TV Lately

Except for M*A*S*H reruns, Hulu cancelled all of the content I was watching a couple months ago. So I cancelled my Hulu subscription. I don’t miss it.

(Okay, technically I did miss it today. I was going down a rabbit hole involving Tia Carrere, and I learned she was in an episode of Married… with Children that might have been fun to watch. I could have watched it on Hulu, but the only other place it is available would charge me to watch it. I wasn’t going to pay $1.99 to watch Christina Applegate and Tia Carrere have a confrontation that probably isn’t a cat fight.)

All at once, the final episodes of three things I was watching came and went, and now I don’t know what to watch. Those things were Space Force, The Queen’s Gambit, and Better Call Saul.

I will live without Space Force. I was only watching an episode here and there. It was decent for what it was, but it didn’t make me want to binge. I might have abandoned it, but I was kind of waiting for Diana Silvers‘ character to do something interesting, but she didn’t. The show also didn’t take the opportunity to ridicule Donald Trump as much as I was hoping. There is evidently another season coming. I guess we’ll see.

You don’t need me to tell you how good The Queen’s Gambit was. It was pretty good, though it may have been over-hyped. It was about chess, but it wasn’t very much about chess. I didn’t identify with the drug use and drinking as much as other people because I have never been a drinker or drug user. I read an article in The Moscow Times suggesting that Russians were surprised to see Russians portrayed as normal people in western television, but it didn’t seem unusual or groundbreaking when I watched it. It was definitely nice to look at Anya Taylor-Joy in vintage brassieres though. Netflix has called it a “Limited Series”, which probably means they have no plans for a second season, but you can imagine the show’s success is forcing Netflix to reconsider the possibility.

I have really been enjoying Better Call Saul, even more than I liked Breaking Bad, from which it was spun. Whereas Breaking Bad was a high stakes thriller about deceit and ego, Better Call Saul has a much slower pace, and it is much more personal and intimate. Breaking Bad drove the story with suspense and adrenaline. Better Call Saul hooks the viewer by developing characters they care about. There is already a fifth season, but it is not yet available on Netflix (in the United States). Evidently, there is also a sixth season in the works.

What else is there to watch? I have tried a couple times to get into The Good Place, and it’s not working for me. It is well done, with good production value, but the writing feels very formulaic, and the characters a little two-dimensional.

I have been watching Star Trek: Discovery and The Mandalorian each week when episodes drop. Discovery has been very weird this season. This nine-hundred-years-in-the-future timeline is very close to jumping the shark, and now they’re back with the mirror universe again. The second season was very solid, but now they’re disappointing me again.

The Madalorian has been quite good, possibly better than the first season. I assume we’re about to approach a big season finale, so we’ll soon see how well this season finishes up. Hey, and the kid has a name now. I can almost hear it in Frank Oz‘s voice.