I hope you're feeling better by now, Mare! Congrats to Kieran on all his wins! I watched the Golden Globes, and he was cute with his bracelets and tattoos from his kids.
I'm glad you stuck with Squid Game! The marbles episode was definitely one of the best of Season 1! That's when you really start to care about the characters, and each death hurts. From what I've read, the show was intended to be a limited series, one and done, but because it was so popular, they talked the creator into doing a second season. I wasn't sure how it would work, but I thought they did a good job with it. They work the surviving characters into it in a way that makes sense while also introducing some really great new characters.
I started watching Yellowjackets this week, and I love it! The first season is on Netflix. I finished that in a few days and then found out that can watch the second season on Paramount+ or Amazon, but only if you have the Showtime plan. So I did a free trial of Showtime on Amazon so I could binge Season 2. I only have a few episodes left to go, and then I'll have to decide whether I can wait for Season 3 or if I need to start paying for Showtime so I can watch it when it airs in February.
I also watched the first two episodes of The Pitt when it premiered on Max on Thursday, and I'm so, so happy that it not only met but exceeded my already high expectations! I've watched at least one episode (sometimes even one or two seasons) of pretty much every medical drama made since ER went off the air, and I don't stick with most of them because they're too melodramatic, cheesy, unrealistic, poorly-written, or poorly-acted, but so far, this one has checked all of my boxes. From the perspective of someone who isn't a medical professional but has done a lot of medical research, the medical stuff was believable. Like ER, there was plenty of medical jargon, and they didn't dumb it down by over-explaining everything. The characters were interesting. It had the perfect balance between their professional and personal lives - most of the focus was on the hospital/medical stuff, but there were just enough hints about their backgrounds to humanize the characters and make me want to know more about them. No one had sex in the on-call room. It had plenty of drama, but none of it was over the top - no helicopter crashes, tanks, or anything too crazy. I laughed, I cried, and I even cringed a couple of times - the degloving injury in the first episode, ouch! It takes a lot to make me squeamish, so kudos to them! Perks of being on Max - they have a big budget and can say and show whatever they want, which makes it more realistic. I can't wait for Thursday night to watch the next episode! I love that they are debuting on Thursday because that was always ER night! It doesn't have the same feel as ER, but that actually makes it better. I don't need or want an ER reboot. All I've ever wanted was another medical drama that I enjoyed as much as ER, and based on the first two episodes, this show has come the closest.
On the writing front, it's been a slow week. I'm having a hard time getting into the new chapter I started because I'm struggling to figure out the logistics of it. It's time for the Boys' photo shoot for the IAWLT album, which is well-documented and looks like it was a really cool shoot in real life:
https://youtu.be/Ty6PXVqbgW0?si=NQwKfCVKdY_BJGoF The problem with it in my story is that Kevin is a wheelchair-user, and nothing about this location is wheelchair-friendly. So I have to decide whether to stick with it and make that a source of conflict in this chapter or completely change the album cover in this alternate version of events. The part of me that likes to stick as closely to canon as possible wants to find a way to make the location work so they end up with a similar-looking cover, but it doesn't seem very realistic. I've been stalling on making a decision about it, but I really need to figure it out this weekend so I can make more progress on this chapter.
Have you had any luck with writing this week, Mare?
