Game of Thrones Season 7: The Queen’s Justice Recap

Is there redemption in Reek? He’s going to float to somewhere, where will that be and what will he tell the people who find him?

Jon Snow moved quickly! He’s already in Dragonstone. If I were him, I don’t surrender my weapons. The rest of my sailing faction, sure. But me and my onion knight don’t come to sublimate ourselves. Jon’s long look at his men before walking away is not lost as they walk past row upon row of exposed dragon glass.

“Stark men don’t fare well when they travel south,” Tyrion reminds him. Foreshadowing? Jon about gets clipped by a dragon seconds later. Foreshadowing?

“I’ve done my part. I’ve brought ice and fire together,” Melissandre says. Maybe foretelling that her role in this story is over as she heads for Volantis. She tells Spider she has to die in Westeros, just like him and he looks very troubled by this. What does it mean?

Dany has a long resume and this is awkward because Jon doesn’t. Dany is quick to remind him the Starks swore their allegiance to the Targaryens in perpetuity. She is in no mood to negotiate her position. He gives it right back over the Mad King, earning him an ask for forgiveness from Dany who seems to want to apply the past selectively. Jon calls her on it. Her ignorance over why she might need Jon’s help shows her inexperience in Westeros. Tyrion should have seen that coming. Or perhaps he doesn’t either. Jon is the one having to make the case for the future when everyone else in this game sees profit in the present. “You’ll be ruling over a graveyard if we don’t defeat the Night King.”

“I am the last Targaryen, Jon Snow.” Again I hope someone in this room knows Jon is no Stark.

Dany reveals herself as angry here, she’s motivated by overcoming the anger she clamped down on during her life. The Breaker of Chains has a virtuous streak, but she resembles the entitled kings and queens of Westeros more than she would admit.

You know Jamie wants to slit Euron’s throat. I hope they get to fight.

Cersei is dead inside. Her move to expose her affair with Jamie was bold. Maybe it was arrogant? She’s bold if she thinks she can repay the Lannisters’ debt to the iron bank in a fortnight.

Tryion gives Jon a dose of reality: He’s not making a reasonable ask. This is Jon’s opening for the dragon glass conversation. Duh. He also exposes Dany’s naiveity when he gently reminds her that Jon is a potential ally. She’s been viewing him as a rival and a rebel. But she knows when to come around, which says she’s a strong leader.

Ah, the weekly check in on Littlefinger eyeing Sansa and Sansa giving him the business. Except this time he gives her advice only a scheming snake like Littlefinger can: Be paranoid.

Oh hey, it’s Bran. Hi, Bran. Well you don’t look very happy to see your sister now, do you. It’s interesting that this conversion where Bran explains what it means to be the three-eyed raven comes after Littlefinger’s warning to know everything that happens everywhere. You’d have to really love your brother to put up with a conversation like this.

What will the debt Ser Jorah now owes to Tarly mean for Jon, given Jorah’s connection to Dany? A note about that handshake: Jorah’s left hand is the one that showed the most disease.

Now Dany is like revenge on Euron now!

Oh, it’s Helm’s Deep kind of. “And so it begins.” And just like that, Casterly Rock falls. Or was it given away? Euron burned their ships and orphaned Dany’s force. Out foxed again.

Game of Thrones, Season 7 Premier: Snap Reaction

Winter is here, and it’s about damn time. Daenerys sailed west, and it’s about damn time. Game of Thrones has always been thrilling and intriguing, but after six seasons it was time for the over-arching story to pick up speed. The time for pissing matches was over, the time for war had come.

The season six finale brought that speed and put the three characters in place who will fight to keep, hold and entrench power during seasons seven and eight. Jon Snow is King of the North, Cersei sits on the iron throne and Daenerys is about to make land in Dragonstone.

Good. It’s time for what we’ve been waiting to arrive and for the wait to pay off.

And now, thoughts.

Arya Stark is a serious bad ass. “When people ask you what happened to you, tell them the north remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey.” Well alright! Arya’s mask is going to make her ultimately powerful, and I like the addition of more magic. But I hope the writers use it sparingly. A character with the ability to be any character is easily abused. I don’t want to sit her wondering if I’m looking at Arya or the real character.

Jon Snow as mining industrial dictator is going to cause problems, as is Jon Snow the king of equality. If his decision to not exact homestead revenge on the Karstarks and Umbers doesn’t cause unrest that undermines his kingery, these two acts will.

I look forward to watching Littlefinger (my favourite character on the entire show) try to fan the flames of a divide between Sansa and Jon. He enjoyed seeing her combat Jon over the traitorous Karstarks, and the look on her face after Jon declared that yesterday’s wars don’t matter betrayed more disagreement than their one-on-one conversations let on.

That’s Petyr’s influence, but don’t count on Sansa to knuckle under to his manipulation. She’s strong as ice, as evidenced by the way she told him off in front of Brienne.

Speaking of Sansa, I’m curious to learn more about the things she learned from watching Cersei. Sansa’s tough and Cersei’s cunning would be a formidable combination. I look forward to seeing that play out. Perhaps this “murdering whore” will get to confront Cersei and take vengeance on the evil queen.

The death of Jamie’s children falls almost entirely at Cersei’s feet. I’d love to see her relationship with Jamie broken and Jamie turn against her. The Lannisters are fiercely loyal to each other…well all except for one and Jamie hasn’t turned his back on Tyrion the way his sister has. Their conversation about dynasty shows he feels their deaths more than she does. It’s almost the reverse of the stereotypical war-mongering father and emotional mother.

Poor Tarly. All he wants to do is read but here he is cleaning shit pans. What’s his role here? How does book boy fit into the bigger battle? Does he figure out some historic secret to defeating the white walkers? He will bring the one who begins the memories to the war. Or find a mountain of dragon glass. That’ll do.

God I hate celebrity cameos. We all know that was Ed Sheeran. And it ruined everything.

What’s the legal drinking age in Westeros anyway?

Arya says she is going to Kings Landing and kill the queen. The boy soldiers laugh, but the audience believes her.

Oh yeah, the Mother of Dragons.

Pitch Hits The Zone

I don’t have many expectations for Pitch. FOX has been buying ads during MLB.tv inning breaks that feature its baseball broadcasting talent. That makes me immediately suspicious that it simply made up a show to draw eyes to remind that it has the MLB post season.

Given the way ratings suffered the past several seasons, that might not be a bad strategy. Any new TV show has a pretty good chance of failing miserably, so why not spend your pilot money on something that could boost your (very, very expensive) live sports programming?

Okay, let’s see how this goes.

(The Exorcist is a new show? I’m concerned that TV is spiraling down the movie industry’s rat hole of recycled ideas. Let’s not.)

Of course the show about the first female player in baseball history starts with a shot of her legs getting out of bed. Come on, try a little bit here.

Greeting cards from Ellen and Hillary Clinton, product placement from Callaway and Nike. Headphones that don’t say beats but sure look like them. Maybe I was too narrow in what I thought FOX wanted to promote.

Hey it’s Colin Cowherd with a hot take.

It took three minutes for the main character to speak.

You know who would have been great in this dad role? My guy Shemar Moore. He might not be old enough though.

The Padres GM has made an appearance. In real life he is on a one-month suspension for hiding injury records.

If we get the same stereotypical crap here that we got from the military guy in Designated Survivor. Whether it’s players or this dreadful agent/publicist character or whatever it’s gonna get old. Fast.

The number 43 is a great touch.

While we’re here, can we talk about the Padres uniforms?

Actually, Kim Kardashian is very talented. I will go to bat on this.

Hey they’re gonna play the Dodgers! This is great!

What is this live video thing? Is it part of the show or a commercial? Oh god it’s a Kohls commercial. This is hot garbage. And it might be the future of TV.

One thing to think about here is the main character is an athlete, so she’s going to act like an athlete. The public version of most athletes would make a terrible TV character, so that’s something to keep in mind. We’ll have to draw a distinction between how the character is written when she’s in “athlete mode” and when she’s not.

But one thing that doesn’t have to be acting is the TV broadcast characters. They should just be able to do their thing, right? That’s what FOX hired them for! I don’t think Joe Buck did. Reminder: I love Joe Buck.

Couldn’t they have cast a southpaw? 🙂

Where have I seen this kid actress? I she the one in Mistresses? I’ll have to look it up. I looked it up. She is. She’s outstanding on Mistresses – well-written and well acted.

Let’s get back to the product placement issue. That’s what we’re used to in sports now. You can’t look anywhere without a logo. So I guess it adds some realism. And this George Clooney commercial about a coffee maker? That was filmed at the Warner Bros. lot.

Oh come on you can’t use real Dodgers? Actually I bet FOX would have gotten way more promotion if it had been able to get Vin Scully. Not only would it be awesome, but Vin was friends with Jackie Robinson so it would be fitting.

Hey this is like watching the Twins pitch! Sorry that was uncalled for. The Twins are worse.

About the decision to have her get off to a dreadful start. From a story perspective, it’s good emotion. It makes me identify with the character. It’s also realistic. Not every debut is Rob Segedin. Wait wasn’t she a starter? You don’t take your starter out that quick. Hey this is a TV show not real life, Watterson.

Remember Matt Fox? Not the actor, Matt Fox the guy the Twins called up in September during a pennant race.

This scene in the hotel is what we should judge the Ginny character by, not the athlete stuff. And it’s good.

He’s right about her being this catcher’s legacy. On and off the field.

Joe Buck can be sarcastic at times, but he is way too professional to ever make a joke like that.

If she beats the Giants you know Pitch is committed to realism.

OMG I just realized the catcher is Zach Morris. WTF. I feel like my life has come full circle. I’m blogging about a show where Zach Morris is a baseball player.

As with every Hollywood production about sports, they managed to find actors with next to no actual athletic ability.

Have you ever held a sparkling white official Rawlings baseball? It’s a beautiful thing. From a pitching perspective, if her fastball tops out in the upper 80s isn’t she basically a screwball version of a knuckleballer.

If this were real life and the manager slapped her butt we’d have a national controversy the likes of which would drive us all off social media forever.

We can add the owner to the list of stereotypical characters.

This better get over, it’s almost time for Dodger baseball.

Hey wait. I approve of what has happened here.

Designated Survivor Premier Live-Blog Review

Here is what I expect from Keifer Sutherland’s new drama, Designated Survivor:

The big event happens early in the pilot, thrusting him to the presidency. It ends with a cliffhanger to make us wonder what happened and season one features a lot of flashbacks leading up to whatever it was.

Now let’s see if that’s what actually happens. I’m about to start watching and will live-blog my thoughts.

I’m choosing this over football, and the Patriots have some pretty solid looking Thursday night uniforms. This better be worth it.

I think we all know how this works. Explaining it is like showing the Superman origin for the 10,000th time.

Do you think the designated survivor (we’ll call him the DS) really wears jeans and a hoodie? And drinks a beer? That would be…unpresidential and actually kinda irresponsible.

Establishing that he has a kid. Solid. Hopefully she’s not as awful as whatever Jack Bauer’s daughter’s name was.

That was okay. It could have been more impactful or shocking or whatever but it was good.

A flashback! Check.

Would the television feed actually flicker out or would it just go out? What an odd thing to wonder.

Going from an explosion that wipes out government at night to eating scrambled eggs that morning feels like it killed a lot of momentum.

I would take an ambassadorship to the ICAO! #avgeek Being booted probably explains his lax attire later that night.

Do we need to talk about – wait…

“What do you want me to do, go to war with the president of the United States?” Um…okayyyy.

Anyway, do we need to talk about whether or not Sutherland’s scratchy voice is a good fit for this part? It was so perfect for Jack Bauer. Let’s give it some time. I assume he was cast to be a president, not a HUDdy duddy. #BureaucracyPuns

This is the first time I’ve thought about the fact that if the DS is elevated to president it can also mean we lost Congress. And the Supreme Court. Jesus. I wonder if networks do a dry run for what to do in this situation.

All of this has to be in place (Do we trust speechwriter guy?) on the night of the State of the Union. I take back what I said about not needing it explained. So hasty am I to judge.

Take control of the room, Mr. President. Do you think they screen cabinet appointees for whether or not they could handle this situation?

This bathroom talk is somewhat convenient.

Have you noticed that so far a lot of my thoughts are about real life and not the TV show? I can’t tell if that’s because the show is lacking or because I’ve always kind of been interested in continuity of government (having once worked in government).

Do we really let the prez hang out on the sidewalk after Congress was blown to bits? I suppose if this character was immediately presidential I would be like oh how convenient that the one guy they leave behind can immediately step into the role of president.

This military guy who wanted to go DEFCON 2 is going to be a problem isn’t he? Could he be any more stereotypical?

When are they going to tell us who this Agent Wills is calling, and why is it important enough that they aren’t revealing it yet?

I like that they’re having Agent Wills reference how real-life attacks seem to go. I think it gives the show credibility. I have to admit also that the possibility of it being the first attack never crossed my mind.

As a communications guy I’m interested to hear the speech they wrote him.

One of the ways I measure how engaging a show is is how many character names I remember. Agent Wills and Tom something that ends in orkman. Workman?

There’s almost always something I dread about a TV show or a movie. In Designated Survivor I think it’s going to be military guy. I really don’t want to put up with a show with such a cookie-cutter character. I hope they surprise me.

All in all I’m not sure yet what kind of show we have in Designated Survivor. There are so many potential elements it can string together from politics to thriller to conspiracy to character. That puts its realm of possibility anywhere between dreadful and brilliant.

Kiefer, it’s on you.

photo credit: ABC

Revenge wedding: Snap Reaction

Image courtesy ABC.com
Image courtesy ABC.com

Revenge wedding snap reaction

Emily better be getting shot for real.

Catching the last scene of Once Upon a Time. This show disappointed me so much.

It’s going to start out with the scene. Excellent. Oh.

Lydia you.

“Vindictive harpies.” Dang, Conrad. You good.

How does Conrad miss that look on Emily’s face? It could turn stone to stone.

Why does she want Patrick back?

What’s Sarah’s role now? Does she comfort Daniel when Emily is gone?

I don’t really like Victoria any more. Her lines and everything feel over-the-top.

What was that? Is that how it happened or how Emily imagines it will happen?

Oh gawd, Jack, with the crying.

Why are you telling him this? He’s going to hate you, as he should.

If I’m Jack I’m tempted to blow the whistle on everything. I have nothing to lose.

I thought Nolan and Patrick were over?

This episode isn’t doing it for me so far.

Heeeeeeeeere’s Lydia! I like this. They kind of devil bonded over snaring a Grayson.

Media at the ceremony? BS.

“My almost sister.” This and Charlotte’s weird line last week are what make me tend to think she’s the shooter.

I am glad the ceremony is mostly an afterthought, though. Luke and Laura we do not need.

Who’s the guy behind Victoria?

Closed-circuit to Charlotte: Not an appropriate wedding dress.

I LOVE the flashbacks over Emily’s vows. Fantastic.

AND the choice for a close-up on Victoria during the announcement.

A 64-year-old bottle of Glenlivet? Pass.

“Mommy drearest” ha!

“Long live David Clarke.” What? What does Nolan know?

Closed-circuit to Lydia: The fortress of solitude needs your necklace back.

Revenge for the revenger?

Seriously Jack you are this stupid.

Nervous about what’s on this video…

Could be where it all goes wrong…

Lydia and Victoria will be trapped in there?

Guess not.

This is the most authentic conversation Emily and Victoria have had in a while.

Daniel looks drunk.

Daniel mad!

Hey that was a real shooting.

Aden isn’t out there to get her.

Fireworks during the shooting, just like the series’ first scene!

No, where’s Aden?

Get out of here Jack you dolt.

Is she gonna wash up dead?

Oh great.

(Based on the preview I may stop watching the show.)