Asakiyume mita

Now that we have Apple TV, we can watch Netflix on our TV, which is great, as we don't have cable. We've watched a few series and tried others, and we're getting pretty good at the quick reject. Below are three we rejected, plus two we're currently watching.

Travelers--quick reject No, change of plans! We're going to give it a chance.
This came highly recommended, and since I've liked other things the recommending friend has suggested, I'm willing to bet that the storyline is good, but it had the violence turned up to high within the first ten minutes. When we watched Continuum, each show had to have its five minutes or so of kicking and punching, and we put up with it, like we put up with the gross-out body horror stuff in Fringe, but when you *open* with vicious violence, that probably means it's going to be embroidered throughout the entire show, rather than making an obligatory appearance once or twice per show. You're signaling to viewers what your show will have. Therefore, not for us.

ETA: All that was true, but when Little Springtime joined littlemoremasks in inhaling it, we decided to give it another try, and at the end of the first episode, we're feeling much better about it.

The OA--quick reject
Started out okay--a blind woman who disappeared from her home as an adolescent is rediscovered--with her sight restored--after she apparently tries to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. AND WHAT ARE THOSE SCARS ON HER SHOULDERS COULD SHE MAYBE BE AN ANGEL??? That seemed to be the working premise for the first half of the first episode: she looks Deep Into The Soul of the drug-selling golden-haired bully boy who lives near her and later pop-psychology-heals his burned-out teacher. She needs five agile, strong, able-bodied folks to help her perform a ceremony that will let her return to ... something. The bully and three of his pals show up--and then the teacher (who doesn't seem at all agile, but details, details), so the ceremony can begin. BUT FIRST LET ME TELL YOU MY STORY the woman says, and suddenly we're embarked on a long, involved backstory involving a Russian kleptocrat father (turns out our heroine is adopted) and visions and a neglectful auntie and .... too much. My engagement plummeted as the baroqueness of the main character's backstory skyrocketed. For his part, wakanomori was put off by the bully character. So, not quite as quick a reject as Travelers (we watched the whole episode), but still: a no-go.

Sense8--quick reject
I liked the pun in the title and the title graphics--how are those for criteria for trying something? But the opening scene was shot with a purple/blue filter and was sexy-vampire-types making out--just not a scenario that interests either me or wakanomori. (This was the quickest reject of the three, as we didn't even watch to the end of the first scene.)

3%--Hey Mikey! We like it!
This is a Netflix original series made in Brazil, with a Brazilian cast. It has a Hunger Games premise: most of the world (? Or Brazil?) in the future live in squalor, but if you've been registered at birth, then when you turn 20 you can undergo "the process"--a series of tests. Three percent will succeed and be allowed to go to the blissful, almost mythical "offshore." The rest return to squalor.

First, it's just such a pleasure to see a cast of non-Hollywood faces, many of them people of color. It's a treat for the eyes. They're all beautiful (young people are pretty much always beautiful), but refreshingly unretouched. And the storytelling is good. We've watched three episodes. Each one has focused on one of a cohort of young people who are going through the process together. All of them have secrets, have done things they regret. Several have cheated or betrayed someone to stay in the process--but those same have also helped out others. There's a guy in a wheelchair who's more than an object of pity or inspiration. After so many shows where you can predict who's going to say what, with what outcome, it's refreshing to watch one where the details are unusual and (some of the) twists are unpredictable. The overseer has secrets of his own, and an auditor has been brought in to see how he's running things. It's gripping! This review has it right: "3%'s ability to captivate relies on both acting and storytelling, and succeeds on both counts."

But set your watching preferences for subtitles, because the dubbing is *very* stilted. (It's a tribute to how good the show is that we were putting up with the dubbing. Now that we've figured out how to get subtitles, we're going to enjoy hearing the actors' own voices.)

Atelier--Hey Mikey! We like it
This is a Japanese show (this one automatically had subtitles rather than dubbing--yay! This allows us to keep up with our Japanese) about a recent college graduate, Mayu, who goes to work for a designer-manufacturer of custom-made lingerie. I feared there was going to be lots of sexist how-important-beauty-is-for-a-woman talk--there was some of that in the first episode--and lots of male-gaze-y stuff, but on the contrary, discussions about beauty and style end up a lot more nuanced. The main character is more than just a pretty face--she works very hard, apologizes a whole lot, but also stands her ground and asks questions. You get discussion of business principles and markets, and about, well, underwear. The side characters are all interesting and likable. We've watched three episodes of this, too, and really enjoy it.

Have you seen any of these shows? Maybe you had a different experience with one of the quick-reject ones? Any of you seen the other two? What things are you enjoying (if anything) on the small screen these days?

Since I'm sharing family fun...
We used to watch the Simpsons every Sunday. Sometime in the last few years, we lost that habit, and as a consequence, I didn't know about a recent awesome couch gag, featuring Simpsons characters drawn comic-book style in a 1980s, Miami Vice-style story, set to the song "Push It To The Limit," from Scarface.

If you want to see the sequence, it's about a minute and half:

My dad was talking about this great BBC mystery series he'd been watching recently, a redoing of Sherlock Holmes, and I said, yeah, wow, there are lots and lots of those around these days, and he said, well this one is really quite good, would I like to see an episode, and I said, sure, why not--and, dear Internet, it was Sherlock he was talking about! It's so funny if you've heard something talked about and talked about and talked about in one particular way, to then hear it talked about in another way, you know? It can sound like an entirely different thing.

Furthermore, although I've seen about 20,000 images and gifs from Sherlock on Tumblr, and although I've read all sorts of discussions and squees and critiques, I don't think I've seen an entire episode, ever. Or maybe one, but definitely not two. So guess which one it turns out my dad has to show me? The one with Irene Adler! I remember everyone talking about it, what? Two years ago? A long time ago.

Well! The closeups on Sherlock and Irene's wrists and fingers and lips and cheeks were quite, quite nice. And Mr. Holmes's blue eyes in a face otherwise all wrapped up in black, for an execution, there at the end, reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia's blue eyes.