What have I been doing this week? I’m glad you asked! Here’s what’s been on my watchlist this week:

TV

Hospital Playlist (2020)

Hospital Playlist has the kind of vibe that makes you feel like you’re part of the gang. You laugh with them, and you cry with them. You root for them through their successes and hope for them through their hardships. This show highlighted the beauty of different kinds of relationships, that between parent and child, between siblings, and of friends who have become family. It has the signature pop culture references and musical flair of Writer Lee/PD Shin that make you feel a sense of nostalgia and longing even as you’re watching it, and the characters are so inherently true to self you feel like they’ve been plucked from real life. I can’t wait to continue on this journey with our Yulje crew. I need Season 2 yesterday!

Harley Quinn Season 2 (2019)

What a great first half, and what a disappointing second half. It felt like the writers were unsure who their characters were in the latter half of this season, with Dr. Psycho turning supervillain, the Joker’s unnecessary reappearance, and Harley’s completely out of the blue love for Ivy. Perhaps it was a case of confused feelings that made Harley confuse love for her friend who supported her with romantic love, but Ivy’s motivations seemed completely opaque. Poor Kiteman got the short end of it, leaving a very bitter taste after seeing two seasons of build-up on their relationship end in rejection. I’m not sure what the writers were thinking, but I hop they remember who their characters are in time for the next season.

Books

A Court of Thorns and Roses (Ch 1 – 28) – Sarah J. Maas

Feyre’s journey seems familiar, with common themes of poverty and self-sufficiency and hardship being ones repeated through many young adult novels. However, she is not your typical protagonist, in that she is very rarely seen wallowing in self-pity. She gets on with life, and makes do with what she has, which makes her infinitely more likeable in my eyes. While the story is building towards her relationship with Tamlin, it sometimes feels like that is almost secondary, with her need to figure out herself and her surroundings taking precedence. Whether that be in learning to paint or in figuring out the lay of the land and the creatures that occupy it, Feyre has a voracious appetite for learning her environment – which also gets her in trouble on more than one occasion. On the whole, I enjoy learning the mythology of Maas’s universe, and just like Feyre, I’m curious about the vast expanse that lays ahead of me.