The World's Common Tater

Movies

We watched The Suicide Squad last Friday night. It was much better than the first movie. I expected it would be considering James Gunn was the director. I thought it had a Guardians vibe and I am a fan of the Guardians movies, so that worked for me. It had a good cast and a good mix of superhero action and comedy. I hope we see more of these characters.

I also watched The Half of It on Netflix when I was awake way too eary Sunday morning. Ellie Chu is a shy, straight A student who makes money writing English essays for her classmates. When she needs more money to help pay the bills, she agrees to write a love letter for a boy. The letter is to the girl Ellie is seretly in love with as well. I expected this to be a love story where Ellie and Aster fall in love when Aster discovers Ellie was the one writing the letters. It was much more than that. It was a story of unexpected friendship and what love really means. I liked it a lot more than I expected to.

TV

We are continuing our quest to finish our backed up shows on the DVR before the new season starts in a little over a week. This week we finished the last season of New Amsterdam. I’ve liked this show from the beginnng. I lke that it shows the doctors as fallible humans. None of them are the suoer, always good doctors you find on some shows. I love that they allow the main character to fail as much as he succeeds. I do think it is time ti bring in some new blood to shake things up a bit.

I am continuing to watch The Walking Dead, Heels, and Ted Lasso.

I started watching The Other Two on HBO Max. It revolves aroind the older siblings of a teen who becomes a celebrity after his music video goes viral. I think it is hilarious, but I also see how many people would think it is very dumb. I would never recommend it to my wife.

Books

I finished two books this week.

Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena – When a wealthy couple is found murdered in their home, suspicion falls on their three children. None of them liked their dad, all of them inherited millions, and each of them had a reason to want them dead. I liked the majority of the book. It was a good mystery. I never figured out who did it. It was another story where the prtobem for many of the chartacters would have disappeared if they had not lied constantly. No one is likeable. The story does have an underwhelming resolution. It kind of ruined an otherwise decent mystery.

False Witness by Karen Slaughter – This is one I almost stopped before I even started when it was apparent that the author was going to weave Covid into the story. Covid is stressfuk enough in real life, I don’t need it in my thrillers. I decided to keep reading becasue the book had good reviews. Leigh is a defense attorney in Atlanta. Her firm is hired to defend a wealthy man accused of rape who has specifically asked for Leigh to be his attorney. It turns out Leigh know the man and he knows her. He also knows the secret Leigh has been running from since she was a teen. Leigh has to reconnect with her drug addicted younger sister Callie to work togehter to keep the secret hidden and protect her family.

This could have been so much better. Instead, it was too long, partly because the author took up space to add Covid to various scenes, including mention of who was or was not wearing a mask and who was wearing it incorrectly. The villains were cartoonish. Leigh was not a great main character. It was disappointing and part I kind of wish I had stopped reading as soon as I saw she planned to make it a Covid era story.

On Deck

I don’t think I will watch a movie this week unless I wake up way early over the weekend and find something interesting. We are working on finishing the last seasons of FBI and The Resident. There will be a lot of football to watch this weekend, I am reading Golden Arm by Carl Deuker.