The film, which was based on the novel, takes place in an Oregon psychiatric hospital and starred Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, a new patient at the mental institution and his struggle to rise up against the evil nurse, Mildred Ratched played by Louise Fletcher.

Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky’s Ratched gives us an origin story of the infamous Nurse Ratched. Sarah Paulson plays the title role and we see her deceive her way into Lucia’s State Hospital which is run by Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones). This is truly just the beginning of Nurse Ratched as she will stop at nothing to get what she wants. It seems as though she has no moral compass—she engages in blackmail, importunes a suicide, and poisons a patient, just to make her way into the nursing staff at the mental hospital. And did we mention all of this happens by Episode 2?

Throughout the eight-episode series, we see that Mildred Ratched has a purpose for all of her nasty behaviors, and what seems to guide her is her love for her brother, Edmund Tolleson (Finn Wittrock), who’s a patient at the hospital after killing three priests and traumatizing a fourth.

We also see that Ratched did not have an easy childhood and that much of what she does may be a result of her less than perfect formative years. We learn that Mildred grew up as an orphan and was placed in the system with another child, Edmund, who she views as her brother. While in the system, they were tortured by all their caregivers and asked to perform sexual asks on one another before Edmund decides to murder his last set of caregivers.

While Nurse Ratched has a clearly evil side, we also see her softer side when she mercifully kills badly injured soldiers while she’s an army nurse after they beg her to end their pain. She also starts a love affair with Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon) and will do anything to make sure that her lover is cancer-free, healthy, and happy.

Nurse Ratched refers to herself as an “angel of mercy” which begs us to think is there such a thing and is Nurse Ratched really that bad? Honestly, after seeing Ratched we’re kind of rooting for Mildred, but we know that she returns to her evil ways when she returns as head nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

We’re hoping there’s a second season to Ratched so we can continue to learn more about Mildred Ratched and how she becomes a head nurse at the Oregon psychiatric hospital.

The post “Ratched” is the Origin Story We Needed appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Now that we’ve set the stage, we have some questions that we hope Season 3 (once the show gets renewed) will answer.

Did They Create a New Timeline?

At the end of the season, the team heads back to 2019 with The Commission briefcase. They’ve managed to land one day after the apocalypse. Upon first glance, things seem to be normal, but then Sir Reginald greets them and tells them that they’re not home. Instead of being at The Umbrella Academy, they’re at The Sparrow Academy.

Which leads us to wonder if they created a new timeline. The Umbrella Academy met with Reginald in 1963 to tell them of their existence and what happens in the future. This may have caused Reginald to change the future and avoid adopting the Umbrella Academy kids at birth. This fits in with what Reginald says in the final scene, “I knew you’d show up eventually.”

What is the Sparrow Academy?

In the final episode, the Hargeeeves see a photo of Ben on the mantle and are told that they are at The Sparrow Academy. We see Ben, but we don’t see the rest of the academy, which makes us wonder if the team is alternative versions of the rest of the Umbrella Academy or if it consists of six of the remaining 35 babies born on the same day.

Where are the Rest of the 35 Babies Born on the Same Day?

We know that there are 43 children born on the same day in 1989 and we’ve been introduced to seven of them plus Lila. Seven of them were adopted by Reginald and The Handler was searching for the other kids born on the same day who have special abilities. We are left wondering what happened to the rest of the babies and if they’re part of The Sparrow Academy.

What Happened to Lila?

Speaking of Lila, why didn’t she follow the Hargeeves back to 2019 after learning that she was one of them? We saw her superpowers, which were a combination of all of the siblings’ powers combined, and we’re sure that we haven’t seen the last of her. After The Handler (the woman who raised her) dies, Lila has a chance to be with her real family, but instead, she grabs a Commission briefcase and disappears.

Will she be a friend or foe to The Umbrella Academy and did she mess with the timeline? We happen to think that she may be part of The Sparrow Academy.

The post We Need to Talk about “The Umbrella Academy” Season 2 Ending appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

After a long wait, the fourth and final season of 13 Reasons Why was released a couple of weeks ago and the Liberty High students finally graduated from high school. But, did all the characters receive the happy ending we were hoping for? And did the last season deliver the shock-factor the other seasons have given us?

The final season tells the story of the students’ senior year and the major events that occur including a student spray-painting “Monty Was Framed” on the walls at the school, someone tormenting the students while they are on a class camping trip, and during a walk-out, someone sets the principal’s car on fire. We also see Clay (Dylan Minnette) trying to be there for his friends and keeping their secrets while coping with his depression and anxiety with the help of a therapist. By the end of the season, we see that all of the acts of violence have been committed by Clay, who doesn’t remember doing any of them.

It’s hard to imagine that the show’s hero is capable of doing all this destruction and that he doesn’t have any memory of committing these terrible crimes. The show’s writers make it seem as though Clay is capable of being a bully like the two characters he hates most, who were killed off in the previous seasons. But, by the end of the season, we see that Clay is back to his old ways of protecting his friends at all costs. And for a character as likable as Clay, we’re glad to see that he’s moving on past all the trauma that’s happened in the past seasons.

With a show that has so much going on, it wasn’t until the final episode and Clay’s speech at graduation that we see that the show’s overarching message is that you have to “choose to live” even when life is hard. This is perfectly summed up during Clay’s speech as the student speaker at graduation, “Hate is easy. Love and understanding are harder. But they are how we take care of each other, how we survive.”

While this message is inspiring and all the character seemed to have the happy ending we hoped for (including getting away with killing Bryce and framing Monty), we can’t help but mention Justin.

Each season of 13 Reasons Why left us dealing with at least one major death, but Justin’s death in the final episode of the series was the hardest to take. During the season we see pieces of a funeral and in the last episode we find out that it’s Justin who’s passed away. Justin seemed to be doing better after returning from rehab and he finally has the family he always wanted, but then we see him relapse after losing his mother to an overdose.

But the season doesn’t end there, Justin ends up dying from AIDs, a disease we had no idea he was suffering from. At the hospital, the nurse says he contracted HIV during his time on the streets as a sex worker and intravenous drug use and his condition quickly turned to AIDS.

For a show that ends the credits of every episode with a character saying “If you or someone you know needs help finding crisis resources visit 13REASONSWHY.INFO,” we wish the series would have used Justin’s HIV diagnosis as an educational platform to show that you can still live a long life with HIV and that it’s not a death sentence. With the stigma around HIV/AIDS, it would have been more interesting to see the character thrive, despite the disease. Why couldn’t he have had the send-off to college the other characters had at the end?

But, all in all, we loved the character development throughout the series and we’ll miss following the students at Liberty High.

4/5

The post “13 Reasons Why”: Was it the Goodbye We Wanted? appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The fifth and final season of She-Ra and the Princess of Power is a perfect example of a series that wraps up satisfyingly. It delves deeper into the characters, offering them each well-rounded endings while still being fun to watch from start to finish. Given that the first season premiered less than two years ago, it is amazing what the writers have accomplished in so little time.

Season four finished up with Etheria being brought out of the pocket dimension. The sword is broken and Etheria is left to the mercy of the Horde army. With such an epic cliffhanger, season five does not need to waste any time building up tension. The season is fast-paced and each episode is filled with epic moments. At the heart of the fast-paced adventure sequence, however, is the characters. It is their carefully-constructed development that drives the plot. This means we get to know some of the other princesses a bit better and fall for them just in time for the big finale. 

There is plenty of action, magic, and heroic sword-swinging. At its core, She-Ra is a fun cartoon that makes us laugh out loud and pump our firsts for joy at all the best moments. The meticulous crafting of the series, however, raises the show’s status to something so much more than “just a cartoon”. In addition to action, season five offers some deeply satisfying emotional moments in the form of the characters and their relationships. What is wonderful is that many of the relationships that reach a resolution were set up all the way back in season one. Perhaps that is a benefit of all 52 episodes taking just 18 months to make. 

In the end, season five does more than just satisfyingly resolve relationship dynamics and conflicts – it offers hope. The resolutions are not polished and perfected, but rather hint that each character’s journey is hopeful moving forward. At a time where a little bit of hope is what we all need, season five couldn’t have concluded in a more fulfilling way.

5/5

The post “She-Ra and the Princess of Power” Season 5 Review appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The special was filmed at New York’s Beacon Theatre. It’s just Seinfeld and the audience now. There’s no eccentric show-business but rather as Seinfeld describes it “the pure art of it.”

In the first half of the show, Seinfeld divides things up into two categories. He claims that there are only “two ratings”: everything “sucks” or is “great”. Something can be great with sucky parts or suck with great parts, but essentially – everything boils down to one of two categories. In the case of Seinfeld’s special, the rating is that it is a great show with a sucky second half.

The beauty of Seinfeld is that everything annoys him. In fact, everything annoys him so much that he takes pleasure in being annoyed by them. He hates phones and all things modern, bad buffets and disappointing restaurants. He even hates how great the Pop-Tart is simply because no food can ever compete with it. The joy in which he lists the things that annoy him invites the audience to get annoyed with him. It’s catharsis at its simplest, purest form.

What is remarkable is how Seinfeld seems to be able to pluck an endless string of examples. His writing is so well-crafted that as an audience we find ourselves constantly nodding along with what he is saying. We always knew we hated the drizzle restaurants consistently pour on our food but we never really honed in on the fact. The brilliance of Seinfeld is that he does it for us and deep down we love being annoyed about it too.

In the second half, Seinfeld spends a lot of time complaining about his marriage. Not all of the jokes in this segment hit the spot but still, it sucks in a way that is great. If you haven’t watched the special, this won’t make sense but if you’ve watched it, you’ll realize that this doesn’t make sense in such a way that only Seinfield could whittle it down for us.

4/5

The post Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill — Netflix Comedy Special Review appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Season two begins in a similar way to season one. Tony is struggling with everyday life and confesses that he feels sad all the time. It turns out that he didn’t pursue things further with the nurse and he is still a jerk to the people around him. The only time he seems truly happy is when he is watching old home videos of his deceased wife. These moments are touching and effective but offer nothing that we hadn’t already seen in season one.

On the plus side, we get to see more of Joe Wilkinson as a postman named Pat and Roisin Conaty as Daphne. The moments the show moves beyond Tony’s grief and onto their budding relationship are more entertaining, although begrudgingly predictable.

Worse still, the female side characters in season two are given unforgivably disappointing dialogue. In one scene, Tony’s colleague Sandy makes him promise to save the paper, just because she quite likes working there. In another, Matt’s ex-wife decides to go out with Matt just because another woman, Kath, is showing interest.  Kath spends the season pining after Matt, failing to pick up any social cues. Her only genuine moments are when she is bonding with Tony about the death of his wife. 

You know things are bad when the best comic relief character is a drunk therapist obsessed with downing pints with his mates and chasing after women. It’s cringy to watch but somehow still better than watching Tony’s terrible office banter with his poorly-written colleagues.

The ending of season two is touching but given the state of the rest of the series, Gervais would have been better off concluding the series with season one.

2/5

The post “After Life” Season 2 Shouldn’t Have Been Made appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Season five continues to pay enormous attention to detail while also driving plot development up to the Breaking Bad timeline. Tensions continue to rise between Gus and the cartel, and Jimmie is now and officially established as Saul Goodman. At the start of the season, he dresses in an eccentric, distinctively Saul Goodman suit and sets up a temporary base in a circus tent. He hands out free untraceable phones with his number on speed dial and promises clients 50% off his services for a week. Kim isn’t too happy with the immoral implications of his decision, but as the season unravels, she is pulled further into Saul’s unconventional way of doing things.

One of the remarkable achievements of Better Call Saul is that it successfully builds suspense even though we already know that the characters we care about most will survive beyond the start of the Breaking Bad timeline. Even though we know that Saul will be fine, when he drags himself through the desert in the antepenultimate episode, there are moments where it feels like he really might not make it.

The desert episode may be painfully slow but it sets up some important relationship developments. Mike and Saul leave the desert with an unspoken bond and after that point, Mike begins to trust Saul with important information. Saul realizes that Kim is the person he cares about the most and Kim equally realizes that Saul is far more important than the corporate clients she works with. At the moment, Saul almost gives up and Kim believes him dead, something happens to the characters which changes their relationship permanently. And then Kim breaks bad.

In the epic season finale, things heat up massively for Lalo and Nacho down in Mexico. Lalo may have started out as a new character that fans were unsure about but now, he is a highlight of the show. He is all about the showmanship and one of the biggest mysteries left in the series is what will happen to him and Nacho prior to the Breaking Bad timeline. And it feels like that timeline is getting pretty close.

5/5

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A group of extremely attractive, extremely confident people arrives on an island with the hope of meeting a special someone who will send sparks flying. Everything is looking perfect. The sun is shining, the location is beautiful and the villa has major Love Island vibes. Everybody is getting on well and attraction is already in the air. And that’s when Netflix drops the bomb.

An Alexa robot makes an announcement that causes everyone’s mood to shift from excitement to dread. The announcement is that the game show has one major rule. Contestants are not allowed to have any sexual contact, including kissing. In a time of social distancing, the twist is relevant, fresh, and uncomfortably hilarious.

If the contestants break the rule, which of course they do, the money will be deducted from the grand prize. The more sexual the exchange, the bigger the deduction.

The reasoning behind this new rule is so that the islanders can experience “personal growth” and learn to love each other for who they really are. It is meant to result in a deeper attraction but ultimately, the islanders are so caught up in not touching each other that there seems to be little room for anything else.

Nonetheless, Too Hot To Handle is a great watch if you enjoyed Love Is Blind and have a soft spot for trashy television. While we self-isolate from our loved ones and any future dates, watching a bunch of young people be told that they are not allowed to touch each other is highly entertaining.

A frisk 3/5

The post Netflix’s “Too Hot To Handle” Perfectly Fits Social Distancing appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Money Heist started out as a 15-episode show that aired only in Spain. It didn’t garner much attention and it was a bit of a spontaneous move on Netflix’s part to snap up the show for streaming. When they licensed the show, they edited the series into 22 shorter episodes. It was not long before the series had pulled in thousands of streams and then came the memes and the merch.

The series eventually sparked a wave of global enthusiasm and before long, it seemed to be the case that everyone was talking about it. It is no wonder that the streaming platform lept at the opportunity to create a documentary about the series and its success.

But does the Netflix original actually add anything to the Money Heist story?

In a nutshell, yes, it does. The documentary explores how the niche Spanish heist drama ended up becoming one of the most talked-about series of the decade. It delves into a new side of the characters on the show and offers theories of how Money Heist went from a failed TV series to a worldwide phenomenon. It is essentially decoding of how a show Netflix barely even advertised shaped up to be streamed by hundreds of thousands of people who began begging for new seasons.

The documentary also delves into how the series became a symbol of resistance. It’s got a high-energy and rather than portraying the gang as thieves, they are presented as rebels standing against the state. We get to take a look behind the scenes of the series and learn about the unusual creative process behind it. If you love Money Heist, you’ll find yourself nodding along in agreement from start to finish.

As a stand-alone feature, Money Heist: The Phenomenon is realistically not particularly worth the watch. If you are part of an audience that has been captivated and shaken by the unexpectedly popular Spanish heist series, then it is worth investing the additional hour when you sit down to watch season four.

3.5/5

The post “Money Heist: The Phenomenon” Explores the World of the Popular Series appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

In the first episode, we meet Joe Exotic. He’s an eccentric mulleted character and the operator of a big cat park in Oklahoma. He has two hundred pet tigers and enough personality to have us instantly hooked on the series. The trouble is, he has been accused of hiring someone to murder his animal activist rival, the equally eccentric Carole Baskin. 

Arguably, the thing that sells the series is the succession of increasingly unpredictable twists. Just when you think you know who to route for, a new event takes place to pull you even deeper into the absurdity of the show. A man with a zoo full of pet tigers ends up being the center of a drug-fuelled murder conspiracy and just when we think things can’t get any weirder, a new whacky character is introduced to the mix. Oh, and there are guns. Lots of guns.

At the end of the day, the experience of watching Tiger King is something like going to a zoo itself. It’s intriguing, entertaining, but the whole time you feel a little bit guilty for getting enjoyment out of animals in captivity. The series reminds viewers that in the U.S., more tigers live in captivity than they do in the wild. In the midst of a colorful, bombastic series, revelations like this hit hard. 

Ultimately, Tiger King is a trashy, grotesque series which is near impossible to switch off. The combination of eccentrics and shocking twists has audiences hooked in the absurd world of Joe Exotic. We have no shame in saying that we consumed the whole series in a weekend and then spent the next couple of days soaking up the memes that followed. A touch of the absurd is exactly what we need right now.

4/5

The post “Tiger King” is Amazingly Trashy and Grotesque appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The film, which was based on the novel, takes place in an Oregon psychiatric hospital and starred Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, a new patient at the mental institution and his struggle to rise up against the evil nurse, Mildred Ratched played by Louise Fletcher.

Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky’s Ratched gives us an origin story of the infamous Nurse Ratched. Sarah Paulson plays the title role and we see her deceive her way into Lucia’s State Hospital which is run by Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones). This is truly just the beginning of Nurse Ratched as she will stop at nothing to get what she wants. It seems as though she has no moral compass—she engages in blackmail, importunes a suicide, and poisons a patient, just to make her way into the nursing staff at the mental hospital. And did we mention all of this happens by Episode 2?

Throughout the eight-episode series, we see that Mildred Ratched has a purpose for all of her nasty behaviors, and what seems to guide her is her love for her brother, Edmund Tolleson (Finn Wittrock), who’s a patient at the hospital after killing three priests and traumatizing a fourth.

We also see that Ratched did not have an easy childhood and that much of what she does may be a result of her less than perfect formative years. We learn that Mildred grew up as an orphan and was placed in the system with another child, Edmund, who she views as her brother. While in the system, they were tortured by all their caregivers and asked to perform sexual asks on one another before Edmund decides to murder his last set of caregivers.

While Nurse Ratched has a clearly evil side, we also see her softer side when she mercifully kills badly injured soldiers while she’s an army nurse after they beg her to end their pain. She also starts a love affair with Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon) and will do anything to make sure that her lover is cancer-free, healthy, and happy.

Nurse Ratched refers to herself as an “angel of mercy” which begs us to think is there such a thing and is Nurse Ratched really that bad? Honestly, after seeing Ratched we’re kind of rooting for Mildred, but we know that she returns to her evil ways when she returns as head nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

We’re hoping there’s a second season to Ratched so we can continue to learn more about Mildred Ratched and how she becomes a head nurse at the Oregon psychiatric hospital.

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Now that we’ve set the stage, we have some questions that we hope Season 3 (once the show gets renewed) will answer.

Did They Create a New Timeline?

At the end of the season, the team heads back to 2019 with The Commission briefcase. They’ve managed to land one day after the apocalypse. Upon first glance, things seem to be normal, but then Sir Reginald greets them and tells them that they’re not home. Instead of being at The Umbrella Academy, they’re at The Sparrow Academy.

Which leads us to wonder if they created a new timeline. The Umbrella Academy met with Reginald in 1963 to tell them of their existence and what happens in the future. This may have caused Reginald to change the future and avoid adopting the Umbrella Academy kids at birth. This fits in with what Reginald says in the final scene, “I knew you’d show up eventually.”

What is the Sparrow Academy?

In the final episode, the Hargeeeves see a photo of Ben on the mantle and are told that they are at The Sparrow Academy. We see Ben, but we don’t see the rest of the academy, which makes us wonder if the team is alternative versions of the rest of the Umbrella Academy or if it consists of six of the remaining 35 babies born on the same day.

Where are the Rest of the 35 Babies Born on the Same Day?

We know that there are 43 children born on the same day in 1989 and we’ve been introduced to seven of them plus Lila. Seven of them were adopted by Reginald and The Handler was searching for the other kids born on the same day who have special abilities. We are left wondering what happened to the rest of the babies and if they’re part of The Sparrow Academy.

What Happened to Lila?

Speaking of Lila, why didn’t she follow the Hargeeves back to 2019 after learning that she was one of them? We saw her superpowers, which were a combination of all of the siblings’ powers combined, and we’re sure that we haven’t seen the last of her. After The Handler (the woman who raised her) dies, Lila has a chance to be with her real family, but instead, she grabs a Commission briefcase and disappears.

Will she be a friend or foe to The Umbrella Academy and did she mess with the timeline? We happen to think that she may be part of The Sparrow Academy.

The post We Need to Talk about “The Umbrella Academy” Season 2 Ending appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

After a long wait, the fourth and final season of 13 Reasons Why was released a couple of weeks ago and the Liberty High students finally graduated from high school. But, did all the characters receive the happy ending we were hoping for? And did the last season deliver the shock-factor the other seasons have given us?

The final season tells the story of the students’ senior year and the major events that occur including a student spray-painting “Monty Was Framed” on the walls at the school, someone tormenting the students while they are on a class camping trip, and during a walk-out, someone sets the principal’s car on fire. We also see Clay (Dylan Minnette) trying to be there for his friends and keeping their secrets while coping with his depression and anxiety with the help of a therapist. By the end of the season, we see that all of the acts of violence have been committed by Clay, who doesn’t remember doing any of them.

It’s hard to imagine that the show’s hero is capable of doing all this destruction and that he doesn’t have any memory of committing these terrible crimes. The show’s writers make it seem as though Clay is capable of being a bully like the two characters he hates most, who were killed off in the previous seasons. But, by the end of the season, we see that Clay is back to his old ways of protecting his friends at all costs. And for a character as likable as Clay, we’re glad to see that he’s moving on past all the trauma that’s happened in the past seasons.

With a show that has so much going on, it wasn’t until the final episode and Clay’s speech at graduation that we see that the show’s overarching message is that you have to “choose to live” even when life is hard. This is perfectly summed up during Clay’s speech as the student speaker at graduation, “Hate is easy. Love and understanding are harder. But they are how we take care of each other, how we survive.”

While this message is inspiring and all the character seemed to have the happy ending we hoped for (including getting away with killing Bryce and framing Monty), we can’t help but mention Justin.

Each season of 13 Reasons Why left us dealing with at least one major death, but Justin’s death in the final episode of the series was the hardest to take. During the season we see pieces of a funeral and in the last episode we find out that it’s Justin who’s passed away. Justin seemed to be doing better after returning from rehab and he finally has the family he always wanted, but then we see him relapse after losing his mother to an overdose.

But the season doesn’t end there, Justin ends up dying from AIDs, a disease we had no idea he was suffering from. At the hospital, the nurse says he contracted HIV during his time on the streets as a sex worker and intravenous drug use and his condition quickly turned to AIDS.

For a show that ends the credits of every episode with a character saying “If you or someone you know needs help finding crisis resources visit 13REASONSWHY.INFO,” we wish the series would have used Justin’s HIV diagnosis as an educational platform to show that you can still live a long life with HIV and that it’s not a death sentence. With the stigma around HIV/AIDS, it would have been more interesting to see the character thrive, despite the disease. Why couldn’t he have had the send-off to college the other characters had at the end?

But, all in all, we loved the character development throughout the series and we’ll miss following the students at Liberty High.

4/5

The post “13 Reasons Why”: Was it the Goodbye We Wanted? appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The fifth and final season of She-Ra and the Princess of Power is a perfect example of a series that wraps up satisfyingly. It delves deeper into the characters, offering them each well-rounded endings while still being fun to watch from start to finish. Given that the first season premiered less than two years ago, it is amazing what the writers have accomplished in so little time.

Season four finished up with Etheria being brought out of the pocket dimension. The sword is broken and Etheria is left to the mercy of the Horde army. With such an epic cliffhanger, season five does not need to waste any time building up tension. The season is fast-paced and each episode is filled with epic moments. At the heart of the fast-paced adventure sequence, however, is the characters. It is their carefully-constructed development that drives the plot. This means we get to know some of the other princesses a bit better and fall for them just in time for the big finale. 

There is plenty of action, magic, and heroic sword-swinging. At its core, She-Ra is a fun cartoon that makes us laugh out loud and pump our firsts for joy at all the best moments. The meticulous crafting of the series, however, raises the show’s status to something so much more than “just a cartoon”. In addition to action, season five offers some deeply satisfying emotional moments in the form of the characters and their relationships. What is wonderful is that many of the relationships that reach a resolution were set up all the way back in season one. Perhaps that is a benefit of all 52 episodes taking just 18 months to make. 

In the end, season five does more than just satisfyingly resolve relationship dynamics and conflicts – it offers hope. The resolutions are not polished and perfected, but rather hint that each character’s journey is hopeful moving forward. At a time where a little bit of hope is what we all need, season five couldn’t have concluded in a more fulfilling way.

5/5

The post “She-Ra and the Princess of Power” Season 5 Review appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

The special was filmed at New York’s Beacon Theatre. It’s just Seinfeld and the audience now. There’s no eccentric show-business but rather as Seinfeld describes it “the pure art of it.”

In the first half of the show, Seinfeld divides things up into two categories. He claims that there are only “two ratings”: everything “sucks” or is “great”. Something can be great with sucky parts or suck with great parts, but essentially – everything boils down to one of two categories. In the case of Seinfeld’s special, the rating is that it is a great show with a sucky second half.

The beauty of Seinfeld is that everything annoys him. In fact, everything annoys him so much that he takes pleasure in being annoyed by them. He hates phones and all things modern, bad buffets and disappointing restaurants. He even hates how great the Pop-Tart is simply because no food can ever compete with it. The joy in which he lists the things that annoy him invites the audience to get annoyed with him. It’s catharsis at its simplest, purest form.

What is remarkable is how Seinfeld seems to be able to pluck an endless string of examples. His writing is so well-crafted that as an audience we find ourselves constantly nodding along with what he is saying. We always knew we hated the drizzle restaurants consistently pour on our food but we never really honed in on the fact. The brilliance of Seinfeld is that he does it for us and deep down we love being annoyed about it too.

In the second half, Seinfeld spends a lot of time complaining about his marriage. Not all of the jokes in this segment hit the spot but still, it sucks in a way that is great. If you haven’t watched the special, this won’t make sense but if you’ve watched it, you’ll realize that this doesn’t make sense in such a way that only Seinfield could whittle it down for us.

4/5

The post Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill — Netflix Comedy Special Review appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Season two begins in a similar way to season one. Tony is struggling with everyday life and confesses that he feels sad all the time. It turns out that he didn’t pursue things further with the nurse and he is still a jerk to the people around him. The only time he seems truly happy is when he is watching old home videos of his deceased wife. These moments are touching and effective but offer nothing that we hadn’t already seen in season one.

On the plus side, we get to see more of Joe Wilkinson as a postman named Pat and Roisin Conaty as Daphne. The moments the show moves beyond Tony’s grief and onto their budding relationship are more entertaining, although begrudgingly predictable.

Worse still, the female side characters in season two are given unforgivably disappointing dialogue. In one scene, Tony’s colleague Sandy makes him promise to save the paper, just because she quite likes working there. In another, Matt’s ex-wife decides to go out with Matt just because another woman, Kath, is showing interest.  Kath spends the season pining after Matt, failing to pick up any social cues. Her only genuine moments are when she is bonding with Tony about the death of his wife. 

You know things are bad when the best comic relief character is a drunk therapist obsessed with downing pints with his mates and chasing after women. It’s cringy to watch but somehow still better than watching Tony’s terrible office banter with his poorly-written colleagues.

The ending of season two is touching but given the state of the rest of the series, Gervais would have been better off concluding the series with season one.

2/5

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Season five continues to pay enormous attention to detail while also driving plot development up to the Breaking Bad timeline. Tensions continue to rise between Gus and the cartel, and Jimmie is now and officially established as Saul Goodman. At the start of the season, he dresses in an eccentric, distinctively Saul Goodman suit and sets up a temporary base in a circus tent. He hands out free untraceable phones with his number on speed dial and promises clients 50% off his services for a week. Kim isn’t too happy with the immoral implications of his decision, but as the season unravels, she is pulled further into Saul’s unconventional way of doing things.

One of the remarkable achievements of Better Call Saul is that it successfully builds suspense even though we already know that the characters we care about most will survive beyond the start of the Breaking Bad timeline. Even though we know that Saul will be fine, when he drags himself through the desert in the antepenultimate episode, there are moments where it feels like he really might not make it.

The desert episode may be painfully slow but it sets up some important relationship developments. Mike and Saul leave the desert with an unspoken bond and after that point, Mike begins to trust Saul with important information. Saul realizes that Kim is the person he cares about the most and Kim equally realizes that Saul is far more important than the corporate clients she works with. At the moment, Saul almost gives up and Kim believes him dead, something happens to the characters which changes their relationship permanently. And then Kim breaks bad.

In the epic season finale, things heat up massively for Lalo and Nacho down in Mexico. Lalo may have started out as a new character that fans were unsure about but now, he is a highlight of the show. He is all about the showmanship and one of the biggest mysteries left in the series is what will happen to him and Nacho prior to the Breaking Bad timeline. And it feels like that timeline is getting pretty close.

5/5

The post “Better Call Saul” Season 5 is the Height of Television appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

A group of extremely attractive, extremely confident people arrives on an island with the hope of meeting a special someone who will send sparks flying. Everything is looking perfect. The sun is shining, the location is beautiful and the villa has major Love Island vibes. Everybody is getting on well and attraction is already in the air. And that’s when Netflix drops the bomb.

An Alexa robot makes an announcement that causes everyone’s mood to shift from excitement to dread. The announcement is that the game show has one major rule. Contestants are not allowed to have any sexual contact, including kissing. In a time of social distancing, the twist is relevant, fresh, and uncomfortably hilarious.

If the contestants break the rule, which of course they do, the money will be deducted from the grand prize. The more sexual the exchange, the bigger the deduction.

The reasoning behind this new rule is so that the islanders can experience “personal growth” and learn to love each other for who they really are. It is meant to result in a deeper attraction but ultimately, the islanders are so caught up in not touching each other that there seems to be little room for anything else.

Nonetheless, Too Hot To Handle is a great watch if you enjoyed Love Is Blind and have a soft spot for trashy television. While we self-isolate from our loved ones and any future dates, watching a bunch of young people be told that they are not allowed to touch each other is highly entertaining.

A frisk 3/5

The post Netflix’s “Too Hot To Handle” Perfectly Fits Social Distancing appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

Money Heist started out as a 15-episode show that aired only in Spain. It didn’t garner much attention and it was a bit of a spontaneous move on Netflix’s part to snap up the show for streaming. When they licensed the show, they edited the series into 22 shorter episodes. It was not long before the series had pulled in thousands of streams and then came the memes and the merch.

The series eventually sparked a wave of global enthusiasm and before long, it seemed to be the case that everyone was talking about it. It is no wonder that the streaming platform lept at the opportunity to create a documentary about the series and its success.

But does the Netflix original actually add anything to the Money Heist story?

In a nutshell, yes, it does. The documentary explores how the niche Spanish heist drama ended up becoming one of the most talked-about series of the decade. It delves into a new side of the characters on the show and offers theories of how Money Heist went from a failed TV series to a worldwide phenomenon. It is essentially decoding of how a show Netflix barely even advertised shaped up to be streamed by hundreds of thousands of people who began begging for new seasons.

The documentary also delves into how the series became a symbol of resistance. It’s got a high-energy and rather than portraying the gang as thieves, they are presented as rebels standing against the state. We get to take a look behind the scenes of the series and learn about the unusual creative process behind it. If you love Money Heist, you’ll find yourself nodding along in agreement from start to finish.

As a stand-alone feature, Money Heist: The Phenomenon is realistically not particularly worth the watch. If you are part of an audience that has been captivated and shaken by the unexpectedly popular Spanish heist series, then it is worth investing the additional hour when you sit down to watch season four.

3.5/5

The post “Money Heist: The Phenomenon” Explores the World of the Popular Series appeared first on Entertainment For Us.

In the first episode, we meet Joe Exotic. He’s an eccentric mulleted character and the operator of a big cat park in Oklahoma. He has two hundred pet tigers and enough personality to have us instantly hooked on the series. The trouble is, he has been accused of hiring someone to murder his animal activist rival, the equally eccentric Carole Baskin. 

Arguably, the thing that sells the series is the succession of increasingly unpredictable twists. Just when you think you know who to route for, a new event takes place to pull you even deeper into the absurdity of the show. A man with a zoo full of pet tigers ends up being the center of a drug-fuelled murder conspiracy and just when we think things can’t get any weirder, a new whacky character is introduced to the mix. Oh, and there are guns. Lots of guns.

At the end of the day, the experience of watching Tiger King is something like going to a zoo itself. It’s intriguing, entertaining, but the whole time you feel a little bit guilty for getting enjoyment out of animals in captivity. The series reminds viewers that in the U.S., more tigers live in captivity than they do in the wild. In the midst of a colorful, bombastic series, revelations like this hit hard. 

Ultimately, Tiger King is a trashy, grotesque series which is near impossible to switch off. The combination of eccentrics and shocking twists has audiences hooked in the absurd world of Joe Exotic. We have no shame in saying that we consumed the whole series in a weekend and then spent the next couple of days soaking up the memes that followed. A touch of the absurd is exactly what we need right now.

4/5

The post “Tiger King” is Amazingly Trashy and Grotesque appeared first on Entertainment For Us.