Jenni from the box

With lockdown ruling out a number of activities (holidays, restaurants, the will to live), it's had a lot of us turning to our TV's more than normal. And now that I've reached the magic number of series, I thought I'd give a little review of what I've been watching. Obviously there are a few spoilers ahead.

The first one I polished off was Dynasty. While I may have been a few (try like 20) years too young for the original run, I have been obsessed with the reboot ever since the first episode. Actually scratch that - I was obsessed since the trailer. And I'm still obsessed having just finished season 3. There isn't much to be said for this show's ability to retain its actors though, as people seem to be recast every season! Alexis Carrington's recasting was absolutely perfect; Elaine Hendrix clearly plays the perfect evil mother/stepmother character (the parent trap, duh). But Crystal's recasting fell a bit flat for me. Having now had 3 actors in the role, the season 2 version was the best for me so they've made a bit of a downgrade. Either way though, the show has remained just as amazing! Adam Carrington is the perfect loathsome villain and I love that they had him switching sides this series. And right from the start I've loved the love story between Fallon and Liam. Her classic one-liners are very Blair-Waldorf-esque and the love story there has been full of twists and turns including marriage, divorce and even a little amnesia (a classic trope that seems to be considerably more common in the soap opera world than it is in real life). If you haven't given this series a try yet and you liked Gossip Girl then what are you waiting for?

One of my annoying qualities is that once I start a TV series, I have to keep going with it until its end. It's the reason I watched the big bang theory for a further 6 seasons after I stopped enjoying it. It's also the reason that I continued with seasons 3 and 4 of 13 reasons why. I read the book of this before the TV series was released and I found season 1 completely infuriating (probably because I already knew what was going to happen) but found season 2 slightly better. So obviously I had to continue with the show (as is my toxic trait) and I honestly found it unbearable by its end. To the point where I was shouting at my TV and getting angry with it. Season 3 was kind of intriguing (spoiler alert) as it became a whodunnit of Bryce's murder. And I liked the way that the show followed Jessica's healing process as she became a strong activist following her rape in season 1. Apart from that, the show is trash. Like I'm very surprised that anyone commissioned it for a 4th series. Its main character Clay is insufferably entitled, self-centred and downright deranged most of the time (I found myself googling 'who else HATES clay jensen'). Its new main character Ani was written way over the top, she seemingly came out of nowhere and her morals were as shaky as Clay's. The series paints a terrible picture of rapist-sympathising, an awful approach to mental health and characters that were so unlikable that you found yourself wishing bad things on them. There was one scene with Clay and the police at his school where I was downright hoping they'd just seriously injure him. But it wasn't all bad I guess. The show did depict healing very well, in the cases of both Jessica and Tyler. It also made me cry with its ending when one of its already-most-tragic characters, Justin, met his end due to AIDS. Other than that though, the show is trash and I could name plenty more than 13 reasons why I hated it.

Hearts broke across the country when the network announced it was cancelling Lucifer after its third season. After a lot of petitions popped up all over the place, Netflix came to the rescue and announced it was commissioning it. And despite the change in production team, the show managed to flawlessy transition and retain all of its original charm for season 4 (which ended with Lucifer and Chloe finally admitting their feelings for each other before he returned to watch over hell). So naturally, being a massive fan of their love story, I was excited for season 5! And it certainly didn't disappoint. There were some great storylines (like investigating a murder of a guy who had written a show exactly like the show of Lucifer itself), a whole twin brother swap-in-swap-out thing and we finally got introduced to God as a character in the last few seconds of the season finale (having only had him mentioned by the other characters before). Thankfully, it's been commissioned for one last series too so I'm already excited to see how it ties up! In the mean time, I've started Gossip Girl for 2948573th time to keep me occupied until then.