Monday Media Musings - 5/9/22

[owlmoose]

Gilmore Girls rewatch: Yes, even including A Year in the Life. The YouTube algorithm has been showing me a lot of fun Gilmore clips recently, and I kept realizing that I didn't remember the context for most of them. So I decided to watch a few episodes, and before I knew it I was almost finished. In some ways it holds up; in others it doesn't -- I had forgotten the blatant fatphobia and homophobia (the latter is better in the reboot, but the former is much worse thanks to that awful poolside scene in "Summer"), and just how frustrating I find Rory and her sense of entitlement. But I'm glad I revisited it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 1: I've been meaning to catch up on Star Trek content for awhile now, and the release of Picard S2 gave us a reason to resubscribe to Paramount+, but we were in the mood for something lighter, so we decided to give Lower Decks a try instead. It's pretty fun, if a little overly silly and dependent on gross-out humor at times. Mariner is pretty great, Boimler is appropriately annoying, and I like the chemistry between Tendi and Rutherford. The callbacks to TNG-era Trek are really great -- gives you the sense of a big interconnected universe, without overwhelming the original characters and plots. Looking forward to watching Season 2.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: We finished this yesterday, and found it an enjoyable wrap-up, although the character development feels like it only got halfway there and needs another game to finish the full story of Ratchet, Rivet, and especially Kit. Fun gameplay, relatively light story, great voice performances (par for the course when Jennifer Hale and Armin Shimerman are in the house)

Comments

[jb_slasher]

Having only really watched TOS, I really appreciate that Lower Decks is not overwhelmed with characters from other ST shows, and when such characters guest-star, the viewer doesn't need prior knowledge of them.

[owlmoose]

I've wondered if Lower Decks is accessible to folks who aren't as familiar with other Trek shows. Glad to hear that it is!

[novel_machinist]

Gilmore Girls is one of my depression watches. It's TV junk food.

[owlmoose]

Totally makes sense. My TV junk food show has always been Friends, but GG is a good choice, too.

[grammarwoman]

A Year gave me such fannish whiplash; there were parts of it that were so great, and so true to the series that I loved, that I felt sad all over again that it was a limited visit. And then there was the WTFery of scenes like that poolside mess, which...who thought that was a good idea? Or even funny? Were we supposed to hate the girls for that?

[owlmoose]

Right? Between the poolside scenes and that ridiculous musical, "Summer" was by far the weakest of the episodes. But also there were just enough nuggets of goodness to keep me going. Just enough closure to be satisfying, just enough openness to feel like the world goes on beyond the end.