Review of Quantum Leap S2E1 “This Took Too Long!”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “This Took Too Long!” Episode 201 — Pictured: (l-r) P.J. Byrn as Sgt. Enock Abrams, Aaron Abram as Sgt. Ronny Abrams, Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song, Melissa Roxburgh as Lt. Ellen Grier, Francois Arnaud as Sergeant Curtis Bailey — (Photo by:NBC)

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So, against my better judgment, I decided to watch the season 2 opener of the current Quantum Leap television show titled This Took Too Long!

For S1, I tended to “soft soap” my reviews, giving the show the benefit of the doubt, even though I knew it’s stated intent was to completely highlight representation as it’s top priority, even above entertaining the broadest possible audience.

All of those episodes piled on top of each other had pretty much convinced me to abandon the show at the end of season one’s run. It wouldn’t be the first time. I watched the first seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (and boy am I glad I missed season 2).

For “Quantum Leap” I think I was just curious about why Ben didn’t leap home when Ziggy’s programming said he really should. Of course the real reason is that the show won a second season so Ben (Raymond Lee) needs to keep leaping.

I was also curious after the nature and character of S1 plus the recent writer’s strike, if the tone and content of the show might try to be more egalitarian. That is, would the showrunners stop trying to alienate large numbers of old school television viewers, science fiction fans, and time travel buffs like me. Never mind that I’m too old, too male, and too white to come anywhere near their target demographic.

Okay, that’s probably too much to ask for, but I thought at least the season opener should be pretty safe. After all, you want to re-engage the audience and pull them in again before blasting them with controversial content. Right? Am I right?

Let’s find out.

Oh, it goes without saying that this is a Spoiler Alert so if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know all about it beforehand, stop reading now.

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Book Review of “Upright Women Wanted”

upright

Cover art for “Upright Women Wanted”

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Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey isn’t the sort of book that I’d usually read. It’s not the sort of book I’d even be slightly interested in buying. But, like books I’ve read before, it was a free download (until Dec 17th) from Tor.com.

I thought I’d given up reading Tor books if, for no other reason, that all the ones I’ve taken a look at seem to have been written for other audiences, written by people who would hate my guts if they knew me, or both.

But the description was interesting enough:

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Gender Fluid Actress Ruby Rose “Not Gay Enough” to Play Batwoman

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Richard Shotwell/Invision, via Associated

Actress Ruby Rose has deleted her social media presence after facing a backlash for being cast as “Batwoman” — not from the right, angry that the self-described lesbian character will be played as written, but from the left, who declared Rose “not gay enough” to play the female superhero.

I found this quote in an article written by Emily Zanotti for The Daily Wire called Ruby Rose Quits Twitter After Leftist Critics Declare She’s Not Gay ENOUGH To Play Batwoman.

Wait! What?

Since The Daily Wire is a conservative publication, and since social and political leftists seem to believe that any conservative news is “fake news,” I fact checked it (yeah, I do that), and according to the left leaning New York Times as well as Entertainment Weekly, it’s true.

What that heck (substitute a four letter word that starts with “F” [Edited to be less graphic])?

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Is Jeff Sessions Trying to Establish an American State Religion?

I know I’m pushing it, but I decided to share these thoughts here on my “fiction” blog.

James Pyles's avatarMorning Meditations

sessions U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

I just found out that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced the Department of Justice’s creation of a ‘religious liberty task force’ to ‘help the department fully implement our religious guidance'” over at CNN.

Actually, someone I know from my Powered by Robots sister blog reblogged an article called The First Amendment Under Siege posted at The Shinbone Star. You can find out more about their staff here (although discovering that one of their reporters used to work for MSNBC told me a lot about the particular bent of this publication).

I suppose I shouldn’t get into politics on my “religious” blog, but this topic is or should be of interest to all people of faith in the U.S.

It’s tough to get an unbiased view of what Sessions is up to, so I had to look at a number of differing…

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The WorldCon 76 Incident: This Never Happened to Me on Twitter Before

Apparently, discussing WorldCon 76 and the tremendous mess they’re currently in on twitter has involved me in a bit of a conversation. Really, nothing like this has happened to me before. I’m pretty amazed. Of course, it’s more than just the WorldCon issue involved, so just for giggles, I’m posting a screen capture (actually, several merged together) of the entire dialog. I didn’t know what to say, so thus far, I haven’t responded.

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twitter screen capture

the next part.