Movie: Deep Water (2022) and The Ritual Killer (2023)

What it’s about: A strange man who collects snails and who seems to be only half-upset as his wife flirts and flaunts her extra-marital activities in front of him and their group of friends. The other men seem to keep dying mysteriously. Everyone thinks its snail man killing them off, leaving the audience to wonder whodunnit.
The moral the story: Sometimes divorce is the answer.

This movie was so slow. It took one hour before something actually happened after an over-extended set-up. Everyone and everything were weird and not in an interesting and quirky way (e.g. Dogtooth, Lemon, Art of Self Defense, etc.). I don’t know why I kept watching. I should have stopped it.
Too much of the story was spent on things that didn’t matter in the end including a lot of stray storylines and character vectors that go unaddressed or unresolved. What was the point of the group of friends if they didn’t play a role in the ending? It seems like they just wanted to show off the cast they were able to assemble to distract you from the terrible writing and excessive color filtering. What was the point of the snails?! What a waste of a potentially intriguing plot!

I streamed this from Hulu. It was a Hulu original production. 

The same night I also attempted to watch The Ritual Killer, another Hulu original. The story set-up was going all wrong and the acting was pretty bad. Even though it looked like they had a good production budget, nothing came together and nothing pulled me into the story past 18 minutes, not even Cole Hauser.

TV: The Split, Seasons 1-3

This is a British series about marriage, divorce, and relationships. Almost all the main characters are legal professionals who specialize in family law and so you get to see storylines of marriages coming together and falling apart for one reason or another. The main storyline is about the slow dissolving of the main character’s marriage, hence the title. Hannah and Nathan go through some crazy ups and downs throughout this series. 

The writing is so good and the acting is so good and its starring my new favorite actress, Nicola Walker, from Unforgotten. This is a three-season series. I watched all three seasons on Hulu.

Photo by stevepb

TV: Little Fires Everywhere (2020)

This limited series was fantastic! I read Celeste Ng's well-written slow-peeled-onion story Everything You Never Told Me for a book club and was enthralled by her storytelling style and capability. I should have read Little Fires Everywhere, but I watched this first. 

Watching Little Fires Everywhere during this this period of racial unrest, it was especially apparent how on the surface, the issues that the main characters face have much to do with white privilege and conscious and unconscious bias. The script is full of judgmental and downright racist statements. But the beauty of this story, which you learn as the onion peels, is that in this case, its not simply about racial issues. Its about the house of cards the two main characters built for themselves.

Ep 1-3 I spent trying to decide who was worse: Mia or Elena? At the end of ep 3, Mia was in the lead for being unnecessarily secretive and vindictive, whereas Elena was just being a self-focused elitist racist. Her hate-ability was passive. Mia was actively hurting people.
By the end of ep 4, you get a sense that the composed Elena is coming unhinged, and there’s a feeling of familiarity to it: she’s done this before! What’s worse is that she has raised another little monster and propagated her self-focused elitist-ness! And while teenagers make dumb teenagery decisions, mini-Elena takes it to another level of threatening and de-valuing her so-called friends’ lives.
At the end of ep 6, the flashback episode, you come away with a good foundation for both Mia and Elena. Their lives of struggle and unhappiness were of their own construction. They both set up their lives so that the cards would fall and they would have to hurt someone in their future, namely their children.

The last two episodes for me was about redemption. 

I streamed this in September of 2020 with a limited pass to Hulu. 

TV: Being Mary Jane Seasons 1-4 (2013-2019)

 Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. - Pema Chodron

When I first started watching Being Mary Jane, I enjoyed it. The show felt like a more grown Insecure. You have a main character who seems put together outwardly, but is a hot mess internally. She is surrounded by interesting characters who support her. That seemed real. It had a sense of authenticity.

At the onset, Mary Jane was already in these fraught romantic relationships. There’s David, the tarnished penny that keeps turning up, and Andre, the married man. As the show progressed, you see her fighting her way out of those relationships, but instead of learning from them, she hauls around the unresolved emotions, ruins a couple of potentially healthy relationships, and runs in heels towards unhealthy relationships. She not only sabotages her romances, but her friendships and family, too. Sabotage seems to be her method of operation. 

Of all the relationships MJ sabotages, I’m most upset about Sheldon, played by Gary Dourdan in season 2 and Lee played by Chike Okonkwo in season 4. How could you Mary Jane?!

In season 3, one of Mary Jane’s close friends commits suicide and the season ends with a lot of issues unresolved. 

Season 4 was terrible. The script was awful compared to the other seasons. It seemed like that authentic character interaction was lost in the writing. It was more “put together.” Characters were finishing each other’s sentences, there were silly comedy tropes and techniques, and I really hate silly comedy music. No matter what she did that was reprehensible, people were forgiving Mary Jane left and right. I hate-watched the season because I was hopeful for season 5. Lo and behold, they only finished one episode of season 5 and gave up, like I should have at the end of season 3.

I listened to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast episode (search for session 3) analyzing BMJ, and it brought my attention to how much in transition MJ is at the beginning of season 4. Note that she’s living in a hotel and having a hard time finding a permanent place to live while her position at work is also fluctuating. And then when she gets a permanent residence, she kicks her love-interest to the curb! 

If they ever think to revive BMJ, or maybe if they want to make a made-for-TV-movie to finish it off, I’d like to see the movie fast forward into MJ’s future and show her lying on a couch, being analyzed by a therapist (An idea put forth by Dr Shivonne Odom on Therapy for Black Girls). They can go through her past relationships, and flashback what happened after her friend died in season 3, since that is yet to be resolved for viewers.

I think Being Mary Jane seasons 1-3 are worth watching with your full attention, but pull out the ironing board, a jigsaw puzzle or feather duster so you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your time watching season 4. FYI: I heart Gabrielle Union. I have listened to both of her memoirs twice.

I binged this series on Hulu.