Selfie: A T.V. Show That Should've Been a Movie

I am admittedly a little confused about this.  I didn’t even realize that Karen Gillan was starring in a new T.V. show until I stumbled upon this, quite by accident, via BBC America.  Well, really, it was via the Doctor Who fan page on Facebook.

Either way, I was excited to watch the trailer because I’m pretty much excited to see anything Karen Gillan’s pretty face is in.  I was, however, undeniably confused and little underwhelmed.  First of all, this entire thing looks like it should be a movie, not a T.V. show.  It has the flow and plot of a fun, throwaway movie like When in Rome or Confessions of a Shopoholic, both of which are movies that I adore, but neither of which Kristin Bell nor Isla Fischer are really known for.  Well, I guess maybe Isla Fischer, a little bit, but you see my point.

The modern day My Fair Lady thing is cute and I see you trying to make this relatable by using social media to replace Eliza’s cockney accent, ABC.  I’m just not sure what the target audience is meant to be, here.  Were this a movie, I would definitely sit down and devote 1.5 hours or so of my life to watching it.  It looks cute, I get to stare at Karen Gillan, and it’s always fun to see Harold in something different.

As a T.V. show?  You’ve lost my interest almost immediately.  I have no desire to drag out what could and should be crammed into an hour and a half as a television series.  It’d be like taking Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and making it into a T.V. show.  Literally, no one would care.  No one.  Actually, I think more people would care about that, than this.

And I don’t care about this.  Plus, I don’t think it would hurt to dial Karen’s vernacular back a bit.  Do real people actually speak in hashtags, unironically?  I sincerely hope not.  I will say, though, that Karen’s American accent is pretty spot on.  If you didn’t already know she’s Scottish, you’d have no idea.  Not that the American accent is particularly hard to master, but I’ve seen plenty of English/Irish/Scottish/Australian/etc. actors and actresses whose American accents are terrible because their native accents are so strong (I’m looking at you, Gerard Butler).

And what happens once Eliza is sufficiently “My Fair Lady’d”?  How many seasons will that take and, once she is, then what?  The whole point of the show is that she’s a vapid social media-ite.  Once she’s transformed into a non-vapid social media-ite, what is the point of the show?

Maybe people will buy into this and maybe they’ll like it, but I would be surprised if it makes it a full season.  Or past the pilot.  Sorry, Karen.  I love you dearly, but this looks ridiculous.  Thank god you’re in Guardians of the Galaxy so I can watch you in something fun and interesting, other than Doctor Who.

Once Upon a Time: Season 3 Finale

So, the finale.  There were things I loved about the finale, things I was indifferent to and things I hated.  We’ll start with the things I loved.  First and foremost, and probably most obvious, Emma and Hook!  Finally!  I’ll admit, I was initially skeptical of this ship.  I liked Neal, back when he was alive, and the idea of a rekindled romance with Emma was sort of sweet, especially since he was Henry’s dad.  However, as time wore on (particularly after Season Three in which Hook and Emma make out for second on Peter Pan’s Death Island) I became more and more supportive of the Emma/Hook pairing.  And then Neal died and all our wishes came true!

Hooray!

Let's just revel in that for a moment, shall we?  Yes, let's.

Ah, that's better.  OTPs coming to fruition are a beautiful thing.  Of course, everyone seems to have sort of forgotten about Neal relatively quickly, but whatever.  I can live with that.  He sold his ship to find her.  Neal never sold a fucking ship.  Fuck Neal.  Moving on.

The whole Back to the Future vibe throughout the episode was a lot of fun.  Also, I think it as cool for Emma to be able to see all of these people she knows in their natural environments.  She got to see her parents fall in love, got to see Rumpelstiltskin in all his weird, glittery glory, got to see Belle in the early stages of her affection for Rumpel, etc.  And she got to kick around with Hook the entire time!  Ten points to Gryffindor the writers!

I was relatively indifferent to the marriage of Rumpel and Belle, speaking of.  I felt like I should have been more d'awwww, but I just wasn't.  I mean, I guess it was a long time in the making and it was sort of sweet and all, but you know Belle’s going to find out that the dagger he gave her is a fake and she’s going to want a fairy divorce, or something.  I know they had to get rid of Zelena (who I was very sad to see go, I might add) but did it have to be Rumpel again?  Can’t this guy just catch a break and be decent for a good, long while?  I was vaguely annoyed by his rambling on at the wedding about how he couldn't understand what Belle saw in him and why she loved him, yadda yadda, after having done the exact opposite of what he’d promised Belle he’d do, and lying to her about the dagger, to boot.

Yeah, none of us can understand why she loves your lying ass either, Rumpel.

Also, I enjoyed Hook punching himself in the face because he was making out with Emma.  That was the weirdest, cutest bit of jealousy I’ve seen in a while.

I hated, absolutely hated the fact that the chick in Regina’s dungeon turned out to be Marian.  Did not see that one coming, like at all.  And I am pissed off, man.  Finally, FINALLY Regina has learned to love again and has her heart, etc.  She’s not a bad guy anymore and actually saved the town by breaking the curse with Henry and so forth.  She and Emma are getting along as well as can be expected, given the circumstances, she’s been helping the Charmings and then BOOM.  Boyfriend’s dead wife shows up and he is overwhelmed with happiness.  Way to go, Emma.  Life ruiner.

And now the flux capacitor is busted and I’m all out of plutonium, so we’ll never be able to get up to 1.21 gigawatts of power to send that bitch back to hell from whence she came.  Nice going.

I guess with the elation of a well deserved ship being made canon, they had to throw us a curve ball that sort of ripped out hearts out.  Shocker that Regina gets to be the punching bag for that.  So, now we find ourselves sort of back to the beginning.  It seems inevitable that Regina is going to struggle all next season with good vs. evil.  We know she's capable of good - she defeated Zelena with it.  But, this is twice, now, that she's suffered in love and you have to wonder - can Regina ever just be happy?  It's like she The Doctor, or something.

But, I was still riding pretty high on Hook and Emma, and waiting excitedly for next season's villain to be introduced.  Oh, look!  There's that vase thingy.  I figured that might be important.  Okay, blue stuff is spilling out into Zelena's witch portal floor carvings.  Okay, a figure is taking shape.  She's wearing a blu-... wait a second, is that a braid?  Did she just hand flare ice curly q's?  Is that...?

What the fuck.  

I love Frozen to distraction, really.  I know all of the songs, I love Olaf and Elsa.  I love it.  But, this seemed like such blatant pandering that is seriously irritated me.  I mean, they could have done Maleficent.  Why aren't they doing Maleficent?!  I know the movie is about to come out and everything, but Maleficent is an established Disney villain.  She's been around since 1959, kids.  She's old school and she's fucking awesome.  Plus, Maleficent is a villain.  Elsa isn't really a villain, she's just a poor, dumb kid who can't control her ice powers.

I realize they're trying to ride out the popularity of Frozen, but what the hell are you going to do with Elsa to make her a villain?  I know they change the stories a lot (Peter Pan, for example) but... I mean, don't kids watch Once Upon a Time?  My daughter likes to watch it with me sometimes, because it's pretty family oriented and usually not particularly scary.  If they turn Elsa into a bad guy, though, I won't be able to let her watch, because Frozen is one of her favorite movies, right now, and she won't get it.

That entirely aside, though, it just struck me as exceptionally pandering and silly.  Disney has tons of established villains that we would all have been happy with (did I mention Maleficent?)  and, instead, OUaT decided to ride the coattails of Frozen's success and just beat a dead horse with it.

I watch enough Frozen around my house as it is.  I don't want it bleeding over into my other T.V. shows, man.

Game of Thrones: Thoughts on "Spoilers."

GAME OF THRONES

Season 4, Episode 4

"Oathkeeper"

I only used quotations around the word "spoilers" in the title because my husband insisted that what happened on Sunday night's Game of Thrones episode, Oathkeeper, was not a spoiler because it hadn't technically even been written, yet.

I disagree, so I Googled the definition of spoilers, because that is a thing you can actually do now.  Here's what Wikipedia said:

A spoiler is an element of a disseminated summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot elements which threaten to give away important details concerning the turn of events of a dramatic episode. Typically, the details of the conclusion of the plot, including the climax and ending, are especially regarded as spoiler material. It can also be used to refer to any piece of information regarding any part of a given media that a potential consumer would not want to know beforehand. Because enjoyment of fiction depends a great deal upon the suspense of revealing plot details through standard narrative progression, the prior revelation of how things will turn out can "spoil" the enjoyment that some consumers of the narrative would otherwise have experienced. Spoilers can be found in message boards, articles, reviews, commercials, and movie trailers.

Suck on THAT, husband.

Anyway, this post on my unpopular blog isn't so much a recap of Oathkeeper, but more a discussion with myself of, not only the spoiler at the end of the episode, but also of the what-the-hell-is-happening-here? story line that is currently taking place with Bran Stark.

I'll begin there and work my way up to the spoiler that my husband says isn't a spoiler and is wrong about.

So.  Bran, Meera, Jojen and Hodor are at Craster's place with the crazy, possibly cannibalistic rapists.  When last we visited Craster's, the crazy, possibly cannibalistic rapists had made the decision that murdering both Craster and also Jeor Mormont was a good idea.  They put that plan into action, Sam RUNNOFT with Gilly and her baby to face down white walkers in the woods and the usurpers were left to it.

Comparatively speaking, Craster's daughter-wives had it way better when he was still kicking around.  They are being pretty regularly raped and beaten, probably starved - who knows what else?  At least Craster seemed less consistent.  Fortunately, we don't spend a great deal of time having to make ourselves too familiar with the atmosphere at Craster's.  It's rape-y.  We get it.

Anyway, back to Bran.  So, someone leaves the baby boy of Craster's daughter-wife in the woods for the white walkers, because that's what they're supposed to do.  Bran and his group are not far away and hear the baby crying.  Bran goes to investigate, via Summer, who then falls into some sort of trap that I'm not certain these guys holed up in Craster's would be capable of making, because I'm not sure that they're capable of much of anything.

Long story short, Bran, Meera, Jojen and Hodor end up being captured by That Guy Who Drinks From Jeor Mormont's Skull and he demands to know who they are.  His friends outside are getting all stabby with Hodor, which makes me sad and is requiring Kristian Nairn to do more acting than they've let him do since the show started.

Jojen has a conveniently timed seizure, which prompts Bran to admit that he's Brandon Stark of Winterfell so that T.G.W.D.F.J.M.S. won't slit Meera's throat, or something.  The vagrant rapists are pleased by this development.

The thing is: none of this shit ever happened.  Like, ever.

I don't remember if Bran and Company are ever anywhere near Craster's while they're traveling, but they sure as hell don't go there and get captured.  You know what else never happened? Jon Snow going back to Craster's to dispense with the rabble.  Jon gets back to Castle Black after he leaves Ygritte and the Wildings and that's that.  He doesn't leave again, friends.

I can only assume that this is being done to elongate Isaac Hempstead-Wright's appearances in the upcoming seasons, because Bran is completely absent throughout all of A Feast for Crows, along with lots of other POV characters.  Martin did this because the timelines were becoming copious and Bran shows back up in A Dance With Dragons, along with all the other missing people.  Still, I hate it when they go so far off into left field and fabricate things that never happened.  I realize GRRM is working with HBO and I'm sure he had a had in it all, but yeah.  None of that happens.

Now on to the spoiler.  Frankly, it isn't as if logic wouldn't lead you to this conclusion on your own.  Why in the world would white walkers be killing babies, after all.  It only makes sense that they would be taking them to make more white walkers out of them.  But, still.  That revelation has not been written or even approached in any of the books, so far.  It hasn't been written.

And, in the aftermath of the episode, I have seen a lot of take-that-you-smug-book-readers type comments and blog posts.  So, let me focus on the "smug book readers" part for a second, because while that is sometimes meant in jest, it's oftentimes meant as a shot at the people who have read the books.  This, because we always know what is coming up and like to do things like film your reaction to The Red Wedding.  Here are my personal solutions to this problem:

1.     If you've read the books and your friend/spouse/partner/grandma/whatever has not and they are watching Game of Thrones with you, don't be a douche.  Sure, it's fun to see their reactions to things like The Red Wedding and the sweet, sweet justice of Joffrey being poisoned at his wedding, but tone it down.  Discuss it with them them afterward, maybe.  Don't say shit like, "oh my god you're going to freak out after this episode."  That spoils the fun of the surprise.  Sure, they don't know what is happening in this episode, but now they know that something is happening, and that takes some of the fun out of it.  And don't be a smug asshole on purpose.  There's no reason to act like you're better than anyone because you know the plot and they don't.  That doesn't even make sense.

2.    If you've never read the books and your friend/spouse/partner/grandma/whatever has, please keep in mind that this is fun for us.  If I had to guess, we probably encouraged you to read the books, right?  We told you that they're really good and you should try them out and you just weren't into it for whatever reason.  So, this T.V. show is a way for us to share a really good series of books that we really like with you.  Now, we get to see how you react to things (the same way we would if you were reading the series, I might add) and we can discuss things with you up until a certain point.  This is cool for us.  We may be a little overzealous, but we don't mean to be (most of us, anyway). 

Now, the spoiler itself in this episode was problematic for me because of the fact that it's something Martin hasn't actually included in any of the currently published books in the series, yet.  So, clearly, it's meant to be revealed later on in an as yet unwritten (or, at least, unpublished) book in the series.  This is an issue for me because I read the books, first and foremost.  My loyalties, I guess you'd say, lie with them, not the T.V. show.  So, when the T.V. show which hasn't even made it all the way through the fucking third book starts dropping spoiler bombs on revelations that haven't been written into the series yet and are major fucking information, regardless of how logical a conclusion it might have been - I have a problem with that.

I understand HBO's concern that they're going to catch up with GRRM considering the glacial pace of his book publication.  A Dance With Dragons was published in 2011, for Christ's sake.  If you look back at the publication dates in the series, Martin clearly has no problem with leaving his readers hanging for five or six years at a time.  But, that's another post for another time.

Anyway, I was thrown out of my comfort zone by the revelation in Oathkeeper and still haven't quite settled in.  I don't like the idea of the T.V. show giving me more information that the books themselves, but I suppose it's obviously something that is possible and, if I want to keep watching Game of Thrones (which I do), I'll just have to get on board.

Fandoms is hard.

Game of Thrones: Season 4, Episode 3

A Brief Message About Screencapped.net:

 

So, let me start off by saying that I can't post any screen caps.  Why?  Because Screncapped.net has gotten hit with a DCMA claim for screen capping Game of Thrones.  I am not even fucking kidding you.  They are being taken to task for providing screen caps of the show.  Screen caps that people will use for things like this recap, like fan graphics (icons, wallpapers, journal headers, etc.), like things posted on Tumblr - basically things that further and support the show by cultivating the fandom.

But, because HBO (to my knowledge) is being a bunch of assholes, Screencapped.net cannot post Game of Thrones, True Blood or How To Make It In America screencaps.  So, firstly, fuck off, HBO, and get your head out of your ass.  Secondly, should anyone come across this entry, please check out this petition and sign it to, hopefully, bring back the quality screen caps of these shows that Screencapped.net was able to provide.

GAME OF THRONES

Season 4, Episode 3

"Breaker of Chains"

  

There are always spoilers.

So, Joffrey died.  Which we all know and no one, anywhere, is sad about.  Moving on.

This week, people are recovering from the shock of Joffrey dying.  Namely, Cersei is convinced that Tyrion is responsible.  If you've read the books, you know who is responsible and, frankly, I'm not entirely sure why that wasn't revealed when Sansa left with Littlefinger, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We begin with Cersei flipping her actual shit first that Tyrion apparently murdered her son and second that Sansa has gone missing in the turmoil.  Being that Cersei is consistently looking for a reason to imprison her brother and/or just generally make his life miserable, she immediately demands that he be locked in the Black Cells, to the objection of literally no one.

Jaime seems generally unfazed by these developments, at least in comparison to Cersei, and Tywin is just pragmatic and Tywin-y, as usual.  Sansa is being led through the streets of King's Landing with Ser Dontos, who takes her to a little boat and tells her to get in.  They arrive at a ship upon which just so happens to be Petyr Baelish, who is made about a thousand times creeper than he should be by Aiden Gillan's portrayal.  Seriously, he makes Littlefinger seems like so much more of a weirdo that I got the impression he was in the books.  I mean, he's creepy, but Aiden Gillan makes him seem serial killer creepy.

Anyway, Sansa gets onto the ship and Littlefinger predictably murders Ser Dontos because witnesses and, besides, he was just doing it for the gold and who gives a fuck about Ser Dontos?  No one, obviously.  After minimal persuading, Sansa pretty much forgets about Ser Dontos' brutal killing and immerses herself in a conversation along the lines of what the fuck is going on here?  Littlefinger is unsurprisingly vague, so the audience has no idea what is up or where he's taking her.

I'll give you a hint.  It's to The Eyrie.

Margaery is super pissed that Joffrey was inconsiderate enough to die before consummating their marriage, because now she isn't the queen and that stupid, stupid Cersei is the queen regeant again because Tommen is now the king.  She and Olenna have another of their delightful political intrigue conversations in which Olenna points out that Margaery is in a much better situation than she was when she was married to Renly Baratheon.  Margaery assumes she's just cursed because all of her husbands have been murdered.  She might be on to something.

And now, on to the single most disturbing and gratuitous portion of the show:  The Incestuous Rape of Cersei Lannister.

Seriously, what in the fuck?  That scene technically sort of takes place in the book.  They do have sex in the sept, but it isn't rapey.  Like... at all.  Cersei is sort of meekly protesting, not because they're fucking six inches away from the corpse of their psychopathic son, but because they are in the sept and it's a holy place and blah blah the gods.  Although, I'm pretty sure Joffrey is lying in state in the book.  Still, the sex is consensual, although Cersei is sort of halfheartedly saying, "Jaime, we really shouldn't do this here... oh fuck it, nevermind, YES YES YES!"  Jaime isn't present in King's Landing when Joffrey dies (he isn't at the wedding) and so Cersei sees him for the first time, I believe, when he comes to her in the sept.  There hadn't been weeks of angry, sexual tension building up to a rape scene tied up with a bow.

Aside from the totally unnecessary rape, this also irritated me because of what it does to Jaime's character.  I think I saw someone elsewhere pointing out the fact (which I agree with) that Jaime is the same man who murdered the Targaryen king because he was, among many other nefarious things, a rapist and murderer and it had to stop.  Jaime knowingly broke his vows and killed the king to save the lives of thousands upon thousands, knowing that it would disgrace him and follow him for the rest of his life.  Jaime is not a rapist and certainly isn't going to rape his own sister.

I've read a few responses to the scene from the folks at HBO and was less than impressed, frankly.  I think one of them actually said something along the lines of, "It becomes consensual by the end..."  Did it?  Because I was under the assumption that a women struggling and saying, "Stop it," were the opposite of consent.  GRRM made a comment about the dynamic between Jaime and Cersei being different because of the fact that, on the show, Jaime has been in King's Landing for weeks and lots of weird, sexual tension, and just regular tension, has built up with Cersei rebuffing his advances, etc.  However, I'm still not really sure what, if anything, was necessary about the rape aspect of that scene and it didn't sit well with me, frankly.

Anyway, after Jaime rapes his sister next to their son's dead body, the entire episode had basically hit rock bottom.  Up near the Wall, Sam is concerned that Gilly is going to be mistreated by the dudes at Castle Black, so he decides that taking her to live in a brothel is preferable.  Let me stop here to interject that this never happened in the book and I have no idea why HBO felt the need to put it into the show.  Sam and Gilly eventually leave Castle Black, but that isn't until A Feast for Crows, when Sam (along with Gilly and Mance Rayder's baby - long story) is sent to Oldtown.  Maester Aemon accompanies him and ends up dying on the boat at some point, if I remember correctly.

In the show, however, for some weird reason, Sam decides to send Gilly and her baby to a house of ill repute so he can go back to Castle Black and not worry about her being raped.  I have no idea where they are going with this story line.  Literally, none.

The Thenns and the Wildings are out murdering innocent people because these people obviously had everything to do with "their land" being stolen.  Amidst the fray, Mr. Thenn murders some poor child's parents in front of him, then tells the child he's going to eat his dead parents and instructs him to go to Castle Black to tell everyone they're coming.  Jon realizes that he might have made a major tactical error in telling Mance's people that there were 1,000 men at the Wall (although, none of the Wildings really seemed to believe that) when there are just under 100, and that includes all the menial labor fuck ups.  So, basically, Castle Black is seriously boned.

Arya's still with The Hound and some poor, hapless farmer takes them in because Arya tells him The Hound is her father and that he fought for House Tully.  The Hound acts like a dick, because that's really all he knows how to do, and after the guy sets them up for the night and The Hound agrees to work for him (I'm still a little confused by why he did that) he cracks him over the head and makes off with his money.  He very pragmatically, if impatiently, explains to Arya that the man and his daughter will be dead come winter, which is probably true, and that money does no good to dead men.

Arya proclaims him the biggest shit anywhere ever.

Somewhere in there, Stannis is pissed because Ser Davos let Gendry go and obviously the Red God's blood magic is a powerful thing that works, because both Robb Stark and Joffrey are now dead, which is what Stannis wished for with his wish leeches.  Stannis rambles on in a threatening manner for a second when Davos tells him he's rallied three shitty houses to his cause and then that scene ends because even HBO knows that everyone hates Davos Seaworth.

Across the way in Essos, Daenerys Targaryen, First of Her Name, is majorly pissed off at the people of Meereen.  Not only did they string up a bunch of dead people on the way to their city, but they basically tell Daenerys to fuck off when she shows up at the gates, as if no one has any knowledge of what happened to Astapor and Yunkai.  Daenerys decides, wisely, that inciting a slave rebellion will seriously help her cause, so she makes a moving speech and then catapults a bunch of barrels full of slave collars and heavy metal manacles at the city.  These barrels burst and spill slave paraphernalia all over the streets, which miraculously injure no one, planting the seed in the heads of the slaves that they can just kill all their masters, because they outnumber them, and because they're asshole slave drivers.

The End.

Once Upon a Time: Season 4, Episode 16

ONCE UPON A TIME

Season 4, Episode 16

"It's Not Easy Being Green"

Notes:  As usual very little, if any of this, is in chronological order.

We begin with a requisite flashback to Zelena’s childhood in which she is decidedly not green, but can apparently manipulate conveniently timed falling tree branches with her pudgy infant hands.  Some crotchety old geezer and his wife are strolling along when they discover her in a basket, chilling on the side of the road.  The wife, who seems pretty solid, insists that they take the baby and make it theirs.  They’ll call her Zelena.  The guy is clearly reluctant to do this, which is probably not the best foundation for fatherhood, and but the wife just ignores his protests and takes the baby anyway.  So, it’s pretty clear that Zelena is going to grow up in a loving, stable and completely normal household and suffer absolutely no long lasting psychological effects as a result of this.

Our visit to Storybrooke opens with Neal’s burial.  Everyone is looking sad and resolutely tossing dirt onto Neal's shiny coffin.  Emma has that revengy look in her eye, Hook seems genuinely distraught and Henry is still just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. The whole thing made me sad because Neal was dead, but also because I had sort of forgotten about that and spent the first few seconds in confused silence, trying to figure out who had died. 

 Who died?  Oh, that's right.  Neal.

Oops.  Sorry, Neal.  

I spent the subsequent few seconds wondering how long it would take for Emma to get over Neal’s death before she could get it on with Hook and continued to revisit that thought throughout the episode when either of them were on screen.  

Poor Henry still has no idea what the hell is going on and he wants to know about his father.  Good Guy Hook insists that Emma is going to have to tell him something, because this whole situation is on the insane side and keeping him in the dark more than is necessary is sort of fucked up.  Then, as an excellent opportunity for Hook to bond with Henry, he offers to chat him up about Neal.  This, of course, is an excellent idea because Hook has such extensive experience with comforting emotionally conflicted, semi-bereaved children.  

Also, I have to wonder why Henry hasn’t made a bigger deal out of the fact that this guy is walking around dressed like a pirate 24/7.  It isn’t just that he’s always dressed in a pirate outfit - he’s always wearing the SAME pirate outfit.  I feel like, were I in this situation, I would be more confused by that than anything else.  Sure, my mom is obviously lying to me about why we're in this weird ass town and there may or may not be some serious shit brewing, but why in the actual fuck is this guy STILL wearing that pirate costume?

So, somewhere in there, we got to relive Zelena's early adulthood, which alluded to a terrible fucking childhood that no one could ever have foreseen.  Her dad is a major dick and her mother is... dead?  Maybe?  I was playing a new app on my iPad during that scene, so I spaced out a little and missed where the mother was.  She's obviously not there, though, and the dad makes a big show of telling Zelena how grody she is because she can do magic with her hands and how he never wanted her and she isn't his daughter and how she never once paid for drugs.  So, Zelena fucks off to the Wizard of Oz, who is just a giant silhouette of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka, and tells him her woes.

Good morning, starshine!  The earth says "hello!"

The Wizard opens up a Floor Portal Screen and begins to show Zelena the back of her mother because Barbara Hershey clearly couldn't be persuaded to film five seconds worth of leaving a helpless baby in the woods to die, and then shows Zelena that she has a younger sister who is training with Rumpelstiltskin.  Zelena loses her shit and starts screaming about how he should be training her and not her stupid, dumb sister, which is a completely legitimate judgment to make based on watching her sister's face on OzVision for about fifteen seconds.  

Benevolently, the Wizard gives her some cool slippers that share the same function with the ruby slippers but are not, in fact, ruby.  I can only assume there were more than one pair of magic traveling slippers, or Warner Brothers drew the line with giving ABC the rights to the ruby slippers.  Either way, that was sort of confusing and unexplained.  The Wizard tells Elphaba Zelena to click her heels together three times and the shoes will take her anywhere she wants to go, so she goes to the Enchanted Forest because fuck her sister.

At some point in here we jump back to Storybrooke and everyone is hanging out in the diner, because what other sets do they really have for everyone to hang out in?  Everyone's talking about how to kill the Wicked Witch when in she strolls and announces to the assembled that Regina is her sister (and their names rhyme, whoo!).

Anyway, Regina is confused because she doesn't remember meeting Zelena in The Lost Year and finding out that she's her sister.  Zelena issues a witch challenge and is all, "Meet me at sundown for an ass beating," and Regina makes some comment about the Wild West, to which Zelena responds with the worst line in the entire episode, which doesn't bear repeating.  Scene.

 "REDACTED BECAUSE THIS WAS A FUCKING STUPID ASS LINE."

So.  Hook's chest hair tells Henry all about Neal, and by all about Neal, I mean literally nothing about Neal.  He further complicates the situation by admitting that Neal was just a kid when he met him, and Henry is like, "Wait, not only do you wear pirate clothes all the time, but you don't age?"  That admission is sort of brushed under the rug... somehow that I missed, and Henry is evidently content to talk about something other than immortal pirates.  Hook says he's going to teach Henry to navigate, which is cute and a little sad, because poor Hook is John McCain out of touch with young people.  Henry says he doesn't want to learn to navigate, you chode, he wants to learn about his dad.  Wasn't that the whole point of this spontaneous, probably a little uncomfortable camping trip?

 If you're not going to change your clothes, at least button up your shirt, for god's sake.

Hook finally gives him something morose and yet uplifting and tells him that Neal was abandoned by his dad, too.  So, even though that's really fucking sad and, on top of that, Neal is dead, Henry smiles because he and his dead stranger father have something in common.

Meanwhile, Regina, having accepted Zelena's challenge, gets a letter that Rumpelstiltskin wrote to her mother about how bad ass her daughter is, which she'd always thought was written about her.  Turns out, it was written about Zelena while she was training with Rumple, before she went all clingy when she found out he was still training Regina, as well.

Saddened by this revelation, Regina goes to the woods to feel sorry for herself and is come upon by Robin Hood, who she was supposed to fall in love with a la Tinkerbell, but didn't because she's an idiot.  They have a sweet, if uncomfortable, intimate moment and I am on board this ship 100%.

In another flashback, Rumple sets up a really weird and confusing trap for Zelena, disguising himself as Regina, who Zelena then attempts to murder out of jealousy.  He tells Zelena that he can't train her anymore, and that Regina gets to cast the curse because, in order to cast it, the caster has to give up the thing they love most.  Which, for Zelena, is evidently Rumple.  Although, I think he's confusing "love" with "psychotic obsession and co-dependence" here, but sure.  As Rumple is, first and foremost, in the business of self-preservation, he tells Zelena to get fucked.

Then he sees her magic shoes and promptly recants the entire thing.  Unfortunately for Rumple, Zelena is SUPER pissed and says no HE can get fucked.  She decides she's going to find a way to turn back time and do everything over again.  Then she goes back to Oz and turns Willy Wonka into a flying monkey.

Back in Storybrooke, the usual group has the brilliant idea that Belle should try to get through to Rumple, despite the fact that Zelena is controlling him with his dagger.  Without The Dark One, everyone figures Regina stands an actual chance against her sister.  Belle goes down into the basement and Rumple tells her to leave, that she can't help him.  Zelena shows up and commands Rumple to tell everyone that he'll murder them all if they try to interfere again.  So, that was basically a huge waste of everyone's time. Thanks, Belle.

Night falls and dozens of innocent townspeople gather in harm's way for the battle between Regina and Zelena.  David has a moment of clarity in which he suggests that everyone get into their houses, but it's too late.  Zelena is already there.  Regina isn't, though, and Zelena figures she's chicken shit, so she harps on about that for a while until Regina finally shows up.  A battle ensues, but not before Regina gets to sucker punch Zelena in the lip.

Zelena goes after Regina's heart, but Regina's mama didn't raise no fool, and she doesn't have it on her, at the moment.  Flustered, Zelena monologues for a second about this not being over, then poofs into green smoke, leaving Regina to recover from being smashed through a window.

 You bitch.  I've dropped houses on people for less.

The End.

Game of Thrones: Season Four, Episode 1

GAME OF THRONES

Season Four, Episode 1

"Two Swords"

Note:  As usual, very little, if anything, is in chronological order.

I’m going to start posting here, again, because Game of Thrones is back on and Once Upon a Time is back on and Outlander starts soon, etc.  So, this post will be about Sunday night’s Game of Thrones and none of it is in any kind of order because it's all from memory.  

It’s both a blessing and a curse that it’s been long enough since I read the books that I can’t remember, with perfect clarity, everything that differs on the show.  It also helps that I’m not much of a stickler for detail, so even though I read the details when I’m reading the book, I tend to forget them in favor of the big stuff.  So, this season, we’ve so far encountered Daenerys, Jon Snow, Ygritte and the Wildings, the Lannister Clan plus one Stark, Arya Stark, Sandor Clegane and Needle and, last but certainly not least, Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand.  We’re going to start there because I fucking love the Martells.

First of all, shout out to HBO for finding a way to let me look at Indira Varma’s beautiful face again without watching reruns of ROME, which ultimately culminate with her throwing herself off a balcony because her husband is kind of a psychopath.  I had completely forgotten that she had been cast as Ellaria, so I got to be delighted all over again when she came on screen.  Oberyn is a bad ass, as well he should be, and is stalking around King’s Landing all, “Tell your dad that the Lannisters aren’t the only ones who pay their debts, bitch.  Imma kill me some lions.”  Oberyn is pissed off because Gregor Clegane raped and killed his sister, which seems like a pretty legit reason to be pissed off.  In the book, Oberyn is there primarily because Tyrion has agreed to secure the Martells a seat on the small council.

They may allude to that at some point later on in the season, but maybe not.  Tyrion (if I remember correctly) brokered a deal with the Martells for a seat on the small council while he was still Hand of the King.  Of course now, as we all know, he’s been replaced by his scary dad, Tywin, and Tywin isn’t too keen on honoring Tyrion’s promises because fuck everybody else.  That hasn’t been revealed in the show, and may not be.  It seems like it’d be just as easy to say Oberyn Martell is there for revenge under the pretense of attending the royal wedding.  Tyrion’s obvious confusion about why he is really there leads me to believe that the producers decided to scrap the whole “small council” thing and just make it a revenge thing.  Simple enough, and it will still work to bring Oberyn to be the plot point he’s meant to be.  So, we can basically assume that, whatever his reasons, Oberyn is there to fuck some shit up.

Jump to Arya.  Arya becomes such a little badass in the books, and her story line gets so fucking weird later on, but we’ve got a little while until that point.  She’s kicking around with Sandor Clegane, The Hound, who plans to ransom her off to her Aunt Lysa who is holed up in the Vale letting her thirty year old son suck on her boobs, or something.  It may be prudent to mention here that Lysa Arryn is batshit crazy and would probably throw Arya out of her sky death window before paying The Hound anything for her.  Of course, I guess Arya can’t know that, so that’s bad luck for her.  

What the fuck's a Lommy?

Arya is pissed off, and with good reason.  Her mother and brother were just brutally murdered and betrayed by that rat bastard Walder Fray and she’s being held (sort of) hostage by some big, smelly, scarred dude from King’s Landing.  I haven’t mentioned, yet, that I love The Hound, so I will. I love The Hound.  He's awful, but I love him.  While traveling, Arya sees the asshole who killed her friend, Plot Point, and stole her sword in the process.  She wants it back and maybe some revenge along with it, and Sandor just wants some chicken, goddamnit.  Cue shabby tavern brawl, in which The Hound beats and stabs everyone into submission and Arya gets to quote last season back to the Sword Stealing Dude and remind him of how mercilessly he killed Plot Point, then stabs him through the throat. Which we can’t really feel all that bad about because he murders children, rapes women and steals people's swords.

 This is for Plot Point, you chode.

So, Arya gets her sword back and gets a horse to boot, and The Hound gets his goddamn chicken.  Mission accomplished.

At some point, we join Daenerys as she begins to confront the fact that her dragons are dragons, not basset hounds, and she is going to have to accept that if she doesn’t want to get her face melted off.  Daario Naharis shows up, gambling with Gray Worm, and accepts Daenerys' sass by giving her random flowers (where the hell did he even get a rose?) under the pretense of impressing upon her the importance of knowing the land she wants to rule, but we all know he just wants to get in her pants and bitches love flowers.  Daario has been recast, which I’m a little annoyed with, because I liked Daario Fabio.  Daenerys and her Big Ass Slave Army are on the way to Meereen, where her story line is going to stall and drag and make you want to strangle her and JUST GO TO WESTEROS ALREADY, JESUS.  Along their way, they find some poor slaves strung up and rotting, pointing the way to Meereen.  They are apparently stationed at each mile marker between where they happen to be and the city, which is 163 miles, so we’ve got 163 dead folks pointing the way as the city of Meereen welcomes their dragon wielding overlords.

 Do you guys think there's a Denny's between here and there?

As usual, Ser Jorah forgets that Daenerys is a bad ass and insists that she wait while some poor bastard begins the arduous process of taking down all the dead people so she doesn’t have to see them.  Of course, Daenerys tells him to go sit down somewhere with a coloring book while she does adult things like stare into the faces of dead, rotting slaves.  I want to pause a moment to ask - who, exactly, was going to get the job of taking down all the dead, stinky slaves?  Because, that is a shit job.  Not to mention that it would probably take hours and the caravan would either have to sit and wait for them to finish, or they’d get stopped several times when the caught up with the dude who was put in charge of that.  

Thanks for overruling that brilliant Ser Jorah idea, Daenerys.  Some low ranking army guy appreciates it.

Back in King’s Landing, Sansa is having a crisis in which basically her whole family has been murdered and she’s having to sit around and drink tea with the assholes responsible for it.  Oh, and she’s married to Tyrion, who is a pimp, but she’s too distracted by all that silly family murdering stuff to notice.  Tyrion clearly loves Shae and is terrified Tywin is going to have her murdered for that reason alone (or Cersei, or anyone, really) so he's trying to keep her at arm's length a it.  Shae is a little slow on the uptake and just thinks he wants a piece of Sansa, so she's getting all jealous.  I see what they’re doing with this.  

Without giving too much away, Tyrion is going to be confronted (this season, should be) with a betrayal of epic, massive proportions and Shae is pretty directly involved.  I don’t recall Martin really playing up any sort of jealousy over Sansa on Shae’s behalf in the books.  After all, Sansa is repulsed by Tyrion and he’s less than interested in her, other than to try and help her recover from his asshole family killing hers, so there’s really nothing for Shae to be jealous of.  In the show, however, it looks like they’re setting up Shae’s jealousy over Sansa in order to have that provide sufficient motivation for what she does, because in the book, it was kind of like, “Damn, woman.  That was cold.  What did Tyion ever do to you besides love you and stuff?”  Apparently, HBO wants to make it a bit easier to see what Shae’s motivation was.  In the books, Shae’s motivation was later revealed as greed, basically, which really kind of made you not be so sad about what happened to her.

Tywin makes it pretty clear that he has no use for men without right hands and tells Jaime he can basically fuck off to Casterly Rock, because no one likes a cripple.  Cersei gives Jaime a commissioned hand made of gold, because that wouldn't be cumbersome and difficult to maneuver at all.  Jaime tries to get his thing on with Cersei who, to Jaime’s confused frustration, rebuffs his advances and then proceeds to tell him that he took too long being held prisoner and getting his hand cut off and left her all alone.  So, he isn’t getting any.  Jaime’s incredulous protests are interrupted by That Girl Who Saw Shae Coming Out Of Tyrion’s Room and this will, presumably, lead to Cersei causing some mischief that will destroy someone or another’s life, as usual.

Brienne shows up while Margaery and her grandmother are discarding precious jewels into the shrubbery and requests to speak with Margaery, whom she tells that Renly Baratheon was murdered by a ghost with Stannis’ face, like Margaery or anyone else really gives a shit about who killed Renly Baratheon, at this point.  She then moves on to trying to convince Jaime to smuggle Sansa out of King’s Landing, somehow.  He calls her difficult and I wait impatiently for the day that they make out and love each other, BECAUSE THEY DO.  Ser Drunk shows up while Sansa is sitting in the Godswood where no one will bother her except drunk dudes who used to be knights.  He gives her a pretty necklace and a remarkably coherent speech for someone who is supposed to be shitfaced, about how his family was toppled from the inside out because of fat alcoholics and he wants his family name to have one more day in the sun.  He thanks her for saving him again and that’s the end of that.  Except that, that scene took place in Clash of Kings and was supposed to be when Ser Drunk promises Sansa that he's going to help her get out of King's Landing, somehow.  The whole relationship with Sansa and Ser Drunk is weird (in the books) and a little on the creepy side.

 What are these made out of?  Robert's gall stones?

Jon Snow is back at The Wall and people are a little pissed off that he killed Qhorin Halfhand.  Telling people that Qhorin told him to do it didn’t really help, much.  I can’t imagine why.  He tells Sam about how Robb was always better at everything than him and how jealous he was of Robb, blah blah.  Sam points out that Jon is better at everything than he is, except reading, and Jon is kind enough to just let that one lie.   He goes to his Night’s Watch hearing, or whatever, and gets sassy with one of the council dudes, who doesn’t believe his totally believable story about Qhorin Halfhand telling Jon to kill him, then proceeds to detail Mance Rayder’s plans to destroy The Wall.  Aemon Targaryen tells Jon to go about his business and hobbles down from his chair.

Somewhere in a Wilding camp, Ygritte is fletching arrows moodily when Tormund sidles up and starts accusing her of letting Jon Snow go, which is a perfectly obvious thing that she did and there’s really no reason to suspect that it happened.  Just assume that it happened and move on.  The Thenns arrive, bag of rotting human flesh in tow, and Xerxes beings an uncomfortable verbal spar with Tormund, culminating with the revelation that the Thenns are cannibals, which wouldn’t be a revelation unless you hadn't read the books.

 

Any of you fucksticks have some barbeque sauce?

The End. 

The Farseer Trilogy (Robin Hobb) : Review

Book(s):  Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy)
Author:  Robin Hobb
Genre: Fantasy


First of all, let me just say that I can’t believe I’ve managed to call myself a fan of fantasy all these years and have never read any Robin Hobb.  I’ve actually read these all out of order.  I started with the Rain Wild series (after a recommendation from my mother to read the Liveship Traders, which I still have not done) so I ended up finding out a bunch of stuff in advance of the Liveship books which will probably ruin some of the surprise (specifically what the “wood” is that the Liveships are made of).  At any rate, I read those and then decided that I wanted to read the Farseer Trilogy.  I was admittedly a little put off, at first, by some of the names.  The nobility all had names like Verity and Chivalry and Shrewd.  It took me a little while to stop rolling my eyes every time she referred to King Shrewd or King-in-Waiting Chivalry.  It got even worse when Chivalry’s bastard, the main character of the book, took the name FitzChivalry (“Fitz” denoting that he was, in fact, a bastard).  But, as I continued to read, the story overrode my issues with the weird names and I really enjoyed all three books.  It had a bit of a Song of Ice and Fire feel to it, thought not quite as involved.  The characters, I thought, were very well fleshed out.  

One thing I both loved and hated was the reader’s relationship with Fitz himself.  Fitz starts out as an uncertain and eventually somewhat precocious youth who was taken from his mother at the age of six and dumped into Prince Verity’s lap, for the king to look over, since he was the bastard of the King-in-Waiting.  I’m not going to recap the plot of all three books, by the way.  I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this is already familiar with the plot and go from there.  Anyway, Fitz’s character progression was grueling and painful, for me.  He started out with such promise and you sort of have all of these hopes that he’ll Harry Potter it and turn out to be The Most Important Man In The World.  Which, he kind of does, but not in the way you’d expect.  His experiences with Galen were unexpected for me, probably because the series doesn’t follow the typical fantasy formula.  In typical fantasy, Fitz would be incredibly gifted in the Skill (which he is, at first) and would eventually, after many trials and tribulations, learn to master it through some kind of dramatic event and be a card carrying Skill bad ass.  That is not the way it goes for Fitz at all, though.  Instead, he has a tough time concentrating and doing what the rest of his potential coterie can do, and Galen eventually burns a lot of his Skill out of him.  Then, he starts using elfbark all the time and eats up a great deal more of what’s left (which he doesn’t find out until book three - oops).  Fitz never becomes the hero, in a conventional sense.  He is always a little bit of a coward and is always outmatched by the people around him in terms of Skill, physical prowess, etc.

People turn on him easily and leave him.  Molly leaves (although he was an idiot for not realizing she was pregnant - how many more hints did Hobb have to drop?) and Burrich decides to be a real dick about the whole Wit thing and abandons him for a while.  Fitz is childish and, even as he grows into a man, never really learns how to be a man.  He can be churlish and sullen, predisposed to holding grudges and dwelling on The Unfairness Of It All.  Basically, Fitz is human.  He isn’t perfect and he isn’t supposed to be.  He isn’t what you want him to be, and yet you feel like he couldn’t be anything else.  You root for Fitz, even when he’s being an idiot, and you keep hoping he’ll see it coming this time, or he’ll wise up and stop being such a child.  Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t, but that’s what makes Fitz unique.

His extraordinary stretch of bad luck and bad timing was also a bit hard to stomach.  He doesn’t get the girl.  Well, he does, but only long enough to get her pregnant and for her to run off to take care of her child elsewhere and eventually marry Burrich (at least both he and Molly think Fitz is dead).  Starling seemed like a promising love interest, but Fitz is so dedicated to the fantasy of Molly and their daughter that Starling is all but ignored.  He sleeps with her once, eventually, when everything else is falling apart and he’s found out that Burrich and Molly are in love, etc., but there’s very little emotional connection there. Which is fine, but just unexpected.  He’s accused of murdering the king after he hunted down and slit the throats of the people who actually killed the king.  Regal throws him into a dungeon, beats the hell out of him, and he has to fake death to escape.  Chade and Burrich leave him.  Kettricken and Chade assure him that his daughter will be used as a piece in their game every bit as much as he has been and he has no say in it - it’s for the good of the kingdom.  He finds Verity, who has gone a little insane and dipped his arms in a Skill river, so he’s making dragons and eventually has to put himself into the dragon.  Verity Skill-swaps bodies with Fitz and gets it on with Kettricken, impregnating her with which is actually Fitz’s child, but it’s billed as Verity’s child.  So, not only does Fitz never get to see his daughter by Molly because she and Burrich think he’s dead and there’s no reason, apparently, to rock that boat, but he also gets to create another child who he can’t acknowledge or ever see.  Except on the coinage, maybe.  All of that (and so much more!) was hard to adjust to.  Realizing that the “hero” of the piece isn’t a hero at all and has had a really awful life, when you just wanted him to be awesome and win, is sobering.

But, I liked it.  I liked what Hobb did with it. She made Fitz real.  Bad luck is real.  Heroes may be a dime a dozen in the books, but in reality, things rarely go as well as you’d planned.  While Fitz had successes, it was his failures that were so mubh bigger, and isn’t that the way it is, so often?  We succeed to make ripples and fail to make tidal waves.

The books were written very well, and I enjoyed Hobb’s penchant for backstabbing and clever ploys.  More than once, Fitz got caught up in some scheme that I really hadn’t anticipated.  Over all, I really enjoyed the series.  I’m about to start the Tawny Man trilogy, which is apparently a continuation of Fitz’s story.  Maybe he’ll catch a break in this one.