Sense8 - 'Smart Money's on the Skinny Bitch'

The smart money is indeed on the skinny bitch.

Okay; let's call this by Sensates, not least to help me remember their names.

Capheus (Nairobi)
After being absent last episode, Capheus comes centre stage. First, we learn that he once wanted to be a zebra, which seemed like an easy life, although 'the lion is a downside.' Then he and his friend Jela make a backstreet connection to buy AIDS medication for his mother (and opt to snark at the snotty dealer, which may come back to bite them.) When the drugs are stolen in a holdup, Capheus charges after the gang, unexpectedly beating down four armed gangsters by channeling Sun's martial arts skills and briefly Will's firearms training, mirrored with scenes in the fight club and the firing range.

Sun Bak (Seoul)
Another absentee last week, we see Sun being chased by the man from the bank, who is threatening to involve the authorities, while she can not get a meeting with her father. A flashback shows that she works with her brother because she promised their mother she would look after him, but her 'message' for her father (punching a hole in his secretary's desk) leads into her inner life, which is conducted in a flashy underground fight club.

Nomi Marks (San Francisco)
Nomi learns that she has been marked down not only for non-consensual surgery, but also forced drug administration. The first attempt at her operation is cancelled by a fire, possibly started by Amanita, and her doctor - who clearly knows more than he is letting on - describes her as being 'under quarantine'. The level of illegal is hard to judge here, but I'm guessing high.

Kala Dandekar (Mumbai)
We touch base with Kala this week, mostly to reference the fake drugs which are making Capheus' mother even more sick. This is part of a general thesis of human interconnectedness underlying the particular interconnectedness of the Sensates.

Riley Blue (London)
Riley is marking time, finding shelter with a friend and establishing a little backstory about her time in Iceland.

Wolfgang Bogdanow (Berlin)
Wolfgang takes a turn in the box this episode, with no scenes at all.

Lito Rodriguez (Mexico City)
Lito learns that Daniela is not just keen to be a gay couple's bessie, but also trying to duck a clingy ex. The ex, Joaquin, turns up at the set and insists on taking Lito to lunch, where he displays an unnerving knowledge of how to kill a man.

Will Gorski (Chicago)
Will recalls dreams in which he saw, as a child, someone being lobotomised (quite possibly in the same procedure planned for Nomi.) A girl in the dream - revealed in Will's police standard issue obsession file to have gone missing at that age - tells him not to look; 'that's how they found me.' Not sure he did the right thing, he tries to talk to Jonas, but he is being taken away by Homeland Security.

'Smart Money's on the Skinny Bitch' pays its dues in general storytelling, but its crowning glory is the spectacular final set piece where Capheus draws on Sun's abilities to defeat a gang. It is also hinted that his sudden and uncharacteristic decision to fight comes from his connection to Sun and the buried rage she has clearly been itching to unload on her brother's smarmy, sexist business partners. As well as a solid action sequence, this is the first chance the series has taken to really dive into the meat of the Sensates, and what makes them both powerful and dangerous, the pooling of eight sets of skills and knowledge coupled with the transfer of emotional states.

A couple of the stories are marking time this week, and Mexico still feels disconnected from the others, with Lito alone having made no significant contact with the other Sensates. Nonetheless, this was a good episode and redresses some of the balance from the last, which was very focused on the white folks.

As a random observation, I keep wanting to talk about 'last week', even thought the episodes aren't released weekly.

Agents of SHIELD - 'S.O.S.' (Parts 1 and 2)

"Help my people or get a shot at a regular slot... What to
do...?"

With the death of Gonzales, SHIELD falls back to assess, but Jiaying is already moving up her plan to turn her people's outrage into war (a plan born when her rebirth after her vivisection basically resulted in a complete loss of empathy for ordinary humans.) In another twist, Raina threatens to expose her and is murdered, but this tips off Sky and turns her against her mother less than an episode after she chose the Inhumans over SHIELD. On the base, Cal's supersoldier experiments finally transform him into his brutal Mr Hyde form to wreak havoc in the Playground, while the Inhumans launch an attack on the aircraft carrier, intent on releasing the Terrigen mists throughout the ship and catching both the crew and the first responders.

While Coulson musters a response and Mack and Sky Die Hard (or should it be Under Siege?) their way around the lower decks, May and Hunter move to rescue Morse from Ward, in what is easily the most tedious part of the two hours.

No saucy comments about self-replicating redheads; I'm just going to point out
that a lot of trouble could have been avoided if someone had just suckerpunched
the middle one while she was doing her special effect sequence.

As things look at their worst, Coulson has a heart to heart with Cal and convinces him to join the good guys for Sky's sake by showing him that he can't be the monster Jiaying wants him to be and a man Sky could ever love and respect; he has to chose. Speaking of choosing, on the boat, Lincoln does an utterly unsurprising face turn (despite being beaned on the head by Mack while trying to do the right thing.) He later sums up the plot claiming that the Inhumans are 'not bad, just misled.'

There's a flashy attempt to do justice to Sky fighting the self-replicating 'Ginger Ninja', but the action highlight is probably Mack, Coulson and Fitz ('Science, beeatch!") versus teleporting Gordon, who is sadly completely on board with the boss's mass murder plans, and thus has to die.

Morse takes a bullet for Hunter and May manoeuvres Ward into taking out Kara by tricking her into reactivating her May disguise (one of the few genuinely clever moves by the good guys this season,) but alas, Ward gets away to become a recurring villain and apparently the first head of NuHYDRA. Yay. He is also bent on revenge, because he loved Kara so (and not Sky after all, or something.)

But the big bad of the next season is yet to be revealed, as we see a lost case or Terrigen crystals being passed up the food chain to become...

Dun-DUN-DUH!

!!!!!!

The second half of Season 2 has suffered from overstretching tension and consequently rushing character growth. It took so long for the Real SHIELD to come out of the woodwork that May's feelings of betrayal hit too fast, while similarly it took so long for Sky to contact the Inhumans that the relationship between her and her parents had to do all its heavy lifting over about four episodes instead of half a season. It has also suffered from its continuing insistence that Ward is at all interesting (let alone the relationship with Kara, which again seems to have gone from blatant manipulation to twu love in a handful of episodes.)

Agents of SHIELD continues then to be a deeply troubled show, failing to be either inept enough to enjoy ironically or good enough in general to overlook its specific flaws. Next season offers Secret Warriors vs. the Omega 3, and I guess I'll be around to see what happens.

True Detective - 'The Western Book of the Dead'

Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell), Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughan), Ani Bezzerides
(Rachael MacAdams) and Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch).

Last year, the first season of True Detective was one of the TV triumphs, so I was very happy to see a second series on the cards, and with an actual female character as well. 'The Western Book of the Dead' is almost an exercise in lowering my expectations to something that, hopefully, the rest of the series can meet.

Rust Cohle and Marty Hart were assholes, there's no denying, but Season 2 seems to be determined to top them. Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell in a 'tache) is a cop on the edge, apparently consumed with rage since his wife was raped* and then divorced him, limiting his access to their son (who might not be his.) He executes vigilante justice and consorts with the criminal Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughan), a course which began when Semyon pointed him at his wife's assailant (in the episode's only flashback, marking a sea change from Season 1.) Semyon is trying to go straight, but feels threatened by an expose of corruption in their home town of Vinci, LA County.

If these were our protagonists, that might be all right, but there's more. Ani Bezzerides (Rachael MacAdams) is a tough cop with anger management issues and a troubled relationship with her CamPorn sister and hippy father (an almost unrecognisable David Morse in Moses chic.) We know she's got issues, because in her first scene she blows off the guy she slept with the night before when he wants to pursue a relationship, despite admitting surprise that she's into 'that'. And then there's Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch), a scarred veteran who finds more release riding his bike at high speed as a highway patrolman than with his girlfriend, and who has just been suspended because an actress accused him of soliciting a sex act.

All of this adds up to 58 minutes of Woodrugh strugling to connect with the world, Bezzerides getting drunk, picking fights and hiding weapons in her boots, and Velcoro viciously beating the father of a boy who bullied his son (having terrorised the name from the boy in the first place, which pretty well undercut every effort to portray a genuinely loving and tender father-son relationship elsewhere) before we finally get a crime that isn't perpetrated by the police. Actually, the crime does come earlier; we have shots of the body being driven around in a car, and Velcoro and his partner briefly explored the apartment of a missing city planner named Caspar, with connections to Semyon, but it is only in the closing moments that Woodrugh finds Caspar dead on Bezzerides patch, and the three cops are brought together over the body.

Season 1 of True Detective embraced the darkness of the human soul, but season 2 seems intent on rolling around in it, and it doesn't make for such compelling television. It doesn't help that the only female characters are defined sexually - an as-yet unseen rape victim, a cop whose first scene is about how kinky she is, a woman who offers favours to get out of a speeding ticket, and a pornographic actress. Actually, I tell a lie. Semyon's wife is so far a dutiful support, but not defined sexually, just by her social bond to a man.

"The fuck are you looking at?"

There are some traces of the weird aspects which made True Detective's first season unique, with Caspar's apartment decorated not just with elaborate exotica, but with robed and crowned skeletons. I hope there will be more of this in future episodes, and less of Colin Farrell yelling at children while he punches their parents.

* Marks removed for rape as character background, double for a woman's rape as a man's background

Agents of SHIELD - 'Scars'

Remember that Theta Protocol we were talking about? Yeah, someone else
gets to play with that.

So, it turns out that Theta Protocol is SHIELD 3, the helicarrier and personnel seen in Age of Ultron, so uh... yeah, we won't be having anymore of that in the series.

Instead, our focus is on the Inhumans, and the clash between Gonzales' desire to control them and Coulson's to make peace. With Coulson now in place as Director of SHIELD, with the Real SHIELD Council as his advisory and oversight board, an approach is planned, and Gonzales persuades Coulson to let him do the talking. Meanwhile, Raina tries to persuade Gordon that letting Jaiying represent the Inhumans will lead to war, but cautioned by Sky and Cal, she is shot down, allowing Jaiying to step up, sit down, and cold-bloodedly murder Gonzales in a move to precipitate a war.

It's kind of like Gandhi suckerpunching J Edgar Hoover.

'Scars' succeeds on a couple of levels, most notably the bait and switch of the final confrontation, in which the apparently hardline Gonzales's sinister 'contingency' is a heartfelt token of regard, and it is the previously ultra-rational Jaiying who goes warmonger, not SHIELD. The slightly rocky relationship between the members of the unified SHIELD is also good, although I'm sad to see Mack head out. Where it is less successful is in the interface with the rest of the MCU, which is a growing problem with the MCU in general.

In Phase 1 and early Phase 2, the existence of the larger universe was to the benefit of each individual film. As we move into Phase 3, however, the need to be aware of and mindful of the multitude of properties is actually becoming burdensome, and as the red-headed stepchild of the continuity, Agents of SHIELD bears it worst, especially in the places where it ought to shine, which is to say in any major plot development involving SHIELD, which ought to be their bailiwick but invariably goes to the movies, which are themselves becoming bogged down with setup to the detriment of each individual piece. With several more miniseries and a Morse and Hunter spin off apparently in the works, this is only going to get more complicated.

I guess at least sprawling, potentially infuriating cross-title plotting is true to the source continuity.

What Agents of SHIELD gets to keep - at least until they launch into their own movie - are the Inhumans, and that plot is pretty decent, with the various members of the group all shown to be complex and detailed characters (apart from Lincoln, who's just sort of blandly decent.) The fairly sudden introduction of what seems to be an Inhuman-busting Kree Macguffin in the hold of the aircraft carrier is a bit left-field, and symptomatic of a somewhat spotty introduction of the Kree and Inhumans into the continuity throughout this season.

Oh, there's some stuff with Ward and Agent 33. They have some revenge plan and then happily ever after in Bora Bora or something. I don't know; the problem is I don't really care and a lot of the pacing is predicated on the audience investing in what happens to him. I also find it aggravating that he is played up as a brilliant operator and field strategist, mostly by passing other characters the idiot ball for a while. This month it was Bobbi, who having been brought to a field by Agent 33 in a quinjet, and then incapacitated 33, just wandered out of the jet instead of contacting base or simply taking off again.

We have a two-parter to bring all this together and then we're done for the season. Illness permitting I may aim to wrap this evening.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - 'The Black Tower'

"A a little bit of this..."

Dr Greysteel: "Do you wish to be shot?"
Mr Drawlight: "No."
Dr Greysteel: "Then behave differently."

While Mr Norrell deploys magic to eliminate all copies of his rival's book, Strange has made his way to Venice to seek the madness that will circumvent the Gentleman's glamours of concealment. After assaying various chemical methods, he finally buys the madness of a crazy cat lady, allowing him to deal with the Gentleman and, in the latter's confusion, gain access to the token of his last bargain; Lady Pole's finger. Thus he is able to locate Lost Hope and learn of the fate of Lady Pole, Stephen Black and the enchanted Arabella. Thus the lines are drawn. The Gentleman traps Strange in a tower of eternal night, but Strange counters this by throwing open the doors which contain English magic.

Meanwhile, Stephen Black learns more of the prophecy from Vinculus, who bears the Raven King's book on his skin after his father rashly ate the tome after losing a bet, but is still unable to escape the hateful thrall of the Gentleman. Norrell and Lascelles send Drawlight to spy on Strange and his friendship with a disgraced adventuress, only for Drawlight to be recruited as Strange's messenger, while Childermass scores over Lascelles when the increasing magical presence makes him the more useful sounding board. Meanwhile, England is turning on magic as a result of Norrell's pettiness and the future of English magic is in crisis with the impending return not merely of the magic itself, but of the Raven King.

In many ways, this is the episode where shit gets real, as the Gentleman is drawn into direct conflict with Strange and shoots his bolt summoning the Black Tower, while Strange goes all out in response. With all this, the friendship between former Byron groupie Flora Greysteel and Strange is an oddity, rather low key, but one expects potentially important, especially when Strange offers to teach her magic, the ultimate defiance of Norrell's way of doing things. It also gives a perfect foil for Bertie Carvel's superb performance as the unravelling Strange, while the far more understated Eddie Marsan continues to impress as Norrell, quietly shedding a tear for the beauty of his erstwhile comrade's work, before setting out to destroy it.

'THe Black Tower' continues to build the pace of the series, which began so sedately in 'The Friends of English Magic', and one can only hope it manages to keep going through the finale next week.

Game of Thrones - 'Hardhome', 'The Dance of Dragons' and 'Mother's Mercy'

It has reached the point where Jon Snow pretty much needs his own touching
yet generic bromance theme.

'Hardhome', or 'The Wight Stuff'

Cersei refuses to confess, and Qyburn tells her that Tommen has basically become a shut in, with Pycelle and 'Uncle' Kevan Lannister taking control of the Small Council. Arya is sent out to inhabit the life of an oyster seller in order to spy on and ultimately assassinate a corrupt insurance broker. Sam tells Olly that sometimes hard choices have to be made, even if they feel wrong, basically triggering Olly's ultimate betrayal of Jon over the Wildling question. In Winterfell, Reek admits he has no hope of ever escaping Ramsay, but also that he never killed Bran and Rickon. Ramsay asks to take the fight to Stannis' approaching army with twenty good men. In Mereen, Tyrion talks Danaerys out of having Jorah executed, instead renewing his exile. He immediately offers himself as a slave to the pit boss if he can take up the place he won at the great games, while Danaerys explains to Tyrion that she doesn't want to freeze the Game of Thrones with the Targaryens on top, she wants to end the game entirely.

Karsi (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) is awesome, and so

very clearly dead more or less from the off.

The meat of this episode, however, is of course at Hardhome, a Wildling sanctuary 'town' north of the Wall. While more than half of the Wildlings refuse Jon's offer, some accept and begin loading onto Stannis' ships, including the female Wildling leader Karsi, whose entire performance in her sole episode is about building up to her death. The evacuation is interrupted, however, by a massive Wight attack. Jon is able to kill a walker with Longclaw, but as he takes the last boat away from shore, he sees the Night's King raise the slaughtered Wildlings as wights.

Much of 'Hardhome' is marking time, but the titular scenes more than make up for it, with two particularly notable scenes. First, the attack arrives under cover of a snow storm. The Thenn chieftain orders the gates closed on those still outside, leaving them beating on the fence, until the storm arrives and there is a sudden, total silence; eerie as anything. Then, with one Walker dead but the camp on the brink of falling, Jon watches in horror as hundreds of wights leap from an overlooking cliff to form a huge pile at the bottom, and after a few moments rise en masse to charge the remaining defenders.

"Can I get a 'hell yeah!'?"

I am very sad that Karsi doesn't get to be a recurring character. She pops up, all noble and stoic, puts her daughters on a boat and goes back for the elderly, dispatches a mess of wights, then gets mauled by wight children because she can't bear to hit them. I can't say I blame her, and if not for the fact that the people-eating Thenn leader also gets offed, I'd argue that only the shit survive in this world. As it is, it's just select shits who prosper.

Also, I would laugh if the Night's King ended up on the Iron Throne. It would just fuck with everyone's heads if this was the story of the last Winter, and the reason everyone in it seems like such douchebags is because it's the account written centuries later by White Walker historians.

'The Dance of Dragons', or 'Don't Put Your Daughter on the Pyre Mr Baratheon'

And speaking of douchebaggery...

I am legitimately too pissed off to write a snarky caption right now, so here's
a picture of Shireen with the father she deserved.

Arya suffers mission creep after she sees Meryn Trant, the top guy on her list, arrive with Mace Tyrell. She tracks him to a brothel where he requests the youngest girls possible. At the Wall, Jon realises that he's barely rescued a fraction of the Wildlings to resist the greatest army the world has ever seen, and that the Night's Watch now hate him anyway. Stannis, the greatest military commander in living memory, gets bushwhacked and his supplies fired by Ramsay. He sends Davos off on an errand so he can let the Red Woman burn his daughter as a sacrifice, thus dropping him to just below Ramsay Bolton on own list of people I want to 'win' in the end. I still want Ramsay Bolton to be eaten alive by fire ants, but he can flay Stannis first. I'm okay with that. In Dorne, Prince Doran sets terms. Myrcella will go home, but Trystane will travel with them and take Oberyn's place on the small council. Bron will also be spared, if he gets smacked in the face. Elaria is forced to swear she will not harm Myrcella.

Important lessons from history - this is why the Targaryens
traditionally win.

At the great games in Mereen - during a round in which a knight, a spear fighter and a water dancer clash, echoing the major fighting styles we've seen so far - the Sons of the Harpy strike. Their first thrust is beaten back by Daario and the Unsullied, with a helpful surprise javelin from Jorah and with the loss of only Dandy Whosit the political fiance, but the royal party - including Tyrion - ends up surrounded until Drogon swoops in, barbecues some fools and then flies off with Danaerys on his back.

Drogon's rescue flight is of course one of the money shots of the season, but is slightly stymied by being so obvious. Also, it is increasingly apparent that as magnificent as they are in open combat, the Unsullied are a shit police force.

'Mother's Mercy', or 'Causes of the Great King's Landing Fire'

Men of action.

The Danaerys Targaryen testosterone brigade assembles to argue who gets to swan off like a magnificent bastard to rescue her, the funk of machismo enough to almost drag Tyrion into it. Ultimately, Daario and Jorah head off, leaving Tyrion - and the newly arrived Varys - to run the city, with Missande and Grey Worm to be the visible face and shit-kicking boot of Danaerys' regime. The Mother of Dragons herself is back to dealing with a sulky- and wounded - teenager, who doesn't want to play any more, and instead opts to sulk in his room/pit of bones, while Mum goes to Iceland and is waylaid by a Khalasar of Dothraki ninjas (seriously; there is no other way she can have not seen them sooner.)

"Fine! Sulk. But don't come down looking for dinner when you
get hungry."

Cliffhanger!

The Red God appears to be making good as the snow around Winterfell thaws, but Stannis is hit with a series of body blows, as he learns in quick succession that the sellswords have run off with the horses on account of their commander is a crazy bastard who sets fire to his own daughter, that his wife has committed suicide after he set fire to their daughter, that Melisandre has booked it back for the Wall since sacrificing his daughter hasn't worked out, and that, oh yeah, you set fire to your own daughter you fuck! Rather than wait for his slightly sad force to lay what they laughingly call siege, the Boltons sally forth and massacre Stannis' forces. Under cover of the confusion, Sansa breaks out and signals for help, but Brienne misses it as she runs off to kill Stannis and avenge Renly, which I guess at least spares him the flaying.

It's like the end of Sightseers, but slightly funnier and less
unpleasant.

As she tries to return to her room, Sansa is ambushed by Ramsay's psycho lover Myranda, but Reek intervenes, throwing Myranda off a wall before he and Sansa jump off in the other direction, which frankly looked just as terminal to me. I guess we'll find out next season when they'll either be on the run and trying to out-Northern Ramsay Snow, or being mopped up with a sponge.

Cliffhanger!

Basically, everyone in this scene is being marked for a
horrible death.

Cersei confesses her sins - well, incest and fornication with Lancel at least; she's keeping mum, as it were, on the Jaime and the bastards charge - and is permitted to return home and see her son, if she atones. This atonement is to walk naked through the streets while the populace throw insults and filth. She is met at the Red Keep by Qyburn, who presents the newest of the Kingsguard, an armoured behemoth with blue skin, who is either the half-dead revenant of the Mountain or a really good blag on Qyburn's part. Being a man of the world who know what women want, he assures her that this man is an engine of death to the enemies of the crown.

Not much of a cliffhanger, as we can be pretty certain that Cersei is going to be 'taking steps' against the Sparrows and her life isn't in immediate danger.

As Jaime sails off he tries to confess to Myrcella, who already knows the truth, embraces her father, and drops down poisoned. I was disappointed that Bron didn't swipe Tyene's antidote while they were saying goodbye, because a) as a father I am suffering from serious 'daughters getting murdered' fatigue and b) it felt like such an obvious move. And because I wasn't traumatised enough, in Braavos Arya steals a face to assassinate Meryn Trant. Jaqen seems to take poison to atone, but she rips off face after face from the body until she reveals her own and then is struck blind.

I feel the camera should be spinning and something by
the Doors playing.

At the Wall, Sam persuades Jon to send him off to the Citadel to train as a Maester, taking Gilly and baby Sam with him for safety. Thus isolated, Olly lures Jon into a circle of officers of the Night's Watch who each stab him once, declaring it is 'for the Watch', before leaving him to bleed out on the snow as the lighting turns blue.

Cliffhanger?

'Mother's Mercy' is a pretty grim episode, wrapping up a pretty grim season of an increasingly problematic show. The not-a-rape-honest of Cersei, the rape of Sansa and general reveling in the vileness of Ramsay Bolton, the murders of Shireen and Myrcella, the latter by a group of women who were otherwise pitched as 'brutal but humorously slutty Amazons', the zombie children of Hardhome and the tonal awkwardness of the great games, in which a man was decapitated for laughs before a brutal (and messily shot) massacre which segued into a triumphal moment with the arrival of Drogon.

As I noted a few episodes back, Game of Thrones is losing track of its tone. It doesn't know anymore if its violence is supposed to be epic and awesome or bloody and horrible, and I suspect that as they deviate more and more from the source material, the showrunners are feeling a certain amount of pressure to keep shocking the audience in order to maintain their buzz. The showrunners argue that outrage over Shireen's burning displays the hypocrisy of an audience who only care when Stannis burns a character they know and like, but this somewhat overlooks the issue that he is burning his daughter, an innocent teenage girl. Stannis has never been the good guy, but he might have been the right guy, just about, until now, and claiming that this doesn't cross any lines that he hasn't crossed before is disingenuous.

In these final three episodes of Season 5, 'Hardhome' was far and away the best, with the massacre at Hardhome a standout for the series, let alone the season. Placing that in episode 8 unfortunately left the final two episodes with nowhere to go but down. 'The Dance of Dragons' and 'Mother's Mercy' also had too much going on, and ended up with big climactic moment after big climactic moment, undercutting each by immediately plodding off to do another one. Shireen's death was horrible, but followed by the almost slapstick great games, and there is a definite numbness setting in after the death of Myrcella which makes it harder to care about Jon Snow, because damn it I'm out of emotional investment just for this evening.

The creators swear up and down that Snow is dead dead, as does Kit Harrington, which usually means he isn't, but who can tell. The internet reaction makes it clear that everyone saw what they wanted to see in that shot, from that blue light to a change in his eye colour. I'm waiting for the first person to claim that if you play the soundtrack backwards you can hear the words 'Stone Heart'.

Penny Dreadful - 'Evil Spirits in Heavenly Places'

"I don't care if the ratings are down, I'm not getting naked this episode."

We open with Vanessa wrapping up her tale from last week, although given that some of that was stuff she couldn't have seen, it's hard to know what she's actually said.

With the flashbacks over, it's time to get back to the various plots in hand. Lyle ropes Chandler and Sir Malcolm into the puzzle of the Verbis Diabolis fragments, which appears to be a single narrative over multiple artefacts and languages, as transliterated by a possessed monk based on the autobiography of a demon.

The next day, Ethan sees the advertisement for the waxwork exhibit of the aftermath of his wolf-out, while police and press examine the scene of the baby-snatching murder. Hecate tries to seduce Ethan, but botches her accent. The Creature talks to the blind daughter of the waxwork family, developing a bit of sparkage even as Frankenstein is clearly getting a bit of a hankering for 'Lily', apparently adjusting their fictitious relationship out to second cousin while dress shopping with Vanessa.

Dorian Gray is pwned at table tennis by his new flame. I'm so glad he's still in this show.

Ethan and Sembene argue over who gets to do the washing up, then three Nightcomers sneak into the house all stealthed up like the Predator to steal a lock of Vanessa's hair as part of their plan to match Ethan 'tooth and claw', although given that they curb stomp the entire crew - less the absent and self-professedly non-action Frankenstein - I'm not sure what the fear is or why they don't just kill him.

This is not something that is often seen, and honestly I think directors ought to
let Eva Green smile more often.

Back in the 'now', Penny Dreadful resumes one of its main flaws, specifically its rambling side stories, in this case the Frankenstein romances and anything to do with Dorian Gray. That being said, the former does give us a scene where the frightfully awkward Frankenstein asks Vanessa to help him dress shop for Lily. What could be unbearable is lifted by a light touch, and the chance to show Vanessa at ease for once. Released, however briefly, from the burden of relentless existential angst, she suddenly seems a more complete character.

Similarly, Ethan's uncovering of the disguised Hecate lifted him from mere pinball of plot to a more active agent, and his kitchen scene with Sembene was another delight, and shows something that Penny Dreadful has overall been missing up until now. Yes, it's a tale of darkness and fear and horror, but what's the point of Victorian monster punk if you're not having any fun?

I'm also nursing a theory that the actual hero of the series is Sembene, the tireless protector and baker of quite magnificent buttercream tortes.

I'm still not completely won over by the series, but I will allow that 'The Nightcomers' and 'Evil Spirits in Heavenly Places' have really upped its game.

Thunderbirds are Go - 'Skyhook'

TB2 vs giant, flying pond skater

After an almost unprecedented fifty hours without disasters, the whole family are forced to turn out when a wealthy stormchaser's bid for a Darwin Award threatens to take two employees with him.

It's rare that you wonder why International Rescue bother, but this week it gets close, as the various flaws in the stormchaser's weather station threaten not only him and his team, but also the Tracy boys, delivering a static shock that knocks out TB2 and forcing John to subject himself to crushing G-forces, and all the while this genius criticises the perceived failings of others. I know he's a caricature, but if John doesn't space him, I wouldn't be surprised if Eos did, given her form as a maniacal supercomputer.

Oh yeah! Eos is back - we have actual continuity - and apparently making bets with TB5's life support system on how long he'll stick Earth gravity.

My questions about 'Slingshot' are not answered here. It is revealed that John travels to and from Tracy Island by space elevator (actually a pod on a winch with no ground station,) but unless Tracy mansion is much bigger than it looks, it's not quicker than Alan walking t his room.

Penny Dreadful - 'The Nightcomers'

Because who said Satanism can't be stylish?

It's flashback theatre time, as Vanessa opens up to Ethan about her past (apparently including stuff she couldn't possibly have seen, but never mind.)

After the first waking of her powers and Mina's plea for help (recounted in last season's flashback,) Vanessa goes to a witch who lives in a lonely cottage for help. Once convinced that Vanessa isn't evil in herself, the Cut-Wife - essentially a herbalist and hedge abortionist - takes her in and trains her to use her abilities, reading people's pasts in their minds and futures in the Tarot. She also shields her from the first attacks of the Nightcomers, and explains that witches can be Daywalkers - insightful, powerful, but human - or give themselves over to the Devil in exchange for greater power and vastly prolonged life. She herself is at least three centuries old - her cottage was given to her in perpetuity by Cromwell - but the Nightcomer Evelyn has not aged in all that time.

The Cut-Wife is my favourite character of the season so far. As this is Penny
Dreadful, this means she dies by the end of the episode. It's actually surprising
that it wasn't the Creature what done it.

Denied and defied, Evelyn seduces the local landowner and - no doubt reveling in the irony and hypocrisy - uses him to whip up a witch hunt. The already dying Cut-Wife is burned alive and Vanessa is branded, but at no point dragged past the ring of protective stones which keep the Nightcomers from getting her, so that's lucky. The Cut-Wife leaves her pupil with her name - Joan Clayton - the cottage and her copy of the not-the-Necronomicon, as well as a warning that if she embraces the Verbis Diabolis and the magic within the Book of Vile Darkness, she will cease to be human and become a Nightcomer.

'The Nightcomers' is, hands down, my favourite episode of Penny Dreadful so far, thanks largely to Patti LuPone's turn as Joan Clayton, and perhaps in part the fact that it doesn't have Dorian Gray in it. In fact, aside from Poole's dominatrix turn seducing the landowner, there's no sex at all, and it's frankly a relief. Also, no babies were eviscerated in the course of the narrative, although there is a middling graphic abortion scene. I also liked the distinction between Daywalkers and Nightcomers, even if LuPone didn't get to tell Evelyn that some motherfucker's always trying to ice skate up a hill, and the fact that this season is overall more coherent than the rambling mess of vampires and Egyptian Gods in season 1.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - 'Arabella'

"Am I your wife?"

"I think what you are telling, my lady, are fairy tales, but told in some way as if the fairy is telling them."
"Human tales, as it were."
- Honeyfoot and Segundus

The Gentleman's trap is sprung! With Jonathan distracted by his Waterloo PTSD, he sends Stephen to lure Arabella away on the pretense that Lady Pole is upset - which she is, sensing the impending deception and striving to warn the Stranges via her baffled keepers - and then swaps in the moss oak duplicate, who induces the magician to declare her 'your only wife', thus bargaining away the real Arabella into the Gentleman's power. As we first saw with Lady Pole, the right of a person to bargain another's life, let alone their understanding of what they are doing, seems less important than their willingness in dealing with the fey.

One ought not to get into strange coaches, and this is a very strange coach.

Lascelles leaps on this as an opportunity to squash Strange's attempt to publish a magical primer, by fostering accusations that he murdered his wife by magic and manipulating Norrell into refusing to aid his attempts to revive Arabella when the moss oak expires. The result is a rapid degeneration, as Strange abandons his self-imposed exile from practical magic and sets out to become mad enough to see and deal with a fairy, restore Arabella and show Norrell what for.

As in the book, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has little in the way of obvious heroes and villains. While on the most superficial level the dynamic, emotional Strange is the hero and the cold, calculating Norrell the villain, they are both flawed men and ultimately focused on doing what they see as good. The most obvious actual villain is of course the Gentleman, although he is more by way of the scorpion of oft repeated fable; why does he deceive, manipulate and abduct? Because it's what he is. He's less a bad guy and more a natural hazard.

For real villainy and heroism, we have to look elsewhere; at the smaller roles. At the unfaltering Lady Pole, and at Messrs Honeyfoot and Segundus who are working so hard to understand their charge (an action largely unheard of in 19th century psychiatric care;) and at Mr Childermass, who is just... quietly cool. Childermass in particular gets good mileage this week. He politely turns down Strange's offer of a partnership, and explains that as Strange and Norrell seem set on destroying one another now, he will hang back and step in to oppose whomsoever wins, so that there will still be two English magicians. He also clashes with the real villain, the reptilian Lascelles, who with no excuse of alien origin leaps on the apparent death of Arabella Strange as a chance to destroy the already distraught Strange in revenge for his critical assassination of Lascelles' own book. Lascelles also dismisses Childermass as 'the servants', which may yet come back to bite him.

The strength of this tale of magicians and magic is that the real driving forces, be they virtuous or vicious, are human.

The Summer of Lovecraft

Over on the Bad Movie Marathon, we're doing a thing; a themed season. In amongst the general mish-mash of bad movie reviews and not-so-bad movie reviews and even some good movie reviews, you'll find a whole set of reviews covering adaptations of the works of H P Lovecraft in the run up to what would have been his 125th birthday, had he been some sort of ageless immortal*. We're calling it:

Why not head over and take a look?

We're also looking at this as a chance to attract new readers, so if you know some folks who love Lovecraft, why not point them our way?

* Okay, technically it's still his 125th birthday, we just tend not to count it when the person is dead.

Agents of SHIELD - 'The Frenemy of my Enemy' and 'The Dirty Half-Dozen'

Agent 33 looks pissed, probably because despite having a knife to Fitz's throat,
no-one is covering her.

In order to infiltrate HYDRA and... Okay, I think they were working on the basis that HYDRA probably knew something about Gordon, but to do it they team up with Ward, promising him a bright and mind-wiped future in exchange. They infiltrate, then HYDRA goes after Gordon (largely by luck) while he's dropping off Skye and her dad. Cal gets pissed when he realises that they were going to ditch him, then HYDRA show up and he lays into them. Lincoln gets into a fight with Petersen, as a result of which they both get captured and taken to the HYDRA labs.

In Afterlife, it is becoming apparent that Raina sees the future, and one of her visions leads Gordon to drop Skye off to join a rescue mission to HYRDA's Antarctic base. Sacrificing the Bus, the original team infiltrates the base and rescues Petersen and Lincoln, but Ward goes on his way after Simmons tries to kill him, for which at least a partial yougogrrl.

All seems well, but Agent 33 is still on the base, and Gonzales clearly considers Lincoln and Skye to both be prisoners.

Winding up to the season finale, 'The Frenemy of my Enemy' and 'The Dirty Half-Dozen' suffer from the presence of Ward, although at least he isn't remotely forgiven. I'm enjoying Simmons' turn to darkness, although I hope it isn't overdone. These episodes also do a lot to set up HYDRA's experiments on enhanced for Age of Ultron.

Person of Interest - '/', 'Allegiance', 'Most Likely to...', 'Death Benefit', 'Beta', 'A House Divided' and 'Deus Ex Machina'

Okay, so clearly I've been binging, so there may be a little less in-depth analysis and more focus on the season overall in this set of reviews.

"I have a badge now. Badges are cool."

In '/' (aka 'Root Path') we focus on Root's special mission for the Machine, as she gets close to a janitor and puts him in danger as a result. The janitor used to be a wealthy businessman, and is now one of the only people allowed to clean the floor where a computer chip is stored that is critical to the birth of Samaritan. The friction between Root and Team Machine, and the intervention of Vigilance, ultimately results in Decima gaining possession of the chip. This will not be the only snafu in the team's immediate future.

In 'Allegiance', we're mostly back to number of the week, as the team work to save an engineer mixed up in dodgy dealing in the Middle East. 'Most Likely to...' begins the same way, with Reese and Shaw sent to a high school reunion to help the latest number, but the arc plot takes a bigger part of the episode, as Vigilance gain possession of evidence of the Northern Lights programme and disseminate it across the internet, exposing the government's part of the Machine's operations and forcing Control to shut down.

White on black is so last decade.

Things continue to go downhill in 'Death Benefit', as the Machine sets Finch and Reese onto a deal-making congressman while Root and Shaw pursue a relevant number in the absence of Northern Lights. Reese gradually becomes aware that the Machine has not sent them to save the congressman, nor even to prevent him committing a violent crime. Rather, he is in the pocket of Decima, and they have been sent to assassinate him before he can facilitate the activation of Samaritan. Although they choose not to do so, Decima use their other actions - including kidnapping - to get the go ahead for a test of Samaritan using the same NSA feeds which inform the Machine.

This leads into 'Beta', as Decima use Samaritan to try to track Harold Finch. Instead, they locate his former fiancee, Grace Hendricks, and despite the team's best efforts she is captured and Finch agrees to turn himself over to Decima, incidentally proving that there is more anger in him than he usually lets on.

Finch: "There's one more thing. I'd like you to avoid violence if at all possible. But, if they harm Grace, in any way, kill them all."

In the dock.

'A House Divided' finally gives us background on Vigilance's leader, Collier, whose brother killed himself when he was held without trial under the Patriot Act, and reveals that Vigilance has well-informed and anonymous backing. Its view occluded, the Machine sends the team to rescue Control and Senator Garrison from Vigilance, but they - along with Finch and Greer - are captured and brought before a kangaroo court to answer for the creation of the Machine. Before this, we learn from his discussion with Finch that Greer appears to accept that he can never control Samaritan, and instead to wish to be controlled, much as Root is by the Machine.

Root's Seven

In 'Deus Ex Machina' Hersh and Reese come for their bosses, Shaw helps Root and her geek squad to install a set of sabotaged servers into one of Samaritan's hundreds of server farms. As the show trial reaches its crescendo, Hersh discovers a bomb in the building. Decima agents rescue the accused and Greer reveals that he was behind Vigilance all along, using the as his catspaw to force the Government to shut down Northern Lights and then turn to him for a replacement.

As the season closes, Samaritan comes alive, sending agents to eliminate the rest of Vigilance, but blinded to Team Machine and the Root Squad by Root's tinkering. Samaritan asks for instructions, but Greer responds that, on the contrary, he awaits its commands.

Season 3 is arc heavy, but none the worse for it. Vigilance is an effective new adversary, the more so because of their eventual links to the existing and ongoing threat of Decima. The closing episodes also manage a neat job of making unlikely allies of Control and Hersh, at least for a time, and giving Hersh - for most of the series an unloveable sociopath - a genuinely heroic exit. Shaw, at first a bit of an intrusion, settles in nicely, and the distinction between her and Reese is a nice inversion of the more typical gender division.

The season's primary flaw, if it has one, is that Root is rapidly overtaking the other leads in terms of competence and cool moments; if Reese is a scalpel and Shaw the hammer, she is a smart, self-guiding Swiss army knife. This is especially telling with Harold, as Root is both his intellectual equal and overwhelming physical superior, whereas she might be qualitatively smarter than Reese or Shaw, but when push comes to shove they could kick her arse. Maybe it's just because he's such a wonderful woobie, but Harold is something of a whipping boy in this season, and I really want to see him do some brainy badassery next season.

And now I'm sad again, because I have to wait for Season 4.

Jurassic World

"Dance off, bro! You and me!"

This is the spoiler free review: The big, spoilery version is at the Bad Movie Marathon, although as ever this does not mean I thought it was bad.

Fifteen years after Jurassic Park (help!) Isla Nublar is a full-on dinopark run by Claire Dearing, an ultracompetent badass in heels, and the hero of this film whatever anyone, including the film, may try to tell you. With some slight help from various men, she has to contain a rogue dino and save a whole bunch of tourists, although her career is pretty well in the can.

Like Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World is a franchise revival with a bit of a feminist slant, although not as much and perhaps almost against its own intentions. I think you're supposed to like raptor wrangler Owen Grady a bit more than I did. It's a little bit same old same old - island, dinosaurs, lost children - but with enough twists to keep it interesting, just not fascinating. Although easily the best Jurassic Park since Jurassic Park, my expectations have been hiked, and there isn't quite enough meat on this one to be more than a snack. A good snack, but a snack nonetheless.

Sense8 - 'I Am Also a We'

Awkward.

The pilot episode of Sense8, 'Limbic Resonance', was absolutely packed, a necessary side effect of introducing eight primary characters. 'I Am Also a We' focuses in on a smaller sample, allowing us to learn more about that slice of the cast.

In London, Riley is dodging gangsters and sees Will in her mirror, even suffering a sympathy cut when he cuts himself shaving.

The principal focus of the episode is on Nomi, and draws many of its themes from her identity as a trans-woman. After a fall during a Pride parade, Nomi's evangelical mother - a storming, monstrous turn from actress Sandra Fish, as she strives to pin Nomi down and force her to accept the name Michael along with her family's medical insurance - isolates her from her girlfriend Amanita and effectively has her committed, pressuring her to have an operation on her brain. The threat of hallucinations is of course heightened by the impossible appearance of Jonah, but a call from Amanita grounds Nomi, who is determined to escape.

The conspiracy against Nomi's identity mirrors that against the Senseates as a whole. Will and his watch are given Jonah's photograph and told that he is a terrorist, presumably knowing that he would try to contact Will, leading to a car chase in which Will and Jonah jump perspective into each other's cars. Will is uncertain about his calling, since his fellow cops see him as a traitor for saving a young gangbanger's life, but still cop enough that he can't just let Jonah walk.

In Mexico, we learn that Lito is actually in the closet for the sake of his career, dating a string of girls to deflect suspicion. When the latest gets pushy and uncovers his secret, she is unexpectedly delighted that she gets to be the beard for a cute gay couple. This, along with Kala's engagement party and her fiance's Shah Rukh lipsynch provide moments of lightness which lift and heighten the drama elsewhere. Props also that the Indian woman having doubts about her wedding is engaged to a charming, handsome chap that she chose; her questions are deeper than that.

'I Am Also a We' makes Sense8's core themes apparent: Identity, persecution and connection across boundaries. The persecution of the Sensates mirrors that felt by all of the characters in some other aspect of their lives, and all are struggling with their identity. Sun and Capheus make little or no appearance, so hopefully we'll see more of them next episode, and I expect to see these themes appear in Capheus' life, as they already do in Sun's.

Danger 5

Note: This review contains spoilers for all seasons of Danger 5

Jackson (series co-creator and writer David Ashby), Pierre (Aldo Mignone), Claire (Amanda Simons), Colonel Chestbridge (Tilman Vogler), Ilsa (Natsa Ristic) and Tucker (Sean James Murphy).

Danger 5 is an Australian web and TV series parodying 1960s action serials and satirising the attitudes of the time. Danger 5 are the top Allied action spy team of WWII, tasked (repeatedly) with two missions: Stop the latest Nazi superweapon and for God's sake, kill Hitler. The fact that the war appears to still be going on in the mid-1960s suggests that they are having some problems with this task, but the whole thing is played so straight that the blatant anachronism only occasionally trips you up.

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho."

The team consists of: American action man Jackson, a volatile man to whom emotions - especially his feelings for D5's Russian amazon - are an alien force and waiting is the hardest thing to do; miscellaneously European smoothy Pierre, with his web of contacts (all of whom know him by a different name and most of whom are traitors) and vast array of cocktail recipes imparted by dying friends; British bombshell Claire, reserved, competent and blonde catnip to most Nazis; angry Russian Ilsa, never seen without a cigarette, speaking only Russian, and certain she'll die of alcohol poisoning; and Tucker, an almost impossibly mild Australian who gives Claire a run for her money in the stiff upper lip department. Their boss is Colonel Chestbridge, who has the head of an eagle, just because, okay.

... Look, I don't know, okay.

Over the course of the first season, Danger 5 battle Hitler's indestructible diamond-skinned female bodyguards, dinosaur army, talking German shepherds, guns made of gold and sexually transmitted nazism, before finally destroying the Fuhrer in mecha-to-mecha combat and winning WWII even in the face of kaiju assault. At the end of each episode there is an advert for an imaginary smooth lifestyle accessory - drink, cigarettes, Swiss army guitar - and the entire cast - including lizard men, dogs and Hitler (played by Carmine Russo, notable primarily as series co-creator and writer Dario Russo's dad) is seen relaxing at a party in Danger 5's base.

Holly (Elizabeth Hay), Ilsa, McKenzie (Fumito Arai), Tucker, Pierre (Pacharo Mzembe) and Jackson.

In series 2, it's the 1980s (established as being 18 years after the end of WWII) and things have moved on for Danger 5. Tucker and Claire are getting married, Pierre is an internationally famous singer, playboy and entrepreneur with a lion-headed Japanese bodyguard called McKenzie, Jackson is a cop on the edge with Nam and Korea flashbacks, and Ilsa is a raddled KGB superspy. Oh, and Pierre is black.

Hitler - still setting trends 40 years after The Tomorrow
People.

The band is reunited after the Colonel is gunned down in a London department store by Hitler in a Santa suit and his lieutenant Carlos (who has the head of a wolf, as you do,) and a less than successful first encounter leaves Tucker carrying his wife's severed head for the rest of the season, with Claire's place sort-of-taken by Holly, an indestructible high school senior sought by both Hitler and Nikita Kruschev, King of USSR-Land.

Amazingly, season 2 is even weirder than season 1, as Hitler infiltrates a high school intent on becoming the coolest kid on campus and Christmas King (all episodes have the sub-mission 'save Christmas',) then sets himself up as an FBI agent, tries to take over the Vatican with luchador cardinals, and finally travels through time and becomes a robot. Or some fucking thing.

I wasn't as fond of season 2 as I was of season 1, largely because I always liked campy old 60s action series better than their macho 80s counterparts, and Danger 5 does very well at aping its source material, with everything from the costumes to the lighting and the film quality so note-perfect that it is easy to forget that the show isn't from the 60s or 80s. If anything doesn't quite fit, it's that the obvious miniatures used for exteriors and cars suit the first season better, but are still used in the second for practical and budgetary reasons. The second season lays on heavy with the 80s style gore, and is decidedly heavy-handed with the sex and nudity to distinguish it from the more innocent chain-smoking, coke-snorting, casually racist and sexist antics of the first.

Danger 5 is likely to be something of a Marmite show. Some people will love it, others will just shake their heads in bewilderment. I also suspect that, like me, most people will prefer one season or the other depending on their feelings about the original products.

Agents of SHIELD - 'Afterlife' and 'Melinda'

"So, you can teleport and read minds?"
"No, they cancelled that series. I do electrokinesis."

Skye wakes up in a remote mountain village, being cared for by 'transitioner' Lincoln (yesterday's Tomorrow Person Luke Mitchell, clearly getting into a groove as supernatural mentor.) She learns that this is 'Afterlife', a safe place for Inhumans and their kin, with Gordon's teleportation the only way in or out. She also learns that Raina and her father are there, but kept from her at first, and meets Jiaying, her mentor (and also, although unbeknownst to her at this point, her mother.)

Coulson and Hunter steal a car and head to the refuge. After learning what happened with Skye they set a trap and try to steal a Quinjet, with the aid of Mike Petersen, who has apparently been working with Coulson for some time. They then set off to recruit Grant Ward (yay*.)

When the hard approach fails, Gonzales is persuaded by the Board to offer May a place among them, as Coulson's advocate when he comes in, if that is her choice. He also shows her evidence that Coulson was working on something called 'Theta Protocol', behind even her back. Simmons signs on to help open the Toolbox, but Fitz leaves in a huff, and a big reveal shows that Simmons has made a copy of the Toolbox, swapped them and sent Fitz off with the real deal and a mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich.

In 'Melinda', the focus is on May, via flashbacks to the incident which made her 'the Cavalry' and her struggle to come to terms with Coulson's new layer of secrets. The flashbacks take Coulson and May to Bahrain to confront a woman with enhanced strength, Eva Belyakov. When negotiations fail, Belyakov and a group of dissidents take cover with a young hostage, and an entire SHIELD team is taken out trying to breach. May goes in and learns that the truth of the matter is not so simple.

In Afterlife, Skye realises that Jiaying is her mother, but is told to keep it secret so as to preserve Jiaying's apparent neutrality. To explain why someone who was not prepared for Terrigenesis is mistrusted, Jiaying tells the story of Eva Belyakov, who overruled the Council to put her daughter through the process, as the flashbacks reveal that the supposed hostage, Eva's daughter, became a voracious psychic parasite, controlling others and feeding on their pain until May shot her, breaking her own heart in the process.

Meanwhile, Fitz opens the Toolbox and contacts Coulson, who lets Hunter give him pointers on shaking a RealSHIELD tail using a hand dryer.

As well as expanding a certain amount of backstory, these two episodes have a fair amount of set up, and work hard to give a balanced view of the two new organisations. RealSHIELD starts to lose a little gloss as Morse begins to realise how quick her colleagues are to write off Skye as a Thing to be hunted and destroyed. It is increasingly apparent that, for all their increased openness, RealSHIELD is an organisation dominated by fear, in particular fear of betrayal. Meanwhile, the Inhumans have a pretty sweet set up, but Gordon's role as absolute gatekeeper is a little creepy, and there is clearly a lot of politics in paradise. It's a bold step to have such a clear demarcation between those with physical mutations - Raina and Gordon - and those without, with Gordon being more obviously against Cal and Skye, and Lincoln being less immediately sympathetic with Raina.

The reveal of what May's deal is is handled well. It's a story that has been a long time in coming, and encompasses and expands on everything we knew without being trite or overblown. All in all, these are a couple of surprisingly strong episodes, and if it weren't for Ward coming back, I'd be very positive about the prospects for the rest of the season.

* This is sarcasm.

Game of Thrones - 'Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken' and 'The Gift'

The times they are a changing.

Jaime and Bron reach Myrcella, by a staggering coincidence at the exact moment that the Sand Snakes try to kidnap her. The whole incident is interrupted by Prince Doran's guards, but the fact that Bron punched out Trystane Martell* doesn't look good for them. He also obtains a minor, but significant cut to the arm.

Petyr Baelish and Oleanna Tyrell return to King's Landing to counsel over the Loras Tyrell incident. Loras and Margaery lie their arses off in court, and are both arrested when one of Loras' lovers (I'm told he was much more constant to Renly in the books, but  like Michael Douglas at his self-professed nadir, the series seems unwilling to pass up any opportunity for sex) identifies a birthmark. Cersei is smug, although we the audience can see that this won't end well for her.

Arya is rightly blown away by one of the first truly awesome
pieces of set design in the last couple of seasons.

Arya continues her training, and comes to realise that the game of faces is about lies; not just telling them, but inhabiting them. Jaqen H'ghar also accuses her of lying to herself when she tells him that she hated the Hound. Once she makes a breakthrough, easing a sick girl into the peace of death with a lie, she is taken to the Hall of Faces and told that she is not ready to become no-one, but is ready to become someone else.

In Slaver's Bay, Jorah and Tyrion are captured. Tyrion blags like he has never blagged before, and persuades his captors that as a knight of great renown, Jorah should be taken to the newly reopened fighting pits, and that he should at least be kept alive so that his dwarfish stature can be proven to the discerning purveyors of magical genitals.

Many threads are followed in 'Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken', but they are all somewhat eclipsed by the big controversy. Sansa Stark is married to Ramsay Bolton and then raped on her wedding night while 'Reek' is forced to watch. I found the scene less shocking than many, but probably because I'd heard so much about it in advance that I'd steeled myself for something truly monstrous. Like the chapel scene last season, I think that this was misjudged rather than pernicious, but I also feel that as it goes on, Game of Thrones may be be in danger of getting lost in its own reputation for violence and sex. Lessons should be learned from the reaction to this scene, and I worry that they won't be, and something worse might be on the horizon.

Come at me, bros.

What comes next is 'The Gift', in which Jon Snow heads north with the Wildlings to try to make peace, Maester Aemon passes on, and Castle Black's resident contingent of rapists try to have their way with Gilly. Sam is beaten down trying to defend her, but gets to be a total badass through a combination of stubborn endurance and fortunate dire wolf. I'm slightly disappointed that Gilly then chooses to sex him up as a reward, as the 'totally just best friends, honest' vibe the two had going was more compelling and it was nice to see someone in the Watch sticking to their bloody vows.

Winterfell goes into siege mode as Stannis Baratheon approaches through a storm. Sansa tries to send a message to Brienne, but Reek betrays her from fear of Ramsay and Brienne's contact in the castle is flayed, dying before giving any answers, to Ramsay's mild annoyance. Meanwhile Stannis refuses to fall back to Castle Black, but is clearly not impressed when Melisandre promises him victory if his royal blood - his daughter Shireen - is sacrificed.

In Dorne, Jaime fails to convince Myrcella that she is in danger, which is kind of fair, since the entire conspiracy was arrested last episode. Bron trades barbs with the Sand Snakes in facing cells, and earns an antidote to the poison in his cut (I knew that cut had to be significant) by calling Tyene Sand the most beautiful woman in the world. This scene was kind of weird, but was made for me by the expressions of Tyene's sisters, who have clearly seen her pull this shit all sorts of times.

Peter Dinklage once more displays his mastery of the 'well
what did you expect' look.

In King's Landing, Petyr Baelish offers to retake Winterfell from the victor of the Stannis vs. Bolton fight at his own expense, in exchange for Wardenship of the North. Meanwhile, Oleanna is surprised not to be able to bribe or threaten the High Sparrow. He basically explains that he and his represent the 99%, and it's interesting to note that if they weren't bound by a quasi-Biblical, homophobic text, they'd pretty much be the heroes. Oleanna does better against Cersei, and much better than Cersei, who pretends to bring succor to Margaery only to confirm that her dismal cell is 'sufficient', and is then dragged off by a burly septa, the Lancel formerly known as Lannister having unburdened his soul by confessing his sins, and by extension Cersei's.

Tyrion and Jorah finally reach Mereen via a slave market, where Jorah takes advantage of Danaerys' presence at a qualifying match for the fighting pits to make himself known. She orders him taken away at once, but Tyrion interrupts, strolling out to declare himself Jorah's gift to her.

After the events of 'Unbowed, Unbent and Unbroken', 'The Gift' is really just marking time. It's only big hurrah is the arrest of Cersei Lannister as the result of her own machinations, and perhaps some prodding from Petyr Baelish, who is obviously treading thin ice himself given how much the Sparrows detest him. Other than that, it's a lot of getting people where they're going, be that Winterfell or Mereen or just the right frame of mind to do a thing.

The fighting put scene suggests once again that Game of Thrones wants to have its cake and eat it in the depiction of violence, as the grim and gory melee is interrupted by a virtuoso and almost bloodless display from Jorah. It sometimes seems that blood is only shed messily in this world when it is making a point; at other times, the show wants to enjoy having spectacular sword fights without the audience thinking that Brienne is just another version of the Mountain, but with a slightly hipper rap.

* Trystane and Myrcella are such a lovely couple that something bad seems bound to happen to them.