BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES S5E03: The Avengers

This week on Game Of Thrones: everybody's fixing for revenge, pairing off in unexpected ways, getting kidnapped, or beheading someone. In fact, this might be the most exemplary episode of all time! It's like, "Yep, this is pretty much what this shit's all about."

We pick up with Arya, currently sweeping floors in what appears to be the worst ayahuasca temple in the seven kingdoms. Jaqen H'ghar is there, but he's less fun than usual. This is where it gets real for Arya, it seems, and in a show of self-sacrifice she throws most of her possessions into the ocean (including the coin, for the second time). Unable to part with her sword, she stores it in some rocks and hopes that the nearly omniscient H'ghar somehow missed that one. Well, hey, maybe he did (he definitely didn't)!

In King's Landing, King Tommen makes his first four or five king's landings inside Queen Marge, shortly after they've wed. Our girl M starts talking to Tommen about whether or not he truly wants his mother around town, where she will surely impede his ability to get it wet 24/7.

When Tommen test balloons the concept with Cersei and it Hindenburgs, Cersei interrupts Marge's brunch with her friends (She's the Samantha and the rest of the table is Mirandas) and the two of them throw enough shade back and forth that all of the marigolds on the table die instantly. You gotta keep them in full sun, guys. Cersei, in her desperation, turns to religion. Not as a source of solace, of course, but as a new potential avenue for power; when the High Septon is caught at a brothel, she tries to form a partnership with the hyper-devout Sparrows and their leader, Jonathan Pryce. Hi, Jonathan Pryce!

Littlefinger's latest plan becomes apparent when he brings Sansa to Moat Cailin, a castle on the outskirts of Winterfell. Bummer alert: he wants to marry Sansa off to motherfucking Evil Frodo Bolton. Of course, his aim and primary selling point to Sansa is that she can finally start taking an active role in avenging the death of her family. But how much knife-sex and looking at Theon will she have to endure before then? But you know, for every action there is a reaction, and because of the glorious union of Jaime and Bronn, I guess we're going to have to deal with this.

At the Wall, in a nice little bit of Wire-style parallelism, Stannis tries once more to sell Jon Snow on a more straightforward path to similar vengeance. But Jon is settling in to his role as Lord Commander, and this week makes the first great decision of his administration. For Kennedy, it was establishing the Peace Corps; for Obama, it was maybe the Lily Ledbetter law; for Jon Snow, it was chopping Janos Slynt's head THE FUCK RIGHT OFF. Oh boy, that was satisfying. He formally turns down Stannis's offer, but Stannis is like, "Yo, respect." Game (of thrones) recognize game (of thrones).

Brienne and Podrick are still tracking Sansa and Littlefinger, but they stop today to repair their friendship. That's an important part of every heroic duo's journey! Another one is "going to a brothel together," and this week Tyrion and Varys check that one off the bucket list. This brothel's specialty is apparently "Khaleesi cosplay," and so naturally Ser Jorah is there. Seeing Tyrion as his chance to get back in Dany's good graces, he kidnaps our man. That's where Tyrion was going anyway, ya big lug! This is going to end stupidly, I can tell already.

Blogging Game Of Thrones S5E02: Come On Up To The House

Sorry for the lateness of my recap this week--I've been pumping my fist and screaming "Jaqen H'ghar!" non-stop for the last four days. It's been really disruptive at work. Letters have been filed with HR. Whatever. Worth it.

Anyway, this was a great episode! Arya arrives in Braavos, and we got some long, lingering, beautiful images. Which is not a thing we normally get on this show! It was nice to have a moment to breathe. Just think, I mean--those precious seconds could have easily been wasted on a Theon story!

She's initially thwarted in her attempt to enter the ominously-named "House Of Black And White"--apparently her coin was a Wonka-like Golden Ticket to this place but they're under new management and aren't honoring old coupons. But she hangs around anyway, and it turns out that "three days of waiting around and muttering the names of people you'd like to kill" is the password!

In Westeros, Cersei has a real murderers row of shitheads for her new Small Council. There's Maester Old Fuck, Maester Evil, and The Lorax Tyrell, plus Kevan Lannister, who is somehow even haughtier than his dead brother. Where do they grow these motherfuckers?

On the wall, Stannis tries to tempt Jon Snow with a new title: Jon... STARK! Wha!?!?!!?!? Yeah, apparently kings can do that kind of thing, even kings presiding over basically nothing. A thing like that! But it's pretty lousy methadone for a recovering Daddy Issues addict such as our boy, and Jon doesn't even seem to consider it. Not that it matters for long! (It kind of seems like putting a week's space between these storylines would have been more effective, right? Oh well.) An election is held for the Lord Commander, and Sam stages a write-in campaign for Jon. Everyone who wasn't hiding in a closet during the battle with the Wildlings rushes forward to reward Jon for his bravery by giving him LITERALLY the worst job in all of Westeros. So uh, thanks, guys!

Elsewhere on the wall, Cassie from Skins is finally getting to have a little fun. I could watch her sass Sam from across a room all day long; they make a great two-man comedy team (and I guess we'll see how they do as political advisors--suddenly this show's placement next to Veep on Sunday nights makes a little sense). As for our original Abbott and Costello, this week brings Brienne and Podrick into Sansa's orbit yet again. Closer this time--close enough to buy her her first drink! (Goth Teen Sansa is, unsurprisingly, unimpressed with beer. "Does this place have any Bath Salts?"-Goth Teen Sansa) But when our girl B makes a direct appeal, Sansa is just like, "Nah." Boy, this vow is proving pretty hard to fulfill. Maybe it would be easier if Podrick wasn't busy trying to fulfill every waitress in the greater metropolitan area?

We might have an even cooler tag team to reckon with in the weeks to come, gang. Get this: Jaime Lannister enlists Bro(nn) to accompany him on a mission to recover Babygirl Lannister from Dorne, land of sand and revenge. Man, so many cool plot threads are getting set up that I almost wish I could jump five or six episodes ahead! But I won't, especially since HBO is finally getting litigious with this shit. (Now is as good a time as any to note that all of my screencaps are used in good faith and with no intent to profit off of Game Of Thrones, LLC or any of its subsidiaries and that I totally pay for my own HBONow account, in that my sister pays for it and I use her login.)

Mereenwhile, Dany teaches herself a hard lesson about the virtue of justice and the complicated nature of leadership and the utter futility of attempting foreign occupation, but you know, we all kind of know the score on this one by now. We're totally fucking up to speed on the themes at play here. No use wasting your time with that. But her dragon Drogon does stop by to say hello, so at least there's that.

BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S5E01: The Crackpots And These Women

And we're back! If you ask me, the season five premiere of Game Of Thrones was a lot like Mance Rayder: well-done! Booyah! But seriously folks--our favorite show (except for Mad Men) has returned in style, and all of our friends who are still among the living are back to party with us (except for Bonus Jonas, apparently, which is fine)! So let's party!

We start with a flashback, where we learn that Teen Cersei did not have nearly the eyebrow mobility she'd gain later in life. But she still had plenty of sass and gumption! She and a friend visit a Wood Witch, as teens do, and this Outdoor Oracle (this Forest Fortune-Teller? Copse-y Cassandra?) gives Teen Cersei a startling and, as she now knows, pretty god-damned accurate prophecy. I know that hindsight is always 20/20 with this shit, but "your kids will all get murdered" is not exactly some kind of vague Nostradamus-y aphorism open to retroactive interpretation.

In the present Cersei's mourning the death of her father, or at least mourning him more than Jaime, who is just worried about the smooth and efficient transition of the Lannister estate. And maybe he should be worried! First of all, I don't know how harsh the estate tax is in the Seven Kingdoms, and second of all Tywin clearly hasn't updated his Will in many years. The most recent draft obviously included the provision "Please bury me in my favorite outer-space-themed pajamas," so who knows what else is in there!

At the post-funeral potluck, Cersei runs into Lancel, AKA Les Cousin Dangeroux, who has gotten all Jesus-y in the intervening months since Blackwater Bay. His father, the potentially important Ser Kevan Lannister, is embarrassed by his son's piety and vowed poverty, but agrees that his new haircut suits him. I'm excited that the religious aftermath of the war is being explored here. One of the few things the later books in ASOIAF do well (more on that below, by the way) is expand their lens to track the social movements and other group dynamics impacting history. The movement outward is not unlike most high school history curricula, which I've always thought was a very nifty touch.

Meanwhile, Lady Marge is still in the outline phase of her scheme for power, as she has been for years. The Game Of Thrones has no room for procrastinators. Get some fucking Adderall and call us when you get a full scheme, lady!

We don't spend much time in King's Landing though, because a majority of the best characters are expatriates now. Tyrion is unboxed at a palace in Pentos, where Varys pleads with him to remain a player in the pending wars. These pending wars are finally the good ones, by the way. How exciting is it to imagine Tyrion meeting up with Dany? It will probably only take like, eight to twenty more episodes!

As for Our Lady D, she and her team are dealing with a covert uprising in Mereen from some Eyes Wide Shut-looking motherfuckers. An Unsullied (I think his name was Greyer Worm?) gets murdered in a brothel, and Missandei is too distracted trying to figure out what he was doing in a brothel to really care. I love that Game Of Thrones has two enduring mysteries. First: who is Jon Snow's mother? Second: Do Unsullied still have the dick part, or what?

Like a True Teen, Sansa is entering her goth phase gloriously, and she and Littlefinger spend this week ridding themselves of Bobby "Babyface" Arryn. Hilariously, on the way out of dodge they pass Brienne and Podrick on the road, who are so dispirited after getting ditched by Arya that they barely even look up. SIDEBAR: Did y'all watch the "Previously on" before this episode? I seriously do not remember The Hound taking such a big fall off that cliff. Was that an alternate cut or something?

Up on the wall, both versions of WoolyWilly are somehow still alive and still in power, but there's talk of an election. Technically speaking, the Night's Watch is still in need of a Commander, although for the life of me I can't even remember who used to be in charge. Was it one of those giants? Was it Force Majeure? Whatever.

The leadership crisis is agitated by Stannis and his family, who are wandering around creeping everybody out and occasionally setting Wildling prisoners on fire. One of those ends up being Mance Rayder, despite Jon Snow's (let's be honest) pretty half-assed attempt at talking him into bending the knee to Stannis. Mance's death doesn't feel that momentous, since he's only appeared on this show in five episodes, and for more than 60 seconds in less than half of them. Another king is dead. That's fine! We still have so many of them!

Now, I could say a little about Mance's death in the books, but it's just one of many deliberately confusing and needless decisions in the source material that the TV show is, thankfully, straightening out. Though I've read all existing books, and will certainly plow eagerly through others if and when they are published, I am not someone who was bummed by this winter's announcement that the show will reach the finish line first. That's fine. The books are not this all-fired holy thing that must be respected. Book five kinda sucks! By way of a (non-spoiler-y) example: back in Book 3, after the Red Wedding, it is strongly implied that Arya is killed by The Hound. She turns up again, just fine, something like 190 pages later. That irritating tendency of GRRM's is only amplified as the books go on, and by the time A Dance With Dragons is over pretty much every character could well be dead, but probably none of them are. It's bad writing! And while Benioff and Weiss ain't Shakespeares either, the show has heretofore wholly avoided such fuckery, and for that, I am grateful, and looking forward to taking a Mulligan on the many stories to come. The official position of this blog is "fuck the books," and this is the last you'll be hearing about them from me. Won't that be refreshing?

BLOGGING MAD MEN, Season 7 Episode 7: If You've Gotta Go, Go Now

We've caught up! We've reached the end of our week of Mad Men posts. I guess I haven't mentioned that I've actually been portioning out these seven episodes over the last six months or so. It was my way of protesting against the artificial, AMC-imposed divide on the final season, which resumes tonight. (Well, functionally tomorrow, for those of us without any kind of normal television.) Fittingly, it was probably some ad man or woman who cooked up these increasingly common division/delay plans, forcing Weiner and Co. to find the art among the thorns of commerce (which is, incidentally, the name of my new socialist hardcore band). I figured such a divide would have ended these episodes on a down note--if the arc of the season is a parabola, we're now at the vertex. But I forgot that I was watching Mad Men, a show that has always known how to stick every single landing, large or small.

And while we're talking about endings (and since we will be, at large, for another seven weeks) I just want to say--I was CERTAIN this show would end for good on or around the Moon Landing. And yet, here we are. Mankind takes that giant leap, and Bert Cooper sticks around just long enough to see it and admire Neil Armstrong's tag-writing skills. Good timing, Bert.

At first, it seems like everything is ending. Don is in breach of contract and Megan is leaving him. Barbie is leaving Pete and even Julio is leaving Peggy--he and his family are moving to Newark, which might as well be the moon. Peggy, Don, Pete, and Harry get on a plane to Cleveland with almost no sense of what will be waiting for them when they return, if anything. It's a nice, subtle parallel with the astronauts--but the pilot comes over the loudspeaker to make it explicit for anybody having trouble keeping up. Captain Obvious was Delta's go-to guy for the Northeast Corridor in those days, so it really couldn't be helped.

So I was running the other day, and listening to "Born To Run" (because I am an asshole) when I heard the line "Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness/ I'll love you with all the madness in my soul" and for whatever reason, perhaps because of all the time I've spent thinking about Mad Men recently, I thought to myself Holy shit, what happened when teenagers heard that line for the first time in 1975? Did their heads explode? So obviously I very much enjoyed the montage in which all of our characters witness and begin to process the moon landing.

And then Bert Cooper dies, and that sheen of doom was back all over everything. I was right about the parabola, and the vertex, I thought.  Jim Cutler doesn't wait for the body to get cold before making his power play.

But of course, just as Peggy is nailing the Burger Chef pitch (with a grest echo of Don's "carousel" speech in the near-tears it elicits from the executives), Roger is cooking up a daring plan. We've watched these folks struggle in the sometimes-literal mud for so long that it's pretty nice to see them doing what they do best. By negotiating a sale to McCann, Roger saves Don's job, makes Joan rich, and arguably prevents Ted's suicide for at least a year or two.

This re-aligning of the universe could have been enough to end this awkward half-season. We can go anywhere from here, and that's exciting. But even more thrilling, to me, is the out-of-left field play they throw at us in the final scene. This is what I've always loved about Mad Men--the willingness to get weird with it. Early on, I was impressed by the way they played with structure; time could compress and contract and reverse in a fluid, exciting way. Then the music choices got more exciting; The Decemberists intruded from the future and it felt like a creative enterprise at the height of their powers, flexing their muscles. That's always exciting to me. And of course, the endings were always spectacular. Betty throwing up in Don's car. Colin Hanks singing "Early In The Morning." "This Will Be Our Year," too. I could go on. But anyway what happens is Don has a vision of Bert Cooper, dancing around and singing "The Best Things In Life Are Free." It's strange and funny and sad and beautiful and perfect, like so much of this show.

I'm not going to write in any organized fashion about the next, and final seven, episodes. I just want to appreciate them in silence. But watch this space, dear reader, because we may have some more writing, from others, to post. I'll go back to writing about Game Of Thrones, but make no mistake--my heart belongs to Sterling Cooper. -ZL