Hello everyone! For today’s Blogmas post, I wanted to share a few shows I’ve watched recently. Specifically, Selling Sunset, White Collar, and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

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I’ve done one or two of these posts before, but these aren’t too regular as I don’t watch many TV shows all the way through, and when I do it takes forever for me to get through them! But I figured I should share them anyway and include it in Blogmas! Usually I share bits of my thoughts in my Lively posts, but sometimes I have more thoughts I want to share! That’s why I love making a whole separate post for them.

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TV Shows I’ve Watched Recently – Selling Sunset

One of the more recent shows I’ve watched is Selling Sunset. There are currently four seasons of the show and I watched all four this month. (Oh, spoilers for the Lively post at the end of the month.) I have always heard of this show from The Morning Toast, but never watched until one of my new coworkers told me I should. I finally did and was instantly hooked!

I did accidentally start watching season 4 first, as I just hit “play” and Netflix thought I wanted to watch the new episodes only, rather than the beginning. I suppose I could have kept watching but I would have been very confused so I love that I went back to the first season. However, due to that error, I did get spoiled that Chrishell’s marriage was going to end, Davina was going to leave at some point, and a few other big things.

So here’s some thoughts on the cast! Right away I loved Chrishell! Although I did understand where the “two faced” accusation was coming from, I did mostly see the early drama as really unfair to Chrishell, who was just trying to understand the dynamics. I was also really heartbroken for her when her divorce happened. It was so sad!

I do actually kind of still like Christine, although she is usually in the wrong. I do like that she is so fierce in her beliefs though. And I love seeing her crazy, over-the-top parties that she throws, particularly her wedding and baby events. She seems to really be going through a rough patch now at the end of season four and I don’t think she’s really understanding that she can’t just say sorry and then go back to talking shit about someone right after apologizing and expect it to be okay. Also, she is so annoying how she says someone is “looking” a certain way but because she doesn’t actually say that they are that way she should be fine. Like how when she tried to say Chrishell was acting a little “two faced” but didn’t actually call her two faced or when she said Mary was acting like a “fucking bitch” but then tried to say she didn’t actually call her that. Like, that’s just not an excuse!

Maya is great, although I think she is a huge catalyst for the drama as she often brings up stuff that she didn’t have to mention. While she doesn’t come across as having bad intentions or anything it does come across as a little forced sometimes so I’m not sure if maybe the producers ask her to bring stuff up or something and that’s why. Oh! That does remind me to mention, season four felt super scripted as opposed to the earlier seasons!

I do like Mary, although I’ll admit I didn’t like Romain at the start. I did get the sense that Romain was just in it for the fame though since he was often the only significant other that was in the show. Even now, the others will appear from time to time but Romain is always there! I get that they’re better friends with him by now though, although it is still weird that he is often the only person there that isn’t a broker/realtor. Back to Mary though. I do like her quite a bit. I think she is the center of a lot of drama but she tries to bury the hatchet quickly and it’s everyone else who can’t get past it.

Amanza is pretty new still and although I do like her as a person, I do think that she is a little too involved in the drama overall when she really doesn’t need to be like when she is being so protective of Mary. I did like that she called out Heather for moving so quickly with her boyfriend, even if Heather took it completely the wrong way. I do like that she does seem to realize that there are more important things, even though if it is for the sad reason that her ex-husband just ditched his kids and responsibilities.

Oh, I nearly forgot about Heather! So she is friendly and nice enough, and can be sweet with the other girls, but I don’t really vibe with her. She just doesn’t seem too mature, like how I mentioned above that she flew off the handle when Amanza brought up her boyfriend’s kids and Heather took it as Amanza assuming the relationship was going to fail. I would have liked to see Heather circle back to that with Amanza after she seemed to finally understand what Amanza was saying when Chrishell’s marriage ended and Chrishell was heartbroken about not seeing her former stepdaughter too.

I hated Davina honestly. She always goes back to her excuse that she’s too “direct” and that’s why people don’t like her but the truth is that she’s just cruel! For example, she didn’t need to antagonize Chrishell at Christine’s wedding! Honestly, it’s annoying that she came back and then didn’t understand why Chrishell wasn’t thrilled to accept her apology unconditionally. It was obvious that the apology was just coming because Davina had to work with Chrishell again, otherwise it never would have happened!

Vanessa and Emma are both very new but they seem cool. Emma seems to be set up almost like a Christine replacement though, so for a bit I was thinking Christine was planning to quit after her baby even though Jason and Brett kept saying she wasn’t going to. Vanessa is great! I love her since she is so sweet and supportive even though she’s so new. She does seem to see the best in everyone, even connecting Christine to her mindset coach. I do worry she’s going to get dragged too much into the drama because she wants to be everyone’s friend and I thought she was going to fall into a Chrishell-like situation where she’s just asking questions and people misunderstand, but her intention does come across well so that hasn’t happened thank goodness. Sort of like how I thought Emma was replacing Christine, it almost felt like Vanessa was replacing Chrishell in a way. I’m glad they weren’t full replacements though!

Also, the two brothers are nice enough but I think they’re not great bosses. I get that the drama is a key part of the show but there were a handful of times where I thought it was so unprofessional of them to step in and put a stop to some of the crazier accusations and conversations around the office.

I’m excited for season five! I really can’t wait to watch it and see what happens next.

TV Shows I’ve Watched Recently – White Collar

I recently watched this entire show and binged it when I decided to cancel Hulu. I really enjoyed it though and it was really easy to binge! I did feel like sometimes it was annoying that the main characters, Neal and Peter, would go back and forth between trusting each other unconditionally then vowing they would never do so again. To be fair, both would make some questionable decisions from time to time but eventually it would all work out. I did really like that they did eventually seem to see each other as family though.

The other characters in the show were great too. Elizabeth and Mozzie’s friendship was just on a whole other level! It was really funny whenever Peter would watch Mozzie and Neal in his own home and seem to have some sort of crisis over the fact that he’d gone from chasing Neal around the world to having them just hang out in his living room or hosting them for meals while they became best friends with his wife and dog. Especially when they made the dog an accomplice in their cons.

I do think a lot of the charm of the show was because Peter was such a hardcore “do the right thing in the eyes of the law” FBI agent working with the conman Neal and watching them try to mesh each other’s approach into their own. Peter eventually does pull a few cons of his own while Neal ends up relying on the law more than he thought. It was also nice to see Neal really settle into the FBI life and it was so sad when he would get close to getting his freedom but ultimately couldn’t.

I really enjoyed the show and the character arcs, and while I miss it, I do think that it ended at the right time. Any more seasons and I think it would have felt like it was hanging on just to do so rather than because there was still more story to tell.

TV Shows I’ve Watched Recently – The Haunting of Bly Manor

Many people had recommended I watch this show after I enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House, so I finally did back in October. I loved it! I was told that Bly‘s story would be different from Hill House but I hadn’t expected how different they would be.

It was pretty cool to see a lot of the same actors in the show, although the new ones were amazing as well. I also really loved how the show was paced. While Hill House was felt like it could or could not have been a curse or just a wild figment of the family’s imagination, Bly Manor really leaned into the paranormal. I really enjoyed how the story would integrate their current day and the past, and then went way back to the start of the haunting. It was also really cool to see how some of the individual’s story lines continued with the haunting and even did flashbacks to events that happened during the show itself but with new context.

I did really like how creative the haunting story was, and how intricate it was. We got such a good look into the original Bly owners, and it was super well explained. The ending was really good too, including the story teller and the story’s continuation after everyone left Bly as well. It was great!

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So those are three shows I recently watched! I really enjoyed each and every one of them. Let me know what you thought if you have watched them!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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