Daenerys Was Always Bad

In the past few days since the last episode of Game of Thrones there has been much discussion/fighting by fans of the show about Daenerys Targaryen. I’m not going to go over that entire character’s history here because her history is explained in the articles I’m going to link to, but suffice to say, I do agree with them.

Daenerys has always been a bad actor, and I have never trusted the things that came out of her mouth about what she was trying to do. Then again, unlike some people who were set on her being the good guy in this show, I’ve been looking at her actions, and not listening to her spoken intentions. Daenerys has always been a tyrant, who rules through fear and punishment. The only difference between her and Cersei was Cersei was upfront abut what she was, and never hid it. Technically, Dany was upfront about herself too, but her fans, who are claiming that her actions this past episode came out of left field, and are a complete turn of personality for her, just didn’t want to see it.

Now, there is an argument to be made for the sloppiness of the writing this season, as the show runners rushed through the making of this season so fast, that they left all manner of incongruities all over the set, like modern day coffee cups,  in one scene with Dany. The writing of Dany this season was definitely  hamfisted, and over the top, but its still consistent with her character.

I speculated on Tumblr about how so many of her fans dismissed Dany’s evil  because they were taken in by her being a conventionally pretty White woman, with long blonde hair. There is precedent for such attitudes about her, since pretty White women have always gotten the benefit of the doubt in American culture. The people who follow her, want, and need, to believe in her goodness and innocence. I used the example of the actress from the movie Get Out. She says she still has people who approach her who want to make excuses for her character being complicit in her family’s evil activities. She has to  tell them that her character was not innocent, and was in fact, evil the entire time, but they don’t want to hear that, wishing instead to believe that character was coerced somehow, thereby maintaining her innocence.

https://afropunk.com/2017/04/how-the-narrative-around-white-womens-innocence-taught-me-to-let-them-get-away-with-violence/

Dany was bad the entire time. Her actions are NOT new and were unsurprising to me, and a lot of other people. Her actions were only a surprise to people who had been as delusional as she was, about her innocence.

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https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/game-of-thrones-review-bells-sepinwall-834528/

Dany’s descent into genocidal madness didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Throughout her travels across Essos, her preferred solution to problems was to burn them and all the people associated with them. She’s impetuous, narcissistic and one of the last members of a bloodline with a history of doing things exactly like what she did to King’s Landing. 

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40 Times ‘Game of Thrones’ Foreshadowed Daenerys’ Mad Queen Transformation

https://www.inverse.com/article/55831-why-did-daenerys-burn-kings-landing-game-of-thrones-season-8-dany-mad-queen-foreshadowing-40-examples

38) In Season 2 Episode 4, Dany decrees, “When my dragons are grown… we will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground.”

Sounds about right.

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And from Medium.Com:

Daenerys Targaryen Acts In Character

Troy Camplin

There are a lot of complaints about last night’s episode of Game of Thrones, titled “The Bells.” The primary complaint seems to be that Daenerys suddenly becomes the “Mad Queen” when she torches everyone — citizen and soldier alike — in King’s Landing. Practically everyone has come to believe that Dany was going to be a benevolent dictator, an enlightened despot — but what I saw last night was completely consistent with what Dany has done for all eight seasons.

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The Breaker of Chains Is a Narcissist, Not a Hero

Mark Ptak

It’s notable that for all her talk about “breaking the wheel”, there was never any subsequent talk about what that would mean. Many believed the show would end with self rule for the people, and that they might play a part in an uprising against Cersei — that, like in our world, feudal monarchy and god-given birthrights would be supplanted with democracy. Never was that even considered for the former slaves she freed. And as far as we can tell, Dany’s idea of breaking the wheel in Westeros simply means the same thing it did in Essos — that she’ll be the one to control which way it turns. A benevolent dictator is, after all, still a dictator.

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This post is about how viewers have always given Dany a pass on her behavior because the people she was killing were seen as bad people who deserved to be brutally murdered by her. They were able to make excuses for her brutality because her killing them  was framed as ridding the world of evil. And where before have we heard that kind of rhetoric?

A (probably) unpopular Game of Thrones opinion …

Fred Chong Rutherford

When Daenerys Targaryen rose from nothing to be a queen in the East, many people cheered. We saw the character suffer brutally at the hands of men, including her own brother. When we saw her exact revenge, over and over, on people who wronged and betrayed her, it was easy to root for her. She had good intentions, she was a decent young girl who suffered, and the people she fought against were evil. They were rapists, they were slave masters, they were murderers. When her evil brother, who had threatened to stab her in the belly, was brutally murdered in front of her eyes, we understood why she was so cold in that moment. Viserys deserved it. We agreed with her.

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This post speaks specifically about how Game of Thrones is not a happy ending type of show and never has been. That is has almost always been about the Stark family family attempting to survive theirs and others worst impulses. It also explains in detail why Daenerys made the decisions she made in the penultimate episode.

The Trauma of Daenerys Targaryen

Jonathan Michael Erickson

As the show crashes towards its tragic conclusion, I notice more and more outrage about where the story is going. The notion that characters are making bad decisions, or that their hallowed “character development” has somehow been betrayed. And if this were a Marvel superhero movie following the trope of heroism, I might agree. But it’s not.

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Here’s the problem in believing that Dany was a good person after freeing the slaves. Dany rules them now. They simply  live under one tyrannical leader, instead of many masters, and are not any  different from the population of King’s Landing in that way. Dany never actually freed them.

Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, Torcher of Innocents

Rachael Hope

Perhaps we should have been listening to Daenerys’s actions more than her words. Moments of ruthlessness have never been absent, but like Tyrion and Varys, I put my hope in Dany because of the compassion she showed when she freed the slaves in Essos, and the way she spoke about liberating those in bondage. We hoped that the moments of justice she created for people who were oppressed showed her real self, and that those moments of vengeance were more of necessity than pleasure. Her sympathy for the powerless seemed genuine.

 

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I often wonder if some people are watching the same show as everybody else. A lot of people are “big mad” over Dany’s characterization in the last episode, and I do ask why are they so surprised, and is it really just that they’re just so horrified by what she’s done. This was never the “Dany the Hero” show, with a happy ending, where she gets to sit on the Iron Throne.

The Mad Queen Was Always Inevitable

Tim Tutt

These fans are, simply put, wrong. Daenerys’s character arc has landed right where you should have expected it to if you spent the last decade watching the show. To quote by far the worst character ever on the show — “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention”. 

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But Then There Is This

I actually have seen a bit of this on Tumblr. people who heavily identified with Dany’s  character feeling betrayed because, for their own deeply personal reasons, they needed her to be The One, as trauma victims themselves, they were watching this show through a very different lens than a more casual viewer, like me.

Game of Thrones Daenerys fan fury, explained by a clinical psychologist

https://www.cnet.com/news/game-of-thrones-episode-5-daenerys-fan-fury-explained-by-psychologist-janina-scarlet/

Clinical psychologist Janina Scarlet says Game of Thrones has functioned as a kind of refuge for trauma survivors who were able to feel and establish a sense of connection with characters who endured suffering from physical disfigurement to the loss of multiple loved ones. 

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And Finally:

Whats going to happen in the next episode, and is Arya going be the one to destroy Dany? I don’t know if that will happen, but there is a lot of foreshadowing that points to it.

Has Arya Added a New Name to Her List?

https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/5/13/18617922/game-of-thrones-arya-daenerys-kill-list

Melisandre did portend that Arya would shut brown eyes, blue eyes, and green eyes. Walder Frey and the Night King fill the first two categories of that prophecy. Some fans previously believed the green eyes Melisandre spoke about belonged to Littlefinger, who has green eyes in the books, but it now seems more likely that she was referring to Dany. 

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I’m probably one of the few people who is not angry about what happened in episode five. I’m horrified at what I watched, but not angry, probably because I’m not as emotionally invested in the show, in the same way, as a lot of other people. I like the show, despite its many, many, issues, and I really liked quite a few of the characters, and it had zombies! but I’m not super-invested in who is going to sit on the Iron Throne, and since I didn’t particularly care about that, I was able  to sit back and see Dany’s weaknesses, the same way I saw the weaknesses of all the other characters. I’ve always been horrified by her behavior, she was never my “hero”, and she never endeared herself to me. In my mind, she was always a delusional narcissist, and last weeks episode was just confirmation of that fact.

Oh, and while we’ve all been paying close attention to Dany, it may turn out that the person we were supposed to be watching, the entire time, was Arya, who has experienced just as much trauma as any other woman on the show, and the entire show may turn out to be about Arya’s journey.

Since next week is the series finale, I’m going to talk about it , because everyone else will, and I will probably have some thoughts about it, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts for the Weekend

 

The Media

This article talks about why one of the reasons people think the world is  going to hell. It is the prevalence of negative news. The very nature of the news, the tagline being, “If it bleeds, it leads.” accounts for the greater and greater amounts of negativity we see in the news. Each story has to be sensational, outrageous, and/or gory.

A couple of years ago, my habit, like thousands of other people, was to get up each morning, and turn on the news. I stopped doing that. When I get up in the morning now, I watch something light and fun, that doesn’t require too much thought, like a comedy I recorded the night before, or favorite episodes of old shows. I’ve found that I feel more positive throughout the day, I’m less angry, I’m nicer to my co-workers, and generally more cheerful, at the start of the day, than when I watched the news.

The media exaggerates negative news.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/17/steven-pinker-media-negative-news

Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.

News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a journalist saying to the camera, “I’m reporting live from a country where a war has not broken out”— or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. 

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Game of Thrones

If you do nothing else this season of Game of Thrones, you have to read the weekly rundown of the show, by the fans at The Root. Even if you hate the show, don’t watch the show, or know nothing about the show, you should read them anyway because they are, hands down, some of the funniest reviews of anything on the internet. At this point, reading the weekly review becomes part of the show. For those of you with real stamina, you can try reading the show’s live tweet on Black Twitter.

I am always amazed that so many Black people love this show, including many non-geeks. It took me years to really get into it, because I just wasn’t interested. I followed the show off and on for the first three seasons, but didn’t become any kind of fan until season five, after the episode Hardhome, which I understand was the turning point for a lot of people.  Last weekend was the culmination of that particular episode, so there are plenty of spoilers in the post.

I want to point out that Arya Stark is one of my all-time favorite characters on the show, and has been my go-to Baby Badass since season five.

Arya Stark Forces Night King to Drop Out of Presidential Race

Although he has not issued a formal statement, representatives for Walker—also known as the Night King—confirmed that the blue-eyed devil will not take part in the upcoming primaries, citing the fact that he had lost support among a key group of supporters—namely, the Arya Stark demographic.

 

#NotToday: The Night King nor Kim Kardashian Could Stop Us From Keeping Up With The Battle of Winterfell

With five or six tea lights lighting the battle scene on our screens, The Red Woman came and did what the fuck she had to do and said let there be light and lit the field with fire. Too bad the fire didn’t do shit for our screens our Daenerys’ vision from the sky.

 

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 Robot Fear

This is a very interesting article about how Western nations view robots vs. how cultures in the East view them. The Japanese, for example, have a very different attitude towards robots than Americans. The article credits part of that to the Western attitudes towards systems of chattel slavery. The East had slaves, but the systems there were not set up the same here, or perpetuated throughout that country’s other institutions, either.

I also think part of the issue is not just our attitudes about the treatment of slaves, but the Western religious ideas behind them, and the idea of karmic retribution that has attached itself to those ideas. We need to add decades of movie and TV narratives in which robot slaves turned on their owners. I wrote before about how a lot of futuristic fiction involves imagining what White people have done to other cultures, happening to White people, usually by beings once held in bondage, like robots. The term “robot” was invented in the West, and violent retribution by them, is one of its earliest Pop culture themes, as in the 1927 Metropolis.

WHY WESTERNERS FEAR ROBOTS AND THE JAPANESE DO NOT

https://www.wired.com/story/ideas-joi-ito-robot-overlords/

It’s not that Westerners haven’t had their fair share of friendly robots like R2-D2 and Rosie, the Jetsons’ robot maid. But compared to the Japanese, the Western world is warier of robots. I think the difference has something to do with our different religious contexts, as well as historical differences with respect to industrial-scale slavery.

 

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Yarn Industry Diversity

Here’s a short list of Knitting designers, and Dyers of Color in the industry.

Black Yarn Dyers and the case for Purposeful Support

https://theyarnmission.com/black-yarn-dyers-and-the-case-for-purposeful-support/

It’s not about tokenism.” Rather, we insist that folks support artists simply because they are Black. Especially for their Blackness we recognize that for so many it would mean “in spite of their Blackness.” This is what pro-Black looks like to us since we are working towards a liberation in the face of rampant, engrained, and internalized anti-Blackness. 

 

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Comedy

I’m still not over Nanette, which is still airing on Netflix. It just floored me. I’m guessing it floored a lot of people, since so many wrote think pieces about it. I do believe Hannah Gadsby is the future of comedy, while people like Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, and Louis C K, are comedy’s past. I noticed that when women do comedy, (any marginalized people, really), they are as as liable to cause tears as much as laughter. The only male comedian I’ve ever seen who captures that particular vibe is Patton Oswalt, in his stand-up, Annihilation, )where he talks about the death of his wife).

Bill Maher Is Stand-up Comedy’s Past. Hannah Gadsby Represents Its Future.

https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/bill-maher-hannah-gadsby-stand-up-comedy.html

Nanette is also a deconstruction of stand-up specials, as well as several generations’ worth of straight male–crafted opinions on what “good comedy” is and what “great art” is. Gadsby poses a question which, if answered affirmatively, would validate her stated wish to quit doing stand-up: What if “funny” is the enemy of “honest,” or at least at cross-purposes with it?

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Reverse Racism Claims

Recently Jordan Peele came into the cross hairs of the White Bigot League, when he stated that he wasn’t looking to hire White men for any of his lead roles, as that had all been done before, and he wants to try something different. I think this article perfectly captures all my thoughts on this issue.

For the record, he never said he wouldn’t  cast any White people in his movies. What he said was he wasn’t going to cast them in the lead roles.

 

There’s Nothing Wrong With Jordan Peele Not Wanting to Cast White Male Leads

https://www.thewrap.com/jordan-peele-no-white-male-leads-nothing-wrong/

But racism becomes a social disease when it systematically and systemically places one race at the top of a hierarchy at the expense of other races. That is why the N-word stings so much more than any word blacks ever coined to denigrate white people. It’s why blackface hurts in a way that whiteface doesn’t. There are centuries of brutal history to back up the sting.

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Black Romance

I thought this article was especially interesting. I do not read Romance novels, as a general rule but I used to have a disdain for them. At some point, I realized my disdain was contributing to an atmosphere in Pop culture that devalues the interests of women, and if the hobbies and interests of women aren’t considered important, then imagine how denigrated Black women’s interests must be.

Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/04/fifty-shades-of-white-romance-novels-racism-ritas-rwa?src=longreads

Some booksellers continued to shelve black romances separately from white romances, on special African American shelves. Accepted industry wisdom told black authors that putting black couples on their covers could hurt sales, and that they should replace them with images of jewellery, or lawn chairs, or flowers. Other authors of colour had struggled to get representation within the genre at all.

 

 

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US

I promise this is the last article I’m going to post about this movie. Its just fascinating how much (and how many) meanings people are finding in this movie.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/us-movies-hidden-meaning-black-identity-explained-1196687

Jordan Peele may have crafted the first horror movie to truly dismantle the MAGA era and how African Americans fit into it.

 

 

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Poverty

Hollywood has crafted a lot about how we think of the world, its situations, and the people around us. I think many of us would be surprised at how much of our “knowledge” of the world comes from movies.

Perpetuating the poverty myth: How Hollywood gives us the wrong ideas about poor people

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/perpetuating-poverty-myth-hollywood-gives-us-wrong-ideas-poor-people-210440365.html

Pimpare believes that at this time of deep divisions in America, movies that accurately portray modern-day poverty are more important than ever. “We are geographically so segregated, racially segregated, and we are very much economically segregated — so it may be that for growing numbers of people, the only opportunities they have to gain insight into lives of poor and low-income people are through mass media,” 

 

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Representation Matters

Yahp!

https://the-orbit.net/progpub/2018/12/26/representation-matters/

For myself and many African-American moviegoers, one film has stood out from the rest. Not because the others listed (or those absent) are sub-par movies, but rather, because the Black Panther was the kind of movie we have long thirsted for. The first Black superhero of Marvel Comics got to headline the first Black superhero movie from Marvel Studios, with a Black director, a predominately Black cast, diverse presentation of Black bodies, an Afrofuturist aesthetic, complex nuanced characters largely devoid of stereotypes, a rich backstory, and a massive budget. A monumental box office hit, the movie shattered record after record on its way to a final global tally of roughly $1.3 billion. 

 

Some Exciting Trailers!

Doom Patrol

I’m actually enjoying Titans, which is something I’ll talk about later, but one of my favorite episodes was number four, which featured the superhero group, called Doom Patrol. Yes, they are comic book characters. No, I never read any of the books. I sort of knew about Doom Patrol in passing, but never actually picked up any of the books. Occasionally, I’d stumble across that Robot guy, but I’ve never heard of the team beyond Cyborg.

In the Titans episode clip below, Beast Boy takes Raven to meet his family. I have this thing about depictions of family dynamics, so I was on board right from the beginning. The team, as it will in the show, consists of Negative Man (the guy with the bandages), Elastic Woman (who can shift her looks), Robot Man (who used to be a race car driver before he lost his body in an accident), Cyborg,(we met him in Justice League), and Jane (who has 60 different personalities, all of whom have a different superpower).

I’m looking forward to watching this soon.

 

Fast Color

One of the things I like about the new year are all the interesting new trailers for films no one has mentioned, or I’ve never heard of. This is Fast Color, about a Black woman who has superpowers, who goes home to discover her daughter has abilities too. I really like Gugu Mbatha-Raw. I’ll watch anything in which she stars, so if this is playing in my area, maybe I can talk Mom into going to see it with me.

 

 

Avengers Endgame

This is the latest trailer for the new Avengers movie, airing during the Superbowl. I’m very excited to see this movie mostly because I’m deeply curious about the interactions between characters who have never met before.

It seems that we’ve been reduced to the first five, or so, original Avengers, in the direct aftermath of the loss of so much life, so there’s a distinctly melancholy feel to the movie. I don’t mind, as long as I get to see most of my favorites return.

 

 

The Twilight Zone

I’m a huge fan of the original TW, and the various reboots weren’t too bad either. I’m a big fan of Jordan Peele, who has already shown us his horror bonifides with his first movie, Get Out, and his newest release this Spring, titled US. I think he’s just a Producer on this, which is cool. I already have the CBS All Access App for watching Star trek Discovery, so I might as well take advantage.

 

 

Hanna

I can’t say I’m a fan of the movie, which turned out not to be the full on action fest I thought it would, but turned out to be quieter, and more contemplative, than I thought. I did not dislike the movie this came from, but I didn’t love it either, probably because my expectations, and the payoff were so wildly different.

The movie is a bout a young girl raised by her adoptive father to be lethal, her escape from his pursuers, and her attempts to live as a normal teenager, when she meets another young woman looking to be friends. If the show follows the movie, then be prepared for some really good action scenes, alongside a great deal of  coming of age drama. I’m curious about this. one of the  standout things , from the movie, was Hanna’s relationships with the normal teens, and their reactions to who and what she is.

So, I’m going to check it out and let you know what’s going on here. Hanna airs on Amazon Prime. Tbh, I haven’t watched a single one of Amazon Prime’s many original series, so maybe I’ll break that record with this one.

 

 

Toy Story 4

I’m probably not going to the theater to see this, but then I’ve said that about other movies, so don’t take me at my word on it. After all, I have several nieces and nephews who all love Toy Story, I’ve seen all the other ones in theaters, and I could be easily persuaded to take them to see it. My family has discovered that I am notoriously easy to be talked into seeing movies I had no plans to watch, (and I’m pretty sure my Mom is just taking shameless advantage of me.)

So, we’ll see.

 

 

Game of Thrones

Season eight is coming.

 

 

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

I remember scaring myself to death with these books as a kid, so I’m mildly excited about a movie based on them. For me the scariest parts of the books are the illustrations, but some of the stories are pretty effective today, too. Apparently this movie is produced by Guillermo Del Toro, who rarely goes wrong when it comes to Horror, so I’m looking forward to checking this out.

 

 

 

Hobbs and Shaw

I’m not really a Fast and Furious fan. I’ve maybe watched half of the movies, but the inclusion of Idris Elba, as a total badass, has my complete attention, Since my Mom is a huge Idris fan, and will actually go see movies featuring The Rock, and for some  reason that is unbeknownst to the rest of her family, has become enamored of Jason Statham’s Transporter movies, I’m pretty sure I can talk her into going to see this movie with me.

It looks like a helluva lot of fun, too.

 

 

The Secret Life Of Pets 2

I though the original film was just sooo cute! My favorite character is Gidget because  her name reminds me of those Gidget Beach movies I watched as a kid. This new trailer is really funny, so I’m sure I can be talked into going to see it by my sister’s kids.

 

Things I’m Looking at # 37

Preacher:

Aaaaaah!!!!

The second season of Preacher arrives just in time to take up the slack after the full-course meal that was American Gods. I was really looking forward to this new season. Last season was a bit of surprise hit for some people, and even though I was really enthusiastic about it, I’m surprised how much I enjoyed the characters. I was pretty much just expecting crazy plot, but I fell in love with Cassidy, Tulip, and Jessie, and I’m really looking forward to their interactions this season.

Last season, Jessie was possessed by an escaped Angel, named Genesis, that gave him the power to compel people to do his bidding, got assaulted  by two other Angels, named Fiore, and deBlanc, who were after their lost charge, was invited by Tulip to get back on the road to vengeance against some guy who betrayed them,  and being friended by an Irish vampire, who then fell in love with his best girl. The three of them, Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy, met a fake God, and the town where all these events,  occurred was blown to smithereens, after things went horribly wrong at the local slaughterhouse. Now the three of them are on the road, looking for the real God, because they got questions they need answered, and I’m certain that yet more batshit adventures will ensue.

Season two has introduced one of the characters from the books called The Saint of Killers. We get our first glimpse of him when the three buddies are pulled over by some cops, and The Saint guns everybody down. In the first episode alone we’re treated to the sight of one of the cops macing his own balls, Tulip siphoning gas through a piece of intestine (lost by one of the cops during the shooting), while Cassidy tries to get out of the sunlight by hiding under the cars, a man getting his tongue ripped out, a preacher who exorcises his parishioners demons by locking them in cages, and Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy sharing a bed, with Cassidy letting them know that he wouldn’t mind if the two of them had sex in front of him. Sent there by the Jesse’s preacher friend, the three of them visit a Jazz bar/Strip club, where one of the patrons claimed she met God. Cassidy’s shenanigans gets their witness killed.

So the usual, all-around batshittery, really!

Like I said, when I reviewed the show in the first season, I was not that big a fan of the books because I’m an artistic snob, and hated the artwork. I knew enough about the books to know who some of the characters were, and be excited by Cassidy’s appearance. I have no idea who the Saint of Killers is, or if its an accurate representation on the show. That said, The Saint is really terrifying. As Cassidy would say, “That’s some Terminator-type shite!

Yes, this series can actually be classified as Pulp, and yeah, I do remember from one of my last reviews, that I said I wasn’t a huge fan of Pulp, since I hated Blood Drive, but since I am a fan of Preacher, I guess that means it depends on one’s definition of Pulp. Preacher is everytihng tht Blood Drive isnt. Better acting, writing, cinematograghy, special effects, and characters, go a long way towards a better class of Pulp.

I mean, Blood Drive and Preacher are basically the same type of show, involving people on the road, doing crazy-ass shit, or having crazy shit happen to them. But Preacher is just much better at it. I guess it’s the difference between an asshole with charm, manners,and a several thousand  dollar suit, compared to an asshole in cheap sneakers and a backwards baseball cap, who keeps spitting on your floor. One of those you date. The other you don’t. Which one you choose is entirely a matter of personal taste.

 

In the second episode we learn that the Saint of Killers was hired by Fiore, who is determined that Jesse not be allowed to keep his superpower, lest he abuse it, which he is already doing. Fiore, in mourning over his dead partner, deBlanc, is working a magician’s show at Mumbai Sky Tower, where he gets killed on stage and keeps coming back, because Angels can’t die. Well, rather they can die, but the only thing that can kill them is The Saint of Killers.

Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy petition Fiore to call off The Saint, but he refuses. Cassidy asks Jesse for permission to try to persuade him to change Fiore’s mind. There follows one of the funniest, most delightful, interludes I’ve ever seen in a show! Initially you think Cassidy plans on torturing Fiore, but the show uses that as an opportunity to turn a trope on its head, by having him get Fiore high on heroin, and then  romping with him around his hotel room, like two over-sugared toddlers, for three hours. Fiore who was depressed enough to attempt killing himself hundreds of times, since losing hs partner, is having the time of his life. My favorite moment is the two of them building a pillow fort in the middle of the room, and eating ice cream in it.

Jesse asks Tulip to get married and she accepts at first but when an old acquaintance from New Orleans (her old stomping grounds), shows up at the Mumbai, she tells Jesse she has changed her mind, after beating the holy hell out of the man. I love to watch tulip kick ass, with her little tiny self. She must weigh all of a buck’o five. Tulip’s got a lot of secrets, though. Jesse has an epiphany about how to find God, since they learned in the last episode that God loves Jazz. He figures that God might decide to visit New Orleans, someplace Tulip is  reluctant to go. At the end of the show, Fiore’s last request is for The Saint to kill him, since Jesse commanded him to “Find Peace”.

And that’s just the second episode. We got nine more episodes of this crazy shit, people.

 

Cleverman:

Last season we saw the introduction of a new superhero show, set in Australia called Cleverman. All of the primary characters, including the hero are all Native Australians. The show works along the themes of colonization, erasure, and assimilation of Native people into a violent dominant culture.

 

*The Cleverman is an important figure in many Australian Aboriginal cultures. Series creator Ryan Griffen describes the Cleverman as “like the Pope of the Dreamtime … the conduit between the present and the Dreaming”.^[6] The version in the television series combines many Cleverman traditions from different Aboriginal clans to create a superheroic version, with powers relating to the Dreaming’s connection to past, present and future.^{[7]    ——–Wikipedia}

 

Koen has reluctantly accepted his position as the new Ceverman after the death of his uncle, who was the last one, and has begun to take steps to protect The Hairy People from a culture of exploitation and enslavement by the government. I didn’t review the last season and there’s a lot to explain, since its a very dense show, that requires close attention, especially if you’re not Australian. So here’s the Cleverman page on the Sundance website, which will give you a quick 101 on who the characters are, what’s going on and who’s is doing what to whom. The first episode of this season drops you right into the middle of everything, so if you didn’t watch the last season, you will need a quick catch-up:

http://www.sundance.tv/series/cleverman

 

And an AVClub review:

http://www.avclub.com/review/aboriginal-fantasy-cleverman-too-busy-building-wor-237354

 

This season, Cleverman is attempting to foil a plot by the Australian  government, to destroy the Hairy People, by giving them a drug that will assimilate them into human society. So they’ve introduced a sickness they claim to be curing, and giving them this drug. They’ve also been kidnapping them, breaking up their families, and conducting medical experiments  on them. All of this is fairly graphically shown, so  keep that in mind while watching. At last some of this is being facilitated by Cleverman’s cousin, who  last season, used to hold a  Hairy People Fight Club, in the area of town where the Hairy People, and the Indigenous population, had been corralled

I’m having some difficulty watching the show because it just strikes too close to home, on a realistic level, and I can’t make it through a single episode without yelling at the TV, so I had to cut my viewing short. And I was also having trouble watching the fascistic nature of the plot. Its the reason why I’m not really into watching dystopias right now.

 

But this is a great show. It’s very deep. It has good representation for my criteria although, if you’re a member of an Indigenous culture of any kind, you may have more stringent criteria than I do. It might also be too upsetting to watch because the plot does not mince around.

 

 

Will/ The Strain

Other shows I’ve checked out, and won’t be watching again, are Will, a show about the life of William Shakespeare which I found too dense to get into, and The Strain, which I continue to hate despite its change of venue, to Philadelphia, after NY blew up.

Now, If you’re a student of Shakespearean Literature than you will  love this show because it chronicles the writing of his various plays and whatnot. its written by a couple of scholarly type guys and it shows. Its also full of pretty people being loud and boisterous,, and lots of ribaldry. I guess this is the show’s attempt to seem racy. I tried to like it, but I don’t think I was in the mood for it, as all that authenticity was giving me a headache.

I tried to watch the first episode of The Strain’s fourth and final season. I didn’t get past the first twenty minutes. I figured out what it was I hated so much about this show. Its the characters. I just hate them. Outside of Quinlan, and Fet, none of the characters are even trying to be compelling, and the villains are just ridiculous. The show also just isn’t scary. At least not to me, but the one review I read of the show the reviewer loved it. I just can’t agree. If you like the show, there’s nothing wrong with that, but  you have very different criteria, than I, for liking it.

Since NY blew up last season, the apocalypse has started t in earnest, as the resultant ash cloud has blocked out most of the sun’s UV rays, allowing the Strigoi, as the vampires are called, to walk around in daylight, menacing the populace. The setting has moved to Philly, and the first annoying thing I saw was an ad for a vampire/human organization called The Partnership, which is mostly designed to separate humans from their blood.

Let me get this out of the way first: Many of the people in the ad were Black, although no more Black people were seen in the rest of the episode, even though it takes place in Philly, which has, quite possibly, one of the most recalcitrant Black populations in America. Apparently, rebellion against authority is only for White guys, since the two Black people I saw are shown  just rolling over for it.

This really pissed me off because I know, in the real world, you can’t even get Black people to do things they want to do, if you  give them an order to do it. Black people (and Puerto Ricans) will decide NOT do something, just to spite you. So I found it hard to believe there were no Black or Brown people rebelling, or creating some kind of Human Underground. C’mon! Marginalized communities would be the first ones to act up. And no explanation is given for why they’re all absent. Were they all wiped out? Eaten? Maybe we’ll find out later in the season but I won’t know because I’m not watching.

 

Castlevania: 

I watched the first few episodes of this series, which is based on the arcade game from the 80’s. I do have fond memories of watching my brothers play it,  because I wasn’t particularly interested in playing it myself. I’m not that type of gamer, really. I don’t get attached to characters too much, or follow plots that closely, so I can’t tell you if the anime has anything to do with the plot of the game.

But I enjoyed the cartoon, which is about a guy named Belmont, a monster hunter from a disgraced family, going up against Dracula, and the Church. The Church is responsible for burning Dracula’s wife as a witch, and he’s so pissed off that he didn’t receive an apology, or even a tribute for his dead wife, that he unleashed a horde of batlike demons into the world to destroy humankind.

I spent a not inconsiderable time muttering at my TV about this one too because, as is natural, the villains are villainous, and  annoyingly unreasonable bullies. The Church is trying to use the approach of the demon horde to consolidate their power, and deflect attention away from the fact that the release of the demons is their fault. There’s another group of monks, truth tellers, that the Church is trying to wipe out because church officials don’t want word getting out that the demon apocalypse is their fault.

The animation is very good, with some nice fight scenes. I usually avoid a lot of anime series because they’re too fast paced, and the characters have a tendency to talk too much, in extremely high pitched voices, which just makes my head hurt. But I liked this one. The people have actual motivations for doing stuff, even if I disagree with their actions, and they all talk like regular people.

So, if you’re a fan of the game, you could do worse than spending an evening with Belmont, who is a total bad-ass, and  Dracula. Castlevania is available now on Netflix.

 

I also watched The British Baking Show and Game of Thrones. I enjoyed the Baking Show because British reality shows are wholly unlike American reality shows.  For one thing, there’s less bragging, and competition from the empty headed contestants, and more a feeling of camaraderie. The British shows don’t look as if they’re trying to get rid of the Black people and women as quickly as possible and the hosts are really funny.

I like the process of watching the contestants learn to bake something, I like looking at the inventiveness of the end results, the judges aren’t mean for meanness sake, but seem honest and forthright, about the results, and the way they choose the winners seems fair. If you have a bad episode, as a baker, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re out. It has to be a consistent thing. By the end of the series some of the baker’s have had several bad events.

 

I have no idea what to think of Game of Thrones. I want to like it. I like parts of it. I’m mostly a casual viewer, who has only watched a few of the more popular episodes. I know who the top five characters are, and the ones I like the most, Jon Snow, Brienne, and Arya and Sansa Stark. I’m much more interested in what’s happening in the north, at The Wall, then I am with what’s going on in the south, even though I realize all of these things are linked.

 

 I don’t know who that guy is that’s been stalking Brienne.I think his name is Torm, or Torman) but he is hilariously, and very obviously, smitten with her. Brienne mostly looks annoyed and puzzled at his insinuations, and I can explain why that’s funny. I often have that same look on my face when people flirt with me. I can’t imagine why they think such a tactic would work with me, and puzzled about whatever I might have done, to make them think it would.

He longs for eve nthe faintest scrap of attention from her. Last night, after Brienne thoroughly trashed some guy  she was training with the sword, he walked up to the man and happily told him how lucky he was.

And of course, Twitter was right on it!

 @MatthewACherry

Tormund be looking at Brienne like #ThronesYall

I’m going to keep watching it (not reviewing it) because I’m curious as to where it’s going to end, and how my favorites end up. Notice that there are some popular characters I didn’t mention, and that’s because I don’t care a single bit, about what they get up to, on the show.