Sunday, May 29, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 56: Blood of My Blood, or It's Time to Hit the Road

Noted: the theme for this season of HBO’s Game of Thrones appears to be “Now Under New Management”. We have a new Lord of Winterfell, new King on the Salt Throne, new Great Khaleesi of the Dothraki, new Head Bitch of Dorne, new Lord of Riverrun, new Interim Dolorous Lord Commander, new Interim 3-eyed Raven. The only notable leaders not yet murdered and replaced are Tommen, the HS, and the Night King.


So if anyone wants your job this season, keep your back to a wall. Except Killer of Tonks. You should relax a bit.


Our latest episode begins with Bran still white-eyed and tripping balls, and Meera at the end of her endurance. And the woods are running with zombie trash.


And who is that masked man? Who fucking cares, he’s a zombie wrecking machine. And he’s got a horse.


(What did we see in Bran’s last vision that we haven’t seen before? The Mad King, mucking about with wildfire, and bellowing about burning them all. And getting run through by Jaime. This will probably be important at some point.)


In greener climes, it’s How to Spot All Kinds of Trees from Quite Far Away, with your terrified host, Sam. Gilly reads him for being a nervous talker, and he focuses on the plan, such as it is. (It is not a good plan.)


Sam’s dad has some sweet digs, considering his not-a-great-house status. And Sam’s mom and sis are over the moon that he’s back. Mom wants to hold the baby, who is being deadly cute.


Back at the Great Sept, the HS is at the peak of his powers, and therefore both smug and magnanimous. And Marge is looking very smiley and at ease. Which is to say that she has gone Squeaky to the HS’s Manson.


Gilly in a gown! Looks like cosplay. She and Talla must have had a ball.


Lord Tarly does not disappoint. He’s an asshole to the soles of his feet and proud of it. He relishes bullying and belittling Sam, listens to no one, and talks like a pissed off cartoon bullfrog.


Sam takes it, silent and sweating, for the sake of Gilly and Wee Sam, and appears to resign himself to his dad’s shitty offer. That lasts about five minutes, and then, fuck it, it’s time to steal the family sword and hit the road. Do some donuts on the lawn while you’re at it, Sam.


Meanwhile, a girl is having a hell of a day at the theatre. Once she’s done snickering at Joff’s death scene, her target manages to choke her up with a speech.


It gets worse, when she’s caught backstage, and winds up having a heart to heart with Miss Fischer. Ha ha, eyebrows. And as with Sam, it looks like she’s going to go against her conscience until she stone cold does not. And like Sam, she’s gonna take her sword and roll.


And in an amusing parallel, it appears that the purpose of this hit was Ginger Bitchface taking out her rival. Good luck, GB.


Down in the capitol, the buffoon Mace Tyrell is armored up and leading his forces to the rescue. Jaime suffers through his (clearly memorized) rally speech, and they ride.


It’s an ugly scene, as expected. A company of armored pikemen, forming up at the entrance to the Sept, a vast crowd of restless commoners behind them. The HS answers the threat with calm and resolve, and Jaime showboats up the steps to talk more shit. (Scarhead Lancel looks like there’s nothing he’d rather do than die in service of the gods, besides maybe clocking Jaime with that nasty club.)


The HS, however, had a way better showpiece planned than Marge doing a bell walk. Ahhhhh, so that’s why she’s still got her hair. It turns out she’s allied with the HS and brought Tommen into the fold. They’ve even rebranded the Kingsguard with fancy new breastplates.


So yes, the Lannister/Tyrell alliance just handed the HS everything, in front of everyone.


(Wait, are they leaving Slow Loras in the dungeons?)


And for good measure, Jaime gets fired from the Kingsguard. Last guy that got fired from that gig wound up taking the black, and getting his head removed. Not good.


Meanwhile at the Twins, the repellent Walder Frey is ordering his useless sons to besiege Riverrun. Riverrun is in the hands of Brynden Tully, as we recall from last week, and he knows the capabilities of the place thoroughly, and will no doubt hold against any siege while his allies gather strength. But the wounded pride of Walder Frey is what gave us the Red Wedding.


Back in King’s Landing, Jaime is dreaming of a necklace of dead sparrow heads. It turns out his first assignment not in this city is going to be backing up the repellent Walder Frey’s idiot sons in the siege of Riverrun. Cersei is excited to an all but unseemly degree by the notion of him commanding the Lannister army, even in a pointless outing like this.


Up north in the zombie-infested woods, Bran and Meera’s protector is wringing out rabbits into a cup. Gross. The reveal here is that this is what remains of Uncle Benjen, who was last seen in season one, and has been touched by the magic of the Children. Which means he is operating on the same communications protocol that runs the tree network that the 3-eyed Raven used to be sysadmin of. Also he’s blue-ish.


So apparently if you want to get two Starks in the same scene, one of them has to be undead. It’s a rough winter to be a Stark.


Across the Narrow Sea, Dany pauses for some logistical thinking. That 1000 ships thing is becoming a theme. And her new recruits look a little squirrely. Well, the thing to do, clearly, is deliver a rousing speech. But first, we need to get everyone’s attention. Perhaps with a dramatic entrance?


Well, let’s work with what we’ve got. How about DROGONNNNNN!!! Pretty good speech, but what a hype man…







Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 56: Blood of My Blood, or It's Time to Hit the Road
Posted by at

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 54: Book of the Stranger, or Come and See

Our fourth episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones begins with a living man bitching about being murdered, and by god the first scene with two living Starks in frame since Tonks and Rickon took off.


Noted: Tormund Giantbeard is fucking smitten with Brienne. And holy crap, Brienne completed a mission. And Sansa is a foot taller than Dead Snow.


And we are allowed a simple moment of warmth between siblings, in which the past is acknowledged and forgiven. And then we are on to Let’s Take Winterfell, since no one on this show can just say fuck it and make a fresh start.


Mel doesn’t look happy about her new mission parameters, and the talk between her and Davos is taking a dangerous turn before Brienne barges up, sword in hand, and takes credit for whacking the man they both so loyally and disastrously served. Davos and Mel can catch up on the rest of the recent Baratheon deaths later I suppose.


Back at the Vale, Robin Arryn is still a hapless veal calf, in spite of having shot up to the same height as Scratchy the Pimp. Robin’s fostering has had little effect on his general development, and Scratchy can still play him like a pennywhistle. So we get an uncomfortable scene which ends with the Knights of the Vale being roped into Scratchy’s latest double-cross.


In sunny Mereen, Tyrion is proposing a conservative solution, with gradual managed change. Tyrion is a pompous ass and well out of his depth. This is a gruelling scene, and plays like a lunch table of college freshmen discussing the need to raise the minimum wage. Then the hookers come out.


The Mereen city council is waiting below the stoop to call bullshit on Tyrion, who proceeds to ladle on further bullshit and get some of it on Grey and Missandei.


I’m trying to give Tyrion a break here, since he’s working with what he has, and that isn’t much. His brief is to keep a civil war from boiling over while two horny assholes scour the countryside for a woman who flew away on a dragon. He has no actual leverage against his well-funded enemies, and his legs are too short to make a run for it. All things considered, he isn’t doing that bad a job.


Up in the rocky scrub by Vaes Dothrak, we get cheap sexual bullying from Second Daario, and Jorah’s been outed as a Stone Man. Jorah has a terrible plan to sneak in and pretend to be merchants, which falls apart on first contact, since Daario is still wearing fucking battle armor. Jorah gets an ass kicking, but luckily Daario palmed his porno dagger while Jorah was thinking about what grayscale does.


Dothraki CSI is probably pretty crap, not that it matters.


Dany, meanwhile, is forming alliances within the First Wives Club, and whatever her plan is, it’s better than Jorah’s, which is his usual We’ll Die Trying idiocy.


Back at Scarhead Gitmo, Marge is on the outs with her pet centipede. So it must be a relief to be hauled upstairs to see the sun and get some backstory on the HS. Apparently success in the world of high fashion did this to him. That explains a whole hell of a lot.


Slow Loras, it turns out, is way too fragile for the dungeons. Though it looks like he’s getting way more smacking around than Marge. She’s wrong by the way; they’re letting her see Loras because they know they’ve broken him, and she’ll do whatever she can to save him.


Across town in Tommen’s office, the dolt Pycelle is clanking around passing out shitty advice. Which Tommen is susceptible to, since he is a gormless kid with a captive wife to worry about. Cersei is in a practical mood, and reminds Tommen that the HS doesn’t have an end game and just wants to do as much damage as he can for as long as he can. This shakes a little secret out of Tommen that Cersei can use.


In a super secret meeting with the two members of the small council who are not buffoons or ghouls, Jaime and Cersei sell a brilliant plan: Put the rescue of the Tyrell prisoners in the hands of the Tyrells. There’s no downside. If the rescue succeeds, great, and it solves the Scarhead problem for the crown. If it fails, and Marge and Loras don’t make it, that’s a Tyrell problem and no one gets to hang anything on the crown. It’ll be a bloodbath either way, but Lady O doesn’t give a shit.


Sailing towards the welcoming shores of the Asshole Islands, we see the earthly remains of Our Theon of Sorrows. Considering the welcome he got last time, he’s got a right to that expression of suppressed horror.


He in fact gets a rough welcome, again from sister Yara, but in the end he comes correct and we have the beginnings of an alliance.


And we get a brief, nasty scene with Barry the Bastard, hereafter known as Killer of Tonks. You can’t die hard enough, fucker.


A bit further north, we have a thoroughly awkward supper at the commander’s table. Tormund Giantbeard is making eyes at Brienne, who is having none of it.


And we get a letter of invitation from Killer of Tonks, who wants a fight.


If that “come and see” refrain sounds familiar, it’s from the King James version of Revelation, and the opening of the seven seals. “And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. (Rev. 6:1)” Note that when Scratchy presented that bird to Robin, he also said Come and See. We are being promised something biblical here.


Back at Vaes Dothrak, it’s time for some callbacks. We get a brief primer on how Dany rose to power with Drogo, and how that went to shit. We get Khal Fuckface echoing Viserys’ smirking assurance to Dany that he’d let Drogo’s whole crew down to the horses fuck Dany if it got him an army. And we get a nod to the Battle of the Blackwater, with Dany’s having booby-trapped the temple with flammables.


And we get Dany striding through an inferno with a little Mona Lisa smile, watching men cower, flee, and burn. In the end, she emerges, like a beatific Carrie White, and all before her drop to their knees, including the two dipshits here to rescue her. Dany is back on her game. Everybody else better step the fuck up.







Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 54: Book of the Stranger, or Come and See
Posted by at

Sunday, May 08, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 53: Oathbreaker, or Now Go Fail Again

Our third fresh episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones begins with some heavy breathing in the dark, as Dead Snow rises. Death suits him; except for the stab wounds, dude’s bod is seriously on point.


The look on Mel’s face is priceless. Jon might be the second most surprised person in the room. She asks him the same thing she asked Beric Dondarrion, and gets the same grim answer. She has more to say, but so does Davos. (First off: Get the fuck out.)


Davos is once again the voice of us all: That’s Completely Fooking Mad. Jon’s having the sort of crisis of confidence that comes from being gut-stabbed by your steward, but Davos is ready with some bedrock wisdom and an oddly effective pep talk.


And so Dead Snow does his resurrection walk of shame. Tormund Giantbeard breaks the ice with a dick joke, and Dolorous Edd hugs first and asks questions later. (Note: When a man known as Dolorous Edd calls you out for not having a sense of humor, you might want to lighten up.)


Meanwhile on the raging sea, we catch up with Grinning Gilly and Seasick Sam! Gilly is giddy with the adventure of it all, and she’s right: Homonyms are fun. People who won’t leave you alone to puke your guts are less fun, but at least she passes the canteen.


Sam’s in yet another pickle related to oaths and single-sex environments, and he’s not selling the Live With My Mom option effectively. Gilly is almost certainly shining him on.


And here we are at the First Tower of Joy Flashback, with invisible Bran and Max. Bran is nearly as tall as Max von Fucking Sydow, who I tend to think of a seven foot four in socks. He may have shrunk a bit.


We get some grim banter and a bitchin’ melee. And Ned Stark, it turns out, is the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.


Bran speaks for us all when he bitches out the Raven for cutting that scene short. And the Raven speaks for the writers and producers, who want us to believe they have a plan. That’s fine, but remember that Bran is stuck dealing with your shit because he can’t walk out.


And we’re off to Vaes Dothrak! And the poorly lit bitter bitch clubhouse! This subplot could not suck more. HERE DROGON DROGON DROGON COME GET MOMMY BACK TO THE STORY.


Varys doesn’t care for the heat in Mereen, though he clearly digs all the leather. And he’s kept up with the latest in hooker-bullying enhanced interrogation.


Tyrion is coming out flat at every appearance this season, and has clearly established himself as a useless and pompous drunk. We are saved from his bloviating by Varys, who finally got someone to take a boat. The SOH are funded by a consortium of all the other slave cities, meaning very rich people with a lot of motivation to crush Dany’s project in a memorable fashion. Fortunately, Tyrion has an idea. Varys is totally going to find one of Jorah’s old gauntlets and backhand Tyrion across the face next week.


Back in the capitol, Qyburn has taken over Varys’ old mob of Baker Street Irregulars. The filthy urchins miss Varys, or at least they miss the candy. Qyburn is on his game this week, with candied fruit for rewards, and the FrankenMountain to play boogeyman. Cersei appears to have an actual plan for dealing with the HS and her upcoming show trial. Qyburn looks a bit nervous, but not unimpressed.


At the cramped Small Council table, the dolt Pycelle is rehashing old grudges and old gags. The “he’s right behind me, isn’t he” bit is some corny shit. Jaime and Cersei may have had a plan for forcing some issues, and it may have been a good one, but they didn’t count on Uncle Kevan flouncing off.


Across town at the Great Sept, we get another boring scene with the HS owning someone who thinks their authority should be respected, in this case Tommen the Hapless Boy. This has all the dramatic tension of a traffic light.


Back in Braavos, Arya and Ginger Bitchface are swinging sticks. And I swear to god, we get a training montage. A training montage. A TRAINING MONTAGE. Because this is a fucking Seagal movie.


In Project Mayhem, we have no names. And since Arya is finally no one, Capt. Jaquen administers the Faceless God’s mercy, which restores her sight. No one is going to shit when she sees the state of her eyebrows.


Up north in Winterfell (Under New Management), we find Barry the Bastard giving an audience to Smalljon Umber, who is not here to mince words. Barry clearly agrees that his father woz a coont.


Lord Umber, hoping for an alliance, brings the gift of a young man. And Tonks, how we’ve missed you. And that’s three of the Stark dire wolves down.


Bringing things back to Castle Black, Dead Snow is presiding over the execution of the conspirators. It’s a bit of a paradox that they are being strung up for murdering a man who is there to look them in the eye, but let’s not get lost in pedantry. (Mel looks a bit put out, but she’s just mad that no one’s getting burned alive.)


The cement-headed bully Ser Alliser makes his last words count, and squares up to face his fate. Oly can’t loosen up his clenched mask of hatred enough to speak, but it doesn’t matter. The swords swings, the foley editor wastes a bunch of celery, and it’s done.


And three cheers for Lord Commander Dolorous Edd. I’m looking forward to the scene where he explains this all to Brienne and Sansa.







Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 53: Oathbreaker, or Now Go Fail Again
Posted by at

Sunday, May 01, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 52: Home, or Guess Who's Back in Town Again

Our sixth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones continues with Max Von Sydow and Bran stoned out of their eyeballs in the root cellar opium den. Bran is dreaming an episode of Winterfell babies.


And WYLIS! (My speaks for us all: “I really didn’t expect Hodor to have a backstory. And now I’m DYING to know it…”)


And Meera’s a grouch, as usual, but seriously, nothing’s worse than people telling you about this weird dream they had. OK, watching your brother get murdered by Party City Halloween decorations, then getting stuck at the frozen edge of nowhere with no one for company but Sexy Snow Elf is worse, but it’s all in the same bag.


Back at Winterfell, Ser Squarehead is here with security to escort you from the premises, and there are some papers you need to sign, just a standard non-compete and non-disclosure agreement. And we’ll need your ID and keycard. We wish you the best, but it wasn’t a good fit.


Davos isn’t signing shit, and he’s not going to surrender his MacBook, he paid for that himself. Here comes the sledgehammer.


And look, here’s Edd with a couple of union reps and a 20-foot-tall auditor from corporate HR! Now that’s timing.


Ser Squarehead has massively overestimated his mandate to command, and some poor fucker has put way too much faith in the power of his coward’s crossbow. Ser Squarehead and Oly are lucky not to wind up as smears in the snow.


Jon Snow: Still dead.


Down south in the capitol, the living comments sections are still abroad in daylight. And so is the moderator. Skulls smooshing on walls is a theme here. So is captivity and boredom, hello Cersei, and so is being lucky not to be a smear on a wall.


Tommen is looking even more like Jughead than his shit brother. That just isn’t a good crown. And turtlenecks are a bad look when you don’t have a chin. Tommen doesn’t just look weak and hapless, though, he feels it, and rightly so.


And here’s the High Sparrow, to tell us the story of the eye cookies! Never thought I’d get that either. The HS is totally the Joker, merrily provoking Jaime and leaving him stewing in his rage. Jaime’s threats have no substance; he could kill one old codger, but he couldn’t take more than a few scarheads left-handed. When the HS talks about overthrowing an empire, he’s smiling but he’s not fucking kidding.


Tommen, to his credit, humbles himself before Cersei and asks forgiveness. Cersei grants it, and sneaks a little smile of triumph, having bested Marge after all.


In the gloom of Mereen, Dany’s remaining brain trust is sifting through the wreckage of the total collapse of Project Mhysa looking for any way to save their bacon. Wrong audience for the no-cock jokes, Tyrion.


Varys is an unconvincing scold, but he’s not wrong about Tyrion laying off the sauce. His attempt to recapture his Lannister swagger ends with him down in the dragon kennel, lucky not to be the latest smoking carcass. The dragons deign to tolerate his blather until he pops their irons off, and dismiss him.


Can’t wait to see Varys throw a left hook next episode.


Across the sea in Braavos, Arya is getting her lunch money took by Ginger Bitchface again. Arya finally loses it, thrashing away at nothing, and who should appear but Capt. Jaquen. He offers her three chances to give up, and she holds fast. Welcome back to Project Mayhem, Blind Space Monkey.


In the cold blue light of Winterfell, Lord Flaymate and Barry the Bastard are butting heads over Barry’s terrible, bloodthirsty, shortsighted ideas for recapturing Sansa and killing Jon Snow, who by the way is still dead. Things are brought to a head by Maester Pyle shambling in and announcing the birth of a male Bolton heir.


And farewell to Lord Flaymate, who perhaps shouldn’t have tried to control his psychotic bastard with emotional abuse. I admit I did not see this coming, but it certainly moves the plot along.


And we get a long tense sequence that hinges on the question: Is this the season they’re gonna waste a baby onscreen? The answer is no, but damn, did they tease that out.


And in the ice zombie infested woods north of Winterfell, Brienne is catching Sansa up with the fate of her sister and managing not to mention that the man she was with was The Hound. Brienne is finally learning to fudge things a bit.


Sansa finds herself in the curious position of reassuring Theon, who doesn’t want reassurance, or forgiveness, just a horse to carry him home to the Asshole Islands.


Where his dad is joining the ranks of the usurped and smashed on rocks. Welcome to the Couldn’t Have Happened to a Nicer Guy Club, Lord Balon.


And we finally get to the bit where Mel tries to resurrect Jon Snow. Davos has to jolly her along quite a bit, since she is having a well-earned crisis of faith and self-confidence after sinking the House of Baratheon. Then it occurs to her that the priest she knows who can raise the dead is Thoros of Myr, whose only other particular talent is absorbing rum in quantity.


So she steps up and speaks the words and does the ritual, which looks like a very odd spa treatment. She gets no result, and after several attempts at laying on of hands, she calls it, much like an ER doc hanging up the paddles. Slowly, one by one, the witnesses depart, until only Ghost is left. Ghost rouses from his nap, and then we get our wide-eyed gasp.


Works for me. Hey, I snap awake out of a stone coma when my puppy needs a walk at 4am.


Next week, we get to see the look on Ser Squarehead’s face. I don’t need anything else. See you then.







Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 52: Home, or Guess Who's Back in Town Again
Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)