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katiesewed
Reviews
The Winchesters (2022)
Jenson Ackles Do Something Fast!!!!
This should be a terrific show. The characters/actors are so flat. They don't emote and there is no chemistry between them. John is just ok, Mary needs to be replaced. Maybe she can age out and they can find a similar looking woman for next season.
The stories are ok, production is a little cheap. I don't think Supernatural was a high cost production show with the monsters and black smoke emitting people but I could be wrong.
The fashion is a little off. The Carlos character is way off. You never would have found anyone like that in Lawrence, Kansas in 1972, particularly a former veteran.
I'm watching out of nostalgia for the original Supernatural and really hope they can do much better in season 2. There's a built in audience, this would be a real wasted opportunity to just do a halfway job!
Lioness: Wish the Fight Away (2023)
My enthusiasm just nose-dived
I thought this series was excellent and provided a wonderful look at the overlooked women in Special Forces.
Why did woman to woman love scenes have to invade what was otherwise such a strong, well written show?
Does anyone believe that if this happened in real life that the operator wouldn't face ridiculous military consequences? It's a slap in the face to female members of the armed services. It added nothing and just seems pandering.
Sorry if others disagree. Everything has a time and place. A gripping military thriller isn't it.
I hope that this gets on track and finishes strong with a second season. The Lioness special forces angle is great.
Lioness (2023)
Not sure what to think, started off strong
This show started off very strong with an interesting premise about a female marine embedded with a CIA QRT team that is made up of special forces Marines, if there is such a thing.
She is supposed to make friends with the daughter of a mid-eastern terrorist financier.
The show TOTALLY goes off the rails when the traditional Arab woman who is anticipating her imminent wedding has a lesbian fling with this embedded undercover female marine.
This tanks the entire show and plot. It is NOT now, not relevant, not happening, not remotely plausible, and is actually cringe- worthy.
Who thought that this subplot would elevate the show or make it more watchable? Can't they do a focus group or something?
Everything has a time or place, but this is way out in left field.
For a show with limited episodes, (6-8), subplots like this and the one with the angry rebelling daughter just take away from the relevant action.
Secret Invasion: Resurrection (2023)
Confusing and a bit slow
I am pretty bad at remembering the character/ plot attributes from movie to movie. However, Resurrection expects you to immediately know who the Skrulls are, who Gravik is, etc. Etc. Time devoted to back story would not have been wasted.
Marvel has written themselves into a deep hole with the blip. They either need to reset, find a way to ignore it, get new actors with a parallel universe, or write something coherent as a way forward.
I honestly don't understand why the writing on all of these Disney+ Marvel series is so bad. The plots are generally boring with no sense of urgency or relevance.
If you need a Marvel fix, this series better than most, but that isn't saying much. I hope Marvel gets their act together, as I am a great fan of the Marvel universe.
Beverly Hills, 90210: Cupid's Arrow (1998)
Lots of missing episodes like this one
I watched the series on and off when Fox was a new network, and have recently been working my way through the series. I thought that the writing was pretty disjointed because people seem to appear and disappear without any transition. I wised up when the college graduation wasn't even mentioned. After watching them slog through school, the absence was glaring. My viewing choices are either Prime video or to purchase the entire season(s) on DVD.
Enter IMDB. I started comparing the episode list here to what is available on Amazon prime. Voila, lots of missing episodes. The writers of the series turned the characters into a carousel of rotating foibles. I don't know or really care enough to determine who has the licensing rights to the series. It appears that anything that is now deemed to be remotely controversial/unseemly has been censored out. You won't see the suicide in season one, the graduation, or this episode where there is possible date rape and a drink spiked.
Valerie is a passable or laughable villainess, but you won't see her being roofied.
Pity, the series is a throwback to the 90's and the angst of growing up. You won't be able to see all of the episodes though, which has me scratching my head.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit: Max (2023)
Don't Waste Your Time
Some of the ridiculous details of the season are finally put to rest - who 'Keith' really is, the woman who allegedly held him for six years, the relationship between Keith and his buddy from therapy, who the weird texts were coming from...
None of this of course makes up for the horrible recurring episodic details from the series - the constant use of the word baby, promising to find all victims, the crazy voodoo egg ritual, a lead actress who is difficult to understand, the total lack of professionalism on the part of what is supposed to be a specialized police unit, etc. If you waded through most of the episodes, you may as well add this one to the queue just to get the answers. Otherwise, just bag the entire series. What a disappointment.
Chicago Med: The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Teacher (2021)
I don't get why the writers constantly have the doctors breaking the law
This used to be one of my favorite tv shows. The situations aren't that unusual that you wouldn't find them in an ER, but are interesting enough. I'm not sure why the writers want the doctors to constantly break the law. Is it to show their dedication to their patients? Are they going to eventually have a DEA raid and then close down the hospital? I wouldn't go to this place if it were the last hospital in the country. I'm not sure it is even worth watching anymore.
In this episode, there's a drug shortage because of a manufacturing recall. Of course they have a patient who will die without the drug. The young intern, who once illegally took Adderal, "finds some" of this antifungal from her very reputable drug dealer. The attending physician acts horrified, then decides to give the pills to the patient's spouse, saying that he can't legally prescribe them, but if they want the pills, hey, they can have them. What the heck? That IS prescribing them. There's no guarantee that they are what they appear to be, etc. This is supposed to be a good plot? I just don't get it.
Borg McEnroe (2017)
SO Bad
I'm not even sure about the point of this movie. They licensed Wimbledon footage, and archival footage of Borg and McEnroe. The actors look quite a bit like them, particularly the Borg actor. With these rights, they could have done a retrospective movie on the 1980 Wimbledon final, or re-enacted the match or surrounding events. There was no plot, no real dialogue. It was just a bad montage of snips from actual match, interspersed with the two actors supposedly playing the game. This is not a biography, not a sports film. It was a total waste of an hour and a half. If you want to see Borg and McEnroe, either rent the actual match or pay for a month of the tennis channel. There may be other movies that explore the relationship and friendship/rivalry between the two men, but this isn't it.
The Time Traveler's Wife (2022)
Should've been a great series but I got tired of naked fa!!ing men
I love time travel series and books. (I've never seen the original movie or read the book.) The series started out on a good note. But my gripes soon outweighed the high points. The gazillion naked falling guys in each episode was overdone. The somewhat creepy visitations to his future wife throughout her childhood was, well, creepy after awhile. The bickering between the characters was overdone, particularly between Claire and Henry. Claire always seemed to want a different Henry than the one with her. I originally thought the slow pace was because there were lots of episodes and seasons, and they were methodically going through the characters' development. No need, because six episodes is all we get. Two characters in what I thought was a romantic novel should at least make each other happy. These two seem to pine for something/someone else. Worth watching, but it really isn't a romance. The sixth episode ends with no resolution. I don't know if at the time of filming it was known that the six episodes would be it.
The English: Cherished (2022)
Entirely unsatisfying ending
The show has its ups and downs, maybe because a western show was largely portrayed (and produced) by the English. I loved the interaction between Eli and Cornelia as they gradually found common ground. I truly don't understand the rationale behind the ending though. Melmont gets his just desserts, and the sheriff who was a witness said he could sell it to the local citizenry as long as Eli and Cornelia both left the area. So far, so good. He seemed to have as a condition though that they couldn't remain together. They part, they turn their horses around, and fall back together. That would've been a grand ending. But no, they do part, Eli to his birthplace and Cornelia back to England. As she wanted to stay with Eli, it just seems so illogical for her to give in so easily and leave him, even knowing that her illness would have a horrible outcome. They both knew that she was sick, and accepted the fact. My personal feeling is either have an unrequited love, or have the characters find a way to be together, but don't pull the rug out in the last 5 minutes for what are pretty thin reasons. There was a lot of discussion between the two about home being where you want it to be. I did like the very end where the Indian youth found Cornelia in England 10 or 15 years later. I searched on the Internet for even a half-baked reason why they didn't stay together, and really couldn't find anything beyond the fact that he was an Indian and she was an Englishwoman. Noble warrior stays a noble warrior and the English lady goes home.
Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)
I'll happily watch every movie, but this storyline is quite mundane
Love Downton Abbey. I'll happily watch every movie or special, but the storyline in this movie was a real snoozer. Instead of exploring how the characters we all love have changed with the march of time, the majority of the movie has to do with the filming of a silent-turned-talkie movie that was taking place on the grounds of Downton Abbey. Does anyone really care about the making of an imaginary film while we're watching a film? A whole slew of forgettable "film star" characters were brought in, and the real Downton characters' lives had very few screen minutes. I really didn't see the point of the plotline. The running off to the Riviera also introduced more ancillary temporary characters, who again took screen time away from the titular Downton Abbey characters. I just think it was a terribly missed opportunity, assembling all of the stars of Downton Abbey, then giving us 5 minutes' worth of updates on their lives per character, if that.
Lost Treasures of the Maya (2018)
A Gigantic Lidar Commercial
This could have been a great series. I am very interested in the archaeology of ancient cultures. I have NO IDEA why the narrator kept repeating before lidar/after lidar/the new lidar discovery and why they kept showing the SAME giant Lidar map with trees and then without trees, multiple times in multiple episodes. I actually thought I had sat on the remote and restarted the episode, more than once, because the scene and narration was identical. Watch the first show and skip the rest. This series is in dire need of an editor to get rid of the repetitive scenes and narration. The narrator also needs to speak faster because the average viewer has an IQ over 80. I do have concerns over deforesting the jungle to excavate this civilization.
Animal Kingdom (2016)
Too many flashbacks, not sure who to root for
This is one of the rare series where there are no good guys. It is a family of grifters, thieves, and muscle heads. I loved the earlier story arc where J was trying to take the reins of the family business, but that was over several seasons ago. Now they are all different shades of hoodlums. There are compelling story lines, but no character is on the path to redemption. This has been a bit like watching a slow motion train wreck, but I'll be happy to have the series over and resolved. This is definitely a series for a mature, non-adolescent audience. I would not want a young teen or preteen to watch it. There's also some underlying sexual tension between family members.
Legendary Locations: Game of Bones and Unknowns (2018)
Not My Favorite Episode
Love Josh Gates and his shows. This episode was a little wacky; the locations were not that interesting. He may become a victim of his own success, and run out of interesting places to highlight. This one is a snoozer, sorry Josh.
The Terminal List (2022)
Last time I ever pay attention to a movie critic!
No wonder there are so few decent movies and tv shows. The disparity between audience ratings and those of "professional" critics is jaw dropping. PLEASE Hollywood, give us more of this type of show. I agree with the comments about the dark filter. Whoever thinks that is a great cinematic device should be forced to watch hours of film in the dark.
The Rookie: Enervo (2022)
Cringeworthy
PLEASE ABC don't force more of these "I'm old and can't follow rules but I solve everything" characters on us. I LOVE The Rookie and Nathan Fillian, but the CIA character was awful, and wouldn't last 30 seconds on the job in the real world. I've heard rumors of her getting her own show based on this premise. I for one won't even bother to watch a single episode if it's true. Being mixed race, I don't really understand why a character has to be written having any particular racial characteristics. Why can't Hollywood just write a decent character, and cast the best person for the role, or is that too naive?
Lost Relics of the Knights Templar: Curse of the Black Chalice (2020)
One of the better episodes
This episode is centered on the examination of the beautiful chalice with a plausible though impossible to prove method of fabrication. I have no idea why the title has the word curse in it. I've watched all of the episodes because I like archaeology and history. It's a lot of hours devoted to the rather thin proven history of the Templars. Many of the episodes in Expedition Unknown could easily have run two hours but didn't, so it is puzzling why the Templar series was shown over two seasons.
Lost Relics of the Knights Templar (2020)
It Drives Me Crazy To See Relics Handled With Bare Hands
The series is extremely light on authentication. I'm not sure of Josh Gates' relationship with these guys, who are called relic hunters. The provenance of the items in the show is not explained. Some of the relics like coins could have been found by these guys, some of it could have been purchased from local markets or landowners, or were family heirlooms, but I imagine much of it is from the black market. Can you buy a Templar helmet and sword from Sotheby's? I personally have a real problem with rich people owning priceless pieces of history just because they have the money. I believe history belongs to us all, and relics should be in a museum, not in some guy's living room or garage. Edit - after watching a few more episodes, I am thankful that these guys have put in the time and money to track down these Templar relics that have apparently been scattered across the world. The program and the two owners of these artifacts could go a lot farther in the authentication and dating of the various relics. I am thankful that they are showing them to the world. Regardless of your views on private ownership, the series is a worthwhile watch.
Good Sam (2022)
Love Sophia Bush but the show is awful. Still looking for the 'Good'.
Love Sophia Bush, she makes a kick ass cop or other action actor. But this show, which concentrates on a constant sniping relationship with her tv dad, is horrible. The premise is horrible, and it doesn't come close to being a decent medical show. Who wants to watch a father and daughter constantly trying to one-up each other or stab each other in the back? She needs a good role like she had on Chicago PD. I know she supposedly had problems with one of the other actors on it, but you would think that she would have better roles to choose from. This show just needs to die quietly.