Pestilentia

I don't know that Kendall does have the balls though. I think he tries to appear as though he has the courage and he even tries to convince himself with his little bathroom pep talks. But I think that his actual reality is all about fear- fear he's not good enough, fear of disappointing Dad, fear of failure all around. He's so deep up his own ass in insecurity that his entire life is a facade. Every time he stalls out while speaking to someone- those enormous gaps where he just goes blank staring at the floor- I think he is wracking his brain for "OK, what would a secure, high powered mogul do?" He's not reacting as that mogul, but in the manner he thinks that mogul should react. He's a poster boy for the "Put up a good front and your ass will take care of itself" mindset. He's so concerned with image- cramming as many buzzwords into each sentence as possible while rendering the meaning itself indecipherable. "So we'll incentivize the hyperlocal quota retargeting our touchpoint and drill down the optics of the deep dive into the synergy of the customer journey by amplifying the core competency and logistics while keeping content king." is Kendall being a strong leader- sound and fury signifying nothing. Everything about him is begging for validation.

I never thought I'd see anyone win an Emmy for simply walking down a hallway, but that long walk Kendall took leaving the TV studio was a master class on acting. We could follow his thoughts flip back and forth between his facade of confidence and his very real terror about the position he finds himself in. He's such a swirling mass of insecurity and bluster.

I'm way late to the party- just binged the series twice in a row. But I don't see Logan ever voluntarily retiring and handing over the reins without being forced to by severely impaired health. He just enjoys it too much. He'd promise anything to anyone with no more intention of actually giving it to them than the man on the moon. He's serious about his business but his relationships with his children are a sick game- they are no more than pawns to be moved around to provoke someone or something else. And they're all handicapped by having been raised thinking that was normal.

I think it is a terrible mistake to think that all psychologists and/or psychiatrists are some sort of all-seeing, all knowing ubermensch with infinite insight into each and every person they meet or even know on a personal level. They have training, yes, but they are still imperfect humans who experience denial and misplaced trust and poor judgment in personal relationships. They certainly are not immune to the foibles of humans. They make bad decisions and have failed marriages and make all the other mistakes the rest of us make. Within a family dynamic we very often see what we want to see and turn a blind eye to things that upset the order of our own personal existence. We explain away problems fifteen different ways rather than face up to what is glaringly obvious to others. An education doesn't make one immune to that.

Celeste is too smart to behave this stupidly. You'd think an attorney would be better at looking out for herself. It's annoyingly unrealistic- she gets this clueless "Duh, wha?" look on her face when anything happens and it's driving me nuts. And why is everyone being so accommodating to the shit stirring she-devil? Heads up Monterey 5 ladies- have a meeting, come to a consensus on how to deal with/ignore her, and stick to it. They are ALL playing right into her hands. Sloppy writing.

The big reveal of Jon's parentage was the hingepin upon which the entire show revolved. If they casually toss that aside as a "Never mind" it renders the entire series moot. What was the point? There have been wolf/dog hybrids available as animal actors for decades. That they chose not to utilize them is a mystery, but I can assure you that no "new species" is being created here. Sounds to me more as if they have contracted with a specific breeder and trainer to provide wolf dog hybrids who have been acclimated and trained to specific 'in world' requirements and standards. Something the current showrunners had plenty of time to do themselves had they cared enough to bother.

She really is a victim of her upbringing. When you consider that she only had Viserys telling her stories of entitlement and how universally loved they were all her life it's no wonder she can't handle rejection. She is not equipped for anything besides vengeance, the acquisition of power, and everlasting adulation.

IMO that's what she was doing during her week of seclusion/not eating- she was stewing over it. She had Tyrion on one shoulder urging her to show mercy and her inner tyrant on the other telling her "Fire and blood." She wasn't raging when she destroyed Kings' Landing- she had long since decided to do it.

So that incinerated corpse that Arya saw at the end there was the mom and child she tried to lead to safety? And that hand poking up that looked like the pommel of a charred Longclaw was just a hand and not a charred Longclaw? RIGHT? Am I the only one seeing these things?

I keep going back to Arya's telling Ed Sheeran's band of bros "I'm going to kill the Queen." It just rang so true to me in a very prescient manner.

I think that at this point Bran is a meat hard drive and not much more. He may have a tiny spark of Stark left flickering but it is dwindling and will eventually go out. His time spent in the cave was analogous to a system upgrade where the new hard drive (Bran) was being formatted and the system switch taking place as the old hardware (Bloodraven) was retired. That's completed now and his job is to record. He is a repository. He is no longer an individual- he is a piece of hardware. He has no real agency aside from the odd cryptic comment to direct people in the direction they are destined to go anyway. And IMO this direction is 99.9% exposition anyway- to help us as viewers understand the pre-existing roles everyone is meant to play. Humanity means humanity as a whole, not this human and that human cherry picked by some metric as insignificant as family DNA. He is not here to influence events, he is here to record the events of the species as a whole. If that requires watching the deaths of the people in the family from which he came then so be it. Just because we don't know the reason doesn't mean there isn't one. He was recording. His warging is used only to enhance his view or his mobility to get to a better vantage point. He is not warging to go and do stuff, only to go and see stuff happen. I think expecting "Bran" (who no longer exists) to function in any sort of human capacity is missing the point of what the 3ER really is. He is not Bran any more. He is not going to be sitting on a council or being an advisor or doing anything to influence or change human events. His "bigger picture" is not Kingdoms or councils or family names- his big picture is seeing the events that comprise the Age of Man.

Not necessarily- could be she's upset over the compete and utter destruction of Winterfell. Her home is gone. Again, Winterfell will be essentially gone. There's no reason for her to stay and live among the rubble, at least not during what would be a very prolonged rebuilding effort. And leaving does not mean never returning. It just means that (as she told Lady Crane) she wants to see what is west of Westeros.

And all I could think of was The Battle of Helm's Deep.

Yes, but when Stannis captured Mance Jon's suggestion as to how to proceed was "Take him captive and question him" not kill him on the spot. It's not as if Jon kills as a knee jerk reaction and Dany does have a bit of tendency toward that reactive sort of retribution. It's the thin line between justice and revenge. I'm reminded of the old adage "When the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail," Our deep dislike about how Dany is judged is just a fundamental dissatisfaction with the world in which the events take place. Cry to heaven indeed, but life is not fair and while women are held to a different standard Dany does look to me like a bit of a hothead. We can't take the easy road of blaming misogyny when there is a true fundamental difference in how she handle situations. She's always needed a voice of reason standing beside her to help her pause and see the bigger picture. All the dead Baratheon bastards beg to disagree. Not in Jon's thoughts of course but he was a murderous man.

The press acting as instigating drama lamas is no surprise because that's what the press does anymore- try to generate news by pot stirring. We have a show here where the women are stronger than the men- we have a woman ruling in King's Landing, one ruling Winterfell, one leading the Iron Born army, one yet a child leading House Mormont, one a strong picture of ethics swordswoman, one a sneaky get 'er done swordswoman, and one coming in with armies and dragons to conquer the whole shebang. Of course there is going to be conflict between women. That the press is pushing it so hard tells me that it will resolve easily and quickly and will turn out to be a non-issue in reality- all this Dany Sansa crap will dissipate early on.

Well, heck- given that we don't yet know the Night King's history or motivations Bran could even be speaking to him.

Hence the bittersweet- final fade King Jon sitting on the Iron Throne and utterly heartbroken by the prospect of having to sit there for the rest of his life.

I doubt Cleganebowl will be "a small scene." More likely his memento is from a touching moment between Sandor and Arya or even Sansa. OR he was being super-facitious and the fight scene "a small scene" is huge 🙂

So I'm really glad Hugh is back despite that horrid Neanderthal look he had going on while his spirit was manifesting as the Mycelial monster. But I am stupid levels of hung up about where the network got his DNA to replicate him. They made a huge point of needing extra human DNA which they found in the cocoon (why couldn't they have just nabbed some from, I don't know- one of the humans on the other side) but no source of Hugh DNA. If he was most sincerely dead presumably his body was disposed in whatever manner they utilize in space. It just bugs me because usually they toss me a bone so I can wank this sort of thing. Hopefully I have misunderstood and someone can correct me else I just have to make the leap and be happy he's back. Agree that I am loving how Pike operates- a couple of times there he was not entirely sure what was going on but trusted his officers enough to proceed with what they asked for anyway, and that's a great commander. Don't quite know why Ash was brought back just to have to sit around feeling useless but also agree that the hair looks good on him.

And yet the custom of a widow's self immolation has existed for ages across many cultures- Sati/suttee. For me I thought this episode wasted an awful lot of time on Roger inside that lovely leaf hut when there is so much to yet get through. I just did not care about Priest man and his ridiculous "ethics." Indeed.

Well, I thought Pip/Gemstone Suitor looked so much like Young Ian it made me sit up and say WTF. Their mouths both wrap around that Scottish accent the very same way. And Lord John has more sense than to put himself in a position like that- they've impugned his character by writing that scene in such a coarse manner. Brianna/Sophie sure looked truly pregnant and bloaty in the sketching Phaedra scene.

To clarify, 'twas Bonnet, not Black Jack Randall. Jamie killed Black Jack at Culloden.

I guess I understand but the great love of my life was such a burning, all-consuming type of compulsion that I would have moved heaven and earth to keep- it was everything. I truly would wish for everyone to experience a love like that at some point in their life. And if that love had been cut short by war, if I was denied the ability to have our life together and then somehow got the chance to get it back? You bet I would go!!

Yeah, I wondered about that but there's so much lore about blankets carrying smallpox and infecting indigenous people that I thought they might have just extrapolated that to measles.

So no one else thought the doll was what brought the measles into the Mueller household?