Tom Sawyer

I’ve seen Return to Me” several times. “Several.” Every time, I see new things—little jokes, innuendos, symbolism. I cried 3 times tonight because it’s about family who never lived anywhere except a few blocks from each other, yet one receives a heart from a woman, finding out later her new boyfriend is the dead woman’s wife. The funniest line in the movie, Alice Hunt says to angry husband Jim Belushi, really fast because she’s nervous, “Grace has Bob’s dead wife’s heart.” The older I get, the younger those senior citizens look sitting around gambling.

D U Double toothpicks. Episode 4 is starting. I’ve been waiting, waiting for someone to have some character so there can be an arc. The story follows a bunch of vacuous maikos (like geishas) and their apprentices. One can’t dance as well as the others, so she can’t be a maiko, but luckily she knows how to cook, so we get to see what she makes. She just spent 15 minutes making a white bread pudding with a crackling caramel topping and getting complimented for it.

Too bad there’s only one season, though I’m on the second to the last episode—maybe they will wrap it up nicely, whatever IT is, by the end of episode 6. I’m liking it. Nothing better for a show than Katherine Parkinson.

Interesting, many-faceted story. It’s a fantasy, sometimes a bit hokey, but it tries to tamp down the viewer’s skepticism by paralleling fantasy with psychiatry and archaeology. I’m also enjoying the natural acting of the series’ star, Beren Saat. She has to play passionate artist, mental patient, lover, sister, mystic, daughter. Bravo. The English speaking version is decent. The locations are real, but you’d never know it. Amazing museums, and the Ankara skyline is lovely.

Spoilers Alert: This was made in 2011? I would assume it was made in 2021 except none of the stars wear masks. Hydrochloroquine-like situation is in there; a blogger who owns stock in “forsythia” fakes his sickness and cure and is bailed out of jail by his followers. Conspiracists claim the disease was made in a lab, though its natural creation is actually shown at the end of the film. Countries hog the first vaccine to themselves, although in the film, it looks like the recipe for the vaccine is shared with all countries. They didn’t have companies hiding their recipes like we did. Yes, other than the masks none of the principals wear for the same reason Trump wouldn’t wear one, Contagion hit its mark 9 years before the real thing.