Well Happy Easter, such as it is. I normally don't care about this holiday and can ignore Christians celebrating, but the White House getting corporate sponsors this year is fucking crass, and religious bigots continue to try to push Jesus onto everything. At least there were good protests yesterday, and the Supreme Court actually ruled to stop deportations from the Alien Enemies Act. Are they finally going to rein him in? Will someone do something finally about him lawlessly defying court orders? We'll see.
I saw the new Wedding Banquet movie on Friday and enjoyed it. The remake stars Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan. Their characters have been friends for years, and the couples even live on the same property together. However these millenials have commitment problems due to mother issues and self esteem issues where they don't think they deserve love or would make good parents; they avoid confrontation and use delay tactics to not make decisions. This comes to a head when Min's Korean grandmother says she will force him to leave his art career and come home to run the corporate business. Meanwhile Lee and Angela's IVF treatment doesn't work and they don't have the money to try again. So Min comes up with the scheme to marry Angela to give them money and to stay in America with Chris. But then the Korean grandmother Ja-young flies in, and we get hijinks about putting on a traditional Korean wedding. You'd think that Chris would realize that Min loves him enough to live in a converted garage shack, so getting cut off from his family's wealth means nothing to him! Some of the comedy is mixed with relationship drama and tears, but I found the story touching as it showed the deep love in this found family. Finally something great in theaters.
On television, I saw the new Sherlock & Daughter show, and I loved it too. The late Victorian setting really cheered me, and I loved seeing a traditional Baker Street. David Thewlis is great as Holmes, and I like the young actress too. I didn't realize that the Amelia character would be partly Native American through her mother, and that they would reference real history about Wild West shows touring in England and such. Wonderfully clever idea. I don't find Amelia anachronistic, because Americans were always brash and less formal in manners compared to Europeans, plus Amelia is lower class and not white, so she's been raised as an outsider for a long time. Of course she would push Victorian boundaries and not know what a traditional English breakfast is. If anything, Clara the ambassador's daughter is the one who was unrealistically trying to be friends and inviting Amelia over for dinner. I like Amelia's personality and she reminds me of what I enjoyed about Netflix's fantasy show about The Irregulars, before they canceled it.
Anyway, Amelia's mother is murdered so she travels to England to meet her putative father. She has to avoid getting robbed and also tries to sleep on a park bench because she has no money. She reads that Holmes's maid was murdered, though, so there's an opportunity to meet him as a servant. What she doesn't know is that since the maid's murder, Holmes has received a threatening note saying that Watson and Mrs. Hudson will be killed if Holmes doesn't obey instructions. (They've been kidnapped apparently.) He doesn't tell the police about these threats and tries to muddle through with Mrs. Hudson's sister and brother-in-law in Baker Street. (I didn't recognize Ardal O'Hanlan as Mr. Halligan.)
Holmes initially tries to fire Amelia as the scullery maid, but then the kidnapping case arrives and Clara's parents ask for her to come to the scene of the crime. Holmes has to abandon the case because of the Red Thread, but eventually he decides to use Amelia to investigate for him and to continue posing as a maid. The mystery is okay so far though I always eyeroll and sigh at "global conspiracy" plots. I'll have to see how they use Moriarty. I believe that the show has cast an actor as Watson, so hopefully we'll rescue him and Mrs. Hudson at some point, but I don't know for sure.
On Amelia's paternity, Holmes does deny being her father, but note how he says, "I've never been to San Francisco" and "I don't know your mother", but he doesn't say outright, "I've never slept with a woman." So they are leaving something open that he might not have always been asexual in this world. There is a possibility that he knew Amelia's mother under a different name; or maybe the show will pivot and say that Amelia's mother mistook Mycroft for Sherlock. I look forward to finding out. Finally a satisfying Sherlock show that even pleases me more than CBS's Watson, with all its annoyances.
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