Watching Television the Last Week of April 2018

There’s quite a bit of good television shows out there right now and it’s straining my TiVo hard drive. These days I am currently struggling to keep my drive from going above 99% full and it’s a losing battle. I did get a bit of time last week to watch a few things and find others that are now on streaming services so I can free up that disk space.

One such show is Into the Badlands. I enjoyed that show but somehow never got around to watching the 2nd season – I saved it all on my TiVo but now, since it’s on Netflix, I can get rid of all 10 episodes of that season – that’s a bunch of space saved!

Legion is another show I enjoyed but never finished. After this week, I still have an episode from the first season to watch and they’ve already put out 3 in season 2. Those are on streaming as well so I don’t have to save them, but I did watch episode 7 over the weekend.

Favorites From Last Week

In any case I am trying hard to get through the shows I find enjoyable and here are the ones I found breaking into my favorites of the week:

• The Americans season 6, episode 5 – The Great Patriotic War. I can only imagine that something serious is gonna happen at the end of this season to end this series and it certainly looks like things are building up to a crescendo.
• Westworld season 2, episode 1 – Journey Into Night. This show started out the second season with as much mystery and intrigue as last season left off with. I love this show and am so happy that they’re able to keep things are such a high quality after the offseason. It’ll be interesting to see where the robot uprising leads us to this season.
• Killing Eve season 1, episode 2 – I’ll Deal with Him Later. The first episode was a bit of a mess for me but it did set things up for a great second entry. This exemplifies why I give shows a couple of episodes to grab me.
• AggRetsuko season 1, episode 1. What’s not to like…a 25 year old Red Panda who works in accounting and sings karaoke death metal – this was awesome!
• Santa Clarita Diet season 2, episode 6 – Pasion. The family is tracking down the cause of the zombie outbreak but with that search, they also are finding other zombies who are not so friendly.
• Jeremy Wade’s Mighty Rivers season 1, episode 3 – The Mississippi. I think I would love anything Jeremy Wade does and I hope he keeps putting out fish shows for Animal Planet. As he looks at the large rivers of the world I also hope people pay attention to all the crap we’re dumping into these waterways.
• Legion season 1, episode 7 – Chapter 7. Wow! After all this time I finally got back to the show and I really feel like I understand things more after that hiatus than I did when I was watching it every week. I’m glad I didn’t delete the episode from my TiVo.
• Impractical Jokers season 7, episode 9 – No Child Left Behind. No matter how bad a day is or how horrible I feel after watching a crappy show, I can always turn on the Jokers to cheer me up. There’s just no way to get through an entire episode without smiling and laughing out loud.

On the Bubble

Other shows I watched that failed to impress me or at least make it into my favorites of the week. These guys are on the bubble and while I’ll give them another chance, they have to start impressing me:

• Trust season 1, episode 5 – Silenzio. I like the show but I am really tired of 50% of it being in Italian. If I wanted to read so much, I’d open a book. There’s a level of authenticity which is nice and then there’s this show. There really should be a warning every week that if you don’t enjoy reading subtitles, then don’t watch this show. Call me elitist, but when I’m watching a TV show on American TV I expect to be able to avoid having to read more than half the show in subtitles. I mean, if I’m watching anime, I expect I’ll be reading captions, it I watch Mexican wrestling, I’ll be reading captions, if I want to turn on Telemundo, I’ll expect to be reading captions…not when I’m watching a docudrama on FX.
• Lost In Space – season 1, episode 1 – Impact. Of course I like the idea of the show but this first episode left me confused and disappointed. Perhaps when Dr. Smith shows up things will get better?

Dropped off my List

• Instinct – While I really like Alan Cumming, the writing on this show and his supporting cast just kept getting worse each week.