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
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ S08E01 Jon: "Where's Arya?" Sansa: "Lurking somewhere."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.
I read all of the books in the series before the show premiered. After a couple of episodes, I was done with the show. The thought of repeating all of that horror and misery, only on the screen instead of the page, didn't seem worth it, production values be damned. Some months later, I happened to walk into a room where someone was watching one of the last episodes of the first season. It was a scene where Tywin Lannister sermonises to Jaime while butchering an animal. It was a scene not taken directly from the books, but made whole cloth for the TV show. I was mesmerised, and suddenly, all on board again.
To me, the appeal of Game of Thrones has never been in the way it brings the books alive, but in how it diverges. It's been in the way it's emphasised, through performance, the humanity of its characters (both for ill and good), thus giving me something I never got from Martin's writing. Where some have lamented the direction the show has taken since it started outpacing the source material, I've actually grown fonder of it. The farther away it's gotten from the cutting of those adaptational apron strings, the more I feel like it's grown into its own thing.
So, while I don't doubt that the remaining episodes of this final season will break my heart in lots of ways – and George R.R. Martin will find several more when he gets around to telling the "real" version of the same story – I thoroughly appreciate that Game of Thrones is the kind of the show that knows the importance of showing people coming together, huddling for warmth in the face of impending doom. I could still feel the claw in my gut, of the horror to come, but I'm glad that's not all the show is about.
Thanks to Melisandre we could actually see what the fuck was going on!
This episode was so dark, even the Night king's guard didn't see Arya coming...
My therapist will hear about this episode.
They didn't even need the Dothraki. Greyworm, Gendry, Tormund, Brienne, and Jaime killed like 2,000 wights each
The Night King was reduced to Tyrion level of Stupidity.
Confirmed death count: R.I.P
Edd
Beric Dondarrion (aka. Barricade Dondarrion)
Lyanna Mormont (Lyanna 'Giantsbane' Mormont. Killed a giant at the age of thirteen in the Battle of Winterfell. Her greatest and final act. And now her watch has ended.)
Theon Greyjoy
Jorah Mormont
Night King
Melisandre (Melisandre: "I will be dead before the dawn.")
99.8% of the Unsullied
99.9% of the Dothraki (Dothraki's flaming weapons slowly disappearing in the dark was the most terrifying scene EVER)
Confirmed living:
Ghost
Drogon
Rhaegal
Jon yelling at a fucking Dead Dragon!
Jon: We did it. We defeated the dead.
Bran: We don’t have time for any of this. Cersei has 4 elephants.
One of the Best part was the slow piano montage of everyone dramatically fighting to the last breath with a shot in the middle of Sam lying on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
RIP Azor Ahai Theories
RIP Night King
RIP Logic
RIP Lighting in the Episode
RIP Lyanna Mormont True King in the North
RIP Arya as a good character
RIP Melisandre the confused woman
RIP Theon protecting Useless Boy
RIP Jorah and Beric Defending Strong woman
RIP Good storytelling and 9 years of Hype
RIP Winter and the Long Night
RIP Me
None of the prophecies mattered, nothing was resolved between Bran and Night King, all eight seasons of build up and the NK dies from one quick stab. No surprising twists, no intelligent storytelling, the storyline ends like this. The whole long night ends in one battle.
The war council preparing for a siege, they send out their cavalry to die in the first 10 seconds, 20 or more wights surrounded every character, and yet every main character manages to retreat. Theon with around 20 archers managed to defend against a horde of wrights. We see Jon surrounded by a crowd of wights, and next scene there's no more wights left.
I think this time it's a bit of a stretch to say DB Weiss and David Benioff planned this well. By their own admission they've only known Arya was going to land the finishing blow for 3 years and when you account for the 2 year hiatus, that's just season 7. Even then, Arya got the job because she's a fan favorite, not because this is what she's been building up to. Her story never even had a hint of "White Walker" plot. I think Mel talking about shutting eyes forever back in season 3 was purely about her faceless man training. Mel said the "Blue Eyes" comment second in season 3 but they retro actively made it the last color while reiterating it this episode to force prophetic weight onto it.
From a story writing perspective this was not Arya's fight to win anymore than it would've been Oberyn Martell's. Her experiences made her a highly skilled fighter but her plot didn't set her up to be the savior of the realms of the living.
Nothing makes sense in this episode.
Dialogues feel forced. Like the previous episode, everything is shoved just to make the plot moves. Especially terrible every time the rookie has a conversation.
This episode and the previous feel like series of unrelated events. Nothing literally happened in these two episodes. There are some cool throwbacks and references (cantina scene, dune sea, Amy Sedaris blurping Star Wars jargons, etc) but it's all fanservice. It appears the show is directed by people familiar with Star Wars universe but has zero sense of screen writing.
Very disappointing episode. Anyone saying it’s the best episode of this show is just caught up in the hype.
Visually, this episode was fantastic. And as a stand-alone episode, it was very good. But when you take this as an episode of Game of Thrones and think about everything that led to this, it’s undeniably disappointing.
Barely anyone died. Most of the characters had super thick plot armour. Lots of plot holes. Anti-climactic ending. I don’t mind that Arya killed the Night King. I also don’t mind how it happened. But for it to happen so soon... the army of the dead have been hyped up since season 1 as the true enemy, and we were told that they were the most dangerous army in the show. Yet all they accomplished was the deaths of a few side characters. It’s pathetic compared to the feats of other characters and armies in past seasons. The Night King should have taken Winterfell and killed at least a few main characters. The survivors should have them retreated somewhere and then beat the Night King in a later episode. The Night King and the army of the dead did not come across as very threatening by the end of this episode. They were unable to kill any main characters, and they were defeated in the first proper battle they took part in.
Very disappointing. My rating is only as high as it is because of the great visuals and the value of the episode as a stand-alone piece of television.
Not for the faint hearted even though this show will leave you feeling Euphoria in some moments
This show straight from the word Euphoria literally brings lots of really important matters faced by teenagers today into light. This show is not for the faint hearted as it deals with drugs, violence, romance, sex and much more, therefore showing an all round representation of what teenagers are faced with nowadays. The main character RUE deals with her own demons from having a drug habit where she overdosed and her sister found her on the floor practically dead. RUE faking being clean to her Mom and then after meeting this girl called Jules who has her own demons and interests that is set on this man who is just a character cat fishing her into a false sense of security. RUE falls for her hard where the Euphoria grows and you watch their relationship go as RUE stays clean and keep going to rehab as Jules is literally her rock and the main reason why she is trying to stay clean. I am so happy and practically Euphoric right now that this amazing show has got renewed for a second season ten out of ten amazing acting especially from Hunter And Zendaya. Lets keep this new amazing HBO show going for lots more seasons too go and the soundtracks will leave you feeling so euphoric. #Rules #Euphoria #EuphoriaHBO #Zendaya
[8.5/10] I tweeted that that Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the “gentlest, most intimate Breaking Bad remake I've ever seen,” and I’m only half-joking. While selling literary forgeries and defrauding literary collectors is a long long way from making meth and getting into lethal scraps with drug cartels, there’s a common thread that connects the two stories in ways that illuminate what makes the Melissa McCarthy-fronted film succeed and yet also mark its own narrative territory.
Both movies feature a protagonist who is not great with people, fallen on hard financial times, and feels affronted by the expectations of the rest of the world that enjoys what they view as unearned success. Both Lee Israel and Walter White feel they have an underappreciated talent, an unrecognized greatness, that makes them all the more caustic and bitter at the rest of the world, and feel all the more justified in dashing off the mantle of the respectable and acceptable when the moment, and the need, suits them. And it leads both of them into unorthodox, less-than-savory ways of paying their bills.
For Walter White, that meant using his talents as a chemist to make meth so pure that users flip for it. For Lee Israel, it means using her talents as a writer to produce literary forgeries that are so convincing (at least for a while), that people utterly delight in them. But what distinguishes Can You Ever Forgive Me? and its protagonist is the extra layer of irony to Israel’s project.
The reason that Lee cannot sell her non-fiction accounts and biographies of various historical entertainment figures is that she disappears too far behind her subjects. That theme is, perhaps, laid out a little too plainly by her agent in one of the movie’s showpiece scenes, but it introduces so many incredible layers of irony to the situation.
There’s the fact that someone who seems as memorable and distinctive as Lee -- with her caustic wit and self-destructive bent -- can nevertheless make herself invisible on the page. There’s the fact that, like Walter White, she has an almost monastic devotion to her art, and yet that impulse to do what she believes is professionally and academically right and proper is what’s holding her back from commercial success. And last but certainly not least, there’s the fact that the very self-subsuming approach that’s made her a professional employer becomes the thing that turns her into a criminal success. Her ability to disappear into her subject makes her able to replicate and extrapolate the likes of Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward in a way that’s utterly convincing.
And like Breaking Bad there are such perfectly increasing levels of escalation, pride, tension, and eventually desperation for Lee. First she’s just selling something she found by accident. Then she’s adding a little post-script. Then she’s making up letter out of whole cloth. Then she’s buying typewriters and forging signatures and baking letters in the oven. Finally she’s rolling out an elaborate scheme to steal real letters and replace them with nigh-indistinguishable fakes.
There’s a nigh-perfect trajectory there, where you understand the circumstances that lead Lee to make each choice that leads her a little further along in her ascent and descent. You see the sense of grievance and feeling lost and overlooked. You see the joy and sense of accomplishment when, even if it’s under someone else’s name, people are finally appreciating her work. You see the relief when she can pay her rent and take care of her cat and feel like, in a weird sort of way, she’s finally getting somewhere in the literary world. And you can see her letting the self-satisfaction and comfort make her complacent, take things too far, as the film slowly but surely tightens the net around her and makes her fall seem inevitable.
Hell, Lee even has her own quasi-Jesse Pinkman. Jack Hock, who’s played with delightful extraverted flair by Richard E. Grant, plays Lee’s lone buddy and eventual co-conspirator. Like Jesse, he is a little more colorful and a little less educated than his partner in crime. Like Jesse, he takes liberties and has screw-ups that earn his some legitimate ire, but he also gets some disproportionate abuse from his semi-benefactor that also earns him sympathy. And like Jesse he, well, deals drugs. As much as Can You Ever Forgive Me? is Lee’s story, her growing, and complicated, but ultimately heartening friendship and fractured partnership with Jack is one of its strongest elements, and Grant is an utter joy in the role.
But this is assuredly McCarhty’s movie, and she absolutely owns it. For all the brightness and occasional dramatic chops the actress got to show off on Gilmore Girls, and the outsized comic characters she’s played post-Bridesmaids, no other role I’ve seen her in has given McCarthy the chance to such range and emotion and unquestionable talent. Lee Israel goes on a journey here, in terms of the life of crime she stumbles into, but also in how it changes and eventually softens her. McCarthy gives you every single beat of that, from her dry blunt comic assessments, to her frustrations and hesitations, to her honest epiphanies that move her to change while remaining recognizably the same person you meet in the film’s opening scene. McCarthy delivers an absolutely superlative performance here.
It’s that final epiphany and change that, more than tone and subject matters, marks Can You Ever Forgive Me? as a different kind of story from Breaking Bad. The latter is a tragedy, with realizations and certain moments of redemptions, but ones that mostly come after it’s too late to undo wrongs and move forward. But it’s not too late for Lee.
While occasionally the plotting is a bit too neat in this regard, and the emotional explications a bit too up front, Can You Ever Forgive Me? posits that what’s really holding Lee back -- personally and professionally -- is her inability to let people in, to get to know the real her. She comes to the point of a connection with a local bookseller but pulls back when things start to get too personal. She tries to confide in an ex-girlfriend who talks about how Lee always put up walls. There is a sense that fulfillment in Lee’s life is eluding her because she won’t let it in.
And it’s the same thing that’s holding her back as a writer -- an inability to let herself, her real voice, emerge what she writes. That’s the crux of her arc here. It takes some desperation, some hardship, some dizzying highs that plummet into humiliation and humblings. But through all of this, Lee opens up, just enough, to let Jack in and to let herself out. She’s still grumpy and a drinker and has a dark sense of humor when the credits role, but she’s also found the experience and the catalyst she needs to push past her worst and most self-defeating obstacles.
Lee Israel and Walter White are both self-involved grumps. They both feel the world doesn't quite measure up to their standard or recognize their carefully-honed talents. Both fall into lives of crime when the going gets tough and there’s praise and recognition to be had in the process. And both rope in a comparatively innocent soul who ends up depending on them. The difference is that Lee Israel learns enough about herself, soon enough, to change, and hold onto the people she cares about, her dream, and her better self in the process.
No more Q... That's still quite very sad. It's like watching The Simpsons without, huh, Ned Flanders? But, hey, at least no more Margo and Josh! Hooray! Though that scene near the end with the two of them "together" made me sigh a little with frustration... Anyway, speaking of Margo, having Eliot and her together on screen again is a true sight for sore eyes. I'm oh so glad to have that dynamic duo back!... Aaand of course the show would find a way to break them apart, again. Gotta feed the drama, right?
The unintentionally misogynistic man pig (pig man?) was a hoot! Julia looked so baffled, it was hilarious! I hope we'll see more of him. He still has a quest to bestow, after all, I think?
I'm very, very curious about what happened in Fillory 300 years ago. And about Penny's mysterious signal. This season is already kicking off with some tasty mysteries! Nice!
And I absolutely love when this show mentions "magic" and "dangerous" in the same context. That very last scene left me gasping for more! Both the show runners and the actor who played Quentin have already confirmed that Quentin is gone from the show, so... What is Alice bringing to this world? HOT DAMN SO MANY MYSTERIES ALREADY!!
Also, I just finished eating and now I'm craving for a ham sandwich. Maybe I should go make one while I wait for next week's episode.
