It's another week of ranging around trying out shows I've never seen, and re-watching a couple of older films.
DOC (Season one is on Netflix, Season Two is broadcast on Fox on Tuesday nights)
This isn't the cringey old Doc series with Billy Ray Cyrus my mom watched weekly. This is a brand new series about an arrogant doctor who is brilliant, but has no bedside manner and she's terrible to staff.
She wasn't always cold and cruel, as we see in flashbacks. She had a young son with heart problems who died on a school museum trip she was supposed to be on. Likely if she was there, he would be alive.
Dr Amy Larsen's grief has no bounds or end and is consuming.
Then, she's in an auto accident and there's brain trauma. She's lost her memory of the last eight years of her life. She doesn't know her son died, her daughter is estranged, she's divorced. She doesn't understand why everyone hates her.
Her medical knowledge is out of date, and if she's to be reinstated in any capacity, she's got to learn what she doesn't know, and start all over as an intern even after passing the boards.
She's still "the smartest person in the room" and her medical instincts are excellent. Her personality is more as it was before her son's death, and she tries hard to navigate relationships. Problematically also, she made enemies in the eight years she doesn't recall, and those folks want her to fail.
Memory and recall figure largely into the episode plots, and there are many flashbacks which I think work really well here.
I was able to binge season one Netflix, but season two is just unfolding on Fox weekly. It's so hard to transition to not just clicking Next Episode!
There is a real life case of a doctor in Italy with this same experience, only he lost 13 years.
Longmire (Paramount+)
If you read lots of mystery blogs and related posts about mystery TV shows, Longmire often comes up as a huge favorite. Based on a series of novels by Craig Johnson, Longmire ran for six seasons, first on A and E, then on Netflix.
According to Reddit, (r/Longmire), the Longmire character in the books and in the show are very different.
The show takes place in Wyoming, and Walt Longmire is the county sheriff. He's been grieving his wife for the last year, and according to one of his deputies named "Branch", he hasn't been doing the job at all, and the rest of the staff has been carrying his weight.
I don't feel it is stated why he starts coming back to himself, but he does. Maybe it's seeing a road sign showing his deputy is running for his job in the next election that rouses him.
He uses old fashioned tracking skills and investigative methods. He has more friends than enemies. He never carries a cell phone but relies on the radio in his SUV.
A new deputy, Vic Moretti, finds Longmire frustrating and inspirational. She gets out of the office and into investigations with Walt anytime she can because he's so good.
I've not finished season one. I'm not sure I'll keep watching as Walt is a bit too much of a loose cannon who does whatever he wants, pretty much, and I prefer my law enforcers to be sticklers for the law and justice.
Paddington 2
I enjoyed the first film, and also Paddington in Peru. While Paddington always triumphs, I was not so fond of the little bear being sent to prison in this one. Even though he won everyone over, produced marmalade and changed all of the prison uniforms to pink, ...yeah he felt sad and abandoned. Poor bear.
Sister Act (Re-watch)
I find this movie to be so fun, and love the music. There are a string of films about nuns I've loved going way back. I'm not fond of any of the part of this film featuring the mob guys from Reno, but everything else! The contrast between the religious versions and rocking secular versions of the featured songs is just magical. The Pope rocking out in the balcony, Maggie Smith's prim and grim Mother. Such a feel good movie.
Sweet Home Alabama (Re-watch)
My husband remembers my son and I seeing this at the theater (2002) . I do not believe I've seen it since then.
Reese Witherspoon never disappoints! She has changed her name to hide her background as a poor girl from a small southern town. Her current love, (played by Grey's Anatomy's Patrick Dempsey), is wealthy and wants to marry her. Melanie slips home to get Jake, her childhood sweetheart, to finally sign divorce papers so she can move on.
Melanie thinks little of her family and former friends, and is ashamed of the town she grew up in. What a fun romantic comedy.
Absentia TV Series Ep 1
I thought this series about an FBI agent missing for six years, then recovered from her captor might be really engaging. Instead, I was horrified at the six years of torture she endured, only to come home to her husband's remarriage and her child not knowing who she is.
As if she hasn't suffered enough, she's now the suspect in a series of murders, that she somehow committed as soon as she was released.
I looked at the episodes ahead, and it looks like they never give her a break, and just keep piling on the horror. Too cruel, too mean. Can't watch this one.
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