kieyra

'Good' like he just murdered two people when he could have simply escaped to safety instead? Or some other kind of good?

You've both hit the nail on the head. The fact of the matter is, I found the later books pretty unbearable, and Amazon 's reviews tell me I'm not alone. If they attempted to follow them as evenly as they've followed the first few (within reason), those record ratings would decline. I'm not as solid in my book-lore as some, but there was just so much in the last two that really made me question if GRRM is capable of pulling his threads back together or if he's just going to keep creating new characters and new plots indefinitely. (I realize I'm saying nothing new here, but the take-away is that if they don't change certain things for TV, the show won't continue its popularity. And at the very least they aren't shying away from the body count.)

Maybe I need to rewatch, or check the unsullied thread, but I wonder if non-book-readers immediately picked up on the fact that Shae was in Tywin's chambers and the implications thereof. I know they did an establishing shot of the Hand emblem, but some people don't catch that kind of small detail.Just thinking aloud.

I think the "St Tyrion" epithet is a bit melodramatic. He just murdered two people. I don't call that whitewashed. They've got plenty of show material for him to go even darker and more nihilistic after this, and the endless "where do the whores go" litany wasn't exactly my idea of nuanced character-building.

I've been holding off on the Rosa's accent debate because I want to test something and I haven't had time: I want to listen to her accent with my eyes closed. I'm wondering if part of the reason people are hearing her accent a little strangely is because she looks so otherworldly, post-chemo (bald head, no eyebrows, etc). And she speaks in a low, gruff register that is somewhat reminiscent of Red's voice, without actually sounding like a Russian accent either. So without any visual cues as to her ethnicity, PLUS her voice 'sort of' sounds like Red's...I think that's how people are arriving at Russian/eastern European. But I suspect her accenting actually is Latin in essence. Did we get any cues as to where Young Rosa was committing her robberies?

Yes. As a longtime female IT worker, nothing bugs me more right now than TVs experiments with this female hacker trope lately (Skye on SHIELD makes me nuts), and while I should like Cameron, they're just showing us a collection of idiosyncrasies and yelling, not a person. Ditto Joe, on that note.

What show did Lapkus leave for? Google and imdb aren't helping.

Olive thanks for your insight (and I hope you post more). My father was in the federal prison system for five years, and in his final year he was moved to a lower security place. I was young so I don't remember a lot of details, certainly not the knowledge level you have, but he did like to tell a story about how another inmate got in trouble for sneaking out to bring back in pizza and beer.

I just binged season one. I noticed in the Wikipedia summary for episode 6, it says "Daniel admits he doesn't know what happened that night," or words to that effect. Does he actually say that? If so I missed it. But if he was high on mushrooms and really doesn't know what happened, it would help explain part of his character to me (that he decided it was easier to just assume he was guilty since he wasn't sure, and felt guilty either way). And why he never explicitly states his innocence, which had been bugging me. Overall, it was solid, but wasn't quite what I was expecting. I understood it to be about what happens to a man released from death row for a crime he didn't commit, and how hard it would be to re-integrate into the world. I didn't realize they were going to weave a whodunnit into it (since we still don't know who killed her, or even if it maybe was Daniel). And then when I realized it was in fact going to have a whodunnit element, I somehow convinced myself it would be wrapped up by season one. And now I find myself pretty impatient with that whole aspect of it and having some post "The Killing" resentment. I guess I was expecting the suicide guy's body to be found sooner, and not by another "bad guy" who would then further prevent it being found. I thought that was all going to play in a more straightforward way. At least season 2 is starting soon, but hopefully they don't try to draw that part out into a third season.

AV Club's review/recap of FUD summarized the many, many issues I had with the episode. http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/halt-and-catch-fire-205547

With such an awesome ensemble cast, I have to admit that Poussey was easy for me to overlook in S1 as "Taystee's sidekick". That of course changed in S2. I felt her backstory was one of the more engaging ones, and the actress's talents really got to shine. And yeah, she's also gorg.

I had a little bit of a problem with that scene and the outcome. I've never been stalked (or stalked anyone, for that matter), but from what I thought I understood, I thought you were never, ever supposed to engage or confront the stalker--when a person is stuck in that mode, they view any attention as 'good'. Like the way she was grinning and simpering at him in court. There was a recent case of a missing woman, Teleka Patrick, who was obsessed with a quasi-celebrity pastor. The pastor had restraining orders on her. Teleka was later discovered to have, sadly, wandered into a lake and drowned*, but she had been tweeting to the pastor with several different twitter accounts, which were discovered in the course of the search for her. There were thousands and thousands of tweets, and I read a lot of them. It was fascinating and extremely sad, not least because she herself was a newly-graduated psychiatric intern. Anyway, my point here is that even though the pastor rebuffed her at every turn, because of her delusion, she assumed he was being forced (by powers unknown) to publicly deny their relationship while secretly still loving her from afar. I thought this was somewhat common, especially with celebrity stalkers. Shorter version: I don't think "I'm really mad, stop stalking me!" ever actually works on someone that far gone. I expected Morello to bounce back from it and say something like "It's that new wife of his, she made him say all those terrible things to me. He doesn't really mean it." (*Due to her mental illness, it's a little more complicated than that, but outside the scope of this forum. Fascinating and sad case, though, good article here including some example tweets.)

18 days left of crowd funding for Hurricane Bianca. http://www.hurricanebianca.com

I liked the second half of the season better than the first. The finale kept me riveted and felt earned. I also liked the fact that almost everyone had some part to play in Vee's downfall. From the voodoo, to Red trying to do the right thing, to Healey falsifying paperwork, to her gang finally wising up, and finally the payoff for the foundation they laid with Rosa all season. Regarding criminals, portrayal of: first of all, this is a minimum security prison, so we've been told all along that these prisoners are not hardened criminal types. Secondly, I find it believable that many women are in there due to the men in their lives (and/or drugs). And finally, I feel like the show is continuing to try to show us that they all ARE flawed. We've seen some sympathetic back stories, but we've also seen Cindy, the shady TSA officer who just seemed to be a piece of crap person in general. We were also shown that the nun was in it for the ego boost, at least partially. And we've seen a lot of regrets and a lot of bad choices. Showing us that the system is broken, and that these are people with good and bad in them, is not (to me) sending the message that crime is okay, or trying to turn them into Dexter-like anti heroes or anything.

I have a lot of issues with the show, but unfortunately you all beat me to them. From the crypto-tech to the schizo characterization to the obvious AMC "branding". It sucks because I should be the ideal viewer for this show (typical AMC viewer, plus grew up in the 80s AND was a computer nerd in the 80s). Instead I just want them to calm Lee Pace the hell down and show me some more competency porn. I think, for me, the show is also suffering by comparison to Silicon Valley (HBO), which managed to make the tech industry accessible (and funny) to both tech and non-tech viewers while communicating clear concepts and rock-solid characterization...including much better versions of real-world tech industry personality archetypes. I guess it's not a fair comparison since it's a half-hour comedy, but it's still fresh in my head and making this show seem perhaps even worse to me.

We were told in S1 that Poussay's father was military and that's how she got her name (something about him being stationed in France). So her Euro background did not surprise me or feel left-fielded. She obviously has a talent for language, and that can include mimicking any vernacular. Eta reading some of Jason Biggs' tweets made me retroactively hate the character.

There was some conversation earlier in the thread about Rachel's reaction to learning she was barren by design. I think it *is* about motherhood for her. In season one she was definitely shown as being jealous of Sarah's motherhood. It was subtle but it was there. Regarding this season in general: I started worrying early on, when they started going for dramatic sequences like the magical car t-boning rather than keeping a tight rein on their narrative. Unfortunately my fears have gotten worse. The season is all over the place and I think we know not all of this is getting wrapped up. I think they ran out of story, they can only introduce so many more evil/not evil scientists and monitors, and so many more clones--both are already getting played out. So they're just going for the big "WTF" moments and over-complicating things as a result. Sadly, they're on a similar trajectory to Vampire Diaries, which had a solid first season but then kept trying to find bigger bad guys and crazier twists and abandoned all logic. ...and, unpopular opinion, but I don't understand why they brought Helena back. I know she is a fan favorite now for some reason, I guess because she likes food and has an adorable nickname for Sarah?--but to me she's still a psycho serial killer who killed their birth mother. The fact that they brought her back made it pretty clear to me that they were going to pander to the audience on a lot of things, and they have, and it's not doing the show any favors. I do hope they get a season 3, and that they slow down a bit and bring the central clones back together.

Agree, but I also feel like they've been intentionally subbing those medical scenes (like the long, almost sensual scene...of Cosima getting that first injection) for intimate scenes for that pair for most of the season. I think I understand what they're doing, but it does read a little strangely, especially this week with her feet in the stirrups and all.

I'm binging the show, just got to this episode. I don't know how many of you might have seen Dichen Lachman on Being Human, but her performance there did not make me happy to see her appear in this show. And she's apparently gotten even flatter and more act-y. It's painful. I don't remember her being like this on Dollhouse.

I've given up trying to figure out who is chasing whom, especially since both Helena and the Prolethians can 1) find anyone they want at any time and 2) teleport to their location. Basically, people can or cannot find each other, at a moment's notice, regardless of their alliances at that moment, depending on what the plot needs. (And needless to say it's been bugging me this season, ever since Cal had time to hide Kira on a farm and then overtake Sarah and her captor AND find the perfect place from which to t-bone them without seriously injuring himself or Sarah.)

Deleted, wrong forum.

The thing is, until this week's episode, this season had been scaring me in the Lost sense. The Cal stuff felt pretty shoehorned in, they were falling back to dramatic cliches like the car t-boning that didn't make much sense, and it felt like they'd lost hold of the mythology for a while. This week episode's been the first since the s2 premiere that felt up to S1 quality to me. Fingers crossed they aren't just winging it.

And now I'm realizing I should probably lay off the book spoilers. :) (Although I've just barely scratched the surface and haven't mentioned the central 'mystery'.) It's definitely adding another cool layer to this season for me.

Jumping off my previous post: This week more parallels emerged: Ariane's parents 'died' when she was young and she was handed off to an older male guardian who was also a scientist. However, the 'death' of her primary parent was a ruse intended to harden her. (I guess this could turn out to be a show spoiler, down the road, if so it's not my fault!) Ariane is aware of herself as a clone and a test (well, as of late childhood), even though other control subjects are not. Ariane has an intense need for personal security guards...who she has sex with. And finally, Ariane inherited from her gene mother (the original Ariane) a tendency towards sadism along with her sexual encounters, including rape, which is a key element of the first act of the (very long) novel. In this regard, Rachel is sort of an amalgamation of the 'original' Ariane Emory (who was more of a 'bad guy', at least as seen by other characters; and again there's the rape), and her eventual clone, who is the one set up specifically to carry on the original Ariane's work but who struggles to be a better person than her predecessor. Like, by not raping people, for instance. This book is absolutely my favorite book, and also my 'favorite book that I've rarely been able to discuss with anyone' because Cherryh's writing can be pretty inaccessible. As more of Rachel's story unfolds I keep being ever so slightly indignant, but mostly bemused and happy that someone else obviously read the damn thing and thought it would make a cool homage in this show. (Meanwhile, if anyone actually read this, thanks for listening...although if you ARE someone who's read the book and you DO see what I'm talking about, reply or PM me, for the love of jeebus. If you haven't, and you like SciFi, and you're into the questions of identity and ethical implications raised by the idea of cloning...read it.)

Jacob Clifton, formerly of TWOP, recapping Orphan Black at Gawker.