A Game of Throne: Season Two, Episode One (“The North Remembers”)
Unlike last year, I have been eagerly anticipating the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Now that it’s here, I have some of those same mixed feelings that made season one slightly uneven. Yet, it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. I will watch this show until the end, even if the characters turn into giant rabbits with swords. The first episode of the second season is a transition episode. It’s one of those “hey, here’s where we’ve been, and here’s what everyone has been up to since we left.” That means, more or less, we’re inundated with a lot of information, new characters, and so on, just so we’ll get a sense of what is to come. After all, Eddard Stark is dead, and that means a hell of a lot of bad shit is coming our way. What follows, as such, is a somewhat disjointed review. In this episode, we are shown the following: King Joffrey’s continued psychological abuse of Sansa Stark; the arrival of Tyrion Lannister as the new Hand of the King (and the family politics involved); Bran Stark’s reluctant position as Lord in his brother’s stead; Danaerys’ desperate attempts to save herself in an increasingly hostile wilderness; Robb Stark’s continued rise to the mantle of King of the North; Stanis Baratheon’s rejection of the old gods in the hope to steal back his throne from Joffrey; Jon Snow and gang beyond the wall; and Arya Stark’s trek north. If that sounds like a lot of stuff, then you understand my apprehension to call this episode anything but a confused mess. GoT is still brilliant, mind, but there is something to be said about the writers biting off way too much in this episode. Who exactly are we to care about here? It’s one thing to bring back some of our favorites, crammed together in one space, but to add new ones? There’s simply too much going on here. Sadly, the overwhelming number of plotlines impacts the casting, as so many of the new additions get short thrift here. Stanis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) spends most of his scenes glaring at the camera, looking altogether not like I expected him to look. Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) at least gets a few extra lines, with some emotion thrown in, but his character is as undeveloped as the rest of the newcomers (especially Maester Cressen, played by Oliver Ford Davies, who seems to come on the screen just so the writers can kill him off). Simply put, the writers desperately need to break up these story lines to develop the characters more efficiently. He’s important. Really. He is. Trust me… That said, there is a lot to admire about the episode. One of the most chilling moments in the entire series acts as the climax. I won’t ruin the moment, but you’ll know it when you see it — and you’ll be as disturbed as I was. What I can say is this: it made me turn away from the screen, even though the act itself was never shown. And it also shows us something we’ve known was coming for a while: that the wicked really are wicked. Additionally, HBO has done a fantastic job rendering the small cast of CG characters (in this case, one dragon). The worst thing about TV is that networks make series which need a lot of CG, but they aren’t willing to pay for quality material. HBO didn’t fall pray to that all-too-common weakness. Instead, the creators have done what smart people do: only use CG when absolutely necessary. And that means that unlike most television, this show forces us to pay attention to characterization, which GoT usually does quite well. Yes, I am God. Hear me roar. And then there’s Peter Dinklage, who every single moment reminds us why he won an Emmy for his work on Season One. What more can we say? He’s brilliant. In some respects, he outshines everyone else who is made to work alongside him. His expressions are nuanced in the way only a great actor can muster. I hope we’ll see more of him this season than last, but we’ll see. That pretty much sums up what I thought about this episode. Future reviews will likely delve a little deeper into the story. This review doesn’t, in part because this episode is less a story than a giant placeholder. Every major plot point opens up here, but there’s not much that can be said about those various threads until we’ve seen where they are going. That said, we’re off to an interesting start, even if the first episode isn’t the best of the lot. Directing: 2.5/5 Cast: 4/5 Writing: 2.5/5 Visuals: 5/5 Adaptation: N/A (haven’t read the book yet) Overall: 3.5/5
#NaPoWriMo Entry #2: “No Small Place”
Another entry? Yup. I’m taking this National Poetry Writing Month thing seriously. This week’s poem was inspired by a book by Jamaica Kincaid called A Small Place. I recommend it to everyone; it’s a biting critique of tourism in the Caribbean which draws upon, in my mind, the discourses of tourism (pamphlets, brochures, etc.). Here’s the image and poem: “No Small Place” To visit the island — whose white sands shimmer beneath the treasure hunter’s sun — is to forget the conquest. The magazine-spread sands pull the shadow of the damp-backed crab men who rake the earth to keep up appearances. Kincaid’s oceans, impossibly blue, impossibly anything but normal, can be nothing more than simulacra, imaginary ideas made real so only their artificiality can be discerned. Pull back the green screen to see the gears manned by buffalo men with juvenile growths squirming like maggots on their backs, to entrap the long-haired baboons with plump fingers prying and plying the cottonswab sheets you cover in dead skin cells. And then remind yourself that they are not buffalo men, maggot growths, or hairy baboons, but people trapped beneath a glass jar, like creatures kept for a child’s benefit… And that it is only a black curtain that rests between the prostitutes and the societies they serve. To visit the island — the curtain drawn back to reveal the hunter’s game — is to remember a history not your own.
Weekly Roundup #6: The Skiffy and Fanty Show / Duke and Zink Do America
I’m playing catch-up again. Way too much stuff has happened since the last time I posted a roundup. Articles. Episodes. More articles. More episodes. Phew. So here’s a roundup of all that stuff. First: I’m too far behind on updating you all on stuff going on at The Skiffy and Fanty Show. I can only blame this on laziness, even if I was abducted by alien monkeys the other night… Here’s all the stuff that has gone live on SandF: Guest Post: “Superhero Ethics” by Myke Cole Guest Post: “Tackling Other Cultures in Fiction” by Stina Leicht Episode 94a: An Interview w/ Stina Leicht (a.k.a. Mrs. Irish Cream)(On Urban Fantasy) Episode 93: Defining Urban Fantasy, Plus Doctor Who Companions and Dying American SF Second: A lot of stuff has been going on at my political show too. If you’re interested in progressive politics, with a side of humor, then check out the new stuff up on Duke and Zink Do America: Episode 4 — Trayvon Martin Recap, GOP Budget Woes, School Prayer, and Bunnies “The Race Problem: STFU about the post-racial society; it’s bullshit…“ Episode 5 — Bombing Planned Parenthood, Supreme Strip Searches, the China “Threat,” and More! And that about does it. What have you been up to?
NaPoWriMo Entry #1: “The Tree of Knowledge”
Before I get to the poem, I thought you all should see what inspired me to write what follows. The following images are of the same tree, though not the tree that originally inspired me, as I did not have my camera with me while I was on campus. In any case, I hope the images inspire you too (if not, then that’s your problem, meanie)! The Tree of Knowledge (also known as Loopsy) This is like something out of a weird Little Nemo dream. The Tree of Knowledge The tree of knowledge spells its name in permafrost moss dangles from its limbs like frayed fingers framed by the edges of a memory of another age, of smoke tendrils reaching to the earth to twist into the fog from which the sweet dew of life chimes a tune for which only the sun will rise. What name does the wintry skeleton give itself as it bends — crick, crack — with the wind to track its tired oaken digits in the snow? Can anyone read its name — of whispers and salt — if nobody is around to see the letters? In whose language does the tree of knowledge speak? If not our own, then the traces of a tree thought must be found on the pages of our books, like subconscious — subliminal — metaphors to be teased from the edges of our collections; nobody will read the tattered adventures of pulp pap for the one hundred years to come — or fifty. But tree language is a permanent marker beneath the layers of pulp upon which the author pens his name in far too many words. If we could reverse engineer the page, perhaps we could rediscover the sacrificial lamb whose voice — chop, crash — we cannot hear. Perhaps, too, the tree of knowledge could tell us what the Woolly Mammoth calls itself from the depths of so many ACGT repetitions archived in the permafrost cover of gnarled roots. Perhaps humanity is but a prolongated process of return: to ourselves, to the beings we were meant to be, to the thought bubbles we actually are, archived, too, in the sap stream memories of the grove.