Monday Media Musings - 1/4/21

And so this series makes a triumphant (maybe) return, after nearly a year away.

Agents of SHIELD, Season 7: This wrapped up many months ago, but we only got around to watching it recently. I found Season 6 a little disjointed and overly complex, and jarring in how it seems to have decoupled from the timeline of the movies, and T seemed even less interested in getting back into it, especially after the Season 7 premiere, which I liked well enough but he didn't find inspiring. But we finally picked it back up again a couple of weeks ago, and once we got to the third episode, the plot picked up some steam and we got more invested. ( Does anyone care about AoS spoilers? Well, I'll cut anyway. )

I enjoyed the finale, and I'll probably rewatch the whole series again someday to see how it all hangs together (rewatching the first two seasons was certainly rewarding).

Outlander, Seasons 1-2: I actually watched the first half of Season 1 shortly after it aired, but since it wasn't on any of my streaming services then (I bought those episodes on iTunes to watch on a plane trip/vacation), I didn't watch the rest, and to be honest I wasn't sure I even wanted to see the scenes of rape and torture that I knew were coming -- I've read the first four books in the series many times, so I'm familiar with all the beats. But seeing that the first three seasons were on Netflix, I decided to give it a shot. It's reasonably good, although there are SO MANY changes from the books, and not all of them are effective -- there are moments and lines and a few entire set pieces that I kept waiting for and missed. And although I understand why they took some scenes away from other characters and gave them to Jack Randall (presumably to give Tobias Menzes more to do -- and to be fair he is quite brilliant in the role, possibly the best-cast of all the main characters, as both Jack and Frank), more Jack Randall is not why I read these stories. Overall, I wouldn't say it's a bad adaptation, but it's not quite what I wanted, either.

Recipe for Seduction: This is the 15-minute Lifetime/KFC "movie" featuring Mario Lopez as Colonel Sanders, wearing possibly the worst fake mustache of all time. I watched it on a Discord stream with some friends, laughing and mocking the entire time, which is the only way to watch it. Otherwise, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the whole thing, and there's no need to seek out the rest.