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Reviews
Outlast (2023)
Appalling what the producers allowed to happen...
The premise of this was really interesting and I've watched many similar shows before from start to finish but this was truly appalling.
It was less about survival as it seemed within the first few days the teams had all managed to establish sources of food, water and shelter - and more about underhanded dirty tactics employed by one of the teams and how it systematically tore apart the other teams who played fair and kept their morality throughout.
The alpha team stole, sabotaged and manipulated at every possible opportunity. In a game about survival, where the equipment a person has could literally be the difference between life and death it is entirely unresonable to have it be 'ok' for another team to steal their sleeping bags or destroy their means to gather food. Despicable behaviour, showing the worst possible side of humanity and yet they are consistently rewarded for it with no repurcussions by the show or the game masters
I sincerely hope they didn't win, but stopped watching when Javier was forced to leave after his only other teammate decided they couldnt be part of the show anymore because of the actions of the opposing teams.
It wasn't worth another minute of my time after that.
Message to Alpha team, for what it's worth - you're permanently barred from my restaurant, and from my bouldering gym on the off chance you ever find yourself walking through their doors. Delta and Beta, you guys eat and climb for free.
Diagnosis (2019)
Phenomenal program born of a tragic reality.
I cannot criticise this show - the difference it's made to the lifes of the people that were involved is astounding. It highlighted something darker though...the state of healthcare in America, right now.
I live in the UK, which has a national health service that is currently in crisis due to under-funding and lack of resources. My partner is a medical doctor, I work in a hospital laboratory and from the first episode I was entirely perplexed as to how this poor girl had been suffering for ten years without a diagnosis.
Despite the struggles facing the NHS, patients presenting with these symptoms and conditions are afforded every conceivable test required to reach the root cause and obtain a diagnosis.
I literally cried when the girl in episode one spoke of being sued for $300 she couldn't afford to pay for a diagnosis that she never actually received. I cried again when Marta's brows furrowed in confusion when the subject of cost arose..."What do you mean? It's free." And so she travelled, half way around the world to receive a test that takes minutes to administer and hours to run, because no one offered it in the USA?
I can't believe the test isn't available. What I can believe, is that it is so expensive, and the condition so rare that it's a price that the majority of Americans are not able to justify to themselves or simply, to afford. Truly, truly tragic.
The USA laudetes having the best healthcare in the world...from where I'm standing, it's a developing country in terms of caring for its populace.
Ancient Apocalypse (2022)
Im a scientist, that doesn't make me a sceptic.
So...I could get on board with this theory - but there needs to be more concrete proof before I change my entire world view.
Look, science is happy to change its mind. It's done it countless times before, and will again and it may be that the first civilization was much earlier than originally thought, there's certainly some interesting evidence to suggest it. And that's essentially what this series shows us and looks at.
After watching I did a fair amount of peer-reviewed reading and I can't entirely quash the hypothesis that's being suggested here, but there is still far, far more evidence supporting the original theory that civilization began circa 10k years ago.
That doesn't mean it's right - and I'd wholly support this line of enquiry being explored more.
Pirate Gold of Adak Island (2022)
Interesting - but for the wrong reasons
I binged this in an afternoon while snowed in, and found it interesting from a historical point of view - and that's about it.
As a scientist myself I'm dissapointed in the geologist who seemed to change hypothesis every episode and support the theory based on hearsay or conjecture. The fabricators, as much as they seemed like lovely guys I'd be happy to have a drink with, would not be on my research team as they appeared to lack any foundation in critical thinking, let alone common sense.
At points it seemed incredibly scripted - the interaction in the store with the clerk who told them about the dead treasure hunter was painful to watch/listen to. A) The dialogue could have been written better by a 10 year old. B) If that was news to them then they've clearly not done sufficient research to begin with.
If I was searching the island I'd go right back to the start. Is this gold confirmed? Guaranteed to be in his possession when he was there. When was he chased in? When was he captured? That at least gives me a number of days to determine how long he had to traverse the island. What were the nautical charts like at the time - they've been in use since the 13th century so look at what he was looking at. What were the local weather conditions and tides like? Where were the local population centres etc etc. I could literally write another hundred relevant questions I'd want answered before I put a spade in the ground.
Meet, Marry, Murder Hosted by Michelle Trachtenberg (2021)
You'll find better on Youtube...
As a forensic scientist I have always found myself drawn to true-crime stories and the investigation around them. Most are done ok, some are done quite well and others are woeful.
This unfortunately, is the latter.
It's like one of those 'clickbait' links that say 'you'll never believe what they found under their floorboards' only to find that you've clicked next 40 times, still have no idea what they found under the floorboards but have had the same generic information told to you in a dozen different ways already.
The same information is repeated again and again and again, often by the same speaker. The experts make claims that, as an expert witness myself, I can tell you would not hold water in a British court. They constantly tell us what the person was thinking, how they felt etc etc.
In multiple episodes they play footage from interviews, but the same clip appears in various contexts. The narrator says something to the effect of "The police pried for more information as to what had happened the night before" and a clip where the suspect states her husband tripped and fell over is played.
"The abuse was historic and they tried to understand an earlier incident when he'd fallen down the stairs" the same clip as above, except now its being framed as a historic incident. But only minutes before we were led to believe that it had actually occurred within 24 hours.
This is fairly constant throughout and as a result at the end of every episode you're still left with only 70% of a story and you try and fit things together as best you can..
Very poor given the budget available for these things. There are Youtube channels that do it better and have nowhere near the same amount of money to spend. Check out ThatChapter or Coffehouse Crime for better.