Month: December 2019

All of the "boutique" shows I've been watching have wrapped up for the season (or the entire series).

Mr. Robot (series)
To be honest, I was kind of disappointed with the series finale. I'm still processing it to some degree, but it left me asking questions that will probably never be answered. Did any of the incidents portrayed during the past for years actually occur in real life, or were they just part of Elliot's psychotic break?

His Dark Materials (season)
Loved it. Unlike The Golden Compass movie from years ago, this time the story stayed almost perfectly true to the source material. They aren't shying away from the religious and spiritual underpinnings of the novels and I appreciate how Will's story (that doesn't actually appear until Book 2, The Subtle Knife) has been interwoven with the events of The Golden Compass. Excellent storytelling.

If I have a gripe, it's that the battle scenes seem a bit…sanitized for our protection and there is a distinct lack of daemons on screen. (Kind of ironic considering the creative force behind this production keeps telling us this first season is all about the daemons.)

For All Mankind (season)
This one kind of took me by surprise and was the sole reason I started exploring Apple TV. This has been a thought-provoking alternate-timeline history of the American space program. Spurred into action by Russia landing the first man (and woman!) on the Moon, the space program is jump-started and after landing astronauts—of both sexes—on the Moon, have established a base, and looks to be on the way to Mars by 1985! Of course there's a lot of family and personal drama taking place as well, which adds the certain emotional spice needed for an otherwise "dry" drama.

Definitely looking forward to Season Two next year.

The Expanse (season)
Brought back from the dead by Amazon Prime after being cancelled by SyFy after a three year run, the Expanse continues to be one of my favorite "hard" sci-fi dramas on television. It's definitely not one of those shows you watch as background noise; it demands your full attention to follow what's happening. I just got done binging the entire fourth season and it's only left me wanting MORE.

Watchmen (season? series? No one seems to know for sure.)
This is another show that can't be on as background filler while you're cruising the interwebs. I was perhaps at a disadvantage because except for the 2009 movie, I was unfamiliar with the source material and required a lot of dedicated paying-attention to the story to suss out what was happening. Even then I had to resort to podcasts to get a fuller understanding and appreciation of what the writers and producers were throwing us. It's a beautiful stand-alone story, and while HBO hasn't announced a second season, the story—while self-contained and satifying on its own—definitely left things open-ended enough that it could easily continue.

Guess I'm going to have to search out weird shit on Netflix or Amazon Prime now.