Game of Thrones 8x04: The Last of The Starks

It's the day after the night, and it's time to burn the dead and get drunk. Daenerys legitimizes Gendry and makes him Lord of Storm's End, so he immediately runs off to profess his love for Arya and propose to her. She turns him down, 'cause the sex was good, but he's no Podrick. Tormund downs enough liquid courage to finally make his move on Brienne, but Jaime's pretty thirsty, too, so he bangs the first lady knight, and Tormund settles for a Northern girl.

After the celebration, Daenerys literally begs Jon not to tell anyone he's the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, but he feels like he has to tell the Stark girls for some reason. Even though he swears her to secrecy, Sansa immediately blabs to Tyrion and starts scheming a way to get her ex-half-brother on the throne.

Daenerys, the dragons, and a small force head to Dragonstone via ship, but are ambushed by a small group of Euron's ships armed with dragon-killing ballistae. They kill Rhaegal, sink all her ships, and capture Missandei. The Dragon Queen is rightly pissed off since now she has no one left to announce her as Khaleesi and breaker of chains and whatnot, so she just wants to burn King's Landing to the ground. Tyrion tries to convince her not to do it, but she's not having it, so Varys thinks that she might not be the best person to rule the Seven Kingdoms after all. The gang heads out for a quick parley with Cersei, who has lined the walls of the city with ballistae as well. Qyburn comes out to deliver terms, but since he's not empowered to negotiate, Tyrion talks directly with his sister... who predictably ignores everything he has to say and has The Mountain chop Missandei's head off. Daenerys is super, crazy mad.


What I Liked
-"Now, which one of you cowards shit in my pants?" I'm really gonna miss Tormund.
-Everyone gets lucky. The North has been at war for so long and through so many different conflicts that I'd say at minimum, a solid 25% of its total male population has been killed. The Northern ladies probably haven't gotten laid on a regular basis since Ned Stark was alive.
-Varys still serves the realm above all else. He may be the last major character with any sense.

What I Hated
-Gendry asks Arya to marry him. That must have been some awesome sex because the two of them barely know each other and he's in love with her.
-Jon sends Ghost to live on a farm. I know CGI direwolves are expensive, but this is just ridiculous. Most people wouldn't get rid of a beloved pet without saying goodbye, and a "Good boy, Ghost, go with Tormund," would've been a hell of a lot better than the brief, sort of, but not really sad look we got.
-Euron Greyjoy's cloaking device returns. The whole sequence where Daenerys arrives at Dragonstone is stupid as hell.
-Tyrion still thinks he can convince his sister to do anything. He used to be a smart guy, but apparently Cersei has some kind of energy field around her that turns him into a total moron.
-Cersei still thinks she can rule the Seven Kingdoms. Her allies currently consist of Euron's fleet, whatever Lannisters might be left, Qyburn, and The Mountain. The Golden Company doesn't count because they're only hanging around because she paid them. Everyone else hates her. Her army certainly isn't large enough to intimidate people into following her, and she has no legal claim to the throne, so I'm not sure what she expects the outcome of all of this to be.


Final Thoughts
I understand why they needed to eliminate one of the dragons as well as another solid chunk of Daenerys' army, but they did it very, very poorly. Apparently scouts just aren't a thing in Westeros, but cloaking devices are. Also, Euron's forces scored three direct hits the very first time they ever fired at a flying target, but didn't think to shoot the other dragon, then machine-gunned all the enemy ships using some kind of off-camera quick-reload mechanism.

Still no word on Lord Royce or what Bran was doing in episode three. I swear if some deus ex machina force of Crannogmen or something rides to the rescue at the end of the next episode, I'll lose my shit.

I enjoyed this episode more than the previous one, but it still wasn't good. Turning Daenerys into a power-mad, vengeful lunatic seems like way too much of a departure. Her entire motivation is a bit messed up at this point. All that stuff about wanting to free the people and break the wheel has gone out the window, and now she just wants to kill Cersei so she can become Queen of Westeros. It doesn't matter to her that Jon has a better claim and he'd be a kind and just King, she wants to rule. She wants to rule shitty Westeros where winter lasts for years instead of installing her nephew as ruler and then heading back to Essos to be Queen of the big chunk of land she conquered over there. Her family could rule on both sides of the sea, but that makes too much sense, so she's probably gonna burn it all down and be queen of the ashes.

Game of Thrones 6x04: Book of the Stranger

Stories are beginning to merge, which is good, because there were too damn many of them at the start of the season. And, hey, no Dorne stuff again this week, which is always a plus.

The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
Missandei and Grey Worm aren't happy about it, but Tyrion has a big meeting and offers the masters of Slaver's Bay seven years to wean themselves off slavery. He seals the deal with some hookers because everyone likes hookers.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa's merry band now includes her older half-brother as they arrive at Castle Black to find that Jon has not actually buggered off. Brienne tells Davos and Melisandre that she executed Stannis and that she's still pissed about what they did to Renly. Later, a letter from Ramsay arrives telling Jon he has Rickon and trying to goad him into marching on Winterfell. They don't have enough men, but they'll figure it out somehow.


Hey, remember the Ironborn?
Theon's home, but Yara's not happy because she thinks he's there to claim the throne. Instead, he says he's just there to help her out at the upcoming kingsmoot.


Wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels
Littlefinger returns to the Vale with a present for Robin. He then suggests that Lord Royce leaked his travel plans to the Boltons, which is how Sansa wound up married to Ramsay. Robin's an idiot, so he believes Uncle Petyr and threatens to toss Royce through the moon door. To save his life, Royce grovels a little and Littlefinger suggests he should use his military experience to lead the Vale's armies up to Winterfell to save Sansa. Little Lord Arryn agrees and the civil war is officially back on.


Ramsay, Shitlord of Winterfell
Because he wasn't enough of an asshole, they show Ramsay eating an apple, which has apparently become movie and TV shorthand to demonstrate that someone is a huge dick. His guards bring Osha in, and she thinks she's there to play hide the sausage because Ramsay had her cleaned up. While she's about to hop on the train to bone town and simultaneously grab a knife from the table to kill him, he tells her how he tortured Theon and got him to tell him everything, including how Osha helped Bran and Rickon escape by killing a dude while he was distracted by her boobs. Ramsay then sticks his secret killing dagger into her neck and watches her bleed out while he finishes his apple.


The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
Margaery finally gets to talk to Loras. They've been gay-bashing him pretty severely for quite some time, and although Margaery tells him to stay strong, all he wants is for the beatings to stop. Back in the Red Keep, Tommen confesses to Cersei that he's been having regular chats with the High Sparrow. She then concocts a plan, which I'm 95% certain is going to involve some kind of double-cross. She suggests to Kevan and Olenna that the Tyrell army should attack the Faith Militant just before Margaery is to make her walk of atonement, while the Lannisters, city guards, and Kingsguard stand down to create plausible deniability. Everyone thinks it's a fantastic idea and agrees immediately.


The Widow Drogo
Daario and Jorah have arrived at Vaes Dothrak, and they know exactly where Daenerys is and how to get her out. Except, she doesn't want to go. Instead she stands before the Khals and allows them to pass judgement on her. They're not happy about her sass mouth, so they resolve to rape her a lot, at which point she flips over the cressets and burns them all to death. Then she waives her nudity clause and walks outside where everyone bows to her because she's fireproof.


What I Liked
-Tormund makes eyes at Brienne. She's not quite a bear, but any port in a storm.
-Littlefinger's got some kind of plan. I'm not sure it's a good one, but at least it's something.

What I Hated
-Even though they probably had a few days to discuss it, Tyrion didn't tell anyone else his plan. How did that even happen? "What we talk about at meeting?" "You'll find out at the meeting, that's why we're having the meeting."
-It took Davos way too long to ask what happened to Shireen and Stannis. He doesn't have any work to do, so I have no idea how it didn't come up.
-Ramsay's letter was delivered by a courier almost immediately after Sansa and co. arrived. If someone could just ride after them and catch up when they had a decent head start, I don't know why he didn't just send a bunch of guys to catch her. It's not like he didn't know exactly where she was going.
-Killing the Khals was way too easy. Only two guards outside? No windows? Doors that can be barred without any difficulty whatsoever? Every Khal in one room at the same time. It's astonishing that it took this long for someone to kill them all. They're a marauding horde that's been rampaging across Essos for centuries, and their whole leadership could've been taken out by the twenty good men Ramsay used to burn Stannis' tents, or whoever it was who burned all of the ships in the Meereen harbour.
-All the Dothraki bow to Daenerys. Even the ones on the other side of the building who can't see what's going on.

Final Thoughts
They're called cressets, people. Braziers are for heat, not light.

Something that's begun to bother me recently about this show is that loyalty only seems to work to the advantage of really terrible people. To be sure, it doesn't always work for them, but it seems to work for them exclusively. The knights of the Vale are more than willing to kill Lord Royce on the whims of a slow, sickly boy, just because he happens to be their Lord. Whereas the Lords of the North are willing to betray anyone at any time for any reason... except for Ramsay. They'll get eaten alive by wildlings before they'll betray Ramsay. Because reasons.

Speaking of Ramsay, we know he's a shitlord. It's pretty much his only character trait. They don't need to keep reminding us at this point.

Presumably, a substantial portion of the Dothraki won't follow Daenerys because they enjoy the whole raping and pillaging thing, and she did just murder their leaders. But, that would make sense, so it's completely plausible that the writers will have the whole horde follow her without question. Once again, I have to ask why she would ever want to go back to Westeros. She now has a big enough army to forcefully end slavery forever, and she can rule a big chunk of Essos from her giant pyramid in Meereen. Why go to Westeros where the weather's not nearly as nice and she'd have to deal with constant threats to her rule?

What the hell did Jon do between the end of the last episode and the start of this one. It seemed like he was walking out the front gate, but I guess he realized it was chilly and he didn't have a coat, so he turned around and came right back. That must've been embarrassing.

Supposedly in good weather it takes about a month to get from Winterfell to Castle Black. But since people move at the speed of plot, it seems like they're right next to each other.

I'm having real trouble envisioning a situation where Cersei and Jaime don't double-cross the Tyrells. Cersei seemed entirely too pleased with her plan, and everyone agreed to it far too readily. But, unless it's some kind of double-double-cross, I'm going to be pretty ticked. Lady Olenna has shown herself to be pretty damned devious, so having her go down to such an obvious trick will seem entirely out of character. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Maybe it'll all work out, and the annoying and pointless Faith Militant storyline will end just as rapidly as the annoying and pointless Dorne storyline did.

This season's just not doing it for me, yet. At least they've sped things up a bit, and they're focusing more of the show on people whose motivations are clear and whose goals make sense.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 1x04: Eye Spy

A bunch of guys in red masks with briefcases chained to their arms ride the subway in Stockholm. A girl knocks out the lights, kicks all their asses and steals one briefcase. Inside are a bunch of diamonds.

They search the interbutts and find a picture of the thief. Her name is Akela Amador, and she was a SHIELD agent who Coulson trained, and who everyone thought was dead. Also she has mind-powers. She sells the diamonds to a guy in Belarus, who gives her a key card.

The team tracks her down, but while Coulson and Ward go searching, she finds the van with Fitzsimmons and Skye and rams them over a ledge. They discover a video feed coming from an implant in her head. They also discover that someone's controlling her. May wants to call in and get a tac team, but Coulson won't let her.

May finds Amador via the video feed, and after the two of them fight, Coulson arrives and knocks her out with a tranquilizer dart. Then they use some Mission Impossible glasses to mimic the signal and send in Ward to finish Amador's mission.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that neither one is a surgeon, Fitzsimmons remove Amador's implant so the failsafe inside can't kill her.

Things go awry for Ward when Amador's orders come in.

Instead of seducing him, Ward knocks out the guard, then completes the mission, which was to look at something. On his way out of the building, an alarm goes off, but he handles the guards pretty easily. Coulson tracks down Amador's handler, but when he tries to stop him, the guy's eye explodes. He was a redundant safety, and the real bad guy is still out there.

The implant is safely removed, Amador is arrested by SHIELD agents, and Coulson promises she'll get a fair trial. For the first time in years, she goes to sleep without anyone watching her.

What I Liked
-Amador hides the diamonds in phony golf balls that dissolve when she pours water on them. That's kinda neat.
-Skye calls Coulson AC because it's cooler. Slater agrees.

What I Hated
-Some people took pictures with their phones, but mainly, everyone ignores the guys in the red masks. In this case, they were transporting diamonds, but in general, they would've been terrorists or bank robbers. If I see a bunch of guys in similar outfits get on a subway and they're not a sports team, I'm getting off and waiting for the next train. But maybe that's just me.
-There are aliens from other dimensions, super soldiers of various types, and a giant green rage monster, but everyone thinks ESP is ridiculous. I'm guessing mutants don't exist in this chunk of the Marvel universe because Fox still has the rights to the X-Men. It still makes no sense that no one would even consider it, though.
-Fitzsimmons are still ridiculous nerds. No real nerd, no matter how nerdy would care about visiting a town near the birthplace of a Nobel prize-winning physicist. That's just stupid.
-Amador and Coulson share a very touching, emotional conversation. Except we just met her, and the dialogue was terrible, so I don't care.
-More crap about Coulson being a zombie or a robot or something. It's really not all that interesting a mystery.
-Someone paid $30 million to get access to a room filled with strange, possibly alien writing, and SHIELD isn't sending in 100 guys to subdue and interrogate everyone? Why the hell not?
-They don't have a medic onboard. They've needed minor medical attention before, but this is the first time where it's been really obvious that they need a surgeon on the team. Ron Glass played a doctor in the pilot; they should bring him back.

Final Thoughts
Directed by Roxann Dawson. I wondered what she'd been up to lately. Not very hard, but I wondered.

This was not a good episode. After the previous one where they did some minor fancy science stuff and created a supervillain, I was hopeful. Then this week they just became bad NCIS again. Or actually, I suppose it's kind of a cross between NCIS and Fringe or maybe The X-Files. Of course, it's not as good as any of those shows. Regardless, why even bother having the Marvel licence if they're not going to use it?

This episode also really showed off how bad some of the acting is. They should probably kill off half the characters and find better actors to replace them.

The show in general hasn't really given me any reason to watch it thus far. The plots are dull, the action is poor, and the characters aren't very compelling. It's still early, but they're mainly ridiculous caricatures. I also don't care about the long-running plots. Skye isn't an interesting character, so I don't care what shadowy business she's up to, and the frequent allusions to the fact that Coulson's a clone or whatever are more annoying than mysterious. Yes, he's somehow different after Loki stabbed him. BFD.

I'm still going to watch a few more episodes, but after the next one, I'm not sure I'll review any more unless the show gets a lot better.

The Crazy Ones 1x04: The Breakfast Burrito Club

Sydney is a workaholic and Simon is forcing her to take a vacation to Hawaii.

But they get a call from a client and need to find an advertising idea fast, so she changes her flight, and they all start talking about burritos.

They can't find an idea, so Sydney busts out the Creativity Binder.

But the topic turns to relationships instead of work. Zach likes a girl for the first time. Andrew's back with his ex, who makes him wear cardigans, which he hates. So Simon gets him to burn it to pacify the gods of creativity.

The ensuing sprinkler downpour soaks Sydney and Andrew and they have to change clothes, which leads to Andrew wearing a track suit from a Pringles campaign.

And to him kissing her. She quickly shoves him off, because they're buddies. He thinks he's destroyed everything.

Simon still has no ideas, so he goes back to the diner where he used to work to get his creativity flowing.

He still can't come up with anything, so they give up and try to enjoy the night. Lauren performs some of her poetry, Andrew chats with his girlfriend on the phone, and Zach invites his lady to the diner and realizes he hates her. It's all so magical.

Father and daughter have a talk about how she needs to find a life outside of work so she doesn't wind up like him. She wonders aloud if Andrew cheated on his girlfriend with her, which gives her dad an idea.

And the day is saved.

What I Liked
-Sarah Michelle Gellar draws really good circles.

It's not the most useful talent in the world, but it's still kinda neat.

-The firefighters have to ask Simon if he's sexually aroused by starting fires. That's an excellent question that all men should be asked at some point in their lives.
-After he kisses Sydney, Andrew realizes that he's going to have to call HR on himself. They don't like it when you do that. It's weird.
-Lauren doesn't think either Sydney or Andrew is good enough for one another. That really does happen sometimes.
-"Adultery and breakfast: Together at last." Getting breakfast together when you're having an affair is really hard.

What I Hated
-Simon goes straight to Hitler when talking about people he hasn't met but still hates. That's fine, but it's not funny. There must've been a hundred people they could've listed that would've elicited a laugh.
-The sweater burns ridiculously quickly. Like it was doused in kerosene or something.

Final Thoughts
Robin Williams vacillates a bit between manic and maudlin in this episode. I hope that's in the script and he's not off his meds or something.

They spent this week doing a bit of character development, which is good. We learned that Andrew and Sydney are friends outside of work, Sydney's a workaholic, Simon used to be a fry cook, Lauren's bisexual, and Zach likes women but he doesn't really like women. After four episodes, the characters are getting some solid definition, and in the future their personalities can be a source of humour, rather than just relying on gags.

As for the content of this episode, I liked it reasonably well. The cleansing fire setting off the sprinklers gag has been done before, but they did some good visual stuff, and even managed to rein in Williams' performance a tad.

Castle 6x04: Number One Fan

A woman wakes up in her apartment with her boyfriend dead on the floor and the cops at the door. She bails out the window and takes hostages at a local dentist's office.

She asks specifically for Castle to come down to negotiate because she's a big fan of his work and wants him to clear her name.

Beckett's there, so she gets to help, too.

Although the guys don't appreciate being ordered around by someone who's not their boss anymore.

Turns out the lady is crazy and has killed before, so Castle's in trouble.

And the hostages are getting antsy.

But Castle still believes she's innocent.

And has an epiphany after he's accidentally shot: He knows who the real killer is.

This lawyer bribed a clerk to unseal some court records.

Because this, rich, powerful dude is the woman's father, who put her up for adoption when she was born.

The lawyer is also his son-in-law, and didn't want the woman coming after his wife's inheritance, so he framed her.

After the lawyer confesses, the rich guy convinces the Commish to rehire Beckett, and everyone is happy.

What I Liked
-Sully points out that Castle should be happy he didn't get hobbled.

He's a funny guy, that Sully. I hope they kill him last.

-A meaty chunk falls from Sully's desk and Castle thinks it was once a bagel. Hee-hee.
-Esposito and Ryan give Sully the stink eye for laughing at Castle's bad jokes. He still has a lot to learn.

What I Hated
-Beckett doesn't know what to do with herself since she says she hasn't been unemployed since she was 15. That's not true. She turned in her badge at the end of season four. Albeit for like three days. Which iS probably about as long as she was unemployed this time.
-Pi is still on the show.

I would've sworn that his home planet would've needed him by now.

Final Thoughts
Hey, Lanie got some screen time. She's been on the show less than Pi so far this season.

At the beginning of the episode, Beckett no longer has a job, and Castle doesn't work as a consultant for the police anymore (for reasons that haven't been explained) and yet they both get to hang around the station all the time and solve murders anyway. That seems a bit strange. Not that it really matters, since at the end of the episode she gets her job back and he gets to come back and consult, thereby restoring the status quo after a mere four episodes. I'm beginning to wonder what the point of having her take the job in DC was in the first place. Maybe the writers were friends with TV's Lisa Edelstein and she needed some work.

So that's twice now that Beckett has left the NYPD at the end of a season, only to come back at the beginning of the next one. The show's only been on for five seasons, that's not nearly enough for them to be repeating plot points already. Not that there's any undoing it now, but it would've been nice if they'd given Beckett a good six-episode arc in DC before she got fired. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd be back in New York at some point, but I didn't think it would be so quick and so clean. Detective Beckett is fine, but we've seen her. Unemployed Beckett or Consultant Beckett, or back to law school Beckett could've been fun. Or they could've sucked. TV shows don't really take chances these days.

As for this particular episode, it was way too convoluted for my tastes. The killer unsealed the crazy hostage-taking lady's adoption records so he could frame her for murder, so there was no chance she could come after any inheritance from her wealthy father, who also happened to be the killer's father-in-law. That's pretty complex, which makes it all the more strange that they managed to solve the case in one day. The whole #1 Fan thing was a neat idea, but it was a bit underdeveloped because they had a whole lot of stuff to squeeze in to try to semi-explain the plot. After the initial phone conversation, she could've been any run-of-the-mill hostage taker and it wouldn't have made much difference at all.

Hawaii Five-0 4x04: A ia la aku

Adam and Kono beat up a Yakuza dude.

Back in Hawaii, a bride runs away from her wedding to the scion of a wealthy family and gets in an accident.

Someone boots her off a cliff.

The team investigates a murder at the hotel where the wedding was being held.

When the bride saw the future dead guy, she bolted.

The gun used to kill him came from a small-time punk.

It turns out the dead guy and the bride were brother and sister and ran cons all over Europe, tricking rich dudes out of their money. They got pinched, and the brother just got out of prison.

Chin finds the bride and they medivac her to a hospital.

The family lawyer was behind it all. He ran a background check and was going to blackmail the bride after the wedding. Also, Rebecca De Mornay looks okay for her age.

The lawyer did it all for the money.

After reading the bride's hand-written vows, the groom decides he still loves her, and they get married.

Danny breaks up with Gabby.

Catherine comes home from her first day of work, and McGarrett thinks maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let her work with Billy.

What I Liked
-Adam punches the Yakuza guy in the face after shooting him in the leg. That's cold.
-The other theatre goers and their girlfriends give the guys crap for talking at the movies.

They're going to go to the special hell.

What I Hated
-Chin rides his motorcycle without a helmet. Sure, his hair looks awesome, but that's dangerous.

Always wear your brain bucket, kids.

-They brought Gabby back just to have Danny break up with her. I hate the relationship nonsense on this show so very much. And what the heck happened to Leilani?

Final Thoughts
How in the damn hell did the girl's brother get ahead of her on the road? She ran away from the wedding and then burned rubber out of there without evening taking off her dress. And what was his plan if she hadn't driven off into the middle of nowhere and wrecked? A head-on collision? It makes no sense.

Sometimes these shows blur together, but I think this may be the second time that they've done an episode where the wife had a secret past as a conwoman and her old partner wanted a cut of the action. It's a really common trope at this point, though, so I can't be sure. It's kinda lame either way.

Still not caring much about what happens to Adam and Kono. The only way they can get me to care is if they can get Sang involved somehow. It wouldn't be too hard. He *was* a snakehead, and they *are* in Hong Kong after all.

So much bullshit relationship drama this week. This show is becoming Grey's Anatomy. I suppose they managed two of the three Bs...

Men like boobs.

but that doesn't make up for all the whiny drivel. Witty banter is great. Whiny banter sucks. Also, the whole "I don't want to be the guy who holds back her career" thing is way overdone. If you love someone, it's okay to be a little selfish and say you'd like 'em to stick around. Love is rare, and you shouldn't let it go so easily.