rcyoung-02426

This is a fun Christmas variety show that will appeal to fans of Ted Lasso, and of variety shows in general. Hannah Waddingham serves as the host of this special, To nobody's surprise, she is quite an amazing singer, and belts out many Christmas standards, both old and new.

While Waddingham is excellent, and is paired well with special guests including but not limited to special guests like Leslie Odom Jr. And Luke Evans, it falls flat when it comes to everything else. Instead of being Waddington's show, it feels more like a Ted Lasso reunion. Almost every major character from Ted Lasso makes an appearance.

While I am not opposed to cast reunions, the fact that Ted Lasso only recently ended its run, made the cast's appearance distracting, to me and took away from her performance, when in reality, it should have been Waddington's show.

That said, this is still a very fun variety show that will appeal to all ages.

This is the best episode of Star Trek: The Animated series. However it fails to reach the heights of classic Trek.

It follows Spock, who has inadvertently become erased from existence, and must travel back in time to save himself from dying. Here we see the return of Sarek, played by Mark Lenard, among others. It's an interesting episode that further develops the character of Spock, which is pretty cool to see.

The 25 minute runtime really hampers the development of the characters though, leading to a rushed ending that makes the payoff seem cheap. Still, it's a pretty interesting episode that is worth taking in, unlike much of the rest of the series.

Your mileage will vary with this one. I watched it as a Star Trek completionist. While it was great to see much of the original cast return, along with the more creative stories, this series just lacks the same heart of the original series, in favor of a more action oriented one.

That is to be forgiven of course. After all, this was a half hour long Saturday morning cartoon, so it would stand to reason that the characters would end up becoming cardboard cutouts, while the plots would be shallow to an extent.

Still, there is a lot to like here. Many of the writers of the original show came back to this one, and they created several great stories that would otherwise not have made it into the original series, because they would have been too expensive.

Unliek the original series, I'm probably not going to watch this one again anytime soon, but I still believe it is a worthwhile watch.