Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 2

While last week’s opener was like a well assembled and properly oiled machine that connected many disparate narrative lines, this week’s episode – “Stormborn” – was like a runaway train, on the brink of derailment for how fast it sped through time. With the condensed season underway, I expected the show to move more quickly than it had ever before – and I’m cool with it – but some of the content seemed extraneous or ill-fitted, although overall the episode had a lot of great moments.

We open back at Dragonstone, which is besieged by a storm so fierce the story of Dany’s birth is brought up, since she was born on a day much the same. Dany, Tyrion and Varys discuss possible strategies for her conquest of Westeros, and while they agree a full-scale slaughter via dragon isn’t Plan A (“you’re not here to be Queen of the ashes”), Dany seems triggered by Varys’ professional track record of king-hopping. This whole argument feels somewhat out of place; not that it wouldn’t have happened at all, but it seems it should have happened long before they landed in Westeros. Dany points out that Varys served her father and was all too happy when he was overthrown, and he worked to usurp Robert Baratheon despite his being “neither a mad nor cruel” monarch, and she accuses him of orchestrating her assassination from way back in Season 2. Varys deflects that transgression onto Robert, and then delivers a great monologue about his tragic backstory and declares his true loyalty is to the people, not to any given despot. He basically ends by saying he does believe Dany is the best option for the well-being of the common people, and goes full Ash Ketchum, saying: “I choose you.” If Dany were a Pokémon, she’d be Charizard, right?

 

Anyway, a dark and stormy night is a perfect setting for Melisandre to make an entrance – and Dany even says as much when they are introduced. It’s great to see Melisandre’s magic necklace is working overtime, because she arrives dry and poised to meet the Mother of Dragons despite the hurricane raging outside. Varys is quick to dismiss the Red Woman as a witch who was once in the service of Stannis Baratheon, and Dany shuts down the conflict with a reminder that they had just been talking about ‘pardons’ for shady political liaisons. BURN. Melisandre comes to elaborate on the prophecy of Azor Ahai – the “Prince that was Promised,” a well-known religious tenet of the followers of R’hllor. Dany basically rolls her eyes – “Oh, so I’m the Prince that is Promised, eh?” but Missandei clarifies for all of the audience who haven’t read the books that in High Valyrian (the language in which the prophecy was recorded) – ‘Prince’ and ‘Princess’ are the same word; it has no gender, like “monarch” or “ruler.” So it could be referring to Dany – which isn’t new news if you’re an ardent GOT fanatic. But it was still exciting to have it explicitly spoken! FAN THEORY CONFIRMED! Melisandre further explains that she believes both Dany and Jon Snow, the current king in the North, are both somehow a part of the prophecy and that his success story is worth listening to, so they should meet. She conveniently leaves out any mention of the White Walkers or his resurrection at her hands – I assume we’re meant to wonder if Jon will mention that himself at a later date? Anyway, Tyrion is thrilled – he remembers Jon from the Night’s Watch and admired him greatly, so Dany concedes they should meet to discuss an alliance – as long as he agrees to bend the knee.

Cut to Winterfell, where Jon and company receive correspondence from Tryion about a possible meeting at Dragonstone. It basically says “join us in our fight against Cersei.” He concludes the invite with a phrase Jon and Tyrion exchanged privately, so that Jon would know that the letter is legit. Of course, they still think it’s a trap – but Davos points out, dragons make fire, and fire is kryptonite to wights, so they’d be a good ally to have in theory.

Speaking of allies, Cersei is trying to drum up some at King’s Landing because as Tyrion knows – everyone hates her fucking guts. She’s entertaining bannermen from families that serve and are otherwise loyal to Olenna Tyrell, who we know is in open revolt against the Lannister regency. She has taken note from the Despot Handbook – which is well known to fascists and tyrants here on Earth; see “Hitler” and “Lenin” and “Trump” – and appeals to their xenophobia, saying that the Mad King’s daughter rides with filthy Dothraki and soulless Unsullied, who will rape and pillage their communities and she will slaughter the nobles as she did in Mereen. Sam’s shitty father, Randal Tarly, is present, and asks the $64,000 question: “How are you going to beat the dragons?”

Qyburn smirks and basically just says “We’re working on it.” (More on this later)

The men are dismissed, and Jaime walks with Lord Tarly and pleads with him to switch to Team Lannister because he’s a competent general and they want him for his talents. He lays on the xenophobic rhetoric thick, but it’s not quite clear if Tarly (who is a loyal bannerman, despite being a shitty parent) has flipped. He probably has, or why else would this scene have been necessary?

We cut to Sam and the Archmaester, who are treating Jorah at the Citadel. The prognosis is bad – he may live for another 10 years, but he’ll be mad as a hatter within 6 months, Archmaester says. He’ll have to banish him to Old Valyria to live out his days with the other Stone Men, but because he was once a Westerosi knight, he can stay one more evening to kiss comfort and kindness goodbye. Sam asks if Jorah needs to contact any of his family, and it comes out that Jorah is Joer Mormont’s son – whom Sam used to serve in the Night’s Watch.

Cersei and Qyburn reminisce in the tunnels under the castle about the dragon skulls that used to decorate the throne room – Robert had them moved under here because it would have seemed petty to keep them on display after his successful rebellion, but he was proud of his victory so he couldn’t get rid of them. And why would you – these things are so fucking badass! Balerion’s (the dragon of the first Targaryen conqueror) skull is the size of an elephant, and Qyburn unveils a large spear-firing weapon and shoots an iron projectile right between its eyes. I guess this is satisfying enough to Cersei, and by extension for we the audience. After all – if Smaug could be felled in such a way, surely Drogon and his siblings can too? I’m already dreading the inevitable death of a dragon.

 

The war council of Daenerys Targaryen is underway now that the storm has lifted, and it was quite the welcome spectacle. The only penis in this room belongs to Tryion (literally – Varys, Greyworm, and Theon have all been fully castrated), and it was possible the for first time on television we had a large-scale war being plotted exclusively by female power players. Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand are for a siege on King’s Landing; Dany and Tyrion not so much. Olenna Tyrell all but quotes Machiavelli; telling Dany that it’s better to have the Westerosi fear her than love her – the city must be sacked.

WHO RUNS THE WORLD!?

 

Tyrion pushes forward his strategy to attack on two fronts: King’s Landing should be surrounded and starved out by the Dornish and the Tyrells because he very aptly predicts Cersei’s racist rhetoric. The people of the Capital will find it less shameful to submit to their fellow countrymen than to a horde of foreign conquerors, surely. Meanwhile, the Dothraki and the Unsullied will hit Casterly Rock, fully fucking with the Lannister’s shit by sacking their home turf. It is agreed that the Ironborn ships will ferry the Dornish army to their destination, and then Dany is alone with Olenna – the longest surviving player on their chessboard.

Dany tells Olenna she knows that she’s only at Dany’s table because she fucking hates Cersei, but she hopes to win her respect in earnest. Olenna cuts through the bullshit and tells Dany that the reason she has outlived everyone else is because she doesn’t follow the advice of men; that Lords are all sheep and men are not to be trusted. She tells Dany that she is a dragon, and she should behave as such. It will be interesting to see which side of the conflict Dany comes out on the side of – clearly she is struggling to maintain her decency and earn her legitimacy as a merciful and righteous Queen. She’s going to have to get her hands dirty again to win, probably, but seems reticent to commit, despite all the advice she’s being given.

We have the obligatory sex scene in which Greyworm confesses his love to Missandei, and though we didn’t get to see the eunuch’s lack of junk – it seems his mouth is well prepared to make up for it.

Naturally, now that we had a genuinely tender love scene we must cut to something boring AF, so Sam is following the Archamaester around the library, asking about possible greyscale treatments, bringing up Shireen Baratheon’s recovery from it. The old man dismisses any hope of a cure, babbling on about his current passion project, a modern history he calls “A Chronicle of the Wars Following the Death of King Robert the First,” which is meant to be a joke on his earlier assertion that if you want people to read your stuff, it has to have a certain amount of flair, which clearly this title does not. But you know what would be a good title?!?!?!? This gives credence to another fan theory, which is that this whole show is a chronicle of events as being written or told by an Old Sam Tarly, much in the same way “There and Back Again” was the book written by Bilbo Baggins, that we know as “The Hobbit.” If the show ends on a shot of a book titled “A Game of Thrones” written by Maester Tarly – I won’t be surprised. Anyway, Sam decides to try and help Jorah in secret anyway out of a sense of gratitude to Joer Mormont. The remedy seems to be getting drunk on rum to withstand the horrific pain of peeling off a layer of scales to be doused with an ointment, and this sets up one of the more clever and gross cut-to’s in cinematic history – jumping from Jorah’s inflicted skin to a meatpie that Arya is cutting up at an Inn which employs none other than her old pal HOT PIE!!!!!

This reunion is full of cute banter – Hot Pie recognizes ‘Arry’ immediately and they catch up. There is a hilarious reference to her Sweeny Todd- foray into pie making, and he mentions that Lady Brienne had been looking for her (“She found me.”) The brilliance of this exchange is that all of it is predicated on our past knowledge of Arya’s sordid travels, which she doesn’t at all elaborate on, but we know as loyal fans. Hot Pie has one tidbit of info that Arya doesn’t, however – that the Bolton’s are exterminated and Jon Snow is now King in the North – so why is she headed for King’s Landing? You can see the deadness fade in Arya’s eyes as she decides to change course (putting her kill list on hold) to return home. Maisie Williams’ acting is superb here – she barely even has to speak, her face says it all.

In the meantime, Sam has sent Jon a raven with the knowledge he obtained in the forbidden section of the library about the dragonglass under Dragonstone. This finalizes Jon’s decision to ride south to meet Danaerys, which literally NO ONE in the North supports. Honestly –I get where they are coming from. Jon has done nothing but hammer home the fact that Winter Is Here and the Army of the Dead is coming for them all – how could he leave when his leadership is so needed? How could he even entertain an alliance with Targaryens and Lannisters? These people are in for a rude awakening when they find out Jon himself is a Targaryen, whew boy. He speaks from the heart to them all that if they are to outlive the coming war, they need bodies and allies and Dany has offered this; she alone can get them the weapons they need to win, and as a Queen she must be addressed by a King – and he reminds them that they declared him as such, he never sought out this title. He leaves Sansa as Warden of the North, which is fair. She is after all the only true Stark in Winterfell at the moment.

Jon says his farewells to Ned’s grave in the catacombs under the castle (a popular destination for conversation, apparently) and Littlefinger slithers his way down to chat, unwelcomed. Jon tells him to get the fuck out, basically, and Littlefinger rubs in the fact that if it weren’t for his swooping in at the last minute with the Knights of the Vale, Jon wouldn’t be alive, much less King.

This was the wrong button to push – Jon uncharacteristically lashes out and chokes Littlefinger. Ah shit, Ned pulled the same move against Littlefinger in the Capital and we all know how that turned out!

Oh, how I yearned for Jon to end his miserable scheming life then – but Jon is a goody two shoes like his ‘father,’ so all we get is a “touch my sister and I’ll kill you myself!” and then he stomps off to leave for Dragonstone. Undoubtedly, now that Jon is openly hostile towards him, Littlefinger will be working overtime to woo Sansa. He’ll be pouring poison in her foolhardy ears, encouraging her to make poor decisions. Make no mistake folks – it’s not a question of ‘if’ Sansa is going to fuck things up: it’s a matter of ‘when.’ My guess is she will attempt to force out Jon and declare herself Queen of the North before he can return with reinforcements.  I appreciate that Sansa has been abused and manipulated and her ire is understandable, but like Cersei Lannister, her mistreatment has caused her to feel entitled to retribution, and entitled prideful behavior from a slighted noblewoman has proven lethal as of late (see: obliteration of the Sept of Baelor).

Allow me to divert attention to something unaddressed by this episode: WHY THE FUCK HASN’T BRAN BEEN BROUGHT DOWN TO WINTERFELL!? We see ravens delivering messages across thousands of miles in a matter of days, but Bran is at Castle Black unannounced to his Stark brethren a day’s ride away? What gives? Has he requested to remain anonymous for the time being at the Wall? If so, why? Why hasn’t word of his arrival spread to Winterfell yet? It’s very suspicious to me.

Back to the story at hand, we see Arya in the woods en route to Winterfell. I have been jonesing for a Jon/Arya reunion for 7 seasons now, but what we got here was almost as satisfying: NYMERIA THE DIREWOLF RETURNS!!! Arya is surrounded by a pack of wolves, who are coincidentally led by Arya’s beloved pet. They recognize each other, and Arya asks the wolf to return to Winterfell with her, to be a family again. Nymeria anticlimactically turns around and leaves with her pack. Arya seems crushed at first, but then whispers “that’s not you” – a play on when she told her father “that’s not me” when he regaled her of the fancy life she would lead as a great Lady and wife. She accepts that Nymeria has forged a life of her own, much like herself – and it would be foolish to think she’d give it up to be a pet again. If Arya and Sansa reunite – Arya will likely have to make it clear that she will be no pawn in the game of thrones. Oh please oh please – let Arya kill Littlefinger! It would be so sweet.

 

Meanwhile, “a foreign invasion is underway” on Yara and Theon’s ship, taking the prize for the lamest ever scripted line to be uttered on this show. The writers must really hate the Dorne subplot because The Sands get the worst parts of the script, always coming off buffoonish or oversexed, or both. Yara and Ellaria’s hook up is interrupted by an attack by Uncle Euron, who is here to collect Cersei’s gift. The following battle sequence was a swashbuckling good time, and Euron’s attack proves fatal for Dany’s naval mission. The Sand Snakes are slaughtered, and he breaks Theon yet again during his capture of Yara. I felt particularly bad for Yara as Theon relapsed into Reek tactics and literally jumped ship, leaving her to be tortured and raped by her Uncle’s men. I doubt Theon could have bested Euron in a fight – but Theon’s PTSD moment ensured his sister’s doom. I feel validated that Theon can never truly be redeemed, even as he rescued Sansa, even as Jamie Lannister and The Hound seem to have ennobled themselves after dastardly deeds. Theon never had honor or bravery as a foundation to fall back on, unlike the aforementioned men. This was bound to happen, but it was sad nonetheless. Theon seems to be the lone survivor of the assault; Ellaria Sand and Yara likely imprisoned to be presented to Cersei next episode.

Euron: Westeros' Creepiest Uncle

The coming attractions for next week show Jon and Davos in Dany’s throne room – I’m positively ecstatic about their meeting; and I’m desperately hoping for Melisandre and Davos to cross paths again so they can have an ugly verbal altercation. I’m also crossing my fingers that Dany’s siege of Casterly Rock is a forthcoming success in light of her naval defeat.

Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 1

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Now that that's out of my system: the episode may have been titled "Dragonstone" - but this masterpiece belongs to Arya Stark. Without a doubt, the cold open of this episode is one of the best season openers for any show ever recorded. It beings with "Walder Frey," who is hosting an uncharacteristically generous feast for his men - and so soon after the feast he threw for the reacquisition of Riverrun! Those of us in the know (which should have been any person who watched the finale last season) were immediately aware, of course, that this was not actually Walder Frey, but Arya Stark wearing his miserable face. She tells the men who carried out the Red Wedding that they all deserve a cup of the finest wine (but not his child-bride - can't waste good wine on a stupid woman! She really sells the performance - all that time spent with the acting troupe last season paid off), and it's deliciously obvious that the wine has been poisoned, and then they all die. Arya orchestrated an act of vengeance so Greek-tragedy in it's DNA all I could do was cheer and squeal with delight at a massacre - that's what Game of Thrones does to people. She executes a face mask pull off that would put Ethan Hunt to shame and tells Lady Frey to spread the word: "Tell them that winter came for House Frey." GOOSEBUMPS!!! Seriously though: the face thing is a full on rip-off (pun intended) of the maneuver made famous by Mission: Impossible, and I think she does it way better than Tom Cruise ever did:

We leave the Riverlands for a barren winterscape, which shows the Army of the Dead literally bringing the storm with them as they approach the wall - and we see that not only are there White Walkers and wights, but zombie fucking giants too - at least three! I'm not sure if that one in the forefront was supposed to be WunWun (Jon and company would have burned him along with the other dead, surely??) but he was missing as eye... perhaps that's a pretty common way for a giant to go? This ominous march is actually a vision of Bran's (and later, the Hound's), who has finally reached the Wall with Meera Reed. Good ol' Ed greets them there, and Bran rattles off some facts that no mere Wildling could know about Ed to convince him to let them in (although I'm not sure why spooky psychic facts would necessarily mean Bran was telling the truth about his identity or anything else, but, woo hoo! FUTURE STARK REUNION IS NIGH!).

Speaking of the Starks, Jon and Sansa are making tough decisions at Winterfell. Jon wants all able bodied men, women, and children out looking for dragonglass, a proven weapon against the forces of darkness. He informs the room full of mostly dudes that they can't save the North if only half the population is fighting - that means the ladies must learn to fight too. This leads to an exchange between Lyanna Mormont and Lord Glover who balked at 'having to put a sword in my granddaughter's hand' and I still want to be her when I grow up. #wokeNorth.

It's decided that the Wildings will occupy all the castles and fortresses along the Wall to lookout for the White Walkers, which is smart because now they won't be brushing up against the Westerosi Northmen drudging up old prejudices. The topic of what punishment should be enforced against Houses Umber and Karstark is brought up, and Sansa does an excellent job of making Jon seem like a bitch. She insists, loudly and forcefully that they are traitorous houses who served Ramsey and deserve to be stripped of their lands and titles, and the properties should be redistributed to loyal houses - which does seem fair to me. Were the situation with the White Walkers not eminent, I think this would have been the way to go. However - Jon knows that be punishing the Umbers/Karstarks for the sins of one generation would be shooting himself in the foot later on, breeding resentment. Think of our own Northern mistakes post-Civil War: the descendants of the defeated from that war are still bitter about the loss, aren't they? and that came back to bite us in the ass in a big way during Election 2016... but it's easy to see why she feels this way. Sansa was trained in leadership by Cersei Lannister and Littlefinger; Jon in the schools of Joer Mormont and Ned Stark, who preached unity and forgiveness and respect.

"Dafuk did you just say!?"

The King of the North makes the new leaders of these houses - child Ned Umber and teen Alys Karstark - bend a knee, and it seems he has won the day and the respect of his subjects. Brother and sister bicker on the ramparts - Sansa is a Machiavellian and Jon is a believer in transparency and mercy in leadership and their opposing philosophies are clearly going to be the undoing of the unity of the North. At one point he snaps "Do you think I'm Joffrey?" at her - muzzling her ire a bit. She has to admit he's an actual true leader, unlike her once betrothed, but he needs to grow a pair, basically. Jon quips that their father used to say "everything that comes before 'but' is horseshit" - definite words to live by. She reminds him that both Ned and Robb lost their heads, and he should be eager to keep his. "How," he responds "by listening to you?" They receive a raven from Queen Cersei, demanding Jon come to King's Landing and bend the knee or face certain death. The argument turns to which the greater threat is - the Army of the Dead, or the Lannisters. Jon, having witnessed the full horror that is the White Walkers, is ready to brush off Cersei - but Sansa has lived with that bitch and she is quick to point out that right now there is a massive Wall protecting the living from the Dead - no such thing exists from the armies of the South. She knows Cersei has murdered every single person who has crossed her, and she'll come for Jon and Sansa too - the threat is real.

We know it's real because Cersei is having the whole of Westeros painted on her floor, a handy narrative device so she can provide we the audience with an exposition dump as she speaks to Jaime, who she accuses of having been 'quiet' since he returned home from the Riverlands. Gee, bitch - you murdered a fifth of the population of the city and caused our youngest son to turn King's Landing into a pun - ya think!? Her monologue is great though - "brood of bitches" to the South in the Sands, "that old cunt Olenna Tyrell" to the West, long standing enemies to the North. Jaime is right in that the Lannisters are shaping up to be the losing side - especially since now all of the Freys are dead (although they are apparently unaware that Arya was responsible for that).

"You killed our baby boy" "He betrayed us" #SORRYNOTSORRY

Enter Euron Greyjoy and the non-Yara/Theon faction of the Ironborn. For an archipelago that has literally no forests they sure built up an impressive armada for their invitation to King's Landing! Euron presents himself as a playboy in the vein of Jack Sparrow (sans-feminine affectations), seeking Cersei's hand in marriage. Jaime is dismissive and smug, recalling that Euron started a rebellion and picked a fight with the Lannisters ages ago that he lost. Ever the suave salesman, Euron flips the script and basically thanks them for defeating him, because had he not been defeated he wouldn't have gone into exile and become the world's greatest pirate. Cersei turns down the offer - he is an opportunistic brother-murderer, after all. He smiles and tells her she should try killing a brother - it's a wonderful feeling (it's not like she hasn't tried - Tyrion escaped before she could execute him for regicide). He also promises to change her mind, and that he wouldn't return to King's Landing without the perfect gift for her, and he leaves. I'm guessing he means Tyrion - who is known to still be alive and in the service of Danaerys Targaryen, who acquired the allegiance of his niece and nephew at the end of last season. But who knows? We shall find out.

Shakespeare In Love + Peter Bishop = Euron Greyjoy

We switch gears at Oldtown, where a montage of monotony provides comedic relief as we watch Sam Tarly wash out bed pans, deliver meals, and reshelve books for what felt like 36 years, gagging and near puking for nearly all of it. Poor Sam wants to really learn things so as to help defeat the White Walkers - but he's the low man on the totem pole here and he has to pay his dues. He complains to a Grand Maester during an autopsy about the situation. Grand Maester is played by the ever-excellent Jim Broadbent, and he admits to Sam that he believes his tale and sympathizes with him, but explains that their role in Oldtown is unlike any other Westeros person, as they serve as "the world's memory." In a monologue that feels like he's speaking directly to us Americans who are seriously nervous that the reign of POTUS 45 will be the death of civilization, Grand Maester tells Sam that the people have suspected that the end was nigh on many occasions - "every winter has ended" - the world kept on spinning; people survived, life continued. It was meant to be comforting, perhaps - but knowing what we do, it didn't feel that way, did it? From a historical perspective, it's relevant to note that the existence of Oldtown and the preservation of knowledge would have been rather helpful if an equivalent city had existed during the Roman Empire. Dearth of knowledge is what brought about the Dark Ages after the Empire collapsed, and it took roughly 1000 years to reach the point of the Renaissance, when science/navigation/democratic ideals etc. vastly improved the quality of life across Europe, eventually resulting in the world we live in today. The accumulation, preservation of, and dissemination of knowledge is what ultimately drives civilization - aka EDUCATION - a lesson we should take to heart.

Back at Winterfell, Brienne of Tarth is kicking Pod's ass. He's lucky he has that magic penis thing going for him because he's not much of a swordsman. Tormund is still publically lusting after her. Truly, even as it comes across as unfeminist: I wish someone gaped at me the way he gapes at her. Sansa observes her protector from a high perch, where Littlefinger has slithered up to whisper poison in her ear. "You have everything you could have hoped for up here," he says. "So why aren't you happy?" For now, she dismisses him, sick-ass burn at the ready: "No need for the last word, Lord Baelish - I'll assume it was something clever" and he slinks away as Brienne muscles her way to her Lady's side. But you can tell - Sansa is bitter that Jon has emerged as the Stark leader. We know she's kind of right - he's a secret Targaryen, after all. She suffers now from the same sickness Cersei does - a lifetime of being treated like a thing to be bought and sold, never to be taken seriously. If only she knew - that's a hubris-laced recipe for disaster.

Back to Arya, who is traveling south, crosses paths with none other than ED FUCKING SHEERAN, who is singing a ballad to his unit of Lannister soldiers off the side of the highway. They invite her to dine with them, and I didn't know who to be more nervous for - her, as an unaccompanied young woman in a hostile medieval land (let's face it - she may as well have 'gang rape me' painted on her saddlebag), or the young men, who have literally no idea that they have invited a once-Faceless Girl and current mass murderer to their hearth.

Ed Sheeran and The-Assassin-Formerly-Known-As-No One

They turn out to be decent men, with relatable problems and kind hearts, despite the colors and flags they carry. They ask Arya where she is headed (King's Landing) and they complain about her destination much like people often complain of NYC - it's a literal shithole! Hahahahaha. They ask her why. "I'm going to kill the Queen," she answers. They laugh at her 'joke.' But I swear, even though the prophecy has ruled it out - it would be orgasmically satisfying to see Arya cross Cersei off her Kill List, more so than when Beatrix finally got to kill Bill. Or is it ruled out? What if Arya kills Jaime, steals his face, and then strangles her at the very end!? If it happens that way (probably not) - you heard it here first!

Arya's former partner, the Hound, is in familiar territory - he and the Brotherhood without Banners stop to rest at a place he and Arya stayed before he was felled by Brienne back in Season 4. You know, the place where he fucked up the kindly farmer and left him and his daughter to die before winter? Well, their skeletons are in the corner of the house, and he's clearly feeling the guilt as a man with a new-found conscience. He asks Beric Dondarion why he of all people - a boring man with no real accomplishments - has been chosen by the Red God for multiple resurrections. Beric doesn't know - and Thoros demands Sandor stare into the fire to answer the cosmic questions that plague him. "My luck I end up with fire worshippers," he grumbles - but when he really looks at the fire, he apparently sees what Bran saw - the Army of the dead, marching towards the Wall of ice. The Red God is undoubtedly the foe of the Dead - lucky for our protagonists. The Hound buries the people he indirectly killed as part of his atonement - do we really need more convincing of his redemption? I don't, but I guess he does.

Cut back to Sam, who smuggles some off-limits books to study as he visits Gilly and Lil Sam in town. He has a lightbulb moment when he learns that Dragonstone  (likely a volcanic island) is basically a dragonglass gold mine - he must get word to Jon! We also get a glimpse in the book he's reading of a drawing of the Catspaw blade: the very knife that was used in the attempt on Bran Stark's life that got Tyrion imprisoned for murder the first time around. That's a heavy hint that it will inevitably crop up again at some point.

But first he must continue to drudge as he picks up the lunch bowls of the afflicted who are in treatment in Oldtown - one of whom is none other  than JORAH FUCKING MORMONT - whose grey-scale afflicted arm shoots out to snatch at Sam to ask if Dany has landed at Westeros yet. Sam says not that he's aware, but that's waaaaaaay on the other side of the continent, so word hasn't gotten to him yet that....

.....Dany and company have reached her ancestral home of Dragonstone! The entire sequence is wordless and without music accompaniment to drive home the gravity of this moment for the heroine and for the story as a whole. She has been seeking this moment her entire life - to return to the place of her birth - and it has finally happened. We should recall this as the place that Stannis Baratheon once called his - this is where Davos set Gendry free from, where Melisandre did most of her plotting for the failed would-be king. He abandoned the castle in his attempt for the throne - Dany casually yanks down the Baratheon banner in the hall and roams freely about the house that is rightfully hers. She and Tyrion wind up in the war room, where Stannis' table of Westeros and all it's little wooden players sits collecting dust. The episode ends with her saying the perfectly meta: "Shall we begin?"

I can honestly say - after a over a year of anticipation, this opener killed it. It was better than I could have hoped for. Next episode suggests a possible reunion between Arya and Nymeria the direwolf - if it happens I think my nervous system will shut down from the ecstatic fit I will have. Thanks for checking in!

Farewell to The Leftovers, an underrated masterpeice

It has been a life-long curse of mine that once I fall in love with a show, it will inevitably end in a way that is in one way or another dissatisfying, if not outright infuriating, to me. The most relevant example I can put forward is that of LOST – Damon Lindelof’s first foray as a show runner, and the show that I count among the most bitter of failures. I watched LOST for six years with the fervor of a religious zealot – and the bullshit cop-out of an ending (which I am about to spoil but get the fuck over it because it ended like 7 years ago) that the “sideways flashes” were actually flashes to some purgatorial afterlife where all the characters met up again before “moving on” literally destroyed my faith in storytelling.



Certain shit endings are forgivable in spite of their unsatisfying nature – Twin Peaks’ cliffhanger ending was as such because the network basically told David Lynch to go fuck himself, so there was no third season to follow it. And it took a full 25 years for Lynch to convince a different network to give him the money and leeway he needed to revisit the show – and it’s literally a miracle audiences will now get to see what happened to Coop and the rest of the weirdos that made Twin Peaks great.



But The Leftovers has thankfully broken that cycle for me – it has achieved narrative Nirvana. I’m going to go ahead and say for me, this show is a perfect masterpiece. The ending, mercifully, sealed the deal. Bulleted below are the reasons why, in no particular order:



· Knowing when to bow out is something many a show that began a gem but became a moldy rock (lookin’ at you, Supernatural) failed to do. I literally hate-watch Supernatural now because I am a completionist, but they just won’t fucking end the show even though it’s been beating the premise like a dead horse for at least 7 seasons now! The Leftovers was neither too long nor too short at 28 episodes over 3 seasons.



· It never flatlined in plot or let characters get stale – it very justly wrote Jill and Tom Garvey almost entirely out of the third season, and their lives (as well as the lives of every other major character who wasn’t Kevin or Nora) were resolved with scant explanation by Kevin in the final episode, and it didn’t feel cheap or evasive – it simply amicably resolved a remaining loose end.



· THE MUSIC – perhaps this reason is more important than some of the others, but I’m not sure any other TV show has even come close to the triumphant music direction The Leftovers has achieved. No other show has utilized pop music, a haunting score, and instrumental renderings of Metallica to better effect than this show. Relatedly:



· The opening title-sequences were poignant and always reflective of the subject matter to follow. The heavy and aggrieved composition that was paired with the Michelangelo-esque fresco of the “leftover” people post-Sudden Departure for Season 1 was an apt introduction to the visceral and spiritually despondent first season. Season 2’s polar opposite sequence, which laid the folksy “Let The Mystery Be” over a far more cheerful collection of pictures in which one or more of the people in the photo has been painted over with a starry/cloudy sky clued us in to the fact that while the images we would be seeing were outwardly less miserable and more hopeful than the previous season’s, it was mostly an elaborate slideshow designed to mask the emptiness and suffering the world of the show was still coping with. Season 3 brilliantly retained the visuals from Season 2’s sequence, and put a new song in to set the tone for every episode. Such genius selections included the theme song from Perfect Strangers (for the episode where the only non-Departed cast member from that sitcom convinces Nora to seek the Departure Machine that supposedly will take her to where her children went), a Richard Cheese cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” (because Matt, John and Michael all think Kevin is a messianic savior and have written a gospel about his life), and Gravediggaz “1-800-SUICIDE” (where we learn of Laurie’s attempted suicide, the direct aftermath of which leads to her joining the Guilty Remnant). Swinging away for the fences in the final two episodes, the show runners chose the theme from Season 1 and 2’s sequences, in that order, for a poetic conclusion suggesting that although the show was often bleak and doom-driven, it ultimately ends on an uplifting note – at peace with the mysteries within.



· Speaking of mysteries – The Leftovers finally succeeded where LOST failed. As a disciple of David Lynch and a partner of JJ Abrams, Lindelof is a clear believer in narratives that are dwarfed by mystery. LOST only ever answered its questions (What is the smoke monster? Where is the island? Where is the Island? Who is Jacob?) with more questions, if it bothered to answer them at all. The backlash from the botched conclusion of that show clearly traumatized Lindelof, and to his credit he weaved a much more cohesive tapestry with this show, because he did answer questions – just not with direct/definitive answers. The Leftovers’ big Unknown – what actually happened to the 2% of the population who disappeared in the Sudden Departure – is actually answered! Albeit by an unreliable narrator, of course – because it couldn’t be definitively answered. Story creator Tom Perotta said there was no answer and Lindeloff promised he could keep it that way on the show, so we never do get a ‘why’ – why the Departure occurred, no one knows. But if you believe Nora, we get a ‘where’ – Nora tells Kevin she completed her journey through the departure machine (LADR, the writers abbreviated it, but it’s not called that in the show. It’s a play on ‘ladder’ if you’re dense; there was a visual motif of ladders this season), and she wound up in a mirror reality where the 2% remained, and 98% of the rest of us disappeared. Very Twilight Zone – but we never see any of it. We only see Nora’s face as she recounts her journey to their version of Mapleton NY, where she spies her teenage children and her ex-husband with his new wife and she decides that it would be wrong for her to interrupt their new life, so she hunted down the inventor of the LADR (who was the first person to test it) and asked him to make another so she could get back. This explanation is everything I could have hoped for, honestly. It’s a theory I had myself about what the Departure actually was: it’s just tangible enough to be believable from a scientific point of view, but it leaves just enough unanswered to still be considered mystical/supernatural. If you believe Nora – who considers herself honest, but is fairly skilled at lying to herself – then it’s resolved. If you think she’s full of shit – you can believe whatever you’d like about the Departure. It’s something for everyone!



· Nora Durst is my spirit animal. I’m not sure there is a fictional character who has resembled me more closely in an ideological way than she. And Carrie Coons, the actress who portrays her, needs 32934507678 Emmy and Golden Globes thrown at her fucking feet for the performance. The extent of Nora’s suffering on this show would have destroyed most normal people in real life - but she’s like a 1980’s slasher-movie boogie man because she just won’t fucking die. Just when you think she’s about to break – this woman used to pay prostitutes to shoot her in the chest, after all – she picks herself back up and moves onward. No one was more skeptical or held more contempt for religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo than she – her living was debunking liars to prevent people from financially abusing the systems established by the government to help those who lost loved ones in the Great Departure –yet she secretly believed, desperately, that her kids were alive, wherever it was they actually were. The function of Nora and Matt, her meaning-addicted pastor brother, seemed to be a way to convey the idea that, to borrow from Fall Out Boy: Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith is when it’s tested again and again, every day. Now, faith doesn’t necessarily refer to deistic faith – Nora is an agnostic at best, and Matt spends the majority of the show a devout-but-modern Christian – but faith in one’s convictions, faith in what you believe is the truth. Matt is the more obvious example of this – he never gives up on his wife, who miraculously recovers from a 4 year vegetative state. He then loses his wife and their son because of his zealotry, and his cancer returns after forty years of remission – only to reunite and regain a fulfilling life with them before his death. Nora railed against the zealous and remains pragmatic the entire show as she overcomes plentiful emotional setbacks – waking up to life model decoys of her family as part of a sadistic attack from the Guilty Remnant, losing her adopted daughter Lily to the custody of the child’s birth mother, the deterioration of her relationship with Kevin – but ultimately chucks all common sense and risks possible annihilation because she hopes to be reunited with her kids, who she knows are still alive – and when that simultaneously succeeds/backfires (if you believe her), she returns to our reality and becomes a recluse, rather than killing herself or making a go of it in the parallel universe. She’s a wonderful and earnest confluence of contradiction – much like…



· …Kevin Garvey, the erstwhile protagonist of the show. From the start, Kevin wasn’t the typical leading man, or even a typical “difficult man” in the vein of Don Draper and Walter White. He’s played by Justin Theroux, so he’s distractingly attractive, which the show uses to great effect in flipping HBO’s tendency to glorify tits and ass by objectifying his body far more than any woman on the show. Kevin was a guy so burdened by the responsibility of remaining sane to hold his family together after the 10/14 trauma that he became unhinged. If you’re against any and all supernatural interpretation of Kevin’s seeming status as a shaman or a messiah, you might dismiss his visions as psychotic delusions – it’s clearly a hereditary condition he picked up from his dad, who began hearing voices the moment the Departure happened. He never actually saw Patti Levin, dead leader of the Guilty Remnant cult, he isn’t actually in some kind of afterlife when he’s an international assassin or the most powerful man in the world or his identical twin brother – he suffers from a severe mental disorder, seeing connections and signs that aren’t actually there, and filling in the details with convincing clarity from his subconscious. If you think he was in some form or another a conduit to the spirit realm (different, of course, from the realm where the 2% wound up) – it definitely explains his physical inability to die, which is on par with Nora’s emotional inability to break. Kevin should have died – like, 4 or 5 times – but yet he lives to the finale! This dude has been drowned, poisoned, shot in the chest, self-suffocated, and suffered a massive off-screen heart attack (which is in keeping with the self-murder in the penultimate episode) – not even Rasputin survived so much! More relatable than his seeming immortality was his tragic flaw: Kevin is never content with what he has. Before the Sudden Departure, he lived in a swanky house paid for by his successful wife, had a good job as a police officer, had two functional kids. But that wasn’t enough, he was unhappy. He keeps screwing up and redeeming himself in a cycle that never truly addresses his discontent – something that is all too familiar for many people, myself included. He is a clearer example than Nora that faith and insanity aren’t necessarily clearly defined or separate – wouldn’t you define showing up in the same location year after year hoping for a different result in your search for a person that all evidence suggests is dead or sci-Departured as insanity? Or is that just faith?



· The sheer, balls out, no holds barred, pure nihilistic fatalism of the tone. Never has a work of film reflected my personal outlook on life so closely – and I realize how alarming that is without explanation. Being perfectly frank: I vacillate between indifferent cynicism and nihilistic skepticism (very different philosophical POVs, although they may seem similar). Some days, pretty much all days in Trump’s America, I happily welcome a cataclysmic astronomical event that will make humans go the way of the dinosaur. Other days I rage against the machine, full of impassioned righteous anger about the bullshit that is regressing the world to a pre-WW2 nightmare of nationalism, xenophobia, and fascism. Because art is funded and produced for profit, it is very rare to have access to something that is unapologetically pessimistic and critical of religious and social mores. Many films and movie flirt with this kind of abandon and chicken out at the end, worrying that by siding with atheism or postmodernist interpretations they will be sending an undesirable message to the masses (lookin’ at you, True Detective Season One). But not The Leftovers – this show got as bleak as it basically can get (regular suicidal ideation, actual suicide, cliffhangers meant to suggest Laurie killed herself as per Nora’s plan to die accidently on purpose via failed scuba dive). But for me at least, as dark and punishing as some of the content was – it still felt enigmatic. It was deceptive in its anguish because often it was the show I laughed at the hardest – I nearly cracked a rib laughing at Nora and Erika Murphy bouncing their troubles away on a trampoline while Wu Tang Clan blared through the speakers. The “unique biometrics” which unlocked the Purgatory-bunker being Kevin’s junk-print was hilarious, as was basically everything Secretary of Defense Patti Levin uttered in that episode. Ironic juxtaposition was mastered by this show in a way few other visual mediums have. This was made possible of course by the excellent cast and ace scripts – the actors and writers deserve all the accolades possible.



· The Kevin dream sequences were so perfect in their symbolic assemblage they managed to out-Twin Peaks'd Twin Peaks. Many a prestige television show has used a dream sequence to further our understanding of a character or as a fish-out-of-water method to inject something fresh into a storyline fraught with seriousness – but I honestly can’t think of any instance where it was as successful as it was on The Leftovers. The international Assassin episode was the best kind of mindfuckery – it was confusing because we couldn’t tell if it was a dream or was actually happening in another dimension, but really it didn’t matter – the symbolic journey Kevin takes is unforgettable. Using karaoke as a way to escape an Underworld that looks like a hotel? GOLD. Having Kevin’s personality essentially halve into two different people, resulting in the death of one at the hands of the other, was so steeped in literary and psychological metaphor you could teach a whole college course on that one episode.




All in all – the ending was a graceful resolution to a thematic focus on the importance of love and family. Truly, Kevin and Nora spent half their life suffering in the aftermath of a mysterious event, and it seemed that without answers, despite attempts to gain knowledge and seize control of their lives through spiritual and secular means, the only take-away is that one can survive and cope with the terror and despair of the unknown if you have the love and support of people who you love and support in return. Now that they have come clean to each other after their independent ventures to figure themselves out– Kevin and Nora can be content, and whole, together. We can also be content, and whole, as a society if only we could also accept truth at face value and not delude ourselves into thinking we (or one religion/political party) alone have all the answers.

Twin Peaks: The Return, Episodes 1 & 2

I decided a bit belatedly that I was going to attempt to recap Twin Peaks: The Return, even though the non-linear nature of the show basically defies explanation. Just a forward: I was late to the Twin Peaks bandwagon. I loved many a show that explicitly called out TP as an influence (The XFiles, the Sopranos, The Killing, LOST, etc), but had never watched it myself until I was stuck at home with the flu in early 2012. Needless to say, it blew my mind and it’s fascinated me since just how prolific and iconoclast it was. I was elated when David Lynch announced its revival (especially since Laura Palmer famously told Agent Cooper she’d see him again in 25 years waaaaay back in 1990 – way to follow through, Fate!). That all being said, consider this a warning:

As groundbreaking as Twin Peaks wound up being, David Lynch isn’t half as clever as he thinks he is. Twin Peaks is profound in spite of this because it’s the closest thing we have on television to a true exploration of the nature of dreams and the powerful force that is the subconscious, but that’s only because Lynch is a stubborn asshole who refuses to put his stream-of-consciousness ideas into the narrative box that viewers/studios expect and are trained in. His work is hardly ever coherent, and to some extent that is the point. You may not remember the literal events that take place in a dream – but you remember the terror you experienced after a nightmare, even after the details slip away. Twin Peaks’ impact is similar – it’s an emotional and psychological event; the content sticks with you long after viewing it. This doesn’t really translate well to serialized story telling format, obviously. Trying to compromise with studio execs and provide narrative answers to satisfy consumer demand obviously defies Lynch’s intent as an artist. Square people want a straightforward murder mystery: Twin Peaks is not that. It was a great amalgamation of things – a noir soap-opera, a surrealist dark comedy, an esoteric supernatural thriller. That’s a lot of threads and Lynch isn’t really great tying up the loose ends, so not everything meshed well together. It was far from perfect; don’t even get me started on the dumpster fire that was Fire Walk With Me. But if you’ve watched anything on TV by JJ Abrams or Damon Lindleoff you should be fucking used to that by now (there are literally 340927345987 mysteries LOST introduced an then never resolved, for example). In conclusion: if you didn’t like Twin Peaks before and you aren’t a lover of frustrating narratives like The Leftovers or LOST, you aren’t going to magically ‘get’ the TP Revival. Even if you did love Twin Peaks and all of the shows that have been influenced by it since – you may not ‘get’ it either. Don’t get pissy about it right away – it may take 2-3 rewatches before you can really make a fair judgment of the work. That’s the nature of David Lynch.

Now that that’s out of the way….

We begin in the Red Room (which is filmed in black and white, because reasons?) with the Giant and Dale Cooper.

 

We last saw Agent Dale Cooper 25 years ago, trapped in the Black Lodge by BOB, his body in our reality now occupied by his evil Doppelgänger. The giant has some strange commentary for Coop as forboding scratching/skipping sounds emanate from an old school gramophone. “It is in our house now. Remember 4-3-0. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone. It all cannot be said aloud now.” We don’t know what any of it means and no one on Reddit will know until at least the end of this season, so relax: you’re not stupid, we’re just ignorant of the symbolism as of yet.

Cut to the woods surrounding Twin Peaks, where Dr. Jacoby (Laura Palmer’s unsanctioned psychiatrist, who according to cannon published in The Secret history of Twin Peaks, actually moved to Hawaii after losing his license to practice in Washington State) is apparently living in a trailer, and is receiving a delivery of shovels. *shrug* Your guess is as good as mine.

We leave there and wind up in NYC, at the top of a building which houses a giant glass cube with a room full of cameras filming it, supervised by a dude in his 20s named Sam who changes the memory cards in the cameras and, as we later learn, is responsible for watching the box in order to observe if something should pop up in there. You know, like, just your standard night gig to pay for college.

Shrodinger's Box

Sam has a lady admirer, Tracy, who shows up to bring him a latte, but she’s prevented by the stoic night guard from tagging along upstairs to watch the box. His work is classified in some way; and we’re not entirely sure if Tracy is genuinely into Sam, or if she’s actually just trying to get a glimpse at what is in the room. Later on in the episode, she returns, only to find that the guard is missing, and Sam confirms that he really is gone and not just using the (disturbingly creepy) bathroom. So he brings Tracy upstairs, where he explains to her the parameters of the job.

She asks if it’s some kind of science experiment, and he says he thinks it’s all funded by a billionaire, and that the last guy who had his job actually saw something in the box but wouldn’t or couldn’t reveal what he saw. Naturally, they start fooling around on the couch– which is when darkness itself seems to manifest inside the box. “A watched pot never boils” goes the old proverb – which is an idea confirmed by particle physics; actions are effected simply by being observed. The pair eventually notices the box has filled up with a terrifying blackness, where a pale, naked, faceless creature can be seen, and eventually forces its way out the confines of the cube, filling the room with blackness, where it seemingly tears apart (eats?) the lovers on the couch (It reminded me of the Smoke Monster from LOST, only more obtuse with better effects). Horror 101, guys: sex = death. C’est la mort.

The new murder mystery plot picks up after our first look in on Sam, in a place called Buckhorn, South Dakota, where a woman is disturbed by a smell emanating from her neighbor’s apartment as she heads back to her own, and in an exceedingly long and drawn out sequence, it is discovered by the police that the neighbor, Ruth Davenport, is dead. Not just dead, though. Beheaded, missing her body, but placed very carefully atop a decapitated male corpse under the covers in her bed. So a death as shocking for this small town as Laura Palmer’s was in Twin Peaks.

Then we’re following Doppelganger Cooper, whose long hair and sleazy wardrobe is visual cue enough to convey that he is a Bad Guy. He picks up some colleagues from a house that is, by his standards, very poorly guarded – their names are Ray and Darya. It’s unclear what exactly their roles are; the plan is unspoken if there is one at all. We head back to Buckhorn, where the police there discover that the fingerprints that are all over Ruth’s apartment belong to Bill Hastings, the local high school principle. This is a small town so everyone knows him and it’s understandably awkward when the detectives have to go and arrest him. His wife is more pissed that he’s going to miss dinner with friends than she is that her husband is being arrested for they-don’t-know-what, so right away we’re led to believe something is off with her. Bill is questioned about Ruth, who he claims to have only a passing acquaintance with, but it’s pretty obvious he knows her in the Biblical sense and they were having an affair at some point. Bill is locked up and doesn’t look good – he seems authentically horrified, but also like he knows more than he disclosed. The cops search the house under the glowering supervision of Phyllis Hastings, and they seem to find a chunk of flesh under the fishing equipment in Bill’s trunk. I guess an ear would have been too Lynchian even for Lynch. This concludes Part One of the season opener.

Part Two opens back with presumed murderer Bill Hastings, whose wife has come to visit him in jail. He admits that he had a bad dream where he was in Ruth’s apartment – but insists he wasn’t there in real life. They fight viciously over their separate affairs – his with Ruth, hers with their lawyer George, and the interaction ends with her basically gleefully telling him he’s fucked because his very real prints are all over her room and he’s going to rot in prison. Not exactly the reaction you’d expect from even a moderately unsatisfied wife. Bill has all the tell-tale signs of a BOB possession, which we were privy to with Leland Palmer in the first series. As we pan along the jail cells were Bill is understandably losing his shit, we see a weird, gray, statue-like man sitting on the bed two cells down, and he simply fades away. This all begs the question: was Bill possessed and driven to kill his lover in the same nightmarish way that Leland was compelled to molest and murder his daughter Laura Palmer?

Meanwhile, it seems Bad Dale is somehow tied up in Ruth Davenport’s murder case. We see for sure that Mrs. Hastings is no innocent when she arrives home, where Doppelganger Dale is waiting for her in the shadows. They seem acquainted – he even tells her that she “did good, imitating human nature perfectly.” Wait, does thing imply Phyllis is the meat suit of a different BOB-like entity, or else another manifestation of BOB (this brings up an interesting related question: Is Bad Dale BOB, or is Doppelganger Dale a totally separate entity? A manifestation of BOB? Was that thing in the jail cell another being from the Black Lodge, or again some sort of version of BOB? It’s too early to make assumptions; any of those theories or none may be true)!? He then pulls a gun on her, informs her it’s George’s, and shoots her dead in the hallway. The discovery of her body is going to seriously fuck with the investigation of Ruth Davenport’s murder, it’s safe to assume.

We cut away to a swanky hotel in Las Vegas, where a Mr. Todd implores his assistant Roger to “tell her she has the job.” Roger asks why Mr. Todd allows an unnamed man to coerce him into doing unnamed things, and the response is “You better hope you never get involved with someone like him.” Introducing brand new characters this way is maddeningly pretentious (like being asked to solve a math equation when there are 3 unknown variables), but I suspect the point is to build suspense and suggest that the unknown “him” is either the same billionaire funding Sam’s glass cube project, or perhaps Bad Dale.

Speaking of Bad Dale, he and his cronies are at a diner, and we find out he hooked up with these two because he needs information from Bill Hasting’s secretary.  Unfortunately for Ray and Darya, Bad Dale lands proof they were contracted to kill him by tapping a conversation they had on the motel phone. Why and who wants him dead is a mystery (as is everything else in these two episodes), so Bad Dale kills Darya after a long period of menacing her for information about who hired her. We see that Bad Dale has access to FBI databases through a briefcase laptop – who did he steal this from, I wonder?

Back to Good Dale Cooper, who is in the Red Room now with Laura Palmer, speaking backwards like the other beings native to this un-reality (It’s always been my own personal theory that the reverse speak/backward-movement-in-forward- motion gimmick is meant to imply that the Red Room /Black Lodge are a place outside of time, where the future and the past coincide simultaneously –akin to True Detective’s “time is a flat circle” idea.  Earlier, one-armed MIKE even asks Cooper if it’s the future or the past, which makes it seem more likely that when in the Black Lodge it’s unclear to the inhabitants at what point in history it is in our linear reality. The effect is less annoying when I consider it in this way, at any rate). Coop seems unsure whether this is actually Laura or not, because she’s been dead since before he got to this realm. She cryptically responds “I am dead, yet I live.” She whispers a secret in his ear, and then is ripped away from the room in a violent and confusing manner that evokes the carnage that befell Sam and Tracey in NYC.

We spend a lot of time with Good Dale in the Red Room, where he next encounters a thin tree with a pulsating talking brain, who self-identifies as an evolution of “The Arm” (previous manifestations possibly include the dancing dwarf from the original series). This is some straight up Doctor Who type shit, and I fully sympathize with people who “just can’t” when this sort of gimmick crops up because it’s bizarre even for an already bizarre dream-like sequence.

You can't even make this shit up...

The Arm tells Good Dale that it’s been 25 years and it’s time for him to return to his body – but unfortunately before he can return to our world, Doppelganger Dale has to come back to the Black Lodge – which we hear him say explicitly before he kills Darya he refuses to do. Dale meanders around the corridors outside of the Red Room, and at one point The Arm pops up, screams “NON EXISTENT” at him with full Dalek inflection, and the iconic zig-zag floor swallows Dale, dropping him through a jumbled black and white haze, after which he materializes in the very same box that Sam is supposed to be watching, only we don’t see him or Tracy. The cube explodes – was Good Dale the creepy thing that attacks Sam and Tracy on the couch!? Did this take place before or after that event? Was he the thing the guy before Sam saw? We don’t know and if we find out at all it won’t be for a while so I wouldn’t stress it too much.

If you’re upset that we spent so much time with new people and not much with the old cast, I was too, but with so many more episodes ahead, I wasn’t too bothered. The most important of these check-ins are the phone conversations between a frail Log Lady and an aged Deputy Hawk. The Log Lady says that Hawk will find something that is missing that is tied in with his Native American heritage, and it involves Special Agent Dale Cooper. The actress who portrays the Log Lady shot these scenes while battling cancer and later died after her scenes wrapped, so they feel especially raw and poignant.  There’s an irritatingly literal vignette with Sheriff’s Department Secretary Lucy, a cute moment where Lucy and Deputy Andy recall that their son Wally is 24 so Agent Cooper went missing even before his birth. We see Ben Horne and his hippified brother Jerry at the Great Northern (Ben’s new secretary is Ashley Judd!), where they have a humorous exchange about whether Ben is sleeping with the “new girl…woman” after Ben expositorily mentions that a skunk incident at the hotel upset a valued customer from New York, and Jerry expounds his lucrative pot-growing side business. We end Part Two of the opener at the Bang Bang Bar, which is still a happening place with a chanteuse-fronted synth pop band playing to a crowd of people including Shelly and James, who were teens when last we saw them. James spots Shelly from across the bar while Shelly is complaining to her girlfriends that her daughter is dating a jerk named Steve (and she would know a thing or two about shitty boyfriends). Her friends are a little skeeved by the attention but Shelly brushes it off, saying “James is still cool. He’s always been cool.”

Here’s to hoping there’s more clarity about Good Dale/Bad Dale and that we get to see more of the characters we know and love in the episodes to come.