Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Key & Peele, Season Two:
The second season of this show feels a little more experimental so more of the skits fell flat for me. Good for a few laughs at the end of the evening, but not as great as the first season. On Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

Shogun:
This limited series started strong and remained strong, but I personally lost interest towards the last few episodes. The acting and set design were all great, but I no longer felt invested in where the story was going and I can't really explain why. Perhaps it was one of the later episodes that fixated too heavily on a "will he / won't he" type of plotline when it was pretty obvious that there was no doubt about the answer. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B

Fallout, Season One:
This series perfectly captures the weird, absurd, violent tone of the Fallout universe and how it feels to play the video game (you don't need any familiarity with Fallout to enjoy the show though). On top of that, it feels like there's a pretty compelling original story taking shape (although a few spots feel too familiar, like something that might have been on Jonathan Nolan's other show, Westworld). The plot moves quickly and the final episode is full of great reveals, although I really felt like we were just warming up when the final episode rolled around. Walton Goggins is wonderful as always -- his character sometimes comes across as an undead version of Boyd Crowder from Justified but this isn't a bad thing at all. On Prime Video.

Final Grade: A

Modern JavaScript for the Impatient by Cay S. Horstmann:
The bulk of my early technical career was spent abusing JavaScript and working around its historical baggage in the quest for cross-browser compatibility. This book is a great look at how the language functions NOW, with only minor diversions into the historical WHYs. It's a great reference and helped me get up to speed on what's changed in the past 10 years.

Final Grade: B+