April 29, 2025

The Handmaid's Tale: Surprise (6x06)

Oh noooooo.

Cons:

Okay... I'm... trying to reserve judgment here. What I'm worried about is that June will never forgive Nick and Nick will redeem himself for this betrayal someway with his life, and that Nick will be dead before the season is over in order to ensure June and Holly etc. are free. That's my fear. That, to me, is a more boring version of this story than I want them to tell. I want June to understand that her cavalier insistence that Nick can take care of her problems led him into a corner where his very life was at risk. He kept her safe, while betraying Mayday's plan to blow up a bunch of Commanders. Sure, we wish Nick could have been braver and stronger or more clever in some way. But this isn't a straightforward situation and I hope that the show will acknowledge that in a more direct way.

Does it seem like June was actually entertaining Nick's offer there at the end, too? Because that's bananas. Even if June would maybe dip out on Luke for Nick's sake, she wouldn't dip out on Hannah, or the other Handmaids. I don't like the suggestion that she was actually being swayed, honestly.

April 26, 2025

Doctor Who: The Well (15x03)

A pretty good horror episode of Doctor Who!

Cons:

Okay, to be honest I think I was slightly more distracted by the connection to "Midnight" than I was compelled by it. The moment of reveal was a literal goosebumps moment, so fucking good, but then after that I was busy thinking... but wait, why is this same cosmic entity doing a different gimmick this time, what is the connection, does it matter to the entity that the Doctor has been here before... it just wasn't adding up to me as a continuation of a story, and felt like it could easily have been its own thing.

It also bothered me slightly that nobody figured out that Aliss might have a different relationship to the monster of the week because she's Deaf... like, for one thing, it might have been explained a bit that not all Deaf people are entirely without any hearing, and might have some slight ability to hear, but Aliss could have explained that she has no hearing whatsoever, and that probably should have clued somebody into the fact that hearing something is probably what triggered the "mad" behavior of all the other people on the crew. It was a little silly that this didn't occur to anybody until towards the end of the episode.

April 22, 2025

The Handmaid's Tale: Janine (6x05)

Omg June, get your shit together!

Cons:

Here's something that's true of this episode but also just true of the whole show: these characters have to be simultaneously stupid enough to let themselves get into serious trouble, and then also lucky and/or clever enough to beat the odds every time. June's protagonist plot armor is the strongest I've ever seen, honestly. June offering to take Janine out of there, and then June and Moira having their fight still inside Jezebel's, without having even hidden the written material, was infuriating! So sloppy, so preventable. Just get out and get in the van and get out of there before you start fighting about how the two of you are processing your trauma. That conversation was so important for them to be having, but I was distracted screaming at them to get the hell out of the lion's den before they started talking about it all!

April 20, 2025

Doctor Who: Lux (15x02)

I liked this one, though I had a couple of pacing objections?

Cons:

The scene where Doctor Who is a TV show and the fans are meeting the Doctor and Belinda in their living room was cute, but it felt very strange from a pacing perspective. There's really just the one scene, and they talk to them for a bit, and then there's this whole big sad goodbye where they don't really exist and will cease to be once the Doctor and Belinda leave. I really wanted to feel impacted by that scene, but instead it felt a little unearned because it was happening all within five minutes of meeting these characters. I wish there had been a way to introduce them a bit earlier in the episode, have them materially assist in the mission, with Belinda believing they're coming along to help, but then the moment of realization that they can't. Just an extra scene with these characters before their sad goodbye could have done a lot. Also, whenever creators do a meta thing about the fans of their own property, do they have to throw in a couple comments about how annoying they find their fans? This one was like "we love our fans so much, despite how annoying you are" and it's like... gee, thanks Russell. I feel so seen.

April 18, 2025

Grey's Anatomy: Bust Your Windows (21x15)

Winston... Jules... stay the fuck away from each other please and thank you.

Cons:

Not a romance I feel like I can root for. Feels random, feels unmotivated, feels kinda gross. I'm still on the Jules/Mika grieving train and then if I can't have that, Jules/Blue is sitting right there. Why Winston? Yeesh. No thank you. Why is it this show simply cannot serve me compelling romance arcs anymore? At least there was no Jo/Link or Teddy/Owen this week, so I wasn't forced to put up with any of their nonsense.

On the one hand, I'm relieved that Lucas is going to get to stay with the rest of his intern class, but on the other, that felt like much ado about nothing! The lesson that Catherine needed to see him learn, of being able to put a patient first, was kind of simplistic and predictable, was it not? And then right when we've gotten through that dumb drama, we pivot immediately into Simone having angst or doubt about their future, as she clams up when Lucas starts excitedly talking about where they'll go after residency. This romance is boring to me, so I want it to either, a) stay drama-free so it doesn't take up too much of my time, or b) end swiftly. I'm thinking we're not going to get either of those things. Sigh.

April 15, 2025

The Handmaid's Tale: Promotion (6x04)

This episode felt like a bit of a transition, not as much to dig our teeth into.

Cons:

A lot of things that were already established were sort of... re-established here, without a ton of forward movement? We already knew Janine was at Jezebel's, and we saw her there. We already understand Lawrence's weird warped conflicted feelings about his situation, we already know Nick's father-in-law is hitting on Serena, we already know Nick is playing the middle... we already know Mayday is planning something big, and this episode is more of the planning. We see Aunt Lydia come to talk to Serena, but we don't actually see that conversation take place. Nothing wrong with a lot of this material, it just felt like a lot of setting up pieces on the chess board without making a definitive move.

April 12, 2025

Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution (15x01)

We're back! And we've met Belinda!

Cons:

I kind of wish there had been a tiny bit more space in the episode before Belinda decided to turn herself over to the robots. She has this moment where she's like, "my name is Belinda Chandra, and it's time I owned it" where she's like... nobly giving herself over to save the world, and it felt like it didn't have enough time to breathe as a moment because they'd literally just gotten to a place of relative safety. Like, take two minutes to show some time passing, maybe, Belinda learning a bit more about these people, so her sacrifice feels more earned? It was a small pacing issue for me.

I also felt like, culturally, we didn't get to learn much about what this planet was like before the timey-wimey stuff happened to it and rewrote the history of this world. This show can have a real gift of creating an atmosphere and world that feels real and deep and lived in very quickly, whereas in this episode it felt pretty shallow and surface-level. 

April 11, 2025

Grey's Anatomy: Love in the Ice Age (21x14)

Guess who's being annoying?

Cons:

You know what sucks, is that I've been forced into a position to be on Owen's side here? I might have been okay with this story-line a little bit more if Teddy had been upset but had known she was being unfair, but instead she was straight-up treating Owen like a villain for doing the same thing she did! Like, sorry, but she was making out with someone, horizontal on a bed, and just because clothes never came off that means that Owen is the bad guy here because his extramarital thing went further than hers? The issue with this whole story is that Teddy has cheated on Owen before, there was a whole story about it. Owen had to find out about it due to a butt dial. The ghost of that story was haunting this episode and it's weird that it's not being brought up! God, this would be so much more interesting if even though they were both weirded out about it, they ended up feeling positive about the experience. More angst for these two is about the least interesting possible outcome.

I liked the main story this week with Bailey and Simone and the racist visiting doctor, but I could have used just maybe one more additional button on things... it feels like Simone should have shared her experience in more detail after everything that went down.

April 09, 2025

The Handmaid's Tale: Devotion (6x03)

Okay... okay... Nick...

Cons:

I'm still feeling a bit of trepidation about Serena and the journey she's going on as a character here. It feels a little too much like going in circles, and I'm curious to see if her stated contrition for her part in the horrors of Gilead is real, and if she's ever going to grasp that the ideological beliefs she still holds are the underpinnings of that violence and abuse. Like, she can say "oh, Gilead went too far" but at the same time she still holds the oppressive values that founded it. So. I think the show is aware of this and exploring it, but I'm wary of how they're going to pull it off in the end. What kind of fate do you give a character like Serena?

This show has a strange consistency problem with like... the "good" that Gilead has done. Whenever we have representatives from foreign governments come, it's always this thing where they're astonished by the birth rate and so overjoyed to see young healthy children.  Because Gilead cleaned up the water, so women are getting pregnant and birth defects are less common. So... okay. Forcing all women capable of carrying pregnancies to ritually undergo rape to become pregnant is obviously the way Gilead has chosen to produce more kids. Got it. But what does that have to do with cleaning up the water? The medical/physical reasons behind the low birth rate have got to be relevant here, right? Surely there are other countries who are looking into ways to buckle down on environmental laws and cure the ills of the earth causing the problem, right? So I'm always curious about how bad it really is elsewhere, and what the actual solution could be that's not... you know... ritualized evangelical rape cults. We spend a lot of time in Canada and it seems pretty normal there, smog isn't choking the earth or whatever. So what gives? I just feel like the world-building here could be a bit more considered and explained.

April 08, 2025

The Handmaid's Tale: Exile (6x02)

Hmm, after a strong opening, I'm feeling some trepidation with this one.

Cons:

We've already seen June go back to Gilead to be a liberator, and we've already seen Serena "get out" only to get pulled back in and continue being a pillar of oppression. I guess my concern is that this last season will be a retread, only this time they'll be able to definitively change the status quo only for the show to end right as the big blow-up occurs. I guess that's somewhat inevitable with a show like this, but it's a little discouraging, in a way.

In general, though, this episode felt like treading water and getting pieces into position, and while I'd be fine with that, it's irritating that the positioning is not something radically new, but rather more of the same, if that makes sense. So that big dramatic section at the end with Serena and June in parallel scenes, each getting ready to address a crowd, just felt a little same-y to other moments we've seen throughout the show, you know?

The Handmaid's Tale: Train (6x01)

I'm going to try and do three rapid-fire reviews because of the multi-episode drop!

Cons:

This is a small detail but I feel like June walking away from Nicole at the end to hug her mother should have been finessed. She should have brought the baby with her, after all the stress and pain of the past few days, why would she walk away and leave her in the line?

Also, the angry mob was going to tear Serena apart limb from limb, I feel like they wouldn't be placated after Serena's off the train. They would have attacked June, right? It felt like a misunderstanding of the logic of mob violence.

April 04, 2025

Grey's Anatomy: Don't You (Forget About Me) (21x13)

Oy... Teddy and Owen... c'mon.

Cons:

If one of the two of them was going to go through with the open marriage thing, I wish it had been Teddy with hot doctor lady Cass. Instead it's Owen and friend-of-sister who had a crush on him when they were kids. And I'm already tired thinking about where this is going - Teddy will say she doesn't want the open marriage thing, Owen will agree but the fact that he had sex with someone else will cause insecurities and issues... yawn. I want it to just work for them, I want it to be a good idea.

Blue and Molly breaking up is like... on the one hand, good, they were boring, but it also feels like a lot of this story-line was kind of wasted and pointless now? I want to see Blue and Jules start something up again, honestly.