Musing Over Some Streaming Shows
Distracting Disasters
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching Netflix shows as I ordered Netflix to watch the second season of Squid Game and plan to cancel it within the month so that I can go on to order Apple TV to watch Season Two of Severance. So I’m super late to the party for many shows as I’ve not had Netflix for a year or two. I actually have Prime, Disney Plus, Discovery, and real cable that has a few hundred channels, which is why I don’t subscribe to everything under the sun at once. I also watch more than a healthy amount of YouTube videos daily as you can tell by my Serial Vlogger story.
Actually, this week, I’ve been pretty glued to the news about the California fires. As of this writing, Saturday morning, January 11, they’ve been burning for nearly a week. It’s horrifying and sad to see this happening, just like it was awful watching Katrina or any number of other hurricane disasters over the past few years, especially around Florida and Puerto Rico.
While people mock the wealthy Californians who lost everything, all I can think of is how much history has been lost. Wealthy people collect cool and priceless artifacts. Hollywood people have art, costumes, awards, props, books, and more that would no doubt be considered priceless and historical. Such as the guy who lost all those Andy Warhol paintings. Or the Hollywood history that was likely in Melissa River’s house. The Olympian who lost his ten medals. And more.
Mother Nature can show wrath or mercy at any time. In the summer, there was unprecedented rainfall, which created unprecedented floods in London, Ontario. Most people haven’t even heard of London, Ontario, but they had their misery. There’s snow in Atlanta this week. It just snowed overnight in Toronto, which is normal, but the grass growing all week sure wasn’t!
Humans have to stay alert no matter where they live. Be ready and prepared for anything at any time. It doesn’t matter whether this change is the natural progression of evolution or a speedy rendition of climate change; it’s happening right now.
You could be next, so try to have some compassion for people caught in the current disaster.
After all, right now, a lot of those California people who are losing everything were involved in creating the shows you love to binge on Netflix and other streaming services.
And I want to talk a little about a couple of shows I recently watched.
I won’t talk about Squid Game 2 because it’s too soon, and it will spoil things for those still waiting to watch it. I liked it.
Skeleton Crew on Disney Plus has been delightful, although it’s taking a long time not to tell us much. But it’s fun and for kids and a relief from all the message-heavy drudgery of some of the other Star Wars TV offerings, such as The Acolyte. I hated a lot of The Acolyte, but I liked where it was going with a couple of the characters, such as Qimir. I loved Manny Jacinto and Lee Jung-jae in the show. I didn’t like what they did to Lee’s character by the end, but before that dumb ending, I loved him as the Jedi, and it sure wasn’t his fault the writing was atrocious. Manny was amazing, and I’ve been a big fan of his since The Good Place and Nine Perfect Strangers. I’d like to see a Qimir show, and I’m still waiting for a Kylo Ren show, so I guess we know where my dark heart lies.
The latest JonBenet documentary on Netflix didn’t bring any new revelations for me but of course, I’ve followed the case from the minute it happened and have seen pretty much everything about it over the years. There might be new information in there for the casual observer of the case. I’m still torn on who I think did it.
At this point in my life, I think it was a local pedophile, the same one who stalked that other little girl from the same dance studio. But I always get thrown off by the ransom note and who might have written it. Because there was never a kidnapping of any kind at all and it never looked like there was supposed to be a kidnapping with how her body was found. Such a mystery.
The Menendez Brothers case I’ve also followed since it happened. I watched the Ryan Murphy offering plus the documentary on Netflix all in one day last week. I’ve never been sure if there was sexual assault on the boys, but I do believe the parents, or at least the father, were abusive.
In watching the shows, I was reminded of the Lizzie Borden case. Another example of an adult child living with wealthy parents who snapped, which may or may not been from abuse and/or sexual molestation. Lizzie, too, went crazy with spending the money after the deaths.
The Lizzie Borden case has never been solved, but I believe Lizzie did it. As for the Menedez Brothers, I don’t know if they should be released. I don’t know enough. But from those two shows, I feel like they are narcissists and possibly psychopaths. I don’t believe they’d kill again, but I do believe they would spend the rest of their lives exploiting the case for financial gain. I don’t feel like they have remorse, but then again, if they were badly abused, should they have remorse? I don’t know.
The last show I’ll mention in this post is the Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, and Scandal documentary. Whooo, doggy…that was something. I remember when the data breach happened and watched a few things about that long ago.
Should Ashley Madison exist? Why not? Cheaters are going to cheat; you might as well give them a place to contact each other so they don’t clutter up regular dating sites where people are actually looking for a real relationship with someone who isn’t married.
I have to comment on this show because of a couple on there that I can’t stop thinking about, and they piss me off a lot. No, I wasn’t surprised that the Head Cheese of AM turned out to be the biggest lying, cheating asshole of all time. Not at all. I felt bad for his wife, who was blindsided by just how horrible he was behind her back when she was doing promo about their fabulous monogamous marriage. Nope, that wasn’t the couple that pissed me off.
It was the supposed “Christian” couple who have a huge TikTok career. I remember when he got outed, but I never looked into what happened next, but this documentary told us.
That man, I won’t name him, is a huge scumbag. HUGE. And the wife is ridiculous. He is a Class A Narcissist. He cheated because he wasn’t getting enough attention. Oh, boo hoo. His wife destroyed her body giving him children but like a lot of men, he gives no shits about her and her body and hormones and love for him and the children and how she tried to please him like most of us do for our husbands. All he knew is that he wasn’t getting the attention he felt he deserved and sought out cheaters on the app. Even when his name came out in the breach, he lied lied lied. I hope that when it all went down, that some of the women he cheated with had posted on his social media what a two-faced scumbag he is but of course, they were likely married as well and didn’t want to get caught up in his quasi-fame.
Even after he confessed whatever he confessed to the wife, she continues to stay with him. To. This. Day. At first, I was rooting for her, and hoping she’d leave his lying ass. But no, the glory and fame and money of being a social media family is more important. As they rake in the money from their videos, exploiting their own children I might add, they prove they have no moral compass even though they claim to be True Christians. They will stay together because it would cost them everything to not be together, which they’ve admitted to. They make fistsfuls of money so why wouldn’t wifey turn a blind eye while the money is rolling in?
Children of God? Good Christians? What. Ev. Ah.
If you didn’t think he was a narcissist and was just a confused young man who eventually realized the wrongs he had done and deleted the app just as he realized he was getting internet famous, then you need to see this documentary.
You can watch his crocodile tears. And his explanations for gaslighting his wife. Oh, how sorry he was…
Sorry he got caught, like all cheaters.
But check this out!
This man wanted to know if his wife was pregnant and decided to be a devious prick about it for clicks and views.
This man actually somehow got his wife’s pee out of the toilet (doesn’t she flush???? EUUUWWWWWWWW) and did a pregnancy test behind her back. He discovered she was pregnant before she did and videotaped all of it for their fans. The scooping of the pee, the test, the positive result, and then surprising his wife with the news that she is pregnant. Live on the TikTok or Gram or whatever they use.
Is that not the most disgusting story you’ve ever heard? I don’t mean the scooping of the pee, but of the mental gymnastics to think it’s okay to go behind his wife’s back to determine what is going on in her own body and then tell her about it in front of the world?
Control freak. Narcissist. Asshole.
Did their viewers find it cute and fun and funny?
Did God himself say it was cool to manipulate your wife like that?
That woman is so gaslit and in such a controlling marriage, but she doesn’t see it. She forgives his cheating times on Ashley Madison and likely found the whole pregnancy thing hilarious.
I will never get over that. The pregnancy test thing.
UGH.
Anyway, the fires rage on. Humans rage on.
I’ll post more about some of the other shows I’ve been watching another time; right now, I’m getting back to the California fires footage.
Natural disasters can happen to any of us at any time. They are the great equalizer to remind us all that we are humans. Let’s try to be good to each other although, yes, some people deserve kindness more than others.
Escaping into shows can help refocus our thoughts so we don’t get overwhelmed by the current tragedies of disasters, wars, politics, robots, and more.
People who say we don’t need entertainment to take our thoughts away from the real life that is happening right now are very rare. Most of us know we need entertainment of some kind to entice our brains: TV, movies, music, books. And we need the artists who create them all.
Do any of you have any thoughts about these shows? I’d love to see them.
And I’ll continue to follow the California nightmare and hope it ends soon.