What I've Been Watching: Part 2

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As I mentioned yesterday, my wife and I have been trying to carve out some time in between travelling and watching sports on the weekends to catch up on some of the shows we missed through last year. It's been a bit of a marathon and if you want to see the first part of this post, you can find it here.

As I said yesterday, there hasn't been anything so far that we have absolutely despised. Pretty much everything up to this point is a definite must watch. In fact, most of the stuff I am going to cover today is also worth a watch with just a caveat or two. I'll get to those in a little bit.

The Old Man

My wife isn't a fan of Science Fiction or Fantasy. Keeping in that in mind, I save those types of shows to watch while she is sleeping or napping. When we watch stuff together she is more a fan of dramas or things that could actually happen in real life. Given that fact, I try to steer us towards suspense shows or spy thrillers versus some of that more depressing drama you can find. "The Old Man" is one of those shows I found just by chance.

The commercials for it were kind of vague, but I had a pretty good idea what it was about. If you hit that IMDB link above, it gives a pretty good description. Jeff Bridges is a "retired" CIA agent who has some baggage and some enemies.

A series of events takes place and action then ensues. That's all I am going to say without ruining it. What I will say is John Lithgow does a great job in this. Probably one of my favorite roles I have seen him in since Harry and the Hendersons. Likewise, there are a couple of dogs in this that in my opinion steal the show. They are pretty awesome. There is only a single season out right now, but season 2 has been approved. Check it out!

Emily the Criminal

"Emily the Criminal" is a movie on Netflix that believe it or not I just happened on by chance. I feel like I say that a lot which is why I joke about it. It stars Aubrey Plaza as a young lady with a mountain of college debt. She takes a side job running a credit card scam and gets involved with some nasty people. It has a bit of a twist ending. I had read good reviews about it which is what led me to this movie.

@mrsbozz was a little skeptical going in, but she ended up loving it and even told her friend that she needed to watch it. It has Theo Rossi in it, so if you are a fan of Luke Cage or better yet Sons of Anarchy, you should recognize him. Although my wife didn't at first until I mentioned something, so maybe you won't.

It has a bit of a twist ending and at just a little over an hour and a half, it is something that you can burn through in a quick watch. I just realized I should have been giving these star ratings or at the very least a thumbs up. I give this four stars out of five.

Jack Ryan

In case you missed it around the holiday's, the latest season (season 3) of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" on Amazon Prime is out. John Krasinski of Office fame is probably one of the best iterations of Jack Ryan that I can remember. I still think Harrison Ford is probably the best even though Alec Baldwin was the original. Chris Pine was decent and Ben Afleck did okay. I actually love the movie "Sum of all Fears".

I'm not going to dig into this one too much, you probably know who Jack Ryan is and hopefully you have watched the first two seasons of this already. If you haven't watched the third yet, stop wasting time and get to it.

Definitely five stars!

The Rings of Power

While the proper title is "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power", I am just going to call it Rings of Power for quickness sake. There was a lot of controversy around this one apparently. Personally, I am not seeing it, but maybe I just am not triggered as easily as some others. I honestly don't remember what the controversy was now, all I can say is this is a very female forward offering of the Tolkien universe. It takes place well before the events of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in a time when Galadriel was much younger (pretty relative when you are an elf).

I'm not entirely through the first season yet on Amazon Prime. This is one of those that I have to watch alone, and I will be honest, it took me a little bit to get into it.

I am starting to warm to most of the characters and there are parts of the plot that I find more enjoyable than others. I'll be honest, there are some sections where I zone out as they focus on different characters because I just don't really care about them.

It's also more kid forward than the original trilogy. There are some segments with Hobbits? Halflings? That I find tedious, and hard to get through. I usually just do something on my phone while those are on because I just don't care about the characters even though I know they are going to play a significant role in the future.

Likewise, another plot section features a teenage boy who acts like your average brooding whiny teenage boy and I just find that trope tedious and worn.

Based on what I have seen so far. I can't give this more than three stars right now, but maybe it will surprise me in the end.

Alaska Daily

"Alaska Daily" is one of those that my wife saw an advertisement for and said "oh, I'd like to watch that". I forgot about it and didn't add it to our Youtube TV library. Thankfully, we can go back and watch the first half of season 1 on Hulu.

It start Hillary Swank who you might remember from "Million Dollar Baby", but I will always remember her from "The Next Karate Kid". To be fair she has been in a ton of other stuff too. She is an aggressive, successful journalist in the big city who uses a questionable source on a story and in her own words ends up "getting cancelled". She heads to Alaska (begrudgingly) to start over.

Make no mistake, while this show is certainly about Swanks character, it definitely has an agenda. I think I can share without giving away too much that the sole focus of this show is to shed light on the injustices that happen to the native population of Alaska. Most specifically on the indigenous women of the state.

I'll leave it to you to decide if you want to watch based on that. Personally, I do feel the indigenous people of this country have been and continue to be treated pretty crappy. Just do a quick Google search for missing indigenous women and you will get an idea of what I am talking about.

Only half of season 1 is out so far on ABC. I have found it enjoyable to watch and I will continue until it concludes or gets cancelled. I give it four out of five stars.

National Treasure: Edge of History

I wanted to love this show. I really did, but I find myself struggling with it. I'm not the sort to quit anything lightly, so I will likely keep watching it, but it definitely isn't what I expected. You might remember some time ago I wrote a whole post talking about my excitement when I saw "Edge of History" was going to be released.

Don't get me wrong, the cast is pretty great, but I just wish they had done more with them. I think my first issue is the fact that these are basically young twenty somethings. I am sure Disney did that to reach a younger audience. Personally, I find a lot of the behaviors and jokes a little too juvenile at times.

I feel like this is a bit of a step down for Catherine Zeta Jones as the villain in the show.

This is what might get a lot of people. If I had to sum up this show in a single word, that word would definitely be "woke". That part doesn't bug me too much, but I know some people will take a lot of issue with it.

For example, they make it pretty clear right away that the lead Lisette Olivera is a DACA person living in the US. There are countless other empowerment and social injustice references. Which again, I am not totally against, but there is a point where you can go over the top. This passes that point in the first ten minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I am going to watch this until the end because I do love a good treasure hunt, but if I had to compare it to anything, I would definitely call it National Treasure: High School Musical Edition.

There have been some cool guest appearances on this, but all in all as much as I wanted to love it, I can't give it more than two out of five stars. It's just not hitting with me.

That's all I've got for now. Give me a couple of months and I might have a new collection of shows to recommend (or not)!

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced