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Reviews
The Girls on the Bus (2024)
The show is good on personal challenges, bad on political fiction
The show is co-written by Amy Chozick, a journalist who spent years of her 20s and 30s on the campaign trail and was struggling to balance personal life with her work. The show is essentially about this. Since people of different ages struggle with different things, and this show takes place during one campaign season, they have four main characters who are at different ages in their life, each facing a different set of problems. The show does this well, the actors are excellent. The weakness I'd highlight here is the unlikely friendship of the characters, but some reality bending is acceptable in television.
On the politics front: the show follows the Democratic primary election. People with some political knowledge will be able to identify the real politicians who the nominees are based on, all were nationally known at some point. To get an idea: the show also invents new newspapers for its fictional story, the "The Washington Union" and "The New York Sentinel" as well as the cable news network "Liberty News". Can you guess which companies these stand in for?
The political discussion in the show is shallow and hyperbolic (not unlike a campaign). What is a little disappointing is that the journalists sometimes also seem to have very naive ideas about politicians, about one level above the black and white characters in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (a movie the show also references). And they do so while navigating the complex economic and political environments in their own lives.
The show is also noticeably left leaning (I had no problem with this, because so am I).
To sum up, the lived experience and lived politics of the show is nice, the abstracted politics and scoops are pretty thin. If you want to watch a journalist dramedy, you'll probably like this, but if you want Lincoln level political drama, you probably won't.
Reunion (2024)
Similar setting the The Afterparty TV show
If you enjoyed this you could give season 1 of 'The Afterparty' (2022-2023) a look, and vice-versa. If you have not seen either, please read another review (:
The setting and a lot of the characters are very similar, so is the comedy. I did not think about it a lot, but I think the crime is similar as well, as in it is theoretically possible to figure out, but not practically, it all hinges on a minute detail. The movie is concise, which suits the facility of the crime.
The main thing the TV show has that the movie does not is that in each episode you get a subjective point of view style recount of the murder, each of which are presented in a different movie genre. These are pretty good in my opinion, but they come at the cost of a much longer runtime.
Captain Fall (2023)
Unpleasant
I watched one (1) + two half episodes (7,12).
A show with a great animation style but awful humor. The gist of it is that the main character is a loser, and his family is awful to him. They do not love him deep down, they are just awful through and through.
Not sure why people would like the "humor" either. Main protagonists brother is a sex fiend, but in a way that is not charming or funny at all, he just says and does inappropriate things all the time. I have no problem with adult comedy, I liked Family Guy, but I did not find anything funny in this. It is often said that comedy is about the perversion of expectations, but I can't recall a single twist that was unexpected, jokes are telegraphed from miles away.
The Book of Boba Fett: Chapter 7: In the Name of Honor (2022)
Action figures
As a child, did you sometimes gather a bunch of action figures, then mash some of them together pretending they were fighting?
If today this still sounds appealing, then this episode is for you!
If not, then it is not for you, the dichotomy is very clear.
Foundation: Death and the Maiden (2021)
This was a better than average episode
Are you upset that the show is not an adaptation of the books? So was I, but if you still are, why are you still watching?
This episode further hints at the original idea behind the show: the genetic dynasty and elements of the galaxy revolting against it. This is a nice idea, worthy of its own show.
In my opinion the show would be better if they totally skipped the elements that vaguely refer to the Foundation books, as those simply do not fit. Personally I am also not a fan of the currently popular trend of having 3+ storylines in a single show, this is a cheap way to build suspense.
I also understand why fans of the book are upset: it is not just that the adaptation is imperfect, but the ideas espoused in the show are at times literally contradictory to the main ideas of the books.