My Puzzling Year

 Perhaps part of the secret behind the continued success of this show is each season is "only" six episodes long.  Much as one wishes for it to run and run, with six episodes there's a certain economy, a certain speed, a certain heightening of attention, and it just doesn't outstay its welcome (compare Down Cemetery Road which felt like it drifted in places and would've benefitted from tightening up by a couple of episodes). It's also rare for a show to maintain interest season after season, such that I want and don't want to watch Season Five immediately -- when I watch it, there will be no Slow Horses backlog to consume and that's sad....but I KNOW already I will enjoy it. I might have to actually start reading the books to fill the void.

 Well it's no "The Road" nor "No Country For Old Men". Yes yes it's a massive MacGuffin, opening with finding a crashed plane underwater with something key missing and a government conspiracy to hush it up -- which then morphs into, well, not much of much, really. Yes yes it's all about philosophical musings on life and death and everything in between, and it's not hard to treat it as a dying McCarthy wanting to get his thoughts out on paper and publish it for the world to see. The problem is, the MacGuffin plot is actually very intriguing and just abandoning it stinks of actually having no ideas about how it would resolve and just dribbling off into a stream of crap. Sorry. Not sorry. At this late stage in his life what he really needed was an editor to say "this is crap, follow the plot" rather than "oh your words shine like gold". By the end, the book was a relief to get out of the way rather than a joy to finish.

 First time watching it through in one go, previously have seen it all but a bit here, a bit there.  Really excellent foreshadowing in the (really quite lengthy) sepia piece upfront, everything in its expected place, (mis)remembered the Wizard reveal being much earlier than it actually was -- in fact the whole last part of the movie flew by: Wizard reveal, the resolution of the three helpers, the balloon, the red shoes, all of it done in an incredibly short period of time. Although plot hole -- the Toto story doesn't get resolved, there's nothing to say Gulch isn't on her way back to grab that dog and get him put down, despite everything Dorothy went through...

 First time I've actually watched it -- Michael Myers irritating as usual,  Some very good gags but unengaging really.

 Pretty good, funny in places, more for the minions than anything Gru and the gang do.