Staircase Wit

1. Ang drama queen ni Criston Cole. Duuuude, the gay lover of Laenor Velaryon is super happy with his secret boyfriend status, tapos ikaw, you're whining and all. Youre not sweet and romantic, you are selfish because you want Rhaenyra to abandon her birthright just to appease your guilt. 2. Grabe chemistry ni Rhaenyra with all her past and future lovers, even with her betrothed na gagawin lang siya na beard. Milly Alcock is a great actress. 3. Look at Laena Velaryon, all grown up and sophisticated. Ito 'yung sinayang mo, Viserys. LOL. 4. There are only two peaceful weddings in Westeros:      a.) Robb Stark and Talisa Maegyr's wedding (show canon); and     b.) Tyrion Lannister and Sansa Stark's wedding.

  Ang ganda. Has all the politics, intrigue, sex, and interesting antiheroes Game of Thrones at its high point offered us. Great table-setting episode. I am hooked! Another good reason for you to watch: Matt Smith plays a major character. x

Imagine being in a relationship for almost two decades with the love of your life, and one day, the relationship just abruptly ends. You're back to the drawing board, but how do you start dating again in the 2020s when you have never seen a dating app in your life? Imagine being gay and middle-aged, on top of all these. How do you uncouple from a pseudo-marriage you have gotten so used to, when your entire lives have been so closely entangled for what feels like forever, when all your friends are common friends, when you share a mailbox, a Netflix account, and an expensive New York apartment? Netflix's Uncoupled's main character, Michael (played by the charming and talented Neil Patrick Harris) is a male and middle-aged Carrie Bradshaw: romantic, dislikes being single, dynamic but can sometimes get old-fashioned, and can get whiny and needy. Unsurprisingly, it feels very similar to Sex and the City, an ode to New York (its culture, art scene, and hip bars and restaurants) a...

Cristin Milioti (the eponymous Mother in the TV series How I Met Your Mother) portrays Hazel Green, wife of tech billionaire Byron Gogol (portrayed by Billy Magnussen). She is never allowed to leave Gogol's tech palace. He controls her nap time, the games she can play, the books she can read, and the movies she can see. She does not own a phone. After learning that her husband implanted a chip in her brain that will let him see, hear, and feel everything she does, she finally escapes her abusive marriage. Imagine divorcing, say, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, then take it up by a hundred notches by making him controlling, obsessive, and immature, and you have the premise of this TV series. Cristin Milioti is an amazing actress. She can be elegant, demure, and sophisticated one minute, then a neurotic and ungraceful hot mess in another. Billy Magnussen is equally talended, playing a douchebag who actually sincerely believes he is doing everything he is doing in the name of love. Made...

  Finished watching the first three seasons of the TV series Billions. Billions ​is the perfectly addictive and entertaining mix of legal, finance, and psychological drama. Think Suits meets The Wolf of Wall Street: the two main characters are a US Attorney (the equivalent of an Assistant Solicitor General here in the Philippines) and a billionaire hedge fund mogul. They are both shady antiheroes with oversized egos. They are both stubborn, vindictive, and morally gray, and at the same time devoted husbands fiercely loyal to their respective wives. They are mirror images, but operating from opposing camps Billions does not pretend to be an intelligent show. While they may spew off legal and finance jargons left and right, it just wants to entertain you with its witty dialogue (chock-full of sneaky pop culture references), supporting characters as interesting as the leads, and a soundtrack so apt and fitting to the complex moods of our two antiheroes (ranging from Metallica to Fran...

1. "If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product." 2. Tech giants forbid their own kids from using social media. 3. "Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them." 4. The guy who invented Youtube's algorithm is now telling us to avoid watching the next video Youtube is urging you to watch. 5. Social media platforms are built to manipulate us into spending as much time in front of the screen as possible. 6. We are indeed living in a Black Mirror episode, and it's a lot scarier than most people think.

In Netflix's Hollywood, everyone is sexy, glamorous, and gorgeous. Everyone is miraculously talented. Everyone is in love. There are no real bad guys (except lawyers). Everyone wants to protect the civil rights of the minorities. Everyone does the right thing. The series starts out great--savvy and interesting. But then it slowly becomes cheesy, and ends in a cute Oscar awards show where everyone gets their happy ending. It's like the ending of the film/novel Atonement, where the writer fantasizes about an alternate reality in which everything turns out perfectly in the end, just because she felt bad about the actual events in real life.

Thanks to my HBO Go subscription (probably one of my most sulit purchases during the quarantine period), I was able to re-watch Season 1 of Sex and the City. I grew up watching SATC. All throughout my years in undergrad, I tuned in to HBO weekly to watch Carrie Bradshaw and her friends traipse all over New York City. I was a just a teenager back then, and as a teenager I thought Carrie and her friends knew everything there was to know about life and love. Watching SATC again, and now in my mid-thirties, I realized that Carrie’s maturity when it comes to dating and relationships is that of a woman in her early twenties. I mean, who else would: (1)  date a guy who clearly didn’t see her early on as someone he would want to marry eventually; (2) actually whine to the same guy about not being taken seriously; (3) actually arrange a meeting with the same guy’s ex-wife; (4) go to the church where the same guy accompanied his mother, hoping he would introduce her as his girlfri...

Black Earth Rising is a political and legal thriller/drama about the prosecution of international war criminals linked to the Rwandan genocide. Stellar cast, and gives a thought-provoking lesson on history and international law. Rating: 4/5

BOTH How I Met Your Mother and Friends are on Netflix! What a time to be alive.

Finally finished watching Stranger Things Season 2. My notes: 1. The Hawkins kids have more acting prowess in them than, say, 100 local adult actors combined. 2. S02E07 is totally skippable. Pat Benatar, tho. 3. And maybe this episode is a prelude to Season 3? 3. The Billy Hargrove character is absolutely sexy, absolutely douchey, and absolutely unnecessary. 4. The sole purpose of Bob's existence is to prove to us that if you find a nice, decent, loving, and caring man, he will most definitely die. Rating: 5/5

1. While Tyrion is good with politics and diplomacy, he knows little about warfare. Jorah, Jon, and Grey Worm are great soldiers, but they are not military strategists. With Jamie joining them in the North, Dany is finally getting a good military general by her side. 2. I like how Cersei addressed Jon as "Ned Stark's son", and considers him as a Stark. Considering that seven seasons ago, Catelyn didn't even see Jon as fit to even be seen by the Queen, Cersei now respects him enough and doesn't refer to him as illegitimate at all. 3. Nothing says "That's my girl!" like the proud grin the Hound had on his face when Brienne updated him about how Arya can now do.. 4. I wonder how many times the Hound and Jon practiced their grand white walker presentation. Great theatrics, guys. 5. Superb acting by Aiden Gillen. The range of emotions his face can make in less than five minutes of screen time is incredible. 6. Jon Snow, why wear ten laye...