What I Watched: The Diplomat from Amazon Prime. This isn’t the other new show called The Diplomat featuring Keri Russell as a US ambassador to the UK. It was fine, full of bad decisions – but based on reviews I apparently should have watched the other show.
Here is the blurb: Laura Simmonds and her consul colleague and friend Alba Ortiz work to protect British nationals in trouble in Barcelona. It isn’t an easy job. They’ll need to work as lawyer, counsellor and cop, as their diplomatic skills are stretched to the limit when they navigate a stream of surprising and complex cases that walk through the Consulate doors.
Here’s the intro because I couldn’t find a trailer for this Diplomat as opposed to that Diplomat as opposed to the movie the Diplomat . . .
What I Read: The four books in the series The Collapse: Fate’s Vultures by Jami Gray. The series is bundled at a sale price everywhere but on Amazon. I like this author, but this dystopian world full of cruelty, dirt, violence, and cheap life wasn’t my favorite. There was no pretty in the book. Here’s the blurb:
In a world gone to hell, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad… Meet a new breed of warriors, Fate’s Vultures, a mercenary band who live by a code in a world gone to hell – loyalty to each other, but for the right price, they’ll be the shield for those without. In the ravaged aftermath of the post-apocalyptic these evocative couples will stop at nothing to claim their future. Welcome to the world of The Collapse.
What I Listened To: The Pernice Brothers – Hey, Guitar; DAIISTAR – Star Starter; and Koresma – Mystic Sea (AK Remix)
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!
I’ve been watching the sitcom Superstore on Hulu.
I somehow missed its entire run on NBC which ended a few years ago. I vaguely remember it getting good reviews but never saw it.
I like it a lot. America Ferrera stars as a floor manager at a Target/Walmart type store and there’s a big ensemble of coworkers.
One of the writers for The Office created it. The tone so far is definitely more like early seasons of The Office before it went soft, but it also seems to do a better job of not turning people into caricatures.
We are still watching “Elsbeth.” Apparently it is a spin-off of the Good Wife/Good Fight; I’ve never heard of any of these things.
https://www.cbs.com/shows/elsbeth/
I also just finished up Founding Partisans
(Oh God, that Amazon link.)
Must go. I told BH that I would make mini-lasagne for him. They’re not difficult, they’re just a pain in the in the neck because you have to drag out out all these pans and…whatever. He’s been very helpful to me so if he doesn’t want to wolf down lasagne from a giant baking dish and wants individual servings, who am I to gainsay this.
ive been watching the baby goats at the kiddy farm
baby goats are hilarious
and listening to… well aronchupa and lil sis nora….coz i like them
they are silly fun with bounce
Welcome to the world of Fallout…
As for the Diplomat… sounds like they’re the baby sitters for ex-pat Brits getting busted for various Drunken offenses in Spain, getting caught stealing some Russian’s drugs at some shady Ibiza club or doing what ex-pat Brits do in Espangne.
I had another busy week so not much in the pop culture arena.
Ended up going down the nostalgia road of News Radio on Prime… starring the late Phil Hartman, the guy from Kids In The Hall, a much less of a jerkasss Joe Rogan and one my TV crushes, Maura Tierney.
…have not seen that diplomat…have seen the keri russell one & it was good though short on likeable characters?
…also…still haven’t finished shogun…but wound up the most recent (hopefully not last) season of warrior
…& it’s all well & good…I like it…I like most of the main people in it, even…but there is one thing it inherits from the kung fu genre that I wish it could have left off…some characters are awful & you know they’ll meet a bad end…fine…& at least some of those have to also pose varying degrees of physical threat because there are going to be a lot of fights…ok…so I see how you get there…but…even allowing for the all-time favorite motivation being “revenge motivated by the death of a close friend or family member”…the thing where such & such a villain kills good-but-not-that-good fighter (who usually could have won if things hadn’t gone wrong for them, often because the villain lacks honor) to establish they’re a legit threat…wastes characters which in this show have at least some depth
…& if one in particular had to go this time around…then for fuck’s sake let’s not introduce a returning villain by having them knife one of arguably the two most interesting characters & hit the credits on the finale without establishing they did or didn’t make it
…if game of thrones had had someone run tyrion through & dumped him into water & then been all “see you next year” there would have been a riot…but apparently not enough people watch warrior?
My wife is in Serbia for the next 5 weeks, so I get to watch whatever I want.
Murder to a wild watusi beat! In technicolor! I would be on the couch next to you. I hope you like sour cream & onion potato chips.
I might or might not have watched all 4 new episodes of Bridgerton last night.
Penelope deserves better than Colin, he’s a spoiled idiot. Like it’s fine, the writers made him really skeezy for the first few episodes which eww gross, but also eh they’re going to have to end up together because that’s how the plot goes.
I love “Bridgerton.” And also “Queen Charlotte.” The outfits. The wigs. The dancing. The drama. It’s all almost too much. But not for me.
I was not as much a fan of Queen Charlotte but only because it wasn’t a romance in the way that the literary canon is. One of the rules of romance fiction is that you have to have a happy ending, and having George be affected by such severe mania and hallucinations, well, not a happy ending.
I’m three episodes in and omg I hate Collin. What an arrogant loser. She is way out of his league. I like the Vegetarian for her but of course that won’t work out.
What’s up with the Pianist? Is she coded as a-sexual or neurodivergent or both?
So far I’m more interested in Mama B’s blossoming flirtation and that other B bro with the smart widow.
Spoiler
It just dawned on me that Penelope’s nickname is Pen which is a writing instrument.
What I meant about the Pianist sister is that it seems like they wrote her in so that there’s a trad-pretty Bridgerton sister in the running. She’s not the main focus of the season so she has no depth or she is their attempt at diversity or both.
They have been more obviously diverse in their casting of background characters, like the guy in the wheelchair, one other fat (not a derogative term) woman, and a sprinkling of Asian characters.
Francesca’s story is about widowhood and finding love after grief in her book. So I think they’re trying to tee that up in this season (her first marriage in the books is a love match where she just had that instant connection, which tracks with how they’ve had her and John be in this season so far). So next season will be Benedict or Eloise and then the one after about Francesca. It will have to be 2 seasons away because she’ll need a year to be in mourning.
Also in the books she’s the one who is overwhelmed by all the noise and activity in the household with all the siblings. I don’t recall her being obsessed with music in the books though.
Side note, I hope they rewrite Benedict’s love story a lot because it’s pretty boring in the book, straight up a cinderalla story.
Thanks to Youtube I’ve been watching this:
Where in the world did this come from? Just the same, I’m happy that Youtube found it for me.
You don’t want to know what I’ve been reading…mostly lightly spicy fantasy academia series.
I watched three romcoms. All were exactly what you expect from their trailers.