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Just started After Life Season 2 Ep.1

Not much going on really, but Ricky Gervais did a fantastic job the last 5 minutes
 
I'm watching Bend It Like Beckham on TV. It's about 20 years old now and has aged remarkably well. It was way ahead of its time and is more relevant than ever today, tackling issues of gender quality in sport, race and sexuality.
 
I highly recommend Altered Carbon. It’s got elements of Science Fiction detective noir, intergalactic politics, and digital immortality all wrapped up in a well paced action series format.
 
Just finished season 1 of Absentia.
Also watching: Manifest season 1 (tonight another double episode)
Both good series but nowhere near as great as Lost. :(
 
Binged Dark, season 3. HOLY CRAP. What started as a fairly simple show about a missing kid and turned into a slightly complicated time travel dilemma escalated quickly. They took this shit to 11.

After a while the amount of incest and pedophilia started to bother me. As well as how they keep referring to the Apocalypse, yet we never see anything outside of the town of Winden. We know there is a world outside of Winden, Aleksander came from sonewhere else and decided to stay, hiding from his past. But they keep talking about the end of the world when all we see is the end of Winden. Not unlike Chernobyl.

Then it became obvious. Jonas transforms himself into "Adam" and Martha into "Eve." This is not a case like Star Wars where a galactic world keeps revolving around one family. this is a BIBLICAL story. The old testament is riddled with entire towns being laid waste to either by God or by Man. The Flood, (Hanno later becomes Noah), Sodom and Gamorrah, etc. Lot and his daughters escape the destruction of the twin cities and hide in a cave. It is in this cave his daughters discuss how they need to repopulate the earth after the destruction of "the world," when it was just THEIR world. They get Lot drunk and well... not only is it incest, it's rape... of an old man... yaaaay religion!

Looking at Dark through this not so subtle biblical lense makes the mess understandable. I wasn't too concerned with the time travel, it was fun, but not worth putting too much thought into it. Many movies have done it and honestly... it will always be sci-fi, so you can make whatever rules you want, whether Terminator, Back to the Future, Time Cop or Avengers.

That being said, I liked how they handle it, as a mistake from yet a third "original" world. I don't want to say "real" because all three realities are real. I also like that it is bittersweet. We've traveled with Jonas, know the whole cast, yet it was the clock maker, Tannhaus, all along. The loss of his son, daughter in law and granddaughter that drove him to give time travel a shot to begin with. Jonas and Martha could've been selfish and chosen to maintain their worlds alive, but they chose sacrifice, to end it all, even if it meant destroying two realities.

Here is where I started thinking about Bioshock, Infinite to be exact. Constants and Variables. Elizabeth tells Booker this, there's always a lighthouse, there's always a city. When you see both Jonas' world and Martha's world (Adam and Eve's) There are those constants and variables throughout and it was fun to identify them. Ulrich is always a cop, always a cheater, his hair is different. In one world Elisabeth is deaf-mute, in the other it's her sister Franziska. That kind of thing.

But what REALLY got my thinking wheels turning was when Jonas and Martha confront Tannhaus' son before he gets to the bridge. All four are standing there, Jonas, Martha, Tannhaus Jr and his wife... my guess is Jonas and Martha ARE them or a version of them that got created by the time-travel accident. Just a thought though, don't know if that's the case, I have no proof.

Worth a watch.
 
I started rewatching as I remember a lot, but for such a complicated show, not enough. Just finished rewatch of S1, gonna power through S2 today and tomorrow.
 
Night Prowler said:
I started rewatching as I remember a lot, but for such a complicated show, not enough. Just finished rewatch of S1, gonna power through S2 today and tomorrow.
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Good idea, we jumped right in and I regreted it as I kept saying, "Who is THAT?!" "Wait... Where did SHE come from?!" and the like.
 
Behind the Curve (on Netflix) was an interesting and kind of fun watch for me the other day. By fun I mean something a bit less emotionally burdensome than the pandemic, work, racism in science, lgbtq+ stuff. It tackled many of the same topics though that several of these other topics do: how arguing with people rarely accomplishes anything other than drive them further away, how all of us bear responsibility for people falling through the cracks, and how all of us are humans at the end of the day. It wasn't a perfect documentary or anything, but it was entertaining and interesting, and since the subject (flat earthers) is, to me at least, not as serious as anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers (don't get me wrong, there is substantial overlap of these communities), it was a less heavy way to engage with the question of how we as a society can or should engage with growing anti-science and anti-evidence movements.
 
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