Category: TV

Gganbu

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The last week’s been pretty social: two days of work meetings downtown which included a Blue Jays win over the Atlanta Braves, coffee from three good spots: the Spadina Neo, the University Fahrenheit, and the Union Pilot, and drinks at The Chase to close it all off.

Friday was a holiday. We basically just binged Squid Game, which we somehow avoided when it came out.

Saturday our friend Upasana made us a delicious dinner, and we had such a lovely time chatting we barely noticed it was midnight. We left feeling fat and happy, as they say.

Sunday night we were the hosts, as Ricky and Olivia came over for dinner. We provided salad and a cheese board; they brought delicious Filipino comfort food. We poured a bunch of fun wine, and served ice cream.

I took Monday off, and kept it chill. Lots of leftovers. Quite a bit of catchup. More Squid Game. Playoff hockey for the first time in four years.

Adolescence

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Well, Adolescence (imdb | rotten tomatoes) wasn’t an easy watch, but it was so good. I decided to put on episode 1 while Lindsay was out with a friend, not knowing if I’d even like it. Four hours later I’d killed the entire thing.

Stephen Graham was as great as usual, but my goodness, Owen Cooper. He may have been older than his character’s age, but still…what a performance. And the fact that every episode was a single shot, with the 1st, 2nd, and 4th being kinetic feats and the 3rd a pressure cooker — outstanding stuff. A feat, to be sure.

And now I never want to watch it again. 😐

Cold Harbor

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I/we’ve been burning through a lot of TV so far this year (season 2 of Patriot, Tsunami: Race Against Time, Say Nothing, season 4 of Slow Horses, The Penguin, Zero Day, Vietnam: The War That Changed America, and season 1 of The Night Agent) but lately we’ve really found ourselves at the nexus of a bunch of big shows, specifically new seasons of Abbott Elementary, Mythic Quest, Yellowjackets, White Lotus, and Severance. Season 2 of Severance (imdb) wrapped up a couple nights ago, and has been the subject of much discussion in our home.

I have a little more patience for the show’s tendency to leave more loose threads than it ties up, but my patience is wearing thin. Hopefully it doesn’t take another three years to see what season 3 reveals.

Also: fuck yeah, Brienne of Tarth.

Yellowjackets and White Lotus should be wrapping up in the coming weeks, just in time for The Studio and the second season of The Last Of Us, so the blitz continues.

“Game’s the same, just got more fierce.”

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Four years ago Lindsay wanted to start watching The Wire (imdb). We only made it an episode or two before she bailed. The time wasn’t right.

More recently I re-watched seasons one and two, but when Lindsay said she wanted to give it another go, I went back to the starting line with her. This time it stuck — we plowed through seasons one (cops), two (blue collar workers), and three (dealers); we’re most of the way through season four (schools).

This might be the first time I’ve watched season three and four since the first time in the mid/late-2000s. It’s as good as I remember. Better, even.

Of note: Clay Davis doesn’t say “Sheeeeeeeit” nearly as often as I remembered.

Clay Davis

Metaphorical cords cut

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After many years of thinking about it, and of Bell offering me enough discounts to never quite make it worth it, I have finally cut the cable. Or, rather, the TV service from the fibre optic line that runs into my house; I haven’t had “cable” since I furiously dispatched Rogers fourteen years ago.

I already pay for umpteen streaming services; pretty much the only thing I still watched on live TV was sports, so I signed up for both TSN’s and Sportsnet’s streaming service, and off we went. With the money I’m saving by not paying for those hundred-ish channels I never watched, I could sign up for Apple TV+ and still save money. It’s also less likely that I just turn on the TV absentmindedly and leave on whatever sports was happening at the time, which feels like a good thing.

So: so far, so good.

Front-loading

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Why do the weeks leading up to vacation always seem the busiest? I suppose the pressure to pre-emptively “make up” for the weeks away (work, errands, friend check-ins, etc.) plus the actual logistics of travelling make that fairly real…though I’m sure there’s some confirmation bias at play as well.

Real or imagined, it’s certainly felt like a busy week.

I realized my passport was going to expire sooner than I thought, so I spent a couple hours at the passport office on Monday.

I wrote my WSET 3 exam Thursday, thereby crippling my own hand by having to write for 2.5 hours. With an actual pencil, readers! Like I’m in the olden times or something. Anyway, it’ll take two months to find out how that went, but I’m very glad to be done studying.

I finished season 3 of The Bear, which wasn’t nearly as good as the first two seasons, but I still thought it was okay. I also watched a lot of Euro matches, and luckily tuned into final few moments of the Canada-Venezuela Copa America match — just in time to see Davies score, Crépeau save, and Koné send Canada through.

I met Matt for lunch at Ardo. Lindsay and I had drinks at Mercantino e Vini (you can buy glasses or bottles from the shop out front, and sit in the cozy seats at the back) with Kirsten, and then we all ate a late dinner down the street at Ascari.

It won’t be a quiet weekend. At this point I’m just hoping for manageable.

L’ours

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Between sickness and lack-of-playoff-making by my favourite teams, I’ve been able to catch up on a lot of TV over the past few months.

  • Drops Of God was like beautiful catnip to a wine nerd (and would-be travel nerd) like me.
  • Silo felt like it had so much promise but turned into a slog by the end.
  • Similarly, For All Mankind started out very strong and medium-high-concept (how would history have changed if the Russians landed on the moon before the US?) but then it got stretched into four seasons.
  • I was utterly mistaken about the premise of Black Earth Rising (I don’t know why, but I thought it was about aliens, not about Rwanda) and I ended up really liking it. As much as one can like a story about genocide. I appreciated it, I guess?
  • Season 3 of Slow Horses was a good as ever — the story kind of doesn’t matter nearly as much as the charisma of the actors. The scene where Lamb asks Roddy, “Can you talk me through your thinking here?” was comedy gold.
  • I love Band Of Brothers, so it makes sense that I liked Masters of the Air. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are doing their best to tell all the WWII stories they can before that war fades from collective memory. (Though, this Substack post by Dan Gardner suggests we might already be there.)
  • The Bear lived up to the hype. I actually liked season 2 better; “Fishes” was the star-studded flashback episode that garnered all the hype, but for my money “Forks” was the real magic. Glad I watched it just in time to feel momentum heading into season 3 next month.
  • Speaking of: I am extremely excited for the start of season 2 of House Of The Dragon in a few weeks.

Highs and Lows

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The week started off well but got progressively worse.

Last weekend Lindsay’s brother #2 arrived for a week. Always fun when he’s in the house. I’d just completed my WSET3 week 3 tasting (more on that in some other post) which meant there were a bunch of delicious white wines available. We ordered Thai and drank grand cru Alsace Pinot Gris and Tokaji for dessert.

On Sunday night we went to White Lily for dinner, and stopped at Chez Nous on the way home.

On Monday I met someone for a work drink at The Chase, then hustled back home for dinner at Wynona with Lindsay and Laura. I don’t remember exactly what we had, but I think it was something along these lines:

  • Grilled focaccia
  • Ontario burrata, forced rhubarb, wild fennel, brown butter & pistachio vinaigrette
  • Honey roasted carrots, chermoula, tahini, pumpkin seed dukkah $20
  • Ramp tonnarelli, Manila clams, Calabrian chili
  • Ziti, braised shortrib, mustard greens, Parmigiano-Reggiano
  • Blood orange posset, white chocolate & thyme ganache, salted honey crumb, meringue
  • Bottles of Nero d’Avola and Syrah

Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly unremarkable, but by Wednesday evening I was starting to feel sick — sort throat, stuffed up, etc. No one else in the house was sick even though we’d done everything together. It was probably too soon to develop anything I’d picked up the day before at the office, so…I guess it was that work drink on Monday? Who knows. Anyway, Thursday was very tough, and by Friday I was barely able to work. We had reservations for the three of us at Ricky + Olivia’s but I was so sick I had to bow out. I was in bed by 8:00. Today hasn’t been much better; I’m definitely scuffling.

As always, the lone bright spot about being sick is that I sit still long enough to catch up on some TV, so I’ve watched all of S1 and half of S2 of The Bear.

“BOB!”

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Just back from another trip out east. Couple days in Moncton (no new places visited) and a couple days on the farm with my dad while my mom, sister-in-law, and brother #2 were overseas. Flew back Thursday (and fell kind of ill on the flight, which wasn’t great, but it’s also not the first time I’ve experienced that…I’m starting to think it’s the white wine they serve) and spent Friday working & recovering.

Right before I left for Moncton we had binged The Jinx. Lindsay had seen it; I somehow had not (though I knew what happened in the final episode). Still, learning the whole story was…pretty shocking. So of course when I got back we starting catching up on the new season, and suddenly I’m back to impatiently waiting for Sunday night TV.

“Come on. America would never elect somebody like David Duke, President of the United States of America.”

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The lone upside to being sick, by which I mean have-to-stay-in-bed-for-entire-days sick, is bingeing TV shows. I finished the last couple of seasons of For All Mankind (interesting concept, but in season 4 it’s feeling strained), the entirety of Black Earth Rising (which was excellent, and I would have watched much sooner if I knew what it was about), and S3 of Slow Horses which was predictably excellent and took all of an afternoon. I also incorporated BlackKklansman (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at some point, not to mention a bunch of other movies I’ve seen a million times but just needed to fall asleep to something.

I seem to be mostly out of the woods…maybe back to like 70%. So as much as I want to go see Dune 2, this weekend is probably going to be about work catch-up.