Review of The OA from Netflix

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Netflix, The OA

During the lockdown, people have been consuming massive amounts of Netflix. I mean I hate to admit it, but I have as well. I’ve watched so many shows that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise given the time of day.

One such series was called The OA. I’m going to be honest, it took me more than a show or two to get into it but once I did I couldn’t stop watching. I consumed the entire first season in two days and the second season over the weekend.

The OA is a story about a blind woman, who has been missing for the last 7 years. She’s found and while that in itself is a huge surprise, even bigger shocker, is that she can now see.

The OA is a young girl named Nina Azarova, who was born to a wealthy Russian oligarch. As a very young child (like elementary school age), she gets into an accident, on the bus to school. This accident kills all of her classmates and leaves her blind.

Her father apparently thinks it was a hit by the Russian mob so to protect her, he sends his daughter off to a boarding school and leaves his dead wife’s sister (his wife died during childbirth I think) to care for Nina.

I don’t know how much time passes, a year maybe, and Nina’s aunt shows up to the school to inform her that her father is dead and all the money is gone. She has to leave her fancy boarding school to go live with her aunt, who runs a really low-end house of prostitution in Russia, and when the girls get knocked up, they sell off the children, oftentimes to America, or really anyone who will pay, I guess.

An older couple — Mr. And Mrs. Johnson travels to Russian to adopt a newborn baby, and while they are there, they run into the adorably cute little blind girl who is helping her aunt to care for the babies that are being sold off.

The American woman falls in love with the little girls and insists they adopt her instead. The aunt is all too willing to get rid of her burden and agrees to sell her to the American couple who properly renames her Prairie.

They raise the child as their own and by all accounts give her a loving home. Nina (now going by the name Prairie), appreciates all that her adoptive parents have done for her, but at the same time, she believes with all of her heart that her father is alive.

She runs away, well – I mean she is over 18 now so running away isn’t really the right phrase, I guess it’s more accurate to say that she sneaks off to go and try and find her father in New York.

It ends exactly how you think it might, with her being kidnapped and held in an underground dungeon for the next 7 years.

While she’s there she meets a few others who are also being held captive and one particular guy, “Homer”, who is about her same age, and the two fall in love.

That connection is what the story is about and it is the reason why once released, she tries to get back because she wants to save Homer and the others.

That’s really what season one is about – her trying to coup with being back home after being gone for seven years, her trying to find a way back to Homer and the others.

The show has a way of creeping up on you and getting into your head. It’s a good watch and a show I highly recommend.

Just remember it’s a slow burn. It takes a while to get into it. Give it a few episodes before turning it off. It’s kind of weird at first but once you really get into it the storytelling is utterly amazing.

Season two takes a very different turn. She has success with her “ritual”, and gets back to her friends but well … it’s hard to explain without spoilers. I’ll just say things really get crazy in season 2.

 

Have you sen The Travelers on Netflix? Love it!

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Netflix, The Travelers, YouTube

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Travelers is a TV series currently available on Netflix. They have three seasons available now and season 4 is probably going to be released around the end of 2019.

Many centuries into the future, the Earth’s population has dwindled to almost nothing — but the survivors have discovered the key to time travel. Desperate to save humanity, a group enters the 21st century on a mission to avert disaster.

The show is set in modern day time, but it’s based on the future, a post-apocalyptic future, where things are so bad, they gave control of their lives to a super smart computer AI (artificial intelligence) known as “The Director”.

Like we volunteer for military service, in the future, they volunteer for the Travelers program, which means they give up their lives in the future (hundreds of years) to return to the 21st century and try and save the world.

They use historical data to find someone who died in our time and then replace that person with the conscientious of someone from the future.

For example, there is this FBI special agent who would have died from a fall down an open elevator shaft while in pursuit of a suspected killer. Just moments before he would have died, The Director sent a traveler from the future known as 3468 (they all go by numbers instead of names in the future). So now Travelers 3468 takes over the life of FBI Special Agent Grant MacLaren in all ways. Only he also secretly goes in missions to help save the world from what will turn out to be a horrible future.

The travelers come over in groups of 5, each taking over the life of someone who would have historically died.

They all live by a set of 6 rules they call protocols.

• Protocol 1: The mission comes first.
• Protocol 2: Never jeopardize your cover.
• Protocol 3: Don’t take a life; don’t save a life, unless otherwise directed. Do not interfere.
• Protocol 4: Do not reproduce.
• Protocol 5: In the absence of direction, maintain your host’s life.
• Protocol 6: Do not communicate with other known travelers outside of your team unless sanctioned by the Director.

Season 3 was just released on Netflix. Here is the trailer for it.

If you don’t have Netflix, don’t worry. you can catch the 1st season on YouTube for $17.99 or $19.99 for the HD version.

Let’s talking about The Good Witch

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90210, Bailee Madison, Hallmark Channel, Netflix, Samantha Gracie, The Good Witch

I came across a show on Netflix called The Good Witch. From the first episode, I was hooked. It’s a great little TV series, light-hearted fun. What I couldn’t believe is that it was based on a made for TV movie that was so popular, they made 6 more!

1. The Good Witch (2008)
2. The Good Witch’s Garden (2009)
3. The Good Witch’s Gift (2010)
4. The Good Witch’s Family (2011)
5. The Good Witch’s Charm (2012)
6. The Good Witch’s Destiny (2013)
7. The Good Witch’s Wonder (2014)

The crazy part is, as much as I love romantic movies, I hadn’t ever heard of The Good Witch or any of the follow-up movies. How is that even possible considering they were the highest rated shows on the Hallmark channel.

Some of the things that bother me …

They tend to say “on the house” all the time. How exactly do these small businesses in this very tiny town stay in business when every time you turn around you hear them say “on the house”.

Another thing that bothered me was in season 2 they introduced a girl named Katie. She goes to school with Grace. They are supposed to be the same age, but clearly, they aren’t. Katie is in fact, 9 years older than Grace in real life. It shows and it’s bad. It’s sort of a 90210 Andrea Zuckerman moment.

A 16-year-old in high school played by someone who is almost 30, is just flat out retarded. There are so many younger girls who they could have cast in this minor part, why cast a nearly 30-year-old woman to play a 16-year-old child? It’s ridiculous.

This is Gracie, the character who plays the 16-year-old. She’s 18 in real life but clearly looks like a little 16-year-old girl. Nothing like the nearly 30-year-old from above.

Okay sorry, that rant over. 😛

I honestly love this TV show. It’s not magical in the same way that Charmed was. It’s far more subtle. It’s more about love and family and the people in the small town than it really is about anything to do with magic.

If you were like me and haven’t seen it yet, I high recommend you check out the TV series. The first two seasons you can see on Netflix and season 3 is currently airing on the Hallmark channel.

 

 

A Fistfull of Futurama Dollars

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Comedy Central, Fox, Futurama

I was binge-watching Futurama on Netflix when the episode called “A Fistful of Dollars” came on. In this episode, Fry realizes his old bank still exists and goes to see if his account was still good. In the year 2,000, he had a balance of $0.93. It’s now 1,000 years later and they said that at an average of 2.25% interest over 1,000 years, his new balance was $4.3 billion.

I was just curious, for whatever reason, how much money he would really have.

Turns out the answer is actually $4,283,508,449.71. That means the writers of the show actually did the math. I’m impressed at their attention to detail.

Futurama was such a great show. I hate that it ended.

For those who don’t know, Futurama is an award-winning animated TV series that was on the air from March 28, 1999 – September 4, 2013. That’s 7 seasons and 140 episodes.

At first, Futurama was on Fox — from 1999 to 2003. But then it was canceled. When in syndication it did so well, Comedy Central picked it up from 2008-2013. The writers said in 2013 they would try hard to find a new home for the series but to date that has not happened.

 

The Truth about Xfinity Cable

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Cable, Cable TV, Comcast, Xfinity On Demand

Have you ever seen those commercials advertising Xfinity cable and how great their services are? If you are like me you probably have and that means you’ve seen them rave about how you can watch any TV show or movie you want on any device.

That sounds like a great thing, right? But just how great is it really?

Yes there is an app that you can download on your phone and pull up most episodes of any TV show for the current season that you can view on TV. If for example your cable plan doesn’t include BBC America, then you won’t be able to watch any shows from BBC America on your phone or iPad.

I missed the last few episodes of the popular Fox TV show called Lucifer so I decided to download the Xfinity app for my phone and watch one of the missed episodes.

If you were to catch it on TV, it will span 1 hour on TV but the show itself will actually only be about 52 minutes long. That means you’ll get 8 minutes of commercials. That’s usually spread out about 2 minutes long, during 4 different breaks.

You will get several of the same commercial breaks with the xfinity mobile app but even worse.

During the 52 minute long episode you will get about 6 to 10 commercial breaks during which time you’ll have to watch between 4 and 16 commercials each. Yes, you heard me right – I said 16 commercials in a row.

If that in itself wasn’t bad enough, I should point out that they aren’t different commercials, they are the same 4 or 5 commercials replayed over and over and over and over again.

Just imagine how bad it is to have to sit through the exact same United Healthcare commercial 6 times in a row.

If that wasn’t bad enough. When I went to watch the second episode of Lucifer I got about half way through. It played 4 commercials and then stopped playing. I pushed the play button and that triggered a new commercial cycle as if it didn’t realize I just sat through one. Only this time I had to sit through 16 new commercials. I finally got through it and it stopped playing again!

I finally just had to turn the app off before I threw my phone out the window.

The annoying commercials aren’t the only problem with Xfinity. They also have a horrible DVR functionality. You can only record one thing and that is the channel you are currently watching. If you change the channel while recording it will cancel the recording.

And as with all the people who tried to record the Superbowl this year learned the hard way, there is no “record show +30 minutes” feature. If a show is scheduled for say 1 to 2 pm, it will record that channel from 1 to 2 pm but that means a lot of people missed the last 5 minutes of the Superbowl – the overtime, arguably the best part of the game.

Now let’s talk about their customer service.

In addition to cable TV, I also have internet service through Xfinity. On January 11th I received a notification that I had gone over my data limit. Somehow in the previous 11 days my data usage had gone up ten times above normal.

I called tech support and they couldn’t figure it out either. They said they would escalate the ticket and get back with me within 24 hours.  Today is February 8th and I’m still waiting on them to get back with me.

Another thing I want to let you know about is their on time guarantee. They used to have a commercial, not sure if they play this one anymore but they used to advertise that you don’t have to sit around and wait for them to show up all day. They will give you an appointment or be there on time or you get a $20 credit.

In the 3 times during the last year I’ve had to have them out to my house, not a single time have they ever actually made it on time. They will make an appointment for say Monday from 2 to 5 pm. You sit around and wait and they don’t show up. They don’t call. Nothing. You have to call and file a complaint to get a new appointment and then demand the promised $20 credit.

This happened to me not once, not twice but three times now.

So next time you are thinking about getting cable TV or using Xfinity for internet service, just remember this post.

 

The support of public televison

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Barny, Downton Abbey, PBS, Teletubbies

I finally got around to watching season six of Downton Abbey which was the final season in the series. I loved Downtown Abbey. The production values for a TV show were quite simply out of this world I had never seen anything like it.

In the United States we have to watch this British television show on PBS, or like me, you pay to watch it on internet sites like Amazon Prime.

Downton Abbey was actually produced by the BBC but instead of getting to watch it on BBC America we instead have to watch it on PBS because they spend millions of dollars to buy the rights for it.

PBS (Public Service Television) doesn’t work like normal TV channels. Instead of making money through selling ad space (ie: commercials) or through monthly subscriptions (ie: HBO) PBS makes its money through donations.

I’m not a fan of this method. Why beg users for money and let’s be clear here, that is exactly what they do day in and day out, when you can just sell ad space and be done with it?

Beyond that, what happened to all that money they made on shows like Teletubbies and Barney? We all know that PBS made a killing in merchandise rights for those shows.

• The Teletubbies began in 1997. They were an instant success.
• Before that there was Barney and Friends in 1992. I think we all know how hugely successful that franchise was.

Those shows make a crap load of money, hundreds of millions a year in merchandising rights if not upwards of a billion a year.

PBS is a non-commercial not for profit, broadcast television distributor and in 2011 PBS made close to a billion dollars in revenue — $838.4 million to be exact.

It’s that money they use to buy the rights to shows like Downton Abbey so they can then play while they beg us for money.

It just doesn’t make sense!!

Most of public television’s revenues come from private membership donations and grants most stations solicit individual donations by methods including fundraising, pledge drives or telethons, which disrupt regularly scheduled programming.

This annoys some viewers, since regularly scheduled programming is often replaced with specials aimed at a wider audience (such as music specials aimed at the baby boomer generation, and financial, health and motivational programs) to solicit new members and donations; during fundraising events, these programs are often interrupted within the broadcast by long-form segments (of six to eight minutes in length) encouraging viewers to donate to their PBS member.

Instead of running a 6 to 8 minute commercial to beg for donations, why not just sell that 6 to 8 minutes in commercials and save us viewers the hassle?

Long story short, I hate PBS. Not because of lack of quality programming but because their business model is retarded and makes no sense.

Update: I found out today that the government spends almost half a billion dollars a year to fund PBS. So in addition to the nearly billion dollars a year in revenue, they also get an addition $500 million a year from the government. SERIOUSLY?

 

Beyond the new IT television series

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Beyond, Burkely Duffield, Freeform, Holden Matthews, Jonathan Whitesell

I’ve been seeing ads for the new series called Beyond, for weeks now. I was really looking forward to seeing it.

But right off the bat there were problems … well, at least for me.

At the start you see a young Holden about to enter high school, drinking a beer with his best friend. This puts him at 14 or 15 years old. They are very clear at the very start where the two best friends are saying they are about to enter high school.

Fast forward 12 years and that makes him 26 or 27.

The problem is, he looks barely 18. He is 24 in real life.

The little brother who at the start of the show was a couple years younger than him, is now 12 years later in college. If he was 10 to 12 or so at the start, he would now be 22 to 24.

Most people graduate college at 21.

However in the first episode of the series Holden asks his little brother how old he is now and he says 17. This means his little brother at the start would have only been 5 years old.

Here are two images of the little brother. Obviously he’s not a 5 year old. He’s 10 if he’s a day!

If this “12 year coma” was such a key point in the story, why not make the characters obviously older or maybe the 12 years significantly less to match the new ages of the characters. It just doesn’t make sense.

In real life the man who plays the character of Holden’s younger brother is actually 25, a year older than the man who play’s Holden’s character is, in real life.

But to the show’s credit, Jonathan Whitesell does look way younger than Burkely Duffield.

When they re-introduce the best friend character, as an adult, he’s now working as a high school counselor, working on finishing his PhD. This matches up as the average student takes 8.2 years to get through the PhD program, and is 33 years old before they finally get their PhD.

Freeform which used to be the ABC Family Channel is known for teen shows like The Fosters, Shadowhunters, Pretty little Liars, Switched at Birth, and Cheer squard, it seems out of the ordinary for them to green-light a show meant for people in their mid to late 20s,

Then again maybe they are trying to break out and bring in a new age group. Their show Party Girl is about a 27 year old and Ben and Lauren Happily Ever After is a show for the Bachelor fans, which is most people with females in that 21 to 35 age group.

So back to the show itself … what do you think? Were you annoyed as I was about the age issues? To me it was so distracting. I had a hard time focusing on the show because I kept trying to do the math in my head.

Age discrepancy aside, I like the show. I think it has a lot of potential.

Update: I decided to binge watch the whole series. In episode 6 they reveal that he was 13 the summer before he went into a coma, making him 14 or near it a year later and he is now 25.

 

Rules of Engagement is a copy of ‘Til Death

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'Til Death, Rules of Engagement, Similar TV Shows

I realize that a lot of TV shows and movies are similar, but some don’t even try to be different. Case in point Rules of Engagement.

It’s a direct copy of the same ‘Til Death, which ran from 2006 to 2010 and starred Eddie Stark from Everybody Love Raymond.

In ‘Til Death there was a married couple, an engaged couple (that lives next door) and a single friend. In short it’s a show about an old married couple and a young, newly engaged couple.

In Rules of Engagement there is a married couple, an engaged couple (that lives in the same building) and a single friend. In short it’s a show about an old married couple and a young, newly engaged couple.

I decided to do some digging to find other shows or movies that were alike and here is what I found …

• Armageddon / Deep Impact
• Paul Blart Mall Cop / Observe and Report
• The Prestige / The Illusionist
• Chasing Liberty / first Daughter
• Antz / A Bug’s Life
• Turner and Hooch / K-9
• Olympus Has Fallen / White House Down
• Friends with Benefits / No Strings Attached
• Shark Tale / Finding Nemo
• Mirror Mirror / Snow White and the Huntsman
• Tombstone / Wyatt Earp
• Striptease / Showgirls

 

My Problem with 2 Broke Girls

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2 Broke Girls, Caroline, Caroline Channing, Max, Sophie

I want to start by saying that I like the show 2 Broke Girls. In fact I found their crude humor down right funny. But there are a few flaws with the show that really bug me.

First and foremost is that fact that Caroline Channing has a degree from Wharton Business school and yet she chooses to work as a waitress in a dive.

Really? Why? At the very least should could use her degree to get an office job which would pay way more than waitress and be better working conditions.

Next is their apartment. We all know that New York City rent is insane. There are people who tell stories about living in a studio apartment (with no bedroom at all) for more than a thousand dollars a month.

Their extremely high NYC rent is one of the reason why I assumed they are always so broke.

But in the episode from 2012 called “And The High Holidays” they mention that if they sold all the cupcakes it would be $540 which would cover their rent. How in the heck is that possible? $540 a month for a huge, albeit one bedroom apartment in New York City? Really?

That can’t be right. If their rent is only $540 a month, between the two of them how are they broke? That’s INSANE!! That’s only $270 each.  I’m sorry but no way can their rent only be $540 a month in New York City.

I checked out Zillow and found a ton of 1 bedroom apartments available in New York for anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 but not a single one of them were as big as the one they have in 2 Broke Girls

Anyway, just wanted to rant about those things because they were annoying me. Now I’m going to go back to watching re-runs of 2 Broke Girls.

I get that TV isn’t meant to be 100% real, but at least they can make an effort to be somewhat realistic. Don’t you think?

 

The Very First Ever Miss Universe Crown

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1952, 1st Miss Universe, Miss Universe, Miss Universe Crown, Nuptial Crown, Romanov Imperial nuptial crown, Russia

The very first Miss Universe crown was worn by Miss Finland, Armi Kuusela in 1952. It wasn’t just any crown though that they placed upon her head. She wore the Romanov Nuptial Crown. Probably the only time ever that a pageant winner wore actual royal jewels.

Alexandra of Hesse wore the crown when she wed czar Nicholas II of Russia on November 26, 1894.

The nuptial crown was then used by all Russian grand Duchesses and wives of grand dukes on their wedding day. Here you can see Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna when she was to wed Prince Nicholas of Greece. wearing the crown on August 29, 1902.

The Romanov Imperial nuptial crown was thought to originally be made in 1840 or 1844 by the jewelers Nichols & Plinkle. The crown was thought to be made from diamonds which were used as trimming for clothes and in a belt by Catherine the Great.

 It’s a crown entirely composed of double rows of fine brilliants in borders of smaller stones, and surmounted by a cross of six large brilliants – on a setting of red velvet. It is thought to include approximately 1,535 old mine diamonds.

It was sold by the Bolsheviks in 1927 through Christie’s. It was bought by Marjorie Merriweather Post, an American billionaire who was a passionate collector of imperial memories.

Her third husband was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and during their tenure in Moscow she turned her collecting eye to the spoils of the Russian revolution. She amassed what is said to be the finest collection of imperial art outside of Russia. Upon her death she turned her home the Hillwood estate into a museum, which is where the Romanov Imperial nuptial crown is currently located.