So much to catch up on. I can take a moment once more to remember my youth and the May TV Sweeps period where all your favorite shows pulled out the stops to get the best audience ratings possible so they'd get renewed.
I suppose summer was all re-runs, but I wasn't interested in them. I'd watch old movies on late night TV till the station signed off for the night.
During the day I'd be outside playing with friends, or reading a book under the big tree in the back yard if I could get away with it.
Here we are in absolute dreamtime, with channels on 24 hours a day, all competing to provide must watch television.
Picard
The second season had quite a mix of episodes, some exciting, some just sleepy. Luckily, the final episode Farewell wrapped everything up satisfactorily with touching and funny and exciting moments all included.
I'm sad to see only Seven of Nine and Raffi from the first two seasons will be in the final season of the series. I guess with the entire cast of Star Trek the Next Generation appearing in season three, there just isn't room.
Moon Knight
This series really deserves another season. They've built an interesting world, ours, except inhabited also by old Egyptian gods. Marc Spector and his alt Steven Grant worked things out between each other, once they were dead. I was rooting for Steven all the way till it was revealed Marc unwittingly slipped into his alter ego to not deal with horrible trauma in his life. Luckily for Steven and Marc, they don't know there's another.
Bosch Legacy
I've not watched the last two episodes of this season yet, but this spinoff of sorts is a great continuation of Bosch's story. He's the same man, but without the framework and backing of the police department he worked for so many years. There are times where he tells perpetrators that if he was still on the force he would do so and so. To a man they sneer he isn't a cop anymore.
Maddie is wonderful as a rookie cop. She works with a tough female partner who has to keep telling Maddie to dial it back and leave the next part of each case to the appropriate department, but Maddie wants to be hands on solving every case start to finish.
Honey Chandler is the third point of view in the series, serving still as Maddie's mentor, and sometimes as a partner of sorts in Harry's cases. But they do not work together, nope, no way.
The plot of this first season continues the saga of Carl Rogers, bad guy extraordinaire who had a hitman shoot Honey and threatened Maddie in the last season of Bosch. Each also have other cases and stories of their own.
I loved so much seeing a few characters from the old precinct pop in to help Harry, and the desk sergeant at Maddie's precinct looks awfully familiar.
Call The Midwife
I started watching Call the Midwife with my mother in law when she was here over Mother's Day Weekend. I really enjoyed it and am up to the middle of season three currently. I'm aware the show has eleven seasons, which makes me happy as I'll be enjoying it for a long time. I also know there are lots of character changes coming up, which is sad because I hate to see people go.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
I have mixed feelings about Strange New Worlds. I appreciate all the stories so far, and like most of the characters. It isn't angry and edgy like Star Trek Discovery.
My favorite is Ethan Peck as Spock. He's spot on as a combination of the best of all those who have portrayed the character.
Jess Bush as Nurse Chapel is unexpected comic relief.
Bruce Horak's fascinatingly grumpy engineer Hemmer is a delight.
The Captain, Anson Mount's Christopher Pike is ok, but his obsession with his fate is overplayed. His hair seriously bugs me and when he's talking it's all I can see.
I cannot see Uhura ever being like she is portrayed here by Celia Rose Gooding.
Rebecca Romjin, ah, I know her from the Librarians and I am not fond of this character who is sort of dark and scary rather than her humorous persona as Eve Baird.
Jury is out on Ortegas, La'an Noonien-Singh and Doctor M'Benga.
Halo
I've been playing video games since the 90s and film and television adaptations of them are always, always terrible. When I saw that the people doing Halo were not trying to know too much about the game, I thought dead meat on a stick once more.
It may have a much more humanity driven focus than the game, but this is just really well done science fiction.
Pablo Schrieber as Master Chief John 117 goes from being a weapon to a man who fights for his people. His backstory of being kidnapped as a six year old by research scientist Catherine Halsey and her husband Jacob Keyes to be trained as a largely mechanized fighting machine is compelling. His self removal of a chip that masks and overrides his own feelings and reactions, making him someone who now knows and cares about the stakes in a battle against an implacable enemy makes everything worth watching.
Halsey is also fascinating. No morals, no conscience, nothing but her scientific goals. Able to appear guileless as she burns everything down.
The Covenant, the grand enemy, is not comprehensible, not even through the eyes of their tool Makee, a human they took as a child for her abilities.
Cortana, the AI who is supposed to be an aid to him, but also if and when necessary, she's built to take over his mind and body seems so sweet. When she actually does have to take over, she's saddened by it and isn't sure she can undo the process.
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Just the first two episodes have been released as I'm writing this.
In episode one, we find Obi-Wan hiding out on Tatooine. He works processing meat from a giant creature who has died in the desert and is being cut up every day by a crew of hard on their luck characters. He allows himself to be cheated by the foreman, as is everyone else. He keeps his head down. He doesn't offer help to a Jedi who appears in town looking for help hiding from the Inquisitors, Jedi who have gone dark serving the Empire in order to survive.
After watching this episode I shook my head and said, it's Boba Fett all over, oh no.
In episode 2 (no titles), we meet the most delightful creature since Grogu. Princess Leia. Ten years old, but so tiny. So quick in mind and body. So clever. I love her to death. I'm ok with the show now.
Stranger Things Season Four
I thought this was the final season, but it turns out there's a season five coming. Despite this being a grim and gory season (more than ever before), you have to love the kids from Hawkins, even though some of them are in California, living or just visiting.
The side story of Joyce and conspiracy theorist Murray traveling to Russia to rescue Hopper is totally off the wall.
Dungeons and Dragons takes center stage once more as the leader of the Hellfire Club takes in Dustin, Mike and eventually Erica. Eddie Munson, the slightly whacky club leader, is soon on the run for murders, which are actually being committed by a dark wizard from D & D named Vecna, who begins to kill Hawkins teens in a grisly, bone cracking way.
In California, Eleven is bullied by a terrible blond psycho bimbo. It turns out she was also bullied while in training with Papa in his labs in Hawkins back in the day. She's recaptured by Papa and his cronies to try to help her recover her powers, which she lost last season.
There are two more episodes which will air July 1st.
