DigitalCount

"Sansa's not a killer...at least not yet." Well, Tyrion, that's quite the five-o'clock foreshadow, isn't it? Good to know that Sansa is going to get a bit tougher down the line. LOVED Grey Worm and Missandei getting screen time from their perspectives. More later.

Yeah, I think the operative issue is that he's Stannis' best friend and Hand. Of course Davos sounds the way he does.

The only thing I can do with the Jaime/Cersei scene is say that there was a moment when she grabs him and pulls him in (there is, but it's hard to see and people could be forgiven for missing it). It's not as clear as "yes, do it now" but it's...something, I guess.

I actually thought he was doing exactly this. Did he make a single true statement when he first appeared at the apartment?

I guess they had to pay off Roose's comment at the Red Wedding. So I guess the Purple in Purple Wedding wasn't the stones or the wine at all; it was Joffrey's face.

Well, that's more about Elena than the BFFs. Bonnie literally fell into a grave to help Elena, and Caroline was there for Bonnie when her mother died. I think that it's been shown that Elena's priority list goes 1. Salvatores 2. Jeremy 3. Bonnie/Caroline whereas something like Bonnie's goes 1. Elena/Caroline 2. Jeremy 3. Salvatores 4. Population at large This is of course in stark contrast with someone like Tyler, who tends to go 1. Population at large 2. Pack/friends Seriously, that dude has had some serious character development, and it shows in the ways he relates to the rest of these knuckleheads. Bringing this back to relationships, just look at the way he dealt with Caroline's very personal betrayal (which I find to be bordering on character assassination, but whatever, vampires).

Why not put the speaker and episode numbers as well? Just a suggestion.

Kiddo82, I think you may be right. This is at least one plot thread that does not seem to have been dropped. That's actually part of the problem with making these theories based on things that were seen a season and two seasons ago; PLL practices a sort of canonical abrogation where later seasons are more in-continuity than earlier ones. That's why, when I do my post on specific events, I'm going to try to focus more on more recent seasons, although there will definitely be citations to earlier episodes and especially the Pilot (which seems to be the one early episode that escapes the abrogation treatment).

Couldn't we have Tywin do something like sell Shae into captivity to go east as a slave? That way, Tysha can stay in the past as she should, and Tyrion can still murder Tywin for the "wherever whores go" line. At the same time, it might be a bit harder to justify Tyrion's anger at Tywin calling Shae that, since Shae is actually a whore (albeit a funny one). Furthermore, Tyrion absolutely has to kill someone he probably could have let live. He is not by any stretch of the imagination a white hat, even though his hat is the whitest of those worn by his family members (with the possible exception of Kevan). There needs to be that moment of him just seeing red and crossing the line. Tywin, people can agree, had it coming. But Shae, even with her damning testimony, was essentially killed for hurting Tyrion's feelings the 3,167th time (when #3,166 wouldn't have been met with murder); while he probably could have killed her for what she said and how she nearly got Tyrion and Sansa both executed, that's not actually why he did do it. On the other hand, from a practical standpoint there will be some weirdness. Book!Shae was quite a bit younger than show!Shae, so it wasn't quite as odd that Tyrion would be able to kill her, but I think show!Tyrion would need to be behind Shae and take her by surprise in order to kill her, since this Shae is fierce as heck. I'm very curious to see how they handle this.

Maybe the drink itself will turn purple? Blue stones, red wine. I'm fine with it. And they're purpley enough as it is IMO.

I was just about absolutely ready for Jaime to follow in his brother's footsteps re: Joffrey, and given his new upgrade, so much the better. It was galling to hear Joffrey talking about his father in that manner in this past ep, even if he believed it was just his uncle. It's like, why would you need to rub it in like that against your own family? This guy is at least the twin of his mother and, given the massacre in S2, Joffrey has to at least suspect that Jaime might be more. Jaime needed to give him a golden backhand. Freaking monster. Jack Gleeson needs all the awards.

Heh, for some reason I hadn't realized that Cersei, as Jaime's twin, would obviously also be 40, making the issue of Loras/Cersei kind of pronounced. Is Loras still not the firstborn son in the show? For some reason I seem to remember a mention of his brothers being removed for the sake of making the story easy to follow, but here it seems problematic. I do agree that Jaime wouldn't necessarily be slowing down at 40, but I got the impression in both the show and the book that even with 2 hands he wouldn't be able to touch someone in Barristan's class, so he is in a very difficult position here. Oberyn Martell...totally perfect. For whatever reason I thought of him as having slightly longer hair, but his danger level is accurate. Also, he and Ellaria seem like they have so much fun living life, which I felt was brought across well in this episode. Was the grove of corpses that Arya/Sandor passed supposed to be significant? I was wondering if that's a Schrodinger's Catelyn nod. I wasn't sure if they were just supposed to be the victims of the rougher Kingsguard people blowing through like brutes, or if that was foreshadowing something else. EDIT: Moved from the other thread: I was under the impression that Tywin had in fact disowned Jaime. Also, that cold open was powerful. Have we had a cold open before? I thought it usually went right from previouslies into the intro. Tywin's facial expression was telling, though. I feel like he was waiting to have finished Robb before melting down the sword. In his mind, Robb, Bran, Arya and Rickon are all dead, and Sansa is married to his son, so he has Castamere'd the Starks. It hurt to watch, once I realized which sword it was that was being melted. Team Oberyn ftw.

Edited because apparently I'm not supposed to post in this thread; sorry about the mistake. I'll put what was here in the other thread.

I started a post on this earlier and it got eaten, but: While it's extremely probable with Allison's account of events that Jason is the person who struck her (and I'm surprised that no one suggested this in-universe, but these girls have a blind spot when it comes to family), can we actually trust Ali's account? Not that I think she lied (which I suppose is possible, but to what end?) but she'd just been bashed in the head with a rock and was in the process of being buried alive. Not only that, but I assume that "what have you done" was a phrase Ali had heard from Jessica on numerous occasions while hanging out with CeCe, so is it possible that whoever buried her alive said this, and her traumatized brain linked it to her mother because she was, well, traumatized? Possible holes in this theory include Jessica's desperate assurance that Ali was definitely dead and she didn't need to ask questions. Presumably, she was so sure because she buried Ali herself. Or maybe that's a red-herring.

I'd personally like to see flowcharts for the Most Wonderful Day of the Year to compare it with Allison's account of events. I'd like to see if there's a discrepancy as well as if it's the sort of sloppy thing that would invalidate some of my other theories or at least weaken them. I know some wonderful people must have pieced together that day so I'm hoping someone will post a link. I have to keep telling myself this show is not LOST. That affects the way I view clues and hints.

Since it took a bit longer for me to get back here (oh, the MPRE) I decided to make a new post for this. I guess this can be called AriA, part 1 - the General Foundation. There are specific actions she takes for which there are a small number of plausible explanations, including her being A, which I'll examine later; this post is more about the way the show portrays her overall. Perhaps the strangest thing I have found about Aria is that, in the midst of an increasingly ridiculous web of omniscience and insanity, Aria does not act like a person in a murder-mystery thriller. She fancies herself in the wrong genre (and is written as such). People in Rosewood are killed at an alarming rate as a result of mere association with certain people. And these people are not just randoms; they are people intimately associated with the four mains. This is all information we know, and it is also information the Liars know. In spite of this, Aria continually acts as if anything else is more important than the very real and present danger the other Liars fear all the time. In the old forum (sniff) there were jokes about various episode descriptions where Aria would be doing some mundane thing (usually re: Ezria) and the other Liars would be in some hilariously dramatic life-or-death situation. It's hard not to feel this way when Aria's eating cake while Jake gets stabbed a billion times, or worrying about her status as fake stepmommy while Spencer descends further into a fractured world of catatonia and drugs. It is somewhat profound that when she found out that Ezra was not A, she was more concerned with his creeping than finding out who actually is A. Furthermore, A has been shown to act in a specific manner where s/he uses the secrets the Liars keep to bury them. Not only does Aria continue to lie and keep secrets, but she doesn't even act worried about having these things revealed--perhaps because she tends to end up better off in terms of her position. Aria is also pretty often associated with the letter A. Yes, this is because her name begins with A, but these are fictional characters; every situation is a construct created by the author. Why make one of your characters have the same first initial as the main villain who goes by that first initial? Related to this is the fact that she: wears the letter A has been referred to as "Big A" has posed as Amy, Anita, Vivian Darkbloom and the real actual A was an Allison-in-training. On the subject of associations, in a show where costuming and mood are just as important as actual plot, Aria has worn shirts with kisses and red/black color patterns, both things associated with A. My personal opinion on how this jives with the show: I have seen many posts to the effect that making Aria A would ruin the relationship between the mains. I do not see it this way; I don't actually consider Aria a great friend to begin with, so it would be difficult to consider anything irreparably damaged by Aria's lack of trustworthiness. And in fairness, this theory generally considers Aria to suffer from dissociative identity disorder, so it is likely that some part of Aria truly cares for her friends while her dark passenger plots their doom. I'll get into reasons for why I think she has DID when I start discussing specific strange events in Aria's character. Annnnnd...if I continue on this now I'll probably start rambling, so this is probably a good stopping point for now.

In fairness, I thought they did a good job establishing the new role Elena has taken on as the world's worst guardian. This episode was probably the first that I actually considered it safe to fast-forward scenes (particularly the Delena scenes) but I managed to hang on through the whole thing. My only hope is that if they aren't going to fire the cannon on Stefan/Caroline, they will just stop putting in these "moments." Shiptease is annoying even when you're not really invested, but it becomes ridiculous when you are. I'm getting Chlois flashbacks here.

So, AriA. I'm going to edit this post later (by later I mean after REAL LIFE TIME is over) to talk about my main reasons why Aria is super shady and possibly A. I think it's better here than in her character thread, because it's a theory (and one that seems to zigzag in terms of making sense, thanks to the way these people treat the idea of consistent writing) but it's one I've held varying amounts of stock in for varying amounts of time.

LOL, I kind of want to make Toby's thread something like "Like a Block of Wood"--it references his abdomen, his acting, and his occupation (teen contractor).

I think the latter was pretty much absolutely necessary (and also, what they did); knowing the answer beforehand would diminish the level of tension that the series would have. They had to do something in order to make it seem as if the situation would be different, so they answered with odd terminology. It's largely the same thing they did with EzrA. The title of this episode was somewhat accurate, however. It's not as if there weren't some answers that were clarified--Spencer did not attack Ali, Ali (possibly) didn't sleep with Ezra or Ian, Jenna is not A, A has an uncannily similar style of turns of phrase as Aria...to the theories thread? (should have some Spencering-related subtitle, methinks)

Oh, but it's so true though. I still remember not having the WB at home and needing my friend to record it on VCR(!) so that I could watch episodes. (Side note: I've watched Hothead more times than should be possible for this reason.) Glad to have a place for venting and eye-crossing over ridiculous plot elements.

The thread name is perfect. I mean, it really had to be that.