QUARANTEEN-ANGST! BQ CRINGES AND BINGES!

            Even in the Pandemic age, we've never been big on marathon binges of TV series.......we'll take a  movie over TV episodes every time.......

            But when you share home sheltering with our librarian BD (Beloved Daughter) who adores adaptations of popular Young Adult novels.......what are ya gonna do?  We found ourselves as a....uh....captive audience......

             Looking For Alaska (2019) comes from a novel by the anointed Prince Of All Troubled Teens, John Green ('The Fault In Our Stars')  Green takes on nothing less than what-happens-when-we-die philosophical musings mixed in with huge heapings of coming-of-age heartbreak.........

              A prep school innocent falls hard for a wild ' n deeply broken Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, whose backstory is designed to shatter everybody's hearts in 10 million pieces. Please don't ask us to go on with the plot......we'll lose the will to live if we continue any further.......

             Not that we're complaining all that much, it's all well acted by the young cast and smartly written and directed........but 8 hours worth of this stuff can wear you out.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

               Zac And Mia (2017)  falls under that ever-popular Young Adult genre.....Cancer Porn.
Nothing entrances young people and the authors who write for them than Lovebirds with life-threatening diseases.

                Cancer Porn Young Adult always boils down to one key element.........as to which one of these cutie-patooties is gonna get sicker quicker.......and how well they can balance out the suffering with the smooching.......

               Also federally mandated are scenes in which our doomed lovers defy their all their doctors strict orders to sneak out of their confinements in search of hormonal teen normality.......and later pay dearly for it......

              This goes on and on for a 2 season total  of 24 half hour episodes.  And that's way, way too much chemo-woe in a genre that's as rigid as Kabuki theater and Hallmark Channel movies......
1 * 1/2 stars) (*1/2)

               And finally, BD and I plunged into the show with by far the highest pedigree.....

              Normal People (2020)  is not technically Young Adult, even though its two lovers begin their tortuous romantic saga as high school students. Taken from a highly praised mainstream novel, it follows the long, up 'n down, off 'n on relationship between two Irish college students - Connell (the sensitive hunk) and Marianne (the quirky, broken iconoclast)

              Pardon us if we choose not to follow the crowd here, who've fallen all over themselves to grovel and bow before the supposed greatness of this show.

               Through 12 long episodes that move at the speed of a terrarium turtle, our dysfunctional duo manage to enjoy marathon sex bouts in between their various break-aparts that stretch out over their college careers.......

                And these neurotic kids look like they'll be in college til they're 60 or older........

               We didn't quite swallow the conception of the boy's character here........you're asked to believe he's some kind of brilliant writer........while most of his dialogue consists of 'What do ya mean?' .....which usually prefaces the beginning of an earth-shattering argument that will send him and his sweetie on separate paths........

                But not for that long.  Until it's time for the next 'What do ya mean/'.........

                 God, we're starting to yawn just thinking about this again.....1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).....we're not down with all the raving praise showering this one........

                 Fortunately for BQ, Beloved Daughter has not dragged us into any further co-binges....not since she's happily watching, by herself, all the accumulated episodes of 'The Brady Bunch'.......

                 For that madness, we told her she's utterly on her own.......