DVR: Week Five

So very busy.  Catching up, now.


Game of Thrones:

The Climb

As with last week, more pieces get moved along the board, with Ros belatedly removed from play.  Unlike many weeks in GoT, The Climb's best moments rested on scenes invented for television: Olenna and Tywin, Tyrion and Cersei.

The Bear and the Maiden Fair

Martin steps in for this year's episode, and the characters improve across the board.  Attention gets paid to things like chivalry and honor, which is one element the series tends to leave in the background. Also, Tormund finally sounds like Tormund and not Styr with a new name.  Mance's folk, aside from Ygritte, have been largely one-note, and that's a disservice.   And then, Cat receives dialogue! Bronn returns for quips, Osha gets a backstory, and both Jon and Joff get to discuss a little history viewers probably didn't know.

Robb and Talisa receive a lengthy scene this week, as we inch closer to Edmure's wedding.  I still think the show has not done enough stage setting to give it remotely the impact it carried in the book. Consider that: in the book, Robb is barely seen in books two and three, yet all the after-the-fact explanations of his battle victories and marriage to not-Talisa are still better developed.

Too many aspects of his story are different: Robb's motivation for marriage, for one, and the relegation of Cat to being less important than, say, Theon, who didn't even appear in this book.*   They have added new material to enhance Walder Frey's hospitality, most obviously by keeping Talisa with Robb as well as confirming her pregnancy.**

But there is the possibility that next week, the last left before the Twins, could actually do a lot of heavy lifting in short order.   First, if Roose arrives with his Theon-skin letter, he can tell drop a dead Stark bomb on Robb and Cat, who might share a few moments of grief bonding and renewal of filial ties, just in the nick of time. It'll also pay off Theon's endless torture scenes, and add a little more television-friendly foreshadowing to the wedding.

That's a lot to ask for one or two scenes, but the series has shown it's capable.


* His scenes are too long, but I fully understand why they need to keep him in play, rather than disappear for most of this season as Jaime did last year.

** Along with telling Gendry of his parentage outright and the fate of li'l Theon, this felt a little like Martin clarifying points of confusion for readers.


Mad Men: The Flood

Having already spent an episode on JFK -- just as Weiner insisted they would not -- the series now spends an hour with the aftermath of MLK.   If the series had bothered to keep more than one character of color on regularly, this hour could have mined some rich ground.  Instead, we get the white liberal guilt of the viewing audience reflected by the characters.

Later this season, will RFK be the assassination-fatigue afterthought?

Mad Men: For  Immediate Release

The return of the caper music from season four's finale, Shut the door, sit down immediately brings to mind major corporate shakeups in the SCDP world; Bert and Pete are angling to take the agency public, but Pete's infidelity and Don's hatred of Jaguar Herb cast a lot of doubt on the venture's odds of success.

But the real surprise arrives from deep left field when by the end of the episode, following pitches to Chevrolet, SCDP have actually merged with CGC,* bringing Peggy and Teddy Chow-guh-guh into regular status.

* CGC has its own financial problems, with a partner certain to die from pancreatic cancer...


Mad Men: Man with a Plan


This is one of the roughly annual occasions where Don is portrayed as an outright villain, and worse, a completely unlikable villain; not a rogue, a broken man, or some comment on his era; no, when Don is in this mode he's a timeless personality: that is, he's an asshole.  He's an asshole to Peggy, to Ted, and to Megan.  Any weirdness I felt about Don's affair with Lindsay Weir is multiplied as he plays humiliating control games that on some level, not even he enjoys much.  He acts like a Rand hero, still searching for the woman who possesses his coveted Madonna-Whore combination.

Roger, per usual, receives the MVP award for his second firing of Burt Peterson.  Comedy gold.


Revolution: Home

This week was the very definition of a filler episode.  Rachel and Aaron are heading for the tower.  Remember how Aaron has that wife he abandoned? No? Well, you're in luck since most of this hour is about Aaron crossing paths with her, the obvious heavy who has abducted/arrested her, and him gaining closure from her not still pining for him.

Back with the main cast of Miles, Charlie, Nora and their new sidekicks in the Georgian army are fighting a too-easy offensive against the Republic.  Monroe has yet another paranoid meltdown and decides to take out frustrations on his and Miles' hometown, knowing Miles will come to the rescue and then he'll be right where Monroe wants him.

Except of course that Miles gets the best of Monroe in about five minutes.  This might have been redeemed if we'd finally had the opportunity to kill Monroe -- his instability and high-handedness to Randall is certain to kill him eventually -- but no, Monroe is laughably only wounded in a firefight where he had no cover.

By the end of the hour, Rachel and Aaron are heading for the Tower, and Miles and Charlie are fighting Monroe.



Revolution: The Love Boat

It's finally happened.  Gus Fring has teamed up with Miles Matheson, though neither of them are happy about it.   Paul Kinsey shows up for awhile, but doesn't really amount to much of a guest character.  It's another A to B episode with ultra-low stakes, even when Rachel takes a Stu Redman down a hill/cliff/depression, leaving Aaron to go on, just like Larry, Glen, and Ralph.   Hope it works out better for you, guy.   But since the blackout was based on your Thesis, maybe you have sins to pay for.  This particular revelation is more insultingly lazy than at first glance -- Aaron, resident tech genius, never considered the links between his old research and the blackout?


Revolution: The Longest Day

Monroe, on a kill streak of his officers*, is able to call in a UAV.  It kills a bunch of redshirts and separates Miles from Nora and Charlie.  And Jason, but who cares? Well, Gus, who after last week's empty adversarial posturing has arrived at a truce with Miles.

Rachel meanwhile is refreshingly vengeance-driven, though the setup was horrible.  First, Aaron manages to reprogram Charlie's nanotech capsule using a looking-very-untouched room of very old computers (Mac SE?).  This allows Rachel's Redman leg to be instantly fixed, thus negating any chance of Aaron abandoning her.  Barely plausible, her screams attract an armed man who just-offscreen manages to watch the instant-fix before revealing himself to our heroes (and us).   So when the man wants Rachel to similarly fix his probably-dying son, she agrees and then double-crosses him, leaving Aaron to again play the sappy morality card, which, Rachel, as noted above, seems to reject out of hand.   Will she have a change of heart next week?!?


* He now has killed or driven off every quality lieutenant. If there were any we'd seen before left alive, I'd have a coup ready; by now on this show only Randall is in a position to do that...