Today, April 4th, is the 94th day of the year, and given that that is two times my favorite number (see here for why), I thought it was a convenient time to review how I’m doing on my 2025 goals.
Now, I actually have a bunch of real life goals that I haven’t shared here (yet?) but I also have my viewing goals which I have shared–25 things coming out this year, and 25 things that came out before this year, all of which I want to watch this year.
47 days is between 1/7 and 1/8 of the year, which means there will be 6 or 7 such blocks of time to review things later as well.
Anyway…
Things that came out in before this year, that I’ve made progress on…
Star Wars: Clone Wars season 1
Umm…I think we watched an episode since last time, but actually I’m not sure. The history here is that over the years my two younger daughters have introduced me to a variety of animated shows, many of which have become favorites of mine (Gravity Falls, Infinity Train, Over the Garden Wall, for instance). The latest effort to do this has been Clone Wars. But it’s been a while, and we are still slowly creeping through the first season. It’s taking a while because there always seems to be something more interesting to watch.
I don’t dislike it, but it doesn’t make me enthusiastic either. Part of the problem for me is the conceit the series has of jumping us into the middle of military campaigns, as if we were watching an ongoing saga, but actually kicking off new storylines which sometimes last only a single episode. It makes it hard to get invested or to care, especially since I already know the fate of most of characters (either because of other Star Wars projects, or because this thing is over a decade old and I’ve just heard about things from time to time.
As the season is drawing to a close (just a couple of episodes left) it shows signs of stringing episodes together into longer stories, where the events of one battle directly influence the characters in the next one, which to me is a promising development. Anyway, I’m told (by my daughters) that it gets much better in later seasons. Someday we’ll find out.
Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 season 4
Currently we’re watching this on Netflix, which one of my daughters is paying for. She’s announced she’s going to cancel it soon so that might slow us down in our TNG viewing. In the meantime, we’re going with it as strongly as we can. That amounts to watching five episodes (not a lot, but pretty good considering all the wedding activity of recent weeks). They are Suddenly Human, Remember Me, Legacy, Reunion and Future Imperfect. This season is one of the high points of TNG, with some of those episodes being interesting though flawed, whilst a couple of them are excellent.
There are some other good episodes approaching that I haven’t seen in a long time (ie Data’s Day, Identity Crisis, First Contact)–I hope we can get to some of them before we lose access to the show (for now).
Andromeda season 3 (and beyond)
After years of inactivity I finally got through all of season 3 of Andromeda. I don’t know why I bother–this show has never grabbed me in any meaningful way. I knew that one of the main supporting characters, Try Anastazi left at the end of the third season so I guess I was waiting to see if that was interesting. It was, to a degree, and had some good elements to it. Then in the fourth season Tyr came back for two episodes where after dancing around this he was fully positioned as an antagonist, and ended up getting killed off in an extremely badly-directed sequence. With Rev Bem, another interesting character, also being out of the picture for some time now (although there is at least one more reappearance by that guy), my tenuous sense of caring about Dylan Hunt and his crew is all but evaporated.
Quantum Leap
Last time, there were three episodes of Quantum Leap left. Now there are only two! You can read about The Leap Between the States here. It wa a good one!
Will I be able to report that I have finally finished watching and blogging about the show next time? Only time will tell!
The Bionic Woman season 1
I developed a hankering to watch this show again, kind of out of nowhere, so I bought the first season of this 1970s classic for Christmas. I remembered it from my childhood of course, but not in any detail.
Lindsay Wagner stars as Jaime Sommers, a former pro-tennis player turned secret agent for the OSI (Office of Scientific Information) after she survives a devastating sky-diving accident and has her life saved by giving her bionic replacement parts (legs, one arm, and one ear). Most of this happens in episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, which is the slightly more successful parent series, where Jaime was introduced as lead character Steve Austin’s girlfriend.
As The Bionic Woman begins, Jaime is moving back to her hometown of Ojai, California and rebuilding her life after nearly dying and then losing her memory in her episodes of the original show. She moves in Steve Austin’s parents, who apparently raised her after her parents died (shades of Barry Allen in the Arrow-verse version of The Flash!)
Over the season Jaime goes on a variety of fun adventures, sometimes going undercover, sometimes just on straightforward missions, and sometimes running into problems of her own in her capacity as a school teacher her on a military base (her new regular job).
One notable episode involves woman showing up claiming to be Jaime’s dead mother. Another goodie has Jaime posing as a flight attendant and helping the passengers survive a harrowing crash (very effectively realized) onto a deserted island. Maybe my favorite features Lindsay Wagner portraying an evil duplicate of Jaime Sommers, whom Jaime must then impersonate without knowing anything about her.
Maybe the goofiest episode involves a tame lion that one girl brings into Jaime’s class for show-and-tell!
It all seems so outrageous ridiculous until you realise that this is the sort of thing this lion really did–it apparently belonged to actress Tippi Hedron (who plays the lion’s owner in the episode), and free rein in her house, even sleeping with her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith.
Anyway, the show is good, cheesy fun, anchored by Lindsay Wagner’s appealing performance. The first season (it only ran for three all together) was only 14 episodes long, instead of the more typical 20+, since it started airing “mid-season” in early 1976.
The first season of the show–it only ran for three all together–was only 14 episodes long, instead of the more typical 20+ (it started airing “mid-season” in early 1976. Richard Anderson played the only other regular character, as spy boss Oscar Goldman. Rudy Goldman (Martin E. Brooks), the scientist who built Jaime’s bionic parts, shows up a couple of times, as do Steve’s parents, Jim and Helen. Other notable guest stars include Andy Griffith, Donald O’Connor, Gordon Jump, William Schallert, Tippi Hedren, and Kristy McNichol. Lee Majors also shows up as Steve Austin himself a few times as well, but even when he’s around, the focus always remains on Jaime, as it should be.
A last note–Jaime Sommers is really, really relaxed about people finding out about her bionic abilities–supposedly a big secret. I think maybe in every episode someone found out. Was Steve Austin like that too on his show? I’m not sure.
What If…? season 3
Last time, I’d almost finished this show. Now I have. I thought it was underwhelming when I wrote about it last, and my opinion hasn’t changed. The final episodes are about a bunch of random figures, led by Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter, helping the Watcher survive the judgement about a bunch of less sympathetic brother Watchers. It’s ho-hum, at best.
I actually quite liked the first season, but the rest just seemed to be an excuse for the producers to do whatever random thing they felt like, without any real regard for how it deepened the world or characters of the MCU.
The Bear season 2
Almost done! My daughter and I are only one episode off of finishing this one, which has focused on the efforts of Carmy, Sid and the others to re-brand the sandwich shop that the first season took place in as a classy restaurant which is more the main characters’ style. There is a notable flashback episode called Fishes which shows the incredibly stressful environment that was Carmine’s family prior to the suicide of his brother Michael. And then there was a really uplifting episode called Forks which is all about Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, soon to be the Thing in what we all hope is the best Fantastic Four movie ever made) learning about the value of working in really high-end restaurant. It’s been a good season so far–there is one more after this which I’ve heard is not as good, but I’ll probably check it out anyway.
Things that came out (or are coming out) in 2025 that I’ve made progress on…
Daredevil: Born Again
I’m seven episodes into this one (out of nine), even though I still haven’t gotten around to watching the last season of the Netflix series that kicked off this version of the character.
Final judgment on Born Again will be reserved until it is finished, but so far I’m mostly enjoying it. Episode one featured a “shocking death” of a beloved character that I m mostly think is a waste–it’s used to motivate Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) into giving up being Daredevil, but this was something he did on a semi-regular basis back in the original Netflix show, so I don’t think it was really needed. Episode five is a nearly completely standalone episode that seems like a holdover from before they completely revamped the production (something which happened a while ago, long before the show dropped). It has potential as a story about Matt trying to diffuse a hostage situation from inside a bank, but is just a bit jarring in terms of pacing and tone, and has a discordant guest appearance from Mohan Kapur as Ms. Marvel’s father. Still, Cox is good, as is Vincent D’Onofrio as the Kingpin (who has become the mayor of New York now), with the show focusing on how both men are struggling to control their darker impulses. There’s also a bit more lawyering going on compared to what I remember from the Netflix series, which I appreciate.
Doctor Who season 2 (aka series 15)
Actually, I haven’t heard people calling this this “Season 2” so much, which I appreciate.
Of course, it’s not out yet–it kicks off in mid-April, so not long now. But there was a cool looking trailer which dropped recently, which I really like to look of–see above.
As always, here’s hoping!
Severance season 2
As indicated by its position in my “I want to watch this countdown”, this is one of the things I’ve been looking forward to the most this year (it came in at #2, just above James Gunn’s Superman). Severance is a series created by Ben Stiller about Lumon, a company which employs people on a “Severed Floor”, where the workers have all had brain surgery to fully bifurcate their brains so that their work personas are completely severed from their home personas–neither knows anything about the other. The consequence of this is that the workers, known as “Innies”, have no existence or awareness outside of their work, a situation which is made worse by the fact that Lumon treats them like they are in bizarre dystopian nightmare cult.
The show is cleverer than I’m making it sound, and the first season left us with lots of questions. The follow-up answered a lot of them, but only after taking us on a tour of some really weird and surreal stuff along the way. I thought it was interesting and it always helped to unpack what was going on, but not everyone in my family thought so.
For me the show’s biggest question is to do with what is going to happen to these people? The season leans into the fact that both the Innies and the Outties are legitimate people and they both should have the right to live as they want to. But at the same time, it seems impossible that there is any way that both can. The next season looks like it will address some of this, as the season ends with the Innies seeming to take control of the severed floor, and the main character Innie choosing his own happiness over that of his Outtie. The actual final moment of the season where this happens struck me as a bit strange when I first watched it, but as I appreciated it more in hindsight as I thought about it and realized what they might be setting up for the future.
So to summarise, here are both lists. Bold Face means that I’ve started it or advanced from where I was at the start of the year (although not necessarily from where I was at the last update), and strikethrough means it’s finished.
• Slow Horses season 4
• Pachinko Season 2
• My Adventures with Superman seasons 1 & 2
• Star Wars: Clone Wars season 1
• Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 season 4
• Star Trek: Short Treks
• Daredevil season 3• Andromeda season 3 (and beyond)• Timeless
• Max Headroom
• Quantum Leap
• Doctor Who – Evil of the Daleks
• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
• Madame Web• The Bionic Woman season 1• Superman movie serials• What If…? season 3• A Christmas Story Christmas
• Babylon 5 The Road Home
• The Bear season 2
• Parasite
• Batman: Caped Crusader
• Superman and Lois season 3
• All Creatures Great and Small season 5
• Stateless
• A Minecraft Movie
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Ironheart• Star Trek: Section 31• The Thursday Murder Club• Captain America: Brave New World• Jurassic World: Rebirth
• Karate Kid Legends
• Wonder Man
• Daredevil: Born Again
• Thunderbolts*
• Stranger Things 5
• Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story
• Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning
• Silo – season two, episodes 8-10
• Only Murders in the Building season 5
• All Creatures Great and Small season 6
• Andor season 2
• Wicked: For Good
• Doctor Who season 2 (aka series 15)
• The Fantastic Four: First Steps
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3
• Tron: Ares• Severance season 2• Superman
Still a long way to go, it seems.
