What We're Watching

Long winter nights are good for catching up on movies and shows that we've been wanting to watch. This month, top on our list has been Resident Alien, the very funny show starring Alan Tudyk. We went back to re-watch the first season to prepare and found that it was still fresh and funny. The second season is running now, and so far is living up to our expectations. Tudyk (who played Wash in Firefly) is an alien who crash-landed on Earth during his mission to wipe out all human life before we destroy the planet. (The octopuses deserve their chance to succeed us, after all.) He takes the form of the town doctor in a small, isolated town in Colorado, where he learns that there is much worth saving about these humans.

An unexpected find was Netflix's Anime series Forest of Piano, which we binged in a week. It follows two Japanese boys, one the son of a prominent musician and the other a barefoot son of a red-light district worker. They discover their obsession with the piano, and end up, competing in the International Chopin Competition years later. The music is wonderful, the rivalries are fascinating, and the piano-playing is well-drawn. The series, especially the ending, has a lot of heart.

Finally, we just watched the first episode of Picard, Season 2. It again starts in a vineyard, with reminisces of opportunities missed, then devolves into a welter of faces from the past, often without much cueing to identify them for the more casual viewers (there was one in the room with me). Unlike the first season, which had an inciting incident within the first ten minutes to set up the conflict for the season, the incident didn't occur until the end of this episode. Even then it might not be the real conflict. This required them to add a 'season preview' on the end to clue viewers about what to expect. I gave it a rating of "has promise, let's see where it's going," while my wife gave it a "meh."

Sellenria has gotten some good publicity lately, earning it a place in the Amazon top 100 in Hard Science Fiction. If you haven't read it yet, give it a try. If you already have Kindle Unlimited, just click and start reading.