DOA On TV November 10, 2024

Here we are with another week of TV.  I watched my regular series and tried out a couple of new ones.  We're getting to that season where curling up with a good book or binge watching a show is just the thing.

NCIS: Origins  Last Rites

This week belongs to Mike Franks and an old case he solved.  Solved the case, never found the body. 

 

A husband who killed his wife and lover in a grisly mess then buried their bodies in separate locations is on Death Row and due to be executed in two days.  At some point in the past, Franks promised the woman's twin he would find the body.  He became obsessed with it, and attacked Hope, the killer, in prison.  

Anna's sister was contacted by Hope to get "absolution" and then he would reveal the location of her body.  Franks worked the case alone in the past, but now he has Lala and Gibbs and Randy to help.  It turns out Hope murdered yet another person, giving the team a pattern to the burials which leads to Anna's body.

Franks is out of control in several scenes, and even fights with his wife Tish over the case.  At the last, he races to the prison where Hope is getting lethal injections just to let the man know he won, they found the body.

Survivor

This week's episode featured that fan favorite The Survivor Auction.  After scrabbling in the morning for tubes in the jungle that contained money, the players had to spend down their money as fast as they could.  The person who had the most money at the end of the auction would lose their vote at tribal.

For once, the food was really great stuff.  It didn't look to me as anyone was just really digging in and eating, though.  Don't they know once the auction ends your food is gone?

Just two gross things this time around: those giant fish eyes that are the size of a small cake, and live wriggling grubs on a plate.  Gack.

This week there was a male and female who were immune: Sue and Kyle (his third in a row).  Lots of scrabbling before and at tribal.  A tie between Sam and Sierra resulted in a re-vote and Sierra left in tears.

Matlock  Episode 5 Claws

Olympia's team is working on a class action suit for prison inmates who were in particularly gruesome conditions before recent changes at the prison, including a new warden.

The key witness is a former inmate who works in a beauty salon as a nail artist.  Before she can testify, she relapses and begins taking drugs again.  Matty recognizes she's high and tells Olympia the girl can't be a witness.  They talk to several other potential witnesses, but once they hear Katya has relapsed, they're afraid and won't testify.

  

Matty goes to a drug house to find Katya to see if she can identify her dealer, maybe he was a guard at the prison?  This is a huge horror for Matty and her husband who have been to places like this before looking for their daughter.  It's almost more than they can do.

No luck there with Katya, but back at the beauty salon, Matty asks to see the tape of the day Katya relapsed, in particular a woman who was with Katya a long time and was disturbingly rude.  Matty recognizes the woman though she's wearing a hat.

Matty and her husband are trying to keep their grandson out of the cases now so he can have a normal school life.  It's tough without him!

On the other hand, Matty's office mates Billy and Sarah are starting to feel left out of the action as Matty shines in every case.  It's as if the writers don't quite know what to do with them now.

The Great British Baking Show: Dessert Week

This week it was meringue, spotted dick, and a tiramisu showstopper.  Aside from a few cracked meringues, it was all spectacular stuff from everyone.  I confess it's been a rough week, so I made it to the part where they said One Minute Left! on the showstopper, then I opened my eyes and the credits were rolling. zzzzzzzzz. 

Dylan has been really working hard each week and he got star baker.  Sumayah was done in by a mix of lemon curd and coffee that didn't go over well with the judges.

Her work is spectacular, but the talent this time around makes it so hard to eliminate anyone.

Christiaan's Showstopper

Yellowjackets

I've heard about the show for a long time, and now that it's on Netflix, I watched the first episode, which was its pilot.

The Yellowjackets are a high school soccer team that gets a spot in the Nationals.  They're getting a ride to the Nationals on the private jet belonging to the parents of one of the girls.  Diverted to airspace over Canada to avoid storms, the plane crashes.

The show is split into two timelines: 1996, the year of the tournament and airplane crash, and 2021 where the survivors of the crash carry on with their lives and dodge a reporter who wants the real story of what happened during the nineteen months they were stranded in the wilderness.

Each timeline features a teen and an adult actress for each character.

It isn't clear what goes on after the crash, though there are a few scenes from that time showing the girls dressed in bizarre outfits as if they were primitives.  It's pretty clear there's cannibalism.

There's quite a bit of character reveal before the crash.  There's a lot of competition and cruelty in the girls as a group.  Everyone seems to have a terrible home life.  Lots of sex. I can't say I liked a single character in the past or present.

Because of that, I will leave my viewing at one episode, and not watch more.

Territory

Not having seen any version of Yellowstone, I was curious and thought I'd start with a fresh new series that features a family and its challenges running a cattle station in Australia.  I have seen the first four episodes, and will watch the last two.

When the heir apparent to Marianne Station is injured after falling from his horse, and then is devoured by dingoes, the Lawson family is thrown into a scrabble for who will be next to run the ranch.  Everyone wants the job, nobody seems capable.

I don't understand why patriarch Colin Lawson doesn't just step back into the role, polishing his apparently rusty skills a bit.  While keeping the place afloat, he could be training in several of the family members vying for the role.  He could see who is actually capable.

Nah, he decides a ne'er do well grandson who doesn't want the job is his new heir.  The kid is a thief and allows himself to be a lackey for a truly slimy fellow thief.

Here's another show where it's hard to find likeable characters.  I like granddaughter Susie and think she's a much better bet than Marshall, her half brother.  I liked Emily, wife to drunken Graham, till she revealed her ruthless nature.  I was really rooting for her.  I also like Nolan Brannock, an indigenous cattle station owner who wants to compete with bigger cattle stations but keeps having bad luck and bad people coming his way.  Colin the patriarch is a monster, let's just say.

Even so, beautiful country, fascinating culture, I hope something good happens in the last two episodes.

DOA on TV October 27, 2023

 

 

NCIS Origins

Another good episode, cementing this as a new regular show for me to watch.  In Bend, Don’t Break, a man is found by the road, clearly having died somewhere else. There are plastic eggs with drugs inside near the body.  The investigation leads to a nearby mall which has had thefts in a toy store and a sporting goods store which sold guns.

Gibbs goes off the rails and entraps a mall security officer in a glass elevator, trying to tie him the thefts and the murder.

 

On the personal front, Gibbs goes to his home to see if he can sort out the belongings of his wife and daughter, but he leaves distraught without making any progress there.  His father, still staying at Gibbs’ apartment goes to Mike Franks and demands Leroy be given a desk job, as he’s not ready to be in the field.

Gibbs behavior at the mall makes Franks ask Gibbs to sit this out.  That doesn’t work, does it?

I’m liking Randy even more this week, as he’s unexpectedly loyal to Gibbs. Lala is much more composed and business like this week, not adding to the people harassing Gibbs.

 

Only Murders in the Building

In Escape from Planet Klongo, things finally heat up with another murder, and a very funny scene where Martin and Short get to be extras on a Ron Howard film set, but break into an argument, wearing blue performance capture outfits that make them look like aliens on a small monitor nearby.   Ron Howard’s cameo doesn’t disappoint.

 

 

Survivor

It’s the Merge, with the usual shenanigans about it not being the real merge until there’s been a competition to earn the new buffs. In a bit of a twist though, only the person ultimately earning individual immunity is safe, every other person can be voted out.

Thankfully Rome Cooney managed to get on everyone’s nerves in the new enlarged group.  The guy just never stopped talking, lying, bragging.  Out he went.

 

There are so many sharks this season, it should be interesting to see who falls next.

 

Matlock

In the episode A Guy Named Greg, Matty, it turns out, was a contracts lawyer, but never a trial lawyer.  Even so, given a sympathetic relationship with the client, and the favorable impression she’s made on the jury, Matty ends up in court trying the case.  The trial is about workplace sexual harassment. 

Matty at first has trouble grasping that the client wasn’t able to brush the guy off, as working women did back in her day.  Then she remembers Greg, and her husband does too.  It turns out Matty wanted to be a trial lawyer early in her career, but it was easier to move into contract law to avoid him after an incident in the break room.

 

Armed with that memory, which she had suppressed, she is able to go into the courtroom and deliver a powerful argument for her client.  Her character just gets better and better.

 

The Great British Baking Show

It’s Pastry Week on the show.  Where do they get these foods?  Spanokopita, a Greek dish with a spinach/feta cheese filling looked nice, but I can’t imagine it being tasty.  I did like seeing the pastry attachment on a Kitchen Aid Blender, though, how slick was that?  The group this time really is exceptionally talented, and the show stoppers were amazing.  I feared my second favorite baker, Illiyin, had some bad luck and was one of those on the bottom, but she continues on.   Nelly wore a beret this week, for luck, provided by her son.

 

 

Girl Haunts Boy

In this Netflix film, a girl named Beatrix from the 1920s takes half of a ring from a display at a museum.  Outside the museum, she’s hit by a car immediately.

In the present day, Cole and his mother are moving into a Victorian style home after the unexpected death of Cole’s father.  Everything is new here for Cole, particularly the discovery that the house is haunted by the ghost of a girl named Bea from the 1920s.  He finds a scrapbook and an old ring in the closet in his room. Once he places the ring on his finger, he can see and talk to Bea.

 

She thinks she’s been dead perhaps 30 years, but it’s been a century.  She is so happy to have someone to talk to, and he’s happy to introduce her to the modern world.  She’s been trapped in the house unable to leave, but they find if he wears the ring, she can go out and explore the world with him.

Taking her to New York and showing her the modern world takes Cole out of his grief a bit.  When he finds out it is possible to remove the curse of the ring and send her on to her fated after life, how can he say goodbye?