Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne:
Overall, this play wasn't as bad as everyone said it was. It works better on a plot level than an emotional level, as it requires a deep knowledge of the book series and uses the tricky device of time travel to carve out new plot additions that actually have meaning in the broader Potterverse. The plot features the children of the main characters from the books and revisits several important points in time from Book Four.

Final Grade: B-

What We Did Today by Just Jack:
Just Jack continues his streak of lo-fi tunes without as much rapping or heavy rhythmic content. This is a pleasant enough album but I do wish he would go back to the type of music he released on All Night Cinema (like 253) at some point.

Final Grade: B

Orphan Black, Season Five:
This is the final season of Orphan Black and though it functions passably as a wrap-up to the series, it's less effective as a standalone season. The plot takes a while to get moving and there are lots of transitional "running through the woods" scenes that just highlight how small the budget must have been. They also brought back many dropped plot points from Season Three (the weakest season) -- while it was nice to have a conclusion that tied it all together, I kind of wish they had left those threads permanently dropped as it seemed they would be in Season Four. However, it concludes well, with plenty of breathing room at the end to give every main character a nice ending. It also has the most effective use of the line "Chickens!" of any show, which is why we spent several days afterwards shouting "Chickens!" at Maia to make her laugh.

Final Grade: B

Narcos, Season Three:
This season was better than Season Two but it's still an uphill battle to watch without much in the way of plot twists or really interesting characters. Things always happen as you'd expect them to, and the paint-by-numbers approach turns into a slog by about halfway through.

Final Grade: C+