The White Lotus (Season 1)

 

The White Lotus is a show about a resort hotel chain of the same name, its employees, and the guests who vacation there. Season 2 just finished and people were talking about it on Twitter, so I decided to give it a watch. Otherwise I had never heard of the show and had no idea what to expect. It's a dark comedy and drama, where each episode follows the day in the lives of the guests and hotel workers. The first season is only 6 episodes, so the events on the show last a week. One of the interesting parts of this show is that most of the characters are generally unlikeable. As tensions rise throughout the week, it is difficult to know who to root for, creating at times some awkward scenarios. 

Armond and Belinda are the two hotel employees worth mentioning. Belinda is the spa manager, and she is the most likable person on the show. Surrounded by privileged white people, she gets excited when Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge - "The core of the onion!") begins discussing plans for Belinda to open her own spa. Of course, Tanya reneges on her offer in the end.  Armond is the hotel manager, who puts up with all the crazy guests, doing so with a smile. He's one of my favorite characters on the show. He is a recovering addict, however, and in a few short days the guests drive him off the wagon, where he becomes self-destructive. 

The Mossbacher family is an interesting dynamic. Mom is a powerful tech CEO, who can't let go of her job and hovers around the hotel rearranging furniture so that the background looks good on her conference calls. Dad (Steve Zahn) goes through two crisis on the trip. First, he was worried when his "balls swelled" that he had testicular cancer, then relieved when he found out he didn't have cancer. Secondly, he thought his dad died of cancer, only to learn he died from AIDS which he got from a homosexual relationship. This knowledge causes him to spiral, even admitting to his son that he had an affair and bought his mom $75k bracelets as a make-up gift. Daughter Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) isn't overly likable, but does provide some of the best comedic relief on the show ("Grandpa could've been butch" she says). Her friend Paula, who is on the trip with them, becomes increasingly frustrated with the Mossbacher family, and their privileged ways. So much so that she convinces one of the hotel employees to steal the mom's $75k bracelets. The poor son, Quinn (who is the third most likable person on the show), is forced to sleep on a lounge chair on the beach because Olivia and Paula won't let him sleep in the living room of their hotel suite with them. He becomes fascinated by the island life, and at the last minute bolts from the airport, deciding to stay in Hawaii. 

Finally, we have the Patton family, newlyweds on their honeymoon. Shane is wealthy and privileged, and he is the least unlikeable of all the characters in my book. They booked the Pineapple Room, but when they were placed in a different room, he converts his trip from a honeymoon to mission "Get the Pineapple Room". This causes him to tangle with hotel manager Armond, contributing to Armond's relapse and the eventual tragic ending of the week-long trip. Throughout Shane's obsession with Armond and the Pineapple Room, not only does he ignore his wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario, the second most likable character on the show), he criticizes her lack of success as a writer and is clueless to her wants, treating her like a trophy wife. As if this weren't bad enough, at one point his mom shows up (on their honeymoon!!), doubling down on her misery. She begins having serious doubts about their new marriage, and I thought she was going to leave him. Sadly, at the end of the season she is still with him.

I'd like to take a moment to discuss the music. It is awesomely intense and does a great job expressing the mood of the show. The general appearance of the show, along with the music, is great. The show does a good job expressing the beauty of the area surrounding the tension of the hotel guests.

Guardians Of The Galaxy (Game)

 

Guardians of the Galaxy is a fun game, and I'd recommend it IF you are a fan of the Guardians. The best part of the game is the banter between the characters. I find Rocket, Drax, and the whole group of characters to be amusing, and the conversation between them is entertaining and hilarious at times. Visually the game looks good, though it took me a bit of time to get used to how the characters look, especially Quill. He looks nothing like Chris Pratt or Peter Quill from the comics.

The story is just as good as any of the stories in the movies. Briefly, the Guardians get picked up by the Nova Corps for trespassing. They meet Ko-Rel, Peter's former lover, and her daughter Nikki, who Peter thinks may be his daughter. The Guardians are allowed to leave in order to make money to pay their trespassing fine. They scam a powerful character named Lady Hellbender, and when they return to pay their fine, they discover that several Nova Corp officers are possessed by the "Promise". Lady Hellbender's goons chase after them, and the Guardians flee to Knowhere where they ask Cosmo for help. They figure out that the possessed Nova Corp officers are under the power of the Universal Church of Truth, who use the power of the Promise to harness Faith Energy and power their ships and weapons. Both Peter and Drax are tempted by the Promise, and have to fight off the temptation. Along the way they meet up with Adam Warlock, and discover that Warlock's evil alter ego Magus is manipulating the church for its power. The Guardians eventually defeat the church and Magus to save the galaxy. 

It took me a while to get used to the team based gameplay. You play as Quill, but during battles you have to instruct the other Guardians on who to fight and what to do. Also, at times you have to use the other character's skills to move objects, open doors, etc. to proceed. Once I got used to the gameplay it wasn't a big deal, but wasn't initially intuitive. The bigger deal is that during several points throughout the game, I got stuck and couldn't figure out what to do next. Usually there was a small gap in a wall that I needed to squeeze through and couldn't see, but sometimes it was because I wasn't picking the "correct" sequence of dialogue responses. This seemed to me to be a bit arbitrary, and was annoying to have to resort to a YouTube video to watch a tutorial to figure out how to get the game to advance. Despite this annoyance, overall the game was fun, and I think would be liked by Guardians fans.

Welcome to Wrexham

 

I've been a fan of Rob McElhenney from his days on It's Always Sunny, and I've become a Ryan Reynolds fan after seeing Deadpool and after people have said I look a bit like him. When I heard the two of them bought a soccer club in Wales, I was intrigued. Welcome to Wrexham is a documentary about them buying the team and the challenges that come along with ownership.

Wrexham is a city in eastern Wales near the English border. It has a population of roughly 60,000 and is home to Wrexham A.F.C., the oldest football club in Wales. The city and people of Wrexham are portrayed as being down on their luck, and the football club is portrayed as a source of hope for the community. One of the coolest aspects of football in the UK is this concept of promotion and relegation. Teams that perform poorly are sent to the league below (think going from the MLB to triple A), and teams that perform well are promoted to the league above. Wrexham A.F.C. is in the lowest tier, and Ryan and Rob want to improve the team to get promoted to a higher league and rally the community of Wrexham in the process.

The people of Wrexham eat and breath Wrexham football. They are hard core. They take hours long bus rides to away games and seem to focus their entire outlook on life on Wrexham's success or failure. It's possible the show featured a biased group of Wrexhamonians, I suppose. The best sports analogy I can think of in the United States is high school sports. There could be some college programs that have similar support as well. I don't think professional sports rally a community in quite the same way. Plus in high school sports, you can get "promoted" or relegated to different leagues based on your performance. Wrexham is relatively close to both Liverpool and Manchester. If this were occurring in the United States, the people of Wrexham would be fans of one of the nearby Premiere League teams. And maybe they are fans of those larger and more famous teams. But no question they support their local, lowest tier team.

I bring all of this up because it makes buying this type of team even more random than it seems on the surface. They are not just buying a team in Wales, they're buying into a culture and identity of a community. Of course there is a mix of excitement and skepticism amongst the fans. They are excited to have celebrities own the team, as their is a feeling that they will be able to inject some excitement and desirability into the team. There is skepticism because, if we're honest, what does an American and Canadian know about Welsh football? 

By the end of the season featured in the show, the team has improved and it seems as if the community has bought in to Rob and Ryan owning the team. One of the most interesting aspects to me of this entire story is that apparently Rob and Ryan didn't even know each other prior to owning the team. Rob needed a co-owner and randomly decided to ask Ryan. In general, I think this is a fantastically unique and interesting sports story. The show does a good job discussing how this team affects numerous individuals as well as the larger community. I hope they have a second season and continue to have success with the team and promotion.

Gran Turismo 7 - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

 

I've been hacking away at this game since it was released in March. I have had two main objectives: (1) Finish all of the events with at least a bronze trophy, and (2) complete time trials with all of the cool cars on the game. I have come pretty close to achieving objective number one. There are a few races and a few missions left where I have not completed my goal. The ones remaining have proven to be challenging, and there is a decent chance I won't complete most of them unless I dedicate a lot of extra time. Furthermore, most of the races remaining I am so slow and non-competitive, I honestly don't know if I can get the bronze trophy. We shall see, as I plan to challenge at least a few of them again.

For objective 2, I am nearing the end of cool cars to race in my time trials, sort of. The new cars are divided into North America, Europe, and Asia sections. I've finished the new cars that I want to race for the time trials in the North American and European sections, meaning I've only got Asia left. There is the used car market as well, and I plan on looking at it periodically for "new" cars to race. But the list seems to be dwindling.

Currently I play Gran Turismo every Sunday evening, with periodic check-ins throughout the week. With my objectives nearing the end (especially objective #1), I have been thinking about scaling back on play time, only playing periodically when I come across a good used car for my time trial. However, just when I start to feel this way, the game releases one of its monthly updates. This typically involves new cars, new races, a new track, or some combination of the three. Last month we got Road Atlanta, with three new races. This month we got the C8 Corvette (see above, and finally!), along with new races. Every month I have new objectives for #1 or #2, or sometimes both. About the time I start feeling like I can scale back on the game, an update arrives fresh with new objectives. This month I was greeted by Christmas music on the main menu. These updates really are great, and keep the game fresh and keep me coming back for more. Otherwise I probably would've had the game take a back seat to other games a while ago.

Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon

 

The events on House of the Dragon take place several hundred years prior to the events of Game of Thrones. The current king who sits on the Iron Throne doesn't have a male son, and thus no direct heir to the throne. His wife dies during labor (lots of labor scenes in this show, by the way) and he subsequently names his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, the heir to the throne. This of course causes some resistance, being that she is a woman. King Viserys subsequently gets remarried and has 3 additional kids, two of which are male. The oldest male technically becomes the direct heir to the throne, challenging the King's previous announcement that Princess Rhaenyra would become Queen and sit on the Iron Throne.

One of the interesting aspects of this show is the way in which time flows. Sometimes several years pass in between episodes. Time flows so fast that some of the actors changes as they grow from kids to adults. It's a risky decision, but the show pulls it off well in order to tell a story that spans a few decades in just 10 episodes. As time progresses, the King's health declines until he eventually dies. As you can imagine, who is to become his successor becomes debated between his princess daughter and eldest son. Everyone has something to gain and lose, and the game of thrones begins.

It's been several years since I've seen Game of Thrones. Watching House of the Dragon took me back to King's Landing and Flea Bottom. Those locations, along with other Westerosi spots, are super cool. I will say that I forgot how violent this show can be. As I've grown older, I tend to like the extreme violence less and less. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I ever really liked it. I'm completely fine with implied, off screen violence.

One of the other aspects of this show that I liked was the score. I don't recall thinking much about the music in Game of Thrones. Apparently the same composer was used for both shows. The music is really good in this show, accurately capturing the mood and ambience of the scene.

Overall this show is just really good in all departments - the acting, visuals, sound, and script are all great. It tells a very complicated story that I think would be difficult to pull off well, but it accomplishes this feat. While not as good as Game of Thrones, it is an enjoyable fantasy soap opera.

HBO Max

 

There are a handful of shows that interest me on HBO Max, but had held off on subscribing to the service because honestly my TV-watching queue is full. However, when they had a 3 month deal for $6 for black Friday I decided to jump on the deal. So far we've started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (again) and House of the Dragon (more to come on that soon). There are a couple of others on the list as well. I'm bringing this situation up specifically for the 3 month for $6 black Friday deal. This service is typically $15 per month ad-free, and I believe $10 per month with ads. The black Friday deal was the with ads. Despite watching 4 episodes of Curb and the entire season of House of the Dragon, I've only seen two ads. Both were for other HBO Max shows and neither interrupted the program I was watching, having occurred at the very beginning. This entire experience has made me change my thought process on adding streaming services with ad tiers, such as Netflix or even Disney+ these days. I assumed the ads would interrupt the show, but thus far not on HBO Max. Although apparently Peacock premium does have ads that interrupt, so it may be a trial and error situation. When you look at the quality of a show like House of the Dragon, it is hard to believe they are making any money when giving away their service for $2 per month. You hear about a lot of these services losing money, and this is likely why (this plus password sharing). I suppose that is an entirely different topic. Regardless, I've enjoyed this nearly ad-free streaming service thus far.

Virtual Marathons

 

I would never claim to have run a marathon. I've certainly never attempted one in person, and I have never run anywhere near a marathon distance at one time on a treadmill. However, I have virtually ran the Boston and London marathons on iFit. It's really cool to be able to run these marathons virtually, as it is something I doubt I will ever do in person. To get to experience the route and the energy around the marathon is neat. The program breaks up the marathon in stages, typically around 5 miles per stage. I usually do 1-2 stages per week, so it takes me a few weeks to finish the marathon. Even at this pace, however, it feels like an accomplishment to finish the course. I'm planning on doing the Chicago marathon next, and then I'll have finished 3 of the 6 major worldwide marathons (Berlin, New York, and Tokyo being the other three).