Watching, Playing, Reading: The Return Edition

==WATCHING==

PERRY MASON:  I think if people had just viewed this show as "Jim Smith" totally unrelated to the character they know, it would have gone down a lot better.  But for whatever reason, the Hollywood geniuses decided they needed to take yet another hero of yesteryear and totally beat the shit out of him, poor Luke Skywalker wasn't enough.  Green alien titty milk still haunts me all these years later and I've never rewatched Last Jedi...

It's a good show with a really stellar cast.  Big Matthew Rhys fan and I loved to see Tatiana Maslany back on my screen again in a post Orphan Black (aside:  if you haven't checked it out, check that out over Perry Mason, its pilot is probably only surpassed by LOST and WESTWORLD) show.  Once Perry was...you know, a lawyer around episode six it even got really good.  Looking forward to season two a whole bunch, since...ya know...he'll be a lawyer at the start that time.

But starting with Perry Mason blackmailing someone, a drinking problem, a deadbeat, AND a shitty father...kinda not fun for the audience.

HARLEY QUINN:  So there's the whole "Joker is abusive and Harley needs to strike out on her own and kick men in the balls" aspect that's pretty played out--or maybe I'm just still recovering from how bad BIRDS OF PREY was--but I dig this for all the obvious reasons like...curse words and smart, witty foul mouthed jokes.  Also King Shark has total T-Bone vibes...if T-Bone occasionally went mad with rage and started biting heads off.  Halfway through season 1, looking forward to the rest.

UMBRELLA ACADEMY:  Blah.  They just repeated season 1 in the 1960s.

FOOTSOCCERBALL:  5 teams with a realistic chance to win the Champions League and a possible Inter-ManU Europa League final where Lukaku can throw Harry Maguire around like a little boy?  Yes please!

THE BOYS:  GET HYPED REWATCH FOR SEASON 2 NEXT MONTH BABY!!!  THE DOLPHINS WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE AND I'M NOT TALKING DAN MARINO!!!

==PLAYING==

FOOTBALL MANAGER 2020:  I'm not addicted, you're addicted.

CRUSADER KINGS 2:  So I haven't really done a run of this for a couple years and the last expansion was HUGE.  Clicked on my favorite 900ish start date and never realized that the Kingdom of Arles has this guy called...Welf...as king, so...I could not help myself.  Two hundred years and a lot of Heinrich Welf's later I've shattered the Byzantium Empire and refounded the Bloodline of Alexander the Great, tons of fun!

CONTROL:  one of the games I just didn't get around to with all my health troubles.  Great gameplay, interesting mystery, tons of style, and it's only about 20 hours long, which is perfect (granted I'm looking forward to spending 200 hours on Cyberpunk at the end of the year, but...this is nice too!) for where I'm at now, especially since focusing on something like that for longer than an hour can still be a hassle for my surgery recovering ass.

==READING==

COLD DAYS BY JIMMY BOY BUTCHER:  It's been like...*checks watch* 6 years since the last Dresden novel and I both needed a refresh but also don't feel like going through all bajillion of them, so Cold Days looked like the smart restart point.  Seems like the new book is "half a story" so I have the time.  Granted if there's enough story for there to be fun theories to go over in the intervening months that can be fun too, but I'll be caught up soon enough.  Ya'll are going to be losing your minds at the FM7 halfway point BTW...just FYI...

THE PLANTAGENETS BY DAN JONES:  The book that made me decided to give Crusader Kings another go!  Nice overview of the time period, but...I like a more personal history book and this isn't it.  Granted without a large number of sources that kind of inner look is very difficult and we're talking about a thousand years ago, not like people were writing every little thought or had blogs back then, did they?

Now...what have you all been up to with your media consumption?