Books:
Claire de Witt and the City of the Dead (Claire de Witt #1) by Sara Gran
While I can't say I loved the underlying mystery or its unraveling in this first in a PI series, the writing was so strong and the characters so sharply written that I'll be reading future books in this series regardless of whether or not the mysteries improve. To be clear: it's not that the mystery was awful or anything; rather, it was just a combination of pedestrian - missing DA, New Orleans, some gang stuff - and conveniently solved though, and this is where it gets tricky with this book, part of the way the first-person lead operates is through some loopy methods meant to tap into her underlying intuition, like I Ching or viewing seemingly random events as clues which they in the end turn out to be. In other words, it's a mystery book with fate or luck or tapping into some spiritual ether baked in as the solution to the crime. Honestly I found it a little annoying since it meant the lead, just via wandering around, bumped into all the clues she needed to solve the crime. But that annoyance was overwhelmed by the strength of the writing which was very specific and entertaining and kind of weird in a good way and absolutely captured the flavor of the lead and the people around her - think Confederacy of Dunces and the way that book etched some very specific characters. The PI lead is a mess, kind of mean yet also kind of friendly and with a never-say-no attitude and a certain fearlessness that inevitably leads her to trouble and/or getting incredibly wasted on whatever drug she's handed. She also has a deeply held philosophy about the nature of detective work as summed up in an obscure, underground, French and also, in the larger sense, deeply French book which is almost a Jungian theorizing about the nature of solving crime. This is what I found to be so amusing about the book. It's just so particular. Plus the lead has a pretty wry sense of humor which adds to the book's overall appeal. I'd call this book more fiction in a mystery package than an outright mystery novel because, unlike with other mysteries where you, the reader, are part of the unraveling of the crime, that just isn't possible in this book because it relies on these seemingly random events rather than clues. Like I said, I didn't care in the end because I enjoyed the writing so much, but I'm noting it because you may prefer your mysteries much more mystery-like and that just isn't this book.
TV/Streaming:
Black Monday (Season 3):
This third season of a sarcastic, self-aware comedy series I've previously enjoyed (prior season reviews here and here) sadly tanked out because the writers, literally and figuratively, lost the plot, by which I mean not only is there essentially zero plot this season but they also lost the basic thread of this show. As a reminder, the series is set in late '80s Wall Street at the only Black-run investment firm and the OTT ridiculousness of the characters (plus nonstop self-aware puns then comments on the puns) acts as a kind of tonal excess mirroring the actual excess of that time period. What drove the show prior to this season, though, and allowed it to override its otherwise somewhat unbearable tone - puns and commentary on the puns are wall to wall - was an actual, real driving plot, like a ton of scheming and backstabbing and plays and counterplays all in the name of money and with the leads, in their ridiculous ways, barely scraping by (or not) by the end of each season. Without that plot, there's nothing, as this season sadly demonstrates. The writers made the mistake of thinking we, the audience, cared about the absurd and unrealistic characters, an odd choice because the first two seasons went out of their way to make the characters ridiculous - one antagonist, for example, is a televangelist who lives on a luxury jet that circles the planet nonstop; others are the “Leighman” brothers who are played as evil twins, etc. We, the audience, were never asked to take the characters or their relationships seriously since the show was structured such that it was putting all the characters in whatever situations the the writers needed in order to make points about America, race, and the extreme systemic risks we allow in the service of rich people getting richer. The leads were all cartoons, and, sure, as with any decent cartoon, there are moments of quasi-seriousness within all the levity, but it's as if this season the writers were somehow no longer in on their own joke that they were writing a heightened reality in the service of a commentary/parody. We (I) cared about watching those cartoons in a driving plot around something that had previously only really been shown with White people, i.e. finance and Wall Street. I'm definitively not interested in seeing where they all go post-Wall Street because they're not people and nothing is real - like one starts a jazz record company and why do I care and what show am I in and where's the plot and what does any of this have to do in even vague remote form with anything that went on in prior seasons which were solely about money-grubbing, law-skirting, Wall Streeters taking huge risks that could topple everything and, you know, like the cliche cartoon waiter balancing 30 plates on one finger while wending through a restaurant (actually is that a cliche? it feels cliche or at least something I maybe saw in Bugs Bunny), we're interested in the balancing act and the recovery when it all crashes down and not, uh, the waiter him/her/theirself. So watching, this season, one form a record company, one try to find herself, one a mega success in fashion, etc. but with all the puns and self-aware quips and commentary is just dull unfortunately. If they couldn't have found a way to keep the characters moving forward in the world they were in for the two prior seasons, they should've just ended the show. Sadly there was this season instead. It's a bummer that this show went so downhill and that the writers forgot their own premise and instead tried to have us all pretend that the leads were actual human beings that anyone cared about as opposed to what they had been in prior seasons - quippy joke-a-second ciphers in the service of smartly if absurdly plotted Wall Street satire. Oh well. If there's a 4th season, it's hard to imagine I'll sit through it though I'll probably try an episode to see if it returns to its roots and, if you're thinking of starting this show, well at least the first two seasons were pretty good but just know upfront it doesn't sustain.
My Brilliant Friend (Season 1):
This is the series based on the blockbuster books which I started then got bored with and, at some point, did the exact same with this series (started, bored, stopped) but you know what happened second time around with the series at least? I was bored again... and then I wasn't and then I actually ended up really liking it. The story revolves around two best friends and is very much of a slow slice-of-life examination of that relationship in 1950s (roughly) Naples. This first season covers a time period from grade school to the middle of high school and I'd say the first episode or two, when the girls are much younger, remain tougher to engage with, not because they're bad but because those early episodes are not only setting up a lot of exposition - lots of characters, a poor neighborhood, the subculture and how it operates and its expectations and gender roles, etc. - but also because child drama just, for me at least, really isn't super interesting. This isn't a flaw of the series as the writing and direction and acting are all really top-notch but rather (I'm guessing) being faithful to books. The first few episodes set up the two leads as the same in that they're both really really smart but very different personality-wise, with one more interior and the other much scrappier. There's also a setup around a local mafia family (or similar) and a lot about the poverty and dearth of opportunities for the people at that time/place, and what makes the series work as it progresses is that the two girls/women start taking very different paths due to life circumstance, luck, or otherwise yet remain bonded to each other. This allows the show to give us essentially three different storylines as you have one lead taking one plot route, the other going somewhere completely different, and then the third plotline as they connect with each other and help each other through their various difficulties. The plots are simple to say - Elena (interior lead) gets a summer job which forces her to confront aspects of sexuality and adolescence; Lila (scrappy lead) is courted by a rich guy she hates and faces family pressure to marry him - but what the series does so well is leave the resolution of those plots very character-based meaning they don't always go where you/me think they would go but rather where these specific characters take them. The series is definitely a slow-paced relationship show but I thought it crafted an interesting story and, despite the pacing and lack of anything super plotty, I was into it because I found myself really drawn to these very specific women and interested in seeing where they'd wind up in their different places yet somehow still together as best friends. Thus I'd say if you, like me, started then stopped but enjoy this kind of moderately-paced slice-of-life drama, it's probably worth giving it another shot as there's clearly some real talent creating this series and, while I'm not rushing into the next season instantly, I know I'll 100% be watching at some point.
Movies:
Gunda - This is an arty (read: slow and black & white) documentary which spends around a few months to a year filming a pig named Gunda from giving birth to her piglets through to some unspecified amount of time later where they're more like adolescents - tweenpigs maybe? Absolutely nothing whatsoever happens. We watch pigs doing pig things; at some point we spend 15 or 20 minutes watching a one-legged rooster wander around the farm; we then watch cows standing there being completely attacked by flies which was by far the most plot-driven and stressful part of the film for me because I desperately needed them to get rid of those flies because they were all over their faces and all that fly buzzing which, despite my abject laziness, almost drove me to grab a can of Raid and scout through my home just in case the flies weren't 100% on my screen. And, spoiler alert, the cows came up with something kind of genius for cows which is they stood next to each other front to back and swatted each other's faces with their tails, though I noticed one wasn't so reciprocal and, like, pig (waah waah)! So that was one plot and the other was the tweenpigs engaged in a nonstop teat-battle in what felt like real-time but I’m guessing was another 20 minutes. I don't know. I mean, it wasn't a nature documentary or anything as there was no narration, and, yeah, it looked cool I guess. But it's 90 minutes and I think it took me 6 viewings to finish and I did that because I was curious if anything ended up happening or if there was at least some interesting insight into farm animal behavior that I hadn't seen before. But no. It looked really hot out there and dry and lots of grass and straw and bugs and mud, all of which served as an affirmation that we humans made the right decision to move indoors, air condition and heat our environments, and attempt to kill everything that wasn't explicitly invited in because living outdoors… shudder. I wonder if this movie would've been more engaging in the theater, like perhaps it would've cast some kind of spell or something. I mean I finished it, but it was all pretty boring. My one takeaway, though, 90 minutes and weeks later is that it's really strange to spend so much time artfully observing the minutiae of lives we're planning to eat.