“Oh wow.”
What a wild ride that show was. And I agree they nailed the dismount.
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Mrs banedoodle and I binge-watched the first season of White Lotus yesterday. Holy shit, that was one of the best novels I’ve seen in years.
Primo on Amazon Prime is good. From Mike Schur (The Office, Parks and Rec) and Shea Serrano, whose early life in San Antonio it is loosely based on. Only 8 quick episodes. Some good laughs.
“The Crowded Room” on Apple TV+ is excellent. I rattled through the first four episodes last night. It has Apple’s now ubiquitous polish, and it’s phenomenally well acted (although Emmy Rossum being Tom Holland’s mum is a bit weird).
It’s billed as a “psychological thriller” and this is true. It’s mentally enthralling rather than having action set pieces to retain one’s interest. It’s so good that I was still watching it at 1am this morning. Can’t wait to see where it goes.
Spoiler
The “twist” that all Danny’s friends are his alter egos is tipped so heavily - not least of which by the title - that it can’t be the ultimate twist.
The best twist ending I’ve ever experienced is in a book called “Necessary Evil”, where a troubled young man finds his estranged father and his new family but ends up slaughtering them. It is then revealed that he has done this many times before. The book ends with him imprinting himself on the next unsuspecting “Dad”…
I continue to enjoy The Crowded Room. There is a fantastic visualization of Danny’s stable of characters in his mind in the most recent episode.
Reminds me of a Fight Club theory that blew my mind as much as discovering that Tyler and the narrator are the same person. What if there was more than one alter ego here too? It was posited that there was at least one other: Marla.
You’ll never watch it the same way again.
I am probably late to the party here, but I have recently come across the bargain bin of streaming services: Tubi. First off, it’s free. Yes there are ads, but they are short and in my experience nowhere near frequent enough to be annoying; in a two-hour movie, you might get 4 ad breaks of 30 seconds. You don’t even have to register if you don’t want to, you can just watch.
But what of the selection? I don’t know the word to describe it, so I will explain it like this: imagine a Blockbuster Video store that had every movie and TV show ever made, but you’re in there looking for something on a Saturday morning after the world beat you to it Friday night. Tubi has some amazing titles in all senses of the word: amazingly good and amazingly bad.
For example, Tubi has just added the entire Jurassic Park franchise, Sicario, The Mummy series (Brandon Frasier version), GoodFellas, Casino, Inglorious Basterds, Seven, Speed, Close Encounters, Big, 8 Mile, Romancing the Stone and on and on and on. Honestly, there is always an absolute blizzard of first tier Hollywood movies on Tubi; nothing truly current, but that’s what you have the other services for.
Then there’s the other side of this Jeckyl and Hyde app: the absolute dreck that’s so bad, it’s good. Tubi seems to have cornered the market on 70s/80s/90s schlock horror movies. All the “video nasties” that were going to turn us all into sex-crazed serial killers are here; the grindhouse stuff to which Tarantino and Rodriguez routinely pay homage.
Then there is the selection of TV shows. Again, this is a walk down memory lane with things like Spencer for Hire, The Rockford Files, Charlies Angels, Columbo, Babylon 5, Baywatch, Airwolf, Miami Vice, Gilligan’s Island, Tom & Jerry (the original 1940s stuff), Scooby Doo, the Six Million Dollar Man and on and on. Not just a few episodes or seasons, but the entire runs of these shows.
For me, there’s a British TV section that includes delights like Red Dwarf, The Prisoner, Spaced, Men Behaving Badly, The Professionals and all of Gerry Anderson’s marionette marvels of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, Fireball XL5, Stingray and SuperCar, as well as his live action effort Space 1999. They are missing his “UFO” series, but that’s probably a good thing because Gabrielle Drake would have me permanently in my bunk.
Give it a go. It’s free! Type whatever you can think of into the search box, and you might be pleasantly surprised.
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Oh man, I do t know whether to thank you or hate you vehemently for posting that. To watch Airwolf again is beyond priceless.
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Tubi isn’t a rabbit hole; it’s all the rabbit holes.
It has Blue Thunder, too.
You son of a bitch.
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Does it have Scarecrow and Mrs. King? Asking for a friend.
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Yep.
This could beget ugly.
I use justwatch.com to find where the random things that pop into my head are streaming, and a solid percentage of the time the answer is Tubi
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Just binged season 2 of The Bear and the episode “Fishes” was one of the best things I’ve ever seen and also extremely tough to watch. The whole season was amazing though.
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The Fishes episode should come with about 100 Trigger Warnings, but holy shit was it fantastic.
An incredible cast, and just a masterpiece of storytelling in a way you don’t see that often.
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And then to get that character arc with “Forks” right after was just brilliant.
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This got my hopes up but, alas, no Fortitude season 3.
Man, this season of the Righteous Gemstones has been a crazy ride so far.
I never in a million years would’ve believed that Steve Zahn was capable of playing a dark, broody, serious role so well.
Did you see the first season of White Lotus? He is superb.