stillshimpy
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Posts posted by stillshimpy
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Doesn't look like I have a ton of company on this but that's okay. I really enjoyed this for a variety of reasons, even though there were echoes of Breaking Bad and Justified. Here's why it worked for me: Whereas the writing can't hold up to Breaking Bad standards, that's okay as far as I'm concerned because it gave me something more valuable: main characters I actually cared about.
Marty and Wendy are both flawed and greedy but in a way that doesn't entirely eclipse their humanity. That's important to me. I'm heartily sick of the standard, dark, anti-hero. Also, I think it fits better with how people are in real life, people who understand they are monsters are rare.
For personal gain Marty and Wendy, both intelligent people managed to turn a blind eye to what cartels do beyond drugs. Drugs are bad enough, they cause so much suffering, death and horror, but the cartel engages in selling human beings. You don't get more evil than that. Yet, two people who have decency within them still were attracted by the concept of all that money. I like how the series handled that. From the moment Marty agrees and watches his predecessor get killed, it's clear that he's made the world's worst bed and now must sleep in it.
But it still hurts him when the preacher points out he's the devil. Like most people, he wants to believe he's a good man on all the levels that count and here's why the series worked for me: he's not entirely wrong. That was refreshing. He wasn't just in denial about how far he'd fallen, a lot of his impulses are those of an actually good person. He's lost his soul by degrees and is still clinging to parts of it.
That alone created an atmosphere that I enjoyed. Unlike Walter White reveling in his own badassery, Marty just really wants a damned time machine to take him back to the moments before he made this fool's bargain and ultimately tries to save Wendy and his children in a way that felt earned. That he stayed to face the Cartel made me like him.
Plus, I love understated performances and both Bateman and Linney turned them in.
Unfortunately, I personally found the Snells to be pretty paint-by-the-numbers and since there was essentially zero character development for any of them, they were pretty cardboard cutout evil particularly the wife, who was so unimpressive as a character and frankly, not exactly handing in a master class in acting on top of that, that I mostly hoped Ruth was going to kill her.
I'm glad there will be a second season but could do with less Snell Snoredom and I'm not heartened by the promise of overly evil Cade either.
There were areas that really needed improvement, I thought. The teenage daughter's story was just not compelling although the actor gave it some good work. The Snells were tedious because they were boring as hell and poorly cast. Some of the writing choices were stronger than others but overall it was worth watching just for the Bateman, Linney and the young woman who plays Ruth.
Agent Psycho was also a weak spot.
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2 hours ago, madam magpie said:
I'm kind of looking forward to that, actually! Didn't they part on good terms? (I mean...life was crap for both of them, but I don't think that was because of each other, right?) I'd think Sansa would hold no animosity for Tyrion and would probably respect and admire him for how he treated her.
I'm looking forward to it too and I don't expect them to dance around the subject. The one nice thing about the excessive fanservice of this season is it seems the writers are out to answer longterm fan questions. They already had Tyrion go right up to that edge by going out of his way to make sure Jon knew the marriage hadn't been consummated "of course" (implications, implications of knowing it would be wrong to do so).
Then also Arya's conversation with Sansa where they both acknowledged what the other had been through seemed another area where the fanservice machine was set to "settling debates" once and for all.
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2 hours ago, Bryce Lynch said:
In the mythical culture, arranged marriages were common, so our real life modern standards don't really apply.
A person can consent to something, without really wanting to do it. If a police officer pulls me over and wants to search my car, I might not want him to, and I might have the right to refuse, but in some situations, I might consent just to get the stop over with faster and go on my way. (Actually, I probably wouldn't but a lot of people would).
I don't agree with this even a little and furthermore, neither does the story itself. For one thing, this was not produced for a mythic land, it was produced to be consumed by people in this world and will be received by those standards. In the story, the actual story, Tyrion is aware that consummating the marriage would rape (as says Tywin) so the story doesn't even support that point of view.
Again, they're on a collision course for next season, so I'm sure the subject itself will be addressed within the story.
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24 minutes ago, Bryce Lynch said:
She seemed willing to "do her duty", but greatly preferred not to have sex with Tyrion. I don't think Tyrion would have had to forcibly rape her. But, beyond that he thought it was wrong to do it, if she was only doing it out of duty, but would rather not. He then made it clear that they would never have sex until such time as she wanted to. Her response indicated that she didn't think she would ever want to, and Tyrion's response made it clear that if she never wanted to it would never happen.
Shades of Todd Akin territory when talking about a "forcible rape". Sex without consent is rape. It doesn't matter if it is forcible or violent.
Also, the use of the word "duty" is problematic because she was forced into a marriage by her captors. Duty is similarly off the table.
ETA: One of the weirder things that is set to happen for next season is that Sansa and Tryion will be on course to meet again.
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12 minutes ago, screamin said:
What I remember from the book is that Robert refused to accept his resignation, told him if Ned gave the pin back to him again, he'd pin it on Jaime Lannister, I think - or Tywin? Can't quite recall. Either way, Robert's threat was enough to make him stay put in KL. If only he'd had the fortitude to go through with his resignation and leave - but he was too faithful to Robert.
That was after Jaime Lannister attacked Ned which was after Ned resigned as Hand, wasn't it? I can't recall from the book but I thought it was treated the same way. Ned resigns, Jaime wounds Ned, Cersei wants him locked up, Robert defies the Lannister for pretty much the only time , gives him back the hand pin and goes off to drunkenly hunt and is killed by the boar after being given drugged wine. On his death bed he tells Ned he was right about not killing Dany. Then he dies.
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17 minutes ago, screamin said:
Theon, he might have blanched at it. He wasn't anti-child death enough to refuse to continue as Robert's hand when he ordered the assassination of pregnant Dany (who was, what, fourteen?) It was only when actually faced with precipitating the killing of children he knew himself (Tommen, Myrcella, and Joffrey) that he realized he could not face the responsibility of doing things he was duty bound to do by the book...and because he was so conflicted about it, he mismanaged it completely.
Isn't ordering the assassination of Dany what caused Ned to take off the Hand pin and get set to leave King's Landing?
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21 hours ago, AshleyN said:
Not sure those stories would have held up when (Book)Jon turned out to be the spitting image of Ned, looking more like him than any of his actual children save Arya. And that was the best case scenario, the worst was him taking after his father -- although I've seen it pointed out that that might be why Ned allowed the Ashara Dayne rumour to flourish.
That's true, but Ned couldn't have known that Jon would grow up to look like a Stark when he was a baby and the most obvious thing to do from there (I did say someone known for spreading it around, after all) would be Brandon who would have had it coming.
But mostly, I don't think anyone would have paid all that much attention to who the butcher's kid was looking like if the cover story was that it was the child of a fallen soldier because all Ned would have to say is, "He favors his father's side" so it's a pretty plausible cover story. Ned stuck as close to the truth as possible, "He's a family member" and chose the rather odd route of preserving Catelyn's view of Brandon in death rather than his own intact honor in life.
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19 minutes ago, Tikichick said:
Actually I raised the issue, and nothing to do with 21st century mores and culture. I base it on their personalities within that world, not ours. The extreme lengths Ned went to prevent his best friend from realizing his "son's" true heritage, not wanting to serve as Hand to his friend, etc.
Not to mention the disgust Ned had for Robert's treatment of Cersei, his horror at his friend's paranoia about killing all Targaryens, even children, his distaste for Robert's unwillingness to serve the realm he ruled, his distaste over Robert's gluttonous eating and drinking.
You know, I think @Blonde Gator raised a good point: The vision of Robert that Ned had prior to the war could be one thing, you can convince yourself of a lot as a young person and it doesn't need to be true.
That it didn't remain his vision of Robert is actually covered in the books. Robert and Ned parted company on killing the Targaryen children and there was a chance that they'd never speak again over it. So, I guess the book did try to render it sensical.
By the time we meet up with them again in the first book and in the series, Ned's affection for Robert is only partially intact and he knows him well enough to warn Cersei that she needs to get her kids out of town (dumb move, Ned) or Robert will kill them.
Ned was anti-child death, so it always kind of intrigues me that people say Ned would have killed Theon if his father had joined an uprising. I always wondered if Ned fostered him to protect Theon from precisely that fate since he and Robert disagreed to the point of acrimony on the issue of killing your foe's kids.
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21 minutes ago, Blonde Gator said:
My point was that it was likely Ned's idea to join houses with his "brother", not Jon Arryn's, nor Rickard Stark's idea.
They were boyhood friends. An 8 year old doesn't make friends based on anything other than based on common interests, in this case, both being fostered by Jon Arryn, tutored in the fine art of nobility and learning to be noble warriors (as Ned must be as a 2nd son of a great house). Robert was a year older, bigger and stronger, imbued with all of the traits that an idealized man of the age. AND Robert became Lord of Storms End in his own right before he left the Eyrie.
Children, and even teenagers, do not make friends based on value/moral judgements. Adults might. But Ned loved Robert as his brother for many years, and only came to question that love much later in his life. Trying to find fault with Ned's lifelong friendship and loyalty to Robert based on 21st century mores and culture is what makes no sense in this regard.
Ah! I see what you meant. That's true, Ned could have thought Robert would settle down and be a loyal, good husband because that's how he wanted to view his friend, so he believed it.
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4 minutes ago, Blonde Gator said:
Ned was the one who took the marriage proposal for Lyanna to his father. Jon Arryn had nothing to do with it. Ned and Robert were best friends, "closer than brothers". They grew up together, and were only a year apart. Robert Baratheon was bigger than life, in a culture that admires the "noble warrior" culture. Revisit the way Cersei described seeing him on her wedding day.
Of course, reality never lives up to an idealized image, does it?
I have no idea why you just brought up Jon Arryn, I just said it didn't make any sense in the books. Their friendship doesn't make sense to me because Robert was everything Ned disapproved of in life.
Also, in reality, most people who have an objection to men frequenting prostitutes wouldn't be likely to then be all "Here, marry my sister!" unless they weren't fond of their sister and we know Ned was.
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6 minutes ago, Blonde Gator said:
Why would Sansa know about the faceless men at all, until Arya spilled the beans? I found that to be sort of shocking, as if the cult of the FM was common knowledge in Westeros. Are the FM one of the things about which all people say "it is known"? I never got that impression, from either the series or the books, either.
That's what startled me. That she knew about them being assassins, when she said to Littlefinger, "Do you know what the Faceless Men are?" because that seemed to imply more knowledge than Arya's oddly menacing speech conveyed.
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4 minutes ago, madam magpie said:
Yes!! This scene really was fantastically done. It's interesting, I watched a "behind the scenes" video last night about filming the summit at the Dragon Pit and how important it was, etc. And it was. But the Littlefinger smack-down and the Tyrion/Cersei conversation in this episode were so much more sublime, I thought! Those two and the exchange when Jon/Dany meet are probably my favorite scenes of this season. I did like all the dragon battles/rescues too, but those were more visually spectacular.
The part of that video that made me unintentionally laugh was when one of the showrunners talked about being excited to see what Aiden Gillen would do with that moment. Note he didn't then say what he thought of his choices.
That was dinner theater acting, man.
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5 minutes ago, Tikichick said:
You brought back to me more of the reasons I despise Robert Barratheon. I just can't ever understand he and Ned having been such great friends, seems like such an odd match.
Quoted for truth. That friendship makes zero sense, particularly knowing that Robert was engaged to his sister and was the JFK of Westeros in the pants department only, the guy claimed he'd have debilitating headaches if he didn't have sex daily and apparently never heard of yanking it.
I liked screen Robert before I read the books because Mark Addy is an awesome actor. I read the books and was horrified.
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53 minutes ago, madam magpie said:
Wait...so Dany can't just be "better," she has to be perfect? And the judgment of that leadership perfection is linked to whose moral code: mine, yours, Tyrion's, hers?
There's a lot of room between better and perfect for her to be better without being perfect. I don't think,"Maybe give it a night's thought before you burn people alive like your dad, who you know was wrong in his actions, used to do." That would be better and is not an unreasonable standard.
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4 hours ago, Tikichick said:
Since Sansa was confident enough in Bran's abilities to consult him, she would obviously realize that it would be pointless to lie to Bran. I think it's a bit of a misstatement that Sansa was actively trying to get Arya killed. I do think it likely Sansa may have been considering a preemptive strike against Arya, which is only sensible in the context of being aware of Arya's abilities, Sansa being wary and mistrustful of everyone in light of her experiences and the fact that Sansa was unnerved by the discovery in Arya's room and their confrontation -- although I do think Arya's presentation of the dagger confused Sansa and caused her to dig deeper.
One of the things that startled me was Sansa's familiarity with the Faceless Men because what would have occurred to me, didn't seem to occur to her, or perhaps it did: What if that isn't Arya but simply someone wearing her face?
We know it's Arya because we watched her journey. It was a missed opportunity to help clarify that muddy plot if the reason Sansa was spooked was she realized there was a possibility that wasn't Arya at all. Arya flat out told her all she'd need to be Sansa was her face, it then follows all that someone would need to pretend to be Arya would be her face.
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14 hours ago, anamika said:
on had a 10 yr old hanged for mutiny - his neck did not break immediately - we had to look at the swollen face and bulging eyes of a child.
We saw a man getting eaten alive by hungry dogs.
Arya baked some men into pies and fed them to Walder Frey and later we saw a whole lot of them clutching their throats and dying from poisoning.
If we don't have visceral reactions to the above because it's justice, why would we to Dany executing the Tarlys using dragonfire - the least painful death compared to the above - the Tarlys became ashes in seconds.
These are all excellent examples of the flexibility of what is considered honorable and good in that world, thanks for making them.
In terms of what Dany did, I think she should have listened to Tryion and allowed them some time in a cell to contemplate what they wanted to do. It would have set her apart from many of the leaders in that world and may have impressed them, or not, they might still have chosen to die rather than follow her but the instantaneous "Do this or DIE" thing kind of guaranteed the "oh...death it is" of it all.
It was pretty ruthless and again, reminiscent of the person she claims she's not like. It was a good opportunity to prove it and she chose fire and death. I like Dany, but some of her decisions hold up to more scrutiny than others and adding more senseless death to the senseless death landscape didn't do much for me.
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16 hours ago, SimoneS said:
Poor Dickon? Your definition of honorable and sweet differs from mine. Dickon betrayed his oath and killed his friends, the Tyrell bannerman. Not only was he a traitor, he was a fool who only thought of his pride and father when he should have been thinking about his mother and sister all alone in the world.
Dickon honored his loyalty to his father and was actually troubled by killing his friends. He had conflicting loyalties there and chose his family. He chose his family in death too.
Yeah, he's okay in my book, kebab that his is. Frankly, none of these people are worthy of loyalty when it comes to their seemingly useless house oaths because freaking none of them honor them. They are oaths in word only, even judging by the Northern Lords, but some of the characters would choose to be honorable in a world that is otherwise not. Dickon was not depicted as a complex person but he was depicted as being troubled by breaking an oath, so he's head and shoulders over a lot of the characters.
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2 hours ago, madam magpie said:
For what it's worth, and even though it's kind of icky, I don't actually care about the incest morally; these are consenting adults who had no idea they were related. To me, it's a sad wrench to throw at them. But given the types of people they are, I imagine it will bother them both for a variety of reasons.
That's precisely where I am with it also, it's icky because of what I know but it's tragic because of what they don't know. These are two people who have been through a lot of hell. They have both tried to put their duty/goals ahead of their personal desires (Dany left Daario and Jon did love Ygritte) and they found something that should have been okay, should have been "finally, some happiness and solace in this increasingly brutal world" and...they are both set to be emotionally mugged.
Sure, I recoil from the "Oh jeez, you just boned your aunt, dude!" but Jon has no way of knowing that and far worse, no reason to even suspect it is possible. Neither does Dany. It's genuinely sad but because it's also "...because it is really quite icky" I don't expect they'll decide to just forge ahead.
Those poor people (characters, you all know what I mean). It's a cruel twist to that moment. It's sad because they are both the sort of people to have genuine anguish over this.
2 hours ago, Dev F said:It would be so cool, in fact, that I found it hard to believe there are any recognizable bones left. Everyone in the kingdoms knows that there's an ancient pit in King's Landing where the dragons used to live, and in the hundreds of years it's been lying abandoned, treasure hunters and sightseers haven't descended on it and picked it clean of every dragon-related relic?
That is precisely the reason I was on the "Stop playing with that person's bones! Dear Dog, what hell?" because it wouldn't have occurred to me that there were bones there after all that time. Sure the big bones survived in the Crypt but that was awfully exposed to the elements.
1 hour ago, Misplaced said:Not 'fair' but if Dany is hell-bent on breaking the wheel, she needs to not deliberately repeat the actions her future people will think about when they think about the wheel. Again, it might not be 'fair', and in point of fact it probably isn't, but if she wants good press, she can't do anything that repeats what the Mad King did -- particularly burning a father and son i.e. Rickon and Brandon Stark. Surely she knew?
This is the thing with burning people. She knows that her father was a madman who did terrible things, she's admitted as much. She can't emulate him, even the appearance of it, and persuade people that she's any different than he is.
I know Dany isn't deranged but she didn't need to burn the Tarlys. Tyrion was right and it is particularly wrong because she knows what it is like to be the last of a family. Kind of not for long, I think we're all accurately guessing whether or not she shuns Jon (and I do expect them both to simply say, "this is wrong" ) she likely will be pregnant.
I've always liked that Dany is fallible but they made poor Dickon into such a White Hat and an honorable one at that. She wants the Northern Lords to follow her and that's going to be a hurdle to clear. Even if she comes around to understanding, "Well, that was wrong and I'm not doing it any longer" Sam's family members are just as dead, so it's never going to help him. I know his father sucked and the story on the screen downplayed the extent...compared to Martin's frankly melodramatic treatment that suffered from an embarrassing excess (as a lot of his villains do) ...but he was still the guy that threatened to kill Sam if he didn't join the Night's Watch. But they went out of their way to make Sam's younger brother a sweet guy and there's no way that isn't significant to Sam.
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1 hour ago, ulkis said:
You're right, I forgot how little they knew each other. But still, even with the little time they had together plus people talking about him could have set up some unreasonable expectations within her.
But that will never be something Ned did.
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7 minutes ago, Misplaced said:
Ned's 'self-sacrifice' and permitting Jon to be treated like dirt is also, fortunately or unfortunately, the reason Jon is ... well ... alive. Or, "breathing," as Jon might say.
Well, Ned sacrificed the perception of his honor, which was intact throughout his life but he allowed people to believe it was not for the sake of Jon, so that is actually pretty much the definition of self-sacrifice.
However, keeping Jon so close and claiming him as his own rather than figuring out where to send him, or coming up with anything else, "We had to put flame to a tavern to drive out Targaryen loyalist, this was the child of a cook who perished in that conflagration, totally innocent. I'm having the blacksmith raise him." Would have kept Jon close to hand and provided a cover story that wouldn't have infuriated Cat.
It was actually that Ned knew Jon was his sister's son that he couldn't simply assign him as a war orphan to be raised within Winterfell. It's that Ned's honor demanded that Jon know he was part of his family but since Ned wasn't actually built for a lot of subterfuge, he kind of made some key mistakes along the way.
But he did hit upon the whole, "If I claim him as mine, everyone will chuckle and say they knew it all along, I'm a hypocrite" and for the most part seemed to live with that perception.
Ned's "tell my wife that this is my child" that hosed Jon and caused Cat to hate him. Although, truthfully, it isn't as if she'd have hated him less if she knew his parentage because to put it mildly, she was not reasonable in the way that she treated Jon. She was horrible and abusive. I don't hate Cat anywhere near as much as others, but she was hideous to a little kid and shouldn't have been even if he'd been the embodiment of her husband's lapse in honor.
A more skill liar would have figured out a story that involved one of his men who died, someone who did like to spread it around so it wouldn't have felled the honor of a dead man, and say simply that he owed it to Ser Got It Plenty to raise the boy in a noble house.
But Ned's lying skills only extended as far as his ability to keep up the ruse and it had an impact on how everyone viewed him.
There just were more options on the table.
I think I'm the only person who would really dig a prequel. I'd love to see a story that fleshes this out and bonus, can't needlessly kill the shit out of people just for gasps and horror value. Well, that's okay, I don't mind planting my flag on an island: I'm sorry we aren't going to get a prequel. It's the more interesting story to me on some levels.
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48 minutes ago, domina89 said:
I think it is interesting that Jon literally handed Dany the jawbone of a (baby?) dragon- especially when R/L were referenced later in the episode. Reminded me strongly of the story of the Tourney at Harrenhal and how Rhaegar placed the crown of blue roses in Lyanna's lap. I have read several analyses of that which suggest that is a sexual metaphor representing Rhaegar also giving her a child. Yet another baby hint for Jon and Dany?
Nice catch! I bet you're right. So, I'm going to admit that right up until that moment, I thought it was the jawbone of a person and was insanely distracted by the "PUT THE GUY'S JAW DOWN!" of it all. Makes a ton more sense that it was a dragon.
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8 minutes ago, MadMouse said:
Really? I'm not questioning your opinion but that mid sex "oh shit we're in love" stare they gave each other was one of the hottest things I've seen on TV in awhile.
Hotness is the eye of the beholder. Even without the relatives reveal to underscore that this is going to be problematic, I personally don't find them to have anything other than manufactured chemistry that hails from a director's suggestion. I like both actors but yeah, they're essentially the same size and I don't know....just not my gig.
A lot of people have good butts so good on them for adhering to the workout regime that helps them in that area but I'm also not much of a butt person so there are diverse reactions even considering the prettiness of the people involved.
ETA: I'm also glad so many people got their swoons in and play through on it, but it wasn't any kind of universal knee knocking.
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46 minutes ago, Hana Chan said:
And with all the fanart done since the books started, I don't think anyone short of Orlando Bloom back in a lighter version of his Legolas wig would have fulfilled anyone's image of what Rhaeger looked like.
1The fanart was inspired by the story that discusses Rhaegar in, I personally found, downright annoying terms. That silver-haired fucker, who set aside a wife because of a malfunctioning womb in order to find one that could spit out a baby to fulfill his prophecy was fairly obviously a complete bastard, no matter how many "he had the soul of a poet, gave away his minstrel money, probably sang like a lark and fucked like a stud" details they throw in there, that's the bottom line for me.
He declared a wife too broken to bear his children so the story on the TV has it that he annulled their marriage and it really doesn't matter to me if Elia was all "Please, with my blessing" or the abandoned, fragile queen because that's disgusting on every known level. "Your parts don't work for me any longer ...buh-bye" is gross.
It's also pulled from history because that's precisely what Henry VIII did to Catherine of Aragon and then he -- this is not an exaggeration -- set her up in a drafty castle hoping she'd die of the damp. For real, the only wife he treated halfway decently was Anne of Cleves because she had the sense to say, "Yup! Never consummated! Annul away!" because when Catherine of Aragon didn't quietly die Henry moved on to fucking killing his wives. Anne apparently took note and he gave her a generous allowance and a good place to live. So it's possible that Martin will simply combine those aspects for Rhaegar, Elia will have been willing and it still will have gotten their children murdered so fuck him, I say.
But he's actually annoyingly bewitching in the tale. Cersie was besotted. Lyanna was so bewitched she also got her family murdered and a lot of the country with her (so fuck her too, love is not an excuse for cosigning on atrocities) and then there is Connington, who was also simply lovesick for Rhaegar.
It would have been nice if they could have found someone to stick a wig on that called to mind Dany, instead of Viserys because the guy needed to be the sort of fellow that the audience might think, "Lyanna still sucks, but at least she wasn't blind."
This story also went way far out of its way to establish that Dickon Tarly was made of goodness and that Dany should have recognized that, instead she burned him alive as he held his father's hand like a child.
I'll be a little surprised if that doesn't come up with Sam and Jon because it's a freaking repeat of what the Mad King is supposed to have done to the Starks. In the story on the screen none of the dead Starks are fleshed out so the audience doesn't know (if they haven't read the books) that Brandon was horrid and Rickard had questionable motives, to say the least.
I really don't think we're meant to view Lyanna sympathetically. Too much of Oberyn (rendered entirely adorable for the TV and leaving out his nastier side from the book) yelling about his sister being raped, murdered, split in two and her tiny children slaughtered for the implication to be "Aw, isn't it dreamy?"
So I think that casting someone who is demonstrably NOT Orlando Bloom in a wig -- and that poor man's looks are taking a pasting while being an actually good looking guy, he just isn't "I can see someone losing their damned mind over his looks" special-- was intentional. It serves as an echo to Sansa's silliness about Joffrey, even after she shouldn't have been able to maintain the fiction in her head.
Smiling beatifically while being married to a guy who dumped his wife, who had a baby young enough to still be nursing so that we can't miss he's been recently fucking her too, as if she's living the dream is wince-inducing. It makes sense as a way to imply that Lyanna was being foolish to the nth degree without having to dig out the backstory. Then lying there dying, smiling so happily at Ned while asking him to do somehting for her that will ruin his life or at least his reputation, is also another marker of questionable judgment. To be able to make the request, Lyanna has to know about Robert's rebellion and the slaughter of Targaryen babies.
That last is important. She knew that Robert would murder a baby ...how? Rhaegar's other kids had to be dead and she had to know about it.
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8 hours ago, rmontro said:
This is a fantasy world though, and I don't think we can apply 21st century Earth norms to Westeros. Obviously, the inbreeding worked for the Targaryens in that it maintained the purity of their bloodline, and that seems to be important because of their ability to bond with and control the dragons. Neither the Targaryens that we have seen nor Cersei's children seemed to have any defects that we might associate with incest.
But the Targaryens do suffer from the signs of inbreeding within the actual books. The line about the coin being flipped every time a Targaryen is born. They run towards madness that can render them incapable of functioning -- one tried to drink wildfire in order to become an actual dragon -- so it is present within the story as a concern.
It's present within the story on the show too. Viserys, the Mad King, some of Dany's more deranged moments "Fire cannot harm a dragon" she says as she watched her brother die and it was said with fascination.
Having Dany burning Tarlys alive should end up being significant because it is reminiscent of the Mad King and it's not the first time she's done it, either.
But as it pertains to the revelation about Jon, since Sam is the person who played the exposition fairy to Bran's all-seeing if-he-goes-and-looks Three Eyed Raven and his father and brother both died at her hands, I think it's going to end up being discussed particularly when Dany turns out to be knocked up.
Man, the background on when Lyanna and Rhaegar met just makes them worse in my eyes. She barely knew him? Oh, jeez.
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S01.E10: The Toll
in Ozark
· Edited by stillshimpy
Yeah, that is an eye roll and a half. People can grow poppies almost anywhere but Missouri's climate is far from ideal for it. Also, I'm pretty sure that the poppies that are grown as "Oh pretty!" type of poppies don't yield what is used to make heroin. Like anything else, there are different types of poppies.
So, that I filed under semi-willing disbelief and it would have been more willing if the characters had been anything other than hillbilly racist stereotypes.
I don't really care that they got most of the entire Lake of the Ozarks deal only semi-right. Bizarrely, MO was one of the most class conscious areas and Missourians LOVE their police presences. It's tacky as can be, but there's also a ton of money at the Lake of the Ozarks and the turn-a-blind-eye law enforcement was the most eye roll worthy of them all.
I think the only reason they didn't use Meth as the thing they were manufacturing is that Breaking Bad was about that but yeah, it's sort of absurd that they are pretending MO has the right conditions to grow poppies. They grew like the weeds they sort of are in Colorado because the ground is fairly sandy and drains well, it's part of the reason they grow well in Afghanistan.
On top of everything else, the climate is wrong in MO. But that's okay, it's not a documentary, it just kind of makes it a bad call to have it be such a focus of the story.
I think the Snells are just a mistake as a plot device. The killer wife I think is meant to be menacing and instead just comes across as satire. Sure, the woman with the overly intense stare, who isn't actually any good at even faking being nice, would continue to move about freely. They wanted to pretend that the area was a backwoods as parts of Appalachia and it just isn't.
For one thing, there's no way on this green and verdant Earth that a stray cartel member, sitting outside a house at a lakefront property, glowering all day wouldn't have drawn the notice of every.single.person who lives there outside of Marty and Wendy. So that would have gone on for like, a minute before most of the other neighbors would have been on the phone to the police, the state police right after them and nothing short of ICE and the DEA after that.
So I had to suspend a lot of disbelief there. Luckily, I did find it worth it for Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, again, as well as the woman who plays Ruth. Bad casting can doom a project but good casting can help elevate the material. The actual writing on this is about a B- but the cast was all in and it worked.
If they're smart next season they will dispatch with the tedious Snells by having the cartel kill every living cell they possess and they can move on to something that isn't quite so much about the constant peril of the overly obvious hillbillies.
Also, swap out overly aggressive FBI agent for some DEA agents because that made ...not much sense.
Seriously, they are lucky they had such a good cast in so many areas but they seriously need to quit pretending that the cartel can move around in Missouri that easily.
The actor playing Marty's son is also a really gifted actor but no parent in their right mind would be all "Oh sure, study carion eaters and by all means, gut some dead animals because there's no way for that to make you as sick as any human being has ever been."
Hopefully next season the writing will be a little tighter, a little less "Um...okay, I guess, but not really because even if I hadn't lived in MO at one point, I'd know this was stretching credulity."
There were things I really appreciated: I was just dreading the moment Marty had a revenge affair with Rachel/Blue Cat Owner and was glad that didn't happen. I also hope she's just kind of gone now but almost any grownup knows that cash is sourced. Hell, they'll ask you where funds came from when you're opening a bank account over a certain amount that involves simply the transfer of funds. Again, good actor there but if they bring her back, she needs to be involved vs. a pure victim of the scheme.
There's a lot of room for improvement here but I found that the things that work act as true saving graces.