Today is May 21st, and just recently to my shock I realized that this was the 141st day of the year. That means it’s time (due to my arbitrary once every 47 days schedule) to revisit my stated list of viewing goals for 2025 and see how I’m progressing on them.

You can read where this all started for me here, and read here why I’m so into the number 47 that I’m using it as the basis for my scheduling.

My list of 50 things is divided into two sections–stuff that is actually coming out this year, and stuff that came out in 2024 or earlier, that I just haven’t watched yet.

(Various spoilers ahead)

Things that came out in before this year, that I’ve made progress on…

Slow Horses, season 4

This one was massively delayed because in the middle of watching it my wife and I decided to introduce the series to one of my daughters. She loved it enough that we then went and re-watched all of it before moving on with the last couple of episodes of the most recent season. Well, we finally got through it and finished it off not long ago.

The series, which is about a group of misfits and oddballs who are part of a particular MI5 division where screw-up spies are sent to keep out of harm’s way, continues to be good. Gary Oldman leads the cast as Jackson Lamb, the leader of “Slough House” who is slovenly and gross and yet genuinely brilliant. He makes Lamb one of the best characters that I have ever seen on TV, a guy who is largely mean-spirited but with just the right twist of a heart of gold. Each season of the series is six episodes long, and tells a single story based on a book.

I don’t think the most recent season was quite as enjoyable as the previous three, but it’s still good and maintains the show’s signature balance of dark humor and nail-biting suspense. It digs a lot more into the family and background of the show’s second lead, the James Bond-wannabe River Cartwright (played by Jack Lowden), with the story actually starting with the implication that he’s been accidentally murdered by his own grandfather (spoilers: he’s not). The season ends with the death of one of the regular characters, someone who is neither my favorite nor my least favorite, but was arguably the most disposable. Still sad, though.

A nice feature of the show is that, so far, the end of a season is accompanied by a trailer advertising the next season, so you know that there is more coming soonish.

My Adventures with Superman, seasons 1 & 2

We watched this whole thing! Actually, we only had one episode left of the first season of this anime-inspired young adult take on Superman, but we knocked that one out and then binged our way through season 2. What did I think of it? Well…I actually forgot all about the second season until I started writing this. Indeed, I thought for a moment that I hadn’t seen it yet.

But then I remembered. It involves Supergirl and a version of Brainiac being voiced by Michael Emerson, and definitely had some cool stuff going on. It also had some annoying sit-com stuff with Lois Lane’s fugitive military dad temporarily living with Clark and Jimmy, with Clark trying to preserve his secret while not coming across as the biggest loser of a boyfriend to Lane’s daughter.

On balance, this isn’t my favorite take on Superman, but I still find it fun.

Star Wars: Clone Wars season 1

We finally finished this! I’m watching this with my daughters, who are huge fans, and who assure me that the later seasons are better than the first. I hope so because there’s a lot more of this to come, and though I didn’t hate the first season, I definitely didn’t find myself gripped by it. Toward the end it began to get into longer stories with multiple episodes linking together into arcs, which works better than standalone episodes that act like they are in the middle of arcs, but really are not (which is how a lot of the first season is).

Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 season 4

Of course, I have seen Star Trek: The Next Generation before, and have blogged about every episode before. I am now rewatching it with my two younger daughters, and in this last 47 days we watched seven episodes of the show, from Final Mission to First Contact. It’s not rapid progress, but it’s fine considering that it’s not particularly urgent for us.

Daredevil season 3

My daughter and I broke ground on this last season of Netflix’s original Daredevil series, but only have gotten two episodes into it so far. It’s fine, but it suffers from the same over-length of episodes and great sense of self-importance that this show has always had. Two episodes in and Matt Murdock has spent most of the time in the basement of an orphanage refusing to tell his friends that he’s alive and complaining about how irrelevant God is to his life now, while the Kingpin is completely disgraced and cutting a deal with the FBI–I’ll be amazed if the end of this season makes the developments in Born Again seem plausible. It’s only two episodes, but it feels like things should be moving at a brisker pace.

Andromeda – season 3 (and beyond)

I think I’ve watched an episode or two of season 4 since I last put out an update, but I can’t remember for sure. As a marker, I’ll mention here that according to my Prime Video account, I’m in the middle of episode 10 of the season, entitled Exalted Reason, Resplendent Daughter.

Quantum Leap

After years and years, I have finally finished watching and blogging about the entire (original) series. See my comments on the last episode, Mirror Image here. Onto the Quantum Leap comic book next!

Doctor Who – Evil of the Daleks

After having this DVD for a year or two, I finally watched it. Read all about it here!

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

And so the DCEU comes to a close with a scene where Patrick Wilson’s Ocean Master eats a cockroach on his burger.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is an exceedingly silly movie with Jason Momoa once again back playing the King of Atlantis / Justice Leaguer, swimming around in a literal sea of crazy design and flat character and okay action scenes, all strung together in by a pretty lame story. This time around the villain is Black Manta, who has gotten himself possessed by some ancient underwater spirit-thing and is now threatening everything. Mera gets badly injured near the start of things, which is the movie’s attempt to maintain continuity with the previous film but not allow the controversies surrounding Amber Heard to derail the film too much. Aquaman spends most of this film teaming up with his disgraced half-brother (the aforementioned Ocean Master, who was the first movie’s main villain) to try to save the day.

Patrick Wilson turns out to be the best part of the movie, and so when it goes full buddy-road trip in its second act, there are some genuinely fun moments between them. There’s an attempt to raise the question near the end as to whether Ocean Master is going to go back to his evil ways, but the answer is never in doubt–the movie is obviously working too hard to reposition the guy as hero (not even an anti-hero, just a full hero) that you know they are not going to go back on it.

Also getting a lot of screen time is Randall Park, basically importing his Jimmy Woo character over from the MCU, except that here he’s an ocean scientist who has reluctantly thrown in with the bad guy, but is fully positioned for his own heroic turn. He’s fine, I guess, as much as anything is in this movie, but probably on balance I’d have preferred him to have spent that time in the third Ant-Man movie. I think he could have only elevated things there, and maybe reducing his role here would have given more room to develop the story and characters more meaningfully.

But given the over-the-top nature of everything here, probably not.

The Bear season 2

We finished this one as well! The second season of this show ends with Carmy and his staff having their “Friends and Family Night” for their new restaurant (“The Bear”), which, in spite of a lot of disasters, goes really well. The series is strong, continuing and elevating the show’s signature blend of authentic character work and extreme kitchen-related tension. Jamie Lee Curtis had a standout guest appearance earlier in the season as Carmy’s mother, and she shows up briefly in the finale as well, in a scene that is not as devastating as her earlier episode, but in which the actress shines brightly nonetheless.

We also watched the start of the third season, which I’ve heard is not as good. The first episode is bizarre and non-linear series of moments from different points in Carmy’s life, showing the aftermath of the season 2 finale while also unpacking Carmy’s history and how everyone was impacted by his brother’s suicide (which was kind of the inciting incident of the whole series). You can see that there’s some interesting stuff there but on the whole I’d say the episode doesn’t hold together very well.

All Creatures Great and Small season 5

Actually, I’m pretty sure we finished this a while ago; I think I just missed it in my last update. This version of All Creatures Great and Small is the latest adaptation of the memoir-ish series of stories about the “adventures” of a Scottish vet working in Yorkshire Dales in the 30s and 40s. It’s low-key and all together pleasant drama–sort of the opposite of The Bear, in many ways–but which is brought to life by a really likeable cast of characters. Highlights of this last season include everyone in the vet practice dealing with the presence of the intelligent but inexperienced newcomer Richard Carmody, and our main character James Herriot dealing his guilt of not being able to serve his country in World War II due to an illness. The series has got a sixth season forthcoming (which is on the other part of this list, below), so that’s more good news on the TV front.

Things that came out (or are coming out) in 2025 that I’ve made progress on…

Daredevil: Born Again

The last couple episodes of this show came out since my last update, and end of the series was basically as decent as the rest of it, which basically means it’s better than almost every other MCU streaming series. The last couple of episodes actually made dramatic use of the major character death from the beginning of the season, which had up to that point seemed sort of irrelevant. The show is fine and it’s good to see both Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio back in their rolls, but like everything with the MCU, it’s hard to get too excited about it.

The season ends with a clear set-up to a follow-up season, with the situation for our heroes and for New York City to be basically a disaster–the Kingpin reigns supreme and Daredevil is pulling together an army of down-and-outs to fight a seemingly hopeless battle against him. Where will it all lead? Well, hopefully into a decent season 2.

Thunderbolts*

Speaking of the MCU, there is this film, which starts out as a Suicide Squad-wannabe and ends up as an Avengers-wannabe. It’s generally gotten decent press and my daughters and son-in-law all enjoyed it, but I felt like it had too many problems for me to just like it unreservedly. But having said that, it’s generally entertaining, and it’s much better than Captain America Brave New World just by virtue of feeling like it was all made as a single movie from beginning to end. Florence Pugh is as good here as she has been in the MCU, and it turns out that Wyatt Russell can be a pretty interesting actor to watch.

I may write about this one in more detail at some point, but for now I’ll just leave it at that–it’s not great, but we had a good time.

Andor season 2

This thing is out but we’ve only caught the first two episodes so far. This is the second and last season of Andor, with the season structured in a series of mini-arcs which take place in successive years approaching the events of Rogue One, where we know Andor himself is fated to die. The first episode started off well, and as usual for this show it’s interesting to get to see a bunch of different facets of the rebellion. However, in the second episode things begin to drag significantly, in particular the storyline surrounding Andor himself, in which he finds himself stuck with a bunch of incompetent would-be rebels who are all fighting amongst themselves until a giant monster comes running through their camp. He gets away at the end of the episode, so it all goes on for just 1 1/2 episodes, but that’s probably 3/4 of an episode too much.

Doctor Who season 2 (aka series 15)

This is underway, with the seventh episode approaching on the 24th of May, a day which seems very important to the internal chronology of the season. I’ve been writing about each individual episode (although I’m a couple behind at the moment), which you can read about starting here. The short version is that there are problems but in general I’ve been enjoying this season more than the last one, and also while we’re at it better than any year since 2017. The last episode I’ve seen was The Interstellar Song Contest and I was surprised by how much I liked it. We’ll see how things shake out when it’s all done but I wonder if it might end up being the best episode of the season.

The one thing I didn’t like about it was the mid-credit scene where we find out that Mrs. Flood, the strange old lady who has been following the Doctor and the show in general all season long is actually the Rani, a classic era villain that appeared in two proper stories and one charity mini-special, two of which were amongst the worst stories the show has ever produced. I wasn’t crazy about the scene because the Rani is not a character I’m particular interested in (it seems like there’s a lot of people online who are way more excited about it than me), because absolutely none of the “hints” about Mrs. Flood pointed to the idea that she was the Rani, and because they decided to use the new concept of “bi-generation” again, an idea I really detest. The Rani is the fourth old villain that Russell T. Davies has brought back since his return to the series (including his own “Midnight Entity”), and so far none of them have particularly resembled their original versions beyond the most superficial similarities. We’ll see if the Rani is any different when she has her first full appearance next episode–if the story makes any sense out of any of the things she’s been doing since she started showing up last year.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to hold out hope that the show’s recent high quality of episodes continues through the end of the season. Wouldn’t that be something?

Oh, and before I forget–here’s a quick fan-theory guess as to what’s going to happen next. Advanced promotion has revealed the existence of something called the “Unholy Trinity” which includes the two Rani’s and Conrad Clark, the toxic jerk from Lucky Day. But apparently the two Rani’s just count as one. So who will the other be?

Guess #1 is the Master of the Land of Fiction–more of a position than a character, but from way back in The Mind Robber with the second Doctor. This guess comes completely from the effort to make sense of all the fourth-wall breaks and blurring of lines between reality and fiction that have been cropping up in the show for the last couple of years. This had been my best guess for who Mrs. Flood was before the recent reveal.

Guess #2, which is actually a more serious guess, is the Valeyard, the dark amalgamation of the Doctor from sometime after his twelfth regeneration, as revealed in The Trial of a Time Lord. The way the Doctor talked in The Interstellar Song Contest about coldness in his hearts that wasn’t going to go away easily, and the way he went so dark against the villain of that story…it very much felt like we might be seeing an “origin of the Valeyard” type of moment. Since the Rani was revealed before the mid-point of the big finale (typically the place where Davies likes to pull out his biggest gun), maybe the end of Wish World will be a reveal of the Valeyard?

Oh well, as long as it’s good.

In addition to all that, teasers or trailers for three of the projects I’m most anticipating this year have come out since my last update. Like you often get with trailers, they look both great and ridiculous–you can see lots of stuff to make you go “Oh yeah!” and lots of other stuff that makes you go “Oh…uh….” Nonetheless, until I know otherwise, I’m choosing to believe the best.

I don’t know what I really want with a Tron movie–for the moment just seeing a Lightcyle makes me excited.

Here’s the trailer for what we are going will be the best Fantastic Four movie we’ve ever seen. I like the movie’s vibes, and though I’m not the biggest fans of Pedro Pascal or Vanessa Kirby, I really like the look of the characters.

Superman is the movie I’m most looking forward to this year, and the movie that I most want to be good. I really enjoy this trailer and the picture we get of both Supes and Lois. It’s a very character-based way of showcasing the film’s strengths (hopefully). I’m excited to see more!

Anyway, that’s it for this update. Let’s check the progress board for a last recap. As always, Bold Face means that I’ve started it (or advanced from where I was at the start of the year), 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