Hi! I was expecting this to be a short list because I initially wasn't watching too much of anything, but after I was done prepping posts for Black History Spotlight I just wanted to relax. Most of my items this month are from regular tv; I only have one Netflix entry and I technically watched it last month, but it was too late for the deadline I set for these entries to be finished so I rolled it over to February. I'm not sure why I said last month that there'd be more Netflix on here in this list; I'm thinking maybe I'd intended to watch more stuff but never got around to it. I'm trying to clear out my DVR (I have 3% open space left LOL) so who knows if I'll get to it next month either. I'll try. But that's next month. Let's get to this month's list!
Without a TraceDrain the Sunken Pirate City
Drain Alcatraz
Drain Titanic
Drain World War II
Drain the Bermuda Triangle
Being Evel
Uncensored
The Unguarded Hour
Angel Face
Kitty Foyle
Katt Williams: Great America
NemGotGame
Sorrow TV
First, let's start with regular tv, which takes up the vast majority of this month's list. Let me just start by praising the tv gods for bringing back Without a Trace. Listen. I've been looking for this show since the minute it went off the air and all the streaming programs started popping up everywhere. It wasn't on any of them. Ion, the channel that used to show Without a Trace reruns, suddenly stopped showing it and I never forgave them for that. For five years this show was ghost on reruns, streaming services and even YouTube didn't have it. Couldn't find DVDs or even VHS tapes of the seasons so I eventually gave up. This new channel, Pop, started reairing it so I'm recording the series to DVR just in case they try to snatch my dreams away again. lol I've done so much whining I haven't even talked about the actual show. Without a Trace was a police drama about the fictional Missing Persons department of the FBI, where an investigative team does their best to piece together a missing person's last steps before disappearing....without a trace. You get it. I did a shit job of describing it, as I often do, but it's a great show and I don't know why it wasn't on tv for so long.
A couple of Sundays ago, I got into this big Nat Geo kick because I saw this show called Drain the Sunken Pirate City and was immediately obsessed once I realized it was an anthology type of series. The Drain the Ocean series focuses on different locations or events and exploring what we'd find if we drained the ocean. Using high-tech software and infrared scanning technology, the ocean is digitally drained of its contents in the selected area and I think it is so awesome. lol Drain the Sunken Pirate City is the first one I saw, which told the story of Port Royal, Jamaica, and its infamous past as the 'wickedest city on Earth.' After a series of natural disasters hit the pirate city, it sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where it lies today. The episode removed the water from the ocean around the area in order to find out what sent the city to the ocean floor, explore what the culture was like during this time and exactly how the natural disasters impacted those living in the city. They combined historical maps with today's maps, gathered through underwater dives and technology scans of the area, in order to digitally recreate the city in full and study the impact of each disaster. I thought it was awesome, so when I saw that Drain the Ocean was on for the entire afternoon I was in.
I believe the next one was Drain Alcatraz, which focused partially on the infamous prison break and exploring whether or not it was feasible for the inmates to have reached the mainland with the ocean and land conditions they had to face. The episode went all the way back to when the mountain that later became the site for Alcatraz was just forming, which was intriguing because I don't think I've ever seen a show explore that before. The episode showed how the landscape has changed over the years due to the movement of fault lines and earthquakes in the surrounding area, which in turn caused Alcatraz to take on the form its known for today. The water conditions were also explored during the episode, creating a fuller picture of what the inmates were possibly facing when they made their escape. I'm a geek for all that stuff. With that said, whenever they start speaking ominously and then cut to the digital recession and removal of the water, I think it's the best part of the show. LOL
The next episode was Drain the Titanic and even though at this point I have seen countless documentaries on my favorite sunken ship, I still wanted to watch. I wasn't entirely confident they'd net any new information, but I was wrong. The series challenges the long-held belief we've had about how the ship sank and the effect that being underwater for so long has had on the vessel. I don't think the other shows I've seen on it have ever challenged those theories; those were always footnotes to the rest of the story. The episode raised a new theory as to how the ship really ended up on the ocean floor after striking the iceberg, digitally tested their theory and to my surprise it actually held water. No pun intended. lol
Drain the Bermuda Triangle was an episode I really wanted to see because I've always been interested in the tales centered on the Bermuda Triangle. I wanted to know if the hype was real, if the conspiracies were rooted in truth, if anything I'd grown up reading about the Bermuda Triangle was factual or if it was all a bunch of baloney. Of the different Drain the Ocean episodes I watched, I have to admit that this one was a bit underwhelming. It wasn't as captivating, as full of little-known information as I'd assumed it would be. It explored a couple of mysteries, but I guess it was a bit of a letdown that the reasons why the ships sunk were more natural and less supernatural--or hard to believe--than I thought they'd be.
The episode after that was Drain WWII, which explored different ocean sites during World War II and the various sunken ships on the ocean floor. I didn't expect to find that one as interesting as I did; all kinds of vessels were under there, from ground tanks to ships that were actually sunken by their own sailors. It was really interesting to learn what happened to each vessel being featured, and go more in-depth about what took place on the waters during the war. To remove the water in certain areas and see just how many ships were under there, just how many lives were lost and how intense the fighting was in certain areas, was both fascinating and kinda sad. That was the end of the Drain the Ocean series and After Hitler came on next, which was a great follow-up show and showed me daily life after Hitler's fall and how it affected everyone whose lands were used in the war.
Moving on, somewhere within that weekend I watched Being Evel, which was a biography of sorts on famed stuntman Evel Knievel. Evel was a little ahead of my time, so by the time I was old enough for tv Evel's career was already largely over. I knew the gist of his stunts but little else. This documentary explained how an orphan named Bob became Evel Knievel, and how the dramatics, theatrics and Ric Flair-worthy flaunting ultimately destroyed both Evel and Bob. Through firsthand accounts from Evel's family, friends, colleagues and even a couple of enemies, we got to see the reality of being Evel Knievel, both in front of and behind the cameras. The general consensus seemed to be that while Evel Knievel was a daredevil, a hero, a revolutionary and a source of inspiration for a multitude of racing and bike related sports, he wasn't a good person for a very long time. It was both eye-opening and kind of a cautionary tale for people to never believe their own hype and I enjoyed it.
Uncensored is a new TVOne documentary series based on the lives of different Black celebrities. The first episode was about Hollywood's newest It Girl Tiffany Haddish and the road that eventually led to her star-making role in Girls' Trip last year. I've always loved shows like this and TVOne had a major hit on their hands with Unsung, which was the untold story behind Black musicians and groups. This is kinda Unsung but in a more general sense as it isn't exclusive to musicians. Ironically, of the four promos I've seen for the show, three of them are musicians. LOL The format of the show is more personal and relies more on firsthand stories, whereas Unsung was a combination of third-party narration and firsthand accounts. I missed Tamar Braxton's episode last Sunday but I'll be DVR'ing the series.
Holy shit this is long already so let me roll the next three entries together. I was doing some digital spring cleaning and trying to free up some much-needed space on my DVR, which brings me to some Summer Under the Stars rollovers and our next three entries. The Unguarded Hour is a crime suspense film in which a lawyer's potentially career-making case is a man accused of murdering his wife but is actually innocent. The lawyer's wife knows the man is innocent because she was at the scene of the crime but cannot say anything for fear of tanking her husband's career and incriminating herself in the process. It was a solid movie. Kitty Foyle is about a working girl torn between two men--the man she's always loved, and a stable, secure man she cares about but has never been able to commit to fully. Angel Face is about a murderous young woman who starts an affair with an older man, drives a wedge between him and his girlfriend, then gets him a job at her family home and promises to revive his previous career as a race car driver before attempting to persuade him to murder her stepmother. Her desire to see her stepmother dead eventually does happen, but with unexpected consequences.
There's only one Netflix entry on here, the new Katt Williams standup show Great America. I have to admit I was wondering the same thing I wondered about Dave Chappelle back in December and January, whether or not he still had it. While I didn't laugh as much as I used to at his standup specials, he does in fact still have it. What I found the most interesting was the tone of the commentary, which has changed significantly considering the state of events during the last standup special I watched and this one. During the first show, Bush was on his way out of office and Obama was making his first run for president. This time, Obama has been out of office for over a year and we know who the current president is. lol So much has changed in eight years, which is both a lifetime and not even a decade ago at the same time. It was a good show and it was good to see him back to doing what he does best, which is making people laugh, but both personal troubles between those two shows and today's climate definitely played a part in shifting Katt's humor a little bit. I'd still recommend it.
On to the 'Tube, I featured NemRaps in a WIBW awhile ago, but he started a new gaming channel called NemGotGame. It's funny, I've been a gamer most of my life but when I was younger I didn't understand the appeal of gaming channels. Didn't see the point of watching someone play a game, especially if I wanted to play the same game myself. As I've gotten older and--ironically--more into gaming than I was when I was in my 20s, I enjoy gaming videos a lot more. Figures, I finally come around to the genre when it's starting to die out. LOL That's me, forever late on the uptake. Anyway, what I think I like the most about Nem's gaming videos are his edits. He brings something new to gaming videos, which can sometimes be a bit stale if everyone's playing the same game and editing it the same way. His channel seems fresher, not a carbon copy of other gaming channels, and it's fun watching him play.
And finally, (geez) Sorrow TV is a channel I found a couple of weeks ago that's basically just a rereading of different musings by the Internet community with certain topics. The r/niceguys series is one of my favorites, because Sorrow TV's accent game--while sometimes stereotypically offensive--is a bit more varied than some of the other channels in the Reddit genre. Sometimes Sorrow collabs with another Reddit commentary channel, Soothouse TV, and their most recent collab, where they read the police blotters from wealthy neighborhoods in California, is hilarious.
Pick of the Month: Drain the Ocean series, Being Evel
Extras: Autopsy: Mindy McCready, After Hitler
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