I bought a Brother HLL2350DW Laser Printer almost three years ago for $165 on Amazon.

Features

• Monochrome laser printer (I don't want to deal with color toner). 1200 dpi (I think). It comes with a starter toner which lasts a few hundred pages. Regular toner is 1200 pages (high yield toner 3000 pages) which is enough for me for at least a few years or until the toner dries (which is why I didn't buy high yield toner).
• WiFI 802.11n which is a bit old now and probably a security risk for my WiFi network. This model doesn't have Ethernet. Configuring WiFi using the LED panel is a bit of a pain but I managed to do it for my Airport. My newer TP-Link WiFi router supports WPS and with that it was easy as you click WPS start on the router and the printer and they'll connect and configure automatically and after that it works fine.
• There is also a USB port so I guess you can connect your computer directly and print from there and also configure from there with their Windows setup utility.
• Mac connection is nice in that macOS will download the right driver so printing just works. Same for my iPhone and iPad. Maybe you don't get all the fiddly settings with the macOS driver but it seems good enough.
• It has duplex printing so it can print both sides of a page. Kind of neat. 100 page output tray and 250 page input tray. You can also manual feed paper which you mostly use for one-off prints using special paper.
• Goes to sleep and starts up when you print. Sometimes that first print job doesn't go through after sleep so you have to print again. When it's sleeping it's utterly quiet.
• It seems to have very low RAM. Printing plain text it can handle fairly long documents. I print a spreadsheet and it can handle one page at a time (if you print too much the print queue says that job failed). I printed B2 Keep on the Borderlands and it could do a few pages at a time.

Overall it's a nice cheap printer that works fine. Not necessarily the nicest administration UI but I guess you only need to set it up once. You can use third party toner (unlike with HP printers which use microchip security toner). I would be inclined to buy a Brother printer again.

In House Marriage Honey (2020) [/] Japanese romance series of 7 half-hour episodes so it goes quickly. After her fiancé calls off the marriage Haruta Ami (Matsui Airi) goes on a dating app, finds someone who wants to get married immediately, and gets married at first sight to Miura Manatsu (Itagaki Muzuki). Immediate complication when it turns out they both work for the same company (he's in sales and she's in accounting) and he wants to keep the marriage a secret… There are some nice moments in the series and no real bad parts but it moves too quickly to develop investment in the characters.

Close Range Love (2014) [-] Japanese romance drama movie. Shy and stoic high schooler Yuni Kururugi (Nana Komatsu) falls for English-class teacher Haruka Sakurai (Tomohisa Yamashita) and the feeling becomes mutual. Besides that complication there is the new teacher Mirei Takizawa (Asami Mizukawa) who is Haruka's ex-girlfriend, and Kazuma Akechi (Arai Hirofumi) who is a fellow teacher and Yuni's guardian. I found this to be a plodding movie. It's different that one of the leads tries so hard to be unemotional but once again makes it hard to get invested in the characters. Also the tone is fairly serious and the romantic ending doesn't feel romantic at all.

Road Trip to the End of the World (2025) [/] A visual story computer game with a bit of interactivity. Andy and her imaginary childhood friend Fishy are driving from the East Coast to San Francisco to crash her former best friend’s wedding. Along the way she reflects on their friendship and how it ended and with Fishy’s help eventually realizes why it ended. It’s an hour-long story, mostly static pictures but good art, nice background music and an original song. Overall quite well done and a poignant story.

Lifeline+ (2023) [/] Lifeline is a choose-your-own-adventure style game with the modern twist that you are communicating with a stranded astronaut via SMS. Taylor sends you messages in real time and if he has a longer task or sleeps he won't send more messages until he's done (you on the other hand can wait forever before responding). One early task for you is looking up some information for him but I didn't play enough to see if that happens more. I guess part of the appeal is Taylor's sardonic humor and sarcasm… I didn't particularly like the real time aspect. I'd rather have a "game clock" that advances more if Taylor does a long action. Also since it's SMS messages Taylor likes to talk in short sentences sending each as a separate message which I find quite annoying in real life and in this game. You gotta admire making a popular game series that only requires a minimal UI — definitely less of a programming challenge than most other games.

Trader Joe’s Mexican-Style Riced Cauliflower [+] “Seasoned with a blend of cumin, cayenne, and lime and flavored with tomato concentrate…diced tomatoes, tri-colored bell peppers (red, yellow, and green), and pickled jalapeños...” And it’s about half riced cauliflower. As a rice substitute it’s not good as the cauliflower is too hard to feel like rice. But mixed with rice it tastes great and a 50/50 mixture means you’re eating less rice if you eat too much of it like I do. It’s $4 for a frozen pack that has three servings.

Oh My General is a Chinese historical light drama running 60 45-minute episodes. After defeating the Liaong Empire, general Ye Zhao (Ma Sichun/Sandra Ma) returns to the Song capital and reveals she's a woman. As penalty for deceiving the Emperor general Ye is forced to marry Zhao Yujin (Shin Yilun), playboy dilettante nephew of the Emperor and known as one of the prettiest men in the capital (I assumed they used Zhao for the two main leads for use in various jokes).

The first twenty episodes are the best as it focuses on the two leads. General Zhao is promoted to head the Capital Guard so she still has lots of military duties and also has to be a dutiful, obedient, and demure wife which she finds difficult. It doesn't help that she's been acting like a man for years so she appreciates beautiful women (and attracts Zhao Yujin's concubines) and like so drink and brawl. In contrast Zhao Yujin is more of a sickly scholar type who is good at poetry and dance. I also like that General Zhao has other female admirers like her cousin Liu Xiyin (Wang Churan) and Western Xia's Princess Yin Chuan (Mi Na) who fell in love with General Zhao back when they thought she was a man but finding out Zhao is a woman doesn't deter them.

Those first twenty episodes are more comedic than the rest of the series. Then there are ten episodes that focus on other characters and you barely see the two leads. The last thirty episodes our two leads are mostly secondary characters with the occasional two or three episodes where they feature. The last few episodes they do become more prominent but not as much as in the first part of the series.

The over-arching plot is the war between Song and Western Xia with machinations behind the scenes. Hence lots of episodes focusing on the Song emperor and his treacherous older brother who is trying to undermine the government. Also the Western Xia royal house gets much more screen time once Liu Xiyin ends up there as fiancée of the Crown Prince but also attracts the eye of the King. Eventually there is a big final battle in the last episode and so many characters die to the point it's a bit hilarious.

In general I have mixed feelings. The first twenty episodes are pretty good. The next 40 are not simply because it becomes a different series. It becomes a series with the occasional good episode and a lot of ok episodes. I watched it on Tubi and didn't help that two or three episodes the translation track was 30 seconds ahead of the video, a couple of episodes had no translation track, and one episode had a translation track from a previous episode.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this series.

Shattered Trident (2013) [/] This is the third novel in Larry Bond's Jerry Mitchell series and I read the previous one, Exit Plan. In this one Mitchell is in command of a US submarine in the Pacific as a stealth war breaks out between China and the Littoral Alliance of Vietnam, Japan, India and South Korea (and later more countries join) as the LA initiates hostiles after they find out that China will take over the Spratly Islands during their next naval exercises.

I suspect like any series that initially focuses on one character this will continue to broaden the scope of characters and action. In this novel Mitchell and his crew get maybe a third of the pages as a lot of stuff is the Littoral Alliance, China, and US politics. I want a good submarine yarn and at this point reading further books is probably not a good idea. I probably need to go to the first novel in the series for the best submarine action.

On the positive side I do like the scenario. It's an asymmetric war where the Littoral Alliance is hitting China at a weak spot (oil tankers) and have a weapon suitable for that (submarines). The events in this novel would make an interesting war game.

The Instigators (2024) [+] Apple TV+ heist movie. Rory (Matt Damon) and Cobby (Casey Affleck) are part of an inept trio doing a heist — steal a bunch of bribe money during Boston election night party of Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman). When the heist goes wrong and their leader is killed the two become wanted men: their employer wants them killed so they don't incriminate him and Mayor Micccelli wants his bracelet back — the bracelet that has the long combination to his huge office safe where he keeps all his bribe money. On the run Rory turns to his psychiatrist Dr Donna Rivera (Hong Chau) for help and she agrees to go along with them if they hold her hostage… Turned out to be a fairly humorous movie in the kind of humor I like: normal situations that turn out humorous because of irony or how the characters are reacting. Good dialog and acting and some fairly expensive looking set pieces. Also has Ving Rhames as a Special Operations Unit tough guy who everyone fears; Alfred Molina as the "main" criminal's second in command slash deli shop manager; and Toby Jones as Mayor Miccelli's hapless lawyer/flunkie.

Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 (1987) [/] A 45-minute mecha OVA. A prototype mech ends up in the garage where teen mechanic Kouji Sugimoto works. He accidentally activates it which sends out a signal and soon the army is after him, led by elite tank driver First Lt Kilgore who is obsessed with defeating MADOX because it beat him during a trial run. Also involved is Eriko Kusumoto who designed MADOX's software and test piloted it — she is in a second mecha prototype. Lastly is minor character Shiori Nagura, Sugimoto's girlfriend who is breaking up with him but is willing to meet him one last time and he's not going to miss it even if he trashes a lot of Tokyo piloting MADOX to meet her (oh, he can't get out of MADOX and this is before cell phones so of course he has to go himself in a mecha suit he doesn't know how to pilot)… Mecha animation is really good for 1987 with lots of little camera shots showing the details of the mecha and of the mecha v tank and mecha v mecha fights. The story though is quite bad.

Osmos+ (2023) [+] Apple Arcade version of Osmos. I reviewed the Mac version 14 years ago and after playing a few hours it's the same excellent game. Since the game has a minimal UI it works perfectly well on an iPad.

Human: Fall Flat+ (2023) [/] Physics-based puzzle game where you control a featureless white "human" that is barely controllable. With a controller you use one joystick to move forwards, back, or side to side; a second joystick to look and turn; two buttons one for jump and one for sit/fall; two triggers to punch/grab with left and right arm (use look to "aim"). I assume the puzzles aren't that complicated as the challenge is in moving your guy and manipulating the environment. I've seen other games like this (e.g. Octodad was really popular for a while) but I don't particularly like this mechanic. Also I played Human Fall Flat for 15 minutes and I was getting nauseous already — maybe it's the low detail graphics.

Dave’s Hot Chicken, Santa Clara [-] Went here for group dinner. Hot Box (10 tenders for $55), Box of Fries $12. 5 bucks per tender is a lot though these are huge tenders. Still I guess that means less fried outer goodness. We probably got no heat and without sauce it tasted as you’d expect — rather bland. With thousand isle sauce it was ok and with cheese sauce it was ok. Comparatively the frozen Tyson chicken tenders are better.

KPOPPED is an Apple TV+ song duel show hosted by Megan Thee Stallion, PSY (both I think pre-shot bits) and Soojeong Son (who is there with the live performers and audience). The premise is taking Western artists (as in artists from North America and Europe) and having their songs made into K-Pop versions which they then perform with a K-Pop group.

K-Pop groups are fairly big (the ones in this series are 4 to 9 or 11 members). The host K-pop group is split into two subunits and each takes one of the Western artists (though two episodes, with Spice Girls Mel B/Emma Bunton and with Boyz II Men, the Westerners perform both songs). They have 48 hours to learn and rehearse the song, though some of that is taken with the K-Pop group showing their artist around Seoul.

Let's take the first episode as an example. K-Pop band Billlie (with 3 Ls) splits into a group of 3 and a group of 4 and team up with Megan Thee Stallion and Patti LaBelle. We have a segment where group 1 shows Megan Thee Stallion something about Seoul. Then they show Megan the K-Popped version of "Savage" and then some rehearsing (all the previous with little interview asides of Megan commenting on the experience and complimenting her team, and the team commenting and complimenting Megan — there is a certain amount of everyone being way too nice and enthusiastic about each other which is wholesome for a family audience and a bit cringy for a cynical audience like me).

Finally in front of an audience they perform the song with backup dancers and light effects — all quite professional and hard to believe all these songs were done in one go. Then repeat for Patti LaBelle. PSY explains that the audience votes with their glow sticks set to Gold for song 1 or Purple for song 2. Two clips of fans talking about which song they liked and why. A bit of suspense and 3-2-1 countdown then the lights turn Gold or Purple and the winner is declared. Then Billlie performs one of their songs and the credits roll but you do get to see their whole performance.

The competition is mock and for fun and more of a framing format. The performances are really well done and entertaining and although I've listened to some K-Pop I don't know enough to feel that every song was suitably K-Popped. Everybody is really happy and enthusiastic (perhaps too much for my tastes). I like that sometimes the K-Pop members talk in Korean and there are no burned in subtitles — instead if you have subtitles on it'll be in your language (and I wonder if you don't have it enabled it would still show the translation in your language using the subtitling system since it's all Apple ecosystem).

I do like this show. I like being introduced to these groups since I didn't know any of them. It is incredibly well produced and edited and I'm thinking on other platforms it could easily look cheaper. Overall I enjoyed the eight half-hour episodes and hope there is a season 2.

The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed The Middle East, Revised Edition (2017) by Abraham Rabinovich is an account of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. With lots of Israeli sources there is a lot of detail on that side going down to notable and heroic actions by individual soldiers, though mostly keeps to higher level commanders. There is some of that on the Egyptian side, some from personal diaries. The Syrian side has little personal stories so I guess few sources there.

It's a 560 page trade paperback so there is a lot of details. A few maps to help you visualize things though this is not a battle study so don't need detailed maps showing unit movements during a battle. This was a recommended book a wargame designer and the combats are fairly detailed.

I have another book on the war, The Yom Kippur War and the Airlift That Saved Israel (2002) by Walter J Boyne. Almost 300 pages but much less dense text so I think Rabinovich's book has double the word count. Boyne's book is necessarily less detailed though it does go some into the US side of the airlift to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition which Rabinovich mentions but briefly. For the US side Rabinovich has some stuff with Kissinger and his shuttle diplomacy and apparently President Nixon was more concerned with the Watergate hearings.

Rabinovich's book was originally written in 2004. Later, Israel released a bunch of secret documents about the war and Rabinovich incorporates some of that which he highlights in a new introduction. The biggest thing is that there was a highly placed mole in the Egyptian government that gave Israel enough warning to have been ready but another part of Israeli intelligence was too reliant on tapped phone lines (which hadn't been activated) and the intuition of the head of that agency.

Anyway, this is a really good book. I like the detail and the narration of the action on various fronts. I either forgot a lot of what Boyne or Rabinovich's book has a lot more information since I don't recall knowing it before.

My Sex Doll (2020) [+] Thai sex teenage sex comedy. In order to pay off his deceased father's debt, sex-shy Ith (Piamchon Damrongsunthornchai) has to show off his uncle's prototype AI sex robot Anna (Phichana Yoosuk) by losing his virginity to her. But he keeps stalling so Anna follows him around to school and interacts with his friends and slowly learns about emotions… No nudity though lots of skin and boobs. And not that bad of a story — Ith's longtime best friend Lisa (Suchada Pramoulkan) has always been into him and Anna showing up makes her bolder; Ith eventually remembers the childhood memory that scarred him and realizes he had remembered the bad part not the good part; and Anna learns to be a bit more human although still robotic and simple-minded.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) [-] I rewatched the first half and realized this sequel is a lot worse than the original. It's Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) vs Afrikaner drug smugglers and adds Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) as a federal witness Riggs and Murtaugh have to protect while they continue going after the drug smugglers.

R&B Tea, Santa Clara - Oreo Chocolate Stormy [+] It’s pretty much an Oreo milkshake, maybe a bit more crushed ice rather than ice cream but still tastes great. ($7 list, $8 after DoorDash fees).

Kimono Cats (2023) [/] Kids game. You and your cat buddy traveling home and wandering through Japanese festivals. Pop balloons which can be gifts/food for your friend or mini-games where the prize also goes to your friend. When your friend is happy enough you get a gift and you can also buy random gifts and they are all used to decorate your property. Not really much of a game, more about collecting random things then decorating your property and then showing it off (as you wander along you sometimes visit other player's property and see their decorations).

Clue: Classic Edition+ (2023) [/] It's Clue the classic board game and you can play single player or online. On your turn you go to a location then guess the murderer, weapon and location. If another player has that card (proving it's the wrong clue) then they show it to you and the game mostly keeps track of which clues are invalid and which player had that card (or didn't have that card). Be the first to make an accurate accusation. Competently good implementation but I don't really like the board game and this version doesn't change my mind.

Women in Blue (Laz Azules) is a Mexican mini-series running 10 hour-long episodes on Apple TV+. Set in 1971, a serial murderer preys on women in Mexico City. The new police commissioner sets up Mexico's first female police force, more as a publicity stunt than to be real police women.

Sixteen women make it through the academy to become officers although the series focuses on a team of four: Marîa (Bárbara Mori), a housewife who always dreamed of being a detective and with a cheating husband she wants a change; Valentina (Natalia Téllez), Marîa's younger sister who is a civil rights activist who joins the force to make changes for the better from within; Ángeles (Ximena Sariñana), a bit of an autist — remembers and recollects everything but bad with human interactions; and Gabina (Amorita Rasgado), the youngest of a family of police officers but no one else in her family wants her to join the male-dominated police force.

As the women go through their separate character arcs and bond they also become involved in the serial murder case. Initially they find a body and when the "murderer" is found they realize he's not the guy even though the rest of the force is going to make him the murderer. Once the serial murderer strikes again the women are discouraged from participating so they do it in secret, running down their own leads and witnesses. Their success is because they see things differently than the guys and they can interact with female witnesses better.

The series is in Spanish with subtitles. After the first two or three episodes the story started getting interesting and it was pretty absorbing the rest of the way. It's unusual that the climax is sort of at the end of episode 9 and beginning of episode 10, then half of episode 10 is a ticking bomb situation, then a fair amount of wrap up to finish their stories — I had forgotten that the story is the women not the serial murder case.

Overall a good series.

Episode XOXO is a slightly interactive romance story app from Pocket Gems and available on Apple Arcade. It's bigger brother Episode lets users create their own stories for others so there are thousands of stories to read (and buy). Episode XOXO comes with 13 stories.

I read four of them and they've been romances from the woman's POV. You get to stylize her looks at the start (a fair number of options but some things like hair styles have lots of options many quite similar), name her, and specify whether the romantic interest is male or female and you get to style the romantic interest.

The stories are fairly predictable yet engaging rom com sort of stuff. The four stories I read:

• No Time For Love - "Desperate for money, you're sucked into a fake relationship with a pop star with a ruined reputation."
• Bodyguard Boyfriend - "You want nothing to do with your detective father, but then your life is put in danger."
• Level Up - "You're a known gamer! Throw in a competition, an annoying partner, and underlying feelings, and you've got quite a mess."
• The Royal Bachelor - "A scandal with the prince gets you fired from the job, but what happens when you're the wild card contestant on the hottest new reality show, 'The Royal Bachelor'?"

The stories are mostly dialog and some interior monologues. Often you get three choices on what to say but mostly they don't seem to matter. Level Up had "video game" sequences that use the same engine so it's "monster is ready to attack, will you shoot, dodge, or panic". Cuter are the parts where you choose which of three outfits to wear and it seems like you're changing outfits every chapter.

Along with the story you have these cartoony characters representing you, your romantic interest, and other people. Sometimes they're moving about though animation is minimal and poses non-existent other than stand, sit, walk/run; also two characters can get closer and kiss (from behind so you have one head covering the other's face). Often the backgrounds don't quite fit the characters but I didn't mind.

Even though it's a rather primitive engine I can make my character a cute girl and the romantic interest another cute girl and the stories are charming enough to be interesting and romantic. Don't mind that occasionally the dialog didn't switch gender or that the writing is not great. I found the stories satisfying and it's always a happy romantic ending.

2025-10-23: Apparently no cloud save so you can't continue a story on another device.

L-Pop (2023) [+] Disney+ Spanish-language half-hour series of six episodes. Andrea (Andrea de Alba) is a K-Pop superfan living in Mexico City while her older sister Paulina (Alicia Jaziz) is filming a documentary about Andrea's fandom. When a K-Pop dance contest is announced Andre is excited but is immediately kicked off her team because she is so busy she can't commit to practice. So Andrea starts her own team with three misfit K-Pop fans and whilst they practice at a Korean bistro after hours Andrea starts to become attracted with the owner Ji-Won (Isan Beomhyun Lee) who turns out to have been a failed K-Pop idol when he was younger. Characters are cute, dance sequences are nice, songs are original for this series. Worst part is the "rival team goes first and uses the same song, then hero team misses the cut by one but one team is disqualified" plot beats, which I've seen before a couple of times at least. I like the comedic moments of the documentary (everything we see is from the documentary camera POV) especially Paulina (and the other characters) interacting with abused cameraman Pablo (Christian Banas).

Lethal Weapon (1987) [/] Rewatched this and still fairly good film. Two Los Angeles detectives thrown together — veteran and stable Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and ex-special forces half-way suicidal Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) — take on ex-mercenaries no drug smugglers led by General Peter McAllister (Mitchell Ryan) and his top lieutenant Mr Joshua (Gary Busey). Good 1980's era comedy and action, probably R-rated at the time but almost a family film today as there is like no blood and little swearing or sexual situations.

Riptide GP: Renegade+ (2023) [/] An Apple Arcade title. In the future where much of the world is flooded you are a watercycle racer making a comeback after being framed by your rival. It's the usual compete in races, get new watercycles and upgrade them, level up your skills. Annoyingly to me your boost is recharged by doing motorcycle-style tricks as you race. Touch controls are nice as you pivot your device to steer and use thumbs to break (acceleration is automatic) or do tricks (which have various thumb swiping combinations using both thumbs at the same time).

Farmside (2023) [/] Apple Arcade farming sim. At base you plant crop squares, wait for them to mature, harvest them, then use them to fulfill orders. There's also a lot of builder mechanics in that you have a forge and a mill and probably other structures that create stuff that you use to do other things and everything takes to do. Good graphics, a thin story but serviceable, good onboarding process (you can pretty much do the objectives as they come and not worry about strategy). Fairly mindless game that keeps you busy.

The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field (2024) [/] by Gary Singh is a 150-page glossy paperback book about my local MLS team. The format is a year by year review though mostly concentrating on historical moments and the fans and the team history and players and personnel. What happened in the season isn't really commented on unless there were historical moments. Author's aim is to show that San Jose Earthquakes have a long history in the San Jose community (even though the original San Jose Earthquakes are not corporate ancestors of the current Earthquakes). Lots of photos and personal anecdotes since Singh grew up with the Earthquakes and has covered them as a reporter for decades.

Big Mouth is a South Korean crime/politics drama running the standard 16 episodes each about 70 minutes long.

Park Chang-ho (Lee Jong-suk, male lead in While You Were Sleeping (2017)) is a struggling lawyer unflatteringly nicknamed "Big Mouth" because he's all big talk while losing 90% of his cases. He's hired by city mayor Choi Do-ha (Kim Joo-hun) to prosecute three people accused of murder. On the surface Park is supposed to follow a script and lose as mayor Choi is working for the three. But mayor Choi also wants leverage so if Park finds a certain piece of evidence he's to turn it over to mayor Choi.

Park does find the video recording proving the murder (though not who the big boss is) but then he tries to curry favor with the three's boss Gong Ji-hoon (Yang Kyung-won, notable supporting roles in Crash Landing on You (2019) and Welcome to Samdal-ri (2023)) who is like second or third in his family's conglomerate that effectively runs the city. Gong doesn't like a no name lawyer trying to blackmail him so Park gets into an accident (where he loses the evidence), drugs are found in his office, and he is convicted and sent to prison.

Half the series is Park being in prison trying to survive by taking on the persona of Big Mouse, a secret con man who stole 100B won from Gong Ji-hoon. Big Mouse is subtly helping Park and Park's plan is to both bring out Big Mouse into the light and make sure the bad guys face justice. Meanwhile his wife Ko Mi-ho (Im Yoon-ah, supporting actress in The K2 (2016) and here she has a much bigger role even though I only mention her now)…

This is a series with lots of plot twists as there are multiple agents working at cross purposes through Park Chang-ho. It's really interesting around episodes four to twelve but much less at the beginning and end. I found the ending a bit lazy. The big bad thwarts Park's plans and has decidedly won but then Park kills him, in an ironic way but still he could have been murdered at any time so doing it at the end is kind of admitting defeat. Also there's another sad plot point which didn't seem necessary — maybe could have been if the final court case where it was used it helped bring a conviction of the big bad but it didn't so seemed like a wasted way to kill of a secondary character.

Production is good, acting is good, plot twists make it interesting for a while but get old as the series goes on. I wouldn't recommend this series — even though it's often good I think the last quarter of the series if fairly disappointing.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a fantasy-ish shooter RPG based on the Borderlands engine and set in that universe. The meta-plot is that you and your two friends — Valentine (Andy Samberg) and Frette (Wanda Sykes) — are stuck with Tiny Tina (Ashly Burch) waiting for parts delivery to fix your ship. To kill boredom Tiny Tina convinces the three of you to play a high fantasy RPG in a world that she came up with.

Much like Borderlands there are lots of classes to choose from. I had a Spore Warden which has a Mushroom guy companion that can fight and if you go down revive you. One of my friends played a barbarian type that's good with a melee weapon, my other two friends played from ranged/spellcaster types.

The same sort of equipment slots as Borderlands re-skinned for fantasy. There is an armor slot, a shield slot, a ring slot, a spellbook slot, a melee weapon slot, and a couple of others. The melee weapon is used when you do a melee attack and uses that weapon's animation (Borderlands melee uses your current gun and is more of a rifle-butt attack). Ranged weapons are the usual pistol, shotgun, SMG, assault rifle, etc. The shotgun might be a crossbow in graphics and animation but still uses shotgun mechanics and other weapons are similar in that it's themed but still Borderlands mechanics.

Like Borderlands there are big maps, a main plot, and side quests to do. All maps have dice hidden in various places and when you break a die you get better loot (though randomly generated). Maps might also have messages or other items to find for extra rewards.

In the campaign you go to the main city and see Queen Butt Stallion murdered so your party goes after the Dragon Lord. The beginning parts is sort of standard medieval fantasy. Then a third of the campaign is in the big ocean but after all the water has been drained away but you still fight giant crabs and land sharks and such. And the last part is in a desert and then a big pyramid.

There is an Overworld, which is new. It's like a big miniature terrain and you are animated miniatures moving around in it. You go into towns (and later you can fast travel to those towns) and dungeons (which you can't fast travel to). Monsters pop up which if you don't punch trigger an encounter (a mini fight in one of several combat maps). There are also dice here for loot and hidden paths and shrines (collect all three or four shrine pieces for random good loot).

Mostly I didn't find this game all that interesting. I'd rather stick with Borderlands. Trying to theme it for fantasy felt wrong (although they do lean into that which might make it more palatable for some). The classes don't seem as well differentiated as in Borderlands and just like Borderlands you are cycling through so much equipment it gets tedious. But at least we managed to finish the game (I have the four DLCs and I guess we used some of it like the new classes but don't recall doing the missions).