The TV thread

Rick and Morty Season 7: Into the Shemp-iverse!

 

I don't know how they'll ever recover from 95 percent of the characters sounding like an offshoot of Morty.

 

Abbott Elementary has been fantastic this season

 

My latest HGTV obsession? The Ugliest House in America.

Hosted by Retta of Parks & Rec fame, every episode shows her touring three houses from several regions of America. From each region, there's one "winner" and the ultimate winner out of the bunch wins a $150K home renovation.

I have now seen every color of shag carpeting that exists. Bad wallpaper. Bad decor. Poor layout. One house in one season that was definitely a house of ill repute. A church and a funeral home.

It is great fun and makes me feel way better about my own house.

 

Succession back soon.

 

Didn't we already sort of see a stalker, though one that was attached to the wall?

I found the game version of that scene with Tess. The one from the show is so much freakier.

 

Spoiler: End of episode 2 spoiler

What I appreciate about this crew is that they're fine with taking some liberties and straying from the game. (It helps when the game creator is one of the show runners.) The Tess thing was a perfect example. On the companion pod, they mentioned that it made little sense for Tess to die in a firefight with FEDRA, because FEDRA at that point in the show hadn't been seen for the entire episode. It also gave a chance for the show to hammer home the point about the community of infected that Tess was telling Ellie about, which is another departure from the game. They didn't want to have the actors spending 70 percent of their time behind gas masks, so they adjusted for the show to change to eliminate the spore transmission aspect of the CBI. I really didn't like that ending at first but upon listening to Mazzin describe the reasoning, I got behind it. From what I understand, there are going to be entire episodes without infected, because this show (and the game) are much more about the human story than just a blind run of fighting creatures. That's what made it special.

Also, I've consumed a pretty decent amount of content on this because I've been pretty obsessed with the game from the start. Pod hosts, please stop using the word zombies. Zombies are undead. The creatures in Last of Us are live humans infected with a terrible fungus. They're not undead. The fungus cannot survive without a live host. Thank you and God bless.

 

Checked out the first episode of Poker Face on Peacock last night. Kind of a slow burn at first but ramps up nicely at the end. I'll come back for the next one.

 

We watched the first two episodes of The 1619 Project on Hulu. The each episode is based on one of the essays in the book with a format of the journalist behind the project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, exploring her own life and interviewing people who have expertise or experience to explain wide-ranging ways slavery influences the U.S.

There are six hourlong episodes in the miniseries. So far, it’s better than many of the documentaries we catch on PBS. Unavoidably, it does sometimes get political and lines to connect current events with the past, so I’m sure there will continue to be backlash.

 

I think they have done a great job driving home the threat faced by humanity in the show. The changes in that one part of the second episode actually do a good job of it.

I also love that everybody isn't a perfect shot, which was an issue with The Walking Dead. By the later seasons, every character was an expert who could get a head shot on the first try every time.

 

I'm psyched to check this out - so happy there are four available on Peacock already, instead of just one.

 

I really liked it. There's a Columbo vibe, for those old enough to remember that show.

My free Peacock Premium just ended and I don't know if I'll get more episodes on the non-paid Peacock.