KJ

This is, of course, not everything I watched in July, but it is everything I wrote a little about and never got around to posting. Other media from July I could talk about, and possibly will later (especially if anyone is interested): Severance, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Better Call Saul S6.5, Stray, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Upload: I don't think I ever posted here about the first season of Upload, an Amazon Prime series about the digital afterlife, so even though I watched it over a year ago, the occasion of finishing Season 2 is a fine time to talk about the series as a whole. I feel like I haven't heard a lot of buzz in fandom circles about Upload, and it's a shame, because it's a solid sci-fi comedy drama with clever writing and excellent chemistry between the leads. The premise: it's the near future, and we've figured out how to upload full human consciousnesses to the cloud at the time of death. But because we live in a capitalist society, the digital divide carries over into the Great Beyond, with those who can afford it living in posh resorts, while lower-cost solutions feature bare-bones accommodations and strict data limits. Our two protagonists are Nora, who works as a sort of digital assistant in Lakeview, one of the higher end residences, and Nathan, a programmer who was working on a more egalitarian solution when he died unexpectedly in a car accident... or maybe it was murder. Lots of clever skewering of corporate greed, a charming romance, and excellent character interactions. Both the first and second seasons have ended on extreme cliffhangers, and I can't wait to see where it all goes.

Ms. Marvel: I wanted to post about this as we were watching it, and I kind of wish I had, because I probably would have been more enthusiastic. This is a show that started off amazingly strong, then devolved into Marvel's usual third act problem of raising the stakes too high and forcing a CGI-heavy mega-battle to round things off. That said, when it hit, it hit. Iman Vellani was born to play Kamala Khan -- most spot-on casting since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and I am not exaggerating, and I loved everything about her interactions with family and friends (even parts of the CGI mega-battle). So excited to see how they work her into the movie universe.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I mentioned earlier that I watched the first episode of this show; I enjoyed it, but it took a little motivation to continue. Upon reflection, I think my reluctance was caused by Star Trek saturation (watching two seasons of Discovery in a little over a week plus a season of Lower Decks and a few episodes of Picard S2), nothing to do with the show itself. So T and I decided to give up on Picard for now and watch this instead, and it was an excellent decision. While I generally prefer my TV serialized, it's nice to get a break from it, too, with a show that carries character development and motivation across episodes but also tells a self-contained story in each show. I could quibble with some of its decisions, but overall I thought it was great and look forward to the next season.

Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3: And now we get to my true priority for getting back on Paramount+: catching up with Discovery. There's really no good reason for me to have missed the last two seasons -- I wanted to watch it, enjoyed S2, was eager to see what the show would make of its new premise -- and yet here we are. In theory I suppose I don't need to cut for spoilers, ( but I'm going to do it anyway. )

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)