How I Met Your Father 1x04 "Dirty Thirty" Review

This episode focuses on Sophie's 30th birthday and also her developing relationship with Drew, particularly how she feels like she's much more immature than Drew.

I do get the "different kind of adults" thing. I also like the relationship Drew and Sophie have, especially at the end of the episode where he assures her that he doesn't care and they bond over Christina Aguilera. While I know he's not going to be the dad so there's an expiration date on the relationship, I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

We learn more about Jesse and Ellen's backstory. Their dad cheated, which led to their parents getting divorced, and Ellen moved with their mom to Iowa while Jesse stayed with their dad. Before this, I'd assumed they were both from Iowa, but I guess Jesse actually grew up in New York. Or, at least, he didn't grow up in Iowa. The scene where they make up was sweet, and I'm looking forward to seeing them become closer over the course of the series as they actually learn about each other.

Charlie and Valentina also get into an argument this episode about not being an actual couple, but they end the episode deciding to be in a relationship. Honestly, for a bit, I thought they might actually break up, but nope.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode. I'm liking the cast so far and the relationships between the characters, both romantic and otherwise, as they develop.

Book Review: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee

Published: July 16, 2019
Publisher: Amulet Books
Received: purchased
Read from October 17, 2021 to February 5, 2022

Synopsis from Goodreads: 

F. C. Yee’s The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom–born Avatar. The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world’s history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, The Rise of Kyoshi maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.

Review:

As someone who's been a fan of Avatar since the show first aired when I was eleven, I've been very excited each time we've learned that there's going to be more. The movie was a disappointment, and Korra was a bit of a mixed bag. People have complicated feelings about it. I actually like Korra, though it's not on the same level as the original for me. The comics are also fun, and I've enjoyed the ones I've read, but I don't really connect with comics in the way I do TV shows or novels.

That was why I was excited to hear that there were going to be novels set in the Avatar universe. Avatar Kyoshi also had an interesting backstory that had already been introduced in Last Airbender, so learning more about her had me excited, and I wasn't disappointed.

Honestly, I could talk about this book for ages, but I'm going to try and focus on several of the biggest thoughts that I have after reading.

As I said before, there's a lot of potential for an interesting story about Kyoshi just based on what we learn about her in the original TV series. She was the longest lived Avatar, living for a longer period of time than a human being should be able too (over 200 years) which was never explained on the show, and she had a whole island and group of warriors named after her.

This first book addresses all of that in a way that felt very natural to the story currently being told and without it feeling like those details were being dropped just to explain things in the original TV show. I love the way it was done. As someone who's seen the TV show many times, I picked up on ways this story connected to the show, and I also have some theories about the second book based on what I know about Kyoshi from the show. However, you could pick up this book without ever having watched the show and be just as engaged in the story.

The Rise of Kyoshi also means that we now have two queer Avatars, which isn't something I could have imagined when I was watching Last Airbender as a kid. It's amazing.

Kyoshi wasn't anything like what I expected her to be, and I really like that. In addition to Kyoshi, we get a large cast of new characters, and every single one of them was unique and interesting. I particularly like how Jianzhu is the villain of the story, but we can see how he justifies his actions as being for the good of the world. It makes him a particularly great villain and humanizes him in a way that Ozai never got. (Azula was a bit more than Ozai, but I think it makes more sense to compare Jianzhu and Ozai as Ozai was always the one Aang was supposed to face.)

I did like Rangi, but she was quite closed off emotionally, which admittedly made a lot of sense for her. I hope we get to learn more about her and how she thinks in the second book. She's very devoted to Kyoshi too, and I'd like to see more of her as her own independent person and not necessarily as Kyoshi's teacher or protector.

Outlaw gangs called daofei play a huge role in the story, which was another surprise. By Aang's day, they seem to have (at least mostly) disappeared, since the pirates that we do see in Last Airbender are nothing like the groups we see in the book. I assume that Kyoshi's time as the Avatar will have a lot to do with these daofei and possibly be why they're almost nonexistent by the time Aang is born.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Rise of Kyoshi. It's an engaging and fun backstory for Kyoshi, and I'm excited to read the sequel and learn more about what happens next.

How I Met Your Father 1x03 "The Fixer" Review

The whole group is trying to convince Jesse to join Tinder at the start of the episode. This episode seemed particularly packed with brand names. I know it wasn't the first time Tinder was mentioned, but between that and even Hello Fresh getting a name drop, it felt a little overdone.

We get to meet a new character in this episode: the assistant principal at Jesse's school who's played by Josh Peck. I was actually kind of impressed with him in the role. I find it funny to have him and Hilary Duff playing romantic interests, since it's Disney and Nickelodeon meeting. I really like him as a character so far.

Charlie and Ellen decide to become roommates, and I'm actually excited for their friendship. I hadn't considered it before, but I like the way they played off each other in this episode. I'm excited to see more of them figuring out New York together.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode. I feel like I'm learning more about the characters and how they relate to each other. I like a lot of the dynamics and am looking forward to seeing more.

The Book of Boba Fett "Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger" Review

This week gave us another episode with very little Boba Fett. He does actually make an appearance this time at least, even if it's for less than five minutes.

Instead of Boba Fett, we get to see some other characters we haven't in a while, including Cobb Vanth. I never expected to see him again in The Mandalorian, let alone in The Book of Boba Fett. It was kind of weird seeing him without his armor too. I'm kind of surprised he didn't make an attempt to make other armor himself after he lost the Mandalorian armor.

Another character we get to see in this episode is R2-D2! That was a fun surprise. Seeing Grogu was too. I'd missed him, even though him popping up in The Book of Boba Fett is still questionable to me.

We also see a bunch of other droids who are building Luke's future Jedi school. That bit felt kind of ominous considering what happens to the school later, and hearing that Grogu might be the first student there in the same episode where we saw his memories of the Great Jedi Purge was a little sad.

(Seeing those memories and being reminded that Grogu is actually older than Luke despite Luke being his teacher felt a little jarring too.)

CGI Luke was... Honestly, I don't know how I feel. I was worried they'd do it but didn't really expect them to because it seemed like such a bad idea. There were times in the episode where it wasn't too bad, but other times, it was very obvious that it was CGI, which took me out of the story. I'm just not a fan. It felt unnecessary, especially since this is The Book of Boba Fett and Luke doesn't seem very important to the story of Boba Fett himself. The series is just going off on tangents about other characters. But if we were going to see so much of Luke, they also could have recast him like they did Han Solo.

We get quite a bit of Grogu's training in this episode. It's the second episode in a row that feels like it should have been in The Mandalorian instead, and I'm still just as confused as I was then about why we're seeing this now.

At the end of the episode, Luke makes Grogu choose between the armor the Mandalorian brought him and Yoda's lightsaber. We don't see what choice he makes, but it's clear it's an important decision, which only makes it more baffling why we're not seeing him make it in The Mandalorian.

Meanwhile, the Pykes are causing more trouble. They kill Vanth and also plant a bomb that wreaks havoc. This part of the episode at least does connect with the larger story of The Book of Boba Fett. I'm hoping we'll see more of it in the next episode.

How I Met Your Father 1x02 "FOMO" Review

This episode aired at the same time as the first episode, but I watched them about a day apart. That might have affected how I feel about the episode. One thing I can say is that I have less to say about this one than the first, which I expected. It's a half-hour sitcom, so there's not always going to be a lot to talk about when it comes to individual episodes.

At one point in the episode, Sophie says, "This story is about the journey, not the destination," and also that she'll be with a lot of guys before she gets with the father. Which...yeah. Anyone who watched How I Met Your Mother would be expecting that. It's interesting because I think one of the downsides of HIMYM was that it didn't always feel like it was about the journey that it was supposed to be about.

I didn't think about this until I was reflecting on this episode later, but where Ted's story starts with his children is actually incredibly weird and pointless in the grand scheme of things. It has nothing to do with meeting their mother. Even when looking at the whole show in context, it makes no sense that he would start the story there, so it's about a "journey" in a certain sense, but it also kind of isn't.

How I Met Your Father is already a bit different here in that we know Sophie met the father in the first episode, so at the very least, it makes sense that she started the story there. It seems like this time around it will actually be about the journey of them getting together and not just nine years of Sophie's life where she finally meets the father eight years into it.

But let's get into thoughts specifically about this episode.

There's a scene where Sophie and Valentina make drip coffee using a kettle, and it made me laugh. I know very few people in the US who have kettles, and I've had friends from other countries ask me how Americans make tea without kettles multiple times. (The answer is that a lot of Americans don't make tea at all, and people who do often use the microwave.) I made coffee the exact way they do in this episode when I lived in Japan, but I honestly don't know anyone in the US who does that. I'm sure some people do, but I definitely don't think it's common, so that was interesting, I guess.

Most of the episode is centered around Sophie and Valentina trying to set the guys up as friends, while Sid convinces Jesse that they're trying to set Sophie up with him. It was a pleasant episode, though noting super noteworthy happens.

I found Charlie more annoying in this episode. I know he's supposed to be an aristocrat who doesn't understand how the "real" world works, but there are so many moments where it surpasses the point of believability, and if it keeps up, I feel like it's going to get old fast.

This episode makes me think even more that Jesse is the father. Or, at the very least, we're supposed to think he is. I still think it would be interesting if we wound up being surprised by one of the other guys being the father, but I'm not holding out hope for it.