#sydney kume

[cantsayidont]

Teevee haterating:

BANDIDOS Season 2 (2025): The gang returns for more Indiana Jones-ish antics, this time in a race with another old enemy (Ximena Lamadrid) to find a legendary diamond that's part of a centuries-old cache of native treasure. The story this time focuses primarily on Lilí (Ester Expósito), but while Expósito is easily the best actor of the bunch, giving her more opportunity to emote sacrifices the deadpan nonchalance that made Lilí so much fun to watch in the first season, and the busy, contrived plot gives the other characters precious little to do. As before, the mood is light, but the plot is only incrementally less culturally insensitive than THE MUMMY (1999); the story's actual indigenous characters are treated very brusquely. CONTAINS LESBIANS? We finally see the woman for whom Inés the bisexual bent cop (Mabel Cadena) left her husband. VERDICT: Much too scattershot to satisfy if you actually try to pay attention to it.

LAID (2024): Stephanie Hsu squanders all accumulated goodwill with this incredibly awful Peacock comedy, adapted from an Australian series, about a romantically frustrated, singularly insufferable party planner named Ruby Yao (Hsu), whose former lovers start dropping dead in the order in which Ruby slept with them. Yet another entry in the lexicon of unfunny comedies about Millennials whose sole personality trait is boorish self-absorption, costarring Zosia Mamet of GIRLS as Ruby's equallly unbearable true-crime-obsessed roommate AJ. Scattershot and offensive, and the characters are so incredibly unsympathetic that there's no reason to stick around long enough to find out what's really going on. (Spoiler alert: It's not actually explained, and ends with a cliffhanger.) CONTAINS LESBIANS? Ruby has dated a couple of women, who are not immune to her death curse, nor is a gay guy she once hooked up with — because for shows like this, what's funnier than dead gay people? VERDICT: Dire. Has Peacock ever made anything good?

THE OLD MAN (2022–2024): Uncomfortable, racist FX espionage drama about a long-retired covert operative called Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), who finds that U.S. intelligence is once again looking for him after 30 years off the radar, with his one-time handler Harper (John Lithgow) now forced to play both sides against the middle. Amy Brennerman plays a middle-aged divorcée who ends up as Dan's de facto hostage and putative partner, with Alia Shawkat as Harper's FBI protégé. Lithgow and Brennerman are excellent, but Bridges seems miscast — he was never a tough guy even in his 30s, and a gravelly voice alone does not an elderly badass make. It takes forever before the needle even twitches on the "Who cares?" meter, but once the Season 1 climax finally (sort of) reveals what's going on, it all falls apart: The second season immediately loses all narrative momentum for a double helping of awful Orientalist horseshit — not only does it refuse to treat any of its Afghan characters as real people, it becomes so racist that it stops making any sense at all. Shawkat embarrasses herself in what proves to be a truly dreadful part. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Obliquely? VERDICT: The first season's fleeting moments of promise are discarded early in Season 2, which quickly becomes unwatchable. I came away feeling that everyone involved should issue a public apology.

SKYMED (2022– ): Undemanding, very cheesy CBC medical drama about the heroic flight nurses and pilots of an air medevac service in northern Manitoba. A likable cast (Natasha Calis, Morgan Holmstrom, Aason Nadjiwan, Praneet Akilla, Mercedes Morris, Kheon Clarke, Thomas Elms, Rebecca Kwan, and especially Sydney Kuhne), the usual dose of contrivance and melodrama, and an eye-rolling lack of narrative subtlety — it might as well slather each major story or character beat in hi-vis orange. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not until Season 2, when it begins to make up for lost time. VERDICT: Check your brain at the door, but there are worse ways to spend 44 minutes.

VINCENZO (2021): Broad, sometimes violent, sometimes ridiculous K-drama satire of the endemic corruption of modern South Korean society, about Vincenzo Cassano, a slick Korean-Italian mob consiglieri with nerves of ice (the incongruously babyfaced Song Joong-ki) who returns to Korea in search of a cache of mob gold and ends up going to war with a ruthless corporate conglomerate called Babel, which is trying to acquire and demolish the building where the gold is hidden. Vincenzo soon becomes entangled with the building's eccentric tenants and their idealistic lawyer (Yoo Jae-myung), whose temperamental daughter Hong Cha-young (Jeon Yeo-been) is an attorney for the firm that represents Babel's pharmaceuticals business. An unsubtle but infectious mixture of ripped-from-the-headlines topicality, goofy comedy, and grandiose melodrama, its biggest flaws are that it tends to draw things out more than it needs to (especially given how eagerly it telegraphs its major story beats) and that the delightful supporting cast doesn't always get enough screen time. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Not always convincing, but consistently endearing, although the brutality of the finale doesn't sit quite right, even considering the villains' over-the-top barbarity.