It’s time for this weeks What We’re Watching. So, this is everything we watched last week. Next week we will have some new additions to this because tonight The Equalizer and CSI: Vegas both return! At the very least I am sure we’ll be watching The Equalizer because we’ve been huge fans since the first season! But back to what we watched last week, not what we want to watch now!
Feel free to share with us what you’re watching. Did you see something amazing or amazingly terrible? You can always let us know on Facebook or through our comment section right here. We love getting recommendations, so feel free to pass them on!
Want to check out last week’s WWW? Here it is!
Ashtyn
Fear Street Part One – 1994: I am not sure what caused me to watch this. I was adding things to my watchlist (that I generally never get to) and the next thing I knew, I was watching this film. It’s labeled as horror, I think, but this is based on the RL Stine books, so believe me when I say it’s not scary at all. There might be the occasional jump moment, but those are few and far between, too. That said, this is high on the drama and offers a little suspense. The acting is great, the story is campy goodness, and the main couple offers some lesbian representation.
The basic premise is that there are two towns – one is filled with murdering psychopaths and is a horrible town and the other town has no crime and it’s lovely. There’s also a witch and some possession and a few other things I don’t want to give away.
I haven’t seen the other two films in the series, but I’m looking forward to checking them out.
You can watch Fear Street Part One – 1994 on Netflix.
The Great North: We continue to roll through this series. The fourth season is almost upon us, which means that our daily dose of Beef, Wolf, and Ham will be coming to an end very soon.
Three seasons in and we still sing the theme song at every episode. I got mildly upset when Hulu made the mistake of trying not to play it. I had to restart the episode. I might need someone to send help.
This show is great. It has a loving family environment in the middle of Alaska – which is very much in the woods but still has a mall and other fun things. I don’t think I’d be the right fit for Alaska, but the Tobins make it look like a great time. If you haven’t seen this yet, I highly recommend checking it out.
You can check out The Great North on Hulu.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart: This 7-episode miniseries was created by the folks behind Big Little Lies. As you can expect this means that it’s a slow burn, family drama, with a complex subject matter. Each episode, or at least the majority of them that I noticed, start with a content warning because the show is essentially about domestic violence and how it affects various people.
That’s not the only thing that deserved a content warning. At one point there is a scene where a young boy calls someone the R-word. I don’t get shocked easily, but I haven’t even heard that word in quite some time, and even longer in a film. The odd thing was that it was completely unnecessary. In fact, you never even see the kid that says it again. He just says it and then he’s gone.
There is also a bit more “men who beat their wives are complex, and not all bad” than I would like to see, but it was there. At the end, the show focused on being a slow burn, so much so, that it burnt out quickly. There are too many episodes holding onto the secret and once things unravel, everything else has to be paced too quickly. It’s a shame.
The acting was wonderful. That said, it’s not worth it to watch this when you could watch any of these lovely performers in other things they’ve done.
You can watch The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart on AMC or streaming online through Amazon with the AMC+ channel add-on.
Reacher: It seems like I have one show or movie that I just loved beyond measure and one that made me regret watching it. While this week’s regret was definitely Alice Hart, the ultimate watching pleasure of the week was Season 2 of Reacher.
It’s definitely action, so if you don’t like high speed chases, people getting beat up (or worse), and things of that nature, this might not be the show for you. I couldn’t get enough. In fact, I’m sad that I watched the entire thing and now there’s nothing left for me to watch.
If you’re unfamiliar, each season is based on a Jack Reacher novel. This means that Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher, is the one constant of the show.
In the second season, members of Reacher’s old team begin popping up dead and he and the remaining crew need to investigate to find out who is behind it and get them before they are taken out. It’s glorious, mindless entertainment. And the acting is wonderful.
You can watch Reacher on Amazon Prime.
Dom
Alien: Resurrection
As I stated previously, a friend and I have been watching the Aliens series and the Predator series together. We are watching them chronologically with how they came out at the theater, so we just finished Alien: Resurrection. I’m certain that I’ve at least seen parts of this previously, but not in many many years.
In this entry into the series, 200 years have passed since the last movie. Ripley has been cloned after the events of Aliens 3. The company is replaced by the US military, who somehow think they are better than the company, but are equally as corrupt and horrible. Ripley is not just Ripley though. She is Ripley with the chest alien, so they have made her because they want to breed the aliens. She has an alien queen inside her chest. They remove it surgically and then raise the Queen to have babies in their lab.
They are using human hosts they kidnap, who are delivered by a group of mercenaries. The mercenaries include Annalee Call, a new member of the crew, played by Winona Ryder, Dom Vriess, the ship mechanic who is also a paraplegic wheelchair user, played by non-wheelchair using Dominique Pinon, and Ron Johner, the typical misogynistic ass hole of the crew played by Ron Perlman. Another notable actor is Dan Hedaya as Gen. Martin, the person in charge of the breeding program.
As always, the aliens get free, and chaos erupts. As all of the military dies, the mercenaries and Ripley must find a way to blow up the ship before it returns to earth. Also, Ripley is oddly aware of exactly where the aliens are because she is their mother. It’s creepy but it’s also brilliant.
Once again, none of the men care to believe anything any of the women say. Call also seems to be a very Ripley-like character (and has her own unique arc). This is a reminder that the Aliens franchise is very much about the Cassandra syndrome – a woman who knows what will happen in the future is not believed. Often these are the men that are supposed to take care of this woman.
Ripley’s clone herself is initially a prisoner, but she is smarter than all of them because she has actual Ripley’s memories and knowledge. Once again she remains the reliable narrator to remind the audience that what the military is doing is corrupt, and that you can’t reason with these aliens. There’s no way to handle them safely.
You must destroy them and avoid them if you want to keep them away from Earth.
I have been planning to write about disability and Aliens due to the last movie which featured intellectual disability. This movie features physical disability, and for a movie made in the 1990s is actually not a horrible portrayal. The only harmful part is that this role could have defined the career of a physically disabled wheelchair-using actor. Instead they picked a competent actor in Dominique Pinon. Just not a disabled one, as was the times.
I gotta say that I am impressed that I find this character in a film that is almost 30 years old better than some of the disability representation we see today. I’m going to be extrapolating on that further in an upcoming essay.
Aliens as a series is great fun to watch. It’s also one of the most well written, well conceived sci-fi series to exist. I think it may have become my favorite sci-fi series. A great warning of the future and what can happen if we don’t change our ways, sadly I think our society will never learn.
Abbott Elementary
Abbott Elementary is back! I started watching this series two years ago for our FilmDis study. It has been one of my favorite comedies. Though it doesn’t contain very much disability representation (at least not overt – some of the actors, including Tyler James Williams who plays Gregory Eddie, are disabled in real life), there are occasional disability stories as we saw in previous seasons.
I only had the chance to watch the two-part opener for the season. In it, Janine actually leaves Abbott Elementary to take a fellowship at the district for the year. She is going to be helping pilot a program for teachers to take what they learn from the district back into their schools. The episode is about how she leaves for the district and what it does to her relationships with everyone, particularly Gregory.
Ava finally gets educated about how to be a principal but by the end of the two-part premiere she is back to her old ways.
Jacob is slightly jealous of Janine because he would’ve loved the fellowship but he is very happy for her and says she must take it. Gregory doesn’t think she should leave Abbott. He also says he doesn’t think they should pursue a relationship together. Kind of tired of the will they or won’t they. It’s my least favorite storyline on any television show. I’m looking forward to this next season. The episode was fun as always and I highly recommend this show.
You can watch Abbott Elementary on Hulu.
The Great North
As Ashtyn mentioned we are on to the third season. The show was just delightful. The characters are so amazingly wholesome but also hilariously raunchy at times.
Will Forte remains a gem of dipstick comedy! I love him so much. Ham remains my favorite character, though, followed by Honeybee, Wolf, and I very much love Moon and Beef. Judy occasionally gets on my nerves, although I love her relationship with Alanis Morrissette, her imaginary cloud friend!
For supporting characters I really love Delmer the best of all. He always cracks me up and I love that he was Beef and Brian’s surrogate father. I also think Alyson is fun. Overall, there is very little I dislike about the show which is rare for any type of animated comedy. It always seems like there’s always one person I don’t like that makes me annoyed when I watch the show. But the show is so wholesome and good that I can’t find anything to dislike.
Also: “way up here you can breathe the air – catch some fish or gaze at the bear – wow. In the great North!”
Star Trek: Prodigy
As I mentioned in a previous edition, I watched the first episode of Star Trek: Prodigy. I then got distracted and did not have a chance to watch anymore until this week I watched nine more episodes and I am halfway through the first season. There is a logical break between the first 10 episodes of the second 10 episodes. One of the stories seemingly ends with a pivotal plot point.
This show is so fun. You can definitely see how it is geared for younger audiences but it doesn’t talk down to them. It treats them like intelligent audience members, not children. I really like the dynamic of the crew although Dal and his inability to listen to anyone, which is an arc he has as a character, gets annoying. I really want him to calm down and be the Captain that everyone knows he can be.
I really love Rok. As a big pink child alien, Rok rejects being labeled the security officer. She wants to be something else that she loves. She also has an amazing arc where she teaches herself advanced science and mathematics, choosing instead to be a part of the science and engineering team. I also love how much she loves little creatures and how she has bonded with Murf.
Murf is the best – rainbow alien that is basically indestructible and can save them even when the alien seems to have no idea what they are doing – perfect addition to the crew!
I’ve also always been a big fan of Janeway except when she’s being all militant. But here she is the cool Janeway we know and love. She guides these young characters into a workable crew and I can’t wait to see how the second half of the first season goes.
Catch Star Trek Prodigy out on Netflix.
Don’t forget to let us know what you’re watching in the comments!
