Change Your Image
joshuaalguire
Reviews
Fleabag (2016)
You've seen this a hundred times before, but not like this!
A story about a broken woman and her relationship with her family. Her sister in particular, who feels like the pillar around which everyone develops.
I was pleasantly blindsided with this show. In today's social climate, a drama about an independent young woman invariably means a ham fisted "white men are evil" narrative. While there are lots of male characters in this show, some of whom are reprehensible; they are diverse and interesting and most importantly, they serve the narrative well.
The reason I say you've seen this before is because the main character is struggling financially and is a borderline alcoholic with highly questionable morals stumbling towards redemption. Which describes innumerable main characters before this except... they are almost always male. While there have been lots of female main characters in the past, very few are this broken or honest and they rarely if ever are forced to be accountable for their failings. Fleabag is one of the best tragic characters I've ever seen, period. She does lots of terrible things while still being sympathetic. But her actions definitely have consequences in this show.
The main character breaks the fourth wall, a lot. Which is a cool cinematic trick we've seen before. But it is done so seamlessly that it works well and feels refreshing.
My only complaint would be that rather than six 23 minute episodes this should have been one two hour (and change) movie.
I highly recommend this show.
The Fourth Estate (2018)
Why the NYT?
A series of segments about NYT reporters covering Donald Trump's presidency. If you've ever wondered what it's like inside the NYT echo chamber, this may interest you. For everyone else, it's basically a ripoff of "The Circus" except instead of last week, the content is over a year old and instead of personable hosts there are a bunch of pretentious NYT reporters.
I get it, Trump is awful, but I just suffered through two years of the MSM obsessing about Russia and whinging about mean tweets. Why would I want to watch a documentary series review the same inane partisan hackery in detail?