Raja

As a franchise NCIS is looking like CSI with each new spinoff lasting fewer seasons than its predecessor. With Agent Hanna's NCIS Elite promised for the finale I can't help but think of an improving Star Trek Enterprise having its finale taken over as a bonus TNG episode. What I don't get is another half or full season of Sydney unless the Australians are picking up much of the cost

Sometimes it does work as a vassal under Lady Ochiba's father only Lord Toranaga understood that Mariko was a hostage holding Lady Ochiba not him in check

Perhaps the difference is that Toranaga was sent out as a hostage like Lady Mariko was sent to Buntaro as his wife and Lady Fuji to the hatamoto as his consort. Being "taken" hostage is beyond the diplomatic norms in the Japans. You know that Isido, he is just a predictable bureaucrat. He has to come attack Lord Toranaga before more clans breakaway because he took their diplomatic mission to the heir hostage. And there can only be one place my screen will funnel the enemy to. But that is to much talk for the narrator. At this point they haven't lost, Lord Isido lost. Even before he gave them 2/5ths of the council the Taiko had already started taking steps against the Christians. For the Catholics a heretic lives among them , but he has been neutered without the Royal Navy coming to back him up.. Getting to a noticeable Christian loss would be the unwritten sequel featuring one of Lord Toranaga's other sons that folks have been clamoring for.

I think we see the difference when we got to the movie, as opposed to the Agent Carter Red Room. Being a woman and the effect she had on men was a large part of a Black Widow's skill set. With Yelena Belova and her Red Room of sisters doing a kata with guns, except the director using women the assassins could have been men.

Becoming Shogun locks the heir out as he would have been Shogun being of noble birth to Lady Ochiba while the Taiko was up from the ranks like Lord Ishido and could only rise to Chief Regent. Winning the battle was only step one now the others would force the Emperor to call up Lord Toranaga much like King Charles nominally calls up the Prime Minister after an election today.

The details will come when I make my second watch of the episode in a few days but I thought the heads on the stakes had the distinctive samurai haircut. I was surprised when Blackthorne and Lord Toranaga where talking about ordinary villagers

What I got was a hesitant translator until Lord Toranaga told him to reveal himself as the spy. At which point he began to question things like do you mean hope or faith. With 2/5ths of the council nominally Christian and the access to Portuguese trade goods in play I think many more bilingual spies would be out and around.

I think his dream since he set sail was to come back as the man who opened the Japan's to the English and Dutch breaking the Catholic monopoly. In a sense being Admiral Perry 250 years before the Americans got there. So the honored gentleman with his grandchildren marveling at his trophies while on his deathbed. In a way a mirror of the last days of the Taiko. I am assuming the Lord Toranaga honored Yabushige's will and Lord Omi has inherited all of Izu. Maybe he has a spare cousin or sister he can marry off to the Anjin to keep Anjiro all in the family and closer to Lord Toranaga instead of trading her off for a new alliance. But then she might be as mad as being assigned to the barbarian/hatamoto as Lady Fuji initially was only to be the best consort ever . More like he won the fight before the sword was drawn. But there are sure to be plenty of widows, whose husbands died in battle so unlike Lady Fuji but more like where Lady Mariko thought she was for a few days. The demonstration by Lady Mariko was enough to see the start of stripping away of the political Catholic lord. If the kidnap was successful we are given a story where Lady Ochiba doesn't withdraw the Taiko's army. But in the end other lords would know that even with the power of law it wasn't the heir but rather Ishido who demanded support and might still flip to Toranaga in sufficient numbers. It hadn't even been a generation since there was a more or less unified confederation in Japan.

Do you cast Bruce Wayne or any ole man, or woman, in a mask and a cape is the question.

So after ending Lady Mariko's story we get the surrender of Blackthorne and the acceptance that he will be the Anjin forevermore. With his spoken Japanese really ramping up all of the sudden many samurai around him are showing up as political Christians and knowing Portuguese. I guess like Yabushige many had different interpretations than Lady Mariko and let their lords know on the side. In those last days with Lady Fuji I was shipping hard and hoping that she would stay on as the Anjin's consort. While Blackthorne in his grief of losing his translator went as far as ordering her to stay. But like other situations she pivots with the no playa I will be a nun now.

Was the short third season always the plan or a result of the strikes delaying production?

So NCIS Elite is just another team, ultimately under Director Vance and the NCIS name instead of the CIA I guess. It sounds like the real life Marines bringing back the Raiders because all Marines are elite stopped playing in the publicity game 20 years ago when all eyes went to the SEALs and Delta Force. For the case of the week, who was the second clown van driver? Perhaps the dude just jumped out of the driver's seat since it was a ruse for the cameras and then jump back in. Another 1000 episodes call back with teaching Kate that beyond the Secret Service stuff they had to be their own CSI's it took the ME to tell us about blood splatter when refrigerated old blood should have been sufficient. For the second week in a row a senior Marine is not going to serve anymore. I was wishing for a JAG defender to be around while he still wanted to save his wife once they knew he stole millions. But I was impressed that the FBI ran lead even if they circled back to NCIS going to the Marine base and being the contact

NBC did the same without CGI back in the day.

I saw an excited father rush out to greet Coulter as he was parking. Giving Coulter the nickname of home school did seem like something a regular character would do, not a friend of the week.

I think that going after Frank in the early days of the TV show was a holdover from Robert Duvall's vocal Christianity and "hidden" adultery in the movie M*A*S*H.