Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road (2023 Christmas Special)

Ahhh welcome Ncuti Gatwa to the role!!

Cons:

I'm not sure if I want to call this a "con" or not, more just something I noticed. We saw Ruby's life with her mom and grandma as being pretty perfect in terms of emotional fulfillment. Yes, they're poor and just barely scraping by, but it's the cheerful kind of poverty where the warmth of their connection sees them through and the house is full of love. We then see the version where Ruby was never taken in by her mom or adopted, and was instead captured by the goblins, and in that version, her foster mother is unhappy and kind of unfeeling, only taking in an occasional foster kid when she needs the extra money. So I guess my issue is more something I wish they could have done to add a bit of nuance. What if we saw some real hardship, some emotional friction, between Ruby and her family, instead of just good nature and teasing and joy? And what if the Ruby-less life was a little less 100% depressing? Like, maybe the foster mother does take in fewer kids, but she still puts them up on the fridge and has a connection to them? What if the lesson is that Ruby finding that family made things better, but not necessarily this enormous shift from totally depressing to totally wonderful? I like the idea that Ruby finding this family was the right thing for her and for her mom, but there's something a little over the top about her presence being that dramatic of a shift.

Bob's Burgers: The Nightmare 2 Days Before Christmas (14x10)

A very cute episode!

Cons:

I was having this weird experience of imagining a whole different episode that could have played out, but that didn't: where the Belchers have to stay at home in their freezing cold home without electricity for Christmas. There's almost a whole other episode concept there, of everyone trying to keep busy and have an unplugged Christmas while also dealing with the winter chill. I liked what we got, but I almost wish there had been time to play around with that concept more as well!

Pros:

Linda being the most sentimental about the tree, while Louise is worried about the practical consideration of Santa not being able to find them, was a great contrast. I think Bob was just trying to keep the family together, and Gene and Tina were mostly along for the ride! Another "what this episode could have been" moment was the family getting stuck in their car, and I was pleasantly surprised at the subversion there, where just as things looked really dire, they did in fact arrive at the cabin where Mr. Fischoeder had sent them. And, in another subversion of expectations, despite some creepy wall art and strange instructions for maintaining the property, nothing super spooky or dangerous happened to them once they were there!

Doctor Who: The Giggle (2023 Special 3)

Well... I'm having some feelings!

 Cons:

Last week's special was about as perfect an episode as I could have imagined, so some of my complaints about this one are just in how it compares with the last one. I thought the tension and threat to Donna and the Doctor was so expertly portrayed in the last episode, that in this one, when once again there's a beat where the bad guy separates them to subject them to separate psychological tortures, it felt like a less-good retread of what we saw last time.

In general, I think this episode might have been served better with an entirely original bad guy instead of a callback to old-school Doctor Who. Maybe that's not very in keeping with the spirit of things, I know this is a show with a long history and it's fun to do callbacks, but the episode had to sit there and explain why we should be afraid of the Toymaker, and that felt like it undercut the threat. I shouldn't need to have exposition explain to me that this bad guy is super bad, more bad than most of the badness we have to face. I should just be able to feel that. And I did, with the concept of the creepy doll with the arpeggio laugh. It's almost like the episode would have worked without a puppet master behind it at all?

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder (2023 Special 2)

Well, that was about as perfect an episode of this TV show I've ever seen, if I'm being super honest!

Cons:

Hmm. Difficult to say. There were maybe a few things where I would have wished for more, like just an extra dash of something we already got. Like, the clues that the words were a countdown, and the robot was moving to initiate something? I guess the evidence was right there, but I think the counting down bit would have been more satisfying if there had been some way that it was possible for me to suss that out on my own before the Doctor realized it. Like what if there were numbers on a door somewhere and the Doctor does say one of the numbers out loud at some point because he figured out the translation, and it's the number six or something, and then later when we hear it, you might be able to grasp that you've heard that word before? Just a few more breadcrumbs to make the moment when the truth comes out feel really satisfying.

Bob's Burgers: Fraud of the Dead: Zombie-docu-pocalypse (14x09)

Okay... this had to have been an episode planned for closer to the end of October, right? So weird how the episodes have been scheduled!

Cons:

Nothing much to complain about, this was great spooky ridiculous fun! The one thing that was a little odd was that the conceit of this scenario is that Gene and Tina don't know Louise, that they are just a documentary crew, and then there were times later in the episode where they continued to reference that they don't know each other. Like, at the end, Tina calls Bob and Linda "your parents" when talking to Louise, as if she's still being the documentary crew and not herself. That feels like a bit of a muddled premise to me, I would have loved to do a bit more with it.