Penman61

Here's the next best thing: S2's opening credits with S1's opening song.

OMG, that club/bar was The Saddest Joint In The World. The singer--who sounded sad and lovely--had dark circles under her eyes and almost seemed drugged. I could smell the stale liquor, smoke, and desperation, and the customers were slo-mo catatonic. It was one nudge away from being Lynchian surreal. Very unnerving.

The mixed reviews lowered my sky-high expectations, so I was pleasantly surprised by this opener. I think people forget (or enjoy?) that S1 had a LOT of pretentious portentous metaphysical hooey played straight, and that stuff in this episode seemed relegated to the David Morse character, who I'm sure will turn out to be wonderfully corrupt. For whatever reason (initial reports?), I expected much more of this to take place in the Inland Empire and less on the coast. IE is the perfect setting for a story of moral decay, and the excesses of the coasties have been done to death. So I'm hoping we stay inland. The last things I remember Vince Vaughn in were Dodgeball and Psycho, so I haven't been sullied by his recent string of sub-par comedies. I thought he was quite good. And Colin Farrell is a phenomenal movie actor, and so I'm glad we're going to get hours and hours of him.

I assumed hemophilia also played a role in her demise. That made me happy.

Aren't the soldiers who left Stannis' army deserters and not mutineers? Trivial point, but it bugged me nonetheless.

Oh God, I'm fine with erudite Hannibal, nearly-nude sexy Hannibal, black-clad biker Hannibal, bicurious Hannibal, but the one Hannibal I pray we never, ever get is... ...Bro-Hannibal.

I'm not sure I like where this is headed. On a much more comfortable note, now that Paige has let the cat out of the bag, I really hope the show is heading to Elizabeth being ordered to kill Paige. That would be the most intense dramatic expression of the fundamental conflict inherent in Elizabeth's ideology: Are you for the State or for yourself & family? If you love the State, you must be willing to give up everything for it. Anything.

Elizabeth's thought ballon was "I think we have a suitcase in the trunk..."

I've carefully and selflessly researched this question for nearly three decades, and I can report within a 3% margin of error that 69% of all male desk clerks in major urban area hotels are gay. Elizabeth got lucky.

For those who've read Dick's novel: My recollection is that Deckard (like Elizabeth) must kill someone (an android) he ends up connecting to--an opera singer, I think? And for extra resonance, I think she has a Russian name, Lubov?

I would have made the bookkeeper a plucky teenage girl who survived cancer and brings both her shelter-rescue arthritic boxer and her paraplegic calico kitten (named "Ironside") to work; she bookkeeps at night to support her mother who has no limbs and her father who's a lovable layabout. She's just had her first blush of young love but hasn't yet kissed, and now she never will: "That would have been nice, I guess," she says to Elizabeth, slipping into death. Her last words: "I wonder: Will I dream?" Oh, and she's played by the actress who plays Paige: but in a blonde wig.

I suppose from a pure story focus perspective, one might complain about the South Africa or Central America subplots. Historically, however, these proxy fights continents away were the fronts in the Cold War; they were its defining characteristic. So I personally think dramatizing these conflicts--and showing the horrific violence enacted at a very human scale--is one of the most amazing political things I've seen on fictional television. Think about it: We watched a black South African horrifically murder a white South African while Russian KGB agents posing as suburban Americans looked on...in Maryland (or VA?), USA. I think it's the essence of this show. YMMV.

Thank you, sistermagpie. :)

Two questions: 1) When Elizabeth and the South African were putting the young SA back in the van, there was a long shot of a some guy running down steps and then across the road/path. Was that Phillip? If so, what was he doing? If not, who was that and why did it matter? 2) Is Misha real? My recollection (vague) is that the Philip's ex might have had reason to mislead Philip about the existence of a son, and Philip knew that too. Please correct me all to heck about it. :)

I eagerly await the day when "gay male couple" does not automatically equal "hairdressers, makeovers, and threeways."

Wow, that season was a hot-mixed mess, with some enjoyable moments and way too many slogs. Doug Stamper: He better turn into a much more interesting character, because we just spent nearly 1/3 of this season on his "arc," which journeyed from failing to kill Rachel to succeeding and then Rachel Getting Buried. Yeah. (Btw, can someone remind me why Rachel needed killing? It was so damn long ago, and it's hard to keep straight all the attractive twenty-something women Frank needs dead. She Knows Something, right?) Claire: What exactly is her talent or skill set, besides abetting ruthlessness? She botched being ambassador, has no common touch with the people, has a short fuse in front of Senate confirmation committees...so, what has she got? She looks fabulous, but then so does Heidi Klum. Frank: Kevin Spacey is apparently melting before our eyes, and I hope it's part of his character work and not just letting himself go, but it really showed this season. Still, it's fun when he's down, and that's the problem with Frank being President. Heather Dunbar: I like this character, but the actress looks and sounds so much like Alison Janney (who I think played on some other TV show about politics, maybe, right?) that it distracted me. And her bluffing about Claire's diary before she had it in hand was a rookie mistake. Someone said this about Fincher's other films, but it applies here to the look/lighting of the interiors: This show looks like it takes place in the saddest Starbuck's ever.

I agree with this 100%, but let's stop and observe that in this episode Elizabeth dropped a car on a 100% innocent person. Are we still rooting for her?

I'm guessing the bit swapping out Brezhnev's portrait for Andropov is a set-up, the first in a series to come very, very quickly. :)

Screw that cut-in to Talking Dead. Fooled me, made me think the episode was over, I stopped watching, and of course I came here and got spoiled about Tuco. Aargh. I agree about the challenge of Odenkirk carrying a show on his own. Maybe this will be his breakout role, but there's something missing, charisma-wise, I think. I realize that's perfect for this character, yet Walter White was just a high school biology teacher and BC was f*cking operatic when called for. But I'll give it at least a few more episodes. Loved the directing, cinematography.

Since TPTB felt free to reduce complex human behaviors to ONE CHOICE, a CROSSROADS with no turning back, I feel justified in doing the same for TPTB: The tragic flaw in this season's conception is the 8-episode finale. The main weaknesses--Tommy's underdeveloped motivation, Gillian's underdeveloped mental deterioration, loss of AR's story line, et al.--can be traced directly back to that fateful choice. I will now fantasize about what a 2-season wrap-up would have been like, with the show's typical nuanced, paced storytelling, punctuated of course by requisite gorebursts. Does anyone know for sure why Gillian was holding her abdomen, or are we just guessing? Also, her "can't tell if it's a lady ladybug" was about the saddest metaphor for her own raped childhood I can imagine. So desperately tragic.