute, but that caused the TV to come back on with a controllable volume but no PICTURE! This went back and forth a couple times, and I threatened to go to Best Buy and get her another new TV.

The internet had told me to reset it by unplugging it for 30 seconds and turning it back on by holding down the power and volume down buttons while plugging it back in; her TV didn’t have any buttons except the power one. So I tied a modified version of it by plugging it in while holding down just the power button. Bingo, bango, bongo; Roku home screen. I hooked it to the wireless network and updated the TV. It now works as it’s supposed to.

Phew, it was touch and go for a while as to who was going to prevail.

The afternoon went much smoother; we took a trip to Home Depot, Sally got her haircut, we took a walk in the park next to the VRBO, and a pizza for dinner.

What’s Next?

Sometime last December I started rewatching The West Wing again. Donna and I used to rewatch the series every couple years, hey we like the show. I got about to the end of Season 6 or the first couple of episodes in Season 7 before I disappeared for 2 months.

I didn’t miss it on the road trip and figured maybe when I got back I’d just stop and not do those last 20-25 shows. Then COVID hit me, so I really had nothing to do, but, watch TV so I picked it back up. As I’ve done the last few times rewatching the show, when I get done with the TV episode I listen to corresponding episode of the The West Wing Weekly podcast.

I was doing fine just watching one episode a day, but when I got down to the final 6 episodes of the show I accelerated. Two days ago I watched two episodes and yesterday I binged the last four. I’ve still got the last 2 podcast episodes to finish. I might listen to one of them when I get finished here.

The post title of “What’s Next?” comes from the show, it was President Martin Sheen’s catch phrase for when he was done with one problem and it was time to start solving the next problem. It is also how Josh Molina and Hrishikesh Hirway sign off at the end of a podcast.

So what’s next for me, TV-wise, don’t know, but reading-wise, I’m waiting on my copy of What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service to arrive from Amazon.

Wait, Where’d It Go?

I’m rewatching The West Wing for maybe like the 20th time and I’ve been watching it on MAX because why not, I’m paying for it just to watch one different show. I’m up to about the middle of season two. This morning when I went to watch an episode there wasn’t anything sitting in my Continue Watching row. The row wasn’t even there. And I checked, by spending way too much time endlessly scrolling up and down looking for it. Eventually it dawned on me to search for it. The only result was for a West Wing Special from 2020 about getting out the vote.

Would have it really have been too much trouble MAX, to let me know you were losing the rights to show? Fortunately, I still have the digital copies of all the episodes.