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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-16 (Thursday)
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:38:08 -0800
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On 1/17/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

> What did you watch?

Yesterday, I stayed home, did some work, and did watch some stuff:

soaps: DOOL - Tue's ep. Leo tries to get Hattie her job back and so far 
fails, but does get Paulina and Abe to hire a P.I. to track down the new 
Lady Whistleblower (who of course is Javi's new boyfriend). JJ is now 
working for Salem PD. Jada is suspicious of Rafe's disappearance, and 
goes to confront EJ about it, and stumbles across FauxRafe!
    GH - Thur's ep. Nina really pressures Willow to back down on 
Michael's parents visiting him, and then goes to Ava to complain about 
Drew's control over Willow. Carly tries to get Tracy to relent. Willow 
has a freak out, but Chase calms her down. Brook Lynn visits the ObGyn 
about getting pregnant. Dante talks with Cody, but then Selina Wu shows 
up. Trina visits the injured football QB.

The Rings of Power (Prime) - Ep's #2.7 #2.8, the season #2 finale.
    Is season #2 better than season #1 - Overall? - Probably?... And I 
appreciated that they seemed to write out a significant number of season 
#1-2 character here, so hopefully we won't be subjected to some of the 
worst from season #1 anymore... But season #2 definitely benefited from 
focusing on Sauron over some of the lesser characters.
    But all of the systemic problems the show has had from the start are 
still there, and some of them (the idiotic "Gandalf", and Numenor, 
storylines) are even magnified in season #2.
    As I feared, they plan 5 seasons for this show, instead of 3 - I 
don't give this show long odds of getting all the way through season #5, 
unless Bezos just decides to throw unlimited money at this.

Demise (Tubi) - A 2024 "thriller"(?) "noir"(?) flick that is not 
actually a Tubi Original film but pretty much might as well be.
    I'm guessing that Liz Fenning, at least, had fun doing this one.
    And, before you ask, there is no naked nudity in this - they use 
very obvious body doubles in a couple of scenes, but if given the choice 
between "no naked nudity" and "use of body doubles", I will nearly 
always prefer "no naked nudity"...
    Anyway, this runs at 2 hours, and is overlong at this length.
    Fenning plays a richie-rich "white girl" (IOW, "Anglo") wife who 
discovers that 1) she can't have kids, and 2) her husband (Carlo Mendez) 
is having an affair with a spicy, hot-to-trot fashion designer (Crystal 
Hernandez, whom I'm not familiar with and seems to have had only a minor 
career so far)... and the mistress is expecting a baby with the husband!
    This pushes Fenning's character *way over the line*! and soon enough 
she's plotting 1) revenge, 2) baby stealing, 3) murder.
    I was disappointed in Fenning's character's plot - I was hoping she 
had a multi-step plan which involved - 1) killing the mistress, 2) 
getting back together with the husband to get control of the baby, and 
3) finally killing the husband to have the baby all to herself. But her 
character's plan only covers Steps 1) and 2), and not 3), which really 
irked me.
    I did not care for the ending of this which seemed ill-defined in a 
way that made the ending less effective, not more.


What did you watch?