Eyes High

I give kudos to CH for dubbing the Wolf "Dave Grohl." I knew he reminded me of someone, but it wasn't until CH made the comparison that I realized who it was.

What gave you that impression? As for Tovah, the makeup artists had to convey that she was sick and dying in this episode, which is what I meant.

I'm not going to blame Morgan for bodyslamming Carol, domestic abuse victim or not. She was slashing at him with a knife; he was entitled to defend himself. Sure, she was right about the Wolf, but she shouldn't have started waving a knife around to get her way, either. I agree with the observation that it's out of character for Carol to force a direct confrontation when she can get what she wants by stealth, subterfuge and surprise. Morgan even told her that their beef could wait, and she at least appeared receptive. Why not just pretend to agree with Morgan and drop it, only to off the Wolf quietly later on in secret? It makes no sense for Carol to force the issue at that moment, especially when Morgan is armed. She's smarter than that. The only explanation that makes any sense is that the concussion addled Carol's brains. She wasn't her usual cool, composed self: she was sweating, she was shaking, and she didn't even seem to be listening to Morgan.

Tovah is lovely and awesome. It's quite jarring to see her in full glamour mode, considering how haggard the makeup folks have been making her look.

The ants on the cookie repulsed me more than 99% of the walker-caused deaths on this show. Deanna was surprisingly benevolent towards Rick at the end. I would not have been. I would have been thinking, "Before Rick, I had a husband, two beautiful children, my health, and a peaceful community. After Rick, I have a dead husband, a dead son, another son in mortal peril, a community overrun by walkers, and a wound that will kill me. I am not feeling so great about that." I mean, Deanna's a good person, but wouldn't anyone be bitter and resentful towards the man whose arrival in her town coincided with the beginning of a series of events that stripped her of pretty much everything she held dear? I think any person, regardless of their moral fibre, would not be spending their last moments praising Rick's parenting and beard-growing abilities, but rather cursing him for ruining his/her life. That's just human nature. Deanna's behaviour struck me as supremely unrealistic. It seemed to be a way for the writers to let Rick off the hook for his shitty decisions.

The Terminator was on tonight, and I suddenly realized that Sam Claflin (Finnick) is the spitting image of a young Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese). A Google search confirmed that I'm not the only one to see a resemblance, but wow. ...Claflin could have used the intensity and charisma in the HG movies that Biehn had. He was serviceable as Finnick, don't get me wrong, but I was disappointed.

It's a reference to a Parks and Recreation episode where someone assumes that the lead character and her female BFF are a couple. The lead character says "Tragically, we are both heterosexual." I'm sure Daryl's heterosexuality is a tragedy for disappointed Rick/Daryl and Daryl/Aaron fans, though.

It would be hilarious if the iconic moment the fans had been waiting for forever--Daenerys' fleet grandly and majestically setting sail for Westeros--is never actually shown. Spoilers from L7R: Scenes are being filmed with a new Lord Commander, and it's a character known to the viewers "for several seasons." There are three separate sets at Banbridge alone filming: one with Bran, one with the White Walkers, and one with Castle Black (with no sign of Kit, who's back in London). I think filming is supposed to go until December 20th, 2015, so there might be some more filming spoilers dribbling out.

I had the impression for some reason that Lennie James wasn't interested in a long-term commitment to an American sci fi show as a lead character (been there, done that, bought the Jericho T-shirt). ....Morgan does die in the comics, although they kept Carol around long past her "expiration" date in the comics.

I never understood the need to dumb down certain male characters in a misguided attempt to achieve some sort of contrast between the various love interests. There's no reason why two simultaneous potential romantic interests for Lorelai or Rory couldn't both be well-read, culturally savvy and intelligent without the universe collapsing in on itself, but you'd never know it from the writing. Ugh.

I think part of the problem was that the show was so stylized, even cartoonish, in certain respects--the rapidfire dialogue style that no one on this planet has ever used in real life, the nonstop pop culture references, Rory's cartoon cutout boyfriends (Intellectual Bad Boy, Rich Womanizer Douchebag, etc.), the eccentric townsfolk with improbable names, people regularly doing horrible things with no serious consequences from the people they mistrestaed, etc.--while still attempting to strive for emotional realism. It seemed like ASP couldn't make up her mind about what kind of show she wanted it to be, and that tension, between powerful, dysfunctional relationships and real, sad, serious problems (Emily/Lorelai, Jess' issues, Rory struggling at school, etc.) and plastic, uber-twee, hyper-exaggerated bullshit, made for a very jarring inconsistency in tone. To be fair to ASP, this seemed pretty common with WB/CW shows. "Tee hee, here's a cute little town festival where people do some ridiculous bullshit! Tee hee, here's a cute little first date where the lead female character adorably trips over something or says something adorably awkward! Okay, now give someone an emotional meltdown with a parental figure so that everyone knows that this is a Serious Show with Real Shit. Tee hee, now the lead character will have some adorable banter with the cute local bartender/business owner!" And so on. I won't name names, but, well... Yup. No one in real life would ever put up with Lorelai's bullshit, least of all someone like Luke. She would have been on the receiving end of so many "Shut up, Lorelai" comments that it would make your head spin. Yes! That was stupid. I think it was a plot device so the writers could explain why now he was pursuing her, as opposed to the million other times when he appeared very attracted to her and romantically interested in her.

Someone based in Northern Ireland is claiming on Twitter that (and I'm putting it under a spoiler cut because this one's a biggie) a scene was filmed earlier this week where the following happened:

Damn, DisneyBoy, tell us how you really feel! Your post is very perceptive, though. A number of posters have pointed to Dean's possessiveness as a red flag. You're darn right that it's disturbing. Yes. That is Christopher in a nutshell. It was so obvious, though! It was weird that ASP walked all the way up to the "Rory's dating her dad" line, invited the audience to walk over the line, but scrupulously avoided having any characters point out the glaringly obvious. If this were a different type of show, I have no doubt that a character would have casually mentioned to Rory that she was dating a younger version of her father. To be fair to Luke, once he did accept that he was in love with Lorelai for realsies near the end of Season 4, he did set about courting her in a reasonably adult fashion (although he didn't respond well when he thought Lorelai wasn't following the "script"). Luke was a disaster in romantic relationships, though, don't get me wrong. As you have shrewdly pointed out, this show could be very regressive when it came to gender relations and in particular dating and sex: Lorelai being pleased that she got the "good kid" when she learns of Paris' dalliance, the presentation of preference for casual sex as a character flaw to be "cured," the men pursuing the women romantically, etc. Practically speaking, if you wait for guys to chase you, you run the risk of ending up with a guy who's more interested in the chase than the relationship. That also leaves out a lot of sweet but painfully shy guys who want nothing more than to be paired off with the right girl but are terrified of romantic rejection. To be fair, there are lots of confident, romantically forward dudes who are great, devoted partners, and lots of shy dudes who are horrible human beings. Shyness in of itself isn't a virtue, any more than confidence in of itself is a red flag. It's just that if you force all prospective suitors to chase you, the suitors you get might be suitors more interested in the hunt than the prey, so to speak. Sadly, straight women are still bombarded with constant messages about how straight guys are gagging for sex all the time, with anyone, that if a guy is interested in you, he will show it, and that chasing a man is desperate, since if he's not pursuing you the way any redblooded man interested in a woman would, he's not and never will be interested. Few things are ridiculed more than the man-crazed woman desperately chasing after an uninterested man. (This is pretty much the premise of He's Just Not That Into You.) The idea is that if he doesn't manifest overt interest, he's either not into you or he's not Man Enough to pursue you, meaning either he's not worth your time or you're not attractive enough for him. Women pursuing men I think is still stigmatized in this enlightened age, since straight women are supposed to want men desperately, since being heterosexually partnered is supposedly the highest attainment of feminine existence, but are not supposed to do anything about it, since that would be "desperate," and desperate women are pathetic. Men are supposed to chase and be "active," and women are supposed to be the passive, gracious recipients of male attention when and if it is bestowed. It's toxic and awful, I agree, but it's a real thing. Again, the idea seems to be that if you're a Woman Worth Having, a man will be sufficiently interested to chase you, and if he's a Man Worth Having, he will be confident and forward enough to chase you. If you're not desirable enough to inspire a man to chase you, you're not a Woman Worth Having. If you're not confident enough to chase the woman you want, you're not a Man Worth Having. It's a horrible, circular trap. There's also the fear of romantic rejection, which knows no gender. Asking someone out is terrifying. Women would gladly shove that burden on to someone else unless absolutely necessary, I think. I will say this for Lorelai, though. Just because she is forthright, blunt, and a straightforward sort of person with an impressive ego, doesn't mean that she's necessarily going to be the one doing the pursuing. Speaking from my own experience as a heterosexual woman, I consider myself a self-assured, independent woman, and I have never asked a guy out or pursued a guy romantically. Not because I'm a supermodel goddess type with men prostrating themselves before me begging for my affection, but because I didn't want to look like a desperate woman or get rejected. Pretty much this. I also think that in reality Luke would never have put up with Lorelai's irritating behaviour, would have banned her from the diner long ago, and never would have formed a romantic attachment to her.

That would be a great twist. Jesse Plemons has played cold, calculating characters before. I would also accept Ed ending the season as a hardened criminal hitman with a fearsome reputation, the man who started a mob war, the man who killed Rye Gerhardt, the man who killed a hitman with a cleaver to the head, the man who held Dodd Gerhardt hostage...They call him "the Butcher of Luverne." I mean, Ed's probably doomed, but calling up Mike to offer him Dodd on a platter was a baller move.

2x08 promo pictures are out (I'll place the descriptions beneath a spoiler cut, because one reveals Dodd's fate):

1. We still don't know how Ed and Peggy managed to escape without Hanzee taking them out, but I can buy that Hanzee underestimated Ed and Peggy. Everyone else has. I'm less certain about why Hanzee would bother to call the Gerhardts to let them know where Dodd was rather than just killing Ed and Peggy, retrieving Dodd, and presenting the Gerhardts with a fait accompli. We might find that out in the next episode, though. 2. I thought the suggestion was that thanks to Floyd's information, Mike no longer had any flunkies except for the lone Kitchen brother, without whom he lacks the necessary manpower to mount any kind of attack. Thus that series of dissolves showing Mike's men disappearing. By the time he got the message that he had two days to clean everything up, Floyd was at the police station giving them the information they needed to disrupt the KC mob's undertakings. As for a "personal point of honour," I don't think Mike has any. He has professional pride, sure, but there's not much that he could do to take the fight to them with only one lone Kitchen brother, and the Gerhardts spending most of their time in a heavily fortified compound with henchmen armed to the teeth. 3. I'm no criminal mastermind, but that's easily done: stake out the office to determine the guy's comings and goings, bribe or coerce the window washers into explaining how to operate the equipment, use a spy to send a signal as to when the timing is right, done. (I'm guessing that the "clients" were collateral damage under the "no witnesses" policy as opposed to Bear and co. needing to take them out specifically. In that case, all they needed was to ensure that the guy was in the office.) 4. The cops would have done or said anything to prevent more bodies piling up. That's why when Ben says that there's no point pursuing the Gerhardts since Floyd now has immunity, Lou says "You're a shit cop." With all that said, I think true tragedy comes from decisions characters make that, while ill-advised or even stupid, are the only choices those characters could have made given their level of intelligence, emotions, personality, outlook, background, etc. and thus take on an inevitable character. However, there are a lot of decisions made by characters that are inexplicably dumb and completely avoidable given the characters in question and therefore make it more difficult to stir up any deeper feeling about the horrible tragedy of those decisions and their consequences. Floyd being too overwhelmed with grief over Rye's death to question Hanzee's dumb story about the Butcher of Laverne is tragic. Floyd knowing that Simone has divided loyalties but not calling her on it until it's too late? Less so. Bear, enraged at Dodd jeopardizing Charlie's future, feeling he has no choice but to kill Simone to protect the family and resolve his own anger at Dodd? Tragic. Bear being increasingly resentful of Dodd's poor leadership and knowing that Dodd and Hanzee are full of shit with the Butcher of Laverne story but failing to raise his suspicions with Floyd? Less so. Simone having an incredibly risky affair with her family's most dangerous enemy for a shot at getting rid of her abusive father? Tragic. Simone failing to go to her grandmother and confess everything the moment Mike starts asking her for information? Less so.

Dean Jagger has been cast as Smalljon Umber. (Source: WOTW) On the issue of Sansa's Season 6 plot...maybe she disappears after getting separated from Theon and reappears at the head of the Vale army with Littlefinger late in the season. Liam Cunningham praised Sansa's Season 6 storyline, which to me indicated that there would be some interaction between Davos and Sansa's storylines, but we know that Sansa is at the battle in 6x09, so maybe whatever interaction between them happens them. There has been speculation that Sansa heads to Castle Black, but it seemed that while Kit was in Belfast, Sophie was everywhere but Belfast (filming other stuff, going on holidays, etc.). So that doesn't seem terribly likely to me at this point. Occam's Razor says that she heads south to meet up with Littlefinger.

I think it's hard to give the premise its crucial punch and weight when a clear goal appears to have been to minimize the gore to keep the movie rating as low as possible and attract the widest possible audience. "Anemic" seems the logical result of the movie continually pulling its punches to make sure the rating stayed low. They implied as much as they could imply, but that often fell short. Also, as has been discussed upthread, a lot of the uglier aspects of the THG universe were glossed over and prettified, which seems a bit ironic given that so much of the books was devoted to showing the ugliness behind superficial prettiness and juxtaposing the horrors of the tributes' experiences in the arena with their stylists' relentless need to enhance them cosmetically. (I remember one terrifying aside from one of the books where someone tells Katniss that while she was recovering from her injuries, the head honchos wanted to give Katniss breast implants and Haymitch had to argue them down.) Movie Peeta never lost a leg. Finnick prostituting himself was acknowledged briefly. What bothered me the most of all these changes is that Mockingjay Katniss was physically fucked up by the bombs. She was horrifically scarred. New skin forms, and it's ripped off in her struggle with the guards after assassinating Coin. So it was a little strange to see Katniss at the end looking immaculately gorgeous, and yes, it seemed cheap. I get why they did it, but man.

I'm not surprised Morgan gets the better of Carol. Hand to hand combat with a primed, ready opponent has never been her thing. She depends on stealth, surprise, and being better-armed; faking a concussion to get a better shot at the Wolf is classic Carol (stealth, avoiding unnecessary confrontation). Morgan could subdue her pretty easily, since he would not hesitate to use his stick nonlethally on her, unless she was willing to kill him or grievously injure him right off the bat, and I think even Carol would hesitate to do that in the heat of the moment unless she thought her own life would be in danger if she didn't. Carol has very little experience with dealing with an opponent who sees her coming when she doesn't think she can just shoot to kill. That's why I suspect she didn't just kill Morgan instead of trying to find a way around his opposition (faking a concussion and sneaking down to the basement to kill the Wolf). Placed in a position where her only way to get Morgan out of the way is to shoot him or stab him, I think Carol would hesitate.

I linked it in the media thread, but there's a post-2x07 interview with Rachel Keller (Simone) over at the Hollywood Reporter which appears to clear up her fate. It's a great read. I only know him from the quirky Australian TV show Spirited, which was a very different kind of role. To be fair, though, Fargo has cast several people with comedy backgrounds--Adam Goldberg, Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Martin Freeman, etc.--so Angus Sampson isn't much different; his comedy experience just happens to be in Australia. Even Allison Tolman was doing improv when she was picked for Fargo. Angus Sampson is tearing it up as Bear, though. Respect.

Post-2x07 interview with Rachel Keller (Simone) over at the Hollywood Reporter, and it's a must-read. Warning: this appears to clear up the question of whether or not Simone did die. Keller seems like a lovely young woman, gracious and effusive in her praise of her costars. She had this in particular to say about shooting the fateful scene in question and about Angus Sampson (Bear), which I thought was just darling: Awwwww.

It's Hangman, with "Sioux Falls" being the solution. You can see the "noose" to the left of the letters. The "third line" is the rejected letters.

To be fair to Lauren Graham, no one would look good in some of the hats they made her wear. Lauren Graham really had a great body for clothes, though; even the less flattering stuff looked amazing on her. As for first season Rory, I think the writer's objection wasn't so much as to what she was wearing--which, if dowdy, at least wasn't aggressively ugly--as to the costume designer's need to swathe every inch of potential exposed skin in bulky fabrics so as to convey that Rory was a "good girl." In later seasons, Rory wore a lot of trendy Marc Jacobs (those short-sleeved blouses with the puffed sleeves, for one) and Anthropologie, while Lorelai pretty much lived in stylish, flattering DVF wrap dresses, so I imagine there were less objections to what they wore later in the show. A number of the things the writer takes issue with were unfortunate but real fashion trends of the early 2000s: impractical skinny scarves, the weird sleeves on Lorelai's work shirts, the infamous tank top/T-shirt combo (which bled over from the 1990s), etc.

Sophie Lucido Johnson over at Jezebel.com is all over the Gilmore Girls' nine worst fashion sins, basically summarized as follows: 1. Rory's T-shirt/tank top combinations. 2. Lorelai's horrifying at-home cotton shirts (including shirts with rhinestones, bubble lettering and decals). 3. Sookie's pink and purple jacket. 4. Rory's "ill-conceived" layers, including wearing a T-shirt, button-down, cable knit sweater and cargo jacket all at once. 5. Lorelai's stupid hats (most egregiously, a pink leather newsboy cap). 6. Lorelai's horrifying work shirts with weird and/or highly impractical sleeves. 7. Rory's ugly print peasant dresses. 8. Rory's extremely modest casual wear in Season 1 (khakis, turtlenecks, huge sweaters, etc.). 9. The impossibly long, skinny scarves.

I'm not surprised. Richard and Emily would measure themselves by the "success" (and as we know, they had pretty limited conceptions of what "success" looked like) of their children and grandchildren. Lorelai's "failure" was their failure by extension, so Rory's "success" would be their success by extension. They therefore had a personal investment in viewing Rory in the most positive possible light, as it was viewing themselves by extension in the most positive possible light. I wonder if Richard and Emily would have come down quite so hard on Lorelai, or thought so highly of Rory even in her less lovely moments, if they'd had other children or grandchildren to share the burden of their expectations and ego investment. If they'd had (in their minds) a "good" child, they might have been more forgiving towards Lorelai, and if they'd had another "good" grandchild, they might have been less disposed to view Rory with rose-coloured glasses at all times.