For All Mankind s4 (2023) [/] Last season was getting to Mars and establishing a base. Now it’s a decade later, 2003, with Mars base probably a few hundred people with a sort of mining town feel. Class divisions threaten to break the colony when the Helios Aerospace workers, most of whom are the tech and maintenance people on the base, go on strike for better pay and working conditions. Later on there is a huge opportunity when a valuable asteroid is discovered heading towards Mars but the governments back on Earth want the asteroid redirected to Earth orbit which would then consign Mars colony as a backwater…

This is still an ok series. I loved the first couple of seasons because it was so epic. Seasons three and four seem less epic even though they went to Mars. But I guess adding Helios Aerospace more normal non-astronaut people makes it seem like space is becoming civilized and therefore boring.

Doona! (2023) [-] Korean romantic series of nine 45-minute episodes. College student Lee Won-jun (Yan Se-jong) moves into the second floor of a house that has two other guys. He discovers that the first floor tenant is the beautiful and distant Lee Doo-na (Bae Suzy), former lead singer of a popular K-Pop girl group until she quit due to anxiety. They form a friendship and slowly it becomes more, with brief hiccups when a couple of Won-jun’s female acquaintances show up again in his life.

But then Doona is forced back into the business on pain of breaching her contract and as part of that has to break off contact with Won-jun who takes it stoically hard. The last episode is four years later where they run into each other and confess they still love each other but I guess they realize her career can’t afford a boyfriend so they part amicably to live their own lives…

Has kind of a bummer ending. As a character Doona is attractive and rather annoying in that she does things without telling people why which leads to misunderstandings. It’s a series I kept hoping would get better (which it didn’t) or at least have a good ending (which it didn’t). Even when they finally admitted their feelings it was a bit of a letdown. At least this was only nine episodes.

Progresso Spicy Chicken Tortilla Soup [/] Not bad as a chicken tortilla soup (though would be better if you add your own tortilla chips because this has nothing as far as I can tell and would be too soggy if it did). I like the medium spiciness which is not too much to override the flavor, though it’s definitely too spicy if you don’t like spicy.

Pride and Prejudice audiobook (2018) [-] Apple has a nice 12-hour version narrated by Kate Beckinsale. I hadn’t realized how much the Dickinson tv series borrowed from Pride and Prejudice. Anyway, this novel was kind of a slog. It feels very stodgy British unlike Anne of Green Gables which had a more childlike and happy feel. So I did not really enjoy listening to this for 12 hours and it took me a long time to get through it. On the other hand the narration is just fine and Beckinsale has a pleasant British voice.