Anisky

We also saw full nudity of some random male extras who were sitting down in that spa Arya accidentally ran through, I believe.

She did ask him to take Riverrun without bloodshed, and he did do (almost) exactly that.

So, what I'm getting from this season is that nobody is the slightest bit concerned that Walder Frey might be angry about his allies knowingly and cold-bloodedly killing his children and grandchildren. Ramsay at least we know is, well, Ramsay. Jaime's plan to launch a Frey toddler into a castle with a trebuchet is a bit more surprising. EDIT: Especially considering they are surrounded by Freys and helping the Freys in this battle. None of them would have a problem with their little nephew/cousin/etc being cold bloodedly murdered by the man sent there to help them? No?

He said that so that she could say, "No, I'm Arya Stark of Winterfell", of course!

This is an excellent point. Her opening remark was pretty much exactly what I think Littlefinger would have said, though I'd say less that it doesn't work that way in the "real world", and more that it doesn't work that way in the North. This probably won't pan out, but I'm hoping that Sansa failing at diplomacy this episode is her starting point. This is her first time trying to "play the game" on her own, and the methods she's been taught are horribly inappropriate for her audiences. I think her looking like a fool here could be redeemed if she realizes why she failed and starts to get more adept at the subtleties of the game, rather than imitating what she's seen on this superficial level. Alternately, she could be the one who goes south to treat with the Sothren lords, since that's the style of diplomacy/games/schemes that she's learned. I'd be fine with either of the above, though while I hope for one of those, I'm not holding out a particularly large amount of hope. Everyone so far on this board seems to be seeing Margaery as having some plan and playing some ballsy, long-con game. That wasn't quite the impression I had while watching her scenes. No, I don't think that her newfound piety is sincere. (I think she did use genuine difficult truths that she'd realized about herself in order to make her change of heart seem believable, which was very clever. Everything she said about having helped the poor while making sure everyone saw her do it in order to be loved for it rang very true; I think she used its honesty to draw attention away from the fact that there isn't actually anything religious about this admission.) I think she's terrified. She's terrified for herself, she's terrified for her family-- the High Sparrow threatened her grandmother pretty directly, followed by Margaery immediately begging her to get out of King's Landing and go home where she can (hopefully) be safe. I think the flower was to let Olenna know that Margaery doesn't actually believe the things she's saying, but I don't think it's indicative of any plan. I also think the reason that she hadn't had sex with Tommen is that she is creeped and freaked the fuck out. I'm sure that, as someone did suggest above, the fact that he wasn't able to save her from spending we-don't-even-know-how-long in that cell being, essentially, tortured, left without food and water, etc, is also a factor in his not being appealing to her; not to mention the fact that on top of all that, he now whole-heartedly believes in the person who did all of that to her (and is still doing that to her brother) in the first place. Not exactly things that make someone attractive. I guess I think she's "playing the game" insofar as she's hiding her true thoughts and feelings in order to improve her situation, but I don't think she really has a plan right now besides, "Don't get locked up again, don't get killed, don't get more of my family locked up or killed, find some way to survive this, hope against hope some opportunity presents itself to get myself the fuck out of here."

So, I didn't read all the comments so I don't know if someone else said it, but I just realized: "Susanna" means "Rose"! It comes from the Hebrew word for rose, "Shoshanna". Pretty neat hint there, actually.

I did notice that, yeah. It might have just been the gunpowder?

True, but if they were trying to subvert the trope, that is the way they'd play it, isn't it? Have something objectively horrifying, but not point out that it's a really ugly thing. Because as Gin and Tonic pointed out, this is a trope that is almost never called out. If they want to jolt the audience, show the event without putting too much emphasis on it, so that people who don't call out that sort of thing don't even pick it out as the horror it is. That way, if they point out how it actually was rape sometime in the beginning of the third season, those people realize they watched this finale and were aware of it all through the summer, but never thought about it. That's much more of a jolt, much more effective at making such a point, than if they showed it as so horrible as it happened. This was the finale; there wasn't enough time, and a lot of those people would just be confused by why the Narrator was making *such* a big deal about it. If they play it the way I hope, I think they would lull the intended targets of this point until the fall. That idea is a little like how on Veronica Mars (er, Spoiler Alert if you haven't seen it and are intending to?), partway through the first season, they show Aaron Echolls beating a guy to a pulp for over a minute-- a long time in a TV show-- but had the guy he beats bloody be unsympathetic, and had funny music running over the whole thing. That he's so violent is a huge clue, but most people completely missed it, because it was framed as funny. Obviously it's not an exact parallel, but good shows do sometimes present something significant in a falsely light way in order to misdirect the audience. On the other hand, again, I'm not saying that you're wrong, or that I particularly think that the writers will pull through on this. As I said, it's a hope, not a prediction. :)

Yeah. This trope never gets called out for what it is, which is rape by deception. It's gross to me too. I agree with both of you, but I'm holding out hope that Jane the Virgin will actually treat what happened like the rape it is, and have characters identify it as rape and show Rafael struggling with what happened to him. For one thing, the woman Rafael thought he was sleeping with was drugged so that she's paralyzed, but aware, unable to communicate and let people know that she's herself, but knows her clearly ill-intentioned twin is pretending to be her and moving in on at least one of her loved ones. That's really hellish and dark, when you think about it; we definitely weren't supposed to find the Raf/Anezka sex cute or funny. That much is a good sign. Another thing giving me hope is that Jane the Virgin is definitely feminist and the writers clearly are also very knowledgeable about feminism-- for example, the episode where they made a point of demonstrating the Bechdel Test throughout so that all their viewers would really be aware of it. That rape by deception is rape is definitely something knowledgeable feminists would aware of, and feminists are also way more likely to apply the same standards to both genders, and treat what is viewed as raping a woman the same as what is raping a man. I mean, this is more of a hope than a prediction. But honestly, I will be REALLY, REALLY disappointed in this show if they just gloss over it and don't point out that Rafael was raped. It would seriously lower my opinion of Jane the Virgin. But I think there's reason to hope that Jane the Virgin actually will call the trope out. EDIT: Oh, also wanted to say, Jane's new thesis/novel idea sounds interesting, and incidentally, also like something that her advisor is actually a lot more likely to like. Given how much she loves The House of the Spirits, the relocation of a lot of the story to South America makes me think she'll probably end up writing it with at least some magical realism. Also, for better or worse, a magical realism novel that has a love story is viewed as a lot more "legit" and "literary" than a romance novel, so that being the result of her time in graduate school would feel a little more realistic. I also like how they're making Professor Donaldson more and more sympathetic-- in particular, it's been showing that she's actually quite reasonable.

She did! When she was telling Jon about how Winterfell belonged to their family, she mentioned Rickon, Bran, and Arya, who were "out there somewhere" (paraphrasing).

Damn, Dany! At what point do we start calling her the Mad Queen?

Whyyyy was the major plot of the episode centered around finding pages from the Storybook when one of the major story lines of the season was establishing that Henry could WRITE peoples' pasts and, thus, any story from the Storybook?? The plot of this episode doesn't work if you remember any of the episodes leading up to this one. That's pretty much the definition of terrible writing.

MK also said that the only reason she's survived is because everyone thinks she's dead, so she must have faked her own death. At the end, Beth says to MK, "No wonder you live like this" (paraphrase). That also could be a clue that Beth faked her own death for similar reasons. Or, it could just be a misdirect. Side note: I'm a little weirded out because MK are my initials.

So, I'm 99% sure that calling normal people "mundanes" was taken from the telepaths on Babylon 5, who likewise called non-telepaths "mundanes". Yes, that is obscure, but I know for a fact that Cassandra Cla(i)re cribbed from Babylon 5 (and "credited" it as an influence) back when I was reading her Harry Potter fic on fanfiction.net because she hadn't yet been kicked off for plagiarism. The moniker "mundanes" worked on B5 for a variety of reasons, but yeah, when you're cribbing something, make sure it works in your own universe!

One thing that took me out of it was everyone acting like it was totally bizarre that Liv was knowledgable about science-- especially biology! She has a freaking medical degree, that requires a pretty strong knowledge of science and biology! In fact, does Ravi have any education that she DOESN'T have?

Well, on the one hand, growing from 18 years old to ~35 years old is enough for a whole lot of changes and increased maturity. I forget if they specified what kind of drugs he sold, but plenty of 18 year old kids who sell pot end up as normal, law-abiding adults with jobs and families by the time they're 35. So that much I can believe. That said, I'm really, really nervous about Gabe's sister. Something about his response when Jesus asked if they got along as adults felt off to me. It made me wonder if Anna just assumed that the sexual offender status was only about her, and if there's something bad with the sister. Or maybe the sister was older and took advantage of him. I don't know. I'm also just really uncomfortable with how the show is like, "Oh, it's so unfair that Gabe is on this list, it makes so many things so difficult, the sex offenders list is so mean." I mean, if Gabe's situation is as it appears to be, yeah, it's pretty harsh for an 18 year old guy who had a 15 year old girlfriend. But a stance against the sex offenders registry without having a complementary storyline to demonstrate ways that it protects people, or making the point (probably through Liam) that sex crimes are only prosecuted a minuscule portion of the time and leaves victims vulnerable to harassment etc, dips into apologism pretty quickly. It's like, yes, this attitude towards sex offenders may make sense in this particular situation, but the writers are the ones who chose to look at it within the context of this particular situation. Callie is just ridiculously hypocritical. I don't even know how to deal with her. Does she believe the things she says? Is she aware how completely contrary her words run to her actions? Ugh.

I am a little confused. Scenario A: After his first kiss with a woman, a man sends her 1,000 roses. Scenario B: After his first kiss with a woman, when said woman gives an excuse for not going out with him the next night, a man searches all 11 dentist's offices throughout the Bay Area open at night to catch her excuse out as a lie, and follows it up with showing up unexpectedly at her home to confront her about it. Is it just me, or does Scenario B raise at least as many red flags as Scenario A? I don't see why the first one freaks DJ out but the second one is totally A-OK, whew, turns out he's not an over-invested possibly-stalkery obsessive after all! Wha?

Since Aria is white, this would have been the correct course of action to take, and wouldn't have ended with her dead in a jail cell. Thus, agreed. (I mean, no, I totally agree that's what Aria should have done. It's just really upsetting that when a black woman did that... well, the above.) I mean... she did though? I'm a little confused, did I watch something different from everyone else? Because I was like, "HALLELUJAH, SPENCER ACTUALLY TOLD TOBY ABOUT EMOJIA, MAYBE SHE'S ACTUALLY GROWN UP AND WON'T BE SO DUMB!" (That, plus when she admitted that she wasn't sure it was Shower Harvey and in fact wasn't sure at all who the culprit was, I was like, "Why Spencer! What a pleasant surprise! Have four years of college taught you how not to jump to constant conclusions?") But then I came here and nobody seemed to have seen the scene where Spencer tells Toby that there's a new fake A, so... ? THIS!!!! Seriously, what the hell? It's not like it's a secret that Shower Harvey knows who Aria is. If she'd seen Aria making a call from the Two Crows that night, she'd have said, "I saw Aria Montgomery making a telephone call", not "I saw some brunette with a keychain make a call". Apparently, after that, she DID name Aria? Like, what is her explanation here? "Oh yeah, I saw Aria make the call, but I decided not to tell you so that you'd arrange a lineup, just for the fun of it. I mean, I have no idea why you included Aria because you know I know her and thus would have been able to identify her the first time, but yeah, it was her."

Hah, I guess one of the benefits of watching this show while doing something else is that I don't notice that much how old the actors look! Interesting development with Jesus and Gabriel. The show needs to be really careful with that storyline though. Was it Jesus specifically who was the victim (before he can remember, obviously)? I don't think Jack has any sort of hidden agenda or is being super sneaky the way it was suggesting he might be. I mean, using the same excuse/explanation doesn't mean it's not genuine; in fact, given that the base of it is obviously true, I think it's pretty natural that he'd give the same excuse for two bad bits of behavior at the same time in his life. And if he were that sneaky, he'd remember that Marianna would hear it both times. That said, I think he's probably not a very dependable person. If Marianna starts dating him, I think he'll probably end up letting her down.

What I want to know is, if this zero matter sucked everything into it and the only thing left was the black goo, then where did the film strip of the event come from?! When Wilkes said that after the test went wrong and "only one thing was left", I half expected him to say, "The camera." What, did it just appear inexplicably, Man in the High Castle-style?

Either way, like, if the solution isn't to give Maya money to fix her roof, then why is the solution to give money to Maya for her to give to other people to fix their roofs? Given what Maya said about how she was going to get an education and do something with herself so that she'd be able to take care of her own roof, I thought the obvious conclusion was to invest the money to help kids who are REALLY disadvantaged to get the education they otherwise wouldn't have access to. But then again, I was a teacher for Peace Corps in Africa, so maybe that's just where my brain goes. :P

See... I agree, except that I think that makes the resolution an even *bigger* problem. It's like... 1) Corey teaches Maya that she's actually part of "the us", and is very privileged compared to the rest of the world. Maya is amazed by this, but accepts it. 2) The solution to helping people is to give Maya money to fix her roof and hole in her wall. Like... what?? They established earlier that Maya is NOT "the them", but the solution to how to help "the them" is to fix Maya's roof and wall? Even though they established earlier in the episode that, even taking into account her roof and wall, she's actually much more privileged than the vast majority of the world? I'm sure the show didn't mean to say, "Let's help the pretty, white Americans who aren't that different from us", but... well... they did.

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking, and it's why I think it was very unfair of Riley to accuse Farkle of being sexist. Farkle would have insisted on being the one who did the experimentation no matter WHO his partner was, because he is the "smart one"; he'd have acted in exactly the same way if his partner were male as female, which is pretty much the definition of not-being-sexist. The only possible lab partner among characters we've met where Farkle would not automatically be he one doing the experimentation part would be Smackle, and while the two of them would probably have gotten into an epic argument about which of them got to do the actual science if they were in that position, it would have had nothing to do with gender. I disagree with some of what the recap said. I think the episode DID address that it's also worthy for girls/women to pursue non-STEM fields; the point was just that if they give up on it at age 13/14, then they will have fewer opportunities and lots of doors closed off. As Riley said to Maya, it wasn't that Maya should be a scientist; it's that Maya should think it's possible for her to be a scientist. It's not that all girls/women ought to go into STEM, it's that they shouldn't dismiss the possibility so early in their lives and education. I thought the episode was fairly explicit about that. Also, I don't think that the "experiment" that the science teacher did was the same kind of experiment as the Stanford Prison Experiment; I don't think it would have needed to pass an ethics review, because it wasn't an ACTUAL experiment. It was just a lesson that depended on the students acting a certain way. It was actually kind of elegant, because if the students acted the way he expected, then he could go on with his lesson as intended; however, if ever the students DIDN'T act that way, then that would be a class that didn't NEED that lesson, so it wouldn't matter that he couldn't teach the lesson he usually taught. I did find the fact that ALL of the marble-droppers were girls not very true to life. At that age, I (who art female) would have been the automatic choice to do the actual work, unless I was paired with one or two particular other students (which would have been unlikely because most teachers didn't allow two top students to partner up until high school when honors classes began). If I had been paired with one of those, we would have argued until we brought it to the teacher that both of us wanted to do the difficult part. GMW just didn't at all capture the subtlety that makes really makes this issue much more insidious than it was portrayed in this episode. To wit: girls get, on average, slightly higher grades than boys, because girls are more concerned with *being good students* and *being conscientious about their work*. Any honor-roll girl paired with a boy with mediocre grades would have insisted on doing the science part, because she wouldn't have been willing to risk him being lazy and saddling her with a bad grade. That doesn't mean that girls don't turn away from STEM around middle school, but the issue is kind of hidden by the "smart girls"' determination to get a good grade in every class, even whilst thinking that she doesn't like/ isn't naturally good at science or math.

So, hot off our correct prediction about "It's me" actually being "It's Me" at the end of last episode... Anyone wonder if the Dalek saying "Exterminate me" is actually saying "Exterminate Me"?

If the Doctor is going to regenerate as a woman, I don't want it to be while Moffat is the showrunner. I'm pretty sure he would make an absolute mess of it. When/if the Doctor is a woman, it's going to be fraught with difficulties. Some viewers of Doctor Who (the Gamer Gate-type viewers) are going to be very suspicious or even hostile towards the idea of a female Doctor, and unfortunately, that type tends to make a whole lot of noise online. If a female Doctor is badly written, that will add more fuel to their fire, and might even get other people agreeing with them that "a female Doctor doesn't work" or whatnot. On the other side of it, female viewers could be turned off to the show if the the female Doctor is written/portrayed in-- well, it's a bit much to get into, but there are a whole lot of ways a writer who doesn't know what he/she is doing could end up being pretty offensive, or just plain not believable. When/if the Doctor regenerates as a woman, I would want the showrunner to either be a woman, or have a proven track record of writing and portraying female characters very well; otherwise I fear Doctor Who would end up in the middle of a very unpleasant sh*tstorm. Moffat has a track record of not writing female characters very well. It's a recipe for disaster.