Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

I have been keeping a running list of binge-worthy shows on various pieces of paper around my desk, certain that I would get around to a post about them. Then I didn't. Part of that had to do with my wanting to get through shows, then being sidetracked. I have started Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access   at least three times, and I like it, but somehow I have never gotten out of Season 1. While Picard (also on All Access) is intriguing, I am several episodes behind and therefore withholding judgment.  On the other hand, there are shows I have binged and found wanting; Amazon's Jack Ryan  comes to mind, as mostly meh, especially in a second season that reworked large chunks of Clear and Present Danger, though not very well. Why Women Kill on CBS All Access I may go back to The Boys, or not, since it didn't thrill me one way or another. And there are shows that await my bingeing, like Dare Me, which is so artfully unsettling that I'd rather devour it all at once ...

The latest version of "Little Women," written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is a lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much-adapted novel, one made especially so by its emphasis on what it meant to be a woman in a world run by men. The options left to women are few: marriage is the main path to solvency, and writers of fiction must have young women married or dead by the end. That life turns out all right for most of them is appealing, but it's built on the idea that "Little Women" is a romance, and that in the real world sometimes you have to sell out a cherished idea in one area to achieve what you need elsewhere. And even though "Little Women" is set in the past, the idea of What Women Must Do is also part of the contemporary "Bombshell," as well as Margaret Atwood's novel "The Testaments." These are all blending in my head because I saw "Bombshell" and "Little Women" on consecutive days re...