Media Report

See For Me, Flight Attendant Season 2, and more!

TV/Streaming:

Swagger (Season 1):

This is a drama about the (I think real?) hypercompetitive world of youth basketball leagues in the DC Metro area. I have mixed feelings about this show. On the one hand I watched the entire thing and not in the background and will probably watch season two. On the other... well basically the show is structured around teenagers of varying racial and socioeconomic backgrounds though primarily Black and poor and while the show's not humorless, it definitely has a message-y/lecture-y vibe to it, kind of afterschool specialish (and is that still a meaningful reference point?). I mean not entirely but let me put it this way: there's an episode with the police/BLM in it; there's a subplot involving athletes and coach sex abuse; there's a thing around taking the knee during the national anthem; one of the kids has an addicted parent in prison; there are absentee fathers, overworked mothers, etc. etc. Also I'm sure the writers thought they were being very current and whatnot when they shot this by having everyone in the latter half of the season going around completely masked, but honestly (a) that particular phase of COVID (post-we've-been-home-forever but a few months pre-vaccine) is nothing I feel a need to revisit and (b) watching actors act with their mouths and half their faces covered really kills a lot of the performance shockingly. Despite these annoyances, the show is actually fairly watchable. In the end, it's a sports drama about, not underdogs really, but rather this odd calculus made at age 13 by both parents and players about using these leagues to position themselves to be spotted by NBA scouts later which gives the characters some choices beyond the more typical sports stories of this ilk. While there's nothing earth-shattering here, the season is enjoyable enough, shows a world somewhat off the beaten track if with some familiar elements, and feels like the kind of thing you'd be fine watching if someone else were into it but may or may not turn on if on your own - which really doesn't sound like much of an endorsement I know but it just means that even if you're not into basketball or whatever you'll still probably be fine watching it. Think Friday Night Lights but more urban poor than that show's small-town poor and less sophisticated in terms of its characters and you'll have a sense of this show.

90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days (Season 5):

The atrocity continues and I really have no one to blame but myself (by which I mean my sister who told me about this abomination to begin with) for watching but there you have it. As mentioned in my review of the prior seasons I watched, this show is the viewing equivalent of whatever feeds off of bottom feeders. It's a reality - or whatever constitutes reality according to the producers - show about straight people meeting up with their overseas online relationships for the first time to decide whether or not to go through with the marriage visa process, thus the “before” part of the title. I have not, I'm proud to announce, watched the follow-up series (the originator actually) 90 Day Fiance and I'm really really really hoping I maintain that standard. This show is terrible in the myriad cliche ways that all reality shows are terrible but slightly worse because you know you're watching deluded crazy people and maybe that's a little sad and you should feel bad about it? But you don't? Like everyone on the show is clearly desperate for a relationship of any kind (as long as they're straight because that seems to be the only kind of relationship this show is aware of) but primarily the kind where the relationshipee is a phantom on the other end of an internet connection meaning the relationshiper can fill in all the blanks about them with their own fantasy ideal. Do you need examples of this? Of course you do. So, for example, the 50ish year-old divorced father of 3 slash self-styled fitness model who, did I mention, grew up in a Christian cult and believes he's found, via texting, the spiritually fated love of his life with a 22-year-old Peruvian who uses Manga-eye filters on her Instagram - plain-old deluded or thoroughly deluded I ask you. Or how about the single mom who's convinced herself that the love of her life comes in the form of a Tunisian guy despite the fact that their entire relationship is based on the vagaries of Google Translate? Or the 50something woman who's bananas for the 30something Nigerian rapper who, btw, basically married her doppelganger (well they both sound like they're from Philly at least) a few seasons ago and, like, didn't she watch that season to see how that all turned out? I did, so I knew. Oh, dear, I'd better stop. This show is background noise at best but, fine, in the moments when I glance up from my tablet to see what's going on oh all right I'm amused sue me.

The Flight Attendant (Season 2):

Well I loved the second season of this romp-y mystery with fun characters and amusing dialogue despite knowing that the plot absolutely cannot be examined too much at all. It didn't matter. The show picks up from the first season (in which an alcoholic flight attendant hooks up with a passenger, parties all night, and wakes up next to his dead body followed by her efforts to unravel what happened all while getting wrapped up in a bigger story) with our lead in a different but similar situation, i.e. one in which she's inserted into an investigation for legit reasons but where her inability to stop herself from digging into details she has no business digging into reveals a larger conspiracy, one which completely inhales her. Tonally, its closest analogue is the ancient '70s mama of all OTT mystery comedies Foul Play and, really, if you can imagine a version of Goldie Hawn's bubbly-but-not-dumb character-type stuck in the midst of an international conspiracy thriller, you have a sense of this show. I admit it: I kind of love this show and may be waxing rhapsodic(ish) about it because it managed something I've seen so little of in my eternal viewing experience: a sense of fun without undermining plot coherency, a plot that actually ties together unlike in, say, any show produced by Apple, characters who are quippy enough to be entertaining yet grounded in just enough character weight to make their actions believable even when they're really completely absurd, plus enough amusement with the side characters that the show never feels bogged down in the kind of repetition that can happen when the lead's in every scene. In other words, it's a show that sets out to do one thing - bouncy entertainment in a conspiracy thriller package - and it does that consistently right through the final episode. While I can understand why the show may not be to your particular taste, it at least knows exactly what it is and consistently delivers on that, like it never has that sense that so many shows have where by episode 3 or 4 you're getting the whiff that the writers have no idea what they're doing and that all they had was a setup with no clue how to pay it off (I'm looking at you, Yellowjackets). This is is not that. The writers have delivered a show that has a beginning, middle, and end where the plot twists are entertaining even if you see them coming because the real twist is seeing in what fun way the characters wriggle out of the situation they're in. You'll note I've barely discussed plot because there's no point. The plot is just the big machine that’s carrying the characters into circumstances where they get to do entertaining stuff and guess what? Fun entertainment is literally all I ask for and this show has now delivered that for two seasons and I'm hoping there's a third. You'll probably know within an episode or two whether or not this show's for you and, if it is, well I can tell you it remains fun for two seasons so settle in and enjoy.

Movies:

See For Me - This is a completely idiotic (details on said idiocy in a minute) but still entertaining-enough home invasion thriller about a blind girl catsitting (!! blind catsitter is only the beginning of the idiocy as is there possibly someone less qualified to ensure an evolutionarily totally silent creature doesn't slip outdoors than a blind person other than, perhaps, the morons who came up with the idea to begin with?) in an isolated mountain home and what happens when a bunch of robbers break in.

But you know how it goes. You're a rich divorcee with said big isolated mountain home and you’re going on vacation somewhere, and, aargh, you have no catsitting options whatsover - like dropping your cat at a kennel for example or leaving it with a friend - and you, what with all your delicate knickknacks on shelves jutting out of walls, multiple staircases, and a house made almost entirely of glass, decide that an electric feeder and water dispenser just won’t do the trick - the “trick” being to get the proper food in the cat's mouth at the proper time and make sure it doesn't get outside - for the few days you’ll be out of town, so you decide to get a stranger to catsit and, darn, the only available catsitter on, I guess, the only catsitting site on the planet is a former ski champion blind girl, which, despite the fact that as far as I’m aware electric feeders can’t open doors, you decide would be the best way for your cat to be sat. In the middle of winter. Okay, fine and, because you don't want to make the blind girl feel bad about being blind plus she seems kind of snarly and resentful in general, you just nod - even though she can’t see it - when she refuses your offer of a tour of the house, i.e. something every sighted person would also need to have in order to, you know, learn where things are what food they're supposed to feed the cat and like how exactly is blind girl going to give the cat cat food rather than, say, a handful of croutons and how is the blind girl is going to get the food into the bowl rather than all over the marble flooring? But I guess you decide you’re in it now, the blind girl’s here so no tour EVEN THOUGH SHE’S COMPLETELY BLIND and you tell her your security code and hope it all works out because you don’t seem to have any remote access cameras either, i.e. basically, under the guise of catsitting, you've invited a totally blind and as it turns out totally sullen and resentful stranger to sleep over and, as a bonus, put your pet’s life in danger just by her very existence in your home. But whatever - sounds like a plan and off you go.

Mercifully, the blind girl has two people to help her out. One is her bestie who via video call gives her a tour of the house which is so much better than the tour you, the person who actually owns and inhabits the house and knows where everything is, would've given her. But sullen blind girl and bestie are up to something spoilerable though they have a disagreement over that and, when blind girl heads outside for a smoke - OUTSIDE AS IN OPENING THE DOOR WITH ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHERE THE CAT IS AND WHICH COULD SLIP OUT INTO THE WINTER COLD IN ONE NOT-SO-HOT SECOND - she does what basically no one, blind or sighted, would do which is (a) not check to see if the door is locked combined with (b) having no keys.

Well T effing G she has an app, the eponymous See For Me which hooks her up to a first-person-shooter-playing ex-military person who did something shameful (question mark because it's never really explained) but which got her assigned to volunteer on blind-person-app duty (also question mark because it's also never really explained) where - and you should be totally relieved at what follows - the app person helps blind person break back into your house, the one she just locked herself out of. Because of course sighted person has no idea whether or not blind person is (a) actually blind and/or (b) lying about catsitting but whevs military B&E skills are applied via app and blind girl gets back in ONCE AGAIN HAVING NO IDEA WHATSOEVER WHETHER OR NOT SHE LET YOUR CAT OUT. And btw - and this is relevant later - blind girl being, you know, blind has to use her hands or a cane which mysteriously vanishes into disuse early in the film and fingers crossed she won't knock over all the vases, ceramics, and glass knicknacks you have placed everywhere (spoiler alert: that doesn't work out for you). I won't go into great detail about the rest of the plot and what happens when burglars - robbers technically since the blind girl is there - break in, what they're after, what their plan is (idiocy you can be sure) - or how the blind girl and the app girl get involved in all of it for spoiler reasons nor will I discuss the moronic then completely ridiculous choices everyone involved makes but I will tell you this: while your home and its contents are smashed, shot, stolen, destroyed, there's blood everywhere, and an alarm system that never seems to go off when needed and which you might want to think about replacing, the entire weekend really helped that blind girl work through her resentment over the poor hand Life dealt her and she’s taking up skiing again!

Though you may want to hire some people, maybe even sighted, to go find your cat.