Books:
Shiver by Allie Reynolds
This is a totally entertaining thriller/mystery beach/airplane read about a group of pro snowboarders lured to a ski resort in the dead of winter and trapped there for reasons I won't spoil. The book is structured going back and forth between the present tense in the resort as the group tries to figure out what's going on - plus present-tense relationship drama based on past-tense events - and a decade ago when certain events and relationships occurred that resulted in the present tense mystery. It's nothing genius, but it's completely fun, and the author clearly knows a lot about snowboarding and that makes the characters’ circumstances and why they deal with those circumstances the way they do seem more realistic. The writing is completely fine, the characters distinct, the relationships soap-opera-y in a good way, and the overall sense of wondering what's really going on and why extended way way farther than most others of this ilk, which is a compliment to the author. She told a fun story in a way that made sense and maintained mystery and what else could one ask for from the genre really?
An American Spy (Tourist Series Book 3) by Olen Steinhauer
Well whatever one could ask for from the genre, it was assuredly not present in this book, the third in this series. I reviewed the first two in prior Media Reports but a quick catchup: this is a modern spy series about a super secret American intelligence service called Tourism where the Tourists are basically individuals who are combo assassins/analysts, i.e. they assess complex situations and manipulate people or kill as needed. Books 1 and 2 are more or less continuous in that they track essentially one large story across both books. The tl;dr on my review was that they were nothing amazing but still fun though the plotting in the second one began to spiral out of control a bit, not to the point that it was unreadable but rather that I was beginning to lose confidence in the author.
Well that assessment turned out to be correct (which is no surprise since as we all know Janice is always right) because this third book was so unbelievably dreadful that not only did I DNF but I’m not 100% sure I can even bring myself to try the fourth and final one (I think) in the series, which I’m only considering because the first two weren’t awful. Basically this third book - without spoilering (though I really can’t imagine anyone suffering through it but just in case) - involves a plot by the Chinese to bring down Tourism due to events that occurred in the prior books. While that sounds like it could be fun in a spy v. spy way, it was just so crazy boring! I mean let’s face it, spy books rely on three things: the spy, the adversary, and the plot that links the two. This book had one out of the three and that would be the middle one as the other two were essentially absent and really a spy book without a plot or a spy is what? An opinion essay on a fictionalized version of foreign policy that’s what. To make matters worse, what little plot exists is internecine warfare within various Chinese politburos, meaning it’s a endless stream of Chinese names and intricate details of how each of those names is somehow trying to internally undermine someone else in ways that are totally incomprehensible and all without a spy in sight. It feels as if the author had basically one, maybe two, books in him and just kept writing anyway. Unlike the first two which had a decent amount of action, this is all office politics and this Janice is hard-pressed to think of anything more dull than reading 300 pages about people going to meetings, but if that sounds thrilling to you, well here ya go.
TV/Streaming:
Warrior (Season 1):
This is a martial arts series set in 1870s San Francisco about Chinese gangs and American politics and is a big semi-twisty drama with an extra huge helping of people punching and kicking each other. I gotta say, while my expectations were low going in, I ended up totally enjoying it. The basic plot tracks several intersecting stories: one about a Chinese immigrant with a past who’s also a complete kickass martial artist and who, as a result, winds up as an gang heavy and gets sucked into a big opium war; another is the mayor and his dissatisfied wife and serves as a lens into politics, business corruption around the railroads, etc.; the third main story tracks the police, with their own story around post-Civil War Americans heading west and the Irish mafia controlling the force and their investigation into Chinese gang killings. In many ways, this is standard premium cable fare - history, politics, corruption, race issues, drama, etc. - but to me what set this show above other of its kind was partly the wry sense of humor that the writers gave to many of the characters but mostly that the action scenes were really entertaining - and there are a lot of them. Also I guess other than in broad strokes I never really gave much thought to that era and found it interesting to see the kinds of issues people faced and how they overcame them (mostly via guns and/or a roundhouse kick to the face as far as I can gather). Look, it's pure popcorn, but with a bit more meat to it - Paleo popcorn (waaah waaah)! I'm not saying it’s the greatest show ever but it's certainly fun with more plot and character heft than I expected and would make for a solidly good binge if you like the combination of setting and punching.
Good Girls (Seasons 1-4):
This is the NBC Weeds-alike about three suburban housewife-y BFFs (well two sisters and their bestie) who, due to financial pressure, decide to become robbers and, from there, get swept deeper and deeper into a web of (somewhat) organized crime. The show is insanely dumb and even more unrealistic than is a given for this category but props to the studio for hiring an appealing cast - the actors are very amusing - plus there's a bit of zing to the writing. While I referenced Weeds, in some ways it's also Fargo-lite, with that same well-acted comic edge interwoven into a crime show. I really cannot emphasize the dumb part enough though; the lengths the writers go to to make sure the women will never get their heads above water (i.e. keep them in the same circumstances for the entire series) is shocking and, in some ways, admirable maybe? Also, because TV networks seem to have to failed to realize that viewers have a bajillion other viewing options - most of them better than network TV - they did that thing where, after four seasons, the network ended the show without finishing it and obviously didn't tell anyone involved it wasn’t being renewed until it was too late for the writers to give the viewers a satisfying conclusion.
I need a minute here because I don't know why networks still do this. Let me rephrase: I know why - money. What I don't understand is why, knowing how much viewers despise it and how difficult it will make it to sell the show elsewhere afterwards, they haven't come up with a better system, like, oh wait I have one: making that decision sooner for example. Every action has a consequence but it seems networks have decided that alienating even more viewers, the few who are left, is better than being forced to make a decision about reupping a series prior to the show wrapping. And if for some reason making a decision about a show’s status while it’s still in production so the writers could pivot if it’s cancelled has such dire financial consequences that the network can’t possibly be boxed into that timeframe, then surely they could account for this issue in the initial deals, e.g. "in the event of cancellation, you'll agree to do a final short wrapup season of no more than X episodes for Y% more than you made the prior season” - I have every confidence that Hollywood lawyers could come up with something that could work for all involved. Because decision trees and timeframes that were functional in an era when the networks were basically the only game in town (read: the ‘70s) are actively destructive in an era where networks aren’t even on most of GenZ’s radar as a viewing option. Networks, as with amputees and phantom limbs, are operating in a phantom business model where they hold all the viewership cards and can do things like make cancellation decisions when it’s financially convenient for them under the phantom business belief that viewers have no other choices. As with pain from actual amputated limbs, all networks’ business strategy limbs have been chopped off but, instead of dealing with and adapting to their new limb-free circumstances, they are instead viewing their phantom-business-model pain as evidence that they’re actually completely whole! and totally fine! and don’t need to change one single thing, like we wouldn’t be in pain if there was nothing there right? Networks, I’mma tell you: that business model pain you’re feeling is the pain of your collapse into irrelevancy and, later, non-existence - like remember when Tower Records was the only place to buy music then two years later it was bankrupt? Pain is a feedback mechanism and the loss of a business model is, yes, painful if you’re a network but, well, adapt or die, right?
The consequence of this really bizarre decision that networks make over and over and over is that they reaffirm every viewer's absolutely correct decision to flee broadcast TV; aside from its awful broadcast censorship standards - absurd in a Netflix era and advertisers sure didn’t seem to mind all the violence in, say, Walking Dead, so they can’t really blame them either - is networks’ continued presumption that audiences are idiots who need everything either over or simplistically explained with every shred of complexity wrung out of the characters and situations. It’s so weird because networks know Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and the like were excellent, complicated, and, most importantly, mega hits - they would kill to have those showrunners write something for them - yet somehow we all intuitively know that if, say, Mare of Easttown were on a network, every single thing that made it interesting would’ve been removed, all characters blandified, the family transformed into a bunch of loving teddy bears beneath the gruffness, and Mare reduced to some cliche notion of “tough female cop who still makes time for the most important thing - being a mom!” all in the name of appealing to some mythical core audience but in actuality doing the exact opposite. Basically, despite seeming eons having passed since this was the case, networks are still operating as if they hold the lock on distribution like they did until that internet thing came along. But what was once mass programming is now, as we all know from the Nielsen ratings, niche programming and I guess… you know I’m rethinking this. Heck, if networks can get advertisers to overpay for the minuscule niche of people who like their notion of “wholesome” and “simple” with a straight-White-though-some-of-my-best-friends-are-Black/gay/Asian/non-binary/etc. vision of America in which everyone is basically a good person - or if not, they’re pure evil so we can easily distinguish who’s what - and where nothing really bad happens and if it does well don’t worry the good people will be okay well you know what? Genius friggin’ business model to get advertisers to wildly overpay for, according to the Nielsens, basically nobody! Of course it’s a death spiral because once those numbers dwindle to the point where the advertisers will no longer pay, the networks will be left with a scarlet letter D for their brands (that would be D for Drek) because while people pay for something made by brands like HBO, Showtime, the BBC, and the like, would literally anyone who’s not an advertiser or a fan of the good-folk-America genre pay a monthly fee upon seeing the logos of ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox? This Janice thinks not!
So when networks do things like they did with this show, they reaffirm that a viewer should under no circumstances ever watch a network show until it's off the air and the viewer knows 100% that it has an actual ending - which becomes yet another death spiral since if no one tunes in at the beginning because no one trusts the networks to make good on the viewer's time investment, then shows will never get off the ground at all since viewership numbers will be so low that advertisers will flee and the thing will be cancelled. It's a bizarre form of suicide, but CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox seem to be super into it. Anyway where was I? Oh right reviewing Good Girls. Well frankly I liked this show as background noise and was irritated that it didn’t finish so if it sounds fun to you just be aware up front that it ends in the middle thanks to network um “strategy.”
Movies:
Held - This movie is in what I’m calling the “leaky theme” genre about the woman who wrote it clearly having completely unresolved issues about what she thinks about anything in relation to gender, relationships, and power dynamics. That aside, it’s also a psychological horror movie about a married couple trapped at some luxe AirBnb being forced to unravel their relationship issues under threat of pain or worse by a mysterious third party which I won’t describe further for spoiler reasons.
So the setup for the female lead (who’s basically the movie lead as well though her husband has a lot of screen time) is that she was raped in the backseat of a car some unspecified amount of time prior to the present day; she's now leery of men, as evidenced by her willingness to be driven alone - in the backseat of a car but with a notebook this time in which she’s writing well I don’t know - by a male driver to an isolated spot where she tells the male driver that her husband won't be coming until the next day plus, when shaking hands goodbye to the male driver, an extremely long amount of time spent with him not letting go of her hand though it's not clear if he's actually holding her hand that long or if she's just seeing it that way due to her past trauma. One would think this setup would go somewhere buuuuuut it’s basically never referenced again (theme leak! theme leak!). In any event her husband eventually arrives and, via the horror device mentioned above (the mysterious third party), certain marital problems emerge. The third party, who has total control over the couple for reasons I won’t spoil, is very concerned with traditional - meaning patriarchal - gender roles and forcing the couple into these roles against their will(s) and the why of it is spoilerable but it's spoiling nothing to say the movie is more or less about the leads trying to figure out what’s really going on and then trying to escape and, in the process, she discovers certain things about him and vice versa and, because it's a horror movie, they wind up doing traumatizing things and there's a bloodbath and the end.
Okay so let's see what see what themes have leaked out so far: sexual assault, post-assault sensitivity, marital problems, patriarchal gender roles, being trapped, being forced to make choices that will leave one permanently scarred, mentions of a notebook with ideas in it (which qualifies as a theme because the movie keeps implying there’s something vital about the writing in the notebook), escape attempts from some of the above, blood, tension, a new day dawns.
All of which adds up to… well you tell me! I mean are you thinking that all of those ideas and events somehow coalesced into a meaningful point the way they did in, say, Get Out? Yeah, well the movie's not about Escaping Partiarchal Gender Roles since those roles are being forced on them. So okay maybe it's something to do with recovering from the Trap of Sexual Assault PTSD in some way? Mmm, no as mentioned it’s never referenced in any way after the beginning. Okay, can we maybe link Sexual Assault to Patriarchal Gender Roles? Not really since the movie is about the female lead being forced into a submissive role rather than being a submissive person. So no. What we actually have here is a jumbled mess of incomprehensibility. Really, I kind of screamed a bit at the end of the movie because I couldn't figure out what anything was supposed to mean - and it was clearly supposed to mean something because this movie isn't a slasher film like Saw or its ilk. It definitely wanted to say something and was trying to use the structure and tropes of a horror film to say it; if only anyone involved had any idea of what any of that was - maybe the answer’s in that notebook.
So what you really have is: a 90 minute psychological horror movie, first 2/3rds mostly boring, final 1/3rd picks up, entire 3/3rds atrociously acted, desperately trying to say something only it wished it knew what but whatever it is is very important, and overall a really bad and derivative movie which, if I hadn't been group-watching, I likely would've DNFed (which one of the group did but not this Janice (though allllmooost)) but group-watching while playing on phones - and trust me the frantic texts I got from my mother about the struggles she was having plugging in the USB cable of her new webcam (“TURN IT THE OTHER WAY!” “What way?!? There is no other way it won’t go in!” “THE OTHER WAY!!”) were riveting glued-to-the-screen page-turners relative to what was happening in most of the movie - while getting annoyed plus like I said the last third really did pick up made it in aggregate fun-ish.