Wednesday

I'm not much of a binger, but I binged the first season of Wednesday on Netflix the last two evenings. Today and tomorrow I'll no doubt binge season 2. I think I needed the relatively mindless activity of binging TV after all the BS going on at work lately, and Wednesday was (mostly) up my alley. Sure, sure, the first season was made a few years ago now and woke hadn't completely gone out of style, so there's a handful of moments in it that are cringe because they're almost woke... but all in all, this is surprisingly free of too much of that, other than a little gag comparing Enid's discussions with her family about not "wolfing out" as being akin to being gay or something, including with a summer camp for "conversion therapy" for kids who don't completely turn into werewolves yet. If that was really more than a gag, though, they screwed up the punchline by having her fully wolf out in the season finale finally, as a little bit of character arc denouement, and she's happy that she did. But like I said, that wasn't a metaphor, it was just a joke, obviously. Otherwise, it would literally be anti-woke, since being straight and normal (for a werewolf) was the desired state. And Wednesday's quoting once or twice of some feminist claptrap came across as cynical even in her own eyes when she said it. 

There's also an ongoing theme of putting down the Pilgrims as super bigoted or something, but I don't necessarily completely disagree with that, as a descendent of backwoods Dukes of Hazzard-style Southerners. Or at least I identify with the southerners on my dad's side. My mom's side were from the north, but they weren't Pilgrims, just regular guys. But even their identity is more as pioneers and later farmer/cowboys that moved out west much later but still long ago. Echoes of Tim Burton's earlier work on Sleepy Hollow with that particular theme, added to Harry Potter with this show. It works because the plots are sufficiently engaging and the characters and their actors have plenty of charisma and chemistry together. It's not brilliant, but it's pretty entertaining, and vegging out in front of the TV is about all I'm up for. 

I included a screenshot (from Wikipedia) of a children's book of nursery rhymes from the 1880s which is supposedly the source of Wednesday's name. Although apparently, the characters didn't really have names for decades when this was a comic strip in The New Yorker in the 30s, 40s and 50s, and they had to come up with names for the TV show of the 60s. I was born on a Saturday. Just my luck. 

In some potentially possibly interesting family drama, my wife wanted me to watch Stranger Things instead, which she is apparently watching. I don't really love that show, but I was happy to watch it with her. But I have no interest in watching by myself. She also admitted that she had committed to one of my sons that we'd go see the finale in theatres coming up here at Christmas. I told her that I was perfectly fine going to see it in theatres, but there was no way I was going to do the better part of 10 hours of homework to get all caught up so that I could watch it; I'd spend half an hour tops reading summaries on Wikipedia. She really had in her mind this idea that we'd independently watch the show and then see the finale together, and I really had in my mind the idea that once she came back home after Christmas and left the kids on their own again, that we'd watch it together. I simply don't care enough about the show to watch it if I'm not watching it with her. That's the only reason I'd care to watch it, is for it to be something that we did together. Stranger Things was pretty clever in season 1, when it was The X-Files meets HP Lovecraft meets The Goonies. It was fresh, and nobody else was doing anything quite like it, etc. But most of the rest of the show afterwards was absolute garbage; poorly planned, wasting of likeable characters, focus on unlikeable characters (creepy Jonathan and bratty princess Nancy, instead of Steve, etc.) and with incoherent plots. Buzz on the latest season isn't great. They kind of redeemed themselves in the 4th season, except that 11 herself got really bratty and unlikeable and the whole Will gay angle was stupid and irritating beyond belief. I think Netflix, or the show, or someone flinched at the last second on that gay angle too, because it was all transparently built up and then kind of quietly not concluded. I dunno. The show isn't terrible, but definitely not good enough that I had any interest in watching it by myself. If she doesn't want to rewatch it with me when she's home, I probably won't watch it at all. I'm actually a little bit frustrated with how it all went down, because I had my own plan of watching this together. But in the end, I guess I don't care that much. If I never watch season five, I won't care.

UPDATE: Also, just saw this. Guns of Mars. Chuck Dixon is great. I love his Levon Cade novels. I doubt that this is very much like Edgar Rice Burroughs, though. It sounds like a classic western focused on survival and psychological drama of being hunted. ERB never wrote anything like that, and Mars wasn't harsh for its environment, which was generally pretty clement, but for its inhabitants. Which is fine. Dixon is a self-professed huge fan of Westerns, so why not? But it feels much more like the Mars of the 50s, not the Mars of ERB's 1911 story. Which is still pretty cool, but has some different themes and is somewhat different.

In some ways, I actually like those better. Just based on the description, I have to admit it reminded more of an Erik John Stark story than something from ERB's Barsoom, though. Which reminds me; although I only re-read it a year or two ago, I wouldn't mind doing it again, if I can find the box that that book is sitting in. I think I saw it a couple of months ago, so hopefully it won't be too hard to find.