What are you watching/Random TV thoughts

You say this now, but your grandchildren will be asking where you were when you experienced the "the first-ever animated series curated entirely on the blockchain."

Yeah, I gave up after that episode.

The peak of the show was when it wasn't really that political at all - I liked it as an absurdist proto-Adult Swim comedy. The show probably peaked with Scott Tenorman Must Die. But once the politics started to swamp the show, it just got worse and worse. I think the praise they got for some of the first political episodes were the worst thing that ever happened to South Park.

Last night on House Hunters International: an insufferable white lady moving to Cambodia because she was inspired by Angkor Wat and wants to live cheaply as an oil painter. She was totally insulting to all of the apartments she saw, and had a long list of demands. Gross.

 have to admit I'm not overly familiar with Vampire Weekend's songs (I know the Oxford Comma one), but I'm sure it's on point

The Reservation Dogs finale was perfect. Gonna miss this show. Love you, bitch.

I'm very grateful that TNVZ+ app has NFL games on. I verily enjoyed watching first half of Chiefs destroying Bears and one quarter of Dolphins riding Broncos hard.

 I haven't even started the final season yet because I don't want it to be over.

I watched it. Ah, my heart.

Finally have some new TV. With Justified and Strange New Worlds off the air by mid-summer we had resorted to watching random Korean variety shows.

Bake Off is back! This season is supposed to be "back to basics," so presumably no more painfully misguided "ethnic" challenges wherein Paul Hollywood continually confuses the words "taco" and "tortilla." After only one episode it's hard to get a sense of (new host) Alison Hammond's personality, but she's definitely game and didn't seem physically uncomfortable with the role as Matt Lucas did for most of his run. The cast is solid Bake Off, including "obvious frontrunner who might or might not flameout due to the pressure" (Dan), "contestant most likely to swoop in and claim the title if/when the frontrunner flames out" (Abbi), "younger contestant obviously in over their head and it's only a matter of time before they're eliminated" (Matty, Dana)," "even younger contestant who actually has the stuff" (Rowan), "adorable older person who will probably stick around a little too long because they're so adorable" (Keith, Nicky), "adorable older person who actually has the stuff" (Saku), "girl I have a crush on" (Tasha), and "the rest" (Josh, Cristy, Amos). The innuendo in this episode reached almost Mel and Sue levels of groanworthy, but I have to admit I cracked up at Paul lamenting that Nicky's "beaver looked amazing but it was bone dry!"

Taskmaster is back! The only cast members I had been familiar with were Sue and Lucy, and the latter only in the context of "hey, it's Jon Richardson's smarter and hotter wife!" in a handful of CatDown guest appearances. Again, hard to tell how the cast will gel in the early episodes, but Julian, Sam, and Lucy's introduction to each other for their first team task might the most sublimely awkward interaction ever featured on the show. "Can Tower" is a classic task.

Sex Education is back!...and it kind of feels off. Lots of first and second-tier characters (Jakob, Ola, Lily, Anwar, Olivia, Ms. Sands, Mr. Hendricks) who were unceremoniously dumped in favor of a bunch of new characters who feel a bit too much like 2-dimensional overly earnest woo woo Gen-Z parodies of teenagers. We're only a couple of episodes in, so maybe they get fleshed out more, but also...why aren't Ola and Lily around? What are they up to? So far, Otis's storyline has been actively annoying me. I know the character has always skirted the line between "wise beyond his years" and "typical insecure teenage asshole," but flipping his shit over not being the only sex therapist at the new school just seems disproportionately petty and silly for the character. You can be therapist on Tuesdays and Thursdays, O can be therapist on Mondays and Wednesdays--there, solved your weirdly contrived conflict for you. Finally, British set designers, I'm begging you: please stop just throwing foreign flags onto every surface to indicate when a location is not, in fact, in England. I know Americans are more flag-obsessed than most, but our university classrooms typically don't feature giant, gold-fringed American flags just kind of hanging around the corners, our professors don't keep miniature American flags on their desks, etc. And besides, no amount of  flags is going to disguise the fact that Maeve's "Wallace University" is a literal palace that manages to to out-fancy even Harvard and Yale.

Yeah, I just watched the last two episodes. The whole murder mystery felt so incidental to this season. It felt like the entire season was about Oliver, and I ended up only interested in the stuff that affected him. Still the final resolution to the mystery at least made sense, even if it was slightly underbaked. 

I'm actually a bit sad about the twist ending. Aw, did they have to kill that character? 

I have the same season rankings as you do.