what-gs-watching

[what-gs-watching]

"So you love me...you just don't want me."

So, I’m not really sure what I’m doing right now. Random things that don’t seem like enough? Moping my way through and spending a lot of time on the couch? My weird season of life just gets weirder because I’m just letting it.

I had lunch with a couple of my engineer friends the other day and when trying to explain what I am doing I said, “I’m binging Dawson’s Creek…” and one of them just shouted “WHY” and honestly, that’s a really good question.

It’s so bad you guys. It’s so bad and I can’t look away and at this point I’ve almost finished it, less than two seasons to go, and I just keep thinking “WHY” but every ‘why’ right now is complicated. ‘Why’ is complex and I’m trying to not look at it too closely.

Dawson’s Creek started in 1998, friends. I was like, 11 years old. And it was one of my favorite shows. I very vividly remember watching it on tv, calling my sister with my live reactions  during the commercial breaks while she was away at college. 

What I’ve realized watching it now though, is that the idea of binge watching truly has improved television SO, SO much. 

Dawson’s Creek is SIX seasons of drama upon drama upon drama upon drama. Like, every episode has ten thousand different plot points because they were only coming once a week and then the seasons were spread out and MAN they were working so hard to keep people engaged with the show. And I can see with clarity now that that is not the way to tell a story.

Which is kind of hilarious, because a huge part of the show was the fact that Dawson was desperate to be this great director and create incredible movies that people resonate with. They spent so much time on that plot point, not to mention how the entirety of the show ends, but jesus, the pacing of the entire thing is absolutely out of control. Too much story, you guys, and none of it makes a true lick of sense when you get down to it.

I’m so thankful our viewing habits have changed. I’m so glad they don’t really make shows like this anymore.

If you aren’t a thousand years old like I am, Dawson’s Creek is a show about 4 friends (eventually more) growing up in a fictional town  on Cape Cod, centered around Dawson’s absolute batshit crazy relationship with his best (girl) friend Joey. 

11 year old me was obsessed with the idea of falling in love with your best guy friend you’d known your entire life. It seemed like the best thing that could ever happen. I shipped the shit out of it, and watching it again now I think this show probably influenced me in ways that weren’t actually good for me, but what’s there to do about that now? 

With fresh and very disillusioned eyes, it’s super clear right off the bat how toxic Dawson and Joey’s relationship really was. I've been sitting on my couch yelling about how much of a creep Dawson truly is as a character - he becomes weirdly obsessed with Jen, the new girl in town and assumes he loves her after like a day and throws it in Joey’s face constantly? He only realizes he might love Joey after he sees her debase herself in a beauty pageant because she wants the scholarship money? He freaks out when the new kid kisses her and doesn’t let her explain her side of things? He doesn’t respect her newfound art passion and is reticent to her changing in any way, at all? He forces her to turn her dad in for drug dealing without just talking to her about it before going to the fucking cops?!

Sure, they’re supposed to be 15, 16 etc but like, stop giving these children such weird character flaws. I remember the whole shtick about the show was that they were supposed to be such enlightened teenagers that analyze things to death (which they even say in the dialogue, like way too much) but they still made such weird, backward choices. 

The one part they do get kind of right is the love affair between Pacey and Joey (this is of course where my love for Joshua Jackson comes from). It’s like the one relationship in the show that isn’t weirdly toxic from the start - they’re friends who annoy the shit out of each other and then they start helping each other and it grows progressively (as much as it can in a season, ya know) and it’s mostly sweet. He challenges her and he supports her but watching it now, she does keep herself away from him a bit.  

And then they do my man Pacey really dirty, and it ends toxic as fuck (though maybe it always was?!), because that seems to be the entire show’s aesthetic. 

I’m also not really even going to mention that someone thought in 1998 that it was totally fine to use ‘female teacher sleeps with her underage student’ as an acceptable plotline. I STILL can’t believe that. I struggled to get through the first season, it was so painful, but I wanted to get to Pacey and Joey. 

And I just watched their breakup and now I can’t remember why I wanted to get to Pacey and Joey. I absolutely thought the two of them were the HEIGHT of romance when I was 13. And yeah, running away for a summer on a sailboat together is still something my younger self(and let’s be honest, my regular self) wished she could do, but still, it just wasn’t what I remembered. Mostly, I’m just thinking that all relationships are fucked in some way and there’s no way around it. 

Well. Maybe the point of me inexplicably doing this is that sometimes things should stay a hazy nostalgic memory, instead of being revisited. Or maybe it’s that some things just age absolutely terribly. Or worse still, it’s to get me to think about the ways things I’ve subjected myself to have affected me in my life - but that’s not something I’m interested in right this second. So pick either of those first two. 

Basically, I don’t really suggest going down this rabbit hole. Unless you desperately want to feel really weird about teen angst for no reason. Or you’re desperate for something that is VERY a-moment-in-time-that-doesn’t-need-repeating. Or you’re Gen Z and doing it ironically because you want to see where that Dawson crying meme comes from (it’s almost worth it), but be warned, it might fuck with who you are as a person. Or maybe it won’t, you kids do seem tougher than we were, at least. 

I don’t know. I’m gonna finish it, but I can’t tell you why.

#what g's watching #dawson's creek #pacey x joey #dawson leery #pacey witter #joey potter

[what-gs-watching]

just over here sobbing my way through Taylor Swift's Tortured Poet's Department because that's my life now and I keep thinking I'm really gonna need to see Supreme Archangel Aziraphale with this kind of big dick energy in season 3 to go along with his face in the credits:

If you wanted me dead, you should've just said Nothing makes me feel more alive

So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream Who's afraid of little old me? You should be

You caged me and then you called me crazy I am what I am 'cause you trained me So who's afraid of me? Who's afraid of little old me?

Time to fuck up heaven, baby boy...

#good omens #aziraphale #the tortured poets department #taylor swift #bamf aziraphale #good omens season 3 #sorry not sorry

[what-gs-watching]

“Cease and desist, bitch!”

News flash friends: job hunting is still terrible. Like, four months in and it’s still the worst. I finished two interview loops recently and I’m waiting to hear back and I have two others I’m trying to get through and it’s all hurry up and wait.

But then Netflix told me that GIRLS5EVA was coming to the platform, complete with a new season, and I got soooo excited. 

I’m sure no one has heard of this show, it was born on Peacock and it’s a Tina Fey joint but there’s definitely a super specific audience for it which is, basically, me. 

Were you born in the 80’s/early 90’s? Did you love all the random girl groups/boybands? Are you now barreling toward 40 and it’s just really depressing and terrible? Then Girls5eva is also for you. 

Wherein, four millennial women decide to reunite their early 2000’s girl group after their one-hit wonder is sampled on a new hip hop track. 

It’s hilarious. And really specific. And starring SARA BAREILLES who in real life is an incredible musician. Y’all remember “Gravity”? No? Even though it was featured in a Community episode where Annie cuts to a montage because she’s  trying to convince everyone that she and Jeff have had a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ thing going on all year? “Gravity” is the theme of that montage!

While you’re checking out Girls5eva, also listen to Sara Bareilles. The girl is a true fucking talent. 

ALSO, Busy Philipps. I LOVE Busy Philipps. And have loved her since Dawson’s freakin’ Creek and then AGAIN in Cougartown. 

(Side rant - Cougartown really is a wonderful show. Terrible name, but honestly incredibly funny and there are a ton of good running jokes and it’s just fun as hell. Courteney Cox got shagged on that one, it really is a gem.)

Anyway. There are 3 seasons and it follows the ladies valiantly trying to make a comeback while dealing with being normal people again after their brief shot at fame in the early 2000’s. Which, I think we all remember fondly but was actually a pretty gross time and the show makes sure you remember that - it was not great for women by any means and it’s still not great now but Girls5eva make it work. And it’s endearing.

And y’all, some of the songs are a fuckin’ bop. BPE? Aka “Big Pussy Energy” (the club remix) is the anthem we all need right now. “Kick down the doors no locks / I don't need a key / Eyes down here, yeah, I'm the centerpiece / Animal queendom feline synergy / Kickin’ down the doors, big pussy energy!” That shit gets you in the right frame of mind. I need more semi-cheesy female anthems in my life and I’m pretty sure you do too. 

Honestly, the show is really just about the fact that life doesn’t have to end after your 20’s, you can keep going after your dreams even if they’re ridiculous. And you can balance your regular shit while you do it. And you don’t need a man to define who you are. And you can leave toxic relationships if you need to. And you can grow as a person. And you can still be a crazy bitch sometimes and your friends will support you.

There’s a lot going on, and it’s all wonderful. Honestly, we need more shows about olderish female friends, with a touch of insanity. I don’t want regular female friends, I want batshit female friends doing ridiculous things. 

Also, lastly, Wickie Roy is a fucking icon. In a weird way because she’s struggling to live in a normal world and she refuses to compromise and she’s an absolute nutbag but in the best way possible. 

Basically, Girls5eva is making me feel better about my life. If they can get back into pop music, I can get myself another boring job and BPE is gonna help me get it done. 

“Momentum yeah / um it’s our moment / we’re contenders…”

#what g's watching #girls5eva #wickie roy #sara bareilles #famous5eva #BPE

[what-gs-watching]

"If that's a joke, I love it. If not, can't wait to unpack that with you later."

So, here’s a thing - winter makes me sad. I mean, it makes a lot of people sad, but also me. When I was younger I used to just cause a whole bunch of drama to get it out of my system but I’m an adult now and I’m still mostly fruitlessly job searching and I can’t really just go around starting fights anymore so I’m just sitting in my ennui, feeling unmoored. 

Which made me realize: I need Ted Lasso. Desperately.

Wherein, a low level American football coach moves to England to coach actual football (aka soccer) and ends up creating something so beautiful it’ll make you laugh and cry until you just can’t anymore.

If you’ve never seen Ted Lasso, first of all - how dare you? And secondly, start it now. Like, literally right now. It’s everything you didn’t know you needed. 

I will admit I didn’t get into it until my husband watched it and encouraged me into it because of my love for Jason Sudeikis. I tend to pick up unnatural obsessions for SNL alumni, I just want all of them to succeed, so I gave in and instantly lost my mind over it. I couldn’t get enough.

During the second season run, I literally had a standing weekly fifteen minute meeting with my engineers to talk about the latest episode and our theories on what would happen next, or what our favorite joke had been. There were MANY heated debates.

Before the third season came out, I made my family binge the first two seasons while we were on vacation. I remember my mom calling me after she and my dad had watched the series finale so we could talk about it - she’d never bought into a show like that before.  

Ted Lasso just brings people together, and I find it absolutely ridiculous that this poignant, wonderful, life affirming show came out of a bit that Sudeikis wrote in 2013 for an NBC Sports commercial. It’s mind boggling. 

You guys know, it’s all about the relationships for me, and that’s the entire show, really. Ted is unrelentingly positive and charming and understanding and the reason he likes coaching is because he wants to help his players be the best versions of themselves and wooooph throughout the show, you get that, for every single character, even Ted himself. It’s about loving each other and loving yourself and also somewhat about football and it’s just so fucking…delightful. 

And I’m obsessed with all of the different dynamics. Ted and Beard, and Roy and Ted and Beard, and Roy and Jamie, and Roy and Keeley, and fucking Keeley and Rebecca! If you need to see a perfect incredible WONDERFUL female friendship, it’s Rebecca and Keeley fucking Jones. Someone needs to write a long-winded essay about these two, because dear lord, I want a best friend like that. Everyone wants a best friend like that. Like, I just can’t with all of the messy, hilarious, beautiful relationships. I want to be part of them all.

Also,  it’s funny. Like, properly funny. Laugh-out-loud-no-matter-how-many-times-you’ve-seen-it funny. The bits are layered. And you’ll get something different out of them every single time. Nuance, gang. It’s all so nuanced. 

The first season is absolutely perfect. You get to know all of the characters and you get a general sense of what’s up. Everyone is kind of charming and you’re immediately annoyed with Rebecca and charmed by Roy even though he tries his best to be threatening, and you think that Nathan is adorable and you’re pulled into Ted’s unwavering enthusiasm and Beard’s silliness indulgence and straight-man stoicism and Keeley’s adorableness. And it’s WONDERFUL! I’ve seen season one at least four or five times, likely more. It’s everything.

There are so many good moments. At one point, Ted says he’s having salads for lunch with Higgins who is communications director or something and as Ted goes to leave Higgins says “Cesar you later!” and Ted BURSTS back in through the door and just yells “YES!” and it’s hilarious every time. 

When Ted and Beard realize that Roy is a bristling motherfucker who wants to hate everything, Ted says something like “wait til we win him over”, with Beard announcing “He’s. Going to be. Furious.” (And he was.)

It’s the little things in the first season that really endear you to Ted Lasso. It just wraps you up and makes you feel warm and appreciated, like there are people out there that are pure and good and they can make you feel pure and good too. 

And then you get into season two and you start to see behind the curtain. Ted’s really not okay with his divorce (which, I still think is because his wife couldn’t deal with his optimism? Which is so insane to me and I can’t even, I never forgave her like, what the fuck is that) and in general and they tackle a lot of mental health issues and social issues and it’s a bit hard to get through.

But at the same time, season two has some of my favorite bits? Which is confusing??! The scene where Sam asks Isaac for a haircut - everyone gets a single cut from the captain once a season - and the entire team watches and whoops and freaks out and it’s like, an intricate performance and everyone is just so fucking thrilled to be witnessing it? It’s weirdly beautiful. 

Ted and Beard teaching the entire team the choreography to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye so they can send off the team shrink in a ridiculous way? Incredible. When they finally get the dance right, they lose their fucking minds. It’s so JOYFUL.

The episode where Roy finally realizes he wants to join the coaching staff and he makes a dramatic trek to the stadium while “She’s a Rainbow” blares? The theme of that one was believing in rom-communism - to rouse the team Ted tells them “Fairy tales do not start nor do they end in the dark forest” and yo that’s so TRUE - and when Roy finally showed up on the pitch he said, “You had me at ‘coach’.” I cry every single time I see that one. I literally watched it twice in a week when getting the family into the show and I cried both times. Hard. 

I think part of the reason this show is so resonating is because dark shit happens, but a lot of really sweet things happen too. There’s an episode wherein Rebecca’s dad dies and they’re all attending the funeral but it still is somehow achingly funny too, even though you learn some terrible things about Ted and Rebecca both in that one. They really ride the line of darkness and light and it’s messy and that’s life.

And then season three is hard.  So much happens. And you know that you’re barreling toward the finale. There’s only 34 episodes in the entire series and it’s not nearly enough but they do try to make the most of their time. 

Watching the finale season in real time was really interesting though, I’ll say, because the fandom was so nuts at the time. So many random theories and outrage over some of the story points. And at the time I did kind of agree, but seeing it all back to back now in my first true binge, it all makes sense. Everyone had their own journey and some of them were ridiculous and maybe we just wanted things to stay the same because that’s how we fell in love with the characters but that’s not the point, gang. Shit is forever changing.

I’ll never get over the moment when Roy finally relents to the diamond dogs. Or Jamie teaching him how to ride a fucking bike in Amsterdam. Or when the team comes together to help Sam put his restaurant back together after it’s completely vandalized. Or Beard explaining to Nate his background with Ted, and offering his forgiveness to Nate as a way to honor everything Ted has done. Or Rebecca calling Roy out on his shit, saying that instead of helping himself he’d rather “eat shit soup and then complain about the portions”. 

There are so many little beautiful pieces. So many things that will pull at your heart strings and make you realize things that maybe have been niggling around in your brain but refusing to come forward because you were scared of them. Ted Lasso helps you be less scared of them. Ted Lasso helps you be less scared of everything, because it encourages you to accept yourself as you are.

In the final episode, Higgins says “Human beings are never gonna be perfect. The best we can do is to keep asking for help and accepting it when you can. And if you keep on doing that, you'll always be moving towards better.” 

And that’s what all of us need to understand. This show will ingrain that thought into you, and it’ll buoy you, and you won’t even realize it. 

So maybe now I’m feeling less ennui. Because I’m still laughing at the hijinx and basking in the wholesomeness and the amazingly perfect relationships  and the belief. Ted Lasso makes you fucking believe.

#what g's watching #ted lasso #coach beard #rebecca welton #roy kent #keeley jones #comfort show #jamie tartt #be a goldfish

[what-gs-watching]

"It's not my fault you're like, in love with me."

So while I was trapped in the house for days on end because of ridiculous weather, I kept whinging that I just wanted to get out and see the new Mean Girls. My sister was not surprised at all to hear it, assuming I would have gone the day it came out. 

Because I’m old, old enough that the original movie came out when I was a teenager and it was a big fucking deal. I remember going to the theater with my bestie and being completely obsessed. We all wanted to be Lindsay Lohan at that point, 2004 was a crazy time, and we were incredibly impressionable. So, Mean Girls was everything.

To be fair, it definitely wormed its way into the culture. My sixty-something mother-in-law knows ‘fetch’ and my metal headbanger favorite dude friend appreciates that on Wednesdays, we wear pink. Millennials get it. I’m honestly not even sure how many times I’ve seen it. If my life depended on it, I could accurately quote most of it.

So, I was excited to see the new one, and a little weary. 

But it was cuuuuuute, y’all. I purposely didn’t read anything about it, so I was slightly surprised that it was basically literally the same story, but I guess that makes sense. The whole schtick is that it’s a musical now, so I can roll with that.

One thing I will say though, it’s hard for musicals to make perfect sense. You lose some of the story by trying to flatten it into a catchy number. So it didn’t feel as comprehensive or fleshed out  as the original (which sounds insane because Mean Girls is just a story about girls being bitches, but still). 

I also really appreciated that they kept a good bit of the classic lines that everyone wants to hear. You have to have “stop trying to make fetch happen, it’s not going to happen” and “Yo go, Glen Coco!” it’s literally not Mean Girls without that. (LOL at the explanation though that 'fetch' is slang from an old movie.)

They did strip out some of the weirder aspects, leaving out the gym coach hooking up with one of the kids, which was sketch to begin with, even in 2004. And Karen trying to make out with her first cousin, which, yikes. So ya know, progress. 

But it did feel like they took some of the bite out of Regina. Like, I got that she was supposed to be mean, but there weren’t a ton of actions to reinforce that. Or even a ton of interaction between her and Cady. The frenemy-ship wasn’t fleshed out as much as I wanted it to be. 

On the bright side though, I didn’t expect the actress they chose for Regina. Body positivity, gang! And the cast was a lot more diverse. 

But, no one is ever gonna best Lohan at the role of Cady. Sure, New Cady was cute, and she did her best but honestly, she did not have the same kind of presence or charisma. But I’m probably biased as hell. Like I’ve said before, I just want Lindsay Lohan to get her life back together. 

ALSO, this is just me complaining, but I absolutely do not fucking understand fashion right now. Like, I just…I can’t. It’s weirdly 90’s, and it wasn’t cute in the 90’s originally and it’s not cute now. I was not in love with Cady’s “makeover” and that was one of the funner aspects of the original. Which could just be me projecting because I wanted to wear all of the shit that they did in 2004 but I was not that cool, gang. So now I’m the old guy who wants gen Z fashion to get off my lawn. It’s not their fault, but it’s still confusing. 

The point is, it was a fun way to spend two hours, and I love that Tina Fey and Tim Meadows reprised their roles. I will love anything Tina Fey does, forever and always. And she loves Mean Girls so much. So I’m going to, too. And I might bump “Revenge Party” because who doesn’t love a party that ends with a head on a spike? 

Did we really need this movie? Maybe not. But I suppose we can let the zoomers in on the fantasticness that is Mean Girls. Y’all can have a piece of the crown too, I guess - it’s just plastic, after all.

#mean girls 2024 #mean girls musical #what g's watching #revenge party #cady x regina #regina george #cady mean girls

[what-gs-watching]

“There is only room for one God in this lab and it's not yours."

Welp, my city has decided that it forgot how weather works, and we’re snowed in and there’s a frozen pipe in my goddamn basement and I finished an interview loop for a company last week so I’m just sitting here trapped in my house and waiting desperately for any news on if they might hire me and it’s not going amazing SO, 

It’s time for a FRINGE BINGE. 

I saw a post a week or two ago that Fringe might be leaving Max at the end of the month, and I couldn’t let it go without a rewatch. It’s one of the reasons I started playing “What G’s Watching” with my husband - he’d seen it when it first came out and I thought maybe he’d remember some of it and could understand my rambling, because you need some kind of background to truly grasp what the eff is happening in Fringe. He didn’t. But that didn’t stop me from becoming completely obsessed. 

Even when I’m not rewatching, sometimes I’ll yell “PREVIOUSLY ON FRINGE” when the show I’m actually enjoying does a recap. I don’t know why it’s stuck in my brain, but it doesn’t matter, I love it.

Here’s the thing about Fringe: it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s like X-Files on acid (or Walter’s Brown Bettty?). The science is ridiculous and honestly it’s difficult to follow the lore sometimes, especially the first time through it. But it’s weirdly captivating and it tugs at your heart strings, which doesn’t make any sense.

Basically, FBI agent Olivia Dunham gets sucked into a special division that investigates weird occurrences that seem to have to do with ‘fringe science’, and she ends up enlisting Peter Bishop and his genius scientist father, Walter Bishop (who’d spent almost twenty years in a mental institution) to help her get to the bottom of what the eff is going on.

AND THEN THINGS GET CRAZY. 

They pump so much backstory into this show. There’s monsters of the week, sure, but every single character has a whole damn room full of skeletons and it was so much fun trying to puzzle all of that shit out the first time. In my rewatch so far, I’m picking up a ton of little random clues and I’m loving it. It’s clear that J. J. Abrams had some IDEAS. 

Also, I’ve never watched Lost, (and I never will, I put my foot down on that)  but I can confidently say this is the better J. J. Abrams show. The ending doesn’t make you ridiculously angry you watched the whole thing. So there’s that. 

Honestly, there’s too much I love about this show. The whole alternate universe plotline for one, which creates some of my favorite moments. But it’s mainly about Peter and Walter. At its core, this stupid show is about their father son relationship, and how far people are willing to go  to protect their family. Which is weird, but also perfect. 

Before the mental institution, Walter was a little bit of a sociopath, pursuing scientific enhancements, consequences be damned. He was a shit person. He ran tests on children, he fucked with the fabric of the universe. No fucks given, that man. But the Walter we get for most of the show is just…oddly charming. Quirky in his brilliance, instead of calculating. And it’s FUNNY and endearing. 

Olivia brings in another agent to help corral Walter in his resurrected lab beneath Harvard, Astrid, and he spends most of the series calling her anything but. “Astro”, “Astrix”, etc. It’s not malicious, he just can’t hold the information, as much as he appreciates the work she does with him. Like, how does that turn out to just be kind of cute? 

Some of my favorite made-up words are from Walter.  “Vagenda”, for one. Which is ‘vagina agenda’ obviously. As in, “Peter fell for her vagenda”, which had me rolling. Even if it came about during a storyline that made me absolutely FURIOUS, but in the best of ways. (There was a lot of time wherein I was yelling at my husband about how much I hated “Fauxlivia” and her vagenda, but honestly I don’t want to spoil it because the twists and turns this show takes are so wonderful, they should be experienced with absolutely no background.)

The whole thing with Walter is that he’s atoning for the sins of his past, even if he doesn’t really realize it at first, and it’s just, really comforting. His entire arc is compelling and satisfying, even if it leaves you a crying mess. 

Also, Peter Bishop is forever my perfect New England boyfriend. At first I’m not sure who they wanted him to be exactly, but eventually he smoothed out into just an earnest, genius, gorgeous man trying to do the right thing and get past all of the hurt Walter caused him. They put him in devastatingly handsome peacoats and he saves the day and he’s sweet to Olivia and I just spend most of the time swooning. That smile, gang.

Is it because I fell in love with Pacey Witter as a young girl during Dawson’s Creek’s heyday? 98% yes. I will always love Joshua Jackson and Pacey was done dirty for a while. And come to think of it, Peter was too. It’s his thing, apparently. 

I do  realize Olivia is supposed to be the main character probably, but she gets me to my two favorite guys so I guess she’s fine. Anna Torv is wonderful, she plays Dunham really well (which I imagine was grueling given some of the storylines) but the Bishops are the stars of the show. I just want to squeeze both of them.

The crazy thing is there are some episodes that will destroy you emotionally. The white tulip? Jesus. That one just came up in my rewatch, and it was still a punch in the face the second time. There’s one where Walter gets lost in Chinatown, I had to literally mute it because it’s gut wrenching. Even with the silliness and the science that makes you roll your eyes, they make you look at things you don’t want to, and it can hurt. I love/hate that so much. 

And look, I understand that the moral of the show is that science and technology can be dangerous and we shouldn’t let it get away from us because it could eventually cause the downfall of everything, but that’s not what I’m here for. I’m always here for the relationships. And the ridiculous ways we can get people to die. And the outlandish scifi. If you wanna remind me of things that I don’t want to think about in between that, I guess it’s okay, because it makes no sense, but when I think of Fringe, it just makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It’s not a warm and fuzzy show, but it is for me. 

I started watching it because it was a complete series that had a purposeful ending and I needed something, but it turned into a lot more than that. I’m jealous of people who can see it for the first time. It’s just so…special. In weird and wonderful ways. There will never be another character quite like Walter Bishop. Or a truly realized tv universe as outlandish. They swung for the fences, and it really landed; vagenda, the observers, Walternate, and all. 

Let Walter charm the shit out of you, you won’t be disappointed.

#what g's watching #fringe #peter bishop #walter bishop #joshua jackson #olivia dunham

[what-gs-watching]

“You see I'm something of a magician, inventor, and chocolate maker…”

So my dad and I do this thing where we like to go see a movie on Christmas day. We’ve been doing it for years, popping in for whatever we felt like while everyone else took a nap. It’s one of my favorite things, seeing a movie with my daddy-o, but I haven’t been home in a long time. 

This year he let me pick but he wasn’t particularly interested in anything and like the weirdo I am I suggested Wonka, because apparently this year I’m all about origin stories.

Wherein, we see a young Willy Wonka set out to build his chocolate empire with help from some friends, and resistance from enemies. 

My dad swears up and down he’s never seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I’m pretty sure is impossible? Even if he doesn’t super duper remember it, he has to have seen enough of it over the years. I mean, it’s a staple of popular culture. I spent most of the morning trying to convince him he’d seen it, and then when he insisted I gave him a patented ‘what g’s watching’ overview before we went to the theater.

While we were sitting through a preview for the Color Purple he declared that he didn’t like movies with musical numbers in them, and I choked on my popcorn and told him “welp, this movie definitely has musical numbers…” but it was too late to back out. I’ll remember that for next time, though. He’s a good sport, my daddy.

Here’s my thing y’all - the movie was super cute. Like, really really cute. And I can’t lie, I was missing the darkness. Like, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is properly dark when you really look at it - Wonka is slightly unhinged and some of it is honestly too much for kids. That scene when they’re traveling through the chocolate river? Jesus. The song lyrics, the colors, the way his voice gets higher and more dangerous and everything just CRESCENDOS. Absolute creeping sense of unease. And I love it. 

ButI didn’t really get that from Wonka. Yes, some of it had some dark themes - he’s tricked into indentured servitude because he doesn’t read the fine print, and his chocolatier competitors basically bribe the police captain to murder him, and they almost kind of maybe drown in a vat full of chocolate, sure, but it never felt properly dark. 

Maybe I shouldn’t compare the two, but Wonka is a little bit of a twisted guy later on, and I didn’t get any of that character development out of this. Timothee Chalamet played him too happy, and maybe that’s what they were looking for, but I definitely wanted a bit more. Chalamet was cute and fun and carefree, and it was fine. But I just needed some of that creep. 

It’s perfect for kids. Like, I’d let smaller ones watch it and then when they got a bit older they could watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but for me, it just wasn’t connected enough.

It is fun though, if you need a hit of something silly and visually stunning and imaginative. And it had Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa! Which is so ridiculous and charming, somehow. And some catchy-ish musical numbers. But you won’t really get a whiff of what makes Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka the way he is, and that is a straight up shame. It’s honestly a wasted opportunity. 

So I’ve seen one origin story lately that was a touch too severe, and one origin story that was a bit too sugary sweet. Maybe eventually, we’ll find that sweet spot...

#what g's watching #wonka 2023 #wonka movie #timothée chalamet #charlie and the chocolate factory

[what-gs-watching]

“Because  what is a coincidence but a form of accident?”

So I went home for Christmas for the first time in like four years, which was really nice. Sometimes it’s good to be surrounded by family. But try as I might, I couldn’t convince a room full of adults who have never actually seen Doctor Who to watch the new Christmas special. 

Clearly, my family is a little bit lame. 

Which means I was late to watching The Church on Ruby Road, but finally got into it the other day and y’aaaaall, that was cute. 

15 is gonna be his own whole thing, and I’m climbing aboard, for better or worse. Are we pandering to gen-z a little bit? Yes. But I think I’m okay with it. Sometimes you need to shake shit up. 

Wherein the Doctor meets Ruby Sunday, a ‘foundling’ born on Christmas Eve, that has been having a ton of weird accidents and/or coincidences. Hijinx and numerous outfit changes ensue. 

Everyone is talking about the fashion, and I love that 15 is just like ‘I’m gonna do whatever, why are we always wearing the same damn thing?’ Amazing kilt? Yes. Gorgeous leather jacket that seems like a callback to something Donna had worn with 10? Absolutely. Weird little zip up sweaters? For sure. 

Baby boy, you are gonna be SO interesting. 

Okay so, Ruby was a baby abandoned on Christmas Eve, and then adopted by her foster mother. Once again we get like a tiny baby companion, this girl is 19 because of course she is. But she’s just living her life and dropping shit and tripping over things and weird things are happening to her and she thinks it’s all good but we can see weird little hands causing all of her mishaps and the Doctor is following her a little bit because he’s got an inkling something weird is happening. 

My favorite part of his lurking is obviously when he runs into her in the club - beauty is DANCING IT OUT. I absolutely love it. He bi-generates and is like ‘yo I know what i need’ and he just tears up the dance floor. Sometimes you need to get sweaty and let your brain drift away because there’s pulsing music and people everywhere. ‘Dance it out’ is one of the best ways to get over things, to remember you’re alive. I felt that so hard. I haven’t danced it out in FOREVER. 

Anyway, we find out that she and her adopted mother are still fostering children, and on Christmas Eve, Ruby’s birthday, they get assigned another foundling baby who was ALSO just born that day, what a coincidence! All about coincidences, this episode. 

So Ruby gets left with the baby while her mother pops out for something and SURPRISE! The baby gets taken through a window. Ruby obviously follows out the window, up to the roof, and sees little weird aliens taking the baby up a rope ladder, which she immediately starts to climb. Gotta love a new companion going for it. 

The doctor sees her, and starts jumping from roof to roof to follow her, and he jumps onto the rope ladder too and they’re suspended precariously in the air. This little smartie pulls out a set of gloves - he says he invented them because he’s always hanging off of things. Each of them put one on, and they take the weight and the pressure and let the two of them dangle off the rope ladder, easy as anything. 

This dude comes out swinging with these gloves - gloves that would have let Rose hang on and not been sucked into the other reality. Righting wrongs all over the place, it’s sweet. 

So they climb up the rope and to a super weird wooden ship in the sky - we learn the creatures are goblins, and they’re immediately caught and tied up. But the Doctor can get out of that, obviously, and he’s saying that the goblins are gonna eat the baby and that coincidence is what makes the baby tasty, because that makes sense.

He says that the goblins went back in Ruby’s timeline and started weaving in her accidents and coincidences, entwining her and the baby, making a tapestry. He says it’s the language of luck, and it’s a new science to him, and he’s so excited by it. I always love how excited the Doctor gets when he comes face to face with something he doesn’t know. 

Ruby calls the goblins time travelers and he gets so offended, saying “They are not time travelers. Excuse me! Time travelers are great. Like, the best. Like, wow.” It’s adorable. But he doesn’t tell her he is one. He also doesn’t tell her he’s an alien, at any point in their adventure. And she doesn’t ask. Which is interesting. 

So they need to get out of the little hold they’re in to save the baby, and the Doctor realizes the ship is tied together with knots, so he has to learn that language too, and he does. They escape into some equivalent of ventilation shafts, and they stumble upon the main area of the ship where a ton of goblins are getting ready to devour a baby.

But FIRST, they’re gonna do a musical number? The lyrics of which explain what’s going on, and introduces the Goblin King? Because that’s something we’re doing now. I told you, I’m climbing aboard. So it’s hilarious when the Doctor and Ruby drop down from the rafters and the Doctor is like ‘I’m going with it’ and he joins in on the song, Ruby too. Like fuck it, this is weird and we’re DOING it. 

So they use their part of the musical number to distract everyone and get their hands on the baby, and the Doctor reverses the power of his new fancy gloves to pull them down out of the ship, and back to Ruby’s apartment. 

Nice and clean, right? Back in the house, the Doctor says he doesn’t think the ship will try to invade, that they thrive on accidents instead so they start running around the house making sure that nothing can go wrong. In the middle of it, Ruby’s mom comes home and they’re trying to explain the Doctor and reassure her that everything’s fine and the three of them are in the room with the baby and they’re talking about all the kids that Ruby’s mom has fostered, 33 including the baby. 

The Doctor says “I’m adopted”, so we really are going with the timeless child thing, but the point is it’s a coincidence and there’s a weird storm brewing outside and then there’s a loud CRACK and the roof of the apartment has a giant seam running through it and the Doctor runs through the house to make sure everything is alright, he thinks that maybe the goblins have gone and wrecked the apartment as a parting gift, but when he makes it back to the bedroom, there is only the baby and Ruby’s mom. Ruby is gone. 

And her mom has completely forgotten her. The pictures of all the foster kids she had on her refrigerator are gone, and she’s complaining about needing to  foster this random baby on Christmas Eve, she’s clearly not the woman she was, and the Doctor realizes the goblins have gone, but they’ve gone back to the night Ruby was left outside a church, and have taken her instead. 

Out to the TARDIS he goes to intercept them. And they’re there, the night Ruby was abandoned, singing again about how they’re going to eat her. So he uses his gloves again, he gets a hold of their rope ladder and he starts to PULL. Down, and down, and down. And the ship is directly over the church that’s got a nice pointy little steeple. And it gets impaled. And we see the steeple go directly through the Goblin King, and then boom, the entire ship disintegrates.

Super helpful, those gloves. Finding positivity in past trauma, and all that. 

So the Doctor grabs baby Ruby and puts her outside the church door like she’s supposed to be, and she gets scooped up exactly the way she had been meant to. And the Doctor sees her mother walking away, and Ruby had so desperately wanted to know who she was, but he doesn’t go after her. I can’t help but think that’s going to be a thing, later. That sort of situation is always a thing, later. 

Back in the present, the Doctor returns to the apartment and Ruby is fine, if a little confused. He tells her that they went back and she was gone and she doesn’t understand it but then he’s popping out again because he needs to help a woman who had gotten caught up in Ruby’s accidents and coincidences. Once that’s done, he’s  out on the street again, about to go back inside but he stops and he says “maybe I’m the bad luck” so don’t worry y’all, not all that trauma is gone. He’s still doubting Doctor a little bit underneath. 

Meanwhile, Ruby is putting it together a little bit. The stuff he had said about time travelers and how the goblins went back and how he mentioned spending a summer with Houdini and she grabs her coat and runs out to the street. And there’s the box. With its door open, just a bit ajar. And she peeks in, and then she circles it, touching the sides. She doesn’t SAY it’s bigger on the inside, but her face implies it. 

And then she gets in. And she asks, “who are you?” and he just smiles all debonair and he says “I’m the Doctor.” 

Basically, I’m bought in. Even if it was a little bit silly, and I never got an explanation about what the goblins really were or where they were from. Even if we’re using random gadgets now. Because each of them are their own thing, and that’s what’s so good about it. You have to let the last one go a little bit. You have let each one of them go, a little bit, and embrace whoever the Doctor is now. Which I’ve struggled with in the past, after Matt Smith I was devastated for a while and ended up just binging 12 and 13 a little begrudgingly, but I’m gonna follow 15 along his way, and it’s gonna be different and weird and good. It’s always good. 

15, let’s get it.

#what g's watching #doctor who spoilers #doctor who christmas special #fifteenth doctor #ncuti gatwa #nunuwho #doctor who #church on ruby road

[what-gs-watching]

"Why is no one having a good time? I specifically requested it."

Here’s a thing: my husband used to watch a ton of tv, all the time. Always had something on in the background. But then he got sucked into TikTok and his attention span broke, so I’ve been watching most things myself.

He just put together a snack to wind down from his work day, and came back in for a glass of milk. I’m on the couch and as he swished by he said “I just turned on Brooklyn Nine-Nine”, which in and of itself was surprising, only to continue “and remembered he’s dead…” and I let out a wail I’ve been mostly ignoring. 

Andre Braugher, I’m so sad that you’re gone. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one of my absolute favorite comfort shows, and I’m not sure how I’m going to stand it now, for a while. Captain Holt is iconic, you can’t watch that show and not fall in love with him. 

And now it’s just…sad.

Nine-Nine is another one of those shows I started watching religiously while it was airing on cable, the entirety of the reason being Andy mother-effing Samberg. I have been in love with him (and the Lonely Island, which we should talk about eventually) since that crazy man joined SNL and so nothing was going to tear me away from his randon sitcom. I came for him, obviously, but I stayed for everyone else.

Including, and mostly, Captain Raymond Holt. 

I’m not gonna lie, he might be the most realized, well-defined character on the show. The man has layers. Gay, black cop who finally becomes captain of his own squad. Deadly serious, married to a professor, proud dog dad, lover of rules, hard grudge-holder, extremely literal and blunt, with the weirdest sense of humor. 

Most of the best moments of this show involve Holt. There’s an entire scene wherein the squad is put on the night shift and it’s fucking with everyone’s relationships and someone suggests his bad mood is because he needs to  bone down with his husband. His reaction has me crying every single time.

He has a dance-off with a kid on the street. He goes undercover as a straight person and does it hilariously. He gets incredibly, heavily, disturbingly invested in the Halloween heist game Jake sets up each year. He creates a ridiculous balloon arch for a wedding and gets deeply attached to it, and is infuriated by the fact that everyone thinks it’s weird as hell. He has the most fantastic arch rival relationship with an old partner, to the point where he plans to deliver a scathing eulogy when she unexpectedly dies. He learns the choreography set to Salt ‘N Peppa’s “Push It” and performs it to distract Amy while she’s giving birth. 

It feels like a lot of characters on tv are two-dimensional, but good lord, Holt was in full technicolor, and it’s obvious the reason it works so well is because Andre Braugher was a master of his craft. He WAS Holt, for a lot of people, including me. No one else could have stepped in and created that man. 

Throughout the show, Jake treated him like a surrogate dad because his own father (lol at Bradley Whitford in that role) was a dumpster fire, and it was really sweet. He just wanted validation, and acceptance.

In the finale, he tells Jake, "On my first day here, I asked Jeffords to tell me about everyone, He told me you were a great detective, but the one thing you couldn’t figure out was how to grow up. Well, I think you’ve finally figured it out. Over the years, you’ve sometimes referred to me as something of a father figure, but I want you to know, if I had had a son, and he had turned out like you, I would be very proud of him.”

I have a dad of my own, he’s wonderful and I love him and we have a great relationship, but y’all, Holt can be a surrogate dad for me too. He can be one for everyone. He always had a pearl of wisdom and he supported the entire squad in absolutely everything, and he was just an excellent human. Who was FUNNY and multidimensional and just…dope. 

He’s one of those perfect characters. And they don’t come along that often. So I guess the point is, thank you, Andre Braugher, for bringing him to life, and giving us the gift that is Captain Raymond Holt. I’m glad we still have him, even if we don’t have you.

#brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #captain holt #captain raymond holt #andre braugher #andy samberg #what g's watching #comfort show

[what-gs-watching]

GANG. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO US!

Gaiman said, "Now in Season Three, we will deal once more with the end of the world. The plans for Armageddon are going wrong. Only Crowley and Aziraphale working together can hope to put it right. And they aren’t talking.”

But my broken heart can't help but hope that in season 3 Crowley finally gets to finish this sentence...

The wait begins, friends. Cheers to the brainrot!

#what g's watching #good omens #aziraphale x crowley #good omens season 3 #crowley loves aziraphale #neil gaiman #gomens

[what-gs-watching]

“Well…maybe I’ll save you.”

I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING.

Sorry.

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

That’s not much better, is it.

I just finished The Giggle and I’m sobbing over the fact that 10 finally gets everything he was chasing and I am clearly unwell. I knew this episode was going to break me but I didn’t realize how far they were going to push us over the cliff. Like. You don’t get this in Doctor Who, not ever. That’s almost the appeal of it, sometimes. 

But Russell T Davies just ripped out everyone’s heart in the best possible way.  I really can’t.

Blorp. Okay. 

The thing is….the thing is - I think everybody needed that. How satisfying must this be for David Tennant? And Catherine Tate? How are they not fit to bursting right now? That was so beautiful, gang. And they must be so proud.

But I’m gonna focus. Also, didn’t I say catharsis? Jesus christ, you can’t get more than that. I’m pretty sure they hit the fucking limit on catharsis. Wow. I’m a mess.

Focusing, though: wherein the Doctor and Donna have to say humanity from their own terrible base instincts because the Toymaker loves a good game. 

So we open on Soho in 1925 (which, is anyone else wondering where A.Z. Fell & Co is in relationship to the street they’re showing? No? Just me? Okay cool) and we’re taken into a creepy toy shop where we meet Neil Patrick Harris doing a super weird German accent and being a general creep. He sells a dummy to a man who says he needs it for his boss, who is around the corner working on inventing the concept of television broadcasting for the very first time.  

They pop the head off the dummy and leave it in a setup surrounded by a ton of lightbulbs and they go into another room to test it all out - and it works. But the heat from the bulbs is hot, too hot, which is why they needed an object, not an actual person. But of course, the creepy toyseller was obviously up to no good, and as the broadcast continues, the dummy head melts and lets out a terrible little giggle. Clearly, we’re in trouble.

Back in the present, the Doctor and Donna are in the streets of London trying to figure out what’s happening. Some guy argues with 14 who tries to stop him from attacking a car, saying that his taxes pay for the street but he doesn’t drive and he has the right to do whatever he wants with the roadway, thank you. Perfectly sound logic, and the guy is belligerent, saying two days ago everyone in the world decided they were right and wouldn’t listen to reason.  So that’s exciting.

Soon enough, UNIT finds them and they’re told to get Wilf somewhere safe while the Doctor and Donna follow them to headquarters. Where we finally get our eyes on Kate Lethbridge-Stewart who I absolutely love, she’s the “bitches get shit done” Tina Fey gif come to LIFE. Bitch will always be the new black, and that’s Kate, and exactly how she runs UNIT, loading it full of equally brilliant women, including Shirley who we’d met when dealing with The Meep, and Melanie, who was a companion to the 6th Doctor,

Who run the world? GIRLS.

Anyway, we get into explanation mode - two days ago there was a spike in aggression worldwide, the same spike across the board. It’s affecting everyone, even the people in government, but UNIT has a fun device that helps keep everyone wearing one sane. And Kate decides she’s going to demonstrate how fucked up the situation is - she asks them to take her device offline, so they do.

And she proceeds to spew a bunch of terrible things at the Doctor - how he’s an alien with two hearts that have infiltrated them and can’t be trusted, and then she takes shots at poor Shirley who’s in a goddamn wheelchair and it’s really gross to watch, it’s one of the worst parts of humanity and she tries to avoid having her device turned back on, but they finally subdue her. It’s some serious shit, gang.

They say that the spikes aren’t coming from outside, they’re in everyone’s head, except for Donna, and Melanie, who have spent significant time in the TARDIS. And for extra fun, two days ago a satellite went up that finally connected the entirety of the earth to the internet, and now, everyone has access to a screen. 

And of course, Donna is working something out about the spike they’ve found, saying that she spent six months teaching Rose how to play the recorder; she thinks it’s a tune. Melanie sings it out and it strikes with everyone, like they’ve known it for years. And then Shirley finds it, it’s not a tune, it’s the laugh from the dummy. The Doctor figures out that the image has been burnt into television itself, into all the screens everyone is attached to every minute of everyday.

As they’re getting the date of the exact transmission, 14 gives Kate permission to shoot the satellite down, even though it’ll start an international incident. He’s the president of the world, and I love that. Her relief is palpable.

He also has a little moment with Melanie, which is so sweet. I love that whenever he rolls up to someone he hasn’t seen in decades, he always mutters the kindest little “hello.” Just for them. His attention completely focused. It must feel like a sun shining directly on you. I literally have a collection of David Tennant saying “hello” in my mind, ugh it’s so something. 

During all of this, Kate is telling Donna she did well working out the spikes, and she offers her a job at UNIT once everything has settled. Pure Donna, she asks how much the salary is, and then counters with DOUBLE the amount and 5 weeks paid vacation which is immediately accepted. BAMF, BAMF, BAMF. Get what’s yours, baby girl.

So much going on. Okay, so they go back to 1925, and 14 is all about what they need to do but Donna wants to hear about Mel because he’s never once mentioned her. He never does, he never talks about them. Rose a bit, yes, but usually no. Not ever. And he reminds her he’s old as hell and he can’t just chat about everyone, but it’s more than that. She tells him he never stops moving, she says “You are staggering along. Maybe that's why your old face came back. You're wearing yourself out” and that’s the crux of the matter, friends. 14 is wonderful, we’re all in love with him, but he’s definitely bleeding out everything. All over the place. And it’s so sad to see him so run down. But, classic 10, he ignores her.

They find the toyshop of course, and the Doctor recognizes the Toymaker. Who immediately starts a game of catch with the Doctor, because he’s a fucking weirdo like that, and 14 looks incredibly determined and also freaked out but Donna puts a stop to it, and the Toymaker disappears. 

They follow him deeper into the shop and surprise! They find themselves in a never ending hallway full of doors, and each door just leads to another hallway. Which should be impossible, but we’re told that the Toymaker is only governed by the rules of play, so he can basically do whatever the eff he wants.

Donna gets the story out of him as they wander - the Doctor had once gone into another realm, where he played a game against the Toymaker and apparently won, but he said he made a terrible mistake. Poor kiddo is really raw all of a sudden, he says “I'm always so certain. I'm all sonic and TARDIS and Time Lord. Take that away... Take away the toys... what am I? What am I now?” and then he tells Donna, “I don’t know…if I can save your life this time.”

Scrawny little 14 all exposed and helpless and I told you, he’s bleeding all over the place, and she just tells him, “Well…maybe I’ll save you.”

THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS, and she’s definitely gonna save him, just not in the way he thinks. And it’s so good.

Speeding ahead, they keep wandering through the halls and then they get separated of course and Donna gets attacked by the dummy that was supposed to be the original dummy’s wife and his creepy babies but she beats them obviously, and the Doctor gets taunted by the Toymaker but they find each other eventually.

And then they’re pulled into a room with a little stage where the Toymaker puts on a puppet show about exactly what has happened to the Doctor’s companions since he traveled with Donna. And it’s so sad to listen to him try to justify everyone’s fate - Amy died of old age, but in a time and place she was never meant to. Clara was killed by a bird but technically saved in her last moments of life. Bill was turned into a cyberman, but her consciousness lived on. No happy endings, for the Doctor and his friends, not ever. 

 To stop the show, the Doctor challenges the Toymaker to a game. And Donna’s afraid the Toymaker will cheat, but it seems the rules of the game bind his entire existence: the Doctor will either win or lose. So they cut a deck, and the highest card wins. And it’s the Toymaker, with a king.

But the Doctor finds a loophole - he won the first game, the Toymaker one the second game, and that prompts another, the best of three. Which the Toymaker accepts, but he wants that game to be played back in the present. 

Meanwhile at UNIT headquarters they’re shooting down the new satellite, and the Doctor and Donna appear to try and figure out a way to force the Toymaker out of the universe they way he’d come, but it’s too late. 14 is explaining something and then “Spice Up Your Life” is playing, and I’m sorry but L O L at the entire dance scene with NPH that unfolds. It’s hilarious, and creepy, and it definitely goes on too long, but I’ll allow a little pageantry. He turns UNIT’s bullets into flower petals and it’s a little terrifying, how much power he possesses and that’s the point. And then as soon as he’s arrived, he disappears again. 

Just kidding though, the Toymaker is out on the platform where the beam they used to take down the satellite is still set up and ready to roll, and he’s got control of it. So everyone of course rushes out to try and stop him. 

The Doctor tries to talk him down, of course. He asks why he’s choosing to be so horrible when he can do so many good things, and the Toymaker reminds him he’s just a vastness that good and bad don’t apply to, only winning and losing. The Doctor tells him he’s a vastness that contains so much more, and then he suggests they take the game away from earth, that they can play across the cosmos. 

He says “we can be…celestial” - and I’m dying inside. Is anyone else wondering what Aziraphale’s reaction to that sentence would have been? So many little bits of Good Omens, it’s slightly painful. 

Also, I appreciate that the Doctor is always trying to turn enemies into his playmates. 10 did it with the Master, too. It makes sense, he’s always off with humans but why wouldn’t entities that are more in line with what he is, want to travel with him? They always say no. Because y’all are too obsessed with your own drama to recognize what a fucking opportunity that is. Idiots.

So yeah, that doesn’t work and the Toymaker declares that since he played the first two games with different doctors, he wants to play the final game with the next Doctor. AND HE SHOOTS 14 WITH THE GIANT FUCKING LASER. 

It’s agonizing. It’s terrible. And Donna and Mel rush to his side as he starts to regenerate, because they don’t want him to be alone. They tell him he’s not dying, and they don’t care who he is, because every version of him is fantastic. And that’s what he needed to hear the first time. Every time, really.

And then he says “It's time. Here we go again. Allons-y!” (squee!) but…nothing happens. So he asks them to pull, yank on his arms, and they’re like ‘um’ but they do and THEN:

Out pops 15. And I’m losing my fucking mind. 

Here’s the thing, gang. There is one sure fire way to make the new Doctor capture everyone’s heart, and that is apparently to let him interact with 14. Because everything that happens after this is incredible.

15 says “You're me. No, I'm me. I think I'm really, really me. Oh-ho-ho, I am completely me!” and he tells 14 to push, and they’re both like ‘will this work?’ and they’re laughing and they push against each other and they’re two separate entities and it’s amazing. 

14 obviously was all done up in his traditional suit (minus the coat) so now suddenly 15 is wearing the dress shirt, and the tie, and their charming little tightie whities, and the CONVERSES! And 14’s still got the pants, the undershirt, the vest, completely barefoot. I’m delighted and crying my eyes out. 

So apparently they’ve bi-generated, which is supposed to be a myth and 15 asks Mel what she thinks and she says “I think you’re beautiful” and 14 pipes up, “still beautiful?!” and it’s all so good but the Toymaker is exasperated and then both Doctor’s say “I challenge you to a game” but he doesn’t like that. He’d caused the bi-generation and he doesn’t want to play both of them but he can’t say no.

What follows is the highest stakes game of catch that has literally ever existed. 14 and 15 are ducking and bobbing and weaving and catching and it’s ridiculous but also so filled with tension; whoever drops the ball, loses. David Tennant is a 50-something year old spindly noodle and oh my god he’s just crushing the entire thing, I could watch this all day. 

But someone has to lose, and thank god, eventually it’s the Toymaker. They decide their prize is going to be banishing him from existence forever. He gets folded up into a little square of douchebag, shoved in a box, and left to rot in the deepest recesses of UNIT’s storage. 

And it’s wonderful! But 14 can’t help but think of all of the people that died. And here is where 15 worms into everyone’s heart for the rest of eternity: he reminds 14 that he can’t save everyone, and then he grabs him into a hug and he says “Come here. I've got you. Yeah? It's OK. I'm here” and he kisses 14’s forehead. 

It’s what the Doctor has always needed, but never got. A reminder from himself that what he does matters, that he’s good and he tries and it’s okay when things don’t go perfectly, but he does save people. He deserves acceptance from himself, and if he can’t give it in his own mind, he can get it from someone else who is literally him. It’s fucking beautiful.

They head back to the TARDIS and 14 shows 15 all the bells and whistles and 14 wonders how it’s going to work, the two of them? 15 makes him stop his anxious rambling, tells him “you're thin as a pin, love. You're running on fumes.” He keeps talking, about all of the things they’ve seen and done. The Pandorica, The Time War, losing River and Rose. The fact that Sarah Jane has died. 14 says, “I loved her” and 15 says “I loved her.” 

15 reminds him that they haven’t stopped, not for a second. But he’s fine, because 14 had fixed himself. He says “We’re doing rehab out of order.” And it’s true; 15 has taken in everything that Donna has been trying to get 14 to understand, he has the sweetness and the willingness to express his feelings that 14 finally learned, and now he’s putting his foot down, to himself. His old self. He’s telling 14 that he has to stop. 

But 14 doesn’t know how, and Donna tells him that he just has to exist, every single day, in and out. Over and over. And that’s the adventure. She says “I've worked out what happened. You changed your face... and then you found me. Do you know why?”

“To come home.”

If you didn’t lose it at that, you might need to examine your inner workings. It’s a punch to the gut. And it’s absolutely true. It’s the one thing the Doctor has never had, but now he can. And the way 14 asks “Do you mean…he flies off?” is so sad and small, and deflating, like he can’t imagine being pried away and made to stop and just be and exist. It’s terrifying for him. And he knows he can’t leave the TARDIS, it would hurt.

15 has an idea though, he thinks they might have a little bit of time, still being governed by a state of play, so he produces a sledge hammer and he hops out of the TARDIS, followed by 14 and Donna. 

He wields the hammer and he says “You get a prize, honey. And here is mine!” and he SWINGS against the TARDIS, and out pops another perfect little blue police box (and he runs a hand down the first one, saying “I’m sorry!”). Two TARDIS’s, two doctors. 

(I’m also swooning over 15’s use of endearments - love, honey - he’s gonna kill me.)

14 goes in to inspect the new TARDIS, he’s reverent almost, and it’s much the same, but it’s got a jukebox. He wanders back to his own TARDIS and 15 hops into the new one and powers her up and he’s definitely about to leave without a goodbye but 14 bounds back in with Donna to get what they’re owed. Which is hugs and a little sass. 15 says “off you pop, old man” and I love that, but they remind him he’s the older of the two now, so he says “Okay, kid. I love you. Get out!”

15 is full of the love the Doctor never gets to give freely, but he’s ready now, and I’m so excited to watch that unfold. It’s so perfect and beautiful that 14 is the one who gets to feel it first. Baby boy needs so much more, and he’s gonna get it.

And so, off they both go. 15 to his endless adventures, 14 to something even more scary.

The last scene is a dinner at Donna’s, wherein 14 is telling a ridiculous story about using his eyebrows to communicate (Crowley, Crowley, Crowley…) and it’s just banter and it’s so good. We find out that he’s taking Mel on little adventures in the TARDIS, even Rose a time or two. He says “Just can’t turn down my favorite niece” and oh, it’s so lovely. He says “That’s what you are. With my best friend, my brother-in-law, the evil stepmother, and mad auntie Mel.” 

The desperate wanderer, a man who has run for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years in a multitude of faces, finally has a family. 

Donna tells him he doesn’t have to stay forever, and then she asks him if he misses it out there. And his face, oh y’all his face as he says “The funny thing is, I fought all those battles for all those years... and now I know what for. This. I've never been so happy in my life”, it’s EVERYTHING.

Never, not once, has the Doctor gotten this. Usually, things work out just enough that it barely soothes the pain of what was lost. Never has he won so fully, so completely. Donna restored, and the chance to finally relish what he’s been protecting for so long. And no one deserved it more than 10 and 14.

The Doctor doesn’t have to be all hard edges and fire and war and unrelenting motion. He can be soft and vulnerable and he can accept help and he can love. 

And I didn’t even realize I wanted to see that. Doctor Who is like letting yourself believe in a higher power, a little bit. Believing in a species that maybe isn’t beholden to all of the disgusting emotions we have to deal with, he’s strong when we can’t be. He’s strong all the time. But I don’t think I’ve ever connected as much to an arch as I did to this one. We can’t be strong all the time. No one can. 

Watching the Doctor stop, and be taken care of for once, I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. Catharsis, on all sides. For everyone. I needed all of that way more than I’m ever willing to admit.

No matter what’s going on in the real world, at least now, somewhere out there 14 is hanging out at Donna’s house, telling silly stories and helping cook dinner and teaching Rose a bunch of science she should never get her hands on, and that’s satisfying in a way I can’t explain.

Basically, I’m so thankful for Doctor Who. And I can’t wait to see what happens next…

#what g's watching #doctor who 60th anniversary #doctor who #fourteenth doctor #tenth doctor #fifteenth doctor #donna noble #doctor who spoilers #david tennant #the giggle spoilers #ncuti gatwa #catherine tate

[what-gs-watching]

"HOW GREAT IS THIS PARTY?!"

So here’s a thing: I’ve been in a bit of a rut in terms of what I’m watching. I’ve clearly been doing a ton of comfort binging - Supernatural, Good Omens, Murder She Wrote, etc. because I can’t get my brain to focus on anything, I’ve just been trying (and very much succeeding) at turning it off.

But the other day, my sister came to the rescue. She and I definitely have different opinions on what’s good (again, she got all the way through Good Omens, and was like “I never got a romantic vibe from them…” which caused the biggest eyeroll of my life, possibly). Sometimes, though, she comes through. Which led me to…

THE AFTERPARTY on Apple TV.

You’ve never heard of it, right? Because I definitely hadn’t. Which is crazy because I am 10000000% their core audience. Like, so hard. And it’s soooo good.

Wherein a group of friends attend an afterparty, and somebody ends up dead. 

This is one show I don’t wanna ruin, because I had absolutely no idea what would happen going into it and it was SO delightful, so I won’t get too detailed but there is a ton to love about this show.

One of which is the cast. 

Tiffany Haddish is the detective that’s attempting to solve the murder. And sometimes I feel like she's wayyyyy too much, but she is the perfect amount of something in this show. Honestly one of my favorite parts. She’s fucking hilarious. Her method is insane and perfect, it’s exactly the way I’d go about solving a murder, and it’s just enough of ridiculous.

And Ike Barinholtz! And the dude who plays Gabe on The Office. AND JACK WHITEHALL, aka freakin’ NEWT from Good Omens season 1. Who you will absolutely not recognize because he’s hot as hell. And Ken Jeong. And John Cho! And weirdo Dave Franco. 

ALSO, Ben Schwartz, aka JEAN RALPHIO from Parks and Rec! Jean Ralphio is one of my absolute favorite insane characters, he’s so obnoxious and silly and his character Yasper in this show is similar, but also really charming. I was immediately in love with him because I’m a super weirdo, and his episode in the first season was definitely a highlight. I promise you’re gonna be singing “Yeah, Sure, Whatever” for a couple of days.

And that’s another thing - each of the episodes have their own motifs, which is clever and fun. A romcom episode, a musical episode. An episode that seems like a thriller movie. A heist caper. There’s even one that’s a fucking Wes Anderson love letter, which made me laugh out loud. 

Each season is dedicated to a murder and both are self-contained, which I appreciate, with a few characters recurring. Maybe people more clever than me can predict who the murderer is, but I have to say, I love the surprise. And both of them were definitely a shock to me. I was basically live-tweeting at my sister, who’d also gotten my parents into it,  while I watched and made her promise ‘no spooooilies’, so all she would say was “none of us could guess who did it.” 

The point is, it’s just a dope show. Again, satisfying my blood lust, but in a hilarious way. It’s FUN. And I haven’t been excited to watch anything new in a while, and it helped in my effort to wake my brain up (if only minutely, it’s an effing process y’all). Apple TV apparently canceled it after the second season which is a huge miss on their part, but there are no cliffhangers and it’s just silly and wonderful. And it made me happy, which I appreciate. 

So yeah, go watch it. You know you’re subscribed to Apple TV even if you forgot about it after Ted Lasso ended. And then, maybe watch Ted Lasso again…

#the afterparty #what g's watching #tiffany haddish #ben schwartz #apple tv #murder shows #jack whitehall

[what-gs-watching]

"I WILL get you home."

Let’s be real. No one cares what I’m up to right now (it’s nothing, I’m up to nothing) because the second Doctor Who special came out the other day.

WILD BLUE YONDER.

Wherein 14 and Donna end up in an abandoned spaceship at the edge of a wormhole and they meet their own evil not-selves. 

This one was so ridiculous, I absolutely love it. It’s so Doctor Who to drop them somewhere and just make them run through insanely long corridors the entire time. It’s one of my favorite motifs. 10 was always running and licking things and obviously 14 had to, too. 

Before the spaceship nonsense though we get the silliest opener, the Doctor and Donna ending up in a tree in 1666 where they come across Sir Isaac Newton - who didn’t know he was a Sir of course and 14 just said “spoilers!” and I lost my shit a little bit. River effing Song, for liiiife.

But the joke Donna intended on making, the Doctor trying to stop her, I’m dead. The two of them delivering the punchline together. It was all about the banter in this episode. The banter, and sheer terror, of course. But I am 97% here for the banter. I guess I’ll take a little bit of a scare, whatever. 

Anyway, they end up crashing in this spaceship and Donna’s all worked up and it’s gotta be the most posted scene: 14 grabbing her hand, holding it to his chest, kissing her knuckles, promising he’d get her home safe.

Here’s the thing, friends - 10 never got to be affectionate, ever. He couldn’t tell Rose he loved her before he was cut off from her. And even when she got to keep his human clone, we didn’t get to hear it then. He was all fury and intelligence and closed off to protect everyone and I’m so excited 14 gets to be more…human. The Doctor has been through a LOT since he last saw Donna and he knows she deserves to know how much he cares about her and it’s just pouring out of him and I’m so fucking smitten. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. 

Anyway, to try and fix the situation he sticks the sonic screwdriver into the keyhole of the TARDIS, encouraging it to rebuild itself while they investigate their surroundings. Which leads them to the long ridiculous hallway. Wherein some of my favorite banter comes in: Donna thinks that Isaac Newton was hot, and 14 agrees, “He was, wasn't he? He was so hot. Oh! Is that who I am now?” Donna’s response of “well it was never that far from the surface…” was perfect, and if you’re not squealing at this point, what’s going on with you? That’s a serious question. Can 14 be my favorite if he only gets three episodes? Is that wrong?

Just kidding though! Banter interrupted. They hear the TARDIS powering up and when they pop back into the hold they crashed in, she disappears. The Doctor thinks that she’s detected an imminent threat, and will return when it’s passed. 

Not great news. But Donna fucking Noble says “There's something on this ship that's so bad the TARDIS ran away? Then we... go... and kick its arse!” because she’s a BAMF and it’s best we don’t forget that. 

Back out in the hallway they get back to bickering and it’s all nice and easy but then they hear the ship say something and the hallway rearranges themselves which is disconcerting. They’d seen something in the hallway at a distance, so the Doctor figures out there’s a transport vehicle hidden in the floor and they hop in. They reach the thing and it’s a ridiculously old robot that moves one step, barely, and they’re perplexed by that but they hop back into the vehicle and I love Donna mocking 14’s love of “allons-y!” and they’re just cute and amazing and my favorite.

They find what I’m assuming is the control room and the Doctor sets to figuring out what’s going on. No life signs on the ship, but an airlock door was opened and then closed three years ago. They send out a drone they find, and slowly 14 realizes where they are: essentially the edge of the universe. Further out than the Doctor has ever been. And he’s so fascinated by it. And then they hear the ship announce another word, and it rearranges itself again and they wander to try and find more information. 

In some room with a bunch of shelving, 14 pulls out a drawer with a bunch of circuit things that look like they’re covered in honey. When Donna asks if they’re dangerous, he LICKS one and then fakes like he was poisoned, like, baby boy probably not the best time, but again! The banter, the playfulness! It’s giving everyone life. 

He tells her to move up a bunch of the circuit things into the tray above and then he leaves her to go investigate another room with a bunch of water tubes? Sure. They should be able to hear each other while he adjusts water levels. Next thing we see is 14 rejoining Donna, and they’re chatting as usual, she wondering how long her family will wait for her in that alleyway, after seeing the TARDIS disappear in distress. 

Then we see Donna entering the room the Doctor is in, saying she finished moving the circuits but it doesn't’ feel right, and then they’re cutting back and forth between Donna talking to the Doctor in one room and the Doctor talking to Donna in another. Boop, y’all in danger. 

Like this should be disconcerting but my favorite part of the entire sequence is the Doctor that Donna is with says “my arms are too long” and she just brushes it off like, ‘yeah you’re gangly AF’ and then the Donna that the Doctor is with says “my arms are too long” and he reacts like ‘humans are super weird, I get it’ like neither one are at all put off by the non-sequitur. They’re such best friends. 

But then the Donna the Doctor is with DOES have an arm that’s too long and panic sets in and then there are 2 Doctors and 2 Donna’s and isn’t that fun?! The duplicates tell them that they came from the nothingness, they’re “not-things” and then they start GROWING so of course it’s time to run. 

I’m sorry, but watching the two of them be pursued by weird stretched out versions of themselves is actually kind of hilarious. Creepy as hell, but also extremely entertaining. As they run they figure out that the not-things are making copies of them, their bodies and their minds, they have their memories, and that’s not gonna be great y’all, how are they gonna tell each other apart?!

Eventually the copies get so big they get wedged in the hallway and the Doctor spots a ladder so he starts to climb it along with Donna, but then the hallway rearranges itself again and they get separated, dumped into different corridors. 14 yells at her to stay put but she doesn’t, she starts moving and he starts moving and eventually they both find doors, and on the other side of both of those doors is the Doctor, and Donna. 

We don’t know who is who, either, and that’s really the stakes of the whole thing. How do the real Doctor and Donna know it’s each other, and not a copy? Y’all want a perfect excuse to yell at the tv? Because this is yell-at-the-tv territory. Just me curled up in a blanket shouting, “I don’t think that’s him, baby girl! That’s not ya boy!”

And so they try to figure out a way to tell who is actually who, and it’s bumbling and they’re trying to reason it out and it just doesn’t go well. The Doctor that’s with Donna says he’ll take off his tie because maybe the duplicates don’t understand matter like that. The Donna that’s with the Doctor asks him where she was born and launches into some crazy story and they’re just muddling through it. 

At this point I’m like, ‘well it’s got to be that each of them are with a duplicate because if the duplicates came upon each other then they’d just like, keep moving? Because they know they’re duplicates’ but it’s fine, whatever. Here’s where it gets sad - The Donna the Doctor is with starts to tell him that when she was The DoctorDonna she saw all the things he went through in those fifteen years, and she mentions The Flux.

I have a lot of problems with The Flux, I can’t lie. But let’s ignore it, because I guess it’s canon now, maybe? And the Doctor is devastated by the mention of it and that tips him over the edge, he just wants someone to understand the utter shitstorm he went through and so he thinks it’s Donna, he says, “all those years, I missed you”  but JK IT’S NOT. He falls for it. But the duplicate sinks into the floor because they’re bad at being solid and she’s so intrigued by what he is because he’s basically controlled the universe and I can imagine that’s super attractive to a not-thing made of nothingness.

Meanwhile Donna figures out the Doctor she’s with is a duplicate, because he doesn’t maintain the tie on the floor that he took off, and then everyone is running again and the ship rearranges itself and all 4 of them  end up back in the control room, still trying to suss out who is who. 

The Doctor is talking fast and the duplicate is trying to do the same and one of the Donna’s says they’re stupid and they both reiterate it’s true but then the Doctor says that Donna thinks she’s stupid but she also thinks she’s brilliant because humans can believe different things at the same time. So they look at each other, realizing they’re both the right ones and Donna says “brain box!” and 14 yells “earth girl!” and they hug. So much hugging in this episode.

The point is though, the duplicates are copying them because they’re thinking and their adrenaline level is up so the real two of them try to calm down and not think but we all know the Doctor,  he has to run a mile a minute always and forever and he can’t give up on the puzzle they’re in: who opened the airlock? Why is the ship rearranging itself? What’s the random clanging they keep hearing? 

He realizes the duplicates don’t know the answer either. But they know the TARDIS will come back for the Doctor and Donna and they want to escape and apparently cause a bunch of wars throughout the universe? Because of course. Perfect sense. Why wouldn’t not-being be blood thirsty? Then the skylight opens in the control room and they see a body tethered to the ship, floating in the nothingness, the captain. 

The Doctor realized the captain did something to trap them in system and he has to work out why, which is not great because that’s what the duplicates want but the Doctor’s gonna doctor. They figures it out: the airlock opening was the captain going out, killing herself. She realized what the duplicates were doing and came up with a plan and then died so they couldn’t unravel it. The ship’s in a holding pattern because she pulled out an old robot they couldn’t copy and set it to basically destruct, slowly. The robot is walking toward a button, and the ship is rearranging slowly, marking out a countdown. 

The duplicates know they need to stop the robot, and the Doctor knows they need to speed up the countdown. So everyone’s running again. And there is a hilarious fight  between the Donna’s, and the Doctor is pursuing his duplicate and it’s a perfect chase sequence and everything is going nuts but the Doctor knows the TARDIS will come back when the danger is passed and then they hear “ONE” and there she is, to save the day. 

The right Doctor gets in and he does a hilarious little thing where we props the door open and propels her like a skateboard to where the Donna’s are fighting and he has to choose who is who. He picks the wrong one. And Donna is screaming and screaming begging not to be left behind and the duplicate is approaching the Doctor like she’s going to eat him and then he says “your arms are too long” and expels her and grabs actual Donna, and they hug and huddle against each other at the foot of the console and it was all very HARROWING. 

Eventually, he asks her if she can see his memories from those 15 years, but she can’t, it’s gone. She asks him to tell her what really happened, what he went through, but true to 10 form, he doesn’t. He may be more human, but not enough to reveal how even more broken he is. She asks him if he’s okay and he says he will be, “in a million years.” But no matter what form the Doctor is in, I doubt that will ever happen. 

Meanwhile, here’s what most of us are waiting for - when they get back to the earth, the exact spot they’d flown away from, Donna flings the doors open and there’s Wilf, waiting. Like he always was. And the way the Doctor reacts to him, “Wilfred Mott! Ohhh, now I feel better. Now nothing is wrong, nothing in the whole wide world! Hello, me old soldier!” is so SWEET. 

Wilf’s face, seeing the Doctor again. He’s 94 and he had to lie to Donna for YEARS about what she’d been through and all that he knows, and he never thought he’d lay eyes on the Doctor again. It’s devastating, but even more so, because after the scene was shot, Bernard Cribbins fucking died. So yeah, everyone is sobbing. 

But there really isn’t time for that, turns out that people are just randomly attacking each other in the street and Wilf says everyone’s gone mad and it’s the end of the WORLD so they pull him into the TARDIS and off they go.

Woof, y’all. It was a lot. But also a perfectly encapsulated Doctor/Donna romp in the middle of bigger things, and I just love all of it. I would watch the two of them run around together until the end of time. I think we all would. The final episode is gonna break me, but oooh weee it’s been a good ride so far. 

#what g's watching #doctor who 60th anniversary #fourteenth doctor #wild blue yonder #wilfred mott #david tennant #donna noble #doctor who #doctor donna

[what-gs-watching]

"It's the things we love most that destroy us."

The other night, I did the last live session for my career bootcamp, and I decided I was gonna take yesterday to myself and just chill out. 

Which led to me seeing an early movie. I honestly enjoy going to the movies by myself, sitting in a mostly empty theater and just getting lost in whatever is going on for a while. I’ve been meaning to go since this ‘hiatus’ started and there hadn’t really been anything enticing enough, but finally I gave in, and went to see

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. 

….Fuck, y’all. I came home and I felt a lot of WAYS about a LOT of things.

I read all of the original books while the movies were coming out. They were lent to me by one of my forever best friend slash favorite coworker - this dude was NOT the type of person to ever, ever read the Hunger Games but he did, and we got into the habit of swapping books and I ran through all of them. It was only fair, I’d made him read The Rum Diaries.

I love dystopian shit. I really do. I think most of us are fascinated with the idea of society breaking down. And also, how much worse it could actually be than it is now. That’s why I loved The Last of Us and Handmaid’s Tale and a million other things. It’s a curiosity. And a comfort, kind of.  Like, things are fucked, but look how much more fucked they could be, aren’t you kind of glad, now? 

So of course I was all in on a villain origin story for The Hunger Games. Who wouldn’t be? 

I’m not really sure what I was expecting. I haven’t read the book yet, I’m so behind on actual reading (has fanfic taken over my life? Yes) but holy HELL. Like, they made this movie and they put it out and they were like “people are terrible, here’s a wonderful example of that. Hope you can stomach it.”

Wherein, a young Coriolanus Snow  tries to mentor a tribute in the 10th annual Hunger Games (whose popularity is waning)  to victory so he can get some desperately needed money for his family and shit spirals incredibly out of control. 

Heartstrings are definitely pulled for Corio, I can’t deny it. He lives with his grandmother and his cousin and their family used to be powerful but his mother died in childbirth and his father was murdered during the rebellion and they show him and the cousin almost starving during that time and I get it. It’s unfortunate. But he gets into the academy and he sees his opportunity to finally get his family back to better footing, and that’s commendable.

He does some dubious shit in the beginning to help his standing - like making suggestions on how they can make the Games more popular again. Suggesting people need to get attached to the tributes, so they’ll be invested in their ultimate fates. That’s some psychological warfare. But also, it makes perfect sense. And it’s so gross. 

Then he gets attached to his tribute, Lucy Gray, and he’s determined to help her live, and of course it’s because if his tribute wins then he’ll supposedly get some prize money, but it also seems like cares about her. Along the way, his friendship with Sejanus, another academy student who is originally from district 2, and who is rightfully absolutely disgusted with the games, grows. Eventually, Corio cheats to help Lucy, even though he’s been explicitly told that cheating will come with terrible consequences. 

And so like, I’m with it so far. You gotta do some unsavory things to survive, we all do, it’s human nature. And that’s really the entire point of the movie but this motherfucker eventually takes it too far.  But he also helps Sejanus when he goes into the arena to try and protest what the fuck is going on, and so it’s like, a balancing act. 

Lucy Gray eventually wins the Hunger Games. I’m not gonna go into how fucked up all the death scenes during the Games are. Or how horrible the one girl is, leading a pack. There’s a lot of ruthlessness but also tenderness and it’s just as terrible  as all of the other Games are, with a lot less finesse. 

Anyway, after she wins, Snow is obviously punished and forced into being a peacekeeper in the districts, and he weasels his way to 12 where he knows Lucy is. And surprise! They fall in love. I am VERY curious to know how he gets away with running off with her all the time, that dude is supposed to be part of the military that shit should not be possible, but whatever. 

Turns out, Sejanus follows Crio to 12 too, and that’s sweet. Sejanus really thinks they’ve got a bond. And maybe they do. But he’s dealing with a fucking psychopath and he doesn’t know it. 

So sweet little Sejanus sees injustices in the district and he wants to help so he starts cavorting with rebels because of course he does, he’s the good guy in this fucking story, and Snow doesn’t approve but he’s also caught up in Lucy Gray and trying to figure out a way to get back to the capital, apparently.

And then it all comes to a head when he follows Sujanus to a secret rebel meeting and Snow ends up killing one of the dudes involved, and then the mayor’s daughter dies too, and tells Lucy and Sujanas no one can know about any of this obviously, and another guy takes the guns that were used and hides them.

The next day the Peacekeepers are obviously intent on finding the guns and hanging the killers. There’s some searching, and then they find one of the rebels involved. THEN we cut to two guys up in the noose, Corio standing guard like a good little keeper, and then they’re pulling SEJANUS up to the platform too and he’s crying for Snow to help him and he just watches and this poor kiddo is unceremoniously snapped at the neck. 

Afterward, Snow makes a plan to run away with Lucy Gray and so they go. Like, he must love her if he’s going to try and escape Panem with her forever? Like, he must be abandoning his family and going for it? He’s abandoning his chance to be sent to 2 for officer training as well, his way back into property society. So he must mean it? 

But when they stop at a cabin to get out of the rain, he discovers the guns they’d used in the murders. And he realizes he can get rid of them for good, and maybe he doesn’t have to escape after all. And Lucy can see the gears working in his mind and she knows he’s already lied to her because he let it slip that he’s killed 3 people and she was like ‘who was the 3rd?’ and I’m thinking the same thing too. And he lies about it. 

So she lies too, says she’s going out to forage some food and when he goes after her, he finds the scarf he gave her on the ground and when he picks it up, a snake she’d planted there bites him. And he loses his shit. He’s carrying the gun he used to kill that rebel and he’s screaming and when he catches a glimpse of her, he shoots. He wants to kill her, she’s a loose end now, just like that. 

Maybe she got away. We never really know. But honestly, in my mind, he got a good bite out of her and she eventually dies. Because it would make sense this asshole ruthlessly kills the one person he worked so hard to help survive, the one person who loved him, just out of self preservation. 

Afterwards, he goes back to 12 and finds out he’s being sent back to the capital. And we need to give ALL the kudos to Viola Davis for her portrayal of Gaul, who was the head gamemaster, and was absolutely out of her everloving mind. She’d been pushing Snow behind the scenes throughout, likely because one fucked up person can recognize another fucked up person with potential. 

So he meets with her, and we find out that he’d slipped information to her about Sejanus’s activities, and that’s why he was strung up. She wants him to attend university and become her protege. And he’s all about it. Sejanus’s family is going to pay his way because he was such a good friend and tried to do right by their kid (jesus christ y’all) and tada! Just like that, his family is restored to the status they expect and they have nice things now and everything is tickety-boo. 

At the end, he meets with Highbottom, the academy’s dean, who has been absolutely not a fan of Snow throughout his exploits. He’d been determined to keep the kid down, and at first you’re like ‘yo what’s your deal?’ but we come to find out that Highbottom had inadvertently invented the Hunger Games as a thought experiment, sharing it with his best friend, Snow’s father. Who took it, and had it implemented. And Highbottom’s been trying to stop it ever since. No wonder he wanted to get rid of Snow. 

Joke’s on him though, he’s hooked up morphling and after Snow leaves, he takes one of the viles that Snow had dumped on his desk, part of Sejanus’s personal effects, and immediately dies. Everyone that could of stopped him, everyone that could have been even vaguely a threat, gone.

And all of this, for what? Power and money? Security, I guess in some twisted way? Because he felt threatened? Did what happened to him turn him into this, or did what happened to him just show him he’s always been this way? 

I wanted a villain origin story and I got it. And I kind of hated it. Because they had me in the first half. Because maybe we all have the propensity to become something so horrific if we’re thrust into just the exactly right set of circumstances. I mean, maybe we don’t, but we could, and I don’t think anyone ever really wants to find out. 

Don’t make me look too close at humanity. That way lies madness. 

The point is: I probably did not need to feel all of that right now. But it was good in a way that makes you angry. And sometimes, life’s just like that. Sometimes snow lands on top. 

Fucking dystopian futures...

#what g's watching #hunger games #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #movies #dystopian future #coriolanus snow

[what-gs-watching]

“I really do remember though…every second with you."

So I’m in the last week of my bootcamp and I have a couple of job interviews this week and things are going I guess BUT my brain doesn’t really care about any of that.

Because Y’ALL. I’m still 1000000% inside the first episode of the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials. I’ve been waiting for this since I saw the first trailer in like September and David Tennant has been constantly on my mind and it was just everything. All the things. 

Wherein, after the 13th doctor regenerates into THE 10TH DOCTOR’S OLD FACE, he lands in London obviously and immediately runs into none other than Donna Noble, his very best friend in the entire universe who absolutely cannot remember him because if she does, she’ll very quickly die.

They did an  intro into the episode that explained the whole backstory which was a little forced and cheesy  but I get it, not everyone is insane enough to have just rewatched all of 10’s episodes just because this was coming (though they should be). 

I’m gonna admit I had no idea what the episode was supposed to be about other than reuniting some of my two favorite characters in the whole wide world, and I’m glad I didn’t. It was definitely a traditional Doctor Who romp: aliens crash land on earth, UNIT gets involved,  one alien faction is going after another alien faction, Donna’s family ends up in the center of it, they need to figure out a way to keep London from getting destroyed.

Ya know, the usual. 

The thing I’m here for, friends, is David Tennant becoming a new version of his own doctor because that’s fascinating, while still absolutely painted into his skinny suit (which is so Crowley somehow), and catharsis. All the catharsis.

After watching his entire run again, I stand behind the opinion that Donna got the worst deal of all the companions. Rose got to keep her Doctor human clone, Martha ended up with Mickey, but Donna had literally EVERYTHING ripped from her. Can you imagine the size of the hole the Doctor would leave in your subconscious after being removed? Like, how do you manage any kind of life after that?

But she did. She’s got a husband, and a kid, and she donated almost all of her lottery winnings while dealing with what I can imagine is an overwhelming, horrible sense of loss. Humans can get used to anything. And that thought is kind of devastating.

Which means all I really wanted was to see the two of them together again, and Russell T Davies delivered the goods. 

The Doctor runs into Donna basically immediately after landing in London of course and he learns her daughter’s name is Rose and I can’t get over how many times he shouted “WOT?” in this episode, I always loved 10’s incredulous “WOT!” 

She rambles at him of course and is messing with boxes full of stuff she’s holding so she misses the spaceship very NOTICEABLY crashing to earth because that’s her thing, always missing everything. But she’s ready to go so in true Donna fashion tells him “Nice to meet you, skinny man. Oh, word of advice. You can wear a suit that tight up to the age of 35, and no further.” Baby girl is still herself, and she’s ruthless, and I love it.

 After the Doctor follows the ‘crashed’ spaceship, he runs into a scientist from UNIT who is holding herself together insanely well considering she’s stumbled upon the doctor, and he tells her that all of this is swirling around Donna of course and he says “she was my best friend in the whole wide universe. I absolutely love her” and then he’s surprised that popped out of his mouth because you know 10 was never going to admit to that so thoroughly, and these are the interactions I need in my life.

Here’s the situation gang: I absolutely love a love story. I really do. If my Good Omens fixation is anything to go by. But I also really love a good, solid, perfect friendship. Two people challenging each other and accepting each other and just being on the exact right wavelength. I’ve had some terrible friends in my life, and so beautiful positive depictions  cut right to my heart. Which means I’m really here just for the two of them being those amazing friends again.

Meanwhile, Donna’s daughter finds one of the rogue aliens, AKA The Meep, which I found to be HELLA creepy, like everyone was all ‘aw it’s cute’ but nah y’all, I knew that motherfucker wasn’t cute. But just like her mother, she wants to help and she brings The Meep into her little shed in their backyard because obviously, and it all takes a turn.

The other aliens that were apparently pursuing The Meep show up, and Donna catches wind that there’s a martian in her house (I love it, everything is always a martian, she’s my favorite) and her mother, bless her, tries hard to make Donna ignore the entire situation because she cannot remember, but it doesn’t matter, the Doctor crashes in anyway.

I also love that she was instantly annoyed with him, still calling him “skinny man”  and wondering why the hell he was following her. And he does kind of try to extricate himself from her and her family but of course it was never gonna go that way.

So the UNIT soldiers have been overtaken by some weird light they found in the spaceship and they come to the house to start attacking and the other aliens are there to also attack and the Doctor’s gotta get everyone out, of course. They do some ridiculous trek through the attics in the attached rowhouses to try to get out to the car parked nearby. Miraculous escape, always! 

Also why am I weirdly all about the Doctor driving the car? I was like ‘yes’ but maybe that’s just a residue Bentley thing, who knows. The point is, he takes them to an underground garage and the other aliens tracking The Meep show up and TWIST, we find out The Meep lied about his backstory while the Doctor wears a ridiculous barrister wig he pulled from his jacket. Turns out The Meep is absolutely crazy because the sun his planet orbited went…psychedelic? Don’t look too much at what’s going on with that whole story, it’s fine, just go with it. 

So The Meep tries to attack! And the Doctor jumps to cover Donna and the dosed up UNIT soldiers show up and everyone is taken hostage and brought back to where the spaceship is being repaired. The Meep wants to eat them, or something? Because sure. The teeth they put on that thing, woooof. I knew that asshole was trouble from the get.

Turns out The Meep plans to escape in the ship and to do so he basically has to burrow under London which will obliterate the entire city. Surprise!

Not to worry about that though, the Doctor and the UNIT scientist create a scenario wherein Donna, her husband, Rose and the grandmother can all get away and the Doctor will handle this situation on his own, thanks. But Donna’s brain kicks in, and she says she has to help him, even if she doesn’t know why. 

She follows him into the ship. And he’s like ‘nah girl you gotta get outta here’ but she’s not having that of course, because that’s her. He tried to shake her a few times the very first time they met and he never could. It’s that friendship pull.

The point is, he’s trying to disable the ship himself but there’s a lot of buttons to press and he has to do a lot of weird shit (again, don’t pay attention to the crazy dialogue of the things he’s saying he’s doing) and then a separator comes down and splits the room they’re in, the Doctor on one side and Donna on the other. And he’s still trying to protect her. He knows they could stop the ship together, but he’d need her, all of her, to do it. 

He tells her that if she helps him, she’ll die. And she just says “okay.” She says her daughter’s down there, and 9 million other people, so who cares about her? And now we’re into what I was waiting for, he’s yelling “I DO!” She says she’s just no one and he emphatically tells her she’s not, and he screams

“WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS?!”

Anyone else crying yet? No? C’mon. This is when I started crying at the trailer. It’s horribly unfair; he gave her up so she could live her life and he never wanted to involve her again, she’d helped save the fucking world already and 10 never really did get a break really, and here he is back at it as 14 and it’s still just as terrible. 

So he starts saying words. And his poor face. You can see it’s ripping him apart. “Westerly. Pelican. Dreams. Tornado. Clifftops. Andante. Grief. Fingerprint. Susurration.” And then she picks up on it, she says “Sparrow” and he says “Sparrow. Dance. Mexico.” 

And she finishes, “Binary. Binary. Binary.”

In true Donna fashion, as soon as she’s fully aware she starts freaking out at him about giving away her lottery winnings because she was trying to be like him and I love it, there’s a countdown to launch in the background and she doesn’t give a shit, it’s so the two of them but she jumps into action anyway again saying some crazy shit about what she’s doing. He tells her she has 55 seconds to live and she says “55 best seconds of my life” and she flips a bunch of switches and tada, they’ve done it.

The partition comes up in the room and The Meep storms in and Donna collapses in the Doctor’s arms. She asks him why this face had come back and she says “to say goodbye? Good fun though” and she fucking DIES. 

The way he cradles her. Jesus. It’s so tender. And the pure fucking anguish in his face. David Tennant’s face, goddamn. I can’t. 

The Meep is still trying to kill him though using UNIT soldiers and he doesn’t give a shit because he’s been basically foiled by “The DoctorDonna” but then, suddenly, the UNIT soldiers are released from their hold and Donna WAKES UP and everyone is like “WOT!”

And we see Rose, manning the controls outside the ship, brilliant as anything. I love this explanation so much: Donna’s metacrisis was too much for one person, but because she had a child, she passed it down, a “shared inheritance.” Her little shed in their backyard was an errant memory of the TARDIS, she’d been creating little stuffed animal toys of all the creatures Donna and the Doctor had met traveling, she’d chosen her new name herself,  the name of one of the Doctor’s most important companions. They realize, the two of them, Donna and the Doctor are binary, but Rose is not because 

“The Doctor is male…and female….and neither. And more.”

IT’S SO FUCKING CUTE. And perfect. And I love it. She had timelord energy strumming through her, her entire life, and it made her feel weird and different but also made her amazingly unique and wonderful. 

And then, to top it off, the Doctor tells them he still needs to heal them of the crisis because it may be slowed down, but it won’t stop. And Rose and her mother just scoff at him. They know exactly what to do. They just let it go. Because they’re incredible.

And I love all of this so far. But I cannot lie, my favorite part of the entire episode is when the Doctor convinces her to take a ride in the TARDIS so they can go visit Wilf. They go inside, and of course the TARDIS has changed again and I’m not gonna lie, it’s probably my favorite design so far. The Doctor freaks out about it, and Donna tries to be nonchalant but she finally admits “it’s GORGEOUS!” and the happy fucking look between the two of them, the Doctor is bouncing, he’s bouncy Crowley. And then he starts racing around the place, running up and down the different levels and honestly that just made me cry harder.

10 was always so sad, I always wanted that boy to be happy and maybe he was a little bit but everything was always so serious but now he’s been able to resolve probably his biggest regret and that’s such a gift. Which I think is gonna make it even harder for him to let go, a second time. I am not excited to watch him leave, again. 

The point is, after he makes her a coffee the way she likes, he says “ I really do remember, though. Every second with you. I'm so glad you're back, cos it killed me, Donna. It killed me, it killed me, it killed me.” And she deserves to hear that. It was one of the worst things he had to do. And 10 was never going to say it. I’m SO glad 14 got the chance. 

Catharsis. They needed it, I needed it. The Doctor back to a true and familiar form. It’s going to kill me to only have 3 episodes of this, but I’ll take it. As long as I get one last “allons-y!”

#what g's watching #doctor who 60th anniversary #doctor who #tenth doctor #fourteenth doctor #donna noble #david tennant

[what-gs-watching]

“It’s Christmas time, pretty baby, and the snow is falling on the ground…”

Well, now I’m in the interview prep portion of the bootcamp thing I’m doing and y’all, I don’t loveeee trying to practice talking about my experience. I really am one of those people that just shows up and says whatever tumbles out of my mouth and that has worked, so far, mostly, I guess. But apparently now I need to really try and that is a bummer. 

But it’s November, which means I have carte blanche to throw myself into the Christmas season. Gang, I love Christmas. I really do. I have a big family and it was always a fucking mess at my parents’ house but it makes me feel cozy and warm and so every year the Saturday before Thanksgiving I drag my husband to the tree farm because we have to have a real tree, and by the time we’re eating turkey, my entire house is decked out and it’s time for CHRISTMAS MOVIES.

I started this blog because I had been rambling at my engineering team at the time about my complete and utter obsession with Good Omens and I’d described my “What G’s Watching” game. One of the engineers said he’d absolutely read this trifling mess, and we had talked about Christmas movies, I forget why, and he said he could imagine curling up with a cup of tea and reading my rant on said movies. It was part of what ultimately convinced me to do this stupid thing, obviously.

So Kevin, if you’re out there, this is for you.

Welcome to my ultimate list of basic bitch Christmas movies (OTHER than the typical ones, we don’t need to talk through those do we?) you can stream this season. All previously released, because we’re gonna have to talk about the new ones  as they come. You’re welcome.

______

The Christmas Chronicles (2 movies, Netflix)

KURT RUSSELL is Santa and he’s caught by a brother and a sister  while delivering presents and they end up going on a crazy adventure to save Christmas after something obviously goes wrong. 

YOU GUYS, IT’S KURT RUSSELL AS SANTA. That should be enough for you. Because he is literally the PERFECT Santa Claus and I will defend that ‘til the end. The beard is perfect! And he plays Santa like a super cool badass! And there’s a fucking musical number!!!!!!! 

The first one is better than the second one, but the second one is still fun and has GOLDIE HAWN as Mrs. Claus and it’s so cute I could literally die. 

I straight up love Christmas Chronicles and I don’t care who knows it. It has the right amount of emotion and it reminds me of being a kid kind of and really, we’ve always needed a COOL santa. I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with Kurt Russell in this situation, but I really, really am. Absolutely no shame here.

WATCH IT.

A Christmas Prince (3 movies, Netflix)

A prince of a made-up country needs to return home before Christmas Eve so he can assume the throne after his father died, and a wanna-be reporter of a magazine? I think? Is assigned to cover the story.  She pretends to be the new nanny for the family and OBVIOUSLY hijinks ensue. Obviously.

Y’all, there are three movies in this series. They made THREE of them. And they’re all ridiculous. But also kinda charming. Like, something to put on while you wrap presents and then you find yourself, like, halfway through the second one and you’re like “well I’m here now, might as well get through the entire thing, I weirdly need to know how this ends.” 

It’s pure fluff. It’s a perfect Hallmark-esque situation, but better than the Hallmark movies because the heroine doesn’t actually need to give up anything for love like Hallmark always makes them do. Like, girl, why can’t you have a career while your husband does XYZ small-town job? WHY NOT BOTH. 

The point is, ya girl likes a happy ending. All of these have a happy ending. Everything on this list will have a happy ending.

Let It Snow (Netflix)

It snows on Christmas Eve and a group of kids in a small town, including a pop star for some reason, deal with that, and their issues, and it builds to a big ol’ party. 

This one is way better than it sounds. There is an adorable queer relationship, and two friends figuring out they’re in love, and one girl realizing she should go away to college because she can’t just stay and shoulder all the issues her family has, and friends prioritizing their friendship, and Joan Cusack playing the town’s crazy lady. 

I’m clearly still like 17 at heart so I enjoy a good ‘random teens figuring shit out’ movie. It’s just cute as hell. 

Holidate (Netflix)

Emma Roberts hates holidays because her boyfriend broke up with her so while she returns shitty Christmas presents she meets a dude who agrees to be her random ‘date’ for all of the holidays that year. 

Okay, this is not strictly a Christmas movie but it starts and ends at Christmas, and it’s fucking hilarious. This is not for kids, but oh my god, I laughed way more than I expected to. And the dude is Australian which is sooo up my alley, and of course the point is that they randomly end up falling for each other and sometimes I need a good romance that is kind of, sort of realistic (in how awkward it gets at times) even if the premise is ridiculous. 

Like, if you wanna get drunk on some wine with some adults that are not easily offended after the kids are in bed, this is the one. 

Single All The Way (Netflix)

A guy doesn’t want to go home for the holidays because his family is gonna be judgmental about his taste in dudes and the fact that he’s perpetually single, so he drags his roommate along for the ride.

Y’all. This is just a really, really adorable love story. No bullshit tricks, no stupid plot, just two friends falling in love. 

I very clearly love boys falling in love, and this one is sweet as hell. Also, it’s got Jennifer Coolidge as the crazy aunt! And Kathy Najimy! The family is hilarious and the boys are relatable and of course there’s a point where the main character is set up with a super hottie but like, they figure it out eventually. And not in a stupid, cheesy movie way. It just feels really cozy. 

This was hands down my absolute favorite the year it came out. Hard recommend.

Spirited (Apple TV)

 A re-telling (kind of?) of a Christmas Carol, but make it a musical with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds.

Okay I’m gonna admit it: this one is so WEIRD! It absolutely did NOT need to be a musical whatsoever but I could not look away. I will watch anything with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds though, and it was funny. And I did not expect the twist they worked in. 

Do you have two hours to be strangely pulled into this and then feel weird ways about stuff? You should. This year, I’m gonna eat a gummie first. It’ll be worth it.

Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas (Roku Channel with ads, but it’s not horrible)

A woman who’s gained the power to see/learn people’s emotions through witnessing them do elaborate musical numbers, has an unsettling family christmas.

Hear me out on this one. I was absolutely obsessed with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (it’s on Peacock; go watch it, like, right now. Immediately). It was such a ridiculous concept for a show but it was really so effing charming. And heartwarming, and also heartbreaking. If you haven’t seen the show, the Christmas movie is  not going to be as emotional for you, but it’s still extremely cute. The pageantry! The musical numbers! The family dynamics! 

I’ll admit this is niche as hell, but Zoey is my bish and I will tell anyone who will listen they should watch. I miss that show terribly.

Somewhat Honorable Mentions

Netflix did two random movies last year that I did watch: Christmas with You, starring Freddie Prinze Jr (!!!!!!) and Falling for Christmas with Lindsay Lohan.

Listen, I support random actors I have loved since I was a kid doing Christmas movies. Especially since they haven’t gotten up to a whole lot else. I want Lindsay Lohan to figure her fucking life out, because I can’t let go of Mean Girls or The Parent Trap. She could have been a whole damn thing and I’m sad about how things went for her and I just want her to be okay, you guys.

Is her Christmas movie mostly terrible? Yes. But it’s good background noise, just like Freddie Prinze Jr’s, and I want them both to keep doing things. So watch them while you’re cleaning the house, because why not?

______

Because I literally have all of the time in the world on my hands, I’ll probably watch almost all of these, and my favorite old standards too. 

I’ll save Elf and A Muppet’s Christmas Carol  to watch with my little nephews when I head home. We’ll do the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve as a weirdo family. I’ll put on White Christmas while I get the tree decorated and I’ll be singing ‘when I’m worried and I can’t sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep..’ for days. I’ll put on The Holiday in between Christmas and New Year’s because I am very much Kate Winslet in that movie, always the best friend, never the leading lady.  I might be able to tempt my Christmas-avoidant husband into Home Alone.

The point is, Christmas movies are such a wonderful and ridiculous genre of content. Because let’s be honest, no one’s holiday season is ever like that. No one, in the history of the world, has Christmases like they do in these ridiculous movies. But it’s nice to pretend. It’s nice to get that warm fuzzy feeling, it’s nice to imagine having the perfect decorations, or a crazy adventure, or a surprising romance. Because we all know, winter is bleak. It’s dark at 4:30 in the afternoon and it’s sludgy and wet and gray and unappealing. But it’s never that in Christmas movies - it’s always magical and exciting and twinkly. And we all deserve something magical and exciting and twinkly. At least until we can make it out of the dark. 

So, stream it all, y’all, it’s that time of year.

#what g's watching #christmas chronicles #christmas movies #comfort movies #zoey's extraordinary playlist #spirited 2022 #a christmas prince #merry christmas

[what-gs-watching]

“I’m 903 years old, and I’m the man who’s gonna save your lives.”

Well. My fridge has decided to completely die, which is really fun, and I’m fighting with Lowe’s to get it delivered tomorrow even though I know that’s absolutely not going to happen, and I had a phone screen with a recruiter for a company I’m dying to work for and I’m anxious as hell about a bunch of things suddenly, and that’s annoying as hell.

SO I’m still hunkering down in content because that’s just what ya do. Even though the dangerously low simmer my brain has been on has been causing problems in my life, I’m not ready to give in and boot up just yet. 

But what I AM doing is getting EXTREMELY excited about the Doctor Who 60th anniversary episodes, so we’re gonna dive into it. Because we have to. 

Doctor Who is a thing for me. Doctor Who is sitting in a stingy apartment outside of Boston with my roommate (who I had a major crush on, and eventually became my husband, which is definitely its own story) and watching episodes on a shitty laptop while we drank beers late into the night. I remember losing my mind when we found out who the Face of Boe was, my heart breaking during Rose’s goodbye. 

My husband had seen it all at that point, he brought me into it and he enjoyed watching me watch it more than watching it himself. I asked a million questions, constantly,  and he refused to tell me anything. At one point my inner monologue became extremely British and I had to resist shouting “OI!” at him when he was being a jerk. Doctor Who wove its way into our extremely weird love story; I fell for the Doctor while falling for him. 

So it’s really no surprise how obsessed over David Tenannt’s 10th Doctor I was. I mean, he was the first boyfriend Doctor, right? You could argue 9 was, but in this house, we don’t really talk about 9. You get through 9 and then you get to amazing, perfect, wonderful 10 and it’s all over. 

Also yes I’m very aware that I’ve said Matt Smith’s 11  is my number one Doctor and he absolutely is, but this is about 10. Because you have to separate them. The show is as good as it is because each of them are unique, while keeping that pulse of doctor underneath. And David does it so beautifully. 

 Like everybody probably, I did really love the Rose/Doctor relationship on the first watch. Boyfriend Doctor is supposed to have that little romantic string, right? And he was so sweet with her - burning out a sun to say goodbye. That got me. The moment he tells her she could spend the rest of her life with him, but he couldn’t do the same. 

Maybe for me the appeal of the Doctor though is the loneliness of it, and  it drips from 10. He’s fully inside of his feelings about being the last of the Time Lords, and he’s always so sorry when things go wrong. He wants to be with humans, he wants to experience things with them but he feels guilty about it because he knows that it never, ever works out. He’s excited and resigned at the same time. I felt a lot of that. He was sad and he was beautiful. And everyone kept fawning over him.

Except, for Donna Noble. She is my favorite 10 companion by far. She takes no shit from that man and the bond they end up with is so pure. I love the fact that she tells him no the first time he invites her to travel with him; that mofo had just murdered a bunch of crazy spider babies, dripping wet and radiating fury, and she was. not. having. it. And she was right about that. He had to get through the Martha Jones mess and realize he’s just fucking about with these poor girls before he could deal with the absolute powerhouse that is Donna-effing-Noble.

Makes him help free a slave society from servitude? Check. Forces him to save at least someone from Pompeii even though it’s a fixed point in time? Yeap. Becomes half time-lord and saves his ass? Obviously. They complemented the hell out of each other; she made him better and he did the same. 

Honestly, if I could be any one of them, I’d be Donna. I’m a pain in the ass, too. Sometimes it’s fucking needed. Brilliant people, amazing, shining sparkling people need to be balanced out too. 

Her ending is by far the saddest one in 10’s adventures. He has to wipe her memories of him so her mind isn’t swallowed up by time lord power, and it’s devastating. She’d come into herself with him, and he had to sacrifice all of that to let her live. Back to her basic life. Back to that horrible grind of absolutely everything. She was gonna travel with him for the rest of her life. 

Which is why I’m SO excited to see how they bring the two of them back. If any companion deserves it, it’s Donna. Rose is set with her cloned human doctor, Martha is knocking about doing this and that with Mickey? Right? But poor Donna, trapped in that very human, very boring, very static life. But she’s gonna come back, and she’s going to put him in his place again, and it’s going to be brilliant. 

Did I cry a little bit (a solid bit) when I saw the first full trailer? 100% yes. Donna Noble is very much another one of my spirit animals. 

And David Tennant has taken up permanent residence in my brain. After Good Omens season 2 I obviously had to watch all of 10’s story again and now it’s all mashed up in Crowley (and the infinite Crowley’s I’ve devoured through a sheer metric ton of fanfic) and I kind of love that. That man is chameleon and fully inhabits every role he plays but seeing 10 after the Crowley of it all, it makes more sense somehow. 

I clearly want to believe there’s a universe out there where they exist together. 

I also am going to believe that this whole 60th anniversary thing came around just for me. Because what I need right now is more of 10, running and saving and running again, lonely and sorry and excited and beautiful, and older but not, and different but not. 

My love for 10 is wrapped in my love for a lot of things that happened in my life and I wouldn’t be having an existential crisis without him coming back to me, so maybe I can love some of the things that are happening in my life right now. He’s going to be 10 and 14 at the same time, and maybe that means I can be a few things at once, again. Instead of whatever it is that I am, now. Maybe I can bring those things together again. 

It’s good that 11 is a singular thing, a completed something. Because 11 for me is someone else, as much as it pains me. Which is something I’ll get to. But I need 10 to keep going, and I really can’t wait to see it. It’s going to fuck with me in all of those uncomfortable, perfect ways. 

It’s gonna be good, it’s gonna be glorious.  So: Allons-y.

#doctor who #david tennant #what g's watching #donna noble #tenth doctor #doctor who 60th anniversary