Lydia Mitchell

Spoiler

Kind of a strange twist on the, "axolotl tanks," from the, "Dune," series of books. I wonder if it was intentional.

There's a scene where Lucy goes to level twelve. She watches a VCR tape. A pregnant woman is show to be strapped to a metal table in a tank of water. She gives birth to a dozen or so, "Gulpers," which proceed to eat her. In the show, "gulpers," appear to be genetically mutated, "axolotl," which are an amphibious salamander native to the underground waterways of Mexico City. Axolotl's distinctive gills are located outside of their bodies.

Double Spoiler

In the series of books by Frank Herbert referred to as, "The Dune Trilogy," there is a race of men known as the Bene Tleilax who are famous for their cloning technology. They can create a clone from just a few cells of a cadaver which can later recover their full memory[1], or create, "Face Dancers," among other things. It is eventually discovered they enslave their females, whose wombs are used to grow the clones in. Thus, the name, "axolotl tanks" of Tleilaxu.

I understand in the game "Fallout 3" the "gulpers" with fingers in their mouths are mutated salamanders, but in the T.V. series they appear as axolotls. I am guessing a writer is a fan of Dune and changed the salamanders to axolotls to create a, "literal," axolotl tank. Kind of a creepy homage to just as creepy an element of the Dune trilogy.

[1] In Dune lore the full memories of you and your ancestors are encoded in your DNA at a cellular level. (It's Science Fiction, and just supports the real thrust of the story. Spoilers, it's a story about how you shouldn't trust charismatic leaders.)

[6.8/10] I want to cut The Crown some slack here. If it followed Queen Elizabeth’s life long enough, it was either going to have to recast or start using an array of prosthetics and old age make-ups. Either option comes with significant drawbacks. I love Olivia Colman in everything from Broadchurch to The Favourite. I’m a fan of Helena Bonham Carter’s work with Tim Burton and beyond. I...vaguely remember Tobias Menzies from Game of Thrones. Regardless, the creative team made the right call here.

And yet, it is undeniably jarring to go from the performers who’ve embodied Elizabeth, Philip, and their coterie for twenty episodes and move onto an almost entirely new cast. The production is the same. The sets are the same. The writer is the same. But there is an undeniable disconnect from episode 20 to episode 21.

It’s understandable, and well within the realm of willing suspension of disbelief. “Olding” cheekily makes reference to it with the Queen selecting a new portrait for stamps and currency that acknowledges the change. But it’s also hard to adjust on an emotional level to the fact that we’re only a few months along the timeline, but Claire Foy and Matt Smith are gone, and there's some veritable strangers wearing their clothes and living in their home. It will take some time to acclimate.

The Crown does its best to accommodate us. A surprising return from John Lithgow as a dying Winston Churchill provides connective tissue between one period of the show and the next. Colman’s Queen arrives to give her mentor one closing benediction, and a kiss on the forehead that mirrors the one he gave her upon his last departure. The icon’s death helps seal that we are at the end of one era and the beginning of another.

And, it must be said, Bonham Carter is the perfect casting to take the baton from Vanessa Kirby as Margaret. Beyond the physical resemblance between the two actors, Bonham Carter has made a career out of embodying the same chaotic, rebellious, off-beat energy that ran through Margaret’s veins in her performances as the Queen’s sister. Time will tell the tale, but at the jump, the casting directors nailed that one.

The problem is that, even if you can forgive the necessary but friction-filled transition of the cast, the writing here is below the series’ usual standards. Big picture, there's an interesting theme at play. The Queen is not a neophyte anymore. She listens to her husband, to her high society gossip mongers, and suspects that her new prime minister, Harold Wilson, must be a KGB spy. She’s confident in her political and social instincts after years on the job.

Only now, she discovers via her spymaster, that it is instead the art surveyor in residence at Buckingham Palace whom Elizabeth has been geeking out with, who has been doing dirty work for the Russians. The high society fops she’s been rubbing elbows with having been leading her astray, and the unlikely, comparatively salt of the earth economist she looked upon with skepticism is, unexpectedly, more on her wavelength.

There's something there! The changing of the tides isn’t just symbolized by Churchill’s passing, but by the arrival of the first Labour Party PM the Queen has ever had. Beyond her individual political affiliations, she’s only ever had Tory PMs, and in Winston’s wake, there's a certain comfort to that. Having that discomfort lead you astray, challenging your preconceived notions and forcing you to reevaluate your immediate reactions and maybe your broader prejudices is a good tack to follow with Elizabeth. It sets the season on a good thematic course as season three launches.

Hell, it even ties into the meta elements of the recasting. Baked into the story is the notion of giving new people a chance, even if they’re not what we’re used to, because they might surprise us with how much they’re on our wavelength. If the Queen herself is willing to expand her horizons and find common cause with a comparatively common man, who are we to turn up our noses at some new performers?

The problem is that even if the story is good, the nuts and bolts writing isn’t great. All of the scenes involving the spy mystery seem overblown and melodramatic, rather than elegant and/or naturalistic. This show’s never shied away from high drama before, but whether it’s breaking in a new cast or embarking on a new storytelling cycle, the delivery feels miscalibrated here.

More to the point, the episode’s dialogue is strewn with tortured, blunt metaphors. When Anthony Blunt, the double agent art historian, is giving his big speech before his arrest, he gives an on-the-nose oratory about truth that stings the ears. The Queen’s speech at his art event after the revelation comes down about palimpsests and the like, and double-identities in portraitures leads to painfully obvious coded exchanges with the appropriately-named Blunt expressing her distaste. And her closing exchange with Prime Minister Wilson about how numbers don’t mislead, but rather what-you-see-is-what-you-get, just like the man himself, could hardly be more ham-handed if the PM was wearing bacon-wrapped mittens.

Sure, there's some juice to Philip trying to threaten the turncoat to watch his back, only for the seemingly soft-spoken art dork to turn the threat around and intimate that he’ll expose Philip’s shenanigans with the Russian-entangled osteopath from last season, another piece of connective tissue. But the whole presentation of it feels a step down from the intimate, lived-in vibe The Crown managed to hone over its first two seasons.

With any luck, season 3 will find its sea legs again. Season 2 was already a bit of a step down from season 1, despite some major high points. You can tell that the show has already eclipsed its original premise. Reloading is a way to freshen things up a bit, but also a chance for things to go awry in a whole new way. The Crown has earned the leeway to figure itself out anew, but fresh cast or not, this isn’t the most confident start to the new era.

[7.9/10] I low key hate The Crown’s Philip. He insists on sending his son to a haven of cruelty that Charles is plainly unsuited for. He yells at him for being weak. He threatens his wife with a messy divorce over it all, after having cheated on her multiple times. Sure, he recognizes the bullshit around the monarchy better than most royals, and he’s got more than a few witty bon mots. But in the confines of the show, he’s a bad person.

And yet, through it all, he means well toward his son, and he is a fair bit better father than he ever had. “Paterfamilias” is a tough episode to watch, because you feel for the show’s version of young Charles. As my wife pointed out, he’s of a piece with the subject of Saturday Night Live’s “Wells for Boys” skit: shy, sensitive, and bullied at every turn. Seeing him subjected to such cruelty by one parent, who puts his foot down and threatens to destroy his marriage to prevent the other from putting a stop to it, is gut-wrenching.

But Philip isn't doing this to be cruel. I’m on the same page with him when he tells Charles that their life isn’t the real world, as servants cut his food for him. I understand his concern that sending his son to an uptight boarding school would produce a molly-coddled twit, unprepared for the rigors of the real world. The goal to give his son a crucible that will strengthen him, give him discipline, is not unreasonable, even the results are abominable.

More to the point, you feel for the show’s version of young Philip here as well. He too is a boy who faced difficulties in the way of bullying and separation anxiety. He too was treated harshly by the other boys based on who he was and where he came from. The experience was a miserable one for him too. And in the part we see, maybe the most miserable.

Because however rough Philip’s parenting is, he is Mr. Rogers compared to his own father. In a tragic series of events, young Philip gets into a scrap with another student at Gordonstoun, which prevents him from going home to visit his favorite sister over break due to his punishment. Without Philip coming to visit, the sister chooses to fly to a family wedding instead. And the plane she and her born mid-flight child take crashes, killing all aboard.

The boy blames himself. Rather than seeing this as tragic happenstance, his already wounded heart crumples to ashes. He reasons that if he’d behaved, he could have stopped this butterfly effect from happening. The scenes of this devastated child, suffering nightmares of his closest family member’s dead body, ready to do god knows what in the lake by his school, stopping and crying in the funeral procession, are truly harrowing.

But nothing tops the trauma of his deadbeat father, the one who’s supposed to have the adult wisdom to know this was a horrible coincidence and not the fault of an innocent child, laying the blame at his grieving son’s feet. The Crown’s Philip is a bad man. His father is a monster.

Thank god for Uncle Dickie. In past and present, the man is a saint. He is a release valve for Charles in the here and now, and he gives young Philip the support he needs in the flashback scenes. For someone presented as a conniving operator in season 1, he’s a remarkably kind and empathetic soul in season 2.

But young Philip doesn’t want empathy. He wants absolution. He wants penance. He wants to wring the guilt from his bones. So he finds salvation in his labors, punishing himself by building the wall whose construction was meant to be his sentence for fighting with his bully. In that, he breaks himself down, working himself to the bone, until he cannot help but ask for the assistance from his fellow students and headmaster. It is in that crestfallen moment, that Philip finds the strength, and the camaraderie, to build himself back up.

It is rousing, even inspiring in the moment. But in truth, I don’t love it. I’m amenable to the idea of letting people work through grief in their own ways. But the headmaster, who genuinely seems to care and to want to forge a better world, could do better than allow a traumatized young man to revel in an act of self-flagellation he doesn’t deserve.

Despite it all, the effort works, or at least works well enough, because there is an inner strength in Philip which, however lamentable, these sorrowful events bring to the fore. We see it in the cold shower scene, where Philip’s fellow students hype themselves up for two seconds of a freezing water wash, and Philip stands stoic beneath the spigot, proving his mettle to those who doubt them. He may want nothing but to curl up with his favorite sister, but that resolve is there within him.

It isn't in his son. I know little of the real Charles. But in the presentation of the show, this is a boy who is simply not built for this. He wants to make his father proud, but doesn’t have that same mettle, the same inner strength that simply needs to be summoned by the hard times to make better men. For a well-for-boys kid like him, the rigorous process is a futile one, and thus a cruel one, which results only in the suffering of someone not made for it who will fumble in pain for that which they cannot achieve.

Philip cannot see that. He can only see his own struggles, the way parents inevitably see themselves in their children, without realizing that this meat grinder is not the ladder out of them for Charles that they were for him. His intentions are noble and understandable , but at some point, to knowingly let it continue despite seeing the consequences, verges on abusive.

Uncle Dickie gives the cinch of the piece. He tells a young Philip that he may hate his father now, but that one day he will hopefully know what it’s like to be a heated father and yearn for forgiveness. Who knows, maybe Philip’s dad has his own complicated backstory to explain his actions. But he earns his son’s hatred fairly here. And whatever life raft Gordonstoun gave Philip in his hour of need, it produced a philandering scumbag who seems far less than a role model for anyone (in the show, at least).

But now he knows what it’s like to be on the other end, to hope that you’re doing the right thing and that one day your child will thank you for it, or at least forgive your mistakes born of good intentions. As the closing text tells us, Charles tried to do better for his own kids, but is having his own intergenerational struggles as we speak.

There is no perfect way to do this. Everyone makes mistakes in caring for the next generation. All we can do is strive to do a little better each time. I sympathize with the Philip of The Crown, for his unspeakable traumas and for his desire to give his son the same strength he forged through hardship in the frozen reaches of Scotland. But I sympathize more with a poor helpless boy, made to suffer cruelly and needlessly, as old sins find new purchase once more.

[8.2/10] I’m reminded of two pieces of received wisdom. “The grass is always greener” and “There’s no right way to be a woman.” “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” is an illustration of both ideas at once. Two iconic figures of the twentieth century -- Queen Elizabeth and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, are envious of one another’s lives, which spurs each to try to put down or top the other. But in the throes of the tough expectations placed on each, they recognize one another’s plight and find common cause, as one of the only two people who know what it’s like to be women in this kind of spotlight.

The episode writes it all on the screen a little too much for my tastes. Aside from the final scene, there's no internal thought either woman, or any character really, has that doesn’t get vocalized or beat the audience over the head with. But the performances are spectacular. Claire Foy is superb as always. Conveying Elizabeth’s self-loathing, her attempt at openness, her hurt quality, her triumphant joy, her queen bee preening, and her deep sympathy -- nothing’s too much for Foy. And guest star Jodi Balfour does a great job as Jackie O, giving the sense of her as the picture of glamor in public, but also a wounded dove behind closed doors.

But what I most like here is the trajectory of The QUeen’s feelings toward her erstwhile confidante and rival. The swings back and forth between hating and sympathizing with Jackie, trying to upstage her and trying to comfort her, in ways that feel true to the character and interweave perfectly with historical events.

You sympathize with Elizabeth when she gets a look in the mirror at the wrong angle on a rough day and starts to feel bad about herself. So when a woman comes to London who’s the same age, but who is the talk of the town for her beauty, charisma, and education -- three things that Elizabeth is already insecure about -- you can understand why she’s so put out. It doesn’t help when the Queen Mother and Elizabeth’s own husband fawn over Jackie. And while I think the show goes a little overboard in conveying the sense that Mrs. Kennedy is this adored object of fascination and desire, it soundly sells the idea of why Elizabeth would bristle at this interloper who seems to be everything she’s not.

And yet, if only to keep Jackie away from Philip, the Queen invites her closer, rather than pushing her away. There's a magnanimousness to Elziabeth here, allowing Jackie a certain intimacy despite the fear that this woman is outshining her, and her ignorance of decorum (watching the private secretaries balk at the Kennedys using the wrong protocols and titles was hilarious). They bond over mutual shyness, over being married to strong-willed men, over loving animals. With an olive branch, Elizabeth turns a potential enemy, someone she’s jealous of, into a friend she can relate to. If the episode had stopped there, it would have been good and interesting enough.

Instead, the pendulum swings the other way to devastating effect, when word gets back to the Queen about some harsh things Jakcie said at a local dinner party. (As an aside, I love the fact that Margaret is the one who stirs up trouble with all this, being practically vindictive in her efforts to undercut her sister’s joy.) By all outward appearances, Jackie betrayed the Queen and, as Elizabeth herself later puts it, “the spirit” of their interactions.

Elizabeth invites Jackie into her private spaces within Buckingham palace, the most inaccessible and reserved areas of her home, and Mrs. Kennedy’s purported response is to call it run-down and dilapidated. Elizabeth opens herself up to this stranger, and the report she gets back is of personal insults that cut her to the bone: about her age, about her “incuriousness”, about her responsibility for the declining state of the U.K.’s place in the world. The combination of envy and apparent camaraderie put Jackie in a unique position to wound Elizabeth, and the bombs she lobbed more than do the trick. Foy sells the hell out of the QUeen’s hurt to hear the report.

But Elizabeth doesn’t take it lying down. I’ll admit my ignorance of the big Ghana trip. I thought this was a plot that ended in, if not tragedy, than at least embarrassment. The Queen felt stung by being seen as a “puppet” and wants to upstage Jackie’s ability to smooth things over for the Americans in Paris. So she makes an ill-considered jaunt to an African country that's been sidling up to the Soviets in a bid that all of her advisors, formal and informal counsel against. Ghana President Nkrumah’s self-aggrandizing reception of her only further suggests it’s a grievous error and she’s being used.

Only then, she dances. I’ll admit, in an episode that's fairly blunt, it's hard for me to perceive how a simple foxtrot is able to win over Ghana’s leader back to the Commonwealth’s side. But as with the Kennedys, it’s a hoot to see stuffy British functionaries fret like schoolgirls over their beloved monarch daring to do a box-step. And taken generously, you can read it as the Queen being willing to show respect to another leader, relax and let out some of that personality that Lord Altrincham implored her to demonstrate. Even if it was mostly for show, you can see Elizabeth practically glowing at the gesture’s success, a subtle message to her arrival in Washington that two can play at this game.

Except things are not so wonderful for Jackie, despite Elizabeht’s image of her. That's what I most appreciate about the episode -- the reveal that each woman puts the other on a pedestal to some degree, and that each struggles to see the ways in which they’re both fighting against the same forces. It’s no coincidence that the direction and editing focused on Elizabeth during the Kennedys’ visit to London mirrors the direction and editing focused on Jackie at one of JFK’s speeches. The same subtle looks and worries about a wandering eye, the same fears that she’s being humiliated by her husband’s attention to their women, reveal that however much there's a perceived rivalry, Jaqueline and Elizabeth are in much the same place.

(As an aside, it has to be said -- I’m a big fan of Michael C. Hall from Dexter and Six Feet Under, but he is pretty awful as JFK. His accent sounds atrocious, and his acting style here seems dissonant from the other performers in The Crown.)

Jackie learns from her husband (who gives Philip a run for his money in assholery), that the whole Ghana trip was spurred by Jackie’s comments. Again, the show writes it all on the screen ehr, but I appreciate that knowing ehr comments got back to Elizabeth makes Jacki want to express her contrition.

The differences in presentation between the two women’s first meeting and their second is striking. The tour of Buckingham is reserved, intimate, personal. The latter reception at Windsor Castle is grandiose, formal, showy. One was to invite someone in. The other was to show off the weight of your office. This is Elizabeth not trying to be the bigger person, but instead to be the grander person, feigning an uncaring air about Jackie’s statements, even as everything from the dolled up guards to the formal tea service to the slathering of jam on crumpets screams “I’m confidently better than you.”

Only this time, it’s Jackie who opens up. She talks about her own hardships with Elizabth, intimating the troubles at home and the reason she was so apt to want to shine in Paris. She talks about the jealousy she dealt with from her spouse, with hints of abuse. She speaks of being basically drugged against her will, all giving Elizabeth an insight into the plight of this person whom she’d formerly seen as a mean demigod. And most importantly, for my purposes anyway, Jackie expresses her regret because of how much she admires Elizabeth -- for her grace, for her leadership, for being , in so many ways, all the things that Jackie fears she herself isn’t. There's a subtle implication that on both sides of the equation, these efforts to outshine or put down was a product of each woman looking at the other, and feeling less than.

That is profound and pathos-ridden. As I’ve said before, I see the central mission of The Crown to be to reveal the underlying humanity of these distant figures. And it’s hard to imagine what could do that better than showing that even these exalted, iconic women feel measured by one another, pitted against one another, envious of one another, when each is facing battles public and private that give them common cause and common understanding. It is, like so much on this show, a metonym for broader societal changes and societal pathologies that are still with us today.

The end result of it all is sympathy and a desire to support one another. It doesn’t excuse Philip, but I take Elizabeth’s quip on happiness to indicate that while she still bristles at Philip’s flirty behavior and general unruliness behind the scenes, she recognizes in Jackie that it can be worse. And so when those grim events of 1963 take place, she sees Jackie’s strength and defiance in the famous deliberate choice to wear the same outfit with her husband’s blood on it. She uses the levers of state to pay tribute to her and to her loss. And she writes a personal letter, not as a rival, but as a friend, as one of the few people who can understand what it’s like to feel the pressures of that envied but unenviable position, as an icon, and as a woman.

Therein rests the cinch. With the weight of gendered expectations, both of these admired women feel like they don’t measure up and yearns for the other’s life. But when they get to see it up close, truly understand what it entails, in the end, all they can feel is kinship.

[7.4/10] Everyone sucks here. Some people suck to varying degrees, but everyone’s in a bad way to some degree or another. It’s a weird episode, one that isn't bad by any stretch, but plays in spaces that don’t do as much for me as a viewer.

Let’s go with Tony, since he was prime on my hate train after his debut episode. Let’s list the shittery in (vaguely) ascending order: 1. Saying unkind things to Margaret when he knows she’s in a vulnerable place 2. Allowing for snipes behind her back 3. Marrying her just to earn his mother’s admiration and 4. Cheating on her constantly, to the point that he knocked up one of his friends, and didn’t say a word about it (so far as we know).

In truth, I feel a little bad for Tony. They give him some pathos here, with the revelation that he was the unloved son, left behind by his social climbing mother , with the implication that he was disdained for his father’s actions and for his disability which he hides. The guy is messed up from all of this, and it doesn’t excuse his behavior, but it helps explain it.

Margaret’s in the same boat. She says many an unkind thing to Elizabeth. She wants to have the wedding to end all weddings so she can top her sister. And while she never cheats (so far as we know), she’s essentially only getting married because Peter Twonsend is, and she wants to beat him to the punch out of a sense of revenge

But she’s also hurt,and people who are hurting do stupid things. She’s not wrong to be bitter at her sister, even if her words can be cruel. And the prospect that after everything else, Margaret had to wait six months to announce her engagement because Elizabeth is pregnant struck me as utterly absurd. The Church of England won’t let her marry? Stupid, but whatever, the Queen’s hands are tied. But some issue of “protocol” preventing dueling announcements is just ridiculous.

Suffice it to say, I continue to feel the way I’ve long felt about Margaret on The Crown -- that she’s an overgrown child in how she acts, but also one who has plenty of legitimate grievances and reason to feel sad.

That just leaves Elizabeth, who occupies her usual more ambiguous role here -- does she want to look out for ehr sister or support her, or knock her down as part of the cold war they’ve been having? It’s interesting to see her be outwardly supportive, but also watch Tony’s bohemian friends mock the dignity and tradition of the palace (which, in fairness, is something I’d probably do), and so look to nip this whole thing in the bud. Her hunting for dirt on her sister’s fiance allows her to occupy both spaces.

I’ll admit, I find the implication that the stress of finding out all the cruddy things that Tony has done causes Elizabeth to go into labor a rather odd thing. But the show does the ensuing sequence well, making points about the strangeness of the process to modern eyes without having anyone vocalize it.

I appreciate that, because very little in this episode is subtle. It lays on the bit with Tony’s issues with his mom very thick. It doesn’t hide the ball with Margaret’s motivations for the marriage in the slightest. And Elizabeth’s disgust for the whole thing is made pretty plain as well.

But what I do appreciate is the ambiguity of the closing scene between the two sisters where Elizabeth sidles up to telling Margaret what she knows about Tony, but can't pull the trigger. Some mean words are exchanged. Elizabeth rubs it in that Margaret could have had what she wanted but wasn’t willing to give up the privilege. Something tough but fair, which ties into one of The Crown’s recurring themes -- The Queen wishing she could just be a comparatively normal person and wife and mother rather than having to become The Crown. And Maragert turns the comment around, saying it’s ironic that her sister enunciates a desire to be invisible because e she’s somehow able to pull that off despite wearing the crown, a comment that ties into Margaret’s own need to “shine”, as her mother puts it, and her pride in doing so, that's been a recurring theme for her too.

Despite the harsh mutual insults, Elizabeth doesn't spill the beans on Tony infidelities. I initially took it as a kindness, or at least an act of measured forbearance. Elizabeth already feels blamed for the dissolution of Margaret’s first pseudo fiance. She doesn’t want to be the slain messenger again. And so maybe, she holds back because, even though she could blow up Maragret’s engagement and relationship, she doesn’t want to. She wants to let Margaret live her own life and doesn’t want to be seen as the culprit for another relationship down the tubes.

But my wife suggested a more sinister explanation. Maybe her non-commenting is a “you deserve this”-style fuck you to her sister. Maybe it’s not a kindness, but a means of damning Margaret to this life she’s defiantly choosing, with the knowing expectation that she’ll have to suffer the consequences for her own poor judgment.

It’s fair to read it either way, and in truth, there's probably some of each, which is a sign of solid character writing. This is certainty a strange episode, focused on more melodrama and adults acting like teenagers than The Crown usually indulges in. But there's also no one to quite root for, which is, in a story about the pampered clucking at the slightly-less pampered, usually a good sign.

[7.6/10] To quote an equally regal television program, Agents of Shield, it turns out that the former King Edward is a “big fat friggin’ Nazi.”

Frankly, the episode works better as almost a news program or a recitation of historical events more than a drama. I knew through cultural osmosis that Edward and Wallis had cozied up to the Germans in some form or fashion over the years. I did not know that they fed intel to the Nazis, that Edward wanted to be reinstalled on the throne as a puppet king, that they’d seen concentration camps and continued to sidle up to Hitler and company, and that he encouraged the Germans to keep blitzing his home country to soften them up for “peace.”

Fuck him.

If I haven't made it clear in these write-ups, I think it’s important to separate these historical figures as they appear in a television show that needs tidy stories and drama from their real life equivalents. I’m sure many of the events that The Crown depicts don’t align with reality, but take advantage of poetic license or the usual excesses of adaptation to make things more palatable and interesting. So when I gripe about Philip’s attitude or chuckle at Tommy Lascelles’ stuffiness or the like, I do so as though they’re fictional characters, in full acceptance of my general ignorance about the real folks.

But not with Edward. I’m no historian, but there’s credible information in the public record to support this. And even if the worst isn’t true, enough is damn the man. So fuck him.

Honestly, that's the most compelling part of “Vergangenheit”. This is bombshell information to ignorant Americans like me more than half a century later. The history comes alive from seeing the aghast reaction of the Queen Mother, or the events illustrated with Tommy’s voice over. Reaction shots and camera angles and haunting music help sell the magnitude of the reveal. But by god, the information itself is plenty.

The show does a good job of selling the magnitude of the information through the grammar of television long before we know the details. The Germany flashback is unique enough to catch the audience’s attention. And the urgency with which the details are raced from desk clerk to supervisor to the highest levels of government tell you this is some big deal stuff. Hell, the simple fact that they brought back John Lithgow and Jared Harris to reprise the roles of Churchill and King George is a sign. The way it’s talked about with wide eyes and hushed tones sacross the government really leaves you salivating to learn the facts, however horrid they may be.

But truthfully, the character drama doesn’t do much for me here. On paper, I think there’s something intriguing about Elizabeth being a devoted Christsian who wants to practice Christlike forgiveness and struggles to do so given what she learns. You can see her noble devotion to ideas of grace and second chances, and the comfort she finds in religion as a place where she doesn’t have to be The Crown, but can just be “another humble Christsian.”

I have a couple problems with it though. For one, her catalysts for all of this is Billy Graham, whom I mostly know for his antisemetic comments, and his stances against women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. So him as the humble bastion of piety from North Carolina who moves the heart of the Queen doesn't do much for me, and if anything, makes his counsel seem like snake oil. Now maybe that's the point. Maybe Elizabeth is swayed by this man’s decent words without knowing the dark parts of his heart the same way she was with Edward, but you don’t get many hints of that in the text.

More to the point, the dilemma doesn't resonate with me once we find out what she finds out about Edward. I believe in forgiveness and second chances. And still, maybe I’m simply not as pious as Elizabeth is, but it seems like an ethical slam dunk to basically excommunicate him given his crimes. I completely buy that Elizabeth would wrestle with it given her mentality, but it’s hard to feel that in the same way when I’m mainly just aghast at Edwarad’s sins. Hell, the second most I’ve liked Philip (after his penitent Xmas address from overseas) is him telling his wife that she 100% did the right thing, (and the Queen Mother and Tommy agreed over drinks, no less!)

The show does suggest a little divine retribution for Edward. Just when he’s positioning himself for a return to public life, just when he thinks he’ll be able to live a life of purpose again, this damning revelation spills out and dashes it all. I don't really feel for him, since my sympathy for those who sympathize with Nazis is pretty slim, but you do feel his ennui living a life of opulent dullery, a bored showpony paraded about in vapid social engagements.

That's the one area of the divine angle here that really works. Elizabeth cannot forgive Edward, but pray’s for him to recognize the error of his ways, that they can forgive themselves. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I take his sullen look in the mirror to be a literal reflection of that, a recognition that this is a mess he made himself, that if insipid card games, silly costumes, and dull parties are his personal hell, he punched his own ticket with his sins against country and countrymen. That is a sad fate, even if it’s a deserved one.

Anyway, fuck him.

[7.3/10] This is a weird episode. It seems meant as a resolution to the marital difficulty storyline that's been percolating through the opening of this season. The shit finally hits the fan, as the Parkers’ divorce goes public and suddenly the shining good feelings that seemed to wash over both Elizabeth and Philip are overwhelmed by the torrent of rumors and speculation that follows in that wake.

The problem is that The Crown all but gave away the game in the opening of the season. We already saw Elizabeth and Philip sniping at each other in the aftermath of all this as the opening scene of the season. So there’s not much in the way of dramatic tension here. We know that things will explode. We don’t know exactly how, but given what was set up in the prior two episodes, it’s not hard to guess. SO much of this episode feels like playing out the string.

There is some personal investment in seeing Elizabeth react to Philp’s affairs not just being a personal challenge, but now being a public humiliation that she’s forced to deal with and have paraded around in the papers. Once again, since The Queen must be reserved in everything, seeing Claire Foy emote or betray clear hurt, anger, and bewilderment as this state of affairs, while putting on an air of placidity on the surface makes for a masterclass of acting.

Otherwise, though, there’s a lot of shots of people looking pensive on beautiful vistas, or a score of grand drama playing over a tabloid newspaper story. As much as I admire the production design and impeccable cinematography of The Crown, it all starts to feel like a bit much.

I also find Philip’s reaction to Mike Parker kind of odd. The tenor isn’t “Well, we’re both shits and it got out. Sorry, but you have to take the fall on this.” Instead, it’s for him to chastise Mike for writing about it and “breaking the rules.” It’s not crazy behavior from a self-absorbed philanderer like Philip, but I don’t know. Something about the presentation makes it feel like the show’s on his side at least a little, and I have trouble sympathizing with the side of “Shame on you for writing an indiscreet letter that shined a light on our misdeeds.”

That said, strangely enough, I found the non-royal parts of this one much more interesting. I’ll admit my ignorance of modern English political history once more. But purely within the confines of the show, I find the persona of Anthony Eden fascinating. The idea that he wasted his best years in Churchill’s shadow, waiting for the man to retire, and by the time he was too desperate and in too ill-health to make an impact as Prime Minister is its own kind of tragedy.

Elizabeth seems to recognize that. And while the man’s fiery speeches show he’s already doomed, you get the sense that he was played by a conniving operator in Harold MacMillan, which only makes his downfall seem more like a sad end. Despite his flaws and mistakes, he gets a certain absolution from the Queen for his predicament, which makes us apt to sympathize with him too. It doesn’t excuse, you know, an unnecessary war and supply crisis that he had a firm hand in, but it makes him an interesting and pathos-ridden character on a personal level.

ALso outside of the explicitly royal circle, Eileen Parker is kind of my hero. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for prickly Tommy Lascelles. So seeing him try to come out of retirement to lean on ehr to delay making any public announcement of the divorce, only for her to tell him off as a shill and a sucker, is a hell of a hoorah for me as a viewer.

More substantively though, despite sympathizing with Elizabeth, I like the way she kind of tells of The Queen even more. I’ll confess, at one point in this episode, I told my wife that it was hard to take some of this interpersonal conflict as seriously as high drama when there are legitimate national and international crises going on just beyond the Queen’s windows. So there’s something roundly satisfying about the Queen personally asking this (I think?) commoner to delay her announcement as her favor, only to be told that she’s already suffered through years of any unhappy marriage as a “favor” t o the Crown, so as not to disrupt thing during Margaret and Peter’s to-do, and that Elizabeth is ignorant of how many such royal “favors” have wrecked lives and marriages to date.

I kind of love that. The interpersonal issues among the royals are interesting from a television narrative perspective. But I like Eileen’s part of this story as an acknowledgement and rebuke that such drama rests atop real people, who aren't insulated by the same kind of wealth and privilege, who have to live their far more regular lives in the shadow of the monarchy’s needs and pleasures. To have some say “enough is enough” and do what they need to do for their own sanity and well-being in that situation is courageous and low-key inspiring.

All that said, I do feel for Elizabeth in this. It’s not subtle, but I like the scene where she welcomes the new prime minister who laments “Eden’s War”, only for the Queen to balk a little, remind MacMillan that he supported the war, and make the point that one must “clean up their own mess.” She’s clearly dressing down MacMillan when she means to dress down Philip, who’s inconveniently absent. But I like that as a nice bit of psychological projection, showing how the personal bleeds into the political.

That said, I don’t know how I feel about the resolution to all of this. The conversation between Elizabeht and Pihlip in Lisbon is still an excellent bit of acting and dialogue-crafting. But it doesn’t have that much more power now than it did in the season premiere. We already knew that Philip had been having affairs. The firm details don’t matter that much. So while I don’t mind watching it again, it’s not as if the context changes much the second time around.

But what I find particularly odd is that the solution to the problem is...giving Philip the royal title of prince? Okay, I guess? The dialogue tries to dress it up, basically saying that Philip wants a title to command some respect from the palace stagehands who infantilize and micromanage him. But it’s a strange ransom to not cheat on your wife, especially since Philip seemed to already have his “Come to Jesus” moment about the error of his ways in the last episode.

I don’t know how it solves anybody’s problems. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it doesn’t, and we get plenty more of this stuff in the episodes to come. (I wouldn't really look forward to that -- three episodes is plenty.) But considering it’s the climax these three episodes have been building too, the connection between the marital issues the Windsors have been aching and the answer of basically giving Pihlip a promotion seems strained. (Plus hey, I’m sure it’s true-to-life, but it doesn’t help that Philip looks pretty darn silly in his floofy crown and furry cape.)

His closing conversation with Mike is a little more interesting -- an acknowledgement that a certain era is over. And the commentary about Elizabeth’s views of her children as mere appendages of the crown, reminders of her own death and replacement, is intriguing as a possible future tack toward exploring that part of her world -- something that's been mostly kept to the side until now. But the suggestion of more kids as a response to all this also feels like a peculiar connection to make.

Now look, this is history (at least kind of) not fiction. The writers are stuck with the events as they happened. But the way they draw lines between personal or psychological reactions and major public developments lacks a certain narrative catharsis. Framing matters. Juxtaposition matters. The suggestion of cause and effect matters. People are strange creatures. Their choices and reactions don’t always fit neatly into narrative boxes or straightforward plots. But as a three-episode arc at least, The Crown struggles to weave its historical facts into a comprehensible, meaningful, or complete story.

[7.6/10] It’s nice to get an episode focused on Philip’s personal journey. He’s had subplot before, but making him the protagonist for an episode allows the series to dig deeper, explore what’s going through his mind with more conviction. I haven't loved The Crown’s Philip as a person, but I have found him fascinating as a character: a compelling mix of personal shittery but professionally in favor of royal reform, with a good smartass wit to go with it. It’s too much to call him an antihero, but he has enough of a mix of good and bad qualities to make him stand out enough to support the hour.

What I find particularly engrossing about “A Company of Men” is that, by god, the time away really did settle Philip. I don’t know if it’s exactly in the way that either Elizabeth or the Queen Mother intended. But by hook or by crook, he comes back not merely chastened from the experience, but appreciative of what he has and even homesick. I imagine the real life Philp’s transition wasn’t nearly as neat or cinema-ready (if he had such a transition at all). But as a character story, I love the idea of someone going away only to realize the value of what they left behind.

To the point, as another character describes it, Philip and his private secretary, Mike, are on what is basically a “five month stag party.” They pal around with the seamen aboard the royal yacht. They canoodle with the local indigenous population, which is uncomfortable at multiple levels. They smirk through various official functions and make goo goo eyes at reporters and just generally act like frat boy pricks.

It causes trouble at home. And in an episode that puts the spotlight away from Buckingham Palace, it’s nice to see someone only tangentially connected to the Royal Family (at best) get to lead the B-story. Mike’s wife, Eileen Parker, has had enough and is ready to file for divorce, only to find that she needs hard proof of Mike’s infidelity or worse to be able to get one.

I like the choice to show her trials and travails to wrangle what ought to be hers by right on multiple levels. For one, it’s a fascinating case study of the institutional thumb on the scales of marriage in the 1950s. For another, it’s a good vehicle to explore the culture that permitted, if not promoted, this sort of behavior for powerful men and left few avenues for their spouses to do anything about it. For a third, it shows the royal apparatus that sees one woman’s visit to a solicitor work its way through a byzantine collection of amateur tennis players and ladies who lunch back to the Queen’s private secretaries. And it neatly sets in motion the letter that presumably set up the blow-up between Philip and Elizabeth that opened the season despite Philiip’s apparent change of heart at the end of this episode.

That change of heart comes from a reflection on his own childhood and difficult life that's prompted by the reporter who used some long distance flirting to set up a veritable journalistic ambush. I like the show highlighting the fact that Philip’s own father had his mother committed and then abandoned the family to take up with his mistress. The revelation both establishes that Philip didn't exactly have the best role model himself for being a good partner, and it forces him to reflect on how that situation made him feel as a son, in a way he doesn't want to repeat.

So when we see a little bit of nobility from him, using his status to rescue and return a local sailor, it’s cause to reflect. He sees a father welcomed home. We see him look at happy children, basking in joy with their parents. We see him...implied to take advantage of the indigenous’ women’s generosity. So it’s nice that the show doesn't simply pretend that he woke up one morning and completely changed his ways. But the experience gives him a lot to think about.

One of my favorite scenes in the show happens when Philip and Elizabaeth trade Xmas radio addresses. Both of them can’t exactly speak frankly with an audience of millions. But each also expresses their love and longing for one another amid their separation. The fact that they’re unable to connect by phone makes this one of the few opportunities to speak when they know the other will be listening. Philip speaks about his regret and missing his family, understanding what he has, even if it’s not in so many words. And Elizabaeth’s revised opening statement that basically gives him an open invitation, is reservedly and unreservedly sweet, in that characteristically English way. Taken with her note, it reminds him that whatever the flaws of the family he grew up in, he has a new one, and the chance for it to be a better one.

Obviously, there’s still storm clouds on the horizon. But despite the rocky waters to come, it’s nice to see smartmouthed, bristling Philip have a chance to pause, reflect, and reevaluate, and maybe strive to do better than his own father ever did for his family.

[7.8/10] “Previously On” is the sort of episode that answers the questions fans have been asking from the beginning. Who caused the hex? (Wanda) What made her do it? (Cumulative trauma) Who’s controlling it? (Sort of Wanda, sort of not.) What’s the deal with Pietro? (Total fake). What about Vision? (Wanda recreated him.) What’s Agnes’s angle here? (A witch trying to attain more power a probably drain Wanda the same way she drained the rest of her coven.)

For a lesser show, these could be mechanical answers to mechanical questions. Instead, this episode answers those technical points while also getting at the why of all this. It confirms, once and for all, that WandaVision is a story about the slow accumulation of trauma, and the ways the shiny sitcom worlds on the television screens are an escape from it.

Agnes (or Agatha, depending on your preference), plays Ghost of Xmas Past with Wanda, forcing Wanda to guide her through major events of her history in an effort to uncover how she became this powerful. Rather than centering on incantations or magical artifacts (give or take an Infinity Stone), it hinges on the moments of both comfort and loss in Wanda’s life.

It’s a strong conceit, giving Elizabeth Olsen plenty of notes to play across the years and showing how Wanda has lost so much of the year. We start with a scene of serene domestic bliss, or what passes for it in a war-torn Eastern Bloc country, with Wanda and Pietro as children with their parents. Suddenly a bomb disrupts the peace of “TV night”, destroying the young kids’ lives amid a moment of happiness and depicting events described in Age of Ultron. \

That sets a pattern for these things, where each moment involves how Wanda copes with such losses. We see her becoming a freedom fighter (or terrorist, depending on your vantage point), out of an attempt to avenge her parents in a way. It leads her to connect with the mind stone (something that, alongside a shadowy figure, will no doubt be explored in more depth later). The experience heightened her powers, but was also a source of further trauma, of being experimented on and treated as disposable.

(Just my crazy theory: [spoiler]I predict that the shadowy figure Wanda saw in the Mind Stone will be Wanda herself, from the future, creating a stable time loop and deciding to set these events into motion, even knowing the hardships of where they lead, because it’s a way to let love persevere.[/spoilers].)

But then we get the best scene in the whole episode, where we jump to Wanda still grieving her brother’s loss, another unfathomable trauma, only to get some unexpected comfort from Vision. The writing and acting here is magnificent. The imagery of Wanda talking about grief as a series of waves, continually hitting her every time she tries to stand, is haunting and effective. But Vision’s retort, of not knowing what loss is given his origins, but appreciating the notion that it is love persevering, is just as beautiful a counterpoint. You can see the way the two of them are connected not just through the mind stone, but through their unique experiences of grappling with the human condition from opposite sides, of learning how to move forward together. The chemistry, easy rapport, and connection between them in those moments is off the charts.

It’s a minor miracle. Having lost everyone close to her, Wanda forges a connection with someone else, someone who helps fill that space. Only then, he’s taken from her too. The final flashback we see is Wanda barging into Sword and seeing Vision being torn apart. We see the man she expected to be waiting for her when she was un-blipped lying in pieces before her. She reaches down and can no longer feel her, the last thread of that connection severed.

It’s enough to send anyone sprialing. We witness the mechanics of what happens next -- a grief-stricken Wanda coming to Westview, uncovering what was meant to be the place where the rest of their lives together began, the ghost of a new chapter of domestic bliss that she was once again robbed of by chaotic forces.

So she snaps. She explodes in her grief, for her parents, for her brother, and for her love, each ripped away from her in the times she most needed comfort, most thought she could be safe and happy like those people on the television screens.

That’s the most piercing thread of “Previously On.” At each stage, Wanda watches these sitcoms as a form of relief, of escape, to have a glimpse of the life denied her by circumstance and tragedy. She’s watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and seeing a happy couple when her parents are killed. She’s watching The Brady Bunch and a couple of friendly but needling siblings when she and her brother are treated like lab rats. She sees the comical violence of Malcolm in the Middle where the father figure can endure large scale mishaps but come out unscathed because “it’s not that kind of show.”

The import is clear. The allure of these stories, this pristine or even hardscrabble sitcom worlds, is that even when the edges are rougher, tragedies rarely happen. Happy families get to persist, to flourish. They get to happen at all. It’s a world where the worst losses of the world are kept outside of the frame, made digestible and easily resolved, one half hour at a time. It is, a world where she can have the life that she dreamed of as a little girl, the life she and Vision imagined for themselves, back.

Who wouldn’t want to bury themselves in that world at a time when the universe has taken pound of flesh after pound of flesh from your body? Look, we’re talking about a famed Scarlet Witch using her “chaos magic” to rewrite reality for a small town in New Jersey. None of this is down-to-earth exactly. And yet there’s something that feels so relatable, even natural, to Wanda choosing (or instinctively reacting) to conjure the sort of place that’s bereft of the traumas she’s suffered again and again and again.

We know the ruddy details now: that Agnes wants power, that Hayward wants a Vision of his own, that Wanda is firmly the source of the Hex. But more importantly, we understand why it came to this. “Previously On” gives us all those stark moments of love and joy and happiness that Wanda was robbed of, and the comforting glow of a place where no such heart-wrenching thefts can occur. Whatever season-ending fireworks happen next week, no one can blame poor Wanda for retreating into her static-filled dream world, when so much of her life has been this crystal clear nightmare.

[7.5/10] I continue to be in awe of the way WandaVision marries difficult emotional truths with the trappings of the televised form. This week, we’ve made it to the late 2000s/early 2010s mockumentary stage, with a style borrowed from shows like The Office and Modern Family. As always, the show does it well, with the talking head segments and characters looking at the camera (or “Jimming”, to borrow a term from Community) that capture the humor of that style of comedy.

The thing that grabbed me about this one, though, is that it uses that form to lean into Wanda’s depression, her sense of meaningless to life after witnessing and suffering so much trauma, her lurking fear that she’s endured so much pain because she deserves it. So often, the show has used its sitcom homages for subtle horror, when there’s something odd at the edge of the laugh track or TGIF rhythms that make us uneasy about what terrible thing might be lurking beyond the polished exterior.

But this week, the jarring part is that we’re still doing the cheery sitcom sheen but instead pairing it more directly with Wanda’s abject despondency. She has trouble getting out of bed. She’s incapable of doing anything. She can’t take care of her kids. Our title character (or one of them, at least), has basically given up.

That’s low-key dispiriting. There’s a realism to all of this. I’m sorry to say I know what it’s like to be with a caretaker who’s suffering from this kind of depression, and once again, WandaVision is unnervingly real in its depiction of it here. The fake ad this week (a pitch-perfect spoof of pill commercials) hints at what Wanda’s going through, weighed down not only by the losses she’s experienced so far, but by the sense that the perfect world she’s constructed is now crumbling too, especially with Vision seeming to have left her.

“Breaking the Fourth Wall” conveys that nicely (and in a visually sharp fashion) as objects within the Maximoff household start fritzing between different eras. It’s a nice way to communicate that Wanda is being overtaxed and overstretched, to where without the object of her affections and the person she ostensibly did all of this for, she can’t hold the focus or will to maintain it. She doesn’t know why, but she seems to ignore it in favor of her depressed stupor, hinting that it’s an emotional issue, rather than a magical one.

There’s other big plot happenings to be enjoyed though! For one, we pair up Vision and Darcy, the latter of whom has been officially sucked into the Hex. I honestly don’t love the pairing, as their comic energy isn’t brilliant. But I suppose it’s necessary, to bring this Vision up to speed on what’s happening both inside and outside this bubble. There’s some good comedy in the impediments that Wanda sets out for Vision to prevent him from making his way back home, and as much as they’re used for comedy, there’s something quietly heartbreaking about Vision’s confessionals, where he’s unusually emotionally raw about what he knows and what he suspects about the things his wife has done and his strange state of identity. Him getting fed up with the construct and just flying toward Wanda is a big move, both in terms of plot and his character.

Arguably just as big is Monica Rambeau not only making it inside the Hex, but maintaining her sense of self. It turns out that her aerospace engineering pal is just a friend of her mom’s who’s willing to deliver a favor, which is admittedly a bit of a letdown. But the purpose is to show the strength of the Hex and, by extension, the strength of Monica when she discovers her powers. The hardcore aerospace tech can’t penetrate the bubble (and even gets turned into a wood-paneled minivan in the process), but Monica wills her way through.

I’ll be honest. I had trouble hearing the echoing voices that presumably spoke important sentiments from Monica’s life as she burst through the barrier. Given her comments later, I took it to be a commentary on trauma, that Monica too has lost people and suffered, but chooses to keep going and finds strength in that, literally and figuratively. The strange body scans were a harbinger -- she’s got abilities of her own, and she wants to use them to help Wanda, to reason with her, as someone who’s experienced similar losses.

The confrontation goes about as well as you’d think, with Wanda trying to blast her away again, but Monica being tough but firm with her target. She’s running out of time though, as Director Hayward not only wanted to use Vision as a weapon, but is planning some sort of tactical strike. I gotta say, that’s my least favorite part of this one. We’ve done the “Government agency guy has a villainous, weapons-focused motivation” time and time again in the MCU. Unless there’s some unseen wrinkle here, it’s just not an interesting twist anymore.

What is, on the other hand, is the reveal that Agnes is behind it all! That may not be a shocking revelation, but it’s still a cool one. I’ll admit, I both thought Agnes was the likely culprit going back several episodes, but also bought into last week’s headfake where she pretended to be under Wanda’s influence. WandaVision unveiling her as Agatha Harkness, another “magical gal” in town, with ominous plans still totally work.

I have to say, I love the “Agatha All Along” montage and the fact that she gets her own theme here. Kathryn Hahn is a total pro, and the way she channels the cheesily cackling and winking baddie vibe on the one hand, while conveying some actual menace on the other, is really impressive. The little outro is very funny at the same time it fills in tons of gaps, and the villainous laughter coda that she killed their little dog too is the icing on the cake.

Beneath that heightened, audience-nudging reveal is some real terror though. The prospect of what happened to Billy and Tommy concerns me, especially when Wanda finds an expansive, gothic basement containing a box like the one that she and Pietro were kept in back in the day. One of the twins, the one seemingly with psychic powers, likes her because she’s quiet inside, something far scarier than it should be. She clearly has plans for them, and children’s lives in danger chills the blood of any adult.

As it reaches its closing stretch, WandaVision puts its cards on the table, telling us who the villains on the inside and outside are, reaching the present (more or less) with its homages, and giving us four superpowered beings within the Hex prepared to do battle to save/protect/convince Wanda of what has to happen left. It’s a hell of a setup, emotionally and story-wise, and I’m excited to see how the show finishes it.

Possibly a contrarian opinion, but I'm starting to get a little worn down by a show that so heavily panders to the super fans in hopes their gushing will trickle down to the masses. You're supposed to be telling me the story, not showing glimpses of things and then hoping I'll read wiki pages and fandom entries just to know what the hell is going on.
Case in point, we've seen Monica as an operative for SWORD, but she walks through the Hex and now has glowing eyes and can stand toe to toe with Wanda. So now you expect me to read wiki entries on whoever the fuck "Spectrum" is just to understand what the hell just happened? Or are we all supposed to have a resident Marvel super fan who can just rattle off who these people are you're introducing at the speed of light?
Agatha is also another prime example. After this weeks episode, it feels like the intended reaction from the audience is "OMG THEY ARE DOING AGATHA HARKNESS?! OMG OMG OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE DOING AGATHA!!". I simply do not know who Agatha is or what her connection is, but all the comments online would have you believe this is the second coming of Christ.
A fly on the wall in one scene is apparantly a confirmation of either Mephisto or Nightmare. Who? What? Oh right, more wikis and fandom pages.

[9.0/10] There’s so much to talk about in this one. X-Men’s Quicksilver as Avengers Quicksilver! Bulletproof hotpants! 1980s TV spoofs! Scarlet Witch’s stand-off with Sword!

But here’s the thing that stands out to me, the thing that grabbed me the most while watching this “Very Special Episode” -- Vision confronting the woman he loves over what’s happening. That moment has extra oomph because of the effects. There’s something eerie about the two of them arguing over the end credits until they stop. There’s something scary about the two of them rising into the air at the same time they raise their voices to one another.

What stands out about it, though, is the emotional rawness in the moment. Vision isn’t just upset; he’s worried that he can no longer trust his wife, that she’s done something terrible to him, to everyone, and doing everything in her power to keep it from him. Wanda is trying to hold it together, feeling just as vulnerable and admitting she’s not even sure how this started. They are both just so messed up by what’s happening, so riven by it, but in ways that drive them apart over whether to tear this all down or do everything they can to continue propping it up.

The tenor of the scene is familiar to anyone who’s spoken with a loved one who’s unwell, who is not themselves, whether through grief or mental illness or some other trauma that jeopardizes their ability to process the world as it is. There’s an honesty to that scene, one that is frankly startling, and it’s the kind of place I never really expected an MCU project to go. It’s draped in reality-distorting fiction and the trappings of family sitcoms, but somehow that just makes it all the more disturbing and poignant when the truth of those moments bursts through those bracing layers of abstraction.

That’s bolstered by the second most stunning revelation of “On a Very Special Episode” -- that Wanda stole Vision’s corpse from Sword. More to the point, that he left a living will and wished never to be revived, not wanting to be anyone’s weapon. It’s plain that Wanda, either by herself or with the help of someone else, revivified him, and that he’s starting to reckon with the margins of what happened to him, if not the full picture.

He’s starting to see through the illusions and deceptions that Westview is made of. Again, the show does so well making the moments where it breaks the sitcom rhythms unnerving. Agnes’s “should I take it from the top” bit is eerie, and for once, Vision has a chance to realize it before Wanda resets things. Instead, she tries to play it off, tries to distract him with puppies and doorbells ringing and other head-fakes that Vision’s nevertheless noticing.

It comes through in the odd behavior of his coworkers, who respond to a Sword email by reading and laughing in unison. Vision briefly frees Norm, who is understandably frantic and undone and, most importantly, in pain over what’s being done to him. The secret truth of WandaVision is that it’s not a comedy show or sitcom homage or a superhero series. It’s a horror show, and Vision’s starting to realize that. He’s realizing that everything is wrong here, starting with him, what he can and can’t remember, and the mother of his children.

Meanwhile, there’s some more traditional but still cool developments on the outside. Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo, and Darcy Lewis are trying to save Wanda, trying to show her compassion despite what’s happening, while Sword Director Hayward thinks she’s just a terrorist who needs to be taken out. Meanwhile, our trio of familiar characters are finding solutions to the problem, realizing that 1980s tech can penetrate the Hex without being transformed by Scarlet Witch’s powers.

Of course, it doesn’t go unnoticed by Wanda, and she storms out of the Hex to threaten Heyward and everyone else when, unbeknownst to Monica, he tries to use their drone to eliminate her. It’s a scary moment, one only slightly cut by Elizabeth Olsen reverting to her dodgy Eastern European accent. We see definitively that Wanda has at least some control and awareness of her surroundings and what’s happening, enough to want to protect it from interlopers and those intruding on her surroundings.

It’s become increasingly clear why she’s so protective of her perfect bubble of happiness and what she is running from -- grief. The show channels that idea through 1980s sitcom pastiches in an amusing fashion, with Agnes as the friendly, albeit intrusive neighbor, kids growing up too fast, and dogs dying so that parents can give an important lesson about making peace with certain facts of life.

At the root of it, though, is a deep sense of loss and the artifacts of reckoning with death, something difficult whether you’re a child or an adult. Wanda says to her boys, and to herself, that she cannot reverse death, that they cannot turn away from it, because some things aren’t meant to be elided and some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

We confirm that she has brought the corpse of the man she loves back to life, presumably because she couldn’t deal with his absence and the tragedy of what happened to him. The commercial break this episode name-checks Lagos, the Nigerian city from Civil War where Scarlet Witch accidentally killed dozens of civilians when trying to redirect a blast, more mess than any paper towel could clean up. And she reflects, at her sons’ urging, on the loss of her own twin, Pietro, the only lifeline she had when she lost her parents at the same tender age Billy and Tommy are now.

So she does what she’s already done -- she brings him back, after a fashion. It’s an inspired bit of stunt-casting to bring in Evan Peters to quasi-reprise his role as Quicksilver. But beyond the jolt of the misdirect and reveal is a simple truth, that this whole thing is wrong. It is a coping mechanism, one meant to shield Wanda from yet another horrid demise marring her personal history.

So she, or some other force working with and through her, has constructed this place to evade that destabilizing realization. Vision is breaking out of it, shaking off the cobwebs of his violative rebirth and seeing through the comforting lies that Wanda is straining so hard to hold onto. It is difficult, hollowing, wounding to watch someone you care for undone by grief and trauma, dragging the world down with them. So much of what WandaVision does is clever or exciting or amusing. But what it does here is disquieting beyond words, and deeply, painfully true.

You know how I said the season 5 finale was kind of lame? This was better, but far from totally satisfying. I know a few decades is nothing when you have an eternity to look forward to, but it still sucks that Chloe had to be a single mother. It's not fair to her. I cried so much when Deckerstar were saying goodbye (a really messy, snotty cry). All the little callbacks like Chloe playing that simple melody on the piano were so sweet and Lauren and Tom really did a breathtaking job. But still, it didn't have to be this way. I think it would've been much better if Lucifer had chosen to commute to Hell and still be in Rory's life, and that moment had created an alternate timeline - so that Rory from the original timeline still arrived to fullfil her purpose, but everything from that point on was different. IMO that would've been much better than the time loop idea. When it comes to time travel, you can pretty much get away with any bullshit explanation anyway. Everyone else ended up in a really good place, so at least that was nice. Maze and Eve kicking ass and taking names together, Charlie sprouting wings... I liked all of that. Also they really got Tricia Helfer to come back without giving her any dialogue lmao.

I will miss this show. Even though I feel like it had run its course and there weren't any stories left to tell, I'm still a little sad to see it go. It wasn't a perfect show, but it had some great moments, especially when it rose above the case of the week stuff and focused more on the celestial side of things and the relationships between the characters. It had such an interesting, diverse and lovable bunch of characters who all changed and grew in organic ways. The humor was always top notch, but the show also had some genuine emotion and a lot of heart. All in all, I will remember Lucifer fondly.

EDIT: After giving myself some time to fully digest this season and this final episode, I realized that there is something deeply messed up about a show that has always been about free will - Lucifer choosing to stay on Earth, Amenadiel choosing humanity, Chloe choosing to love Lucifer (remember how big of a deal the "does she only have feelings for me because she's a gift from God?" debacle was?), Maze choosing to develop human emotions and form connections with people, Eve choosing her own path after literally being made for someone else - not giving its leads any choice in the end and forcing them to follow a predetermined path. Again, the alternate timeline idea was right there and it would've reaffirmed the show's message that you make your own fate.

Watching through Buffy for the first time recently. I missed it the first go-round as i would've been too hardcore goth for such bubblegummy fare when it was first coming out. It's good timing, actually, i feel like the ensuing 2 decades have put me in a place to appreciate Joss Whedon's campy vision.

I feel like Teacher's Pet is the episode where the series starts to hit its stride. The main characters seem to be establishing their chemistry, which is excellent and worth watching for that alone. Secondarily, it's good, goofy late 90s fun. While this show could easily veer towards the obnoxious, somehow it toes the line and is charming instead. I feel like if this came out even 3 years later, it wouldn't have worked, as i imagine they'd have been tempted to use CGI instead of practical effects and the whole thing would've been rendered dated and cheap. Instead, Buffy has kind of a timeless quality, in lines with weird, goofy teen horror romps, from Eerie, Indiana to The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina.

I also like to imagine a world where teenagers go out and watch live music almost every day. Makes me miss going to shows.

[7.6/10] In some ways, “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is one of The Simpsons’’s most dated episodes. Its main plot centers on stealing cable through adjusting the hook-up between your T.V. set and the bundle of wires that connects it to the outside world. For one thing, it rests on a schism between over-the-air television and “pay T.V.” that doesn't really exist in the same way given the multitude of entertainment options and avenues. The very idea of “getting cable” is a bit outmoded given the variety of ways people consume T.V., movies, and other entertainment. And the simple notion of a shady guy making it all happen through a few misplaced wires is downright quaint.

But in others, the episode is timeless. While the sources and methods of obtaining premium content have varied considerably since 1991, when it originally aired, we live in an age of an increasing number of cord-cutters and cord-shavers and others tired of subsisting on traditional entertainment offerings. And while rewiring one’s cable box has gone the way of fixing the tracking on your VCR, piracy, illegal streams, and bootleg DVDs are still the province of average joes galled by pricey packages and an increasing number of walled gardens.

And even more universal is the moral dilemma at the core of “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment.” The episode is anchored around the biblical admonition “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” And whether that means swiping a graven idol from a shop in ancient Sinai, using an illegal cable hook-up in the Springfield of the 1990s, or running a shady bitcoin scam today, the ethical conundrums of what constitutes theft, immorality, and upstanding principles in the life of the nuclear family are just as compelling and applicable.

What’s funny is that when the episode aired, America’s moral guardians were wringing their hands about The Simpsons as a bad influence, and yet, Homer’s part of this episode reads almost like a Chick tract. Homer is the instigator of the cable-stealing (recreating North by Northwest to get it), and at first, everything’s good. He’s thoroughly seduced by his drug of choice, glued to the T.V. set 24/7, and everything from being able to entertain his family to being the toast of the town for hosting the big prize fight suggests a big win for the lovable oaf.

But then things start to crumble. The normally immovable object of television’s affections grows disillusioned and disinterested even with cable television’s cavalcade of offerings. He starts to grow increasingly panicked about everyone from his boss to his bartender finding out the various ways he’s bent or broken the rules over the years. And after a well-done sequence where he imagines a fanciful, if more secular-than-divine punishment for his ill deeds, has a change of heart, and desperate to escape his guilt and paranoia, he begrudgingly becomes a pioneering cord-cutter once more.

And he does so at the behest of an earnest voice encouraging him to save his soul. One of the unique things about “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is that, in contrast to some of the other “versus” episodes in The Simpsons catalogue, there’s not really much antagonism between the two title characters in this one. It’s more that Homer is on the highway to hell, and Lisa is the Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, calmly but firmly encouraging to be a more moral man, but in a way founded more on childlike protest than direct confrontation.

There is, as was even more potent in the show’s early seasons, some subtle social commentary in that. There’s something well-observed about the way the show presents Lisa’s position in relation to the adults in her life. She’s taught that the Ten Commandments are absolute hard and fast rules, where the punishment for violations is eternal damnation. Her parents seem to care enough about these core precepts to take her to church, but then they do things like steal cable, or sample a pair of grapes without paying for them. Sure, the latter at least may seem too minimal, but if it’s a biblical stricture, and the risk is going to hell, why wouldn’t you be extraordinarily wary of even the slightest misstep?

Lisa, then, is the conduit for the show pointing out that however much folks believe in the basic moral principles behind the Ten Commandments, people’s devotion and belief only runs so deep, otherwise we’d all be acting like Lisa. There’s an innocence and willingness to take things at face value in childhood, and as usual, The Simpsons points out how, in American society at least, the way that people bend the rules suggests they don’t always practice what they preach.

As is typical for the show in its early going, the humor derived from that idea is softer. Lisa shouting at the supermarket, Homer freaking out about office supplies he swiped from work, and Marge being excited to make her own band-aids is all pretty mild, but its rooted in wry observations about how we compartmentalize our religious tenets rather than let them interfere with our daily lives. The bulk of the straighter comedy is picked up more by a cavalcade of wide-ranging cable T.V. spoofs, and with Bart up to his traditional hellraiser tricks. But as usual, early season Simpsons is content to pull humor from the shape of whatever situation its deposited its characters in rather than setups and punchlines.

For the most part though, the show gives us morality tale. There’s a goofus and gallant routine between Homer and Lisa, the simple oaf lured by the glow of the television, contrasted with the principled young woman worried for her mortal soul. It wasn’t the first time that Lisa led her father to be his best self, and it wouldn’t be the last. But there’s still something unique about this one, where Lisa is still definitively a kid, Homer is less idiotic and more easily seduced than usual, and when the pair’s trajectories crash into one another, Lisa brings her father to the side of the angels.

The specifics of the story may be rooted in the particulars of 1990, but the ideas at the core of this one -- bent and broken morality, the situational malleability of religious beliefs for most people, and the way good influences in our lives can remind us of our better selves -- are timeless.

[7.3/10] Well, that was bold. I have to give the show that much.

Let’s start with the big mystery reveal. I suppose I have a bit of egg on my face after my last write-up when I railed about how Penn couldn’t be the real bomber. The show gives him a good bit of motive and opportunity. We see him having been harassed and disrespected by all the Spring Breakers, which gives him reason to hate them and want them gone. And his interest in true crime gives him the understanding of how these investigations proceed to be able to (a.) potentially get away with it (b.) feed the investigators what they need and (c.) understand how the explosives work, something he’s been working up to.

You can also see how the whole Murderheads thing makes him love the spotlight, idolizing killers, until the two combine and he realizes the best way to hang onto the spotlight is to become one of the murderers he so admires.

But I don’t know, at some point it just requires too much contrivance to really make complete sense to me, less from motivation and more from action. Can you really picture Patton Oswalt lugging the body of his “friend” Don or getting the neck bomb on that kid? And at the same time, for his plan to work, he had to be able to play Veronica and Keith to a degree that feels impossible, requiring them to pick him up at just the right time so he could leave his bag in their car, and lead them to Don, and all this other stuff that just seems kind of implausible.

Beyond Penn turning into a Bond villain and delivering monologues to Veronica at the end (which you can at least attribute to him watching true crime shows and aiming for their same sense of grandiosity), beyond the sort of visceral implausibility of Penn managing to stage all these crimes, it just requires too much to go right for him for everything to work out the way it did.

Granted, I think of the 7 major mysteries the show has done at this point, I think I only found one of them fully satisfying, so there’s a fair argument that this sort of thing is just the show’s M.O. and a decade and a half after the series’s debut, you’re either on board with it or you’re not. I like Veronica Mars for the great humor and dialogue, the strongly-written character relationships, and the fun and twists of the mystery along the way, regardless of whether the answers make complete sense.

But man, those character relationships take some pretty big blows here! I admire the show’s boldness in killing Logan right when he and Veronica are at peak happiness. This show was often compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its early days, and that’s a very Buffy move. The ethos for this show has always been that in Neptune, where everything is rigged, even when you win, you lose. To have Veronica solve the mystery, marry the love of her life, and get a clean bill of health for her dad, only to see the bomber take one last pound of flesh, and to have the corporate and gentrifying interests take over the beach anyway, feels true to what the show is and has been.

I’ll admit, though, that I don’t really like the fake out with it seeming like Logan was going to bail on the wedding. I understand needing to have some stakes in these moments, but it just came off cheesy to me, as did the whole “last recorded voicemail” shtick. Still, as a BSG fan, it’s always a thrill to see Mary McDonnel pop up, and I appreciate that the silver lining to all of this is Veronica accepting that she needed to deal with some shit and going to therapy.

I also neglected to mention that however contrived the situation is, I really like the scene at the heretofore unmentioned Kane High School commemoration. For one thing, it’s just fun to see Veronica show up and crash another Kane event (almost literally). But there’s legitimate tension when Veronica has to watch Keith stand there and try to convince Penn to confess and defuse the bomb before they’re both blown up. Say what you will about how the show crafts its mysteries, but it knows how to pull off a suspenseful scene.

Otherwise, I like where things land for the most part. I appreciate the reveal that Maddie is the one who stole the ring (Vinnie was right!), which establishes her rough-around-the-edges bona fides that makes her fit to fill Veronica’s shoes at Mars Investigations. I like that in the end, Keith still can’t abide what Clyde did, despite how endearing their bromance is, and I like that Clyde ends up with his girlfriend and his car dealership, underscoring the anti-”evil never prospers” message of the show. And I like that maybe, just maybe, Veronica is genuinely ready to move on from Neptune, to go see what else is out there, now that the best life she was living there has been ripped away from her.

Overall, I’m not entirely satisfied with the answer to the big mystery, but otherwise I really liked this season. It definitely had the tone and sensibility of the show right. It had some good personal developments with the main characters, and brought in a slew of interesting new fresh faces. And it made some bold moves here, that challenge our hero, and live up to the show’s perspective rather than sanding it down. Good, bad, and otherwise, this season was still very much the Veronica Mars that I remembered, and that’s a good thing.

Great wrap up to a wacky season! It was bound to happen, but still, I am sad to see Blum go (yes, I'm aware I'm in the minority, though I understand the Blum hate), but I am happy that he took Maia with him (I still don't like her). Judging by her last scene, he seemed to have ruined her, anyway, so nothing's lost, there.

Between the absurdity of the ASMR testimony and the silly Brooks Brothers riot re-enactment, that has got to be the most ludicrous trial we've ever seen in The Good Fight! And I'm glad for it, this show does not spend enough time in the courtroom, unfortunately, so I treasure every moment that it does. And this one trumped them all!

I did not understand if the whole ball lightning was supposed to be a metaphor for something. Nothing burned up in the end, Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart won the trial, so... What was that all about? Same thing goes for that cliffhanger... What the flying fuck?! I'm guessing Kurt will be charged for something. Or maybe Diane. Or both! Maybe the Book Club has something to do with it, like someone suggested around here. I hope we'll get to see the reason behind that scene by early 2020.

... Until then, enjoy Donald J. Trump, everybody!

I think this is my favourite show at the moment. There was a period where I was watching this (The Good Friend, as my sister and I stupidly refer to it) as well as Big Little Lies and Feud, and I couldn't have been happier. Strong, female-led drama is what I crave in a TV show (one of the stereotypically gay things about me). This season has been a belter, as well. They're playing with the form of television, having started to break the mould set by network television in the first couple of seasons, now they are going all out to see how far they can push the medium, and still tell a compelling, dramatic and at times, hysterically funny story.

The confrontation referred to in the episode title is just one of the moments where the show breaks out of traditional television narrative to great effect. There are odd moments when people start singing (I can't even begin to understand what was going on with Michael Sheen singing the Jackson Five song "I'll Be There" over the closing moments of a recent episode), and real-world back stories to the events in the show are told in song, with accompanying animation. These disparate elements really should not work together, but somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (and the parts are already fairly heavyweight, amazing cast, showrunners honed on a decade of network television, being let loose on a niche streaming service).

Even if you never really got into The Good Wife, this show is still worth a look.

If you are, like me, in Australia, The Good Fight is available weekly on SBS.
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/the-good-fight

After a couple of superficially entertaining but broad and Michael Sheen-infected episodes, The Good Fight bounces back big time with its best episode in... ever? Yeah, this might be my favorite episode of the show. It's not only that Blum's presence is only strongly felt, not seen, but also that this episode is super-focused on the firm in every plot. And they really perfect the show's balancing act, between contemporary politics and character dynamics, between big picture theme and minute personal consequences.

How Lucca's video sparks off the rumination of the firm's racial bias (or its "supposed" lack of, depending on where you stand on the corporate ladder) is complex, difficult, and so damn exhilaratingly incendiary in the way it pushes our character identification of certain favorites against the important movement that needs to be pushed forward. It's all captured in how legitimate the grievances of Jay and Lucca are about this issue, but so too are the feelings on their faces for Maia when they learn she will be caught up in this. Even the sideplots of Julius/Marissa and Diane/Liz tie directly into this gray area, with all characters learning what needs to be done is never black and white, or that simple. This is The Good Fight at its best, really.

Best lines
I’m waiting for an old friend - Bran
You left me for dead - Hound
I also robbed you - Arya
I’ve always had blue eyes! - Tormund
Whatever they want - Dany
but
It had its moments - Sansa

They need wheelchair ramps in Winterfell. They left Bran in the courtyard overnight!

Parallelism between Season 1 Episode 1 and Season 8 Episode 1

1. S01E01 Winter Is Coming. S08E01 Winterfell.
2. Opening shot of the King and Queen arriving with the same soundtrack called "The King's Arrival."
3. S01E01 Winterfell showed grass but S08E01 it’s covered in snow.
4. The kid from the beginning was climbing on trees to get a good view, similar to Bran climbing the castle to get a good view. He was made to look similar to Bran in the Pilot.
5. Arya being a kid watching the King coming, compare to her letting a kid get a good view of the Queen coming.
6. S01E01 Jamie is arriving at Winterfell taking off his Golden Lannister Helmet and showing his blond hair, clean shave, and everyone staring at him. S08E01 Jamie arriving in Gray cloaks and taking a hood off to show darker hair and a beard and no one except Bran noticing him.
7. Both episodes ending with Bran and Jamie, except this time Jamie looks terrified.
8. Both episodes have amputated limbs from the white walkers spread out in a gory way to send a message.
9. Scenes in the Winterfell crypt except instead of visiting Lyanna Stark they are seeing Ned Stark.
10. S01E01 Cersi and Catelyn Stark talk about their kids possibly getting married while looking at them from a distance. S08E01 Varys, Tyrion, and Davos talk about Dany and Jon while looking at them from a distance.
11. S08E01 The reunion of Jon and Arya at the Godswood (weirwood tree) is similar to S01E01 Ned and Catelyn at the Godswood.
12. Incest between visiting monarchs and Bran watched both lewd acts. Bran controlled the staring scene from Drogon. Another interpretation is,
13. Dragon and riders can have personality. Drogon’s emotional expression is essentially warning Jon that this is all smoke and mirrors (as Varys noted earlier, nothing lasts). The “real” Daenerys is not the flirty kissy-face girlfriend joking about eloping; Daenerys’s true nature, underneath the playfulness, is reflected in Drogon’s intensity and focus. That’s who she is, and Jon shouldn't forget that.
14. S08E01 brothel scene with Bron is similar to S01E01 Tyrion’s scene and it is both interrupted with someone walking in.
15. S01E01 Catelyn: "Where's Arya?" "Sansa, where's your sister?". Sansa: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ S08E01 Jon: "Where's Arya?" Sansa: "Lurking somewhere."
16. S08E01 Sansa (Current Ruler of Winterfell) saying “Winterfell is yours, Your Grace.” to the arriving monarch (Daenerys Targaryen). S01E01 Ned (Former Ruler of Winterfell) “Guarding the North for you, Your Grace. Winterfell is yours.” to Robert Baratheon.
17. S01E01 Robert Baratheon to Ned "I have a son, you have a daughter, we shall join our houses." S08E01 Arya (Stark) and Gendry (Baratheon).
18. S08E01 Sansa being more than wary of Daenerys, similar to Catelyn in S01E01 was of Cersei. She is exactly like her mother (Catelyn) in the greeting.
19. S01E01 Robert asking Ned to be his Hand of the King in the crypts is similar to Sam in S08E01 telling Jon he is the king in the crypts (Hinting Sam might become Jon's Hand of the King).
20. Sam and Ned both share a few similarities; Sam is the smarter one in their duo, Sam and Ned's fathers/brothers were burned alive by Targaryens.
21. Jon/Robert - great warriors, “brothers” to Sam/Ned, and both seeking for the iron throne but also both doing it for reasons beyond wanting the throne (protecting the realm / saving Lyanna and removing the mad king).
22. S01E01 Ned’s farewell to Jon he says “the next time we see each other, we will talk about your mother. I promise.” In S08E01 Jon is staring at Ned's tomb while Sam tells him about his real parents (Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen).
23. S01E01 Jon is distraught over his identity crisis as a bastard. In S08E01 Jon is distraught over his identity crisis as a king.
24. In S01E01 Cerci tells Jamie to kill Bran. In S08E01 Cersei tells Bron to kill Jamie.
25. In S01E01/S08E01 Arya is jumping into Jon's arms as he lifts her!
26. S01E01 A child is “dead” and crucified to a tree. Child attacks brothers of the nights watch. A brother goes south (then executed by Ned Stark). In S08E01 a child is crucified to a wall. Eddison Tollett (Edd) witnesses, and he goes south to warn others. Side note: Opposite of what brother of the Night's Watch did from S01E01: safe to say he won’t be executed by Lord of Winterfell considering he was one of the reasons the current Lord of Winterfell is alive after himself being executed.
27. S08E01 Daenerys "The North is as beautiful as your brother claimed, as are you." Similar to S01E01 when Cersei said "Hello, little dove." "But you are a beauty".
28. S01E01 The last time Jon and Arya spoke, she was given her sword Needle and jumped up on Jon to hug his neck. S08E01 Arya jumps up to hug his neck, then shows Jon that she still has Needle.
29. If Cersei taught Sansa anything, it's not to blindly trust a beautiful queen coming into Winterfell and promising to protect her and fulfill her wildest dreams.
30. S01E01 The whole family standing in line for the king. S08E01 The remaining Starks and their advisers waiting for the queen and Jon
31. In S01E01 Jon Snow gets a pet Direwolf (Stark), in S08E01 Jon Snow gets a pet Dragon (Targaryen).
32. S01E01 Surprising return of and the existence of dire wolves south of the wall shocking the northerners. In S08E01 The return of and existence of dragons also shocking the northerners.
33. The arrival at Winterfell, the only person that rode in both caravans, was The Hound. In S01E01 the hound wore his trademark dog helm, but in S08E01 he wore nothing. It seems to symbolize his transition away from The Hound and to being himself, Sandor Clegane.
34. In S01E01 Ned kills the deserter and tells Bran "the white walkers been gone for thousands of years." Bran in S08E01 says we don't have time; the white walkers are coming.
35. S01E01 Robert and Ned are standing in front of Lyanna Stark's tomb. In S08E01 Sam and Jon are standing in front of Lyanna Stark’s tomb.
36. S01E01 lady of Winterfell (Catelyn) reading a letter by candlelight. S08E01 The lady of Winterfell (Sansa) reading a letter by candlelight.
37. In S08E01 When Sansa and Tyrion were discussing the wedding at Joffrey. Tyrion said "Last time we spoke was at Joffrey's wedding" "Miserable affair" Sansa said "It had its moments" recalling Joffrey's gruesome death and being satisfied by how it went down. Recalling "fondly" in this instance would be sarcasm. In S01E01, Sansa thinks of Joffrey fondly because she wants to be queen.
38. S01E01 Sandor Clegane comes to Winterfell with the Bastard Joffrey Baratheon. S08E01 Sandor Clegane comes to Winterfell with the Bastard Gendry Baratheon.

Foreshadowing (from different Seasons/Episodes.)

01. S03E05“ “Let’s not go back. Let’s stay here a while longer,” Ygritte tells Jon. “I don’t ever want to leave this cave, Jon Snow.” S08E01 “We could stay a thousand years. No one would find us,” Daenerys says to Jon.
02. Sam is suggesting rebelling against the Targaryen because they burned his father and brother alive. Similar to when Robert's Rebellion, began when Rhaegar Targaryen, allegedly abducted Robert's betrothed, Lyanna Stark.

When I heard Doctor Who was doing an episode about Rosa Parks, my first reaction was 'huh?". One, because I didn't expect a British show to tackle such a crucial piece of the American history. And two, because I was afraid that they wouldn't do it justice. It's such a delicate subject matter and they really needed to find the perfect balance for it not to be a complete failure.

And find the perfect balance they did.

I mean, I'm a white girl living in Poland, so far be it from me to claim to be an expert when it comes to the Civil Rights Movement. I'm absolutely not. But I thought this episode was amazing. The actress who played Rosa did a phenomenal job. And I'm pretty sure I held my breath for like 5 minutes at the end there. The moment the Doctor realized that they had to stay on the bus and watch, unable to help because they needed to keep history intact... It was devastating. But Rosa's choice felt absolutely triumphant. I love that we got to see her receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And what a lovely ending with the asteroid.

Jodie really nailed it once again, especially the more intense moments. I loved both her conversations with the other time traveler (whose name I didn't catch because my ears suck and there are no subtitles yet). I can't be the only one who saw a bit of Twelve shining through. The editing, with the quick cuts between the two characters and the (sometimes extreme) close-ups, made those scenes feel very dynamic and intimate. I also adore her facial expressions. Her face does all kinds of crazy things and it's so completely Doctor-ish. When Graham put his arm around her shoulders at the motel and she scrunched up her nose in disgust... I am head over heels in love with this woman.

"- You ain't Banksy!
- Or am I?"

I can't believe I stan this absolute nerd.

All three companions played a big role, which I'm very happy about. We saw a bit more development from Yaz - a lot of people complained that she didn't bring as much to the table as Graham or Ryan in the previous two episodes. I think she really shone here. I also love that Ryan just vaporized the antagonist without hesitation. Good stuff. And I'm glad they haven't magically forgotten about Grace and she still gets mentioned a bunch. It is a very fresh tragedy, after all.

This was hands down the best episode of the season so far and it's probably gonna be remembered as one of the most iconic stories of the entire show. I hope we can keep this up. It looks like next week the Doctor is finally gonna get her gang home and they're gonna be fighting some good old-fashioned space spiders. Which means a ton of dumb fun. Hey, I'm not complaining. We need episodes like that too. But "Rosa" was excellent on all fronts and I'm definitely gonna have to watch it again.

Is American Horror Story: Cult the television equivalent of Marvel’s Secret Wars event? Fan favorites like Evan Peters are turned into unrepentant fascists, characters like Twisty make unexpected and inexplicable returns, and as nakedly as Cult demonstrates its aspirations toward political commentary it remains unclear what the show is trying to convey. The complexities of the issues Cult is trying to take on may result in a season that is as in poor taste as Secret Wars, especially considering their shared ideological murkiness. Because the show seems to take aim at both Sarah Paulson’s left-leaning Ally (the name, as AHS always is, is painfully on the nose) and Evan Peters’s Kai, one might accuse Ryan Murphy of false equivalence. And yet, Ally is unquestionably heroic and Kai is unrepentantly villainous. This distinction is important. On a day when DACA is under threat, representing an existential horror far beyond what AHS is artistically equipped to depict, the perspective that “everyone is worried over nothing, ‘both sides’ need to calm down” is unwelcome. At least as of the first episode, I’m not immediately alienated by some poorly thought out centrism.

While Cult is a high risk (and, perhaps, low reward) proposition, it gets a lot right. I found this episode inspiring fear and dread in excess of other seasons of AHS. It’s not just the political drama, either. Peters is a menace on the screen, chewing scenery, firing off nonsensical diatribes, and committing heinous acts. The sinister nanny is also a powerful fear-generating machine. The powerlessness of Ally and Ivy to intervene on the life of their child and protect him from this intrusion is profoundly unsettling. But beyond on that, it’s slick camera work and memorable costuming that does the job. The monstrous clowns that terrorize Ally and her son and commit suburban murders are as striking as the returning Twisty.

I’m appreciative that the show verified Ally’s encounters with the clowns as “real” as opposed to long-playing the possibility of hallucination. Horror rarely treats mental illness with the nuance it deserves and Cult is no exception. Ally’s condition played up as an isolation based horror is crass, and her treatment by both the narrative and the other characters is unconscionable. The quicker the show decides to pivot away from this hackneyed plot device, the better.

Overall, I’m intrigued by what is on offer with this season of AHS. I don’t expect any groundbreaking political commentary. For some, that might be enough reason to dismiss the show at best or argue it should have never been made at worst. I’m sympathetic to those arguments. But there’s something about the craft of this first episode that has grabbed me. And I appreciate seeing the naked fascism of Kai on screen, rendered as incoherently and unsympathetically as it deserves. But I shudder to think what other viewers might take away from Murphy’s glib and over-the-top depiction of the entire political spectrum. The fact that Kai might affirm or embolden some white supremacist is a horror of which I don’t need to be reminded.

"Call her Nichole."

And just like that, my pathetic bitch ass is back on the June/Serena train. No regrets.

I could write a 1,000-word review of this episode and I still don't think I would cover everything. So, I'll try to list some of the things that absolutely blew my mind:

1. Aunt Lydia getting wrecked by Emily. Of course it's what she deserved, but it was brutal as fuck. Alexis Bledel's acting was everything. That initial rush of adrenaline followed by absolute terror and panic. So good.

2. How many more times is Serena going to allow Gilead to crush her before she finally rebels? I think she's near her breaking point. Give me the June/Serena team-up I deserve in season 3, you cowards. The way she gave up the child she'd wanted for so long so Nichole could have a better life was beautiful. Yvonne Strahovski, man.

3. Emily's getting out! Lawrence, you are officially my favorite man on the show (not that there's a lot of options there). I want to see her find her wife and son. I'm going to cry so much when that happens, I already know it.

4. So Marthas seem to have some kind of a secret operation going on, huh? That's gonna be interesting to explore.

5. I knew June would stay in Gilead. She needs to get Hannah out too, she can't just leave her behind. The last 10 minutes of the episode made me very emotional. Some good writing and even better acting in there.

What an excellent season finale. I have to say, I was afraid there would be a decline in quality in season 2 seeing as they were going beyond the events of the book, but that was certainly not the case. I liked this season more than the first one. Now, please give Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski and Alexis Bledel (The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit of acting on this show) Emmys and I'll be happy. I absolutely cannot wait for season 3.

8.6/10. Oh man, I just love it when Adventure Time gets straight up weird like this. The idea of Treetrunks, who comes off like a sweet old lady, but who is (a.) kind of cattily angry with and opposed to Princess Bubblegum on principle and (b.) this strangely sort of sexual being, having alien babies is so delightfully out there. In particular, the sequence where she goes to the alien cloud land or whatever, and everyone talks slowly, and there's little green elephants with alien faces, is definitely the kind of strange set of scenes that will make you briefly wonder if someone spiked your drink.

Still, beyond the creative art and stylistic choices, it's just a neat little headscratcher of a story with some good comedy thrown in for good measure. Treetrunks running into Starchy (who's still, apparently, a conspiracy nut) and a collection of supposed alien abductees (including the hilarious Booshi) and trying to turn it into a militant group is, again, weird, but hilarious stuff. (And little throw ins like the banana guard trying to save P-Bubs from being abducted and dropping to the ground when he fails, or Starchy's secret passageway taking them right back where they started were great.)

But overall, this episode comes down to a story about Princess Bubblegum and Treetrunks. As strange as the conflict is, AT sets it up well, with Treetrunks wanting to protect her children, and P-Bubs wanting to protect hers too in a way. For Princess Bubblegum, annihilation with this band of idiot candy people seems perilously possible, so colonizing other planets is a way to ensure the candy life force doesn't go out. The fact that they understand each other in those terms, and that Treetrunks helps PB after PB realizes the damage her goo-buds were doing, gives an oddly emotional undercurrent to everything. The exchange about not liking each other, but still being able to respect each other is, amid the abject weirdness, a very mature sentiment.

And again, as weird as it is for Treetrunks to say goodbye to her Alien husband, only to then introduce him to her pig husband, it's also a little sweet. That's what this show is, a ton of on the surface weirdness, with a core of real feeling and surprisingly complex interpersonal relationships. It amazes me still.

And shit has hit the fan for Claire (and her pretend witch friend).

Claire gets first hand the unjust treatment of women who did not abide by the repressive society who saw women of intellect as in league with the devil. Unfortunately for Claire, that also includes being killed for being a witch (which was punishable by death). But with Jamie out of town, Ned the lawyer is the only person in her corner to help her.

What I do love about the ep is seeing the frienship between the two women. Seeing Geillis stop with pretense and reveal herself as just a smart woman who married for convinience and ended up with Dougal over shared politics. She is no witch, just a woman ahead of her time.

Unfortunately for Claire, she has made enemies in an obsessed teenager. Even more surprising is seeing the Father who had failed to save a young poisoned boy use religious furvour against Claire, playing the part to woo the judges against her. The two things that will always be used against women: the jealousy of other women and men's inability to deal with women more powerful/intelligent than them.

In order to save herself, Claire must turn against her only friend, but she will not turn her back. Claire is loyal to a fault and also from another time. And in the biggest turn of events, Geillis takes the blame for witchcraft and also reveals herself to Claire as also being from the future, from 1968. Geillis' witch knowledge was just as Claire's, knowledge from a future time. Did NOT see this coming! Also Jamie coming in to save Claire at the knick of time with sword and dagger ready to throw down.

And finally we get Claire revealing to Jamie she is from the future, when he confronts her of being a witch, of having the same mark as Geillis, the scar from a smallpox vaccine. And Jamie's love for Claire is so great, he believes her and she lets him in to her story, no more pretense, no more made up stories. So great his love for Claire that he lets her go. He takes her to the very rocks on the hill that brought her to him, and he'll let her go back if that's what she wants and to keep her safe from the dangers of his time. Oh Jamie, you are grade A hubby material.

Love the scene of Claire looking at her two wedding rings, one representing Frank (and the future) and the other being Jamie (and this past/present), literally having to choose between which wedding band she will stay loyal to. Frank in gold and Jamie in iron. She chooses strenght and stability over a gliterring maulable maybe. She chooses Jamie. No longer is she stuck in the past, she is now choosing it with wide eyes.

In terms of pacing, this episode feels like it slowed down a bit. Moving in chunks rather than flowing. Overall it's still a great episode with loads of things.

1. It's beautiful to see the relationship between these two. Post-wedding night, we see an intimacy we rarely see in shows, we see them opening up to each other. Jamie asks Claire if what they feel with each other is normal, do other couples have it? It's a bearing my soul moment and it's beautiful. Though Jamie can be considered a traditional masculine man (built like a tree, strong, fighter, works with his hands, one of the boys, etc), he is also soft in unexpected ways (he's always asking for permission from Claire, he's thoughtful, considerate of her, earnest, emotionally open even when he knows it could be embarrasing, etc).

2. We meet a friend of Jamie's and I'm surprised to see that he is mute (his tounge was cut as prisoner) and he has a physical handicap from an injury (walks with a stick/cane). And he is treated with the same friendship and respect Jamie offers to all. There is no pitying him or making a mockery out of his handicap/difficulties. Jamie speaks in a version of sign language and translates to Claire so she may also understand him. This friend is treated by the writers with decency and respect, no played for laughs or pity, and not treated without dignity. It's rare to find a person with a disability in period drama that isn't there for comidic effect or as a sob story.

3. I did found it hard to watch the two instances Claire was/was almost raped. But I do respect the writers for not sexualizing it, but rather focusing on the trauma of the situation and Claire's emotional state. Also the men who committed the offenses where seen as villains (and within their villanious characters).

4. Claire is almost seconds away from going home, something she has been longing to do, but I wonder if she could break the bonds she has created with Jamie if she had been able to go back. Having experiences Randall, would she be able to look at Frank the same way as before. We do get a glimpse in this episode that Frank is capable of the same/similar cruelties his ancestor was known for.

5. My favorite part of the episode was seeing the Mackenzie men showing Claire how to defend herself and fight back. It's endearing to see the caring they have for her, which she recipricates. These sequence creates a light moment within an emotionally heavy ep.

Season 4 was simply amazing. What a finish!

I am a bit sad that the series hasn't picked up for a fifth season. Conversion therapy fallout and Betty's story would provide great frameworks for at least one more great season. But I sadly suspect this season finale is the series finale.

Libby: Caitlin FitzGerald really amazed me in her transformation. And this season is easily her very best, oozing confidence and sexiness. I am really happy that her character ended in a triumphant note.

Johnny Masters: Big claps to Jaeden Lieberher, who gave very surprising and poignant performance on this episode. He really played this under written character with a big heart, channeling a bit of River Phoenix in his teenager years.

Art: Art was totally played by Nancy, but he kept his dignify and my respect. It's sad that Art wasn't invited to stay. If the series is renewed, I strongly suspect he will come back either as an ally or as a foe joining Barton Scully.

Nancy: Every great series needs a villain and Nancy was a character that's all too easy to hate. But her drive is realistic and at least understandable. I am glad her character did not end in stereotypical total defeat. I suspect she'll thrive, although at far reduced capacity than she had hoped.

Lester: I am a bit disappointed that Lester did not get the full respect nor love he deserved. In a way, he dug his own grave, but he's a lovable loser and I was giving him a high five when he hooked up with a hottie caterer.

Betty: Betty has been absent in the last few episodes and her absence was greatly missed. She is by far among the most fascinating characters on this series, third only to Bill and Libby Masters (sorry Virginia). I hope she manages to regain custody with Austin, another great character.

Virginia: Virginia was never among my favorite characters, but she had an amazing run on the first season and her "shrink session" with Art this season was simply amazing. So I am very glad that this season finale returns its focus to Virginia, who simply glows and shines on this episode.

Bill: This series cemented my deep respect for Michael Sheen. Prior to Masters and Sex, I simply viewed him as a token British character actor who was born to play Tony Blair (in The Queen). But here in Masters and Sex, he plays a fascinating character with uncanny realism and attention to detail.

On a final note, writers did an amazing job this season with all the parallelisms, creating rich texture at very high efficiency. And the show looked really amazing, from set decoration, casting, and cinematography.

A backup, a hug, a fight and a kiss
El is the cutest BADASS character ever

This episode was amazing and beautiful, if there's more than 10 stars I would give it more

First let's talk about Steve, he's amazing, he's brave and kind.. Did you see how he was genuinely care about these kids and puts himself in danger just to protect them.. I gotta say he became one of my favorite characters in the show

Also lets talk about the kid who plays Will, gosh!! That kid is sooo talented, I was genuinely feeling his pain, he's so amazing and I'm sure he has a bright future ahead of him

The 3 ways attack bit was also amazing, seeing all the characters attack at the same time from different places was gold writing from the show runners.. I liked how the kids took Steve with them while he was unconscious LMAO, and he was like f*** it lets go burn that sh*t.. I still thing that Nancy doesn't deserve Steve, he's too good for her

Anyway, I didn't like that bit with Dustin and his pet, it felt stupid, I mean they're monsters after all so I don't see how that monster can form such feelings for human, anyway he died at the end we saw him next to the chocolate bar

About El, her scene closing that gate was simply EPIC, I loved how she towards the end used both her hands to push the monster back, and by doing that she actually became more powerful, so now we know El with 2 raised hands are unstoppable

Last thing is the Snow Ball party, it was sad and hilarious seeing Dustin get rejected one by one LMAO, but then Nancy saved his a**, then we saw Mike sitting alone and I had a feeling that El gonna show up, and she did!! She was beautiful and cute.. I'm glad that she's finally with Mike and she feels happy

It was a great season but now we have to wait a long time from season 3 :(((

First things first: MILLIE BOBBY BROWN IS A FRIGGIN' REVELATION AND SHE DESERVES AN EMMY!
The finale Episode showed once more how good the set-design was. You could see that the Upside Down was full of real props. Also the Byer's house had a real development. I told the story of the whole show in the background. It was like a focal point of the whole plot. Furthermore it showed the strength of the series storytelling: Chief Hoppers backstory was hinted in some previous episodes and one could already think, that his daughter is dead. So the flashback didn't feel forced but natural.
On the other hand the finale showed how bad the CGI was. It begun with the CGI flies in Episode 1 and continued through the whole show. It's sad, that they didn't try to make more with physical props. Like the portal. Did it have to repair it self and therefore needed CGI. I don't think so. It would be fine, even better without.
The last scenes in the Byer's house gave me last one kick in the gut. There are so many unanswered questions: What are those slugs. We saw them in Barb's corpse earlier. Why put Chief Hopper food in that box. It is obviously for Eleven. Where is she? Who and where are One to Ten?
Some thoughts on season 2: Now that the expectations are so high i fear that season 2 will feel worse, even it isn't. This show hit me from nowhere, this advantage will season 2 don't have. Maybe a time jump? (But i want to see the actors again). I really hope the Duffer Brothers will take their time and won't become the Wachowskis (Matrix --> Matrix 2+3).
Conclusion: Stranger Things showed us that you can build on existing themes and tropes and at the same time do something completely new. I think Netflix will learn something from this: Don't just continue an existing IP (Full House, Gilmore Girls). Nostalgia is prevalent in today's pop culture, but that doesn't mean viewers want to see old things with a fresh color. In building on a whole decade of cinema and Zeitgeist, the Duffer could develop new ideas. It's like: We like the 80s but we don't want to retell them. There are still new stories in this period that cinema and TV just hadn't time, money or motivation to tell. For that i am eternality grateful.
Good Night, readers, good night.

God, I love this show! What an episode: entertaining, funny as hell, bonding and sweet. And finally we got to see Luci doing something supernatural like getting shot and surviving. I've really missed this in last episodes.

"I thought since I'll never likely penetrate you, I'd commemorate the one time you penetrated me", lmao. That was absolutely brilliant.

I loved the flashbacks with Candy and how they just befriended so quickly. I loved the "Candy Morningstar" episode but knowing what happened in Las Vegas before just made me realized how meaningful that episode was.

The ending scene with everyone passed out in the penthouse was great. Btw, Dan's random and casual appearance with a drill was so good. He's a sweetheart. The bonding between Chloe and Luci is lovely. I loved the scene about lying when Chloe was in bed. It was great to see Lucifer being so honest. That hug at the end.

Chloe imitating Lucifer's accent was so good, lmao. "I'm Lucifer Morningstar. I can play the piano and I'm a fancy British man", lol.

We got Lucifer singing again! Nothing will ever top his version of Sinnerman but I loved it. Tom Ellis' voice is just glory.

Hamlet! And love, Will? Lol. I really really loved it. And that Hitler comment, that was great.

Ella's t-shirt! I want it! I loved to see her working with Lucifer on a case. Although her backstory in Vegas was kind of obvious to me, I did enjoy it. And what's up with the voices she hears? Does she have schizophrenia or something? It's definitely a red herring but what if those voices are addressing to a previous life? Or what if she's an angel and she doesn't realize? Let's see.

Anyways, enjoyable episode even though it wasn't connected to this season's plot.