Safe As Milk

****I’m going to talk spoilers, so scroll past if you want to save it****

I don’t particularly enjoy feeling bad while I’m watching tv so the whole “bad things happening to people in a tough situations” setup of ep01 had me ready to jump ship. Fortunately the second episode dipped into some recognizable tv Drama beats, so I was in. Bad things still happened, but it seemed less real.

Really great show. We remembered Angourie Rice (Siobhan in Mare) from The Nice Guys, which is overlong but underrated, IMO. She’s terrific.

The baby-in-danger scenes were the most harrowing for us (specifically the pillow in the recovery room and the bathtub scenes). That stuff skeeves me out. No bueno.

Also, the bits where we came in at the end of conversations were like you’d find in a novel: the dad making the kid promise to keep the secret, the older brother making the other brother say he did it, etc.

I thought the last twist(s) got a little Scooby Doo/Agatha Christie, but not so that it ruined the experience.

Kate Winslet was so, so good. This is one of my favorite things about prestige TV. Good writing in the hands of capital-A Actors is really something awesome.

I recommend it.

This is a satisfying confluence of my personal interests.

Homecoming is Julia Roberts acting on television and it’s terrific. The story is based on a podcast, which is cool, and it is a 10-episode show available on Amazon Prime Video.

Julia Roberts is a great actor. I forget sometimes, because I don’t generally follow her work (and shame on me for that), but man-oh-man she takes this well-written and well-developed story and straight crushes it with her performance.

The episodes are all about 30 minutes so it’s an easy binge for a winter weekend.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a fun and spooky Netflilx show starring Kiernan Shipka as the titular Teenage Witch (you probably know her from Mad Men). She’s just great. She’s a really, really good actor and it’s fun to see her using all of those powers on this odd, tertiary character from the Archie Universe.

I’m a notorious chicken when it comes to scary shows or movies. Like, it’s embarrassing. I was half-worried that this would be too much for me based on some of the cuts in the trailer. I know. I’m embarrassed just typing that.

It’s a really well-crafted show with plenty of easter eggs for fans of classic horror which all went over my head. Still, it’s cool that they’re there. My wife and daughter got a two-episode head start on me but I caught up quickly enough and this turned out to be a great family watch for us.

And then they made and released a terrific Winter Solstice episode. This reminded me very much of a Hellboy one-shot where Mignola would learn about some crazy, cool, unknown myth and he would weave a quick story that put Hellboy in the mix.

I am an enthusiastic fan of this show.

These guys are so damn funny. We’ve watched this segment a couple of times since this weekend.

Clint Eastwood, man.