Things seen. And not with these very large pupils....

Just back from the eye doctor's, and everything seems fine. Other than still seeing fuzzy from having my pupils dilated. But it's okay, since I can't drive anywhere anyway because stupidhead left his lights on when he got to work this morning. I'm waiting for the jump, and my final appointment, as I write.

I got a brief respite from the email snafu last night into this morning, but it looks like Speculum has once again blocked them. I know this because I filed something this morning, which should have produced a confirming court email, and, nuthin', on that or any other case.  Once I'm mobile again, I'm going to head over to one of their offices to bitch at them in person. Conveniently, there's an M&T in that same plaza, and their snafu continues, only now the entire mobile site is down and has been all day.  Maybe Wile E. Coyote is making trouble over there, too:P

So I'll just update some of the things I, or we, have been watching and, in the case of the we's. mostly enjoying:

* Up-Doyle on Date:  We've now finished the third season of Republic of Doyle and that puts us at the halfway point of the entire series. It ended with Tinny's provenance being clarified, Des taking a bad turn, and a beloved member of the Doyle family seemingly passing away. But nothing is ever certain in this series, and we'll return to the Rock after catching up on some other stuff.

* Zach Braff films. Eleanor brought home one called Wish I Was Here, a coming-of-age film about a couple, their kids and his character's dying father. Braff is much better known for the earlier Garden State, also a coming-of-age film about a not quite couple and their asshole parents. We'd always underestimated the staggering drawing power of the Garden State, and actually found it pretty dry except the scenes with Natalie Portman. Those were distractingly over the top.  But the later film really connected with us. Even though Mandy Patinkin plays an asshole father, he's Mandy Patinkin, so you have to love him. The kids played their parts well without being sugary sweet or overly precocious, Jim Parsons from BBT drops by, and Josh Gad is cool (heh) as Braff's slacker brother with a heart of gold.

* The Art of Getting By. British actor Freddie Highmore played Charlie to Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka in the Tim Burton reimagining of the story. Unlike his predecessor in the role, who never acted before or since and overlapped a year at Cornell Vet in my senior year of undergrad, Highmore has stayed active, and here plays a perfectly accented American kid coming of age in Manhattan with Emma Roberts as his just(?) friend.  The supporting cast is also excellent, the music awesome, and the Manhattan cinematography is up with what I will no longer watch from that Allen guy.

* The Finale of Flux. I bought the six-episode miniseries on iTunes, which was stupid because I've refused to download that iPieceOfShit onto this computer, and the final episode didn't show up until yesterday despite the others all becoming available the Monday after the BBC airings.  But I stuck with it, and.... okay. Just okay.  Thirteen was clearly having a good time playing with herself (not THAT way, you pervs:P), Dan is a good new companion, the real bond between Doctor and Yaz finally deepened, but Chibnall overdid the exposition and packed too many villains and too much overlapping bullshit battle for the good parts to sink in. We'll get a New Years episode in a few weeks and then two final specials with him and Jodie to exit on. Rumours are rampant about a Ten return along with RTD returning to the TARDIS controls, but I hope they go in a new direction. Capaldi remains my fave of the new era and that maturity, in whatever gender(s), race(s) or other details, would be a plus for this old guy watching.

And finally, speaking of returns,.... Let's Talk About Dex.

----

I was one of the many who, eight years ago, thought the series finale was horrible. Worse than Quantum Leap's kick in the pants ending, worse than Tony Soprano's fade to black. I blacked it out so much, I didn't even notice that Hannah was played by the future Commander's Wife in Hulu's Handmaid. The lumberjack jokes were about the only good that came out of it.

So when I heard over the summer that Michael C. Hall was going to give it another go to re-wrap his signature character's ending, with the original showrunner back in the restraints, I was curious enough to check it out. Not curious enough to pay Showtime anything for it, though; it's annoying that CBS-Paramount hasn't folded that premium service into the one I already buy for Star Trek (which I'm also horribly behind on). I figured I'd wait until the finale next month, sign up for the free trial and binge it. That remains the plan, but over the weekend I noticed that Amazon Prime was giving away the premiere for free.

Okay, Dex. Rope me in.

And,.... another okay.  Only one other TOS actor visually reprises their role, and that, um, not exactly.  (IMDB spoilers reveal that another Miami friend of the Morgans voices-over a brief scene.) Another character, played by a new actor, makes a more significant return, which I won't spoil but just about every article about the show does, making the dramatic build-up of it pretty anti-climactic.  The new characters are largely trope: The Small Town Cop Who Doesn't See Through Her New Boyfriend's Act, The Umambiguously Gay Fish And Game Shop Owner, The Rich Asshole Who Wears The KILL ME DEX Sign Pasted To His Ass, all in a fictional town in upstate New York that's really filmed in rural Massachusetts. (IMDB even published my observation of the premiere goof in that setting;)

The homages to the past are few and far between. Dex still brings donuts as his calling card to the living, and can't help imagining microscope slides to deal with those he wishes dead.  The biggest disappointment was not a single use of the haunting original Rolfe Kent theme song, not even a hint of it unless I missed something.  Contrast how David Chase held the original Sopranos theme song, and ran it complete, at a key moment at the end of Many Saints of Newark.  A close second is when Dexter hears the voice of his conscience telling him not to connect with anyone beyond a superficial level, because "everyone close to you dies." We then hear a litany of those from Miami, beginning with: his former captain, his late wife, Doakes.

DOAKES?!?  DEX HATED THAT MOFO, AND THE FEELING WAS MUTUAL. He had true affection for everyone else in that piece of exposition, but the speaker, and the showrunner, and actor-executive producer Michael C. Hall all must have known that one of these things was not like the other and it got into the episode anyway.

Be careful, guys. If you're gonna get caught with continuity errors, you're breaking the first rule of The Code.

Back in January to revisit.