My, my – it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these. It just be like that sometimes, so without further ado, here’s what I’ve seen lately:
The Astronaut Wives Club
I love anything to do with space, and that includes TV shows as well. The Astronaut Wives Club, based on a best-seller with the same title, mixes that with an early 60’s aesthetic (The clothes! The cars! The houses! The fact that I’m grateful to not have to have everything looking that way if I don’t want to!), so you know I’m there.
The show has secrets, lies, resentment, and more happening between the astronauts and their wives, between astronauts, between the wives – what a tangled web, indeed.
I’ve enjoyed the show so far, but I have to admit I’m worried. It reminds me a lot of Pan Am, another show set in the 1960s, with a similar “perfect on the surface, secrets just below” theme, and it was even on the same damn network – ABC. It started out well, but faltered and I eventually stopped watching it even before it got canceled. Time will tell how The Astronaut Wives Club fares.
B Gata H Kei, or Yamada’s First Time
This heavy sigh is a show about a high school girl who has made it her goal to sleep with 100 guys. Wait, wait! Don’t hit the back button! It’s not what you think, I promise.
I thought this would be a super gross ecchi anime (that’s just a link to the definition, don’t worry), but it turns out that Yamada’s First Time is a rather accurate depiction of how we sometimes rush to become adults. In that rush to grow up, sometimes we show how naive we really are – regardless of age – and that’s what happens with Yamada. She’s so endearingly and creepily naive, so eager to have sex that she forgets that she doesn’t really know how to carry on a normal conversation, let alone flirt with a boy.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how this story ends because it’s no longer available for streaming! Only 2 episodes were on Hulu, and the full series was taken off Netflix in July. I’ll have to find it somewhere else…
Black Mirror
What the hell is this anthology about? In a nutshell, humans suck. We suck so bad that we mess up the future (and the present, let’s be honest), and we’ll never not suck. The end.
I couldn’t finish the series – there are only about 6 episodes or so – because it made me feel so hopeless. Still, I do recommend it to those of you with more fortitude. Just read this quote from executive producer Charlie Brooker:
“If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirror, my new drama series, is set. The ‘black mirror’ of the title is the one you’ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone.”
– Interview in The Guardian, December 1, 2011
I’d argue that there is literally nothing delightful about watching this show, only discomfort; it’s the discomfort that comes from examining oneself.
Bridal Mask
I don’t have too much to say about this one. It was an interesting story – a folk hero for the Koreans mistreated under Japanese occupation. However, too many episodes and overly long fight scenes made this drama drag.
Then again, I might not be the target audience for this drama. When I told my pen pal that I was watching it, he was surprised and said “Usually guys watch that.” That was, of course, after he finished laughing at my pronunciation of “각시탈”…
The main villain was an issue as well. The show portrayed him mostly as a complete villain, though he wasn’t that way from the start. Instead, they should have shown shades of his earlier self showing through (they did, but the reason wasn’t totally clear and it was pretty cliché) and/or him struggling with the decisions he had to make.
On the other hand, the protagonist was pretty damn unlikable, but events lead to him taking on the hero mantle in a totally convincing way. As the story progresses, the chips continue to stack up on the “definitely become a hero” side.
Daredevil
Boring as hell and I want my time back.
I tried to watch, but I quit about halfway through. I just didn’t care about anything that was going on or any of the characters, except for Rosario Dawson’s brother.
To the Beautiful You
There are a lot of adaptations of this story, but I picked this one because a) the lead male interest is from one of my favorite groups, SHINee and b) it looked beautiful:
The plot was okay, but I had a few issues:
Why is the main lead always stoic and mean as hell? Why do they always get the girl, when the second lead is perfect for them?
No one else found her creepy? She followed a celebrity to school because she thought she could help him heal and start high jumping again. She’s not a teen genius physical therapist. She’s just a regular girl. HUH? Maybe this makes more sense in the source material.
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone is one of my favorite shows of all time, and it never gets old, even if you know the twists already. I don’t know if I can say anything about it that hasn’t been said before (1, 2), so here’s a list of my favorite episodes:
Season 1
“What You Need”
“I Shot an Arrow into the Air”
“The Fever”
“A Nice Place to Visit”
Season 2
“The Man in the Bottle”
“The Howling Man”
“The Eye of the Beholder”
“A Most Unusual Camera”
“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”
“The Obsolete Man”
Season 3
“It’s a Good Life”
“A Quality of Mercy”
“To Serve Man”
“Little Girl Lost”
“Four O’Clock”
“The Dummy”
Season 5
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”