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This Week: The Great Emptier of Pockets

Here's what the Agents of Doux are watching this week.

Billie Doux: Agents of SHIELD is back and on Disney+ as of last night! I'm wrapped up in Star Trek: Picard and Outlander, and also moving to a new home, which is among the most stressful of human activities. I haven't broken it to my cats yet. I'm sure they'll be thrilled. I'm also trying Reacher and am not sure I like it.

Victoria Grossack: I am enjoying Travelers. Currently in the last season.

Samantha Quinn: Already back into AoS too, although Disney+ really tried to bury it in their less than good user interface. There was also the new rating system which locked me out of mature content because I couldn't remember my password. Sigh.

I have been super busy all week so I haven't done much watching of things. I did revisit one of my old favorite movies, It Could Happen to You, with Nic Cage and Bridget Fonda. I make no excuses, it is an overly sappy rom-com, predictable as hell and a bit overacted in places by Mr. Cage, but I still love it. Along with a few other movies that will remain nameless.

Lamounier: There was also the new rating system which locked me out of mature content because I couldn't remember my password. LOL, Samantha.

I've been slow on television these past few days. I started reading The Iron Trial from the children's fantasy series The Magisterium. No strong opinions so far, but I'm enjoying it.

Baby M: My youngest has me watching an anime called 86. It's about people who run around in metal battle suits shooting at other people in battle suits, but the writing is a cut above the usual mecha fare. I've only seen two episodes, but it's holding my interest so far.


Sunbunny: Daredevil rewatch is on! The show is soooo good but at the same time it’s more violent than I remember. My tolerance for gratuitous violence has waned as I’ve aged...

Shari: I haven't watched much this week. Instead I spent my time reading the third Wheel of Time novel which I finished yesterday. It's back to The Flash for me. I also watched two and a half episodes of Supergirl trying to figure out where I left off. Still looking, LOL. I also watched a little Star Trek: Discovery but I haven't seen the finale yet, so shhhh!

Still hanging in there with The Endgame. Julie Plec is one of the producers. No wonder it's so addictive. That said, they are not even trying to be subtle about the structure. I'm not sure how much longer I'll last. I'm far more excited about some things to come. Have any of you seen the trailer for Everything Everywhere All at Once? It looks so cool. I'm also curious about Tokyo Vice which starts streaming next Friday.

Joseph Santini: I have been drowning myself in Father Brown this week, namely seasons one and two after my brief but joyous Sister Boniface experience. I'm thoroughly enjoying the series and it has been a trip going from the gothic atmosphere of GK Chesterton's stories to Mark Williams' version, which seems slightly more dynamic.

The first season was good but a little uneven, and honestly I struggled at times to understand why Inspector Valentine didn't want Father Brown's willingly imparted information. The second season found Valentine promoted to London, presumably to start his career as the best investigator in the world, and replaced with Inspector Sullivan. The second season seems better shot and better scripted, and Alex Price's snarky grin is great eye candy, but it's Mark Williams' portrayal of the caring, human, unprepossessing sleuth which steals the show for me. (And Flambeau is a pretty awesome friendly villain to have around.) On to season three.


I'm looking forward to watching Spider-man: No Way Home now that it's streaming.

In reading I got to check out Wiccan and Hulkling: King in Black. It was really fun watching Wiccan, who I guess most people remember as Billy from WandaVision, having beach time with his hunky green boyfriend and fighting evil symbiote dragons with cocktail banter.

An Honest Fangirl: Spider-man is streaming??? Well, I know what I’m doing today.

Slowly working my way through CSI: NY still. Think I’m midway through season five? I also saw the latest Scream movie last night, now that that’s also streaming. I liked it a lot more than I was expecting to. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was better than a lot of the other sequels.

Joseph Santini: Yep! $19.99 on Amazon, the Great Emptier of Pockets.

I have to catch up on the Scream series. Your response encourages me.

Mark Greig: Saw The Batman on Tuesday and despite being so jaded with Batman stories now always being so dark and brooding I really enjoyed it, although I think it suffered in the third act by the need to be a superhero movie and have a big action set piece finale.

All the Alien movies are now on Disney+ over here so decided to be a completist and finally watch Prometheus and Covenant. Found both to be nothing more than generic looking prequels, unimaginatively riffing on everything that has come before, trying to answer questions that never needed answering and in the dullest way possible. The characters were all just one note archetypes there to do nothing more than wander around, doing dumb things so they can all die gruesomely one by one.

I'm continuing to work my way through all the Lupin III anime series and watched all of the fourth one: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. This was the most stylish series so far as well as the most mature in content, sometimes excessively so (the title sequence is practically a Playboy photoshoot), but it lacked the breezy fun of the earlier series.

An Honest Fangirl: Joseph, I would put it (the latest Scream movie) above 3 and 4, and maybe tied with 2. (It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the second movie so my memories are a little hazy as to the actual quality.)

The only things that save the Alien prequel movies for me is Michael Fassbender. There’s something about him and his character that is just very compelling to watch for me, even as the movies degrade around him. Though Alien always did have excellent android characters.


Billie Doux: (a couple of days later) So I did the weirdest thing with Reacher. I got through two episodes and was losing interest, but thought I might give the book, Killing Floor, a try. I read the entire book in a couple of days, and with a renewed interest, went back and finished the series. An odd experience, since the book and series were nearly identical.

The series is exceptionally brutal, just so you know, but I did end up enjoying it as the action outing it was. Although I kept seeing Reacher as Aquaman. Maybe because they kept stripping Alan Ritchson down as often as they could, and he really does resemble an unrealistic super-muscled comic book character.


That's it for us this week. What are you guys watching? Any opinions to share?

9 comments:

  1. Dangit, sorry I missed this one. Life stuff got busy. I'm finally getting around to watching the back half of the final season of Supergirl. I think I've been putting it off so it won't be over.

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  2. I've read one or two Reacher books. They're fascinating, in a way, and even though they're not to my taste I admire how well they do what they set out to do.

    I tried to watch the first Reacher movie, mostly because I love the director, but I couldn't get into it. I'm curious to see if the show vibes with the books more.

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  3. A week filled with shows I loved. I thought Reacher was great. Yes, it was incredibly violent and, like sunbunny, my willingness to watch violence has waned over the years. Yet, I loved Roscoe and found myself rooting for her as often as Jack.

    Samantha -- I am right there with you in regards to It Could Happen to You. It is one of those movies I have watched so many times I have lost count. It is simple and lovely and perfect for the end of a bad day when I need cheering up.

    I, too, discovered Father Brown recently. I am enjoying it, but the portrayal of Mrs. McCarthy gets on my nerves as does the fact that the Inspector seems overly snarky from time to time. I find it's a good show to watch while I am doing something else.

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  4. I still can't really explain how or why but it was the entire run of House of Cards (US) this week for me. **Vague spoilers, though you honestly shouldn't care** Not properly watched, I just kept putting it on when I needed to multitask something and went through it alarmingly quickly. Not a great show by any standard but there's always been something immediately calming about having the show on (I'll sit through episodes just to hear that mood-setting opening sequence again). And I honestly enjoy the gimmick of having a character addressing the screen. I can't believe I kept watching it even when it very clearly loses steam after the s2 premiere. But the only season I regret wasting time on is the last. Claire just did not carry the show on her own. They could've done cool stuff there I think, but they failed. And even when I welcomed the inevitable absurdity, the series finale ended on such a muted note, with no epilogue when it sorely needed one.

    I liked season 5 though, and I'm glad I at least found out what my personal stopping point is, which wasn't s4 as I originally assumed.

    Frank Underwood isn't a sympathetic villain at all but there's something incredibly depressing about watching things finally going wrong for him. Something oddly hard-hitting about swapping out the original goal of climbing the ladder and replacing it with the task of managing chaos.

    Weird thing is I'm not actually burnt out on the show... I mean I don't see myself revisiting it but the next thing I did was track down the original UK series lol. I've heard it's objectively better and tighter so I'm looking forward to it. But if it demands more of my attention I might actually like it less... we'll see. It's not a huge commitment, each series is only 4 eps I think and there's only 3 of them, with some warnings from fans that they go off the rails with the last season. Which still sounds loads more enjoyable to me than what they did with US HoC's s6.

    Whether I stick with it or drop it I'm following it up with a Rectify rewatch.

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  5. I tried to start watching House of Cards once and noped out of it immediately when it started with the dog's death (Spoiler for the opening scene of episode one, I guess.) It did however introduce me to the website doesthedogdie.com, which is infinitely helpful in avoiding such things.

    HoC always makes me think of Thick of It with Peter Capaldi among others. Is that worth tracking down and watching? Anybody seen it? Literally all I know is that it's about politics and Peter Capaldi swears a lot.

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    1. Nooo not the heckin' pupperino :( Kill your fellow humans in horrific ways, but spare the doggeridoo!!
      I like dogs, but I can stomach it if there's no real emotional attachment/connection to them, which there wasn't with this rando. I don't get it, to be frank, I find this sensitivity bizarre, but I guess there's something to respect there about blanket intolerance to fictional violence towards man's best friend. God bless doesthedogdie.com if it means I'll have to hear less about it, in any case. Sheesh, I don't know why it's the cat ladies who catch all the flak

      The Thick of It is definitely one of the few shows of the political comedy genre worth tracking down. I don't know why it's compared to Veep, I didn't like Veep at all, but The Thick of It is great if you're not put off by the relentlessly vulgar language. Consider it.

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    2. I'm with you guys re: dogs. Do you all remember a show called Medium? I watched it, mostly enjoying it but not really a fan, until there was an episode where someone tortured a dog. Turned off that episode and never watched the show again.

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    3. How'd y'all get through The Magicians? Though I realize (or think) that was mostly cats and rabbits.

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  6. @Onigirli Both shows were written By the same guy, Armando Iannucci. But i know him more from his tim in front of the camera in the 90s on Saturday Night Armistice here in the UK.

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