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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-21 (Saturday)
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:41:32 -0800
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Yesterday, I should have been doing the grading of my final final 
exam(!), but I didn't get to that until yesterday night.

Instead, during Saturday day, I mostly took it easy, and just left 
football on, mostly the NFL games - I really didn't see much of the 
college playoff games yesterday. (Sidenote: It annoys me that the "first 
round" college playoff games aren't played with "named" bowl games.) In 
the evening, before grading, I finally started tackling "Cross", and 
then watched a Lifetime Christmas flick:

soaps: Y&R - Wed's(?) ep. Billy has had enough, and washes his hands of 
Jack after Jack refuses to participate with Billy's revenge scheme 
against The Mustache. Audra talks with Sally, and admits that her recent 
emotional outburst with the Winters was genuine, and Audra seems to be 
mellowing. It's Claire's first day at work with Nikki [hurl!].

football - In the Saturday morning game, Kansas City beat the Texans (no 
real surprise), though there were some injuries along the way, esp. a 
pretty bad one to a Texans player.
    In the afternoon game, which I payed more attention to, it took the 
Ravens a long time to outclass the hated Steelers, but later in the 
second half the Ravens did exactly that and shellacked the Steelers 
pretty good, 34-17. Unfortunately, the Steelers still lead the AFC 
North, but I have a feeling the Ravens will win it before all is said 
and done.

Cross (Prime) - First two episodes. I really wish they hadn't tried to 
"update" this to modern times (the first novel came out in 1993), 
because it leads to an awkward mix of enjoyable crime-conspiracy mystery 
elements with up-to-the-minute woke point-scoring. (Though I did 
appreciate the wink that the most anti-cop dude is a richie-rich (IOW, 
out of touch) African-American dude whom Cross almost punches out.)
    Early on, this did answer one question I had - Was this supposed to 
be in continuity with the Tyler Perry film? But the TV series quickly 
establishes that is covering some of the same ground of that film, so 
this series more like a "retelling".
    It took me until *after* watching the first two episodes to realize 
that Cross' partner, John Sampson, was portrayed by the same Isiah 
Mustafa as from "Shadowhunters"! Mustafa looks totally different here!
    Hmmm... In reading up on the book series, I think I have been 
majorly spoiled on Alona Tal's character! (Ha!!) And when did Tal get so 
cleavage-y?!! (She had a child in 2022, so maybe that's it?!...)
    Anyway, while I dislike the social commentary aspects of this, and 
kind of don't like how they are portraying Cross as kind of a *mess* 
right now, I am liking the crime-conspiracy mystery elements, so that's 
keeping me in.

A Carpenter Christmas Romance (Lifetime) - I only really watched this 
because it stars Sasha Pieterse (PLL, bitches!).
    Pieterse was always substantially younger than the rest of the PLL 
cast, even Janel Parrish (who just looks younger) - Pieterse isn't even 
30 yet. As such, she still looks good. She's lost some weight from her 
peak (which was probably at the end of PLL), though is by no means 
skinny now.
    Anyway, this was the usual malarkey, though maybe a cut above the usual.
    Pieterse plays a somewhat prickly fantasy novelist who is hit by a 
P.R. crisis - she intends to kill off the main character in her fantasy 
series, and her fans find out and are in an uproar. So her 
sister(?)-manager sends her back home to hide out and finish the latest 
novel. There, of course, she runs across her high school 
crush(?)/boyfriend(?) (Mitchell Slaggert) (I didn't pay enough attention 
to this part to figure out which he was), who is now a 
carpenter/woodworking(?) artist.
    Complications and hott sex enuse!
    This didn't break any new ground, but it went down a little easier 
than most, and I liked that Pieterse's heroine was much more subdued 
than most of the female lead characters of these things.


What did you watch?