Hardhome

The title of this post is simply "Hardhome" because it's now a word and an episode that will be the reference point for television as spectacle and payoff and worldbuilding. 

And while Hardhome will be known for that part that's set at, well, Hardhome, the rest of the episode needs to get the credit it deserves.

After Hardhome, the payoff of Tyrion and Dany meeting is one we've all wanted for a long time.  And somehow, without a single dragon scale, these scenes of the new Targaryen alliance give us everything we wanted.  Tyrion reasons through all the different scenarios, and whether or not to keep his own head/exile Jorah being a case study and a sort of test for him to show Dany his worth.

One of the most memorable lines this season is from Dany - "I"m a queen, not a politician."  It's not so much a statement of fact and the relationship between monarchs and the smallfolk as it is a naive statement by Dany showing the realpolitik she lacks, and Tyrion can provide. 

If Tyrion worked in Washington, DC, he would be known as "former White House chief of staff" and for good measure, "former Treasury secretary."  He would be much sought after.  He could start his own firm, he would be paid millions of dollars for his advice.  In Westeros, his dad tried to kill him. 

Anyways, being former Hand to the King is an asset that Dany sorely lacks, as she operates on the assumption the smallfolk will rise in support of her.  The War of Five Kings can work two ways.  It can weaken the lords from being so battle worn that they are vulnerable (except the Valemen and the Dornishmen).  But on the other side, the smallfolk are warworn as well, tired of the fighting...as Jorah said in season one

the common people pray for rain, healthy children and a summer that never ends.  It is no matter to them the high lords play their game of thrones.

so they may have a "call me when you're done" sort of attitude.  They've already, in their sorrow and defeat, sought out religion as an escape, giving rise to the new power in King's Landing, the High Sparrow.

The arrival of Winter adds another element, as food becomes scarce and battle becomes diffcult.  Hard to say how this will play out until either Stannis THE MANNIS or Roose Bolton solidify the North.

Arya begins her training in earnest, further removing her from her identity.  Of the remaning Starks, two are beyond the Wall and one is beyond the narrow sea, and all three are deeply ensconced in the magical/supernatural.

Sansa and Theon have a great scene.  We get the reveal that Bran and Rickon are alive, a payoff that no one's known about since mid season two.  It goes all the way back to Robb sending Theon as emissary to Balon for his "navy".  The acting from both Sophie Turner and Alfie Allen is some of the best of the series. 

Cersei is not yet completely broken, though her game has backfired horribly.  We get some schadenfreude in her short scenes.  Not only that but she already cast off her own lifeboat, having sent Jaime to Dorne, where is also captive. 

Now, Hardhome. 
The payoff between the the series' first scene and this is stupendous.  We see the small girl from the first scene.  We see the White Walker who sits ahorse and screeched at Sam at the end of Season Two.  And we see the White Walker in Charge who converted Craster's baby into something inhuman.

It's not simply nonstop action for the sake of nonstop action, as was the Watchers on the Wall.  It's about putting aside petty differences for the greater threat.  It's the Wildlings trusting Thormund but not Jon, and that being good enough.  It's the Thenns being a pain in the ass.  It's those characters somehow raising the stakes even higher for us and making the ensuing battle mean something. 

Plus you have the stuff that's simply cool.  The giant.  The White Walker walking through fire.  Jon defeating one with Longclaw (one of two audible cheers this season from me.  The other also involved Longclaw).  The effects and the swordplay and the panic and the bravery. 

The game of thrones has changed completely.  It somehow doesn't matter what the high lords are doing in Kings Landing now.

The episode also speaks to something larger about the show in general.  I've noted before it's difficult and silly to judge a show based on a single episode, but because shows (outside of Amazon and Netflix streaming shows) air on a weekly/episodic basis, it's the way we talk about them.  But in speaking about the show at large, one cannot do anything but look at the whole picture of a season.  In ten episodes, with many storylines, the season follows with Introductions (episodes 1-2) Rising action (3-7) Climax (8-9) Denouement and leading into the next season's storylines (10).  So, to judge, for example, episode 4 as being slow compared to episode 8 is silly.  Episode 4 does what episode 4 is supposed to do and episode 8 does what episode 8 is supposed to do.  That of course doesn't mean it's not interesting, only that it's interesting in a different way. 

So when speaking to teh qualify of a show, it's impossible to make a judgement until all the bets are in. 

"High Sparrow" - Game of Thrones - 5-03

Oldest previously
Renley is stabbity stabbed by Shadow Stannis

Credits
Moat Cailin, Braavos
Still no Dorne.

I'm confused as to how Moat Caitlin fits in.  I thought the Boltons were staged at and reconstructing Winterfell.  That's certainly where they were when Sansa arrived. 

Identity
A common thread this episode is identity.  Specifically the Stark identity.  The name STARK looms large still.

• Jon considers becoming a true Stark
• Arya considers putting her Stark identity behind her
• Sansa considers how to best live up to the Stark name, move foward or bide time for vengeance.

Furthermore, Cersei struggles with her identity as queen, excuse me, Queen Mother or Dowager Queen, as Margarey so helpfully pointed out.  Which leads us to..

Margarey
This is the first time we've seen Margarey be a bit mean spirited to her enemies' faces.  She is killing Cersei with kindness, through the conduit of Tommen, in trying to get her removed back to Casterly Rock. 

When Tommen says hearing King Tommen sounds strange, and he asks Margarey if Queen Margarey sounds strange to here, there is a perfect beat where it's clear those two words are all she's thought about for the longest time. 

Margarey is Cersei from twenty years ago.  Ready to be married to the king or the heir apparent, as Tywin turned down quite a fair match from the Martells (as Oberyn told us last season) in favor of holding out for Rhagaer (in theory) and then Robert (in practice).  Margarey's been queen one way or the other since the start of Season Two with Renley, Joffrey, and now Tommen.

In press, GRRM speaks of prophecy coming true, thought not int he way one expects.  The obvious answer to the flashback prophecy is Margarey.  But there's another younger, more beautiful Queen coming to take the throne (SOMEDAY) and her name is Dany (a queen, not a politician).

Religion
Between the pope, er, High Septon getting caught in the brothel and St. Francis, er, High Sparrow, leading his own movement, there is a lot of religious activity in Westeros, specifically Kings Landing.  It stands to reason that after the land is war torn for years, and with winter coming (as Stannis noted at the Wall) the people shrink back from conflict (think isolationism after WWI) and seek solace in their guns and religion.

Relgiion is featured prominently in Braavos, as Arya learns of the one true got.  And Tyrion encounters a red priestess preaching.  Are they the same god?

Important Time Check!!!
Stannis the Mannis says two weeks until he leaves Castle Black, marching for....Winterfell. 

The North Remembers
Maybe the most important dialoge this week.  Does it signal a secret resistance movement, biding their time, like Sansa?  Twice we're reminded of the North's loyalty to the Starks.  Once when this is said to Sansa, and the other when Ramsey recounts the lord who wouldn't recognize any Warden of the North but a Stark. 

Last week, Stannis (the Mannis) got a reply as well from Bear Island, "There is but one King of the North and his name is STARK

Silvers and Coppers

• Making Thorne First Ranger.  Brilliant or horrible.  No in between.
• Jon's execution of Slynt was sweet, if not too fast.  I thought he resembled Robb more than anything though. 
• And Robb's execution of Karstark (rather than imprisonment), unbending like Stannis, is ultimately what did him in.  Not breaking the marriage vows.
• Who wore it best?
• Sansa
• Speaking of, this storyline is incredibly interesting so long as translates into Sansa maintaining her own agency, rather be the torture toy of yet another sociopath
• Brienne is just as tiresome on the screen as she is on the page
• The more book departures the better.  I love being surprised.  I am very pro different roads to the same end point, much like Brienne and Pod are taking to Winterfell.

Finales: Mad Men and others

A while back I wrote about the upcoming close to Mad Men

Here, part one

here, Part Two

and Here, part three

Overall, I expect it to be closer to a Sopranos ending than a Six Feet Under  one. 

Every show needs to end in the appropriate way for that show.  So, let's go over a few finales and see how they are appropriate

The Sopranos - first in the "television as art" age of the late nineties through now, a show that integrated symbolism and ambiguity throughout its run ends on exactly those notes.  It's the Mona Lisa and the finale is Mona Lisa's smile.

Six Feet Under - the much lauded, emotional finale that brought absolute and complete closure to every character via fast forwards as much as eight decades into the future.  This works for SFU because the show was about mortality and the way we pass, so it only made sense to play this string completely our for our beloved Fischers (& Co.).

But the thing that really made the finale was not the Breath Me montage but the events leading up to it, ie Nate's death.  A show born out of the death of a family member ends with the same.  Nate's AVM hung over the series like a shroud for almost it's entire run.  Each episode include the death of someone, and the reactions of that person's loved ones.  So it only made sense to see the Fischers & Co. reacting to Nate's death. 

Which brings up the idea of starting the finale early...

West Wing - had an incredibly underrated finale.  Between the two campaigns, the current White House and the new occupants, not to mention relationships like CJ and Danny and Josh and Donna, the show had a lot to wrap up.  Which is why they started doing it as early as "Transition", three episodes prior.  It makes sense with a large ensemble.  Thought it closes with a Bartlet and CJ centric episode.  It makes sense as they occupied the WH for all eight years/seven seasons to follow them around as they turn out the lights.  Especially Jed, our generation's collective grandfather, as the show that was never supposed to actually feature the president became his show, he gets the last word.

Justified - you can also go the bookend route.  Call back a lot of images to the show's beginniing.  Justified is a western, an Elmore Leonard, a novel, so it is going to be a little more closed off and clear than say, Sopranos.  And it works.  Like a novel, the questions raised in the first chapter are answered and called back to in the last chapter.  It does so by continuing to do what it had done best for six seasons, beat our expectations every time.

The reactions this article below refers to are why I can't stand to read about television anymore.  Expectations are out of whack and the only way a show can continue to be praised each year is to fly under the radar (like Justified).  Game of Thrones is both everyone's favorite show and everyone's favorite show to complain about. 

I read a great article discussing finales, within the context of Mad Men ending the crux of it is below:

That question is top of mind as we close in on the conclusion of Mad Men, the current program most directly linked to The Sopranos. This isn’t just about creator Matthew Weiner’s three seasons as a writer and producer for Chase, nor the charismatic antiheroes at the two shows’ centers; Mad Men has always been a show that just felt like The Sopranos, tonally and stylistically, a series where ambiguity and unease and narrative cul-de-sacs were not only present, but part of the modus operandi.

And that’s why it’s so infuriating to read clueless inventories of “loose ends we hope Mad Men wraps up” and “what needs to be resolved in the final season” (yes indeed, what needs to be resolved), as though this is a show that’s ever been about tidy conclusions and clean resolutions; that’s why complaints about recent episodes not going exactly where we think they “should” (from websites or fans or, worse, websites aggregating fans) are so headache-inducing — because Mad Men has never been about fan service. This fan, for one, doesn’t presume to know better than Weiner and company how this show should end, except that it shouldn’t end the way stupid people want it to: with someone falling out of a building, or Don parachuting out of an airplane with millions of dollars, or Bob Benson murdering him, or whatever.

The one thing that seems safe to assume is that Mad Men isn’t going to end in a nice clean package with a big, pretty bow on top, and that’s an assumption based on not only the show we’ve been watching for seven seasons now, but also Weiner’s own statements on the subject. “Resolution in itself is a mystery in this world,”

 

I think Mad Men, at large, is very much about wanting to maintain the status quo and resisting progress. It's a theme we see with Kennedy and Nixon, the firm being bought, the civil rights movement, Japanese businessmen, computers...in each case the change is resisted, eventually accepted as fait accompli and then people discover it's not as bad as they thought, and they work on establishing a new status quote, which they wont want to get rid of. Everyone is going kicking and screaming not just into the next era but the next year, month and day.

Oddly, the only change that's greeted with eagerness is the copy machine by the secretaries, even though that very copy machine spells their demise...and we get less and less secretaries each season.

So, anyways,  I look at the show's finale episodes in that context.  But maybe I'm wrong too.

"The Wars to Come" Game of Thrones 5-01

Oldest Previously:
Thought it was going to be Myrcella to Dorne, but we're going old school  Two administrations ago with Lancel and Robert's wine.

Credits
The Eyrie may or may not have been there last year.  All the old guys, plus Pentos, finally back.  Winterfell is on the mend.  No Dorne.  No Bravos, but I expect we'll see them next week.

Flashback
I am wondering how obvious it was to people that it was a Cersei flashback, if you hadn't read anything about it.  Maggie looks way better than expected

Confess your unpopular opinion
I do not care about R+L=J. 

I find D = E completely fascinating though because it could change the game.  I wonder if the recast of Daario had to do with casting someone who would fit an Iron Islander description better.

The real question is how does he get from Nashville to Mereen and back so quickly?

Chapter 1
Some shows are like reading a book.  Spend two episodes setting the stage and showing us what conflict will propel our characters through the season.  What obstacles they are facing.  What sort of changes they will make, or try to make and fail.  Here are some conflicts that look to play a major part:

• Deeper division between Cersei and Jaime
• Night's Watch election
• Jon Snow's over-sympathy to Wildlings is a divisive issue
• Stannis marching south to the North
• As they said, Stannis is like iron...unbendable.  And he can't bring himself to be lenient with Mance, even if it would help him immensely.  While Stannis is doing the work of the King in Westeros, he can't be so dogmatic.
• Dany can't control her dragons
• Dany's army/police force is facing an insurgency
• Surge!
• Tyrion to Dany?
• Margarey aiming high
• A younger, more beautiful queen
• Getting in with Tommen
• "Perhaps......Perhaps."  probably the best line of dialouge in the episode.  If this show does one thing well, it is economy of words and scene.  They convey so much information so succinctly.
• Sexposition
• Now, with dudes
• Birth mark looks like Dorne

Adaptation
The presence of Varys does several things.

• Much of Tyrion's action and conflict occurs inside of his head at this point in the series.  That doesn't play on television.  So he needs someone to speak to.  That person has to have an investment in his and the kingdom's future.  And he has to be an intellectual equal of Tyrion. 
• It allows Tyrion and Varys to continue their already established rapport.  Always good not not add more characters to a cast of hunrdeds if you can avoid it
• You also save time that would be needed to establish a new character
• They are in the East now.  Varys is Eastern.  They are going to seek an Eastern solution to the problems of Westeros.

Lords and Lordlings

• A POV shot worthy of Breaking Bad, Tyrion looking out from his box
• Uncle Kevan made an appearance
• Dorne dorne dorne dorne.  Let's get to it. 
• Alisair's alive?  Did not expect that.  But again, using an established character at this point is always better than creating a host of new ones. 
• I wonder if Robert got a proper funeral, like Tywin did, with all the hubbub going on when Ned Stark tried a coup.
• The image of tearing down a statue transcends any culture or medium
• Do a storyline where Robin gets bullied
• Small shout out to Oberyn when Oliver refers to his ex.

"Trust" - Justified - 6-10

The mark of a truly well thought out and established character is when the character is able to surprise us in a convincing way.  That's Ava Crowder in "Trust". 

Ava was introduced to us six years ago as the woman who blew her abusive husband away as he sat at the dinner table eating his favorite meal which she prepared for him, calculating that that would give her the best chance to put a whole bunch of shot into his chest.

When Raylan gives away that Vasquez is putting her behind bars regardless of what she does, she knows she can't get anything out of cooperating.  Her backs against a wall, living an inescapable life, much like the one where she lives in a broken down town with an abusive husband.  So she shoots her way out.  It's not what we expected, but it makes sense, especially considering Boyd's short temper with her lately.  She has to recognize those signs, even if there's a good chance Boyd won't become Beaumon, she's going to make sure.

We're so caught up in the Raylan vs Boyd, where Raylan realizes Boyd is not going to fall for their trap at the same time Boyd is realizing Raylan wouldn't allow the money to be moved in the way he expects, that we forget about Ava. 

I've expected Ava to bite it for almost two entire seasons now.  This is the final season and nearly every episode has echoed "never leave Harlan alive" in one form or another.  The suspense builds to where you're constantly worried about these characters while also fully expected them to bite it by the end. 

• Dewey's necklace appears again, but it doesn't have the effect I expected, unless we aren't done with it yet
• Boon is a creep man.  Just as the whole series is able to create tension on a macro level about whether Raylan, Boyd or Ava are going to survive, he's able to do it on a micro level, with two characters we've never seen before.  Just when I thought we were out of ways to make a henchman unique, we have this guy.  Then again, should I have been surprised?  Elmore Leonard wrote about 100 novels.
• Speaking of Mr. Leonard, we get a call back to Raylan enjoying vanilla ice cream.  Originally an item from the books, Justified dropped it in a few early episodes, namely when Raylan stops in a conveinence store in 'Riverbrook" and when he orders it when meeting Pinter in "Fixer".

"Burned" - Justified - 6-09

Things that got burned:

• Ava as an informant
• Wynn Duffy as a long ago rate
• Avery's pizza kitchen
• Zachariah's element of surprise

Other observations

• The number of people getting killed in these hotel rooms is getting out of control.
• Best use of a rock hammer since Shawshank
• Unsure why Zachariah had to throw that other guy down the shaft to get his shot at Boyd

The Party
In television, if a party is being thrown, it has the the benefit of bringing together a bunch of characters who normally wouldn't be in the same place.  In this case we have Markum's pizza party.  RSVP-ing yes to this we have Raylan, Markkum, Katherine, Loretta, Boyd, Ava and Boon.  We've seen smaller groups of this cast but never together.

Boon brings to mind The Gunfighter from early Season Three who fought with an ice pick until Raylann hilariously defeated him.

Anyways, it seemed like there would be a big event at the party as the second act of the season draws to a close.  Something that sets things in motion for the series' final four episodes. 

It may have been as simple as the Boyd-Loretta alliance.  When Loretta got up to speak, ending with approval from her fellow Harlanians (?) one had to think of Mags standing up to the coal company in Season Two.  She made a dramatic speech to Rebecca Creskoff's character, only to take the money herself later on. 

Something tells me Loretta would stay more true to the "Keep Harlan Weird" mantra that she spouted.

Community's back!

Dart: Personally, I don't own a tv.

Abed: You're the first person to say that I didn't immediately delete from my brain.