What I watched: Two episodes of Fallout, before I chose to work while it was being streamed by . . . others. It was good timing because of my busy season, so everyone got what they wanted – I got to work in peace and Keitel got to watch a show which he was predisposed to like due to his fondness for the Fallout video games.
So, I am probably treading on more than a few sacred cows here, but I found the show to be ugly, violent, mean-spirited, and lacking in any characters for whom I wanted to root. I liked the Expanse and Amos, I liked Luther, I even liked Hazbin Hotel – so I can watch gritty television. But Fallout (except for the dog) wasn’t my cup of tea.
The Guardian liked it: The reason Fallout is good – and this applies to the other successful game-to-screen adaptations in recent years, too – is not that it looks right, that the sets are perfect, or that they’ve nailed the retro-futurist nostalgic aesthetic of the games. It’s that Nolan and writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner actually played and understood Fallout, and felt the power of its storytelling for themselves. Instead of trying to awkwardly adapt a game story into a TV script, they’ve written brilliant, extremely high-budget extended fan-fiction of the games. I’m all for this approach. Now that we have a generation of TV and filmmakers who’ve grown up with games and truly understand them, I’m hopeful we’ll see more of it.
What I Read: The six books in the next series by Jami Gray, The Kyn Chronicles. Here’s the blurb to book one:
Raine’s spent a lifetime hunting monsters, but can she stop her prey from exposing the supernatural community one bloody corpse at a time? Everyone fears the hunter in the shadows – even the monsters . . . Raine McCord, forged in the brutal maelstrom of magic and science, is an elite hunter at home hunting monsters through the murky shadows of the supernatural world of the Kyn. Not an easy task when you’re trying to keep the humans ignorant of the existence of creatures typically confined to campfire tales. And gets worse when a series of disappearances and deaths in the Kyn community suggests someone wants to rip the thin veil of secrecy aside and expose the horror lurking behind the curtain. To even the odds, Raine is forced to partner with another hunter, the sexy and tantalizing Witch-Fey, Gavin Durand. Their partnership proves to be as challenging and dangerous as the prey they hunt. Especially when the trail leads back to the foundation that warped Raine’s magic as a child and threatens to resurrect the nightmares of her past. Determine to stop the threat to the Kyn, Raine and Gavin stalk their prey through a maze of lies, murder, and greed, but will the price they pay be too high?
What I Listened To: The more pressed and stressed I get at work, the harder and darker my tunes become. Sick Fuck by Singapore Sling (which includes many uses of the “C” word, and I don’t mean cilantro); Trees by Big Special; and the Kokoro Disco-San Remix of Skyn Saxo Derivato.
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!
Hope you’re feeling somewhat better @Elliecoo
Yes, it sounded really tough. Hope you’re managing some rest.
@Hannibal @bluedogcollar thank you for asking. I’m really quite a wreck, wasn’t expecting it to be quite this painful. Also I hadn’t considered the quantity of constant basic things that use core muscles. I’ve got a rolling hospital tray coming so that I can work on my laptop from a reclining position. But I will probably not try to “go to work” until Wednesday or Thursday. Keitel is a superstar. I can’t even get up or down without his help. He is so patient. And that will teach you to ask, as I will whine, moan, and complain!
Whine, moan, bitch and complain to your heart’s content. We’re all here for you and Keitel…but he’s not allowed to complain 😉
Moaning about real pain is a good thing and asking for help is a skill more people should learn. My wife had a couple of big surgeries and it became clear that being direct right away was a lot better for everyone instead of letting things linger.
I watched The Flatshare (Amazon). It was cute and I enjoyed the whole post-it note gimmick. The main female character was anxious, needy and self absorbed as a plot point and that made it hard for me to watch. I had an emotionally draining best friend like that. After a decade of them stuck on a loop, I ghosted them.
Speaking of old friendships. I read Touch by Ólafur Ólafsson. Set at the beginning of the pandemic, a man in his seventies, who is begining to lose his memories, goes off to Tokyo in search of a woman he fell in love with in his youth. I enjoyed the hyper focus on a flash in the pan romance which changed the man’s whole life trajectory.
@HammerZeitgeist I keep considering watching the TV show, but it looks really sad to me. Themes of unrequited love, bad choices, missed opportunities, etc. – they hit harder as one grows older, at least for me.
The unrequited love is not the kind that pulls at the audience’s heart strings. Her ex is emotionally abusive and controlling. The love between her and her roommate is what we’re watching slowly develop. Bad choices yes she makes many because she suffers from anxieties and low self esteem and lacks a backbone. I loved her flatmate. He was the reason I kept watching.
But yes, I totally know what you mean about avoiding certain plot lines because they might hit too close to home.
Jessica Brown Findlay was my sister-in-law on “Downton Abbey.” Lady Sybil. Neither of us completed the series. 🙁 JBF then went on to do “Harlots,” which is one of the least enjoyable things I’ve ever watched. Not the acting, but the plotlines. “Harrowing” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Do you think you and your cousin got written off the show because your stars were rising at the time? I think that’s what I read about you both…a decade later look at where you’ve both landed.
I’m pretty sure that was the case for me. I don’t know about Lady Sybil. I think what they did do wrong, whoever decided this, was to leave no hope of return. Lily James, who does not need the work, shipped off to New York with her husband but I believe it’s in the first movie she comes back for a visit with a baby! Maybe I hallucinated this.
I think that’s a fair opinion of Fallout. It started getting better for me the more it leaned into being a cartoon than a drama. I thought it was good cartoon and I enjoyed the acting, especially Walton Goggins, but I thought they took the backstory much too seriously and it was awfully clumsy. I enjoyed it overall, though.
@bluedogcollar, whew, I really don’t want to disrespect the viewing opinions of others!
I’m about halfway through and I think your opinion of Fallout is valid, Ellie. I was hoping for something like The Last of Us (which was amazing) and this doesn’t get there. BDC’s description of a cartoon fits it much better. I plan to finish it, but I’m not bingeing it like a maniac. I’ll get to it when I get to it.
@Bryanlsplinter at least the dog is good?
I also watched the first couple of episodes of Hacks and liked it.
Jean Smart is a rich, nasty Vegas comedian who pairs up with a young insecure writer to jumpstart both careers. It’s well acted and pretty funny, and I’ll keep with it.
No apologies. Fallout isn’t for everyone.
I’ve only seen two and a half eps due to time constraints.
The universe of Fallout is one that’s mean, nasty and almost heartless (unless you run into cannibals.)
One of the better things about Fallout that it was one of the first games that allowed you to be what you wanted to be. You could be the savior of the wasteland or the worst nightmare of the wasteland or something in between the two. How the story ended was based on how you behaved (aka Karma.)
I’m usually too much of a goody two shoes and rarely went beyond chaotic good meaning I wasn’t a cold blooded murderer but I also wasn’t going to take shit either.
Lucy reminds me of me in terms of how I viewed the world as a kid with wide eyed naivety… The Ghoul, on the other hand, is me much older and more mean.
Maximus… well, I hope he’s less of an ass as the show progresses. I will say Michael Rappaport was ideally cast as an asshole.
@manchucandidate what you said here is spot-on as far as my take on it, “The universe of Fallout is one that’s mean, nasty and almost heartless (unless you run into cannibals.)”
still watching warrior
is still good too
and listening wise…i has a new trampsta to get my bounce on
I like a Trampsta bop and bounce!
on that note tho…bakermats latest is in the charts over here
dudes got a sound all his own and i might be slightly in love with it
Already on my playlist from my Spotify release radar. Good stuff!
also also also…
welcome to my youtube
What I just read: yet another communiqué from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who persists in digging the hole deeper:
You tell ’em, Kristi! Choices must be made! If Cricket needed to take one between the eyes in a gravel pit 15 years before the onset of Covid, that’s a tough challenge you didn’t shy away from. You know what you could have done is, under the guise Covid. you could have taken out a few of your fellow citizens who were shying away from tough challenges by voting Democratic.