Grab Bag: White Lotus and Yellowjackets finale reviews! Dubs playoff run down to the wire! Excellent start for SF Giants 2025 season! Ice cream nightmares!
- Colby Michaels
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Good day, gentle readers! For fun, I'm switching up the usual order and going to start with the entertainment side first. Sportsball next, and then, <smh> oh, why about the ice cream!
Breaking News: In the high-glam luxury fashion world, it was announced Thursday that Prada has bought Versace for 1.4 Billion dollars! The couture crowd is rocked by this deal and very expensive pearls are being clutched! I was always a Prada boy myself, as I thought Versace was for folks trying too hard to prove they were nouveau-gauche! Shots fired! :) https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/10/style/prada-group-acquires-versace/index.html
So the third season of HBO's very popular tropical drama, "White Lotus" has concluded. Compared to the last two seasons, it was just okay. The big drag on the season for me was the Walter Goggins storyline. Not fun watching over several episodes having a character be all angsty and negative- doesn't make for fun viewing or best use of one's time. I did suspect from the beginning when we were teased with those gunshots in the opening scene of the first episode that it had something to do with Goggin's character! As for the three best gal-pals getting together after being apart for so long, again, just okay. The third group of guests, the Radcliffe family, with Jeremy Issac and Parker Posey as the parents, was the most interesting, for a variety of reasons that would be to spoilery to get into here. Lastly, having the character of Belinda return from season one, after she was shafted by Jennifer Coolridge's Tanya character was also interesting, considering that Belinda ended up crossing paths with Tanya's widow, who is living the good life on Thailand off of Tanya's inheritance!
Okay, now for the positive stuff! Thailand was filmed in such a gorgeous way, I can see why people are clamoring to visit! While I riffed on storylines earlier, the acting was superb, with Jason Issacs, Carrie Coons, and Parker Posey (that accent!) being standouts for me. Also flowers given to the actresses who played Belinda and the British girlfriend of Goggin's character. Oh, and Belinda, after hitting a big monetary score, pulled a Tanya on the poor guy she liked and who the two of them discussed opening up their own spa; she basically said, "No can do", and took that boat and money back home! Money does change everything!
Last note I will leave you with, as one character said, is to pay attention to the "power of threes", boy was that ever present upon reflecting back on the season and the finale!
Yellowjackets closed out its fourth season, and lets just say, the cast is getting smaller! This show splits its' time between the the Yellowjackets girls soccer team surviving the plane crash in a remote forest area that teems with a supernatural energy, leading this young ladies to explore their culinary palette and slowly going feral. The other side of the show follows the girls who were rescued (when the show decides to reveal who was rescued!), as the very disturbed women that they are currently living today! Paranoia, distrust, seriously repressed anger and angst play a big part in their current lives, and that paranoia is not unwarranted, as outside forces seem intent on interfering with trying to heal and move on. "Unhinged" is how I hear a lot of fans describe this show, and it's pretty spot-on. The synopsis online I'm going to use as a cheat, as it's more succinct and describes the show as a "drama-thriller", and names the actresses , both younger and older selves:
"Yellowjackets" tells the narrative of a team of wildly talented high-school girls soccer players who survive a plane crash deep in the Ontario wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to warring, cannibalistic clans, while also tracking the lives they have attempted to piece back together. Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher and Sammi Hanratty star as the teenagers, while Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis portray their adult counterparts as they reveal the truth about their survival 25 years later.
The finale is on Friday, so I will be up late to catch it and update here Friday morning! I'm adding the FIRST season trailer as not to spoil too much, but it was a much bigger cast at that time! Not a show that will inspire the munchies! Oh, this show DOES have the BEST soundtrack of any show in a long time, of you are an eighties/nineties music fan!!
Update! The season finale! "Can you hear me now?" I'm playing with a key line from the finale, which solved one person's death, and revealed the whole story of that very first opening scene from season one, episode one! The wilderness wants what the wilderness wants from the girls, who have gone full feral as winter has come again for them! And as the Antler Queen is revealed, so is the true confession by the woman who became the Antler Queen in the wilderness! Let the hunt begin for a hopeful season five! All seasons can be viewed on Paramount Plus/Showtime!
Okay, now the sportsball! March Madness ends: I ALMOST had the winning bracket! On the men's side, Michigan State made it to the Elite 8 before getting bounced, and Duke lost to Houston in the Final Four (all final four teams were ranked #1 in their region!!) The NCAA Men's Basketball final came down to Houston and Florida, with Florida winning the trophy. On the women's side, one of my picks, UConn, made it to the final against the other team I should've picked, South Carolina. The UConn ladies took care of business, and was the victor who took home the Women's NCAA Basketball trophy for this season. With that, college basketball is over till late fall! Golden State Warriors: The Dubs are down to their last two games of the regular season, hoping to avoid the "play-in" part of the playoffs, where it's one and done if you lose, and all the other times the Dubs have had to play in the play-in part, they have lost, and the season was over. The play-in is teams ranked 7-10, who do NOT get the week off as the top six teams do. As it stands as I post this, after winning seven games in a row, and hanging onto to 5th or 6th spot, Wednesday's loss to the San Antonio Spurs at Oracle was a blow, on a buzzer beater, no less!! So it's Portland on Friday, and the last game on Sunday against the LA Clippers, who have the season tie-breaker over Golden State, so must-wins apply here if the Dubs want that week off! I will be rooting hard for the Sacramento Kings, who play the Clippers on Friday! :)
San Francisco Giants: MLB baseball is back, and the Giants have gotten off to a great start! After opening on the road in Cincinnati and Seattle, and then winning their home opener, the Giants had a 7-1 record! The offense decided to go into hiding for two games, but then woke up Wednesday, coming back from a 1-6 deficit to win with a walk-off home run and leave with good vibes as they head to New York to take on the Yankees this weekend! Big test for this team! Part of the Opening Day Ceremonies was that 3rd baseman Matt Chapman and catcher Patrick Bailey picked up some nice hardware, receiving their Gold Gloves as best at defense in their respective positions, as seen below:
Congrats guys! and Chappie has been showing off his cannon of an arm this season!
Weird Food News: Here in San Francisco, is was announced that we are losing TWO ice cream shops that the locals and visitors alike loved. That was bad enough, then these two stories popped across my screen, and lets just say adding insult to injury, and WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!!??
I'm going to go get a rare, juicy cheeseburger! Enjoy the weekend!
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