"A former hostage negotiator takes a job retrieving people who are lost in a virtual reality program."
Pros:
1. It has great visuals, and special effects. It has really good scene changes. It's beautiful and magical.
2. The characters are average. Mara Kint (Sarah Shahi) is the hostage negotiator who is nice and sympathetic. She has experience a deep trauma 2 yrs ago and she is dealing with it.
Charlie (Dennis Haysbert) is the boss.
Paul (Sendhil Ramamurthy) from Heroes is in it.
Alexis (Jessica Lu) is the creator of the program.
Monica (Kathryn Morris) from Cold Case is part of the military.
Good acting.
3. There is drama, conflict, and tension with Mara's trauma of seeing her loved ones die.
Also the mystery of how to get people out of the game.
4. The writing is average. There are good sets, psychology and mystery. It's kind of out-of- the box.
5. In a later episode 3, Alexis says she created it because: To gain self-confidence, heal, feel better about yourself if you use it right.
There are a couple of stand-out episodes:
Ep 7 "The Black Mandela": The team works together to save the life of a wrongly imprisoned boy; Mara is introduced to the dangerous world of dark reveries, where the normal rules don't apply.
Ep 8 "Despedida": Mara comes to the aid of an elderly woman who used Reverie to go back to her younger days when she fell in love. Mara assumes the woman wants to say goodbye to her boyfriend who died in Chile in 1973. But that was not the woman's goal.
Cons:
1. It's maybe just me: Deal with reality. You can escape sometimes with TV, but you should deal with your problems in real life instead of escaping it into a game.
Of course, we already do that a lot already:
-TV and movies
-virtual reality
-video games
-drugs and alcohol
-partying
-dating
-or burying yourself with something good like work, because you don't want to spend time dealing with what's really bothering you.
There are lots of ways people soothe themselves.
Comparisons:
People in VR and a game: The Matrix, Gamer.
The AI creator has transferred a loved one into the AI tech: Alexis transferred her brother Dylan as the voice of AI.
It was done on Humans season 2.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6461746/
Aug. 16, 2018: I would probably watch this show if it got a 2nd season and it came out during the summer.
Crawford: This is a sitcom on CBC. I saw 9 out of 12 episodes as of now:
"A comedy about a dysfunctional family with 3 children. Oldest Wendy is trying to figure out life. Don came home after being kicked out of his band and finds he can talk to raccoons. Youngest Brian always seems to unite the family."
Pros:
1. I mainly watched it for one of my favorite Edmonton actors Kyle Mac (from Between).
The dad Owen (John Carroll Lynch) is good.
2. It's light, fun, and funny. It's quirky.
3. In the pilot there were a couple of good surprises.
Spoiler alert: There is a break-in at the house and Owen fights off robber. I love the fight scene.
Brian shoplifts beer and the store owner locks Brian and Don in the store and calls 911.
Cons:
1. It's not really funny. I don't really care about the characters.
My opinion: If Kyle Mac was not in it, would you watch it? Yeah, but it's mainly because it's the summer time and there aren't that many shows to watch during the summer.
I would probably watch this show if it got a 2nd season and it came out during the summer.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6635810/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
iZombie: This show came out in 2015. I was really busy with working at the Home Installation place and my restaurant job so I didn't even check out the pilot. I knew David Anders was in it, but I didn't tune in. I was kind of bored with zombies.
I did watch the 2-part season 3 finale in 2017 when I had free time. Today I finally saw the pilot. It came on T+E and I recorded it.
"A medical resident finds that being a zombie has its perks, which she uses to assist the police."
Pros:
1. The lead actor Rose McIver as Liv is good and likable.
David Anders.
Aly Michalka from Hellcats is on.
All the other characters and actors were average.
2. Ethnic diversity.
3. The writing was average. It was from Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars creator) and Diane Ruggiero (Veronica Mars producer).
It even had Liv doing voiceovers like Veronica does.
There is a big event that turns Liv into a zombie and then 5 months later, this is how she lives her life. There was a fast montage.
Cons: None.
My opinion: It's an average crime-comedy-drama. If you like zombies, sci-fi, comedy, and crime, and Veronica Mars, you may like this.
I watched the pilot and 2 episodes, and I'm not going to watch it again.
Aug. 20, 2018 Veronica Mars movie: I saw this movie in 2017. I watched and bought all 3 seasons on dvd. The fans helped fund this movie through Kickstarter.
"Years after walking away from her past as a young private eye, Veronica Mars gets pulled back to her hometown, just in time for her high school reunion, in order to help her old flame Logan Echolls, who's embroiled in a murder mystery."
Pros:
1. The actors are all here from the show. They are also good.
They threw in some big names like Jerry O'Connell as Sheriff Dan Lamb and James Franco.
2. The mystery is good. There is good writing as Veronica solves the case.
3. There is good action at the end.
Cons: None.
Comparisons: Spoiler alert:
A group of friends in their late teens and early 20s go out one night. One or all of them either kill someone by accident or on purpose. They then cover it up, because if they don't their futures are at stake: I Know What You Did Last Summer.
My opinion: I thought it was average. I guess I might have liked it more if I saw it when it first came out in 2014. However, now I'm much older and wasn't as interested. There is a low chance I would watch it again.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2771372/?ref_=nv_sr_2
Aug. 25, 2018 Chris Wood: I was going through my email drafts and found this. He plays the bad guy Kai on The Vampire Diaries. He then got to play the good guy Jake on the show Containment.
And this week, it’s all about Kai. “We’re dropped back into where we were many moons ago,” Chris Wood tells EW. “Kai distrusts everyone and doesn’t really care for anyone. He has a soft spot for Bonnie but that’s probably about it. He’s selfishly motivated.”
For Wood, getting back into character as the snarky heretic who only cares about himself was less about preparation and more about living in the moment. Sure, he has a Kai playlist on his phone, but this time around, he didn’t need to listen to it. (For the record, it features a lot of early ’90s music and is both “scary” and “weird,” according to Wood.)
“In some cases, the less I think about it the better it turns out,” Wood says of playing Kai. “It’s one of those characters that the pre-planning of things doesn’t tend to work as well as in the moment. I put on his rings and his weird little wardrobe choices and it wasn’t too long before I felt super comfortable again and got to play around with everybody.”
But as playful as Kai might be, there’s a dark undertone to everything he does, mostly because the guy’s been in hell. If his time away from Mystic Falls has changed him, Wood says, “it’s only made him worse because he was in hell getting tortured, so he hates everyone and everything and the most we can hope for is that he doesn’t kill everyone.”
http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/17/vampire-diaries-chris-wood-kai-return/?xid=entertainment-weekly_socialflow_twitter
Sept. 22, 2018 Veronica Mars reboot: There is going to be 8 episodes. It's on Hulu and I can't access it.
https://www.eonline.com/news/970404/hulu-s-veronica-mars-revival-what-we-know-about-kristen-bell-s-return-to-neptune#photo-494695
My week:
