CletusMusashi

Daemon isn't on the level of Joffrey or Ramsey, but we haven't yet seen anyone on this show who is. If a bigger bad shows up, I may well accept Daemon as an antihero. But so far a few "pet the dog" moments with his niece do not change how much screen time I just saw him spend acting like the most brutal thug in the room. Even Roose Bolton and Cersei Lannister cared about their families, so I'm gonna need to see more than that to actually like him as a person, rather than simply enjoying him as a fictional bad boy character the way that I am now.

My explanation for Dany was that she was painting her eyebrows black for sun protection, sort of like wearing kohl. I didn't even know about the actress allergy, but, cool, that's yet another excuse. With King V, though, the hair and makeup department seem to have just randomly decided that it was a good idea for him to look like Fred Flintstone in elf drag. And, yes, I suppose I have been beating this dead horse into the ground. But, in my defense, some of the wigs and stubble are the funniest dead horses on this show.

OK, this is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but I'm still okay with Otto. His advice to the king was consistently good, and he was willing to put his neck out there insulting the king's own brother. The part where he tries to set up his teenaged daughter with the king, though? In modern society, I agree that is a creepy move. But in a society where she's going to be married off to somebody anyway? And money and power are expected to be major factors in that decision? Well, the king is pretty rich and powerful. And, except for that one thing that happened at the very very end, he seemed to be in an actual loving relationship with his first wife, so it's unlikely he'd suddenly turn cruel toward the second one. Also, he's getting up there in years, so she won't have to bang him for that long anyway. And she might even be able to convince him to buy a better quality shaving razor. Within the admittedly lamentable restrictions of a patriarchal pseudomedieval society, it's a winning plan.

Yeah, going into it I knew that the medieval stasis trope was going to annoy me. But it's omnipresent in sword and sorcery media. So silly though. I mean, just to pick a couple of dates that it's easy to do math from: 1500 AD had full suits of heavy articulated plate armor, but hand-held firearms were only up to the arquebus stage. By 1672, body armor was rare, even helmets were fading away, and muskets were too common even to be thought of as new or exotic. Or, 1000 AD had short-sleeved mailshirts and nasal helms, but 1172 had full head to toe suits of mail with gauntlets, great helms, and specialized point designs on swords, spears and arrows for penetrating all that armor. And also high powered steel crossbows. But, truthfully, I was more bothered by Viserys and his dark facial stubble. And whatever the hell was going on with that Walking Dead surplus wig they stuck poor Cordys with. Poor guy looked like the only way he could think of to explain "Hamilton" was to say "Well, it's not just shitty rap songs, your grace, it's also that everyone looks like this... Otto, pass me that mop head..." As far as overall characters go, though, I'm pretty much enjoying everyone that's noticeable. I'm already forgetting their names, but I'll come around on all that eventually. Daemon is a good villain or antihero or whatever he turns out to be. Sometimes a little too on the nose ("Why don't you trust me, brother?" "Because your name is literally Daemon! It's like not expecting Sinestro to turn evil!") but never boring, and in a pilot episode I do very much appreciate not being boring. Rhaenyra is competent both at court and at the less ladylike stuff like dragonriding, without those two factors feeling too dramatically at odds with each other (the way they were with Arya and Sansa, for example) and seems to be actually respected by people already. There were murmurings of a "female heir is highly unorthadox," but nothing about her not having the education or the disposition or anything. Doesn't mean those who prefer a male heir might not still side with Daemon, of course. Or they might still side with him for other reasons. The story is still young. I don't remember her friend's name, Otto's daughter, but I like her too. That actress is nailing it. Viserys is doing a good job with the material he has, but that darkass stubble does still anoy me, plus he has "red shirt" written all over him. This show seems to be more like what I thought GoT was going to be like, before I actually watched GoT. Fewer locations, more plotting and intrigue going on at closish range, instead of storylines on seperate continents that take forever to merge. What it's missing that GoT had, though, is an A+++ protagonist like Tyrion or a villain like Joffrey who can singlehandedly make any scene that they are in awesome. Despite that lack, it is amazingly good for a pilot. I'm in.

You might have to settle for Jason Dorne.

I'm actually scared about the dragons. GoT used the cost of showing dragons as an excuse for every single other thing they didn't want to spend money on, giving us that horrible green screen bastard battle and months on end without knowing where Jon's wolf was (you know, 'cause occasionally having him say 'hi Ghost" and then showing a dog in a field somewhere say "woof" is just so, so expensive.) So with this show from the very beginning being hugely dracocentric, how cheap is everything else gonna end up being? I keep envisioning scene after scene where they can only show one Targaryan on camera at a time because all of the actors are sharing the same crappy white Halloween wig. Maybe I'd feel better if I watched some promotional material, but I'm trying to go into this as spoiler-free as possible, at least for the first viewing. Probably afterward I'll delve into the extras a bit, just to help me keep straight which character is which.

Meanwhile, even when Bruce is in his gamma-improved superhuman form, he still has to wear glasses in order to be "smart."

I'm fine with them being together. I just don't think it should be the primary focus of the script, any more than I'd need episode after episode examining the friendship bewtween Clayface and King Shark.

I thought the cast did an excellant job and I liked the main character. Not just because of the actress, but because I thought they did a good job of setting her up on paper and writing a character that made sense for this story. And of course I liked the dog. This should have been a four star movie. But.... Most of the CGI animals were bad. Sometimes laughably so. And what the hell was up with up with just randomly doing whole sentences in an untranslated language? I mean, Hulu made this movie. If their policy is that French and Commanche will not be translated into English in their subtitles, then why make things gratuitously complicated? I could maybe give a pass on the French, because Naru doesn't understand it either, so it adds to the alienation of her captivity, but why the hell do the Indian characters keep switching back and forth between English and Commanche? Especially when we know perfectly well that the English lines are just using the translation convention trope anyways Literally all the language shifting did was render entire chunks of dialogue unintelligible unless the viewer was hitting "pause" and opening a google translator window. I was still able to watch it in one sitting, which is better than most movies these days. But it was not as good as it seemed like it should have been.

I think Joker planned from the beginning to make up his own result. And by choosing Harley, he gets to make a public show of how he's so cool he's just happily moving on from her. Also, he really hates Riddler. I think out of existing Gotham villains, Clock King is a pretty good fit for Riddler. Both are very smart but very OCD about the exact precision of their crime details. I can't see him being happy with somebody as disorganized as, for example, Bane. Although their bickering would be hilarious.

Ivy has been shown to fixate on three people. Catwoman represented who Ivy wished she could be more like. Cool, aloof, super comnpetent at everything, and charismatic without actually seeming to care whatever anyone thought of her. Kite Man represented someone who was crazy about Ivy as she actually already was... except without actually knowing her all that well yet. Harley has seen Ivy at her worst, repeatededly, and still thinks she's the most awesome person in the world. That's why Ivy is with Harley. But whether or not it's really enough, comsidering all their differences in seriousness and agenda (or lack thereof, in Harley's case,) remains to be seen.

So Macaroni is still a thing, eh? Poor Gordo. He's the only person close to Batman who doesn't get a costumed identity.

I thought they did some good character work this episode, but Eclipso himself is best when he hides off-screen ad plays illusary tricks. When we see him, he's either a very, very punchable small child or an extra from Power Rangers who doesn't even have the wrist strength to win a tug-of-war match with a nerdy high school girl. Many of this shows villains have been great on camera. Eclipso, not so much.

The funniest part was Joker doing the stair-dance from that stupid movie. But I am stoked for absolutely all of it. So glad S3 is finally happening.

I'm hoping they figure out how to bring him into Homelander's butthole.

Also, I'm calling a little bit of bullsht on her intended pacifism. I mean, didldos are not the easiest of weapons to slam through a human skull. If she was using a weapon as a force multiplier, like by picking up a hammer or knife or something, then that's just about getting the job done. But if you can break a skull by pushing a dildo at it, you can break it even more easily with your fist. I mean, there are a lot of black belts who can crack bricks with their hands, but can they punch holes in them with sex toys? Generally not. I kind of think that when she saw what she had to work with, there was a certain amount of "I may never get another chance to do this." Now she can scratch "massacre Russian mob with dildos" off of her bucket list. Can't say I blame her. It was hilarious. But Butcher wasn't the one who told her to crank it up to 11. And if she'd simply done the job and gotten out again, without showboating, she also probably wouldn't have gotten shot.

If this theme holds true, then MM should end up with similar powers to Soldier Boy.

You know, I was just saying a few days ago: This show is riveting and dramatic and exciting and funny and horrifying and brilliant, but you know what it still needs? More dildo fu.

On a non-Deep note, I love that their flashbacks to the 80s and 90s actually feel right. There are so many little Easter eggs of not only historial accuracy but also of plausible simulation woven into them... I love it. Most movies' and/or shows' flashbacks just re-create the Hollywood version of an era, so the 80s is all studded leather and Mohawks and luftballoons. Nope. I was there. Big dorky mustaches and jokes about how hot Loni Anderson was were far more representative of the era. I mean, shit. You think people today repeat the same memes over and over? Imagine a world before we even had a dailly fix of new material from the internet! All we had was newspapers! (Calvin and Hobbs was good though. So was The Far Side.)

As far as I'm concerned, fuck The Deep.. I mean, he's not a monster on the level of Homelander, but no matter how sympathetically he is written or acted, at the end of the day he is all about himself. Every sea creature "friend" we've seen him with with dies horribly, and he shrugs it off and goes right back to using somebody else. Timothy was literally only living in that aquarium because The Deep took him out of the ocean and brought him there? And what sort of non-living-marine-life-octopus-food was Deep going to feed him anyway? Crabmeat-flavored Fancy feast? And, in addition to the narcissism, he's a fool. I mean, I can understand being trapped in a contract with The Seven and living every day of your life in terror of what Homelander might do to you next if he becomes increasingly annoyed. But Deep was out. And he was doing perfectly well financially. His book sales were high enough for him to be doing TV interviews. I pay my bills perfectly well without working for The Seven. Maybe he himself could try working a real job. But no. The entire time he was out, all he fucking wanted was to go back the The Seven. Okay, well, you're back now. Spoiler Alert: Homelander did not magically turn into a nice guy while you were gone.

I wasn't crazy about the pilot. I actually watched it twice, just in case it would be better if I caught more details, but it was still, by the standards of this very great show, kind of mediocre. Now this second ep, however, I absolutely love! Every actor in it got to do all kinds of stuff, and we saw shitloads of action, and intrigue, and character nuances. And the number one thing I'm into this show for is watching crazy Homelander be crazy, and he did not disappoint. I really appreciated the "show don't tell" approach to world-building that they seem to be leaning into. I feel like this ep gave me a much better feel not only for the scope of the Vought Corporation itself but also for the society that this show takes within. It just felt really lived-in, instead of just taking place in a few little bubbles of supe activity. I still have time to watch Episode 3 before I go to work, but I don't quite want to yet. I still want to just enjoy all the questions and emotions that Episode 2 has left me with for a little while before I move on to whatever delightful batshittery comes next.

What I loved most may well have been the absolute not-giving-a-fuckness of disguising a 65 year old man as a man 30 years younger... simply by plopping a mullet wig into his head.

I kind of assume they're limited to humanoid brains, rather than just animals of a certain head size. Otherwise, why not take over a Kodiak bear? Rhinos and warthogs are obvious out, for trademark reasons...

They'd shown so much butterfly footage, followed by such along closeup of Murn looking stoic, that I was already thinking it before the reveal. But even then I didn't actually think "I bet he's a butterfly." I simply thought "I bet he gets possessed by one later, because it's going to be hard for people to notice." Okay, so here's my other prediction: I don't think the butterflies are alien in origin. That "Of course I had a father; I wasn't grown in a Petri dish," denial was just a little bit too specific, methinks.

That could actually be a great way to cycle through more villains. Please, starting next week, let him get bonked on the head and suddenly think he's King Tut.