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This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

Usually, I'll talk about TV shows, movies, or whatever new content has taken my interest.

This episode is being recorded on Sunday, September 1st, 2024.

And we have a jam-packed episode.

Well, we have a bunch of things that we're gonna talk about anyways.

First off, I wanna start off by wrapping up Orphan Black Echoes.

So, as I mentioned many episodes ago when I first mentioned this show, I noticed something, I noticed a distinguishing aspect of the two shows.

In the original Orphan Black, in the original Orphan Black, you had one actress, Tatiana Maslany, play multiple versions of her clones.

So, they all had different personas, they all had different names, all different characteristics, and so on.

And she did it immaculately.

Immaculately.

I think I'm going to have to re-watch that show, actually, because I never did finish it.

Anyways, in Orphan Black Echoes, at least when I started, it was, I would think I was five episodes in when I mentioned the show.

You had Kristen Ritter play the, she played Lucy, a late 20s, early 30 year old version of herself.

And you had a teenage version played by a younger actress called Jules.

So that was the distinguishing factor.

You had the same clone, but different age versions of her.

You had an older one, you had a young adult one, and well, and like I said, early 30s, late 20s, and you had a teenager one.

Well, as the show progressed, we have Eleanor, which is the original name of the person that Lucy and Jules was cloned from.

So she's like in her, I want to say 50s, between 50s and 60s.

So you find out that Kira, the daughter of the original clones from Orphan Black, she, as I predicted, Lucy and Jules are clones of her love, a younger version of her love, because her love, Eleanor, developed dementia.

And it's something that runs in the family, because Eleanor's mother had dementia.

And Eleanor's whole scientific career has been trying to cure dementia, trying to come up with a drug that would, if not cure it, at least slow off the effects that it won't really affect you the way dementia does.

But, you know, it failed.

She never got to that point.

And then she got early onset dementia in her 50s.

And what Kira did was she was able to create, her original job was she was able to create artificial limbs, not limbs, organs, with her printing machine.

And the bad guy who was funding these, Darrow's, I think is his name, he was, you know, funding all of them.

He wanted to know if she could print out a whole person.

And of course, Kira, early on, was dead set against that until she was afraid of losing Eleanor because of the dementia.

So what she first tried to do was she was trying to improve her printing techniques to create brains.

Because so far at this point in time, she was successfully able to print out hearts and lungs, I believe, and other organs.

And this was a medical miracle and breakthrough because that's one of the biggest issues with organ transplants is that there's so few of them and so many people that need them, especially, you know, kidneys, liver, you know, people who need liver transplants or heart transplants or, you know, yada yada.

So anyways, she never did a brain before.

It was too complicated and it would always fail.

But seeing Eleanor develop on set, dementia motivated her to to accelerate her, her plan to finally create a functioning brain.

She thought she did.

She was able to, you know, do a brain transplant for Eleanor.

And the next day, it looked like everything was great.

She was cured with this new brain.

And then the following day, she died.

So she lost her.

And this put Kira into a mental downward spiral because she lost the love of her life.

And she had a moment of insanity and she created Lucy.

That was her first clone.

And Darros was all for it because, you know, he has his own plans, but he doesn't tell her what those plans are.

We find out later on during the show.

So anyways, she creates Lucy.

And then we had the whole cluster, cluster F that happened in the very first episode where she's like, who am I?

Why don't I know anything?

Blah, blah, blah.

Freaks out, escapes, and gets off the grid for two years.

Well, apparently during those two years, she then created Eleanor.

She created a adult, you know, a another, she created an Eleanor, I should say, closer to the age before, you know, two years before she got the dementia.

And, you know, because they've developed a new drug that can help slow it down.

And so she was going to try to relive this life that she create, that she had with the original Eleanor, with this Eleanor clone.

But also, you know, constantly used this drug on her behind her back to keep her from getting dementia.

So that's the...

Well, I went on a long time.

My point is that there's...

So the show ended with three versions of the same person, of different age groups.

And so we learned more about it.

This guy, Darros, he then got Kira's assistant to reproduce the machine.

Because after Kira created Lucy and Eleanor, she then destroyed the machine, thinking that, okay, now...

Because that was the original deal.

But behind her back, Darros somehow bribed the other guy to recreate the machine so that he can have his own clones.

And he's the one who created Jules.

So Eleanor, sorry, not Eleanor, Kira, had no idea that Jules was created.

And she found out through Lucy that that was the case.

Anyway, you find out towards the end of the season that not only do you have Lucy and Jules and Eleanor, Darros also created a clone of himself, and he created 12 other clones.

One of them is actually Kira.

So all of this was done behind Kira's back, without her knowing.

And then the show ends with with Darros killing off Jules, because in his mind, Jules was perfect until she came across Lucy, who then corrupted her mind with all these ideas of actual facts and reality that she was a clone and all that stuff.

She was perfectly groomed to to see what her potential could be, minus the backstory of who she really was.

But now that Lucy corrupted her by telling her who she was, Darros felt she had to kill her.

He had to kill her off.

And after killing off Jules, Darros then introduces, yeah, after killing Jules off, Darros then introduces Lucy to a new Jules, a blonde bimbo version of her who doesn't know anything anymore.

Once again, blank slate.

And that's how the show ends, which it ends with that reveal, with Jules getting killed off, and now there's a new Jules in the picture by the same actress, but now she's a blonde bimbo version.

And this episode, so it ended, I don't know, a week or two ago on BBC America, where I watched it.

And apparently, this show originally aired outside of the US two years ago, and there's still no plans for a second season.

It's not, the show hasn't been canceled, but it has not been renewed either, and so it is up in the air whether or not there'll be a second season.

If this second, if this US run of the show garnered enough audience attention, maybe that'll be enough to convince the creators or the network that's producing it to renew it.

But as of now, we still don't know.

And that is my problem.

If I haven't already said this enough times, like a broken record, this is the problem I have with Western television.

Because like I said, this show was written for one season with a bunch of openings for a possible second season, but no guarantees that it's going to happen.

And now we don't know if there's going to be a second season.

And so us people who got emotionally invested in the show and the characters and whatnot, we're now we're left in the lurch.

Which is why if I'm going to watch a Western show, I'd rather watch something that's already completed, because that way I'll have a full story, and I won't be left in the lurch, like I am with this show now.

So anyways, and that's why K-dramas, of course, have been my new passion, or my new media interest, though I haven't watched any in the last few months since, frankly speaking, which was, you know, the one I talked about a few episodes ago.

Anyways, on top of wrapping up Orphan Black, I've been checking out Tubi, and there were two movies that I saw on Tubi, which I'll talk about really quickly.

I don't want to go too long in this show, though I guess I'm not really.

So I saw The Mummy with Brendan Fraser.

That movie came out, when did it come out?

Let me see.

So that movie came out in 1999, and the movie stars, as I mentioned, Brendan Fraser, Rachel Wise, John Hanna and Arnold Vaslu.

I guess those are the main characters.

Arnold Vaslu plays the Mummy, and Brendan Fraser plays this adventurer American who helps these archaeologists find the City of the Dead.

And then, of course, all hijinks break loose.

So, anyway, what made me want to watch this?

I mean, I had it in my list, because Tubi has a lot of stuff.

However, the Mummy was on the way out.

So probably by the time you hear this episode, if you go to Tubi, it will no longer be available because it will have left their catalog.

So, yeah, I had a few days left, so I figured, let me check it out.

And this is my first time watching it.

I know I remember it being a big deal when it came out, but for whatever reason, I just never got around to it until this week.

And it was a fun show, fun movie, you know, 25 years later.

So seeing it from today's perspective, I saw how campy it was.

It's definitely a typical American movie in terms of like dealing with foreign, like, you know, this is dealing with Egyptian lore, but with an American's understanding of it, which is not a lot.

So we exaggerate things.

And of course, Americans and white folk need to win in the end.

That was pretty much the plot, you know, because the mummy's Egyptian, he's evil.

And it's an American movie.

So the American is the hero and helps these poor, hapless British archaeologists and saves the day.

And of course, gets the girl, the British librarian.

And I mean, I don't know if this is typical of the 90s, but there was a lot of suspension of belief with the laws of magic that were in the movie.

But towards the end of it, the consistency of the laws that were set in place at the very beginning got sort of thrown out the window and they just made up things as they went along.

And the way, the reason for that is because, especially at the end, you had the spineless bad guy who betrayed everyone to be the mummy's slave, so to speak.

And he was also money hungry.

And he grabbed a bunch of gold to get the hell out of Dodge before anything else went wrong.

And for whatever reason, the two big bags of gold was not enough.

Or at least that's what it...

See, so that's the thing.

They made it very vague as to whether A, he was going back to get more gold, or B, he had a change of heart.

And now the reason why I say that is because, like I mentioned, he brought these bags full of gold to the camel, but then he goes back.

But as he goes back, he has the bags of gold, but it looks like it's the same bags of gold that he already took out with him, but for whatever reason, he's bringing them back with him.

And then of course, he then puts it on this lever that just happens to be there.

It wasn't, you know, whatever, some mysterious lever, ancient Egyptian lever, and the weight of the bag pushes the lever down, and that causes a self-destruct sequence to take effect, which completely takes down the whole city of Thebes.

And that for me is like, okay, where, how, why, with such a self-destruct thing exists.

It just, it made no sense in comparison to everything else that they had going on in the movie.

But I guess they can stretch it because, you know, it's a booby trap, so to speak.

They can say, they can use the booby trap argument from earlier as a means to justify this quote unquote booby trap that just takes down everything.

I don't know.

It was weird to me, that last part.

But whatever, it was, that aside, it was a fun movie.

I came in with no expectations and I enjoyed it.

I don't know if I'll catch the sequel, The Mummy Returns.

It's not that, what's the word I'm looking for?

It didn't really, it didn't, it didn't, I'm at a loss for words.

My point is, it was an okay movie.

It was not the greatest movie in the world.

Obviously it wasn't, it's not enough to draw me in for the sequel.

I mean, if the sequel comes across my lap again, maybe I'll check it out.

But it's not something that I'm gonna seek out.

So the Mummy was fun.

I'm glad I saw it finally.

But I don't really think I need to see the sequel, which is where I think The Rock makes, that's like his first breakout role that makes him become the big star that he is today.

Anyways, the next film that I saw is called Obsession.

And this one has Idris Alba, Ali Carter, and Beyoncé.

And I remember wanting to see this film a while back when I first saw the trailer for it.

Sorry, let me start over.

The name of the movie is called Obsessed, not Obsession.

So, it's Obsessed with Idris Alba, Beyoncé, and Ali Larder.

And so, yeah, this movie came out in 2009, so 10 years after The Mummy.

And yeah, I was interested in it.

Ali Larder at this time, she was from Heroes fame.

That was a big show and NBC at the time.

Anyway, for me, it's weird that...

I mean, it's not weird, but it's kind of interesting.

And maybe this is just my own mind, the way it works.

But because on Heroes, her boyfriend was a black guy.

So for her, one of her first movies after her role in Heroes to be this film, where she's into a Dressalba, who's married, man, is kind of interesting.

Like she's sort of had this weird typecast, so to speak.

Like she is the white girl that will date, that can be an interracial relationship on camera.

Like it'll be believable, because she's already known for that from the show Heroes.

So anyway, the role, the basic plot is, you know, you have Idressalba, he's a newly married, not that newly married, like a relatively newly married, like a three years married to Beyoncé Knowles' character.

They have a kid, and he's a very famous, not a very famous, he's a very successful financial executive at this financial firm.

And Ali Larder starts temping at that place, at that firm.

And she starts developing an obsession with Idressalba's character.

And she starts basically stalking him and trying to seduce him and get him to be hers.

And try to get Beyoncé Nose's character out of the way.

And so the ratings on this, interesting enough, are not that high.

So I guess that's why, I mean, it wasn't a big hit, I don't think.

But I like the film better than the ratings give it credit for.

I do admit that the ending, towards the ending, it kind of, I don't know if consistent is the right word for it.

But yeah, it could have been a tighter script and maybe better ridden.

But that aside, I think the actors did a good job with the material that they were given.

And it was a fun enough film.

But yeah, it did sort of drag towards the end when they had Idris Alba's character and his wife, Beyoncé, have a falling out.

And so apparently three months go by where he's not living at home because she feels like maybe he did cheat on her with Ellie Larder's character, which he didn't.

But because he kept that whole incident from her, you know, lying through a mission, she had trust issues.

But three months of them not living together and him coming to do his weekly visits for the kid and whatnot, I guess, melted her over and she was willing to give him another shot.

But then that's when we get to the third and final act of the movie where Ellie Larder just breaks into their house and then her and Beyoncé have an all out dragout fight until one of them dies.

So yeah, I thought it was okay.

Oh, Jerry O'Connell was the other actor in the film with any relevant credits that's relatively well known, I should say.

So those are the things I want to talk about in this episode.

I did see another movie that I'll leave for the next episode because I want to actually really dig into that one because I really enjoyed it.

It was on Peacock.

It should still be on Peacock when I do the recording.

And so those with Peacock will be able to watch it.

So that will be all for this episode, and I'll cue in the outro music.

And that wraps up the show.

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