Thursday Movie Picks #363: TMP Television Edition - Fish Out of Water

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five titles and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is TMP Television Edition - Fish Out of Water

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So this is a fun theme. I'm picking my most recent watches.

The Rook (2019 - )

A woman wakes up in a park surrounded by dead bodies around her. She has no memories of what happened but finds a letter on her person, a letter written by her informing her that her memory has been erased and that she was targeted by an unknown assassin. The assassin could be a colleague from the secret organization within the British Intelligence whom she works for. So her choices are either to walkaway from everything and assume a new identity or use the identity of the person who's memory was erased to find out who is trying to kill her.

So the fish out of water aspect of the story is of the main character pretending to be the person that was erased, navigating this new world like she already knows it, trying doing her job and meeting the people she used to know. I loved the book this was based on and was sooo excited when an adaptation was announced. Unfortunately the TV series was a disappointment as it changed sooo many things. In the book for example, the main character that woke up in the park has a completely different personality from the person that was erased. The person that was erased was an introvert, into organization and afraid of her own power. The person that woke up is more of an extrovert, is witty, more interested in field work and open to exploring her powers and the TV series completely ignores that aspect of the book. Also the plot is completely different from the book...it is I think unnecessarily more convoluted.

Emily in Paris (2020 - )

A young woman moves to Paris to work for a French marketing firm to provide an American perspective on things. Emily doing her "marketing stuff" is not entirely believable...like she doesn't have much skills and experience. She just mostly seems very juvenile, unworldly and basically not like a working adult at all. I would also say some of the office workplace stuff is also unbelievable...I think it was the second day, where she came early and had to wait outside a locked office building. I mean are we not living in the 21st century where offices (especially for the kind of the firm she is working for...it is not some sort of small family business where only the owner has the key to open shop) use key cards, and she would already have been given a card on her first day by HR. Still I thought this was fun light fluff. Just don't take it too seriously and go into it expecting it to be about a poised young woman crushing it at her career.

 

Ted Lasso (2020 - )

American football coach Ted Lasso, moves to the UK to coach a football team. Emily in Paris was heavily criticised for having a silly expat main character who goes to Paris to work without knowing how to speak French or doing much prep for the position she is about to fill. However, the same criticism for some reason doesn't seem to be directed at Ted Lasso as much, even though he too is a silly expat, one who is expected to coach football but doesn't know anything about the sport (he has only coached American football, which is an entirely different sport), nor did he do any prep work into the culture or language...it is his assistant coach who was hired along with him who basically did all the prep work on learning the sport and briefing him on language differences like how a truck is called a lorry and a car trunk is called a car boot in the UK. But Lasso is this nice and very optimistic character and some of the other characters are just as likeable so the show turned out to be quite funny and I did enjoy watching it. I guess what I just don't understand is the love the show seems to be receiving...because the show is not great great.

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