Because it makes absolute sense, Temptation Island is moving networks again. Except, this time it’s not moving to a network. Netflix will now take the reins of the long surviving reality stalwart that just can’t stay dead. Originating on FOX in the boom of reality TV, the show took couples and “tempted” them to cheat with hot singles. What a premise. It’s amazing this show isn’t winning Emmy awards.
Speaking of reality TV on Netflix, I did go with another episode of Squid Game: The Challenge (Netflix), which really has got to find actual challenges for these people. After watching the remaining contestants get cut in half by the ever predictable marbles segment, the episode left on a cliffhanger where the remaining contestants had to be whittled down for some reason to a Top 20. This was not a challenge. One guy volunteered to be Team Captain, which admittedly could have worked against him, as I assumed the next challenge would resemble the glass panes challenge, and he’d have to go first. Instead, he is automatically a survivor, and the challenge is to pick the top 20. So he picks one, then that person gets to pick one, and so on, until 20 are left, and the rest are presumably cut. This is not a challenge. There’s no skill here. It just felt like too many people survived earlier challenges, and the next challenge can only have 20 people, so someone arbitrarily came up with this dumbass way of cutting to 20. honestly, picking a random object out of a hat, with a yes or no on it would have at least been some kind of challenge. This show has so much potential. Honestly, my two favorite contestants lost during marbles, so I’m trying to find someone to care about right now anyway.
Fargo (Hulu) kept moving forward, with Jon Hamm still delivering a career high performance. Jennifer Jason Leigh is also really pretty good, but Hamm and Juno Temple are doing such great work, it’s hard to even notice equally good work from Leigh or even Jason Schwartzman. Also, this show does have really good audio description. Case in point, mentioning a character’s face being obscured so we can’t see it, really at the right time as the characters are talking about what the guy looks like. That’s a directorial choice, and I’m glad it was noticed and pointed out.
Reacher (Amazon) continues to be an excellent show, and this heartbreaking character loss was one I saw coming, but honestly I thought it would be at the end of the season. And the fact that Reacher wasn’t there for it, really just hurt that much more. I loved how this episode, and the audio description, focused on this sequence where Reacher is hunting down the bad guys one by one almost like a killer in a horror film. the best shot was ripping that one guy underneath something. (See, I do TRY to navigate spoilers a little).
What If (Disney plus) for the first time made me realize I don’t know Marvel well enough. What on earth was this episode? where does it come from? Which film? Which comic book? What did I miss? I was so lost. I was like, is this The Watcher being given control of Avatar? No. Then I wondered if maybe this is a reference to the Marvels, which I still need to see. I’ll go with that.
Justified: City primeval (Hulu) has a villain who is only interesting, because he is such a strong combo of psychopath and sociopath that everyone is disposable to him. Last episode ended with a lot of people dying, and this episode he is still killing people, even ones that are helping him. Raylon needs to just shoot to kill. At this point, he’d just be saving future lives, cause this baddie is on a warpath.
And finally, congrats to *name not given because it’s a spoiler* for winning Celebrity jeopardy (Hulu). I’m a few days late on this, but surprisingly this wasn’t ruined for me, so I’m not ruining it for anyone. They were my second choice to win. the Celebrity jeopardy questions are so easy that should they ever consider me a Celebrity as a film critic, or anything else I do in life, I will win this thing. No questions asked. I get like 80-90% of the questions right, and I know buzzing in is part of the skill, but I think I’d still have a really high score. Just saying.
