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This Week: The Impending Alien Invasion

So Agents of Doux – what are you watching this week?

I'm nearing the end of Big Sky's first season, and my daughter made an apt remark that it feels a lot like Justified. The characters are quirky, the violence is shocking and realistic, it's very arc. It does lack Timothy Olyphant or his equivalent, though. I like both of the lead actresses, but I don't love them. At least not yet.

Mikey Heinrich: I've finished Star Trek: Discovery and am about half way through season one of Picard. Definitely some pacing issues, but I'm enjoying it. It's going to be so strange to finish up the big Star Trek watch. I only have Lower Decks and Prodigy left.

I may have to write a piece about the entire experience.

ChrisB: In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, the Washington Post did an online forum interviewing Woodward and Bernstein about their experiences reporting on Watergate. They are still as articulate and snarky as ever and I have found myself swept up in Watergate fever. I’ve been watching anything and everything I can find on the subject, the highlight of which is a six hour documentary produced by the History Channel that really puts the whole thing into perspective as it also shows what some of Nixon’s strengths as a president were. Fascinating.

Then, because there is no such thing as too much Hoffman or Redford, I re-watched All The President’s Men for the umpteenth time. And, I finally watched The Post. OK, Pentagon Papers and not Watergate, but both Streep and Hanks are outstanding in their roles.


Baby M: I’m going to start watching The Night Sky.

Mikey Heinrich: I am absolutely determined to believe that you're telling us you expect an alien invasion at any moment and are going to keep an eye out for it.

Or that you're looking for omens.

Josie Kafka: Are we really going to try to trick our readers into thinking the aliens aren't already here?

Baby M: I walked into that one, didn’t I?

Josie Kafka: The Doux listserv is never safe from ironic invasions.

Samantha M. Quinn: Okay, my week no longer seems relevant given the impending alien invasion... however, if it makes you feel better, the current rundown of shows I'm watching is bordering on excessive.

Halfway through season two of the Stranger Things re-watch. Same with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Just re-watched WandaVision and Loki, and I'm current with Ms. Marvel (which if you haven't checked out is turning out to be really good as well as a great representation of a culture that doesn't get a lot of time to shine on American TV). I don't really want to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier yet so I might skip to Hawkeye. I'm on the second to last episode of an Arcane re-watch and again I'll strongly recommend this one for anyone that likes complex and morally gray characters, family and political drama and absolutely bonkers good animation.


I've just hit the back half of season five on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. binge and I have to say it is nice to finally get to episodes I haven't seen and the next two and a half seasons will be completely new. I also just started Lucifer again with a friend and that's been fun, because the first season Lucy is so different, and completely the same as later seasons.

I finished First Kill in a few days, and I don't know if I actually recommend it, except for a very, very niche audience who likes bad horror scholock and lesbian-slanted melodrama. I also tried Dark, and I have to say that while very intriguing, it may be too, pun intended, dark for me. Oh... and I finally saw Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I'm both pleased and pissed. If you've seen it, you probably know why.

Billie Doux: I just saw Doctor Strange in the Multi-Etcetera too, and didn't like it much. It was all about the effects. I couldn't connect to it at all. And that was disappointing because I really liked the first Doctor Strange.

Victoria Grossack: The Fourth Estate is so important! And Streep is so versatile.

Per the alien invasion: A few weeks ago I watched the Netflix series on UFOs, and that series maintains the aliens have been here a while. They've been allegedly communicating more directly with certain humans ever since we started exploding nuclear bombs. The theory of the series is that governments have known about the aliens for decades, and that they're now releasing information – I know the US released a lot of information a few years ago – in order to ready the public for the knowledge. They don't want to say that they have been lying to us for the last eight decades.

I'm not saying I believe in aliens! Just reporting on the show.

As to what I've been watching: I binged the third season of The Umbrella Academy, and am now watching it more slowly in order to review each episode individually.


Billie Doux: The Time Traveler's Wife was just cancelled. Did anyone see it? I never tried it. Didn't like the book.

Sunbunny: I didn’t like the film but I was going to give the series a chance. Maybe now I won’t bother. Does anyone have thoughts?

Shari: I only watched part of the first episode because they made the male lead a bit of a jerk. So I'm not surprised. It was hard to buy in to their great love affair when you wonder why the hell she would marry him.

Billie Doux: That was my problem with the book, actually.

Mikey Heinrich: The second season of Only Murders in the Building is dropping on Hulu and so far has been just as good as the first.

Shari: Other than the shows I'm reviewing the only one I'm up to date on is Strange New Worlds. I'm still so in love. I also watched the first two episodes of Reacher. It is exactly what you think it is and it does it so well but it makes me wonder why we have such a fascination with the lone gunslinger trope. Is that just an American thing or do other cultures have their own versions of it?

In a weird twist I went on Amazon Prime to watch No Time to Die (which I still have not seen) and watched Snake Eyes instead. (Henry Golding is very pretty. Sue me!). It retconned most of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. First and foremost by making Snake Eyes Asian which was the smartest thing about the movie. I liked the original movie but having the white boy become a master martial artist and hero while his Asian foster brother goes evil does not sit well. As for Snake Eyes, watching it was such a strange experience. It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. There was a sincere attempt to create a movie layered with nuance that was ruined by needing over-the-top fight scenes at regular intervals, none of which felt rooted in character. I could see how hard the filmmakers tried and I could see why it didn't work.


Joseph Santini: I’m up to date on two shows, Shari, Strange New Worlds and The Boys, the latter of which is maybe doing its own homage to the lone gunslinger trope. I have to say that I love how Pike is being developed for SNW. He is managing both to connect to The Old Series in important and fun ways, and to develop this captain who is a different kind of captain, maybe the most like a coach of any Star Trek Captain in how he’s working with his team? Is that due to his unique perspective or unique personality – I don’t know, but I love his sense of humor.

The Boys had some great developments with episodes six and seven; I’m reading the comics concurrently and it’s fun to see the comics and the TV show dance in and out of each others’ worlds (they’re both great and yet different, versus one being better than the other.) I still struggle with the gratituous violence.

I started the second season of Pacific Rim: The Black and Ms. Marvel and like them so far; Pacific Rim has some incredible artwork and a fairly good story, and Ms. Marvel has a great find with Iman Vellani, but haven’t formed any solid opinions yet! Looking forward to making more inroads into those.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of physical books this week. I’ve gotten to the sequel for Connie Willis’ Blackout, titled All Clear; the characters in this two-part novel about time traveling historians have been great fun, but so far still no resolution to some of the big questions of the first book. Can already heartily recommend.

I did finish Squire, a graphic novel by Nadia Shammas and Sarah Alfageeh with a great coming of age story focused on the journey of Aiza towards becoming a full knight in her society, a sort of alternate-history Middle East. The artwork is incredible – the story easy to follow and increasingly deep.

Looking forward to rewatching Deep Space Nine for reviews this summer!

Oh yeah, and Stranger Things season four, volume two? Try before you deny.

Billie Doux: That's a wrap. What are you readers watching this week?

1 comment:

  1. For currently-airing TV there's really only The Boys for me. I'm not proud of it but I'm not gonna call it a guilty pleasure either. It does its job of making me look forward to it each week and definitely more enjoyable consumed in a non-binge format. Instead of reading its comic book though I might just start on The Walking Dead (comic) instead. Patiently waiting for the 2nd half of Better Call Saul's last season, only about a week away.

    With my 30 Rock watch complete I started watching The Larry Sanders Show on HBO Max because I didn't feel like rewatching Curb Your Enthusiasm but wanted a show in a similar comedy style. It's really good, Hank is hilarious and Artie rules.

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