National Sarcasm Society

Avengers: Endgame new scenes

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:27:06 GMT

I know a lot of people drifted from the MCU, especially after Endgame wrapped up the Infinity Saga, and the intended plotline to bring in Kang the Conqueror got nuked by the actor's legal troubles. I'm just dead curious about what they can do to get themselves out of the hole. Apparently the answer was "Drive a dump truck full of money to RDJ's house" and hope for the best.

Endgame is currently back in theaters, with a few minutes of new footage in the end credits to act as a bridge to Doomsday. Of course those scenes, of which there are four in all, are showing up on YouTube. I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find them, but many of them were incomplete, or you couldn't hear dialogue because of the audience screaming.

I finally found one that seems to balance it out by showing clips and screenshots, but mostly just speaking the dialogue. He also explains a lot of the various connections. Outside of the movies, it appears the Loki series will be in play. Makes sense, as Marvel is working to bring all the various movie universes together now that they have all the rights, which would involve the Time Variance Authority in some way.

It's about 25 minutes in all, but should bring you up to speed if you want to know where they're headed. I have seen all the movies at least once, though I'm not up-to-date on the series entries. Even with as much as I've watched, I liked the refresher and including explanations for what some of it is referencing.

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YAGA trailer

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 19:27:21 GMT

No real spoilers, but I've read that those who've seen or read the play can tell this is going to be a slightly different plot. Still featuring the hunt for a missing young rich guy (Hudson Williams), but there's a whole new character at play, who's also played by Hudson Williams. They look mostly the same, but apparently use fake teeth, a nose prosthetic, and glasses to make them look slightly different. Not sure if it's going to be a case of them just being doppelgangers who found each other or if they'll be related. Maybe a literal "brother from another mother" situation? They do heavily imply that the two of them are having threesomes at a minimum, so the fangirls will be fangirling over Hudson Williams having sex with himself. ;)

I'd watch just for Williams, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Noah Reid, plus the plot looks nice and witchy for the season.

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Call Me Traitor

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:21:04 GMT

MacMillan Publishers: Sneak Peek for Call Me Traitor

At the link, you can read the official summary, but the author is referring to it as the "lesbian winter soldier wizards" book, so I'm thinking that alone will be relevant to many of your interests.

Everina Maxwell wrote Winter’s Orbit, which I enjoyed, so I'm looking forward to this one. There are links to several stores to get a copy of the sneak peek, but not sure about outside the US. Might be available elsewhere, but I can't check.

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Ride or Die canceled

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:02:36 GMT

Deadline: ‘Ride Or Die’ Canceled By Prime Video After One Season, Being Shopped By Paramount TV Studios

This is a shocker — one of the streaming hits of the summer will be no more, at least on its original platform. Prime Video has opted not to renew Ride Or Die starring Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer for a second season.

The article also says the show was "...well received and, according to available data, it has performed well." And also:

Reasons are murky but the show’s focus on middle-aged women may have been a factor. While Ride Or Die crossed over to also attract men and young viewers, its appeal to women of a certain age may have hampered its chances.

It sounds cynical, but I hear that that demographic is not very desirable for Amazon executives as a lot of middle-aged women already have Amazon Prime for shopping, so a show targeting them would not bring new subscribers.

[sigh] Apparently my eyeballs on a show are never good enough for whatever reason.

It says that Paramount is shopping it elsewhere, but the obvious question is why not move it to Paramount+?

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Drive Thru Magic

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:06:45 GMT

Variety: Gay Romance Podcast ‘Drive Thru Magic’ Casts Daniel J. Kim and Danielle Kennedy

Came across this one in one of my podcast feeds. Took me a bit to find the official site, but from there I found the press kit which says it will be 18 episodes of 5-8 minutes each.

Every night, Gabe pulls up to the same drive-thru window, and every night, the same voice on the other end is waiting; Louie. Drive Thru Magic follows two strangers who fall for each other through a speaker box, connecting, sharing their grief, and learning how to move forward as young adults in the world. Starring Briggon Snow (The Bright Sessions) as Gabe and Daniel J. Kim (Cobra Kai) as Louie. With Danielle Kennedy (The ‘Burbs) and Lauren Shippen (Two Thousand And Late). Produced by Atypical Artists and created by Briggon Snow.

The production company is the one who did The Bright Sessions, among others.

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YAGA sneak peak

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:32:09 GMT

Starts Friday, October 23rd, on Crave and AMC+.

The photo used for Henry Park's missing poster is Hudson Williams at the Golden Globes earlier this year.

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Book repair

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 16:54:40 GMT

This post is dedicated to the person who returned a Dog Man book and apparently decided packing tape was perfectly fine to repair torn pages. Literally slapped on, with tape sticking out of the book in three places and two pages taped together through the tear. The torn pieces aren't even touching!

You will be replacing the book.
Don't ever do that again.
Like for real. Don't ever do that again.

This book was fixable. If the torn page had been left alone, I could have reattached it properly and the book could still be checked out. But no, we now have a very popular book out of circulation because someone not only thought this was a good repair option, but thought we wouldn't notice. There was tape sticking out of it!

[deep breaths]

We now return to your regularly schedule flist.

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The Stargate That Almost Was

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:48:08 GMT

Fandom Pulse: Michael Shanks Reveals His Canceled Stargate Character Wasn’t Even Named In The Pilot Script

I had a suspicion, but this article confirms that Michael Shanks was set to star as Daniel Jackson in the Stargate series that Amazon killed earlier this summer. It was being kept secret, to the point of using a pseudonym for the character's name in the pilot script.

The concept placed Daniel Jackson in an alternate reality where the SGC program never existed. Shanks would have anchored a new cast of characters as their tie to the original series, a structure the Popcast Brothers hosts compared to Spock bridging the Kelvin timeline in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films. Shanks called the cancellation the biggest disappointment of his career.

Many fans noted Shanks was very vocal about the cancellation, which made many think he would be involved at some level. Looks like Daniel would have been the focal point, but he would be separated from his team in an alternate reality, and I'm iffy on that point. I know it's difficult to get the band back together, but it was a big draw for many viewers. Though I guess dumping him in a different reality would be a way to explain why the rest of the team isn't there, but could appear at some point as guest stars, even if they were AU versions.

I also wonder if the intent was to have Daniel out in the field on a team, or be more of a mentor to the new characters but would stay at the non-SGC version of home base. Some shows would have a character as the lead of a team, but minimize their actual time onscreen. SG-1 already did that with Richard Dean Anderson by cutting his time towards the end of the run because he wanted more time with his daughter but didn't want to leave the show (and all the cast and crew) high and dry when the show was conceived of as a vehicle for him. They truly didn't know if the show would survive without him.

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Coyote vs. ACME (2026)

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 21:26:40 GMT

Got to see this one Saturday for my birthday outing with BFF. I grew up with Looney Tunes, so I've been interested in this one beyond the underdog, er, coyote, story onscreen and off, but what a story it's been.

WB wanted to can this and take a tax write off, but Ketchup Entertainment bought distribution rights for $50M. Between that price tag and the production cost, it might not make a profit, but reports indicate if it had gone the traditional route, it would have. And 38% of the audience was 25-34, which is highly coveted by the studios. It also show there's interest in live action/animation that's not just a remake of an animated movie (looking at you Disney).

Lots of little bits to look out for, such as the law firm name of Avery, Jones & Maltese honoring voice actors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, as well as Michael Maltese, co-creator of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. You can tell those involved both behind and in front of the camera wanted to do this right. John Cena is absolutely having the time of his life as an ACME lawyer, and managed to keep a straight face while talking with Tweety -- "What did you tee, what did you saw?"

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Ride or Die

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:10:55 GMT

Just an update after my post from halfway through this series. Watch this!

Had a few slow spots near the end, but much better than a lot of shows I've seen. Loved the leads and their relationship. It can by shippy, platonic, or, as I saw in a Tumblr post, a secret third thing. There's a great gender role reversal that I didn't quite expect. Two older female leads kicking ass? Yes! Two younger guys discussing their love interests in a private moment that wasn't just talking about physical assets? What? We almost never get that! It felt like a variation of the Bechdel test, except we had (1) two men, (2) talking, (3) about women in a non-stereotypical way.

( Spoilery bit )

The primary story is wrapped up, but several bits are laid in the final episode for a potential second season. Not just stuff for Debbie and Judith, but secondary characters get new stuff that can carry over for next season. Now we have to hope for a renewal, but even if not, the first season plot is pretty much self-contained and the loose threads aren't major, at least not yet.

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Writer's block ended, so new fic time!

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 01:14:40 GMT

Ring the Bell (2789 words) by Nialla
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Stargate - All Media Types, Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion
Series: Part 3 of Stargate Rivalry
Summary:

Marly doesn’t ring the bell, Shane still lands in infirmary, Ilya has to make a quick exit.

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Ride or Die (2026)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:43:25 GMT

I'm only about halfway through this one, and loving Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham. Big dumb action series about two Women of a Certain Age, with one married to an English MP, while the other is an assassin. Ludicrous plot, but that's kinda the point.

What I want to pause to fully appreciate is the dress Hannah Waddingham wears in the first episode. Turns out the actress had a hand in designing it. Props to both her and the costume team, because that thing is defying the laws of physics. I'm pretty darn ace, but I'm not blind. Damn. I do like that both women are older and larger than the norm for an actress, much less an action heroine, and this dress most definitely highlights how amazing looking, and amazingly badass, they can be.

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Spooky in Love (2026)

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 19:33:28 GMT

Another Netflix Kdrama, starring Park Eun-bin and Yang Se-jong in a fantasy romcom. The former also starred in The Wonderfools earlier this year, and I really liked her in both shows. Going to check out some of her earlier work.

Cheon Yeo-ri was in a boating accident 12 years ago, and has been able to see ghosts ever since. She's an executive, but has a reputation for being cold and standoffish, but that's due to the whole ghost thing. If she touches anyone, they're able to see ghosts for the next month. She does the expected helping ghosts resolve their issues to cross over, which sometimes brings her to the attention of the authorities.

Enter Ma Gang-wook, a prosecutor who stumbles into Yeo-ri's adventures which lead to finding dead bodies and solving cold cases with the help of the victim. She tries to hide her power to see ghosts and generally hides from Gang-wook for a while, but slowly but surely their paths keep crossing and eventually she touches him and he spends a slightly terrifying time seeing ghosts. The two of them decide to work together and use her ghost vision and his job to solve crime.

There's a little bit of a case-of-the-week, but that's quickly abandoned in favor of solving the mystery of what really happened in the boating accident 12 years ago. Except there's not really any mystery to it for the viewer, and there's only one option of what happened then, though different options for how that will play out in the present.

I like the leads in this, especially Park, but the plot is all over the place. I like the paranormal romcom aspect, but I swear in between the blocks of two episodes a week, the plot was kind of all over the place. I also felt the progression of the couple from adversarial to friendly to fake romance to real romance wasn't quite developed. The fake romance jumped to real so quickly that I felt like I'd missed an episode. Still an overall fun watch. Oddly one where I found myself liking specific episodes more than the overall story arc.

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Boldness is all!

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 02:43:26 GMT

Gizmodo: The Cast of ‘Murderbot’ Season 2 Is Ridiculously Stacked

Don't know who's playing who, but there's a lot: Blair Underwood, Brendan Hunt, Bridget Everett, Britne Oldford, Damian Young, Divian Ladwa, Ella Jay Basco, Etienne Beydon, Griffin Newman, Jaedynn Latter, Jason George, Kali Reis, Katy O’Brian, Maddy Strauss, Marc Menchaca, Martha Plimpton, Meredith Salenger, Michael Sheen, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Nicholas Braun, Patton Oswalt, Steve Buscemi, Topher Grace, Tramell Tillman, and Wanda Sykes. Some maybe be recurring, others may be guest stars.

But we're not losing season one cast either. Noma Dumezweni (Mensah), David Dastmalchian (Gurathin), Sabrina Wu (Pin-Lee), Akshay Khanna (Ratthi), Tattiawna Jones (Arada), and Tamara Podemski (Bharadwaj) will all be back. And Clark Gregg, John Cho, DeWanda Wise, and Jack McBrayer will also return to do the show-within-the-show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon

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Julie and the Phantoms (2020)

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:37:47 GMT

I'm always late to the party, but this one was on my list since I signed up with Netflix at the start of the year. It got bumped up with the casting of Charlie Gillespie as Troy Barrett in season two of Heated Rivalry. I could see it just from photos, but the actor does have that "bro" vibe in this that I can see translate into a young hocky player. And we share a birthday, though definitely not the same year!

I'm only about halfway through the nine half-hour episodes, and it's enjoyable. Sort of a throwback to old school YA series, which is fitting as the ghosts are from the 90s. I'm not a huge fan of musical numbers, but they're having fun with them and it's a me problem.

Julie is still dealing with the death of her mother, and her father is talking about moving with her and her younger brother. Julie and her mom were big on music together, so dad asks Julie to help clean out the studio garage where all of her mom's music stuff is located. There's also some old instruments stored in the loft, as well as a CD from a band called Sunset Curve. Julie plays the CD et voila, three members of the band appear.

There's the usual hijinks as they all figure out what's going on with the band figuring out they died 25 years ago and Julie believing they are truly ghosts. Then the band discovers people can hear them when they play music, and later they discover when Julie joins them, they become visible to everyone, but disappear when the song is over. Julie explains this away as them being holograms of a real band overseas, and later her friend names their band Julie and the Phantoms.

I'm not done with the series, but it's a quick watch and fun, despite the realization that I'm the same age as the band that died in the 90s. ::sigh:: Also did a double take on seeing Steve Bacic in this, as he's a fave in my "Spot the Canadian Actor" game.

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‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Review

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:38:28 GMT

Deadline: The Movie Warner Bros Shelved In 2023 Becomes Its Most Entertaining Film Of 2026 & Best Live Action/Toon Hybrid Since ‘Roger Rabbit’

So far the reviews are looking good. I just hope that translates to ticket sales when it releases on August 28th.

I also read there will be a physical release, which Ketchup Entertainment did for their previous Looney Tunes release, The Day the Earth Blew Up. Should end up streaming on HBO Max eventually.

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Runner (2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:56:07 GMT

Looks like a big dumb action movie. I could use a big dumb action movie right about now.

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The East Palace (2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:26:19 GMT

I binge watched this new series this weekend. It's a dark fantasy series set in Joseon Era Korea, with horror elements that are fantasy enough to not bother me. No human blood and guts, just monster blood and guts.

Thirty years ago, heirs to the throne died one after another, leaving only the current king as the survivor. It's said that spirits killed them, and now it seems to be happening again. The king abducts an unwilling Gu-cheon because he has the ability to not only see spirits, but travel the supernatural spirit realm to fight them. The king assigns his estranged daughter, Saeng-gang, to assist him due to her ability to hear spirits.

I'm not certain which parts of the mythology are really from Korea or just made up, but it works very well. Very creepy (and in one case, creepily cute) monsters to fight, with interesting reasons for different types of spirits to exist, including ones who were human. There are a few jump scares, but the horror is more about the weird and creepy versus gross out.

The big draw for me is the leads. Very different goals at the beginning, but they become absolute ride or die for each other that can be read as romantic if you want, or as just friends who literally went to hell and back for each other more than once. They unravel a complicated mystery over the apparent 30 year curse on the royal family, which involves a lot of human actions instead of just spirits.

The costuming is beautiful, though not as elaborate as some shows I've seen with royalty. The f/x for the spirit and the Realm of Gwi are good, with Gwi as a sort of mirror of the real world, just slightly off. I will give a caveat that if you have a squick regarding anything icky with eyes (I do) there's a sequence that might trigger. It's quick and they don't focus on the ick, so it didn't bother me.

This one is on Netflix, and does offer an English dub if you prefer.

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Coyote vs. ACME | Final Trailer

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 15:29:50 GMT

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YAGA (2026)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 15:12:06 GMT

This one will be out in October. It's a Canadian Crave Original like Heated Rivalry, and it's got Hudson Williams too. It will be on AMC+ in the US.

With a cast including Williams, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Noah Reid (Schitt's Creek), it's on a must watch list for me. It does have horror elements, but I can't tell if they're just aiming for spooky sexy that I can watch with no problem, or spooky gross that's not my thing.

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Registries

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:14:27 GMT

My parents got married in a time when a traditional wedding registry was still very much the thing. We rarely used the "fancy" plates other than holidays, mainly because they needed to be handwashed and couldn't be used in the microwave due to "gold" accents along the edge. It was enough to cause sparks.

The last time I remember buying anything off a traditional registry -- nice dishes, silverware, etc. -- was in the early 90s. My oldest cousin lived out of state and asked if he could send me money to get something for a local friend of his and take it to her house which wasn't far from mine. All the ones I can think of after that were more general household goods, which would included dishes and silverware, but just daily use stuff.

I've been reading about how a lot of the nice stuff you once only used on holidays is now turning up in thrift stores for cheap because no one in the family wants it after their (grand)parents pass. They have their own set, don't want to use this set for daily use, etc. So now it's becoming a thing to buy a used set of the fancy stuff for daily use, and why not? I've also seen articles about people memorializing the patterns from their childhood in modern ways. The floral pattern from their grandmother's teacup is now a tattoo. The pattern from the dishes used on their manicure. Something they can keep with them, instead of something kept in a cabinet.

One of the weird side effects of weight loss (trust me, this is related *g*) is my rings no longer fit. Stuff I've had since the early 90s is at risk of flying off my fingers. I'm trying to replace them with new stuff, but my rings mean things to me. One was my grandmother's (it still fits!), some I got while on vacation or at events, and one has a fleur-de-lis which is in the family crest.

I have one spoon from my parent's wedding flatware that's damaged, so I'm thinking about sending it off to be made into a spoon ring. I found a lot of DIY videos but I just don't want to deal with the process, and $25 isn't bad for someone else to do it. I found one on Etsy with the same pattern, though I think I want a closed version instead of the wrap.

Anyone still seeing traditional registries these days? I imagine there's still some, but I just don't run in those circles.

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Agent Kim Reactivated

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:05:38 GMT

Manager Kim is just an ordinary middle aged guy. Meek. Works at a bank. Raising his daughter on his own. Then his daughter disappears, and he uses skills he promised to never use again to find her. Sort of a Taken crossed with John Wick vibe.

What's really fun is it isn't just Kim, but he also has a couple of buddies who also are ex-agents. They're all middle aged girl dads who have to once again kick ass, take names, and now also complain about their bad knees. They're a great trio, and one of them is Choi Dae-hoon, who I liked in the recent Wonderfools series.

I did learn they used AI for one sequence. My understanding is a three-minute action sequence was produced through AI technology rather than live-action filming. It includes building explosions, car chases on snowy roads and inside tunnels, a vehicle overturning and crashing into a river, gunfights, and martial arts choreography. So stuff that could be so expensive to film IRL that they might have otherwise left it out due to the budget. So not really taking away a job from stunt performers, f/x folks, etc., but giving another tool to do more dangerous and/or expensive scenes without risking lives. At least they're being open about it too.

This one is currently airing in South Korea, so there's still a couple of weeks left, but I kind of like getting two episodes a week instead of trying to binge 6+ hours of a show and not taking the time to digest it. It's also based on a webtoon.

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AI @ work

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 16:57:54 GMT

One of the items on the last council meeting agenda was approving updates to the employee manual. I haven't seen the final copy yet, but a section regarding the use of AI has been added.

It's not forbidden, but we can't put certain types of documents through it due to privacy issues. The example given was EMS can't put in their data that connects a patient to their health information and have it generate a pretty looking report due to HIPAA. The names may not show up in the final product, but they'd be in a LLM dataset somewhere. By the same token, I couldn't put in anything with library user names in it. They did also say that anything we put in could then be used to generate more stuff, either for us, or someone else without our knowledge.

My coworker and I are very anti-AI, or at least the generative stuff. The closest we come is we use Canva to make graphics and flyers and we're pretty sure some of their clip art is AI generated. We do our best to avoid anything that has that weird cartoony look that's common with genAI. Neither of us would use it to write letters or anything like that, because we can, you know, actually write letters faster than writing a prompt then having to proof and edit whatever it spits out.

The mayor was in yesterday with a flyer she'd made in Canva that she wanted me to post to the City's Facebook updating about the sidewalk construction. She also wanted some text explaining it a bit more, and specifically wanted some of the text from a newspaper article about the project. She at first said to put it in AI to figure out what to say, then paused and said something like, "Or just type something up. You're smart."

It's just distressing to me that someone who's been publishing a local newspaper for years would even suggest AI use for something so simple. It's just been in the mainstream consciousness for a few years. How did so many decide to outsource their thinking so quickly? Especially to something employers are salivating over replacing their human employees with? Even for those "fun" pictures and stories, all it is is a Plagiarism Machine.

I know there's a lot of talk about the use of phones and shorter attention spans because we're reading short bits and watching quick videos, but I think there's more to it. That seems more like a symptom than a cause of this almost not quite functional illiteracy we're seeing. I still go back to the "Sold a Story" podcast that detailed how kids have been taught the wrong way to read for literal decades. We have a generation that was not taught how to understand what they read, so when something comes along that claims it will do all that work for you in a short summary, of course they'll use it. They don't even have the ability to go back and proof the final product they generate, because they can't understand what they're reading. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't feel like anyone in power wants to stop it. More like accelerate it.

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The Next Prince

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 17:44:38 GMT

I'm about halfway through this 14 episode Thai BL series. So very, very tropetastic, as only Thai BL can be.

In the fictional Emmaly, vaguely in the Thai region, succession is through a fencing tournament since the founding of the country, which is actually four regions who each can compete for the title of King. Though the competing princes are actually deciding which of their fathers will rule.

Twenty+ years ago, the king's daughter-in-law and grandson were killed, leaving only his son as his heir. Enter Khanin, 20ish year old Emmalian living in London, with his dad teaching him the culture of their homeland, but with no idea that he's the supposedly dead prince kept in hiding by a member of the Royal Guard under orders of the King.

Khanin soon meets Charan, a young member of the Royal Guard who has been sent by the King to retrieve him, as the King is in poor health and wants to step down, so he wants his grandson to participate in the fencing tournament. Of course someone learns about Khanin's existence, and tries to kill him and Charan, and have apparently killed the man he knows as his dad. He's dumped into the world of royalty and adapts relatively quickly, though he's not too much of a fan of the formal clothing and manners. I know there's "formal" language being used because some lines make reference to it, but that goes over my head since I don't know the language.

So we get the classic royal who didn't grow up royal, who can't understand why he can't be with a commoner. Even if the commoner is a member of the Royal Guard, an art professor, and adopted by the King (though I'm not sure if they mean literal adopted or more of a treating him like a son or grandson).

When I was reading the notes on the trailer, it says a version airs in Thailand that's then followed by an uncut version. The version on Netflix is rated TV-MA, so I'm guessing it's the uncut version. Haven't seen much beyond kissing yet, and so far the racier stuff is between a secondary couple having a D/s relationship that looks, as the kids say, Very Problematic. It's all set in a world in which homophobia apparently doesn't exist, most people are some flavor of queer, and the real issue keeping them apart is their status.

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I Will Find You

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 17:15:52 GMT

This one is based on the book by the same name by Harlan Coben. I haven't read his works, but I know he's very popular in my library. It's one I'm glad they did an eight episode series instead of trying to compress all of it into a two hour movie where too much gets left out.

David Burroughs has been serving five years of a life sentence after murdering his son. Or did he? There's just enough of plot to say he did it while in a "night terror" and didn't consciously do it, but the body was so badly beaten a DNA test was required to confirm it was his son. He has no memory of it, but even his family who thinks he did while having a night terror still thinks he did it.

His ex-sister-in-law visits him -- the first person to visit him in prison -- and shows him a photo. A friend posted a picture of her family at a theme park, and then she noticed a kid in the background looks a whole lot like her dead nephew would if he'd lived, including a distinctive birthmark on his cheek. Is he alive? If so, who took him, why, and how did they manage to cover it up?

Was it the crime boss who took revenge on David's police family after his son was killed in prison? Maybe his ex-wife's new husband did it to get him and the kid out of the way? Or something altogether different? It's not really presented in a way that the mystery can be solved by picking up clues, but more of a twists and turns sort of plot.

David decides to break out of prison, with the help of some of his family members, especially his ex-SIL, to find his son and figure out who did this to them. If you're guessing there's got to be a romance plot between him and ex-SIL, I'm going to spoil and say yes, but no. It's not a big part of the plot, just implied it could happen at the end. That was kind of refreshing, as most shows would have pushed the romance right from the start, maybe put in a plot that they were involved at one point before (or after) he and her sister married.

If you like suspense-thrillers with sometimes ludicrous plot points, this is a pretty good one. Filmed in Canada, so lots of Canadian actors I like, including Aaron Ashmore, Greg Bryk, and Peter Outerbridge. Plus a small role for Clancy Brown, who's always great.

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