5 TV Show I Watched ( Or Am Watching) This Summer

With some much heaviness in the news these past few weeks,  I feel the need to go in the opposite direction and think about light things like entertainment.  It still is summer after all, so I don’t feel like I need to limit this summer TV post to things that were watched during the months of June, July, and August.
Let’s be honest, when I like something I really like it, so it can be hard for me not to gush about shows I loved.  One item of note though, almost all of the television I watched this summer I watched on Hulu Plus, Netflix, or HBO Go.  Our television is in the basement  our house and the basement is only partially finished and there are way too many things for Patrick to get into down there. We usually only watch TV when hurricane Patrick is asleep. This means our TV watching is planned and thus I miss out on the spontaneity of just turning on the TV and discovering a show.  I rarely watch network TV except CBS Sunday Morning about once or twice a month and occasionally I turn on the Today Show and listen upstairs while I am eating breakfast.

5 TV Show I Watched (Or Am Watching) This Summer

1.  Master of None: Season 2: Early this summer I watched the ten episode, possibly final, season of Master of None. I really enjoyed the first season because Master of None (Netflix) feels like no other show on television.  It feels easy like a Sunday morning.  It’s pace is leisurely and while there are some serialized plot lines, the show does not seem overly concerned with moving an agenda ahead.  It is the saga of Dev, a thirty-ish television host and actor and his life in New York City.  I liked some aspects of season two even more than season one.
   1. 1. Here are three things I liked about Season 2 of Master of None:

•  I loved that the first two episodes took place in Italy.  Dev and his friend Arnold ate so much delicious looking food in these episodes.  The shots of the Italian countryside were gorgeous.  The first episode was shot in back and white and that lent the episode an artistic air.  I also loved how the scenes in these episodes lingered in the beauty of the Italian countryside.  It was a beautiful and fun present to linger in.  Master of None does things that other shows don’t do.  It is truly unique  in that it doesn’t always seem to have an agenda but instead lingers in quiet moments and beautiful days.  It is opposite of a show with a laugh track.
• I loved the stand alone episodes in this season.  I like the episodes that aren’t about Dev’s love life or career, like Episode 3: Region which is about Islam and the differences Dev and his family exhibit in their practice of it.  Episode 6: New York: I Love You focuses not on Dev and his friends but other people in New York who happen to be going to the same movie as Dev and his friends. I also liked Episode 8: Thanksgiving focusing on Dev’s friend Denise and her relationship with her mother played by Angela Bassett.
• I would also like to commend Episode 3: First Date for being hilarious and fun. Ever wonder it would be like to go on date after date using an app like Tinder? This episode is your crash course.  Warning: Showing friends who have never watched Master of None this episode can cause binge watching.
• One Thing I Did Not Like About This Season:  I had mixed feelings this season about Dev’s romantic interest Francesca, a 30-ish Italian woman who he meets while in Italy but gets to know in the New York.  While I found Francesca to be warm and sweet during her first few appearances this season, I began to find her presence irritating as the season wore on.  In comparison to Dev’s love interest last season,Rachel, we never get to see any of Francesca’s flaws.  Francesca is beautiful and has a lovely Italian accent.  She is every man’s dream come true. I guess this is why she started to irritate me so much as the season went on.  We see that Dev is a flawed person and we experienced Rachel’s flaws in season 1 but all we get from Francesca is perfection.  And maybe that is the point.  At the end of the one of the episodes a song plays, Say Hello Wave Goodbye by Soft Cell.  One of the lyrics is “You never knew me, I never knew you, Say hello goodbye, Say hello and Wave goodbye”.  Maybe this is the point, Dev never really knew Francesca so it is hard to see her flaws.

2.  Game of Thrones: Season 7: I have heard from several family members and friends that they thought that while this season was a lot of fun, it felt kind of empty. I can see what they are saying, many, many things happened this season and some of them seemed to happen without a lot of explanation for logistics. At times viewers could see holes in the story. For example, how did Dany and her dragons get to the wall so quickly to save Jon and crew? Another complaint I heard was that the plot concerning the Stark Sisters and Little Finger was very transparent.  While I can agree that some of these these felt thin to me too, I still thought the season was a lot of fun. I would take the plots of this season over a few of the plots in earlier  seasons (4 and 5), specifically plots that did not occur in the books and seemed to be invented to try and kill time until George RR Martin finished the 6th book.
3. GLOW: Season One: This is the part of the post where I gush.  I loved this Netflix show!  GLOW stands for the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (Netflix).  It premiered in June 2017 and stars Alision Brie, Marc Maron, and Betty Gilpin. It is the fictionalized account of the beginnings of the real syndicated professional women’s wrestling circuit of the 1980’s.  When we first meet Ruth, Alison Brie’s character, she is a starving actress who is best friends with former soap opera queen and new mother Debbie, played by Betty Gilpin.  Surprise though, Ruth accidentally had an affair with Debbie’s husband, Mark.  Ruth then gets cast then cut from a show about women’s wrestling.  However, just as she is sent packing from the set, Debbie shows up and wants to kick Ruth’s butt for sleeping with her husband.  The director, played by Marc Maron, decides that Debbie is the star he has been searching for and Ruth will play her heel, AKA-The Bad Guy.
Here is what I loved about GLOW:

1. The 1980’s outfits and hair.  Truly epic.
2. The soundtrack.  Click here to watch the trailer and get a feel for it.  Think Pat Benatar, The Go-Go’s, and Queen among others
3. I felt like this show dripped with female empowerment.  I wanted to stand up and shout “You Go Girl” many times.
4. The leads: Marc Maron plays a character similar to the person he acts like on his podcast WTF. Alson Brie is hilarious when she plays Ruth acting as her Russian wrestling character but is also very winning when she is normal Ruth.  She makes you want Ruth to keep her job and succeed.
5. I loved all the other women wrestlers too.  In early episodes we got to see a lot bratty Melrose but as the season progressed we got to see storytimes about all the women.

There is one things I couldn’t quite believe though.  In the first episode we get to see that Ruth and Debbie are best friends before the big blowout.  They have good chemistry but it was hard for me to believe that their characters would be best friends .  Ruth is broke and down on her luck.  When we meet Debbie,  just left a popular soap opera that she had been on for at least a few years. Ruth and Debbie seem to be in different places in their lives so it stuck me as a bit off that they might be best friends prior to the affair.  That’s my only criticism, besides that I loved the show.  I am glad that it was renewed for another season.
4.  Drunk History: Season 4: Drunk History (Hulu Plus, a Comedy Central Show)  is one of my favorite shows.  The formula for the show is simple, drunk people narrate real stories from history with real actors re-enacting the stories including the line flubs that the drunk invariably interject.  My husband and I sometimes alternate between subscribing to Netflix and Hulu Plus so I believe we missed this season when it first premiered on Hulu Plus. Recently, we watched Episode 9: Hamilton which starred Hamilton creator Lin-Manual Miranda retelling the life of Alexander Hamilton while drinking.  Lin-Manual Miranda was excellent and fun as a drunk narrator .  However, occasionally when watching Drunk History, I feel like the drunk narrator is too drunk to tell the story well.   Also on occasion on Drunk History I think a story that I am familiar with is too condensed and the narrator skips of glosses over the most interesting parts.  All and all I think it is a great show.
5. Handmaid’s Tale: I just started watching this show.  I read and re-read the Margaret Atwood book several times since 1999 when I first read it.  In the first episode I loved the Margaret Atwood cameo.  I am a huge fan of Margaret Atwood and I liked the book a lot.  I have been holding back when it comes to watching the show though because the book is so intense.  I have been a little afraid that watching it on-screen might be too much since I know what to expect.  So far though I am finding it to be very satisfying.  Tension certainly exists but it never goes over board.  I can’t wait to watch more.
What show are you watching right now? Is there anything you are addicted to?