Books:
The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan
This is an admittedly somewhat simplistic but still entertaining mystery about a woman infiltrating a criminal defense team for spoilerable reasons. The story is basically told from the main character's (Hannah's) POV with some diary entries from Hannah's mother and a random POV shift late in the book and I'd say the book mostly worked. You know upfront that whatever Hannah's up to is on behalf of her mom and, for me, the mom/daughter stuff, especially at the end, was really thin and ultimately didn't make much sense. I'm not going to spoiler, but I'll just note that I really didn't understand the mother at all and, while I got Hannah's basic motivation, it stopped making a certain kind of sense once some spoilerable plot points were revealed as in I felt the book failed in that, as Hannah made more discoveries, those discoveries should really have had more of an impact on her relationship with her mom and, perhaps, should have led to a secondary investigative stream about her mother but none of that happened. I'm noting this but in all honesty it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book but it also kept the book from being anything more than a casual time-killer rather than a more elevated mystery. What I'm saying is it could've become an interesting character book wrapped in a ticking-clock mystery but the author didn't capitalize on what she had. I mean, if you heard a parent's account of a major event in their lives and acted on what you'd heard and then later discovered some cracks in that initial account, wouldn't that affect your choices going forward to hardly mention your relationship with that parent? That's what was missing. The author bypassed it by making the mother an alcoholic and Hannah afraid of triggering her (kind of) but really what was lacking for me from this book was that it implied a mother/daughter thing but really never delivered one. I know I've spent the bulk of this review critiquing this point but really I enjoyed the book overall and I guess the reason I'm bothering to write about it is that it felt as if the author had the skill to address this but maybe not an editor who had a discussion with her about it (I have no idea if that’s true btw). So setting aside what I think it could've been, what it is is a fun beach read, nothing that's going to blow your socks off, but something that absolutely sustains interest from beginning to end and nothin' wrong with that.
TV/Streaming:
Acapulco (Season 2):
Well despite kind of enjoying the first season, this season got DNF'ed and I'm 100% done. As a reminder, this show is a, well honestly I'm not entirely sure, gentle comedy maybe (half hour) which intercuts between today where a rich guy is telling his grandson the story of his rise from poverty and then back to mid-'80s Acapulco when he started that rise working in a resort. It's is utterly and completely edge-free as in whatever lack of edge you're currently imagining, remove more edge. It borders on a Disney+ tween show in terms of its comedy though arguably, and without sarcasm (ish), those shows offer marginally more edge via their modernism. I'm picking on this point because it's what became the death of this show for me. Honestly, it was always on the margin and I didn't really understand why it was set in the '80s other than to have '80s costumes and hair and, I guess, makes '80s references. And even more - and this is why a mere lack of edge was enough to push this show into DNF land - I couldn't figure out what it was going for. Like is it literally nothing more than Mexico and shoulder pads and the jolly poor and OTT hotel guests and for what? All shows, including comedies no matter how goofy, center around SOMETHING, like there's some basic idea at the core that’s gluing it all together. Network sitcoms are prime examples of this where characters do absurd things but because you understand what the show is trying to achieve - broad commentary on friends, family, workplace, roommates, or whatever - you can enjoy the situations because you get where they sit in their context, which for network sitcoms are typically current (meaning culturally a decade ago and okay with Red States) life and relationships. So while work and family are obviously comprehensible, what do those things mean in an '80s Acapulco hotel? Do you get a blank answer from that question? Because I do and this series offered nothing more. Put a different way, if you're going to take your show out of the default now, there needs to be a reason. For example, the show Black Monday which I've enjoyedish for two seasons (here and here though spoiler alert for my eventual season 3 review - it goes way downhill) is set at a Black-run late '80s Wall Street trading firm and I get why: it's about race, money, and culture and how those things at that time reflect on now because it's a comedy and therefore can easily traffic in irony in addition to all the poufy hair and tight outfits. But with this show, there's nothing plus, as noted, all edge has been honed off. The writers gave no reason for their settings beyond "we wanted it there cause '80s Mexico hilarious!" and (from Apple) "bwahhaha Latin market yes dinero!", and yeah that's it I guess. Anyway, last season had this problem but I watched it in smaller doses plus I thought the jokes were better. This season, it just began to feel like a chore and, despite the fact that I write about shows, my idea of TV/Streaming ain't homework. Don't even bother starting is my advice.
Dead To Me (Seasons 1-3):
Meh. That's the tl;dr review of this comedram - that coinage will take off one day I just know it! And btw, the distinction between comedram and dramedy in my mind is comedrams are 30ish mins and lean into the comedy while still having some kind of story backbone and dramedies are 60ish mins and are dramas but with amusing characters. Anyway this female buddy comedram is about two women brought together under, well, deceptive circumstances (vague to avoid spoilering) who go on to become besties and how those deceptive circumstances spawn their own series of other silly plot developments as a means to cement friendships. It all involves murder, some money issues, some family stuff, but mostly stuff around the murder/death(s) and the cops and all that kind of thing but with a definite wackiness to it all like in the tone of Fargo-very-very-very-lite. Your enjoyment of this series will be totally dependent on whether you enjoy these Oscar/Felix relationships - in this case stick-up-her-ass realtor Christina Applegate and loopy-sweet Linda Cardellini - and seeing these two opposite personalities grow a relationship while doing all kinds of nutsy investigative things. You can probably tell I'm on the cold/lukewarm side and so for me this show was background noise (barely). I mean it’s trying to walk the edge of some heightened reality, like a wacky caper with death and cops and FBI and this person maybe finding out the truth and our leads forced to cover it up and one keeping info from the other and the kids and leads' mom(s) and small-town cops and, you know, two suburban ladies trying to hide a body, that kind of thing. It's fine I guess but you know going on in that the sole purpose of the plot is to create ridiculous circumstances to both force the leads together and reveal their different Oscar/Felix approaches which of course causes squabbles yet there's love and friendship under it all. So if that's your vibe, you'll probably genuinely like this show because it's not like it's flat-out bad. It is what it is and it's a well-cast, well-shot, and, I don't know maybe it's well-written - not my thing so harder to judge that because so much seemed contrived and dumb - but regardless is at best a pleasant confectiony distraction with I guess some heft if you're into this kind of thing or just vague banter from some decent actors if you're me. Let me put it this way: if you liked Bad Sisters (review to come and yet another review spoiler alert: you know that moment you decide to go clean out your photos only to realize after a few minutes of satisfying deletions that you have like 15,000 to go and you begin wondering why you're even bothering but kind of force yourself to keep goingish mostly by doing massive scrolls and randomly deleting something you see and realizing how much you're hating this plus WTF because you have enough storage and ugh why did you even start this task? that was my experience of watching Bad Sisters), this is definitively better not to mention shorter so there you go.
Movies:
The Novice - This is a pretty interesting movie about a college freshman who drives herself to extremes in order to win. What I thought was interesting about it is that it's shot and plays like a thriller even though it's not remotely in that genre as the Freddy(ie?)/villain in this case is the lead’s relentless competitiveness and self-loathing and her inability to stop herself from mental and physical destruction in the name of winning, which, for her, is never about any internal sense of achievement but rather always an external goal - top that time, beat out that person, get that grade, etc. The context for all this is she decides to join the rowing team, a famously rough sport, or at least famously rough to me even though I never did it nor knew anyone who did. Yet somehow its reputation for brutality filtered down to my college-aged brain as something for which you had to train nonstop then get in freezing cold water at 5am and drag an oar with teammates while being screamed at by someone. This sounded bad and watching the movie I felt like my assessment was only partially correct in that the reality looked even worse. The lead’s reasons for doing all this tie into her self-belief about achievement which is that she may not be the best or the brightest, but she's the most relentless regardless of her level of physical to hardly mention mental suffering. Like she sucks at physics as well but is majoring in it as it doesn't matter that she doesn't like it or care about it but rather turning those Cs into As through what's ultimately the self-brutality of hand over hand dragging oneself up some mountain solely because the mountain's there and not even thinking about whether you want to climb that mountain at all just that you can't right now and so you will, that thing? Well most of the movie is watching that played out in a very physical way with rowing. That's kind of the entire movie. Yes, there are quick and well-crafted relationships with her and her teammates and her and a TA which serve to illustrate her internal state and amplify her goal and, especially with the teammates, show how isolated she makes herself even though she's incapable of seeing it. The movie's pretty short and I'm honestly not sure how much more I could have watched because the physical stuff became difficult to witness, not that it was a gorefest or anything but there was definitely a lot of bleeding and pain. Thematically I thought it was interesting because it's about what I think so many people go through - and honestly in many ways the process of becoming an adult is overcoming this - which is that ambition in the absence of meaningful connection to a self, as in suffering in the pursuit of an external marker of success - a grade, a row time, etc. - as opposed to suffering in pursuit of something that you enjoy - like many people in the arts toiling away in the hopes of doing what they love - is actually self-loathing. I liked this movie because it was different and knew what it wanted to be and made its point effectively. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it per se but I'm definitely glad I watched it.