Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer (2025)

A look back at the women who disappeared from New York City and Long Island before the 2010 discovery of female remains found in the Gilgo Beach area of Long Island, which lead authorities to believe the deaths were all connected. – IMDB

With any crime documentary series, its always interesting to see how certain events unraveled. With this one, its intriguing because it starts off as one case that actually verges off into something else that seems much bigger. However, its how things sometimes are when

Netflix documentaries are always something of a mixed bag. Gone Girls is one that caught my attention because of its name similar to a book that I love Gone Girl which made me want to see what its about. The documentary centered around the disappearance of a young girl which eventually led to finding the multiple bodies in an area that was suspected to be connected. While the documentary spent a lot of time unearthing all the other connected murders and who could be involved, it circles back to its start and addresses the cold case at hand which still has a lot of unanswered questions and suspicions.

Gone Girls is a pretty decent look at this case which focuses on the unfortunate women who are forgotten because of their profession that has distanced them from their own families. There’s been a few documentaries on Netflix that does go into that angle. I don’t really want to go deep into this since its well worth a watch especially on how the case unfurls.

Sisters Who Make Waves 乘风2025 (Season 6, 2025)

Sister Who Make Waves is a show that invites successful female figures from all walks of life who are 30 and above to break out of their comfort zones to create memorable performances while being in competition to stay in the show based on audience voting.

While I haven’t watched the first few seasons, the last season introduced an international element that I thought really made me want to keep going. I usually watch these things based on the celebrities that I like to watch and the same goes for this season as they included veteran Hong Kong actress Cecilia Yip and Sheren Tang but also have younger faces like comedy duo Zhang Xiao Wan and Guan Yue as well as a few familiar faces from TV series in recent years like ex-Rocket Girl 101 Wu Xuan Yi. I think I’m the minority but I actually wanted to see this for a less popular choice, Jiang Yi Qiao, a talented singer songwriter that I think doesn’t get enough credit.

For what its worth, the show actually managed to put together a really interesting group that had a lot of space for growth. There was no doubt that Cecilia Boey’s group would be a highlight with her great girl group skills. This group also having some fun surprises but all the groups unlocked a lot of potential from celebrities that haven’t been in the public eye as much due to family or whatever other reason.

In a world where girl groups and boy groups are all the rage, this show (and the male version Call Me By Fire) highlights the attractiveness of being 30 and over which maybe its my age right now but I appreciate what this whole show represents.

I’m The Surprise 我是隐藏款 (Season 1, 2025)

Thirty innovative “designer toy” creators bring their original IPs to the show, teaming up with six celebrities to form three studios. Through a series of themed creations, they closely collaborate and continually challenge themselves in creativity and design. Using painting as their artistic language, they witness the “72 transformations of IP,” infusing these trendy emerging IPs with vibrant artistic value. This journey also brings domestic “hidden gem” original IPs and talented designers into the spotlight. – MyDramaList

As blind boxes have become a rather permanent wave in the younger community, I’m A Surprise strives to highlight Chinese designers with their original IPs which different degrees of popularity. They focus on three pairs of celebrities who start the show putting their allocated show’s currency to invest in different designs to build their teams and then set them on various challenges and after its main challenge, having to eliminate their own team to start the next phase of challenges to eventually find the top one based on audience vote from both live, the “big bosses” (the group of collectibles experts) and online voting.

The whole show is a refreshing take on new material. Its one of the things that have given Youku a facelift recently the last few years as it starts to build these trendy shows. However, unlike other shows like dating or whatnot, collectibles are incredibly subjective to all kinds of preferences from the style to the color to the purpose to its emotional value and having the actual designers sell the toys along with different celebrity teams with their own different level of popularity plus normally some skewed “professional” opinion, its hard to not feel like sometimes things don’t quite go the way it should go.

Not to mention some of these designs have had incredible following online so its not weird that the competition while supposed to be locked into secrecy, still get leaked through their various live streaming promotions. Whether its fair or not, in the end, truly depends on an individual’s view. For myself, who is quite an oddball when it comes to collectibles, actually liked a lot of the lesser loved properties. Although to be fair, the designer team that won did deserve it since their design did prove to be very adaptable to all the themes.

With that said, it was a pretty fun show overall. I do hope to see a second season but maybe with a few added rules to keep it more balanced and fair on the entire process for each of the teams whether its budgets or other elements.

Clarkson’s Farm (Season 1-4)

I honestly never thought I’d sit around watching Jeremy Clarkson run a farm. I liked Top Gear and Grand Tour and watched it every once in a while especially for the Top Gear specials but to actually be watching four seasons of Clarkson’s Farm was unexpected but my husband’s love of this and the few times I’ve watched it gave me the push to check out and see why he liked it so much.

To say the least, it was a surprisingly an enlightening experience. Every season has a different endeavor and added a different twist because of the challenges and it would seem since he’s started the Diddly Squat Farm there’s been mostly challenges because of both inexperience, natural and environment extremities and the town council being a hurdle in itself. The first season had a fun and basic one like wilding which I personally enjoyed since I’m kind of in a similar task for my garden so its on a smaller level. Its just a quick example of how some of it is rather educational or maybe just partially learning as Clarkson’s Farm makes their own mistakes but also as he learns about the various aspects of farming.

Watching a farming show like this does have its purpose to spread some great knowledge about the importance and difficulties in this crucial industry in a more entertaining way. I was also skeptical when I started but it has been a pretty fun time between the silly decisions and the banter.