Shimmer Lake is a Netflix original movie that I stumbled upon completely by chance, without having read any reviews. The blurb doesn’t do it justice at all; it’s one of the funniest, smartest movies I have seen in a very long time.
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Catching up here…
I loved GLOW as well and was surprised at how sophisticated it was.
I always have a hard time watching things set in places I’ve lived – it’s too easy to find the geographical flaws. I was annoyed when the Avengers movie labeled the Pentagon as being in Washington, D.C. when it’s actually in Arlington, Virginia. Mostly because just labeling it the Pentagon would have been enough to establish location – they didn’t need to add misinformation into it. Also, the Avengers HQ is sitting right in the middle of the Potomac River. Anyway…
I just finished binging Jane the Virgin. I didn’t think the third season was as strong as the first two, but it was still quite good. The character development is really fantastic. And despite the premise and telenovella-ness, I still found it more realistic than any sitcom.
(I’m still bristling from having to watch numerous hours of Big Bang Theory and the New Girl last weekend. Who makes a 20-something teacher with no administrative experience a school principal! Gah!)
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As it happens, I know a man who was a school principal for his entire career, save a few months of the first year. The old principal at his school passed away suddenly, it was a rural area, and he got picked to be the replacement.
He didn’t think he was qualified, but the board kind of made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. In the end he did very well, but it was totally learning on the job.
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I’ve been binge-watching King of the Hill.
A very funny show and way too underrated among the pile of “adult” cartoons that followed in The Simpsons wake.
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That one and Cat’s Eye are my two favorite books of hers. I am a Margaret Atwood junkie.
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King of the Hill is (ironically, for a cartoon) possibly the most realistic and honest show made about average Americans that I know of. And very funny.
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Yep
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Mm-hmm…
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Friends of mine who’d lived in the suburbs of Dallas couldn’t watch it; it reminded them too much of people they’d known there.
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It really does. It was based off of Mike Judge’s experiences living in Texas.
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I expected a show taking cheap shots at hicks, but it was obvious that Mike Judge was deeply familiar with Texas / suburban families and had a lot of affection for these characters and the local culture. It’s interesting comparing it with his other family cartoon sitcom on the other end of the cultural spectrum, The Goode Family – it’s just as obvious how much he loathes hippies/liberals and how little he actually understands or knows about them as real people. (Plus it simply wasn’t funny.)
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I’ve been tempted to watch The Goode Family just so I could personally see if the unfunniness lives up to the hype
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That scenario actually makes sense and I’m glad it worked out for everyone. But in a major metropolitan city? Not so much. (And I’m done wasting my energy on the New Girl).
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It made sense, but was also totally sexist. The new principal’s own wife worked at the school, and had more than five years’ teaching experience over him.
He says the night he got the offer, he ranted about how sexist it was (he was the only male teacher at the school), and asked his wife what he should do.
She told him to take it.
He asked how he was gong to handle it with his own lack of experience, and she promised to help him. Which she did.
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I was in eastie the other day, and my GPS tried to route me onto 1A to the airport. It said I should go left, but since it did’t ALSO say go 30 feet straight down… I was unable to comply. I seriously had to guess my way out of Eastie, it kept trying to get me to take U turns and get on the underground highway!
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I’ve just enjoyed the first series of Hap and Leonard on Amazon. It’s based on the books of Joe R Lansdale and it’s really been a blast to watch.
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I watched it on Netflix a few months ago. Yeah, lots of fun. Apparently Season 2 is coming out next March.
Season 2 is out already, at least on Amazon. I think it was March/April.
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IIRC Judge is a good pal with far right scumbag Gavin McInnes and some of the other Libertarian (The “angry at their mom” types and and not the “I hate taxes!” types) babymen that crawled out of 90s pop culture. That he created a show for broflakes isn’t surprising.
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Yeah.
It’s too bad, because King of the Hill had some strong bits, and Office Space is an underground classic.
But then.
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