I don't usually get on the hype train when everyone else is climbing on board. When Game of Thrones was big on the scene, I didn't watch it until season four came out. But this is...I dunno, different. There's a new streaming service that's become big in the past few weeks called Pathfinder and the other girls in my office seem over the moon about it. Even girls in other departments who I've hardly ever spoken to swear I'm gonna like it.

Well, I just finished my MBA and this job is letting me have more free time than I thought so, why not. Better than day drinking like my uncle Patrick. Rumor has it that Pathfinder's got some shady backers though. Who knows, maybe drug dealers are using it for money laundering or something. Huh, there's an idea for a movie. So, last night, I watched a pair of films on the service after getting an account set up.

The first movie I saw was 'No Time To Die.' It was a pretty standard James Bond-ish spy movie, but I found myself laughing at a few of the jokes they made about spy movies.

The second one was a lot more interesting. It was called 'Mom's Secret Friend' and I thought that it was going to be some drama about a cheating mom. Oh boy was I wrong. It took place in the mid 1980s and was about a middle school girl named Hannah. Hannah is noticing that her stay at home mom's started acting a bit funny. At first, she things that her mom's got a secret boyfriend just like I did.

As it turns out, Hannah's mom is being hypnotized and indoctrinated into becoming a sleeper agent along with the other members of her book club by a female KGB operative who's posing as its newest member. When the mother discovers that Hannah is getting close to the truth and reports back to the KGB woman, she orders that Hannah be hypnotized into becoming a sleeper agent. After a brief confrontation, it looks like Hannah's mom succeeded and Hannah is brought to the KGB agent. It then turns out that Hannah was faking and overpowers the KGB agent before undoing the hypnosis she performed on her mom and the other book club members.

It was surprising good to be honest. It lulled me into thinking that the plot was going to be a lot more conventional and it threw me for a loop. The acting was great too and whoever the set designer was really didn't pull any punches in trying to recreate the 80s. The scene that stood out to me the most was when it looked like Katie might give in to her mother's attempt to hypnotize her. Her back's to her bedroom wall, she can't take her eyes off the pocket watch with a hammer and sickle on it and her eyelids are starting to drop. Her mother's smiling and telling her not to be afraid, telling that when she wakes up she'll be 'a commie just like mommy.'

I found out that there was an alternate version of that scene where Hannah's mom says 'when you wake up, you'll be mommy's little commie.' The KGB agent is still arrested and things look like they've returned to normal when it shows Hannah refusing to do some of her chores. Her mom just smirks and asks 'who's mommy's good little commie?' Hannah gasps, her pupils shrink and she replies with 'I am, I'm mommy's good little commie' before going off to do her chores. It was a bit weird, but it was still a pretty cool twist.

I think I've just found my new source of after-work entertainment.