Vee

I like both parts of the season, but I thought the first half was much tighter, really good stuff. This show doesn't need to be more than 13 episodes per season - trying to push it close to the length of a year-round show does not work. That's why the second half, while decent, has been a lot saggier for me. I love Glenn and Maggie - I saw no reason for either of them to kowtow to anyone, certainly not Abraham and his crusade. Why does Glenn owe them anything? He was on the road by himself looking for his wife, and I personally doubt this mulleted doctor, amusing though he is, can cure [!@#$%^&*]. But I'm pretty sure poor Maggie is dead on Sunday because of that foreshadowing bomb after their reunion with the picture. I like Daryl, but I feel like I have watched the "Daryl must turn his back on his past self" storyline at least three or four times before, with Merle, with Beth a few weeks ago. These bandit dudes are just the latest, and they bore me, all of them. I also have a terrible feeling Carl might buy it next week, or close, based on the preview with Rick looking shellshocked. I hope they don't go the dumb Robert Kirkman route of

I'm curious to see DRW's reaction to the next few episodes, but also to the end of Episode 4(?) of Season 2, with Melisandre. When she and Davos went into that cave and she did her, uh, bit, my jaw dropped to the floor. I thought Melisandre was largely a con artist and exploitative zealot up to that point, but she's obviously something much more complicated. The jury is still out on her true nature for me, even after Season 3. So much of that is on the strength of the writing, and of Carice Van Houten's incredible performance. I first saw her in Robocop and Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven's fantastic WWII thriller Black Book, and before GOT I also saw her playing another mysterious witch opposite Sean Bean in the underrated medieval supernatural thriller Black Death - which I think is still on Netflix streaming.

That's why he (and many others) died. I think Renly was a decent enough fellow and would've been a good administrator but he was a kid in many ways. He wanted what he wanted, he had the flash and pomp but he didn't have the iron will or the wisdom. His Hand and Small Council would've run most of the show.

It's not that Tyrion wanted the girls hurt. Tyrion believed that he could calm Joffrey down and bring him into line by getting him laid like a typical uptight virgin kid. He was wrong - Joffrey went wild on the girls because violence is what arouses him.

I enjoyed the "General Homicide" mess for a while, but what baffled me is it seemed to go on for what felt like 18 months as everyone on the show and their mom said, "it must be Greg Cooper and that crazy Julie!" Greg Cooper was supposed to be responsible for everything bad on the show, so I naturally thought, well, these two are obviously red herrings. But no! After all that, it was Greg Cooper and Julie! Ridiculous. And the DV story was awful. They were psychic spies? What? I thought the whole incorporation of Kevin's backstory - Grace, Rachel Locke, etc. - was masterful, but the Ellen angle they dropped absolutely infuriated me as a kid. I loved Debbi Morgan, and even though she wasn't playing the role anymore I cared about Ellen.

Yes, Lancel was Robert's squire, IIRC. He has a somewhat larger role in Season 2, but I've yet to spot him in Season 3. The doll who plays Loras, Finn Jones, I first glimpsed on The Sarah Jane Adventures, as Jo Grant's grandson.

Am I gonna have to trawl through Dailymotion to start watching more of this show? Because I'll do it. I've gone worse places.

That wasn't Loras with Cersei. That was Lancel Lannister, a family cousin.

Dat INXS cover, tho

I think they'd have been fooling themselves. She was a danger to everything around her. In this instance, Carol did what had to be done.

Nothing could snap her out of it - it's not a funk. She was psychotic. And as Carol said, it was clearly in her makeup long before the apocalypse. There was absolutely no way for her to function in that world except in the worst, most harmful way possible to the people around her. In everyday life she would have needed severe professional help to even begin to function safely.

I always believed she did it. We'll have to see what comes up for her, though.

Yeah, that's really a good point. Carol's arc in Season 4 - this kind of moral road and the consequences therein - is the sort of thing you generally see given to men on major primetime dramas, a Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad, a guy on Mad Men, whatever. A woman, certainly not a woman of a certain age, less so. And also not one given what are often seen as the conventionally 'masculine' traits Carol has been imbued with - her lethality, her strength, her resolve. I get that on Game of Thrones, but Game of Thrones is a very, very different show with a fantastical context.

A few errant thoughts that I have collected: The girl playing Mika was awfully good with Melissa McBride early on. She called Carol on her take on the new world and she was, up to a point, right - each of them, child and woman, represented a different extreme. I had a feeling since their introduction that Lizzie and Mika would go the way of Ben and Billy from the comics and teach Carol the weight of her sins and her new ethos, but I wouldn't have minded if they'd thrown me another loop and let Mika win out while Lizzie was offed. Still, this was an excellent episode. The last scene at the table between Chad Coleman and Melissa McBride was unbelievable - the look in his eyes, the intimacy between the two (not romantic, though who knows if that's entirely impossible in future). I loved when he said they couldn't stay there - because though he forgave her (with some sort of astounding grace), I thought he would kill her if they did, alone. I have no idea if Carol has a future with the show, as they didn't do the reveal I expected here - some sort of big, big moment where she sacrifices herself. That may or may not happen, but either way, they did a great job here. I laughed when they showed the Talking Dead check-in before the preview for next week and the room was dead silent with everyone clinging to each other. Poor Yvette Nicole Brown.

Ohhh, this is good. And of course, the incredibly self-conscious hipster critic at the A.V. Club hated it, which is always good news for me. Fortunately he's being raked over the coals.

Yeah, it was a kooky channel and so was Shelley Taylor Morgan. Remembering him now, I didn't care for Logan then and I certainly don't now.

Possibly a very appropriate clip for the month - E!'s Pure Soap takes a look at the death of Bill Eckert in 1993 and interviews Tony Geary. Tony is, of course, not pleased. I remember this show well. Is that Michael Logan or some other strange goblin? Oh, yes it is.

I think Marcus was one of the teen assholes doing or dealing drugs in the painfully bad Ecstasy teens subplot. And yes, they were clearly attempting to test Gabriel and Bianca, and it was gross. I don't know where that attempt came from.

This was in their third official month.

I may have posted this before. April 2003: Dorian returns and marries Mitch Laurence. I will never forget the scene in the second clip - a repulsed Dorian kissing Mitch as the wonderful, incredibly creepy music plays, and a darkened Llanfair is totally empty, except for them, the minister, the offscreen Evangeline Williamson and a disgusted Blair, who finds herself unable to either watch or leave. They were doing right by Blair around that time, one of the last times the show did on ABC - with Todd gone and presumed dead she was the 'vengeful widow,' the only game in town left to go after Mitch. Until she confronts Dorian on the terrace, and Dorian finally says, "Mitch cannot be gotten to from the outside."

Here's another vid and a description from the child's mother.

Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman chat with a young fan Dalek while filming in Cardiff Bay. It's hard to make out, but Capaldi is talking about the last Doctor and is asking the little Dalek for permission to be the Doctor too. According to the scuttlebutt, the little girl in the Dalek costume is an autistic child who loved Matt Smith and was very nervous about the new Doctor.

I half-slept through that episode. Not my favorite. I don't mind the separate group episodes, I like the exploration - I mind it when I have to just watch Daryl and Beth, who I like as part of the ensemble but not alone together, for an hour. It doesn't help that I'm sick and exhausted at the moment.

Oh, Sully is just a big emotional quasi-centrist galoot who vacillates a lot. He'll see sense eventually, even if he couldn't handle New York. I don't think these initiatives will ever succeed. But I do think they should be loudly fought against.

It's discrimination. And while I expected those initiatives to get shot down because of that simple fact, just the fact that it was coming up in this day and age - through the weasel tactic of trying to make it about "religious freedom" instead of what it was, which was institutionalized discrimination - made my skin crawl. Someone will try again.