Books:
Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake Series #4) by Rachel Caine
Well this fourth in a series about a PI and her family who, for various spoilerable reasons, live under constant threat maintains the standards of the prior books and I'm sad there's only one more in the series (the author died a few years ago). What makes these books work, aside from the modernity around using the internet/social media for nefarious purposes as I've mentioned in previous reviews (here, here, and here), is that they're a good combo of connected and standalone. All the character and relationship stuff builds throughout the series so in that sense you need to read them in order. But other than the first two (which are kind of a duology of one longer story), the cases the lead PI - Gwen - takes on each book function as their own stories; they're sometimes connected to prior stories or characters but not in a way that taxes your memory if, say, a year has passed between reading one book and the next. The books are all total page-turners and, really, the element of a PI having her own massive problems which inevitably interfere with the case she's investigating (to hardly mention getting her family dragged into things) just adds some great plot elements and tension to the book. It's almost like you're getting a twofer, the case she's investigating and her dodging all the crap that’s coming at her and her family. The books are well-written enough that I don't notice the writing (which is a compliment) as in I'm just immersed in the story. There are some POV shifts between her and her partner and kids which add some interest and, because the kids are now teenagers, some plot problems as well stemming from teen rebellion but in the context of larger outside issues, i.e. the characters evolve across the books. Yes, I'm being very vague about the plot and all in part because this is the fourth book and I don't want to spoiler if you haven't read the other three, but mostly because the fun of these books is watching how what's happening in the lead's real life impinges on and crosses with her investigation and there's really no point in discussing those details since the pleasure is seeing how it all unfolds. I'm really hard-pressed to think of a series that has remained this twisty and page-turny but which also has a strong and well-developed lead driving the whole thing; I mean, yes of course there are other books with tramautized PI leads, but many of those leave whatever trauma may have happened as backstory that affects the current life of the character whereas with these books the trauma that’s happening is happening right now in the real-time of the book meaning you're not merely in the head of a smart, competent person who's trying to live while overcoming her past but all that plus overcoming her present too. If you like page-turny mystery/thrillers and haven't read this yet, well what are you waiting for?!?
TV/Streaming:
The Crown (Season 2):
If season 1 of this show was bad then season 2 has really doubled-down on the boredom primarily because, as noted somewhat in my season 1 review, there's an enormous amount going on... only not to any of the leads which means this series is basically spending 10 hours watching the do-nothing stay-at-home neighbors of the real protagonists/antagonists sit around and chat about what they're hearing everyone else is up to. If you're some fan of the British royals, everything I'm saying will make no difference since for you this is a docudrama of sorts (though I didn't notice anywhere the show saying it was based on a true story or anything so am I just to assume it's mostly true because it names real-life names or not so much?). For everyone else, this will either be a total background noise hate-watch (moi) or Ambien. Here's what I mean by how horribly written this is as a series. And, a moment here, let's bear in mind: no one forced anyone to write this meaning, if you're choosing to tackle a relatively recentish history of the British monarchy, well it's on you, writer, to construct the same thing every other decent show has (read: plot, character, conflicts, obstacles aka the basics of drama). Instead the writer did this - and remember each episode’s around an hour to really give everyone ample opportunity to sink into the abject boredom:
Episode 1: Phil goes on a long cruise. Liz hears about an oil crisis but doesn't know what to make of it.
Episode 2: Phil continues his cruise until Liz tells him to come home for Christmas to make a radio address. He does.
Episode 3: Liz finds out the wife of a buddy of Phil is filing for divorce and, because Liz is a total narcissist who thinks everything's about her, tries to talk the wife out of it for fear of how that person's divorce might reflect on her own marital problems as if that makes a lick of sense. Liz and Phil resolve their marital issues by giving Phil a title change, a ceremony we get to witness for what feels like two hours in a one hour episode.
Episode 4: Liz's sister, Madge, makes then breaks an engagement, has a nude photo taken, and has it published, the consequences of which are absolutely nothing.
Episode 5: Liz makes a speech which is critiqued; she doesn't like the criticism but decides it's valid and that Xmas radio address, the thrilling plot point in Episode 2? Well, reacharound, that becomes a TV address due to the criticism!
Episode 6: Liz finds out her uncle was a Nazi collaborator and seeks spiritual counseling.
Episode 7: Madge gets engaged but Liz tells her she can't announce it for a few months because Liz is pregnant and there would be a publicity clash though Liz doesn't explain how nor why but regardless it doesn't happen. Madge storms off. A few months later, when Liz is ready, Madge gets married.
Episode 8: Liz hears gossip that Jackie Kennedy thinks she's a useless frump. Meanwhile Ghana is some kind of pawn in the Cold War and is leaning towards the Russians. Liz takes successful if completely nonsensical political action to turn Ghana from Russia to the West by flying there and dancing with the Ghanese leader. Jackie apologizes to Liz then Jackie's husband is assassinated and Liz has bells rung.
Episode 9: Phil forces Liz to send their son Charlie to Phil's boarding school, and Phil thinks about his own childhood when his family died and his father was mean. Charlie cries, and Phil yells at him.
Episode 10: Phil goes to an osteopath for a neck issue. A year later, the osteopath suicides and Phil finds out there was a hand drawing of him in the osteopath's briefcase which makes Liz conclude Phil has been cheating on her. Phil denies it; Liz gives birth to another child.
If you were a studio executive and a writer pitched that as a season plot for the leads, would you buy and finance that show? Me either but, ya know, Netflix. Here's knocking wood season 3 turns out to be even half as exciting as this one.
Warrior (Season 2):
Even though I know it's not the greatest show on the planet, I still loved this second season of this martial arts show about Chinese immigrants in late 1800s San Francisco and all the attendant cultural and inter-tong clashes. The first season was equally good (or, I guess, equally bad if you didn't like it) and this one is on par though some of the action sequences are even better. The show focuses on a number of main characters, primarily a Chinese brother and sister who are at odds with one another and have worked their ways up in competing tongs, a few cops, the asshole mayor's wife, and a few others to show us all the politics, racism, sexism, yet also interdependency of these various factions, all with an unbelievable amount of crunchy punching, blood flying everywhere, people being kicked in the face nonstop and, if you’re me, contemplating all of their futures (however long those might be) with ALS due to the seemingly endless concussions. The reason I say this isn't the greatest show on the planet is I know there's a certain simplicity and contrivance to the character motivations - like, without spoilering, the writers built this season around growing resentment by Irish laborers of losing their jobs to the Chinese but the inroad into this was some very hazy generic "rebelliousness" (or something) on the part of the mayor's wife's younger sister - but it was all fine. The writers managed to weave all the plots together into a big-ass final few episodes and if they needed to fudge with some character stuff to get us into various worlds well I didn't care in the end because it all paid off in a satisfying way. The final few episodes are some seriously intense (and super gory and, as noted, very very crunchy) fight sequences and if you like that kind of stuff - which I do! - it was all very gripping. Also I liked the world. I mean, it's an unusual setting and I really didn't know much about the Chinese tongs and opium import and how all that mashed up with everything else going on in the West in that time period combined with the more familiar stuff around lawless towns, prostitutes, and whatnot and the show takes us into those worlds as well in a way but from a Chinese lens which makes it all more interesting. Yes, the characters are kind of bluntly drawn and in some ways you can see where the plots are going as they're the sorts of things that have cropped up in other shows of this ilk, but I didn't care because every episode drives plot forward, the characters had enough stuff going on to keep me engaged, the plot definitely has some twists, and really the fight sequences are pretty great. All of which is to say if you haven't seen this show and a martial arts urban Western sounds kind of appealing, well it's been consistently good for two seasons so I'd say give it a shot, and I will absolutely be watching season 3 when/ifever it emerges.
Movies:
Lockout - This is an extremely ridiculous though still entertaining sci-fi movie about a rogue CIA operative who's sent into space in a last-ditch effort to save the President's daughter from a hostage situation on a prison spaceship. The plot complication (I guess) is that the prisoners are all kept in some kind of consciousness-suspending stasis only something happens (which isn't spoilerable but which is merely so unmemorable that I literally have no idea what it was even though I'm typing this within a week of seeing the movie) and all the prisoners wake up and try to use the hostage situation to negotiate a way out of their jail. The ticking clock is that the military is sending in ships to blow up the prison and there's only one guy - literally Guy as in Guy Pearce - who can slip in there to save the daughter from being either mauled by the prisoners or blown up by the military.
And of course there's also that weird layer of righteous macho which infuses this genre of media, the kind epitomized by Kiefer Sutherland in 24, where Guy Pearce is a moral maverick doing things like killing and torturing people but for the right reasons, which all feels really... strange. I mean I think this movie was made around a decade ago but there's something about the male muscly quippy self-assured life-risking-on-behalf-of-sassy-stranded-female that feels, far from heroic, but rather like a remnant strain of toxic masculinity in which all of that was the justification for overarching misogyny, as in: the moral authority of One Man Willing to Sacrifice Himself For the Good of One Female reiterated over and over and over in TV/Streaming and Movies is the thing that props up all the total assholes of the world. Like yeah I'm slapping you around or keeping my hand on your shoulder too long at work or wolf-whistling at you when you walk down the street or roofieing you in a club... but deal with it because I'm a superhero who could save your (hot little) ass in one equally hot second - and with banter BTW because I’m that great - should the need arise, and far from suing and hashtagging me for all that, how about some gratitude! In some ways it's total male genius. I mean the millennia after millennia sale of the pitch that men are self-sacrificing saviors and therefore should be given slack for their awful behavior in non-savior mode (read: for most men, their entire lives) just because we all KNOW they're the ones who, in a crisis, will step up and fix everything has become a brilliant justification for someone else needing to empty the dishwasher and get the kids to bed, for being a flirty boss/customer, for being lazy and unresponsive to non-male authority, and more or less going through life doing anything you want regardless of how it affects others because, don't forget, one day when you, lady, are stuck in outer space or the Mideast or trapped in a panic room or a big building or there's an invasion, a tornado - any weather event come to think of it - where something bad happens in a hotel on vacation, where some sneaking around or getting the bad guys is required, I'll save you which we know for a fact because well we’ve been saying it over and over in that brainwashing way of repeated story tropes in various media for thousands of years QED FACT and like not being whatever here but just sayin’ it wasn’t Mary who put herself up on the Cross right? Now go pack the school lunches because I have some very important tablet-browsing to do.