‘The Bachelorette’ Review: The Douche-baggery Reaches New Levels of Amazing

June 2, 2016

Well, kids, here we are in Week 2 of the nonsense known as The Bachelorette, and I’m already thinking of hitting myself over the head repeatedly with a 2 by 4. It would certainly be less painful than watching this insanity that is on my television screen. In week two of the debauchery there are 20 “men” left in Testosterone Mansion, all vying, whining, punching, fighting, and drinking over this “woman” that they are all “falling in love with” and have known for all of 27 seconds. The alcohol is flowing freely, and this week, the douche-baggery whose name is CHAD, is in rare form. He begins by making a toast in the house with all the dudes: “A toast to JoJo and life. Fuck all you guys, I’m gonna make her my wife.” He laughs at his dumb toast humor, and all the guys in the house begin their mission of hating him. He says to camera: “I can do better than any of them with everything. Once she goes out with me, she’ll see I’m way better than all the other guys.” He then goes outside, puts a suitcase between his thighs, and starts doing pull-ups as the other men watch and mock him. Later, Head-Douchebag / Host Chris Harrison comes in and explains there will be 2 group dates and 1 one-on-one Date this week. He leaves the first Date card, and exits to go continue masturbating in the Fantasy Suite with a wilted rose.

GROUP ORGY (I mean … Date) IS ON FIRE:

The limo shows up in front of the mansion, and it immediately bursts into flames. All the men run outside, to see whats going on, and nobody does anything. Even Grant, who is ACTUALLY a firefighter in real life, just stands there. Chase wonders aloud: “Is JoJo in there? Should I go get help?” They all stand there frozen , as if struck by lightning. If JoJo WAS in there, she would be dead now. Great job, guys. But of course, JoJo is not in there. This is just one more lame tactic by this show to create drama where there isn’t any. A fire truck pulls up, JoJo jumps out looking all sexed-up in her bunker gear, and proceeds to put the flames out with her long hose. All the men applaud, and then she steals some of them away for their group date, which is at a Firefighting Training Facility. Once they arrive, the Fire Chief explains they will be put through the ringer with a series of tests to see how they would be as real firefighters, having to “save” JoJo in an emergency situation. Since Grant is an actual firefighter, he better win all these challenges, or he will never be able to show his face back at work again. The men get into gear and JoJo starts licking and smacking her lips together because that is what she does when she gets all horny. Daniel, the “Canadian”, says to camera: “The last time I pulled a hose like that was when I was back home at my apartment.” Really? A joke about you masturbating at home? Who wants to picture that right now? Ewwww. Meanwhile, Wells (dumbest name ever) is a guy with a small body and an even tinier head, and he is having trouble getting through all of the exercises and challenges. When he looks as if he will pass out, the Chief sends EMS over to look at him and give him water. JoJo follows and sits with him, which of course makes the other guys jealous. This is their brilliant dialogue while sitting together:

Wells: I’m about to faint.
JoJo: Awwww, don’t faint.
Wells: I always feel that way around you. Like I’m about to faint.
JoJo: Awwww…….

AWKWARD SILENCE.

Meanwhile, back at Testosterone Mansion, the remaining men not on the Group Date are writing a song and practicing it in the house. It is a song about JoJo and it is god-awful. James plays his guitar and leads everyone along as if they are the goddamn Von Trapp family, and they wail out their awful lyrics of: “Oh JoJo!!!! JoJo!!! Where did ya go?? JoJo!!!! JoJo!!!” Could someone please hit me in the head again with that 2 by 4? Thanks. Chad does not approve of the singing, and he does not participate. Instead, he stays in the kitchen making his 15th protein shake of the day and munching on every single piece of food in the house, while mocking them for their collective immaturity.

BACK TO THE ORGY (Group Date):

The fire chief chooses 3 men from the group to race one another through a series of challenges, ending in “saving” JoJo, who is in distress on the roof of a large building. He chooses Grant, Luke, and Wells – because they didn’t kill him the first time a few minutes ago, so let’s traumatize him and his tiny head a second time, shall we? First men to the top of the roof wins the challenge, and more time with JoJo on the date. So the three men race – chopping wood running with hoses, knocking doors down with axes – and poor Wells struggles to get through it with his tiny head. In the end, Grant wins, of course. He IS an actual firefighter, after all. He reaches the rooftop and takes JoJo in his arms, carrying her out to safety. All the men pout and whine as they see them together, and Luke, who came in second place, is very dramatic into camera: “The line between victory and defeat is so thin.” Ah, yes, Luke. Yes it is. Grant and JoJo use their private time to kiss a lot, and then JoJo joins all the men and does a toast to them. Now it is the night-time portion of this orgy, where each dude gets some time with her and then she gives out the group date rose. She pulls Wells aside and told him she loved his energy today. Her time with Erectile-Dysfunction Evan was lame as hell, with him and his mop for hair saying: “I’m the only one here who has kids!” And her response: “THAT’S AMAZING!!!!” Really? Is it? Luke and her go to the rooftop. He asks her “Do you want to wear my jacket?” She says “No. Just want a hug. Mmmmmmm”. Then she smacks her lips together and attacks him with a make-out session. Man, she wants him BAD. He says to camera: “That’s the way first kisses are supposed to go. I really want that rose.” But alas, he does not get it. Wells and his tiny head get the rose. Luke is confused and baffled. “I thought we had a clear connection”, he muses to camera. Ah yes, dear Luke. But the line between victory and defeat is oh, so thin, isn’t it?

DEREK AND JOJO AND CHOICES:

“In life, you have to make a lot of choices, and I feel like you can learn a lot about someone by the choices they make.” Ah yes, JoJo. That is deep. But do you really feel that way, or is that the line the producers gave you to read into the camera about your date with Derek? Either way, these two wacky kids go on an adventure in a car, where they are given a series of choices/decisions to make, in order to determine what their date will end up being. Riding along, their first choice is SKY or SEA. They decide sky. They get to the destination, and then choose NORTH or SOUTH. They choose north. That brings them into a private jet, which lands in San Fransisco. Their next choice is Golden Gate Bridge or Lombard Street. They choose the bridge, and have a picnic by the water with a view of the bridge. She says her next decision is easy, and kisses him.

Meanwhile, back at Muscle Mansion, Dumb and Dumber (Chad and Daniel, who is from Canada) have the stupidest conversation known to humanity, which goes a little something like this:

Chad: Yeah, dude, you gotta watch the nice guys, man. They have an agenda.

Daniel: Yeah man. I agree. Yeah.

Chad: They all think that I’m the asshole, ya know? But I’m not. I’m like, the nice one, even though I come across as the asshole. But them – those nice dudes, they are assholes.

Daniel: Yeah man. I totally agree.

Chad: Like, if you were making a protein shake with all the dudes here in this house, and you, like took them all and blended them up, right? If you blended it up …….

Daniel: Yeah. What would you get?

Chad: It would be, like, you’d have, like, that shake would have, like …zero chance. Like, nothing. (WHAT THE FUCK)

Chad: Dude, I knew you were cool the minute I met you.

Daniel: I knew you were cool too. But I have, like, really good intuition, ya know? HIGH FIVE.

BACK TO DEREK AND JOJO:

The night portion of their date begins. This is the part where the couple usually has a romantic dinner at a table set up in the middle of nowhere outside , and neither person ever eats anything on their plate, ever. NEVER. She asked him about past relationships, and he was hesitant at first to tell. Then she opened up about her and Ben from last season, and how much it hurt when he said he loved her but then didn’t choose her. He then feels all comfy to open up in return, and tells her about how his last girlfriend hurt him by being with someone else. “I was ready for marriage, and then there was another person in her life. I closed myself off for a while.” So, of course, the next logical thing to do after such a traumatic breakup, is go on national tv to find love, right? Right. She gives him the rose, and they kiss more. Then they kiss more again by a waterfall . He seems much too innocent and nice for this show, therefore I predict right now he will get his heart shred to a million little pieces by JoJo.

GROUP ORGY (Date) NUMERO DOS: ESPN AND DOUCHE-NATION:

So group date number two gets in full swing, and Alex says to camera: “I’m going to have to spend today with a super-douche. Chad is toxic.” The group of men and JoJo go to ESPN studios, where the show “Sports Nation” is filmed, and they are joined by the two co-hosts, Max and Marcales. The hosts tell the men that they will be competing on their own version of the show, called “Bachelor Nation.” They will be scored and analyzed, and then JoJo will decide the winner for the day. The first challenge to see who is worthy of some JoJo love, was a Touchdown Dance that they each had to come up with on the spot and do in front of everyone. What on earth that proves, I have no idea, but it sure was incredibly humiliating to watch. The second challenge involved each guy being spun around 10 times with a ring in his hand, then he had to stumble over to JoJo and propose to her. Each guy went one by one and had their own version of cheesy proposals. Chad did not approve, calling them all fake and phony. “I’m surrounded by children, playing games. They’re all here as a joke.” When its Chad’s turn to propose, he gives her a half-assed: “Will you marry me?” with a shrug of non-enthusiasm. She says to him: “Well what are all the things you love about me?” He replies: “I feel like in that moment, you should already know that.” Followed by: “Startin off a little naggy here.” Yeah. Calling her a nag – not exactly the most romantic proposal in history. To camera: “She wants a man. Not someone who is gonna kiss her ass. ” The last round is a Press Conference, where each guy sits next to JoJo and is asked questions by “reporters” that they answer in front of her. One of the questions is who should JoJo NOT choose today, to which all the guys say a resounding CHAD!!!! He says: “Why? Cuz I don’t suck up? You all are so fake. How can you say you love her and you’re into her? You don’t even know her.” For some stupid reason, JoJo seems to LIKE his moronic behavior, and the fact that he is so damn dis-interested in her. She tells cameras “He is so honest. I like that about him.” Oh, yuck. He is a douche canoe. The co-hosts rank the men, and they come up with the Top 3. They rank the men in order as JAMES, CHAD, and ALEX. None of the guys can believe that Chad is in the Top 3, and they continue to hate him and comment about how much he eats in the house, because it’s the only thing they can think of to say.

NIGHT TIME MADNESS:

During the night-time portion of the date, JoJo first takes James aside, who is like Howdy Doody, but even more GOLLY GEE innocent. He reads her something that he wrote about her, which is really sweet and way too nice for this silly-ass superficial show. Part of it says: “I want something real. I think that something is you.” Okay, it’s not Shakespeare, but its sweet. She cries as he reads it, and then tells him she is honored, and really glad he is here. Then he kisses her. Next up, Chad and JoJo talk, and of course, he shows her his sweet side by telling her about his mom that died 6 months ago. She is so very moved, and thinks its AMAZING that he is on the show after going through that. They make a wish in the wishing pond together, and then they make out. He tells cameras: “I’m starting to develop real feelings for her, and that is so unlike me.” Every guy tells cameras that if Chad gets the rose tonight, they will start rethinking their life. Well, that’s a bit dramatic, but maybe you should start doing that anyway if you are on this stupid show. Not that it matters, because Douche Chad does not get the rose. Howdy Doody does. And he is shocked. “Oh my!!!! Oh wow. My goodness. Thank you!!!” He looks like he might cry. Chad does not approve.

COCKTAIL PARTY AND COLLECTION OF DOUCHE-BAGS:

Beginning of evening, Chad is missing from the mansion. He is sitting out front waiting for JoJo to pull up to the mansion in the limo. He waits there for her with a drink, and greets her as she gets out. He asks her to go for a walk. They walk awkwardly, he kisses her awkwardly, and she awkwardly says “Oh. Thank you.” You never want to hear a half-assed “thank you” after you kiss someone. It’s just weird. When the two walk into the house together, the men are beyond pissed off. The guys confront Chad like a bunch of gang-members. It was like he was on trial for something. Seriously one of the dumbest and most pointless dialogues ever in the history of life.

ALEX: Whats up with what just happened out there?

CHAD: I was getting some air.

ALEX: Oh, really. Getting some air, huh? Did you happen to see JoJo out there while you were getting this air?

CHAD: Yes, I happened to see her. She approached me as I was getting said air. (as he laughs and eats cheese)

ALEX: Hmmm. It just seems odd that you would get that chance, to see her alone, before she came inside.

CHAD: (who is now eating a meatball on a stick) Was just getting some air, bro.

At this point, the men disperse a bit, and Chad goes back inside to grab a ginormous plate of food. All the men comment on how much he eats in the house. Vinny, who hasn’t had a line of dialogue until right now, wonders: “Is he here for the free food, or to find love?” Grant agrees, saying: “Chad has consumed enough food tonight to feed an entire class of kinder-gardeners, or maybe even fourth grade!” (what an odd statement, breaking it down by grade) Alex adds: “He just chews with his mouth open and laughs. He is just meat and protein. Meat and protein. ” Chad finds it hilarious that all the guys are obsessed with talking about him so much. “I can’t make it one lap around the house without hearing my name”, he observes, while chomping another meatball on a stick.

But that’s only the beginning of the Chad Chronicles. Things get worse very quickly, because people like to drink alcohol very quickly, and walk around shirtless for no reason, and then they threaten to fight each other, because they are MEN, of course. As Alex is talking with JoJo, Chad approaches and interrupts him. Alex to camera: “It is something out of a horror film, in my perspective, that he came up and interrupted the small time I had with her.” A horror film??? Really? Do we exaggerate much? Chad takes her away and tells her that he “actually thought” about her, which was different for him. She says “Oh. That’s good.” She laughs nervously, then tells him that she is still trying to figure him out, and sends him on his way to eat more meatballs on a stick.

Later that night, everyone gets all testeron-y about Chad’s behavior again, and they confront him. They circle around him outside like vultures, and they start in on him as he eats a pineapple slice followed by some cheese and then perhaps mini-frankfurters. “You’ve been crushin’ the food, dude. And getting some extra time in. And smiling about that cuz it seems like you don’t care.” He responds with: “I don’t care. I don’t care about you guys.” Finally it fizzles out a bit, and Chad talks to the cameras. “They confronted me about nothing. ‘Oh we are a bunch of butthurt dudes who are going to confront you slightly.’ It was like ‘West Side Story’ man. Bunch of dudes just surrounding me. It was like the Care Bears telling me they’re gonna kick my ass.” He goes and has another therapy session with his buddy Daniel, the “Canadian” muscle-meat #2. Their brilliance astounds me.

Next up, Chad decides to interrupt Erectile-Dysfunction Evan, whose dick probably goes limp at the very thought of losing precious time with JoJo. ED Evan sheepishly leaves JoJo, and then regrets it instantly. “I should have pushed harder with him.” He goes back to the circle of men, and tells on Chad, at which point Alex comes to the rescue. “If someone isn’t willing to stop Chad’s behavior, than Chad will have the entire night with her.” So manly Alex approaches manly Chad in the middle of the woods as Chad chews on a chicken wing. This brilliance happens:

ALEX: Hey Chad. You’re makin all kinds of moves. Like, move ten. Lots of moves.

CHAD: Fuck you then, man. I gave her time.

ALEX: You just cut off , uh, what’s his name there, Evan. Let guys do what they need to do.

CHAD: That’s what I’m doing, man.

ALEX: It’s weird that you’re always lurking around the corner. Like, go drink a beer or something.

CHAD: Fuck you for real. If you don’t back off, you’re gonna lose your teeth.

ALEX: You think I’m scared of you? You’re the most disrespectful person in this house.”

Yes, this was an actual conversation. No, I have NOT ONE CLUE what on earth these two jackasses were talking about. Yes, these are two “men”, and not two 17-year-old boys. Where’s that 2 by 4 again???

ROSE CEREMONY:

All the men separately tell the cameras that if she keeps Chad, they will RETHINK THEIR LIVES!!! Chad is eating during the rose ceremony, and smirking up a storm. He comments in voiceover about the other men. “She is gonna keep Alex around because she doesn’t want America to think she hates short people.” When she calls Christian’s name, Chad’s thoughts are: “I don’t even know who Christian is. Oh, another short guy. ” Finally, Chad gets the very last rose. Of course. Did you really think she would send him home? He is the only thing on this show that is obnoxious enough to be slightly interesting and get them some ratings. Besides, its funny to watch him slowly eating all the food.

She gets rid of James the “Bachelorette Superfan”, who was pointless, so now he can go back home and hold his “parties” where he watches the show on his couch with 2 other people. She also let 2 other guys go that I have never seen or noticed who they were. Chad proclaims: “I’m not gonna be writing her any songs like these other guys. I’m gonna keep drinking protein shakes, keep eating the food, and keep doing what I do.” Okay then. WTF???

NEXT WEEK: Chad drinks Canadian Daniel’s protein shake in the Fantasy Suite while Chris Harrison watches. At least two people cry, and two more go shirtless. Alcohol is consumed.

The Smut Continues: Starz Renews ‘Outlander’ For Two More Seasons

Jen Stayrook

June 1, 2016

Outlander fans, rejoice! Starz has committed to two more seasons of the historical romance series based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon.

“Starz Chief Executive Officer Chris Albrecht announced today the network has ordered “Book Three” and “Book Four” for the Golden Globe®-nominated STARZ Original series “Outlander,” the critically-acclaimed original series executive produced by Ronald D. Moore and adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s international bestselling books. Once again partnering with Sony Pictures Television, this is the first multi-book pickup for “Outlander,” assuring the series will run for several more years. The highly-anticipated second installment of the series premiered on STARZ in April 2016.

“Book Three” will be based on the third of the eight books in the Outlander series, entitled Voyager, followed by “Book Four” based on the fourth book in the series, Drums of Autumn.”

Currently, Outlander is just over halfway through its second season following Gabaldon’s second book in the series, Dragonfly in Amber. Outlander stars Caitriona Balfe as the lead, Claire Fraser and Sam Heughan as her 18th century husband, Jamie Fraser.

Outlander has been incredibly faithful to the series and I’m excited to see where Starz takes the story, but I am curious how certain events like time jumps and children will be handled in future season. That said, they’ve done well so far, so I see no reason not to trust them now.

Outlander airs Saturdays on Starz at 9pm EST.

‘Person of Interest’: “Sotto Voce” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 31, 2016

So many feelings, so little time…. Person Of Interest through the eyes of Alyssa. And this isn’t just Root and Shaw feels, this is every character in the freaking show feels.

Two weeks in a row Person of Interest begins with a Shaw scene. She has made her way from South Africa to Mexico, by way of a human smuggling caravan. When the men driving the caravan kick out the family who had paid them to be transported across the border, Shaw emerges, staring out into the distance, with Old Western music playing in the background. As always, Shaw does what Shaw does best. You know just casually saving everyday people while covertly traveling from South Africa to the Big Apple. But, most importantly, Shaw in a cowboy hat.

Number of the week is Terry Easton, a locksmith who John discovers breaking into a security firm and getting ready to set off a bomb. John talks Terry out of blowing up the building and learns that Terry is being blackmailed. Terry’s wife was kidnapped in the middle of the night and the kidnapper threatened her life if he didn’t set this bomb off. And the person blackmailing Terry is…… The Voice.

Okay, well that was anticlimactic. Wasn’t The Voice only in one episode two seasons ago. To recap, we first/last heard The Voice in Season 3 Episode 15 “The Call” [Let me tell ya about the call that changed my destiny]. The Voice attempted to blackmail a 911 operator into deleting a 911 call by threatening to murder a boy and blow up a building. I mean, don’t get me wrong it was a pretty good episode that involved Harold going undercover, but still, I kind of had forgotten all about it. Harold on the other hand, has not forgotten The Voice. John tries to get Fusco to help him with the case, especially because Fusco still has not been assigned a new partner, but Fusco abruptly declines. He is, justifiably, still upset with the gang since they won’t explain to him why he was blown up in the basement of the building. He tells John he has his own police work to do and goes to interrogate a cab driver named Amir who turns out to be a hitman. I didn’t realize how emotionally invested I was in the Fusco/John relationship until this moment. Seeing the hurt on John’s face when Fusco gave him the cold shoulder really got to me. John is so much looser and fun when he was around Fusco. He was almost, dare I say it, enjoying himself.

John heads over to an abandoned warehouse, sans Fusco, to save Terry’s wife but the warehouse is a setup. Instead he ends up marching a dozen or so uniforms into a building that blows up moments later. Actually, let me just give you the quick version of this. Terry is actually The Voice. His wife was just isn’t real, and he purposely broke into that office building to get arrested. The reason he did this was so he could kill Amir (the guy Fusco nailed earlier) who was a former hitman of Terry’s. The reason Terry placed bomb threats all around the city was so the precinct would be empty for his Plan B which was to hire the Templarios gang to get arrested and then break out to kill Amir. As fate has it, John and Fusco are the only cops left in the building when the Templarios break out of their cell. As such, they are forced to work together to save Amir’s life (which they fail at), as well as their own (which they don’t fail at). And when Terry fires a shot at John, it is Fusco who jumps in front of Terry, to take a bullet for his partner. These two are partner soulmates! It is then, FINALLY, that John makes the decision to tell Fusco the truth. He brings Fusco up to the roof, throws Fusco’s phone over the ledge and reveals to Fusco that they are in the midst of an AI apocalypse. No these are not tears in my eye, it is just allergy season.

Meanwhile, Harold heads over to the safe house so he can get some information regarding The Voice from Mr. Carl Elias. After Harold gets the intel he needs, he attempts to pursue The Voice alone, but Elias will not allow this.

Elias: “I’ve already lost my two friends. I cannot afford to lose another.”

Elias considers Harold a friend! My heart!

Elias brings Harold to an abandon school, which is now that home to a very sketchy, very skilled bombmaker. The same Elias used to blow up his father in fact. If The Voice had a bazillion bombs made, this is the guy who made them. Elias uses his Elias charm to get the location of The Voice’s lair and they head to the Soho. I was a little disappointed here. They specifically said Soho when they were talking about where The Voices lair was, so I was fully expecting it to be on evil person lair in an elevator straight to the apartment penthouse. But no, it is just a crumby old basement. That basement might as well have been in The Heights. Harold and Elias discover that The Voice has been watching them for a while and planned this entire ruse. The Voice is …dun dun dun… Terry Easton the locksmith.

Harold heads to the precinct and tries to stop Terry as he is escaping to his unmarked getaway car hidden in a no-camera zone. He urges Terry to turn himself in. Ugh, hardcore eyeroll Harold. Turn himself in? Yeah that sounds like something this evil mastermind would totally do after setting off bombs across the city and causing a huge shoot in a police precinct. Luckily, Elias is there to protect Harold from getting shot by this psychopath and they let said psychopath drive away safe and sound. Well that is what would have happened if Harold had his way. After letting Terry drive a safe distance away, Elias flips a switch to explode Terry’s car.

Elias: “Come on Harold, you brought me for a reason, you must have known I would do something like this.”

I really do not understand why they made such a deal about bringing The Voice back. They treated it like it was this recurring villain when in reality we met him once. It was like they were trying to tie up loose ends of a story line that I thought already was packaged with a neat little bow.

The Machine has given Root a new mission this week: to track down a radio engineer who is either working for or about to be killed by Samaritan. The Machine has also given Root a new toy, a big ass gun. Root is set to go.

Root is on the roof casing the Samaritan radio guy, while talking to herself which is actually really cute. Just as she witnesses the engineer meeting up with Samaritan ops, they all get shot to death. Root moves the scope of her gun to see where the shots came from, and sees a petite female in all black fleeing from the scene.

I AM PRETTY SURE IT IS SHAW. Root does not realize that the blur from the adjacent roof thousands of feet away is Shaw, so she chases after what she thinks is a bad guy. Root follows the shooter down to Central Park where, after a little hand to hand tussle, she looks up and realizes who she had been fighting. IT IS SHAW! THEY ARE REUNITED!

As soon as Root is able to process that Shaw is truly right in front of her a smile forms across her face and she scrambles to pull Sameen into a loving embrace and caress her. But then reality sets in, prompting Root to ask what Shaw is doing there in Central Park. Shaw becomes distant, and after telling Root she is here to kill Samaritan agents of course, tries to peace out. Yeah, no, Root has been searching up and down the world for you, she is not letting you go that easy Sameen. Shaw reveals that she escaped a week ago, but she couldn’t get in contact because it wasn’t safe:

Shaw: “When they had me they put me through these tests. These simulations.”

Root: “Simulations?”

Shaw: “Over 7,000 of them and always with the same goal. To turn me against all of you. To kill you.

Root: “Well obviously they failed.”

Shaw: “No. They didn’t. Because in all the simulations. That’s exactly what I did.”

Oh Shaw, why are you lying to the love of your life right now?!?

Root tries to convince Shaw that this is real, she is not in a simulation and urges Shaw to go back to the subway, which couldn’t have been a worse move since that is what simulation Root said all the time.

She pushes Root away and pulls out her gun.

Shaw: “The simplest way to break someone is to rob them of their reality, and they did that well. And maybe you’re right, maybe I am safe but as long as I’m alive you’ll never be safe.”

Root: “What do you mean”

Shaw: “I could turn on you at any moment. And even if I don’t I could lead them to the Machine.”

Root: “That’ll never happen.”

Shaw: “I don’t know if I’m calling the shots anymore. And neither do you. 7000 simulations. I killed a lot of people, but the one person that I couldn’t kill was you. So I killed myself. Over and over again.” Shaw raises the gun to her own head “And I’d rather do that here and now than risk your life.”

It is now Root’s turn.

Root: “Okay Shaw. We’ll play it your way. You can’t live with me, I can’t live without you. So if you die, I die too” ::she raises her gun to her own neck:: “I really don’t know whats going to happen when we pull the trigger. I’ve never been much of a believer but hey, you never know. Guess we’re about to find out, aren’t we.”

Oh! My! God! This is Shakespeare type love right here! They are both willing to die for each other. The only thing keeping me together is knowing I have to finish this recap. So essentially The Workprint is currently keeping me alive.

Shaw is taken aback by this. This never happened in the simulation. And I have two theories for why this never manifested in the simulations. The first is that Samaritan does not have the capability to simulate something it doesn’t understand, and that is truly and fully putting yourself before others. That is why they couldn’t stop Sameen from killing herself instead of Root 7,000 times. On that same note, Samaritan could not understand love which follows the same reasoning as above. My second theory is that while Shaw loves Root, and she knows Root loves her back, I don’t think she was capable of letting herself realize how much Root loved her. Letting herself believe that Root loved her so much that she would sacrifice herself the same way Shaw would is a huge thing and even simulation Shaw couldn’t let herself be that vulnerable.

The next day, the sun is shining, and the grass is green as the whole gang gathers down under the bridge (including Fusco) so Root can introduce Shaw back into the fold.

The entire time, Sameen keeps rubbing her fingers over her neck to assure herself that this is real, that there is no chip. It is heartbreaking, but joyous at the same time. Everything is happy and perfect! Until next episode of course where the previews has promised us someone important will die.

Other Things:

Did anyone else notice that when John first comes up to Fusco he is moving around the mouse like he has never touched a computer before.

’12 Monkeys’: 7 Game-Changing Moments in ‘Meltdown’

Nicole C

May 30, 2016

12 Monkeys

Season 2, Episode 7: “Meltdown”

Air Date: May 30, 2016

This week’s 12 Monkeys episode is a heartbreaking one as not only do we say goodbye to a character, but everyone’s world is turned upside down in the catastrophic events that happen in 2044.

Here are the 7 game-changing events that you should know:

Jones and Eckland Get Busy

When the timeline was altered earlier this season, Jones found herself catching up with this new version of 2044 and discovered that her other self had a romantic relationship with Dr. Eckland. While she was completely flabbergasted by the situation, the mischievous scientist told her that he gets to woo her all over again and boy did he ever! We finally see the two lovers together in Jones’ quarters, him with his shirt partially undone and her in a robe. I’m sooooo happy for these two!!!

Cassie Goes Back to the Future with Disastrous Consequences

Reeling from her kidnapping and subsequent encounter with the Witness, Cassie finally returns to 2044 but unknowingly brings a whole mess of trouble with her. She is still feeling the effects of the “full immersion” from the red forest tea and keeps seeing the Witness in the facility, making her question her own sanity. Cassie seems to hear Olivia’s voice talking her through the red forest and she follows it to the splinter room and there she sees the 12 Monkeys leader again (tinkering with the machine) before waking up in her chamber with no memory of how she got there.

Jones though decides to check the time stream data of when Cassie was in 2016 to see if there are any anomalies that give credence to Dr. Railly’s claim that the Witness was physically in room 607 at the Emerson Hotel. But what they find is another tether that is anchored at the facility in 2044. Jones tells Dr. Adler to recalibrate the machine and run another test but something goes terribly wrong. Everything goes haywire as the machine begins to overload splinter radiation because of too much power. They aren’t able to cut the power down from the console for some unknown reason and so someone has to do it manually from the core. If that doesn’t happen it’ll explode taking the base with it.

Craziness ensues as earlier splinter volunteers appear totally disfigured having been lost in the time stream and anything hit by the radiation vanishing into the unknown. Deacon and Eckland decide to go get piece needed to fix the machine while Cole and Cassie head to the core to shut the power down and run into Ramse and Sam. We learn to little too late that it was Dr. Railly, being controlled by the Witness who had caused all of this. She ends up taking Sam to the core room and locking it to prevent the boys from entering and even sticks a gun to the poor kid.

Eckland’s Heroic Sacrifice

Once Eckland and Deacon come back from finding the spare part plus dealing with the poor soldiers from 1950 that accidentally got splintered to 2044, the scientist decides to do the most ridiculous, heart-wrenching, hair-pulling, declaration of love ever for Jones. After the splinter room is evacuated, Eckland goes in himself with Jones helpless to stop him. He says that there’s nothing like going out through a wild romantic gesture to a beautiful woman all in the name of love. In desperation Jones screams that she doesn’t love him so that he might come back inside but he counters that she did once and that can’t be erased. My heart is melting. Once he puts in the spare part, Eckland begins to dissolve with Jones unable to do anything but watch. This scene killed me, just when she had something good in her life it gets ripped from her.

Cassie is Trapped Inside the House of Cedar and Pine

While the Witness has control of her body, Cassie is stuck inside the house within the red forest. Somehow the full immersion has allowed the leader of the 12 Monkeys to tether himself to the doctor and take over her consciousness. Through her he was able to sabotage the machine without Cassie remembering what was happening. However, while trapped she sees the Witness standing outside and behind him looms some kind of industrial city with the mysterious symbol (that we’ve seen on the necklace both Ramse and Olivia had as well as the neck tattoo on her) and the word “Titan” on the water tower.

Cole Gets Shot

Cole is able to get inside the core room via a river access that is used to help cool the power source. Once he gets in, he tries to reach Cassie but the Witness is still firmly in control with the real Doctor Railly trapped in another plane of existence. In the physical world she then sticks a gun at Sam, preventing him from being able to do anything. Ramse soon follows though and points his gun at Cassie, ready to take her out to save his kid. Cole, caught in a terrible situation between the woman he loves and his best friend, realizes that the real Cassie wouldn’t let him die and so he tells Ramse to shoot him instead. Thankfully it works and a door in the house opens for the doctor, allowing her full control of her body once more.

Sam Becomes Lost in Time

This poor kid really got a raw deal. He’s been telling his dad that his life is not worth everyone else’s, generally stayed out of people’s way in the facility, and is even extremely helping in helping Cole and Ramse get inside the core room but ultimately gets a bad deal. While the core gets shut down, there is a sudden surge of splinter radiation that sends Sam into the time stream. Where/when he ends up is unknown but someone wearing gloves (that looks suspiciously like the Witness’) offers a hand that he takes. Sam is a smart kid, he wouldn’t just go with some stranger so whoever this person is, it’s someone he already knows.

Ramse Leaves the Facility

After Sam’s disappearance, Ramse understandably decides to head out. He has a tense conversation with Jones and asks whether or not she thinks his son survived to which she responds unlikely, but he had been lost in time once and he’d found his way home. Unfortunately Ramse points out that Sam is just a boy. Both Kirk Acevedo and Barbara Sukowa gave amazing performances in this scene as two parents who’ve both lost their children. Jones feels the weight of her choices as she feels responsible for what happened to both Sam and Eckland.

Final Thoughts

It looked like Sam was with Cassie (wearing a suit) when she was imagining she was in the red forest, how was he there?
Deacon telling Ramse that he needs to get into the core room to stop Cassie because neither Cole or himself has it in them to kill her (awww!!)
Cassie looks super creepy when she as the Witness is speaking to Cole inside the core room
Brilliant performances from Amanda Schull, Kirk Acevedo, Michael Hogan, and Barbara Sukowa
Ramse and Jones looking at each other after Sam disappears was so painful to watch considering she had just lost someone herself (Eckland). It’s like she’s completely given up.

This was such an emotional and intense episode that left me reeling from the serious blow the Witness dealt Team Splinter. Though I wonder why the 12 Monkeys leader wanted to destroy the facility when he had needed it before. Could it mean that he no longer has any use for it because at least some of the Messengers have already been dispatched to cause the paradoxes?

Season 2’s narrative continues to be sinfully good as the story unfolds into a much larger picture. While we now know the Witness’ goal is to destroy time to eliminate death, who’s death is he trying to prevent? After this episode, we’ve learned that he can tether into a mind via the red forest tea, though I do wonder if this would work with any person, or is there something special about Cassie?

Also, where in time has Sam gone? All these new questions! Just when we think things can’t get any crazier, 12 Monkeys pulls it off and then some.

12 Monkeys airs Mondays 9/8 central on Syfy.

Catch up on all things 12 Monkeys here.

‘Game of Thrones’ – “Blood of my Blood”: Reunions For Everyone!

Jen Stayrook

May 30, 2016

This week on ‘Game of Thrones’: Bran dashes through the snow, Arya gets a job offer, Tommen is the worst.

Spoilers through Game of Thrones 606: “Blood of my Blood.”

Does no one honor their commitments anymore? I mean, honestly, the characters on Game of Thrones have lost their ability to stick with a bad situation and instead have opted to run away to something better. Jaime runs away from the Kingsguard, Bran runs away from the wights, Arya runs away from the Faceless Men. It’s dire times, my friends.

Family was this week’s theme and I guess it’s the promise of family that drives the plot forward in episode 6, if you want to get all sentimental about it. And I do because I’m a sap. If you’re a fan of the action and the stories involving dragons and doors, you might find this episode a bit lacking. But hey, this was definitely an episode that set up a lot of big moments so the pay off should, theoretically, be worth it in the end.

Also, let’s take a moment to celebrate that it has been five weeks since we last visited Dorne. Count your blessings, babies.

Beyond the Wall

Last week ended on a crushing note and I don’t think all of the Thrones’ fandom has properly recovered. I mean, there are people out there 3D printing Hodor door stoppers. Y’all need to talk to someone about your grief; I’m here for you.

Thankfully, we only had to watch the brief recap of that moment before being thrown back into the bitter cold of the far North. Meera is putting in her time at the gym and pretty soon she’s gonna be swole as hell.

You know who isn’t a good team player right now? Fucking Bran. While Meera is dragging his comatose ass, he’s dreaming about the past, probably eating lemon cakes in another lifetime. Meera (rightfully) gets sick of his shit and stops the sled because like hell is she fending off another wight attack while he sleeps. Girl, I feel you. But have no fear! ~~Coldhands~~ A stranger arrives with a fiery ball and chain–and Meera’s all where the eff do I get one–to fend off the wights who were marathon runners before they died. He picks up the two ~~children~~ teenagers and they ride off into the sunset to eat rabbits and do arts and crafts with blood.

Bran drifts in and out of his visions because he’s still hung over from that rager he had last night in King’s Landing where the Mad King Aerys said to “Burn them all!” You had to be there, I guess. Anyway, the mysterious totally-not-Coldhands stranger reveals himself and GASP OH MY GOD I AM SO SURPRISED it’s Uncle Benjen! Bran looks absolutely unfazed by the reveal and book readers everywhere grumble at his ungrateful ass. THAT IS A STARK. YOU RESPECT YOUR ELDERS, BRAN.

Benjen mentions that he and the Three-eyed Raven have been homies for a while now and every fan of the series is all, “You don’t call…you don’t write…” Come on, Benjen. At least Robb sent a letter before he died. Well, Book!Robb did. I dunno what that fool on the show was doing. JK JK.

Braavos

Oh behbeh Arya. Look at you with your little caterpillars on your head. How sweet. Now get to killing that nice lady before J’aqen goes all stabby on you. Because Braavos doesn’t have good cable TV, Arya watches the The Young and the Lannisters’ third act, in which our hero, Joffrey, dies. Arya laughs at his death and you have to wonder the damage she would do if she were the Stark given greenseer abilities.

Arya goes backstage again because the traveling show has security like S.T.A.R. Labs and she can just do whatever she wants. She and the actress formally known as Cersei share a moment and Arya remembers what it’s like to have a mother again, or at the very least an older female figure not trying to kill and or marry her off to someone. It’s an endearing scene and serves as a spark to remind Arya that no matter how many times she proclaims she is “No One”, she cannot kill an innocent person. In the end she saves the life of Cersei’s actress and high-tails it out of there to find Needle, setting up a final battle between Arya of House Stark and the Waif of House Hits Blind Girls.

Somewhere Out West in a Place Named Horn Hill

I didn’t want a Sam plot this week. I could have done without the Sam vomiting into a bucket scene a few weeks ago and I had zero interest in watching him return home to explain his complicated relationship to his parents. He and Gilly have a super uncomfortable with the Tarly family and Randyll Tarly does not hold back when it comes to berating his eldest son. You’d think for dude so concerned about making his son into a “man” he’d at least be like, “Well, you had sex. Half a high-five, pal.” But no, nothing.

I’ve been in the situation Sam was in at dinner and it’s not a fun place, so I respected the hell out of Gilly for standing up for Sam. Everyone at the table minus Randyll seemed to appreciate her concern for Sam as well, even getting the support of Mama Tarly, Melessa. Randyll tells Sam that he’ll put Gilly in the kitchens and take care of the bastard child, but that he’s never to be seen at Horn Hill again and so help him if he ever sees Sam eat a piece of bread again, there will be hell to pay. Sam says his goodbyes to Gilly and the wee baby Sam and leaves. Two seconds later he turns around and he’s like, “No, wait. Fuck that dude. He’s a dick. We’re leaving and taking his totally unguarded Valyrian steel sword, Heartsbane, too.”

I can’t see this ending badly for Sam, at all.

King’s Landing

Tommen is an idiot, thatisall.

Okay, but seriously, things are heading from bad to worse in King’s Landing. Not only are the Lannisters and Tyrells working together but Mace Tyrell has a goddamn feather duster on his head and people let him leave the house. Look at this shit.

The Lannisters and Tyrells, led by Jaime Lannister head to the Sept to free Queen Margaery before she goes on her walk of atonement. Before Margaery heads out, she gets to brush her hair and give Tommen a good squeeze. Tommen, who is naive as fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, agrees to meet with Margaery before her walk, thus giving both the Sparrow and Margaery time to manipulate him. Remember before when I said that the Sparrow let Margaery see Loras to break her instead of him? Well, I hope I was wrong and that instead, Margaery caught on his shenanigans. The Sparrow is clever, but Margaery ain’t no simple flower. She’s been trained by the Queen of Thorns. She knows that her way out is through Tommen. By choosing her words carefully and letting him assume she is now a woman of the Faith, she’s conned him into essentially taking her place.

Now she doesn’t have to do the walk of shame, but what she didn’t count on was the Lannisters and Tyrells teaming up to muscle out the Faith. Tommen allying with the Sparrow and the Faith puts the two great houses of Westeros in a bit of pickle, as now they have to sulk back to the Red Keep. Also, a word of advice, Tyrells, the Sparrow very clearly has control of the people of King’s Landing. Turning your backs to the thousands and thousands of peasants to face a dozen Faith Militant is not a smart idea. I wonder if that line of thinking comes back to haunt either house at some point.

Jaime, now disgraced by his nephew/son is removed as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and sent off to handle things in Riverrun, where the Blackfish is stirring up trouble. I know Tommen is a child king and I can’t expect him to make the best decisions, but it’s incredibly infuriating that all of the adults around him (Kevan Lannister, Mace Tyrell, Jaime) are made into simpletons just so that he can continue making stupid choices to advance the plot. It’s a sad day when we’re wishing that either Tywin or Joffrey were still alive to handle the nonsense that is the Faith Militant.

Meereen

Dear HBO, I love Dany. And unless she’s directly responsible for the death of Sansa, I will always love her. How-to-the-ever, can we pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease have her do something else besides give inspirational speeches. Don’t get me wrong, home girl Emilia Clarke does wonders screaming in a foreign tongue. But we need more from her. We need more than the same story of “I’m going to take this army whose love I’ve earned and sail them to Westeros to take back what is mine with fire and blood.” I love strong Dany. I love Dany riding a dragon. But I’ve seen it all before. Take those CGI funds you used on Drogon in that final scene and GIVE ME BACK SUMMER.

Hell, here’s an idea.

Random Thoughts

Bran will finally make it to Castle Black and he’ll be all, “Jon! Jon! You’ll never guess who I saw! Uncle Benjen!” And then Jon will stab Bran for his mockery and we’ll all cheer because I’m getting sick of his ass.

Things Bran saw in his visions:

Ned beheaded
The Red Wedding
The Battle of Hardhome
Mad King Aerys saying “Burn them all”
Wildfire in the catacombs under King’s Landing
Young Ned asking about Lyanna and his hand covered in blood
Crows

I have an issue with the House of Black and White. It’s supposed to be the place controlled by the Many-Faced God and instead it’s essentially a house of assassins, willing to be sold to the highest bidder. I’m not surprised, I just expected more. But….it is in the name. Black and white, cut and dry, bought and sold, kill or be killed.

SAM’S MOTHER IS LOVELY. She took Gilly and her baby in without hesitation and even after learning that her son was in love with a wildling, she defended her against her brutish husband. Sigh. Which means next week her head is on a spike because that’s how Game of Thrones operates.

I’m glad we skipped the whole training montage between Dany and Drogon. Watching her collect all 8 gym badges would have been awful.

Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO at 9pm EST.

‘Outlander’ – “The Fox’s Lair”: Back to Scotland Wit Ye!

Jen Stayrook

May 29, 2016

The Frasers are back in Scotland after a tumultuous time in the luxurious and treacherous France. The eighth episode, “The Fox’s Lair” offers quit the shift in tone for Outlander, changing even the opening sequence yet again to fit the main characters location. (Even if they didn’t change it, I could listen to the Skye Boat song for days.)

The most notable difference is in Claire and Jamie themselves, mirroring their relationship the last time Claire pleaded with Jamie to take then home to Lallybroch. I’m sure that for some, the Lallybroch episodes are a dull affair, acting as bridge episodes between the exciting segments of the series, but I’m a fan of the slowed down storytelling, relishing the moments where we can just watch Claire and Jamie as a couple in love, sharing stolen glances and touching one another whenever possible.

But even I cannot deny the stark contrast from France to Scotland. Everything in France was fraught with tension, every decision made by the Frasers reverberated through each social circle, culminating in the ability or inability to change one moment in history. And by the end of it all, their actions weren’t enough so the pair resigned themselves to failure in France and run back to Scotland, tails between their legs.

Fate and history seem adamant on coming to pass, however, as Jamie receives a letter detailing the Jacobite support in Scotland, with his forged signature attached to the message. This act by Charles leaves Jamie at a bit of an impasse, either support the bonnie prince in his plight to win back England and hope that he wins or hang as a traitor to the crown. Even though Claire and Jamie have run from Paris, it’s another thing entirely for Jamie to run from his family’s home, to abandon his kinsmen, so he decides to stay and fight, and hopefully change history enough so that they might one day live in peace.

It’s an odd thing watching these moments play out as we already know the outcome. We know based on Claire’s return in the premiere that they do fail again, and their presence in Scotland only makes that imminent failure that much closer. But Jamie and Claire don’t know the truth of it all yet. They still have hope, faith, that they, armed with Claire’s wits and Jamie’s stubbornness, can change history. And so they set off with a few men from Lallybroch to head to the home of Jamie’s grandsire, the Lord Lovat of clan Fraser.

Simon Fraser of Lovat is an interesting fellow, one that at first glance doesn’t seem the least bit like the lovable Jamie. Simon is a bit of a creep, a man whose word can only be trusted by what he has to gain, his flippant loyalty isn’t relegated only to politics, as he isn’t much faithful to the women he married either. This fact is obvious considering that Jamie’s father was actually one of Simon’s bastards.

Jamie goes to Simon in the hopes that his grandfather will support the Jacobite cause and send men with Jamie to meet the prince, but he’s not alone in trying to win the support of the chief of clan Fraser. Colum Mackenzie is also at Lovat in the hopes of bartering neutrality out of the Old Fox because Colum has suffered through enough Jacobite uprisings to know that staying neutral is the only way to survive. Jamie balks at Colum’s cowardice and says he will do whatever is necessary to protect his home, family, and country.

Claire and Jamie do their best to win Simon’s favor, but the only thing he wants is something Jamie won’t give him: Lallybroch. Therefore, the pair tries to use Simon’s heir, Simon Jr., against his father, and to do so, Claire manipulates our old pal, Laoghaire, freshly repentant for her actions against Claire (proclaiming her a witch, trying to steal Jamie, just generally being awful). Claire tells Laoghaire that if she wants Jamie’s forgiveness, she’ll convince Simon Jr. that he’s stronger than he realizes, especially for standing up to his father.

It doesn’t seem to work as Laoghaire shows off the girls and Simon Jr. runs away, but not before Claire can get valuable information from Maisri, Lord Lovat’s seer. Lord Lovat puts Jamie on the spot soon after, telling him he can either sign over Lallybroch to him and be granted his aid in the coming war or he can do nothing and Lord Lovat with agree to be neutral with the Mackenzies. Claire, using her reputation as La Dame Blanche, has a vision of the lord’s demise at the hands of an executioner. When the lord attacks her for her words, Simon Jr. steps in and stops his father from stabbing her, and gives a grand speech about allying with one’s kinsmen and fighting for their country.

The chivalrous act falls on deaf ears as Lord Lovat signs the neutrality agreement anyway, and off Jamie and Claire ride, with a dejected Simon Jr. in tow. Jamie tells Laoghaire “thank you” for her part in the matter and Laoghaire goes all “crazy ex-girlfriend” whispering that she’ll win back his love eventually, and I can’t help but loathe her return.

In the end, as the trio leaves Lovat’s domain in the distance, the lord’s army surrounds them and Simon rides out and tells him that he’s hedging his bets. If the Jacobites are victorious, his men supported their endeavor. If they lose he proclaim his son acted of his own volition, currying favor with some of the militia. Either way, Jamie and Claire head to Prince Charles with an army to fight the British.

There are many small things to love about “The Fox’s Lair”, the most of which being the intimacy between Claire and Jamie. I’m not talking about the naked times, though those are nice, but rather the quiet moments where neither needs to talk to understand the other. The highlight of course was Jamie on the sofa with the wee baby Katherine Murray, pouring out his soul to the child as Claire looked on with tears in her eyes. As a couple, they’ve moved beyond the anger and bitterness over losing Faith, and are now simply left with cold sadness, a sadness neither one feels compelled to bring up around the other, but handles in their own way.

And despite all disagreements and the rift between them the months prior, they still know one another intimately. Claire knows she’ll find a sulking Jamie in the stables, a place he feels safe and comforted with the monotony of labor. The couple trusts the other even more now than when they did prior to Black Jack’s assault on Jamie. Claire doesn’t need to watch over Jamie around Laoghaire anymore than he needs to protect her from Simon Fraser. They know the other is strong and they trust in each other’s decision making. In the end, it’s that infallible trust that gets them the aid they need to survive.

There isn’t another show on television right now that depicts a long-term relationship in such a believable and romantic fashion as well as Outlander. Sure, it’s fantasy and historical, but their relationship is one us hopeless romantics can see ourselves in. We know what the future holds for this pair and it breaks my heart to imagine them ever parted, but for now, I cherish every second I get with together.

Outlander airs Saturdays on Starz at 9pm EST.

‘Wynonna Earp’ – “Bury Me With My Guns On”: #Wayhaught Celebrate

Jen Stayrook

May 28, 2016

This cannot be said enough: if you are not watching Wynonna Earp, I don’t know what to do with you. If you have friends who aren’t watching Wynonna Earp, please, send them my way. I have gifs, I have shirtless photos, I have quotes, I have Tumblr on speed dial. We will get this thing figured out because everyone needs to be watching this show.

Wynonna Earp is on it’s ninth episode and the show has really come into its own. And that’s a weird thought considering in episode eight, “Two-Faced Jack”, Wynonna killed the last of the seven, the revenants responsible for killing her father and older sister. Her goal for much of the season is now complete and Wynonna celebrates her victory in the most Wynonna way possible, by drinking and making out with random dudes. God, I love how unabashed she is with…everything. Wynonna is Wynonna and if you don’t like it, you can get the hell out of her way.

But things aren’t all inebriated in Wynonna’s head, as she has PTSD flashbacks to her time with Jack of Knives. Her mind gets the better of her and she pushes away Kyle/Pete/someone who isn’t Dolls and Doc comes to her rescue with the that best description of Wynonna Earp:

“She ain’t anybody’s but her own.”

Doc is a character I waver on weekly; one minute I ship him and Wynonna harder than I ship myself and sleep and then moments later he’s back to doing some other stupid, selfish thing and I curse myself for finding a man with a mustache attractive.

But Wynonna isn’t one to give in to silly things like emotions and demons and after she sleeps off her disastrous night, she sashays into the police station like she’s walking down a damn runway.

She banters with Dolls for a bit and honestly, if you tune into the show for one reason, let it be the witty writing. Like Gilmore Girls, sometimes it blows past so quickly you miss it, but believe me, the fast-paced conversations are amazing on Wynonna Earp. For instance:

Wynonna: “You’re not the only one who gets to be married to his job.”
Dolls: “Married? Slow down. At best it’s just my girlfriend.”

But then Dolls does that whole, “I am the job” thing and gives Wynonna a bogus assessment, kicking her off the team when she’s clearly still suffering from the whole “almost murdered by a psychopath” thing. So Wynonna goes to Doc Holliday to complain and relieve some stress the best Wynonna way she knows how.

And just as it’s about to get as good as things get on cable television, Doc is all, “Oh, aaahhhhhctually, I feel another woman inside me. I need to go.” Wynonna’s all, “It’s cool. I don’t mind a threesome.” And Doc peaces out before she can tell him JK.

Wynonna tracks Doc easily enough, presumably following his trail of mustache hairs to the outskirts of town where Bobo is tormenting the poor Stone Witch. Up until this point the Stone Witch had been trying to resurrect her “boys”, baby demons she created in cahoots with their demon Pa. After Waverly smashed the skull of one of the boys, making it impossible to revive both, the Stone Witch decides to play mix-and-match with some body parts, creating a Super Son out of two skeletons. Things don’t go quite so well for newly resurrected Quasimodo and Mama Witch, as Bobo gets angry that the Stone Witch goes back on their deal and he flambés both the skeleton’s remains and Quasimodo before either could be properly baptized by the good word of the devil.

I’m a little bothered that the Stone Witch has been played up much of the season, shown as this woman who frightens not only Doc but Bobo as well, and then when push comes to shove, she cowers behind her demon son who’s easily put down after 12 seconds of screen time. I expected her to put up more of a fight and I recognize she had just drained her powers in order to resurrect that disappointment of a son, but still, even a teensy bit more than the begging and pleading woman would have been better.

It’s at this moment that Doc and Wynonna arrive and Wynonna comments on Bobo’s choice of fashion:

In an odd standoff, Bobo plays the gentleman card and lets Doc leave with both Wynonna and the Stone Witch, even with Wynonna acting all Scrappy Doo, “Lemme at ’em. Lemme at ’em.” Why the team constantly lets Bobo walk away from situations is beyond me, but hey, I don’t know the intricacies of the Earp curse and what magical powers Bobo’s white beard patch might have.

Doc and Wynonna take the Stone Witch on a fanciful date, tying her up and doing a marvelous rendition of Good Cop/Bad Cop. She sings her own version of Wicked’s “No Good Deed”, telling the lovebirds all about the Earp curse and how she meddled her way into the HolliEarp bromance. Doc gets especially wound up at being referred to as the sidekick and don’t think we didn’t miss the Witch’s snide comment about an Earp always picking the law man (ahem, Dolls) over Holliday.

Wynonna gets tired of the run around with the Stone Witch and takes her to some salt flats where they bury her in pain and get some real answers about Bobo and his plans for Purgatory. Basically, Bobo wants out. He’s tired of the whole revenant pimp shindig he’s got going on. Wynonna and Doc high-five one another on another murder mystery mostly solved and then Dolls hits up her cell phone and she says, “I must leave, my donuts need me.”

Meanwhile, in the most adorable part of town, Waverly and Officer Haught are off fulfilling the fantasies of shippers everywhere. The pair start off with a classic case of miscommunication, where Nicole wants to discuss the odd happenings in Purgatory and Waverly wants to talk about what it’s like to maybe be a unicorn, I mean, lesbian. The two argue because Nicole thinks Waverly is making fun of her and Waverly sulks back to Shorty’s Saloon where she learns that Gus is planning to sell the joint.

Things are rough for baby Earp, so she goes on an existential walk in the snow when Nicole drives up and they have an adorable, albeit awkward conversation in and out of her car. Later on, while Waverly is still having a crisis of being, Gus is all, “Here’s a check for a lot of money. I sold my soul to the devil to get it, so you may as well enjoy your sins fully.” And Waverly is all, “EUREKA” and she goes to the police station to FINALLY act on her emotions.

The #wayhaught ship has been sailing proudly since Nicole first arrived on scene and in one episode we got the feelings, the kiss, and the sex all wrapped in one squee-tastic scene. In a gay frenzy, Waverly closes all of the blinds like this is a life or death situation. If she doesn’t kiss this woman RIGHT NOW, she is LITERALLY GOING TO DIE. And then of course they kiss and have a heart to heart and it’s all:

Waverly: “Maybe I should stop talking.”
Nicole: *is talking*
Waverly: “Maybe you should stop talking, too.”
Jen: “MAYBE YOU SHOULD BOTH STOP TALKING AND GET BACK TO MAKING UP FOR WHAT ‘THE 100′ DID TO EVERYONE.”

I SWEAR TO GONDOR IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO THIS PAIR I AM GOING TO–

Ahem. Anyway.

Wynonna goes back to the police station, completely bypassing Nedley’s office because you know if she even had an inkling as to what was going on with her sister, she would be nosey as hell, high-fiving everyone and whistling for an audience. Dolls doesn’t exactly apologize for his earlier behavior, but he does tell her that hooray! She passed* the second assessment and now she’s reinstated and everything can go back to being like it was before. (*He cheated.) And even though everything Dolls does is suss as fuck, he bats those beautiful eyelashes and I can’t help but swoon with everyone else.

Dolls then gives Wynonna an “I’m sorry” gift in the form of a revenant and Wynonna is all, “DOLLS YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE.” She goes to kill the revenant and he shouts, “But wait! There’s more!” And he tells Wynonna that Bobo now own Shorty’s Saloon and she’s going to have to dance and get drunk somewhere else for the time being and Wynonna is pissed.

Wynonna Earp airs Fridays on Syfy at 10pm EST.

‘Person of Interest’: “Reassortment” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 28, 2016

Welcome to the third and final Person of Interest recap of the week. As everyone in the world has noticed, CBS is really trying to burn through these episodes. You should go check out Kate Aurthur’s article on Buzzfeed where she interviewed the showrunners of POI about how they dealt with the hand CBS dealt them.

Shaw-shank

It is injection time again at Samaritan. As the nurse gets ready to give Shaw her daily poke, Sameen she promises the nurse that she isn’t going to try anything today.

Shaw: “It’s not like I’m gonna spill the glass of water off the nightstand, stomp on your foot, throw an elbow to your chin and stick you with that sedative.”

As expected, this is exactly what she does. Except for one step, she forgot to knock down the water but quickly remedies the situation. This actually be my favorite gif I have ever seen from Person of Interest. It is the what the dreams of all cat and Shaw lovers and made of.

After taking the out nurse, she uses the the wire from her lamp to shorts out the lock to her room. When the guards and orderlies arrive, Shaw is nowhere to be found. They search the room as if there are a million places she could be hiding.

In the bathroom, I notice that Shaw has what looks to be a very nice shower head. Mr. Lambert on the other hand notices some dirt under the sink and after giving it a swift kick, the sink rips off the wall revealing an entry into some sort of underground tunnel system. Shaw just Shanked her way out of Samaritan y’all (promise that is my last Shawshank reference).

Shaw crawls through the tunnels and finds herself in a South African men’s prison in Johannesburg when she emerges. I secretly wish that there was a plot twist and we find out that the Samaritan facility was actually in China and she somehow crawled all the way to South Africa but I digress. The first thing Shaw does when axes her way through the prison wall is knock out two prisoner beating up their cellmates. Shaw, always the protector.

Root and her new prison friend, Samuel, break out of their cell and beat up two guards with the worst South African accents known to the history of man. As they are about to leave the facility, Samuel hands her the gun he took of the guard and urges her to go. He has friends here that he can’t leave behind. Shaw respects his decision and tells him to hit her up if he ever comes to New York. I can just imagine that scene now. Samuel walking through the streets of NYC with his South African accent asking “Have you seen a small but strong Persian sociopath spitfire named Sameen? She told me I could find her in NYC” to every tourist, street vendor and businessman he walks past. Dear Person of Interest writing staff, I propose this as a story line for when Netflix picks you up. Anyway, Shaw thanks him again and skidaddles.

As Shaw is finding her way out of the prison, Mr. Asshat Lambert shows up to stop her. He tries to convince her that this is just another simulation. Shaw tries to fight his words, but her internal struggle can be seen in her face. Out loud she begins to reason with Mr. Lambert, as much as with herself. She stole the axe three months ago and she has been in and out of simulation since. Why would Greer set a South African Stanford Prison Experiment in her head? Mr. Lambert responds saying that this simulation isn’t Greers doing at all. The simulations are based on her memories. Does she not remember the Somali bomb maker she killed in this very prison? That can’t be true though, Shaw reasons, she has never been to South Africa.

Lambert tells Shaw that she has no sense of reality anymore. The memory of killing John in the simulation feels as real to her as the memory of killing the scientist the episode before. Shaw thinks about this for a second and realizes whether this is simulation her best option is to kill Lambert. If it is a simulation, she might as well have fun while she can and if it is reality, then she will be free! So she shoots Lambert, escapes the prison, steals a car, drives off on the left side of the road, and is home free. Well kind of, she still has to get her ass across the Atlantic to NYC.

I know I have said this before but man, Sarah Shahi’s acting and facial expressions are just so amazing. You could feel her trying to compute Lambert’s words, sort our her memories, her experiences, battle her feelings just by looking at her face. By the desperation and pain in her voice.

And that is the end of the episode. Just kidding, amazingly that was only the B plot.

Number of the Week

The number of the week was okay I guess. I’m a little biased though because I really dislike outbreak stories. Normal run of the mill disease transmission I am okay with but crazy scientists creating highly contagious and fatal strains of a virus that can kill everyone in time span of a work day, that shit just freaks me out. And that is basically what happens here.

John is following a shady international businessman Mr. Ko who is the city to conduct some shady business. But instead of leading John to a back room money swap, Mr. Ko leads him to the hospital. John tells Finch that the machine got it wrong this dude just has the common flu, but Harold insist that John say. The machine is never wrong. Dr. Mason examines Mr. Ko and after announcing her credentials as an epidemiologist, diagnosis him with the flu an ordered him an antiviral shot. Um, Dr. Mason, I am pretty sure you don’t need to be an epidemiologist to diagnose the flu.

John calls Finch back to let him know that Mr. Ko is checking himself out of the ER when all of a sudden Ko collapses and starts hemorrhaging from the mouth. You know normal flu symptoms. Another reason I hate outbreak stories… hemorrhaging from all orifices is randomly but truthfully a big fear of mine. And with that, the hospital is on a lockdown.

Harold and Bear come to the hospital to help John out, while Root stays in the subway with the machine to help on the back-end. Although they don’t have Root there to help them hold down the fort, they do have the awesome hospital security guard Paulie, a character who I really hope comes back at some point because he was awesome. After some investigating they realize that Mr. Ko was not injected with an antiviral, but instead with live human flu virus. That plus the avian flu which he had previously contracted created a super flu, H5N1, a virus ten times more contagious than the regular avian flu and everyone is going to die and have blood coming out of their orifices and I will be crying in the corner. Well I take back my previous snarky comment about Dr. Mason not being a real epidemiologist. After hearing her talk about the contagiousness and infectious rate and other key words, I think she may have some background in epidemiology.

Due to the specificity of the virus markers, the nerd herd determines that Samaritan is behind the attack. The hospital had recently switched to an automated computer system to improve diagnosis and treatment accuracy, but Dr. Mason and her nurse kept challenging the system, and therefore need to be eliminated.

Remember the ex-con turned window painter turned unknowing Samaritan operative Jeff? Well he is back and taking his ex highschool girlfriend out to a super fancy, expensive and exclusive restaurant. I am not sure if the goal of the scene was to make the audience feel bad for Jeff, but if it was, it worked on me. Jeff’s ex gives him the third degree of where he is working, and how he is making all this money, all of which are understandable questions. What is not understandable is that she starts blurting out statistics about how many formerly incarcerated individuals (the politically correct term to use by the way) end up back in jail and that she doesn’t want to get in a relationship with him if he is just going to end back up there. I get what she is saying, and her fears are not without reason, but it is how she is saying it. It is as though she is condemning him to go back to jail before he has even done anything wrong. The process of reentry is incredibly difficult, most individuals are given zero resources when they are released and are not prepared for what life on the outside will be like. If you are going to spew out numbers about recidivism, please take into account the factors that contribute to that statistics. Man there is so much public healthy stuff going on in this episode between this and Doctor Epidemiology. I could delve into it more but I will slowly step down from my MPH soap box and get back to the episode.

Jeff took what his ex said to him to heart, and decides to tell handler that he wants out. His handler convinces him to complete just one more mission, and then he can decide if he really wants to quit. And his next mission is to take two syringes containing live flu virus and kill Dr. Mason and her nurse. Jeff doesn’t want to follow through with his mission, but his Samaritan has staged a crime with his fingerprints so if he doesn’t complete the mission, he will be going back to jail. When will people realize that if they are not allowed to talk about their job or employer and kill for that said employer, that quitting is not really an option.

Meanwhile Fusco decides to pay a visit to Elias and let him know he found his childhood buddy Bruce and a dozen other dead bodies in Jackson Heights basement. He asks Elias to help him figure out who this new player is, and although Elias vowed to remove himself from the game, he will not leave his friend’s death unavenged. Fusco reasons that for an explosion that big, trucks needed to be used, so Elias sets Fusco up with the one man who knows every single truck that goes in and out of all five boroughs. Some more investigation leads Fusco to discover one of those truck drivers is Jeff, and he heads to the hospital to find him. And find him he does, because while Jeff is fleeing the hospital he sticks Fusco with the syringe. Luckily, just in the nick of time, the Machine give Root the alias of a CDC agent, and some delivers the flu antidote to save Fusco’s life.

The next day, Jeff meets up with his handler again. She tells him she was selected for this job because of his genetic marker. He is what scientists call “an elite controller.” His DNA makeup ensures that he will never contract any strain of avian flu. That outbreak the previous night, killing those two practitioners was only part of the plan. The real reason for the outbreak was to prompt people to go get vaccinated, and record their genetic information in a national healthcare database.

Samaritan Handler: “ It’s a simple calculation Once everyone’s data is stored in the national healthcare database, then they just need to be sorted.”
Jeff: “Sorted, in order to accomplish what?”
Samaritan Handler: “To get us through the next great filter of course .”
Jeff: “What filter is that?”
Samaritan Handler: “Our own savage history.”

HOLY SHIT! Is Samaritan planning a genetic based genocide? What the fuck is going on!

Additional Tidbits

What took the hospital so long to start handing out face masks once they declared a quarantine?
Was that South African prison an actual Stanford Prison experiment or were they just using that phrase in passing. Samuel kept saying that the prison was a social experiment in evil, so do we think that the whole prison was actually a Samaritan experiment, or was it a real prison that shared a sewage tunnel system with the Samaritan lair.

‘Person of Interest’: “QSO” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 26, 2016

Person of Interest
Season 5, Episode 7: “QSO”
Tuesday. May 24, 2016

::In a low raspy radio voice:: Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of “Feelings: Experiencing Person of Interest through the eyes of Alyssa.” This week’s POI is a Root-centric episode, so please stay with me as I try to keep my emotions in check, again.

I have to say, these three episodes a week of POI are killing me. Does CBS not understand that I have feelings that require a week to process before watching a new episode? I literally think CBS wants to give me a heart attack, or kill me by self-asphyxiation because I forget to breathe during this show.

This episode starts off right after the explosion with Fusco in a hospital bed and Bear by his side. Most important news, Bear is fine. Second most important news, Fusco is alive. Look, I love Fusco, but Bear is always my number one concern.

Root strolls into the hospital room

“Hey Detective! Busy day directing traffic into the river coco puffs? No? Nothing?”

Aww look at Root trying to make him feel better. Also, aww look how cute Root looks in a crossing guard uniform. Root feels guilty on many levels. She feels guilty that she is still forced to keep Lionel in the dark about the machine and she feels guilty for handing him the number that lead him to the explosion. Root tries to help Fusco out by handing him an envelope with all the items necessary to start a new life for him and his son. She looks him the eyes and in a moment of seriousness says “There is a reason that John and Harold are presumed dead.” How do they think it is okay to ask Fusco to uproot his kid and live underground without telling him why? I. Dont. Get. It.

Root can’t stay long though because she has to move on to her next mission.

One of my favorite parts of this episode is how they show the relationship between Root and the machine from both The Machine’s and Root’s perspectives. They show that The Machine really does care about Root and what she is willing to do to ensure her safety.

And the alias that The Machine to provides Root with is a ballerina at Lincoln Center (swoon).

After she finishes her performance (which we sadly don’t get to see) she heads back to her dressing room and has a long conversation with The Machine about Shaw. All Root wants is for the The Machine to tell her that Shaw is okay, but The Machine refuses. Instead she keeps re-routing shoddy radio signals into Root’s cochlear implant. She looks up at the surveillance camera in her dressing room (which is the equivalent of looking The Machine straight in the eye) and says “We need to be actively looking for Shaw’s exact location”. I love how the show cuts to The Machine’s perspective when Root is talking to her, showing how The Machine reacts, digests and computes everything Root is saying. The conversation is put on hold though so Root can save her number by strangling some guy with her ballet shoes. The creativity of the POI’s writing staff never ceases to amaze me.

Post haste, Root assumes her new alias, a butter churner in a colonial NYC museum. Utterly excited about her new station, she starts another convo with The Machine. Root calls her out for refusing to talk directly to her but everytime Root starts talking about anything of substance, the Machine puts up a wall in the way of radio interference. The Machine’s go to coping method seems to be avoidance. Maybe she should see a therapist to work on that.

Yet again her conversation is cut short, this time by a group of GhostFacers shooting a film about the haunted museum. Root had finally reached her breaking point with these meaningless errands that The Machine has her running and once the camera crew leaves she walks right up the surveillance camera and puts her foot down

Root: “I refuse to do one more mission until I know what I’m doing is going to lead me to Sameen.” (swoon)

After having Root utter both “Sameen” and “Shaw” in the same sentence to a camera, Root’s imminent danger status goes off charts. Samaritan is on its way. Root’s stunt seems to have done the trick because moments later the GhostFacer leader gets a text that reads “WKCP, UFO, Find her, run.” And run Root does, but not before quite literally buying a shirt off of a girl’s back.

Next stop, WKCP, to interview for the newly vacant producer position for “Mysterious Transmissions” a conspiracy theory talk show. Before Root is formally offered the job, Max, the host, asks her some hard-hitting questions about AI’s, or extraterrestrial life or something. I am not going to even pretend I understood the conversation these two were having. The clouds are closer to my head then this conversation. What I did understand was that Root’s radio voice is very sexy.

Root gets the job and starts screening callers to put on air when a guy named Warren calls in talking about how the Chinese government controlling Max’s mind. This Warren dude sets off Root’s spidey senses, so she calls John for some backup. But John is suspicious about what Root is up to.

Root: “Can’t a girl ask her cop friend to look up a creepy guy without getting the third degree.”

Joking aside, Root knows that John will do anything she asks if it means getting back Shaw. Once the show goes off air, Max tells Root about the side project he and Warren have been working on. Over the past few weeks Max had noticed interference in the radio waves and with the help of Warren and his cryptography training, they discovered that the interference was actually coded messages. He and Warren were planning to announce their findings on the air.

Over at the subway, Finch is watching the ongoing massacre of The Machine by Samaritan when he hears a distress code being emitted from the Samaritan computer. When he calls Root to tell her what he has discovered she finally understands why she was sent on this mission. The Machine wants Root to send Shaw a message. The Machine: the ultimate Shoot shipper (swoon). Root runs back up to the radio station and finds a Samaritan infected device to send a message to Shaw.

After Root sends the message, she decides to make a deal with Samaritan. She tells Samaritan that she will give up without a fight as long as she is brought to the facility where Sameen Shaw is being held and Max is not harmed. All she wants is to be back with her love. But, just as Samaritan is about to agree to Root’s terms, John busts in coming to Root’s rescue. Suffice to say Root is furious as John has just jeopardize what is likely to be the only chance to find Shaw.
But really, it isn’t about John trying to save the day. It is about him not wanting to lose another member of the team. Another person her cares about. And I think Root does understand that because she does not stay mad at John for very long.

Meanwhile Shaw is at the Samaritan facility, running through yet another simulation. In this iteration Sameen punches the mirror, cuts her hand with glass and is taken to a facility where she is told to kill a scientist who is working on an experiment that will destroy the world in 15 years. Before the Samaritan operative even tells her what to do, she grabs the gun, shoots the scientist and says “Point made. Can I wake up now?”

The next morning a doctor comes in and tells Sameen that the previous night was not a simulation. The scientist she shot was very much dead. At first Shaw thinks this is just another game Samaritan is playing, but after hearing the news report on the radio, seeing the bandage on her and noticing the mirror was still shattered, she realizes that last night was indeed reality. The doctor injects her with a sedative and says “Seems like you don’t know what’s real anymore.” Dear evil doctor, please die.

Luckily, Shaw has grown immune to Samaritan’s sedatives, so instead of being knocked out, Shaw is as alert as ever and attacks the doctor. The doctor tells Sameen that the only way that she is leaving the Samaritan facility is in a body bag to which Shaw replies:

“I’d rather be dead than be your Guinea pig for one more day.”

Shaw finally escapes the room and slowly slides down to the floor with her back against her cell door, pointing the syringe directly at her eye.

Just as she is about to end her pain, her suffering, her life, she hears interference coming from the radio above. She hears Root’s message [deep breaths Alyssa]. Slowly she begins to decipher the code and writes it out on her arm: 4AF… FOUR ALARM FIRE! [I am full on hyperventilating now]

Shaw’s face lights up as realizes that Root has sent her this message. Just a refresher for you guys who don’t understand the importance of this, please see the gif below

All caught up? Good, because my mind, heart and soul are all exploding at the same time. Shaw finally has something to fight for again. She puts the needle down and allows Samaritan guards to take her back to her cell. So for the record, not only is Root Shaw’s safe place, she is also her hope. Her reason to live.

Back at the subway, Root and John are listening to Max’s radio show as the decompress from their mission. They had made a deal with Max, he does not have to go underground if he promises to never ever tell anyone about the radio code he discovered. But Max was unable to keep his end of the bargain. While John and Root are listening along to the show, they hear Max reveal the secrets he uncovered and then subsequently die on air. Root is upset and frustrated because The Machine told her that the mission was over but Finch is downright furious. When Harold asks The Machine why she said the mission was over, she responds by saying Max acted on his own free will. Root supports the Machine’s assessment. Not only did Max know the consequences of his actions, but now Shaw knows that they haven’t given up on her. Harold is not having this lamenting that “A lie of omission is still a lie. And using the idea of free will is an excuse of moral attrition, I am not sure I am comfortable with where this is going.” You know what Harold, you are being a complete hypocrite. You had this same EXACT argument in Season 4 episode 2 “Nautilus” when Claire kept refusing your help. You said that the one thing the Machine can’t control is people’s free will, and so you let her go on in danger’s way. Harold, you can’t have it both ways.

At the end of the day, Root sits in a coffee shop talking to The Machine. She tells her, that she knows that she did the right thing, even if Harold doesn’t. I never in my life thought that a TV show could make me feel so emotionally connected to a computer. But alas Person of Interest continues to do it.

Other Tidbits

Most important tidbit that didn’t fit anywhere else is that Lionel tells Finch that he is officially out. They obviously don’t respect him or trust him or give him any credit for all he does for them, so he is done working with the gang. He hands Harold his encrypted phone and tells him he wants nothing to do with them.
When Max started his radio show off with “If anyone has mocked you for asking questions, I’m here to listen.” I am pretty sure he was talking directly to me. Do you know how many times I have been made fun of for asking too many questions? My nickname on Birthright was “Quest” because I asked so many questions. I was awarded the paper plate award of “The Grand Inquisitor” in middle school FH. And, on not one, not two, but three occasions, people have given me a question quota. Any questions that exceeded that number would not be answered.

‘The Bachelorette’ Premiere Promises Drunks, Kilts, and Erectile Dysfunction

Kelley Lynn

May 26, 2016

Well, kids. It’s that time again. Time for The Bachelorette to go on a “journey”. Time to find love through hot-tub make-out sessions, alcoholic evenings, dates in helicopter rides, crying on mountain-tops, and giant mansions filled with testosterone. Yes, my friends. It is time yet again, for the stupidest show on television: The Bachelorette. The only show more dumb than this show, is its other half: The Bachelor. The main difference? The first version features loads of sobbing hormonal women, whereas the latter version features loads of shirtless men threatening to punch each other constantly, while shirtless. Always shirtless.

We begin this season with this year’s bachelorette, Jo Jo, because everyone on this show always has a stupid-ass name. For those who watched The Bachelor, Ben told two women that he was in love with them, Jo Jo and Lauren. He also told Jo Jo that he would never blindside her, and then he totally blindsided her and instead of proposing to her, he dumped her ass right there on national TV. Good times. He told her “I love you, but I love someone else more.” Ouch. So, Jo Jo picked herself up by her fake tan and annoyingly grating voice and clueless personality, and decided to put herself through another season of heartbreak and pain by becoming the next bachelorette victim.

Which brings us into this week’s episode. Jo Jo sat down for drinks (because all these people do is drink) with former victims Kaitlyn Bristowe, Desiree Hartsock, and Ali Fedetowsky. They basically all told her that the process is terrifying but amazing (because everything on this show is “amazing,” according to everybody on it), to kiss someone whenever she is “feeling it,” and to open her heart to love. Next up, were various shots of Jo Jo walking the beach in her bikini, then sitting on a large rock whipping her long hair back and laughing as the waves crashed over her. Yuck.

Then it was time for Douche-bag host Chris Harrison to come out and finally get to say his 5 lines in this week’s episode. He told the audience the premise of the show, for anyone living under a rock who doesn’t know the premise by now, and then he introduced the montage of background videos that told us a bit about some of the “men” who will be acting a fool this season as they fight each other for someone they just met 14 seconds ago, but now want to marry. Here is a preview of some of the high quality of man-meat you can expect on this current “journey:”

GRANT, a firefighter who hopes Jo Jo is the one who “lights his fire.” Ewww, really? JORDAN, a Former-Pro Football player for the NFL, which basically means he is job-less and does nothing now. He is hoping that he is JoJo’s “number one draft pick.” Seriously? Come on. Ten minutes into this shit-fest and already with the horrendous puns. ALEX is a Marine with a twin brother who just got married, putting the pressure on him. JAMES, who is a “Bachlorette SuperFan”, which means HE HAS NO JOB. No income. No purpose. He is a fan of the show – that is what was listed as his “occupation” under his name. He appeared shirtless in his video for no reason, and he holds “watching parties” of the show at his home, which basically involve him and 2 other dorks sitting on a couch watching the show and eating chips. The man has no friends. Then we have EVAN, who used to be a Pastor, but now is the Director at an Erectile Dysfunction Clinic. Well, alrighty then. He is also a complete dork, saying: “I’m so pumped. Got my mojo for JoJo.” Yuck-o. ALI is a Bartender from Iran, who has the largest and thickest eyebrows of anyone ever on the planet. His entire face is just an eyebrow. He is like the human version of Bert from “Sesame Street.” Next up is CHRISTIAN, who is biracial, and a Tech Consultant. LUKE is from Texas, and is a country boy rancher who is also a War Vet. That is a small taste of the douche-baggery. Now here is the rest, as Jo Jo stands outside the mansion and greets each guy one by one for their first ever meeting.

MEETING THE MEN :

JoJo appeared outside the mansion in her tan sparkling gown, as each man approached her one by one to be introduced for the first time. Some of the highlights/lowlights included: Robby, a Former Pro Swimmer (again, UNEMPLOYED), brought a bottle of wine which they both sipped out of together. Will, an engineer, tried desperately to be funny by purposely mixing up his index cards that had lines of dialogue on them – it ended up being an epic comedy fail. Daniel is “Canadian.” That’s it. That’s all we know about Daniel. Usually under their name, it says what they do for a living – his just said “Canadian.” So I guess that’s a profession now? Being Canadian? How much does that pay? Are there benefits? Someone named James Taylor came out with his guitar and sang to her. A dork named Jonathan appeared in a Kilt, and told Jo Jo he wasn’t wearing any underwear underneath. Then he made a lame joke about how he is half Scottish and half Chinese, but no worries, because his bottom half is Scottish. It was obviously a dumb joke about Chinese men having small penises, but dumb JoJo didn’t really get it, and mumbled: “Huh? What does that mean?” To which he replied: “I’ll let you interpret that one on your own.” AWKWARD!!!! Next up was a dude named Nick who dressed as Santa Claus (Get it? Saint Nick?) and yelled “Jo Jo Jo!!!!” instead of “Ho Ho Ho!” THE ENTIRE EVENING. It got old after the first five minutes. He also creepily said to Jo Jo “So I understand you’ve been a good girl this year.” Ewww. Meanwhile, the men who were already inside Testosterone Mansion were already knocking back whiskeys and beers and wine as they awaited all the introductions to be over, so they were in rare form ALREADY with their insults toward one another.

Meanwhile, more insanity from the guys coming out of the limos. One dude brought blue Stress balls, put them in Jo Jo’s hands, and told her “when you are stressed, you have permission to squeeze my balls.” Gross. Someone whose name is Coley (Really? That’s a name?), is in Real Estate, and wants to be the one to take Jo Jo off the market. (Another zinger of a pun. Everyone BOO!!!! all together now.) Brandon is a “Hipster.” That is all. Just a hipster. Again, no job or point except that he’s a hipster. Nick with an S. initial broke into splits and danced with Jo Jo. Vinny said he didn’t have any champagne but wanted to “prepare a toast’, then pulled out a piece of actual toast. Erectile Dysfunction Guy yelled “God Bless America!” at seeing Jo Jo and how pretty she is. Another dude brought the acappella band ALL 4 ONE with him, because he’s a DJ and has connections I guess, to serenade JoJo with their song “I Swear.” Except they stayed THE ENTIRE EVENING, and that got old after about ten minutes. Christian came in on a motorcycle, and Luke rode in on a unicorn. Okay. Everybody got all that? I think that just about covers the arrival of the douche-bags.

LET THE DOUCHE-BAGGERY BEGIN:

Now that everyone is inside the mansion, it’s time for all these men to start acting a fool, be a bunch of drunks, and generally make fools of themselves. This begins immediately, as Marine guy starts doing push-ups with Jo Jo on top of him. Meanwhile, Ali keeps getting hairier by the second, as his eyebrows and face-hair take over the mansion slowly. Everyone is nervous. Jo Jo tells them “don’t be nervous.” They drink more. She states that she wants to feel a natural immediate attraction with someone. This happens with Jordan, the unemployed football dude. They talk while sitting outside, and she rubs his hands the whole time, and keeps licking her lips like she wants to eat him. It is mildly disturbing. She is giving him bedroom eyes, big time. He leaves her without kissing her, then comes back later and they kiss a lot. She is smitten. Later, Will plays a silly game with her where she has to choose numbers and colors and things, and the corresponding message that she chooses says that she will be kissed. So they kiss, but it’s really lame and awkward and it’s the way that someone kisses when maybe they are kissing their weird aunt and they really don’t want to. Whereas, kissing Jordan felt “good and right, and … his butt! HIS BUTT!!!” That was Jo Jo’s deep and meaningful statement about THAT.

Douche-bag host Chris Harrison comes in and leaves the first impression rose on a tray at the coffee table, and all the men lose their shit. Wells takes her aside (whose name is WELLS??? What the F kind of name is that?) and once again, that damn ALL 4 ONE band follows him and they sing in the background as the two talk awkwardly. Everyone keeps drinking more alcohol, and acting stupid. Everyone wants time with Jo Jo. Chad is such a creep with a hugely creepy vibe directly from Creep-ville, but Jo Jo finds him mysterious and sexy. Yuck. He tells cameras: “I’m pretty confident that if I want Jo Jo, I can have Jo Jo.” Then he drinnks some more and stares creepily with his beady eyes at her. Then Daniel the “Canadian” gets insanely drunk and starts acting like a moron from hell. Within minutes, he is shirtless, then he is sans pants, and then slurring and walking around in bikini briefs. He jumps into the pool, flexes his abs at the camera, and just stays half nude the whole night for no reason. In his time with Jo Jo, he talks about You Tube videos and asks her “Have you been keeping up with the internets?” What the hell are you babbling about? Put down the whiskey, weirdo. Then he pokes Erectile Dysfunction Evan in the bellybutton for no reason whatsoever, to which Erectile says: “Hey! You can’t just go around poking other guys in the belly button!” Other guys get drunk, interrupt Jo Jo’s interview time, and act like idiots. “Everyone is drunk, apparently,” she observes. Ali plays beautiful piano for her as his eyebrow hairs grow more. Luke buys her a pair of cowboy boots. She starts licking her lips again while talking to him, smacking them together in an annoying manner. Jordan gets the first impression rose, and then Harrison breaks up the madness by telling her that it is now time for the Rose Ceremony. Time to send some douche-bags home.

ROSE CEREMONY:

Right away we can tell this is going to be an incredibly boring season – the kind of season where they try to create drama where there isn’t any -something this show loves to do. But doing that one episode one is a very bad sign. Just as the rose ceremony is getting underway, Former Bachelor Jake shows up and steals Jo Jo away from the men. Of course, they all flip out, asking each other if he is there to be part of the show, and freaking out about it in angry tones. Meanwhile, he tells Jo Jo in the other room that he couldn’t let her “do this, without talking to me first.” Then he says: “I want love —— for you. And I believe its in that room.” He was obviously sent there by the producers to shake things up some, since its so damn boring already, and Kilt Guy or Erectile Dysfunction Guy aint cutting it with the crazy. Anyway, turns out good ole Jake is a family friend to Jo Jo , and was only there offering his good wishes and advice. Awwww, how sweet and convenient.

Rose Ceremony ends. Kilt Guy is sent home, calling the experience “a kick in the balls.” Which has to really hurt with no underwear. Someone named Peter also goes home, which is fine since I never knew who the hell he was in the first place anyway. And others go home who are equally as pointless. And yet, she KEEPS drunken idiotic Daniel, who is Canadian. Did you know he is Canadian?

NEXT WEEK: Host Chris Harrison masturbates with a rose in the Fantasy Suite. Jo Jo cries over someone. One of the men gets drunk. Several men go shirtless. Someone rides in a helicopter or gets a private concert as part of their date. Everything is amazing, and everyone is excited about the journey.

‘Person of Interest’: “A More Perfect Union” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 25, 2016

Person of Interest
Season 5, Episode 6: “A More Perfect Union”
Monday May 23, 2016

Monday night’s episode of Person of Interest finally provided a substantial and interesting number story line, the first of the season, as well as strong plot line for each main character.

The Machine is back to its incredible witty self and sends Finch a marriage license as the number of the week. (I know that there are more than one episode a week, but “number of the episode” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well). Who is the victim? Who is the perpetrator? The only way to find out is by attending the wedding!

Finch sends John to the hotel to protect the bride and her bridal party. And by protect the girls I mean give them a lap dance. Oh man, and John’s reaction is beyond priceless.

With an evil smirk on his face, Harold tells Reese “Sorry Mr. Reese, but I had no choice. I need you at that wedding.” Looks like Finch has the same whimsical sense of humor as the machine. As the old saying goes: Like father, like ASI. John turns on his charm by continuing to be grumpy and monotone and snags an invite from Jenna, the bride’s sister. Jenna also has a case of the “Tequila Talks” and tells John all of her family’s dirty secrets. Phoebe Turner, the bride, is a Harvard grad whose dad owns a horse racing empire (which is apparently a thing) while the groom, Will O’Brien is a lowly peasant working a public defender who graduated from the undignified halls of Boston College. Papa Turner decided not to give Phoebe the racing dynasty because of her choice in life partner, and is leaving his life’s work to his eldest daughter Karen instead. Also Will’s ex-girlfriend is inexplicably one of Phoebe’s bridesmaids.

Root strolls into the subway looking for a place to crash because her latest alias, a meth head, was behind on the rent. She offers to make the pair lasagna for dinner, but Harold can’t. He has to attend a wedding as Uncle Ralph, Will O’Brien’s estranged alcoholic uncle from Ireland. Root is offended when Harold neither invites her as his date, nor assumes she enjoys weddings.

Root: “Even I appreciate a fairytale ending Harry. Family politics. Overcooked meat. Monogamy. What’s not to love.”

Harold laughs this off and gives Root the house rules: Bear gets 2 scoops of Kibble twice a day and answer the payphone. Well that sounds simple enough. Fast forward to Root sadly sitting on the subway floor with Bear, eating a sandwich while flipping through a wedding magazine. The payphone rings and she jumps up to answer it and retrieve the new number, letting Bear finish the rest of her sandwich. Well at least she followed one of Harold’s rules.

They head back to the office, only to discover that all the surveillance camera’s cut out during the ceremony. Luckily all weddings have their own form of surveillance, so the pair decide to find Maggie, the official Turner wedding/life photographer. Well, before they even start their search, they find that someone has beaten them to it. And that someone is Root, the catering ninja extraordinaire who magically appears in the back of the room with a temporarily drugged Maggie.

Before they can continue on with their investigation, Uncle Ralph is called up to the stage to perform his long overdue number. Will’s father always used to tell him stories growing up about how fantastic of a singer Uncle Ralph was, and his one wish is that Uncle Ralph perform at his wedding. This has to be, without a doubt, in my top five favorite moment of Person of Interest ever. What song does Mr. Harold Finch/Uncle Ralph decide to sing? We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sisters. But that is not all, he sing/talks the entire thing in an Irish accent. If you haven’t watched the episode (which I am not sure why you would be reading this right now) you need to stop everything you are doing and watch the entire episode just for this scene. That is how amazing it is. I have actually watched this clip about ten times already.

Root: “How come Harry never sings to us?”
John: “He doesn’t sing to you?”

It turns out that Photographer Maggie was the victim, and Phoebe’s older sister Karen, the perpetrator. Maggie learned that Phoebe was doping horses so they could still race even when injured by accidentally catching it on camera. Because of this Karen wants her dead. Luckily for Phoebe, John, and the entire world, Root (again) comes to the rescue, but this time on horseback. Robin Hood style bro!

With all of the action and fighting out of the way, the gang goes to enjoy the wedding reception. As the night winds down and the last song is announced Root asks Harold for the last dance.She confronts him about the Machine’s utter defeat by Samaritan and asks to give her the tools to act. Harold asks if that is why she is at the wedding, because the machine asked her to come and make this point

Root: “I didn’t like being alone in the subway.”
Harold: “Oh. Ms. Groves, you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”
Root: “I wasn’t scared.”
Harold: “You were lonely.”
Root: “Or maybe I just like weddings.”

The song ends and they meet John who is sitting down at their table with a top shelf bottle of bourbon he stole from the wine cellar. He pours one out for each of them and they take a drink. One small happy family, minus a few missing members. As they watch the happy couple dance and celebrate with their family, they look off into the ether, imagining what their future with Samaritan may bring tomorrow. In my dreams of dreams, this is how the episode would have ended, with Root, Harold and John sipping whiskey, but alas it is not how it ends. Not how it ends at all.

Now onto the two stellar B-Plots:

Shaw:
Shaw is still in Samaritan’s control, still wearing virtual reality glasses, and Samaritan is still unable to break her. Greer asks Shaw if she is tired to which she responds “Why would I be? That’s what? 7052 times you’ve tried to get me to murder my friends.” Phew okay, well this mollifies my fear that Shaw wouldn’t know fantasy from reality.

What Greer wants is to prove to Shaw that the Nerd Herd are not the heroes. They are the villains. He brings Sameen to Central Park and tries to butter her up by giving her her favorite sandwich before explaining how Samaritan does good. He does this, as Shaw says so eloquently explains, by showing her “two rich, balding, white men.” Ha. I missed Shaw’s dry humor so much. These two rich, balding white guys run companies that put other companies out of business resulting in the deaths of many elderly people and kids. Next, he brings Shaw to a second location to show her two more bald rich white guys who are about to seal a deal to start using cheap faulty airplane parts to save money, which will result in the loss of thousands of innocent lives. Samaritan would be able to save all these innocent lives before The Machine even received their number.

Finally, after telling Greer that his tactics are not working, he brings Sameen to meet the creepy creepy kid Samaritan has taken control of. This kid creeps me out so much, I just can’t. Yet again, they try to convince her that “Samaritan=Good” and “The Machine=bad”. This time it is by blowing up a bunch of buildings in NYC, which would have been stopped if she just worked for Samaritan. It is then that Shaw realizes that this is, yet again, another simulation.

Fusco:
Harold calls Fusco to try to enlist him on Team Wedding, even offering him the possibility of a caviar bar. Really Harold, caviar? You’re talking to Fusco, know your audience. Fusco declines, citing the fact that a) he has a life and b) he has an actual job, but really it is because he is trying to get to the bottom of the rash of disappearances and suicides occurring in his city. Man this makes me so scared that Fusco’s going to get shot in the head before this episode ends. Luckily, Fusco is smart enough that he hides his missing person board in a room without a camera. See, Fusco knows things! Just trust him already!

Fusco may be able to say no to Harold, but he can never say no to his one and only Coco Puffs. Root has a wedding to crash, so she is unable to work the new number so she hands it off to Fusco. Lionel walks to his desk to find Root sitting in his chair with Bear, her service dog. When he asks why she can’t handle it herself she replies with “because I’m Harold’s plus one.” She slowly explains to a confused Fusco what a plus one is, but the definition of a Plus One is not the part of the equation confusing Fusco. Annoyed that yet another person thinks she hates weddings, she sighs “Please, I left a guy at the altar just last year.” Ha! Now it’s up to Fusco to save this the number’s life.

Fusco follows Howard (the new number) to Central Park, where he is meeting up with Bruce, Elias’s partner who threatened Fusco’s son last week. Fusco gets really suspicious though when Howard goes missing, and he has to add another picture to his missing persons board. He is going to get to the bottom of this, so he pulls up a recording he taped of Bruce and Howard in the park on his computer. Fusco knows computers! He then does some high-tech computer sound mixing and gets a new lead. Woohoo, you go Fusco! This lead leads him out to a soon to be demolished building in Jackson Heights where he finds the dead bodies of every missing person on his missing person board. AND THEN THE BUILDING EXPLODES! Fusco better be okay, or I am going to be the one that explodes!

Other Tidbits:

I really did not understand Samaritan’s strategy to turn Shaw. Greer starts the episode by saying that he plans to show Sameen that Harold and the machine are not the good guys they make themselves out to be. But his argument really is that Samaritan can save more lives on a greater scale than the Machine by killing people in advanced. While that argument may be valid, it does nothing to discredit the Machine and the good it does. It is just saying that Samaritan could do more.
Was Fusco referring to Bear or Root when he said “Most of my mugging victims don’t have an 150 lb killing machine.” Root obviously took it as being about Bear, but there is no way Bear is 150 pounds right?

‘Game of Thrones’ – “The Door”: The Beginning of the End

Jen Stayrook

May 24, 2016

THIS WEEK ON ‘GAME OF THRONES’: Bran makes the biggest mistake in the history of Westeros; Arya watches a bad Off-Broadway production; Sansa owns Littlefinger.

SPOILERS through Game of Thrones 605: This is Game of Thrones. People die. It’s awful and heartbreaking but I recommend you watch it play out on screen before reading about it here.

Phew. What an episode, amirite? Season 6 has been insane and the latest episode, “The Door” has been the most heartbreaking yet. For much of the episode I thought, “Okay, where’s the door? What’s the significance of this title? Game of Thrones doesn’t take episode naming lightly.” Then the moment came and I wished it hadn’t. But we’ll get to that soon. For now, the rest of the episode.

Castle Black

I’m still not done basking my love for the Sansa/Jon reunion. Every scene they have together is blissful and though I know happiness doesn’t last long on Game of Thrones, I want them to hide away in Castle Black forever, reminiscing about a time when Winterfell wasn’t ruled by assholes.

Sansa gets a surprise visit from Littlefinger, who’s back to his old teleportation tricks. He apologizes to Sansa for handing her over to Ramsay and instead of accepting his apology like a “lady should” she lays into him. AND IT’S WONDERFUL.

That’s not Stark or Tully strength coming out in her. That is SANSA strength. I have been waiting for this moment from her for five years and to finally see her putting others in their place is a thing of beauty. There have been flashes of her strength, like against Joffrey and Tyrion, but this year is truly the year of Sansa and I, for one, welcome our new Queen in da Norf.

But things aren’t all Littlefinger slapdowns and stolen glances between Tormund and Brienne at Castle Black. There’s a war brewing for control of Winterfell and Jon and co. need all the help they can get. With the largest armies already pledged for House Bolton, Jon needs to petition for aid from the smaller houses. Then Sansa’s nose grows when she mentions that her uncle, the Blackfish, has rallied an army in Riverrun for their cause. With his aid, surely Jon and Sansa can take back Winterfell, so Sansa sends Brienne as an emissary to the Blackfish and the rest of the party heads to the different Northern houses to ramp up the excitement for new northern leadership.

Braavos

Arya, now No One, is given a second chance to become a Faceless Man and J’aqen gives her a new target: an actress in a local theatre troupe. The play depicts King Robert’s demise and Joffrey’s rise to being king. As depressing as it was to watch Arya’s reaction to the fictional representation of her father’s death, I actually enjoyed the play. It was a simple reminder that not everyone sees the characters of Westeros as we do. Tyrion is shown as a villain, devious enough to get both Robert and Ned killed so that he can become Hand to the King. Cersei and Joffrey are innocent in the act, and poor Ned Stark is a bumbling idiot who only want to be king. It just goes to show that our perception of a certain character is not true for everyone in the world. (Kind of like how Cersei is the best and no one seems to realize it.)

[Backstage, Game of Thrones finally gives us a close up of a man’s penis, but it’s of a man who is showing off his genital warts and I’m concerned that HBO is just trolling those of us who want equal nudity representation.]

After studying the actors behind the scenes, Arya wonders why someone would want the actress who played Cersei killed. She seems nice enough, even if she doesn’t drink wine like the real Cersei. After a discussion with J’aqen about who could want her killed, Arya is all, “I bet it was the younger, angrier actress who’s jealous.” And J’aqen is all, “BE COOL SHE PAID THE MANY FACED GOD A LOT OF MON–I mean, there are rules, No One.”

Pyke

On Pyke, there’s a Kingsmoot a’cooking, and Yara/Asha is running to be the first Queen on the Salt Throne. The men mansplain to her that there’s no possible way a vagina could lead such a burly group of men until Theon gets up and says, “She’s the best for the job.” And they’re all, “Ohhhhhhhhh he’s right. Ok. We’ll vote for her.” It’s at this moment that Euron decides to swagger on set to brag about how he killed his brother, Balon, and proclaim that his plan for Pyke is to cut down all the trees for boats because he read a story about Easter Island and thought that was a really good idea. Naturally, Euron is elected as the new King of Pyke because the Iron Islands is well-known for its eco-conservation.

While Euron is being crowned with the worst tiara in the seven kingdoms, Yara and Theon abscond with all the bastards who could have, realistically, voted her into power. But whatever. They have boats now.

Vaes Dothrak

Dany thanks Jorah for saving her life, once again, and instead of banishing him for a third time, she commands him to find a cure for his Greyscale because she needs the old bear in her life and Daario is all:

Jorah sets off to find the cure because there’s still a chance for her to love him back. Look, I know Jorah can be creepy. I know the whole, “old man who loves the gorgeous younger woman” is weird but I cannot help but root for him. I cannot help but ship the two of them together so hard it hurts. It helps that Iain Glen looks nothing like Book!Jorah, but my heart beats for the pair and for the kiss that was promised to me two season ago.

Meereen

Tyrion continues to give diplomacy a shot in Meereen and hey! Crime is down. The complaint box is practically empty. And almost no one has been stabbed in like a day. It’s good to be Tyrion right now and he’s smug about the whole situation but he muses to himself, “What would make this situation even better for Dany? Ah, yes. Religious fanatics.”

Tyrion brings in a Red Priestess who says she’d do the the job for free because dragons make fire, R’hllor loves fire, so the Lord of Light obviously loves the mother of dragons. The Lord of Light especially loves when Dany sets people on fire to teach them a lesson. Coincidentally, a trait we as viewers also love about Dany.

The Red Priestess then talks to Varys and for the first time, we see Varys afraid. He doesn’t smirk at her knowledge, play cat and mouse like he did with Littlefinger. No, this is a woman who knows things and that terrifies him.

Sorry. I’m so sorry. I had to.

Beyond The Wall

Bran steps into another vision of the past and this time it, presumably, has little to do with House Stark and everything to do with saving Westeros from the white walkers. Bloodraven shows him a ritual of the Children of the Forest where a man is tired to a weirwood tree, their sacred tree, stabbed through the heart, and turned into what we know as a white walker. Bran gets upset and once everyone is asleep he makes the best decision ever and decides to surf weirwood internet without a parent or guardian present. In true internet fashion, a creepy older dude finds him, tags him, tracks down his GPS information, and shows up at the front door. Bloodraven is all, “I told you to stay away from those shady sites! Now they have all our money!”

Bloodraven pulls Bran in for one last data upload and it’s a repeat of one they’re already seen but Bran is all, “Aww baby daddy Ned” and doesn’t say anything. In fact, Bran doesn’t do anything even when Meera and Bloodraven scream at him to get off the computer. Instead, he wargs through the past Hodor in order to control present Hodor so he can have a couple more minutes inside his precious internet space. Meanwhile, everything is going to shit in the real world. All of the Children of the Forest have thrown themselves at the attacking wights, and you think at least Meera would be like, “We should have kept one of them alive.” But alas, no.

In the most horrific moment since we saw Shaggydog’s head slammed down onto a Bolton table, Summer jumps into the frey and dies. It seems HBO got tired of paying for the direwolf CGI budget (#saveGhost). Leaf sees this and thinks it’s a solid suicide plan and follows suit, using a grenade made of ice and fire (eh? EH?) to kaboom the wights for about 10 seconds.

Then we finally learn the truth of the lovable giant, Hodor. Through some magic even I don’t quite understand, Meera shouts at Hodor to hold the random ass door into Bloodraven’s cave, in order to give Bran and Meera time to get lost in the snowstorm. The repetition of Meera’s command echoes through present day Hodor’s memory into past Hodor’s mind and as Bran unsafely disconnects from weirwood.net, he causes past Hodor to seizure, frantically screaming, “Hold the door” over and over and over until it finally morphs into “Hodor.”

I have a few thoughts regarding this scene:

1. It was the best death sequence we’ve seen on the show in a long time, beautiful, poetic, and absolutely devastating. It was the death of a man who spent most of his life knowing how and when he died, and that knowledge makes him a cripple in his own right. His death had been decided long before the events of the series without any input from him whatsoever and for him to help Bran, knowing he’d be his downfall, makes him a hero.

2. Why was there a door there? The entrance to the cave was wide open, protected by magic, so why have a door down a long hallway like that? Not saying it changes anything, it’s just all I could think about once I’d processed my grief.

3. Bran is totally about to bring chaos into Westeros.

Random Thoughts

Daenerys for Queen of Westeros
Brienne for Lord Commander of the Queensgard
Yara for Salt Queen
Sansa for Warden of the North
Margaery for Warden of the South
Meera for Anything Not Involving Bran

Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO at 9pm EST.

’12 Monkeys’ Immortal Review: Everyone Dies Eventually

Nicole C

May 23, 2016

12 Monkeys

Season 2, Episode 6: “Immortal”

Air Date: May 23, 2016

In 12 Monkeys this week, it’s up to Cole and Ramse to find primary Kyle Slade before he is paradoxed by Messengers sent back in time.

In 2044, Jones (Barbara Sukowa) stands outside smoking her cigarette and watching the red thundering sky as time continues to collapse all around them. Eckland (Michael Hogan) interrupts her brooding with information on Kyle Slade (David Dastmalchian). Meanwhile, Ramse (Kirk Acevedo) and Cole (Aaron Stanford) are playing a game with young Sam (Peter DaCunha). There’s a particular moment when Ramse says, “That’s your problem. You’ve got no plan! You rush down that hallway naked, he’s gonna get you.” Cole goes for it of course and they are both ambushed by Sam (with paper bullets). Their little game comes to an end when Jones finds them and says that they know how to find the primary in 1975.

Ramse has a heart to heart with his son in the splinter room where Sam tells his dad that he could have saved the lives of a lot of people but didn’t. The young boy understood that his father loved him but it wasn’t just about his future, it’s about everyone’s. Well ain’t he a wise kid? You did good Elena.

In the meeting room, we find out that Kyle is a drifter and is believed to live somewhere near Greenwich Village. There are also four unaccounted Messengers and Jones believes that there is a good chance that two were dispatched to handle each primary. The scientist goes on to say that Kyle was believed to be the serial killer known as the Immortal, responsible for the murder and dismemberment of at least 12 people between 1974 and 1975. Jennifer wasn’t kidding when she said he was dangerous. The primary had been dishonorably discharged from the army after reportedly butchering numerous Viet Cong soldiers during the Vietnam War. Cole of course is clearly disturbed that he has to protect this guy but Jones makes it clear that he only has to prevent him from being paradoxed. That’s good? To find Kyle, he first needs to find the killer’s final victim, a waitress named Victoria Mason whom was murdered on July 22, 1975 (incidentally the same day Slade’s body was found).

Ramse comes in saying they follow her to Slade, wait till the Messengers come and then they take them out. Looks like his son’s word made an impact as Ramse has voluntarily agreed to go on a mission with Cole in order to watch out for him. The bromance is alive and well right now as the two trade barbs and Ramse claims that Jones would send him anyways to save Cole’s life yet again. Jones warns the two though not to change time anymore than they already have (aka let Victoria die).

As they arrive in 1975, both men walk into the diner where Victoria works and Ramse is obviously the edgier fashionista with his patterned shirt. The two get some grub and seemingly unable to stop himself, Ramse ends up flirting with the soon to be attacked waitress. Unexpectedly however, they see that Victoria has a young son and both feel conflicted about letting her die. That night though as they wait in the alley, Ramse is adamant that they do not alter the future. Kyle makes his appearance and begins to abduct Victoria and Cole is the one who comes to her rescue with an annoyed Ramse following. Preventing the her death though alters the timeline and causes both chrononauts to be disoriented, allowing Kyle to get away with one of the Messengers (who looks to be Adam Kenneth Wilson, aka Ragnor Fell in Shadowhunters) chasing after him.

The boys bring Victoria back to the Emerson and tell her the truth, which of course sounds crazy. The woman though is not quite so grateful to her saviors at getting a second chance. She is told to stay put while the two of them go to the hotel bar to grab some drinks. There Cole gets the idea of calling in the local NYPD and submit a tip to help them find Kyle. They pass themselves off as two journalists looking to get an exclusive of the Immortal’s arrest. At first the two NYPD officers refuse to have them ride along but Cole shows them an article of the police bungling the arrest and threaten that this goes to press unless they are allowed to come. Reluctantly the cops agree.

Kyle has taken a hostage at a small convenience store and Team Splinter has arrives outside with the police. Cole, not heading Ramse’s warnings plunges ahead (yet again) and goes inside. He then tells the primary that he knows who he is and that last night a man from the future tried to kill him. Kyle confirms it and says, “It’s you. James Cole.” The serial murderer has been waiting for him after all. The time traveler convinces the other man that he would be safer in jail and that the Messengers can’t get him there. Kyle blurts out that he can take him to the Witness now. What the what? How is the leader of the 12 Monkeys there? The primary claims that he’s captured him but before he can say anything else the NYPD burst in and he is taken into their custody.

Undeterred, Cole commandeers a police vehicle and follows the two detectives who have personally taken Kyle. He then is able to overtake the detectives’ car and forces the two law enforcement officers out so that Kyle can take him to the Witness. The boys argue because Ramse is trying to get his friend to see sense that they can’t trust this primary. Their mission is just to protect him not to chase this lead on the mysterious 12 Monkeys leader. At this point Cole is beyond reason and he chooses to follow Kyle. Ramse calls him an idiot but lets him go despite knowing that this cannot end well. Cole counters with, “it was always my mission, not yours,” before leaving the scene.

Back at the Emerson, Ramse enters room 607 with Victoria tied up to a chair. The other Messenger asks him if Cole with the primary, to which the traveler answers yes. The end up fighting (of course) but Victoria manages to stab the messenger with a letter opener distracting him. Now that he’s trying to kill her, Ramse is then able to overpower him and deliver the killing blow. He asks the waitress if he can borrow her car and tells her from one parent to another that she needs to go home and take care of her son because her life is not about her anymore.

Kyle takes Cole to his hideout where there are hacked limbs and blood all over the place. As they walk over, the other man claims that the people he killed in Vietnam were all primaries and that he had no choice because the Witness wanted to paradox them. Cole asks about Victoria because she wasn’t a primary but Kyle says that she was a means to an end and that he didn’t actually want to hurt her. He begins to also talk about an ancient group of warriors called the Immortals that had no attachments in life and their only purpose was the battle. Kyle seemed to view Cole and himself like these guys. He also mentions how the Witness wants to be immortal in the timeless forest and then enters his home. Interesting.

Inside, he warns Cole about a trip wire for uninvited guests and as the two men go deeper in, the chrononaut must be wondering what he’s gotten himself into with all those bloody limbs hung about. Kyle then points out a tied person towards the back of the room whom he says is the Witness. We then get a close up of the person who is wearing a black hood and some weird looking stitched up skin mask. When both men stand in front of the cage, Kyle explains how the Witness had come for him but he was smarter and had trapped his would be killer instead. He had used Victoria as a way to bring Cole to him in order to have the other man kill the Witness. To make matters even weirder, the primary says that once it’s done they can go home together to the future. Well now, Cole has got himself a new companion! Kyle though does tell us something intriguing that the Witness is from the future as well and he also been time traveling but has done so for far longer. The leader of the 12 Monkeys also has technologies far more advanced that theirs and has special abilities (like getting inside your mind), but he is still just a man who can be killed. Kyle then shows him the bone dagger (just like Tommy’s) and urges Cole to kill the prisoner with it because time wants him to do it. The primary insists that he must be the one, but when the skin mask is removed, we discover that this person is not the Witness but the second Messenger.

As he explains this to Kyle, the man flips out believing that he was too important and that he knew the Witness wanted to kill him personally. The primary then pulls out a gun but Ramse arrives with his own weapon and tells his friend that they should end both of these guys and get out of there. To make matters even more complicated the two NYPD detectives show up and Cole tells Ramse to get down knowing about the trip wire. After the explosion, Kyle tries to choke the time traveler, the messenger attempts to paradox Kyle but is shot by Ramse, Cole then frees himself and then shoots the primary (deciding that this guy was not worth saving).

Meanwhile at the Emerson Hotel in 2016, Cassie (Amanda Schull) injects Jennifer (Emily Hampshire) with a sedative so that she can sleep and recover. At first Ms. Goines feels wide-awake and complains how their room smells old and is probably haunted. She babbles that some people think ghosts are just replays, dramatic moments recorded in their surroundings into time. Is that another nugget that will come into play in future episodes? The drug soon kicks in though and Cassie helps her into bed. Sleepily Jennifer asks the doc if she believes in ghosts to which the other woman replies no, but she can’t get the flashes of the Witness morphing into Aaron (Noah Bean) from her mind.

Cassie goes out into the hallway to get some ice from the ice machine when she begins to hear someone calling her name. Following the sound, she goes back into the room where a scarred Aaron has appeared before her. Understandably, she’s freaking the F out because he’s supposed to be dead. Cassie is feeling guilty, confused, and shocked all at the same time. The former political aid begins to explain that the 12 Monkeys saved him and that they aren’t the enemy. They are all basically fighting the same battle only on different fronts. Aaron says how in the fire the only thing that kept him going was Cassie and how horrible he felt that he would die without getting the chance to say he was sorry. He wants her to understand that time is the real enemy and that without it you could be with the one you love forever. Still somewhat confused from this surreal conversation she was having with him, Cassie protests that it can’t be this way. As Aaron gets more adamant about how the red forest is the only way to beat death, she realizes that something is not right with him. He tightens his grip on Cassie’s hand and then his eyes go all black, prompting her to realize that she’s actually talking to the Witness. He then morphs into Cole, asking if this is the face she prefers. Freaked out even more, he then vanishes before her eyes as someone grabs her shoulder.

Jennifer snaps Cassie out of her experience and somehow they are both at the lobby of the Emerson. The primary tries to cover Dr. Railly’s trance walking by saying that the other woman had a little too much to drink because it was her birthday. Confused and scared, Cassie tells Jennifer that the Witness was here and that she needs to leave because she is no longer safe here with her. The other woman though asks the doctor what if it was all in her head (appreciating the irony coming from her). Cassie is convinced that it felt real and she doesn’t want to take the chance. Jennifer sees this whole experience as a positive event though because now she thinks that the Witness is scared and that they need to go monkey hunting. The gals need to become a pack of hyenas and take the fight to them! Except Cassie doesn’t have much fight left in her and Ms. Goines asks what he had said to her to cause this much fear and anxiety. The doctor answers that he wants to destroy time so that there’d be no death and that he made it sound almost beautiful. Poignantly, Jennifer states that death is a time clock and makes us better, makes us love harder and what makes us human. Well said.

Back in 2044, Ramse, Cole, Eckland and Jones are outside and we can visibly see that preventing the 1975 paradox has caused the temporal storm to recede. The two bros have a heart to heart and Cole apologizes for almost getting his friend killed. Ramse essentially accepts and says that he thinks Cole’s leaping without thinking is really because he has a good heart and that one of these days its going to help them out of this whole mess. Till then someone’s got to have his back.

Cole: Listen man, you know I lov…

Rame: Ohhhh what are you doing??

Cole: What?

Ramse: You don’t say that…

Cole: Say what?

Ramse: You never say that!

Cole: I was going to say I love whiskey. We should go find some and drink it.

Ramse: No you weren’t. You were going to declare your undying love for me brother.

Oh these two, how can you not love them? After everything that’s happened so far it warms my heart to see their bromance alive and well. As they leave the roof Ramse says, “me too.” AWWWWWWWWWW GUYS!!!

We end this week’s episode in 2016 where Cassie has discovered that Jennifer has left the Emerson. She leaves a note telling the other woman that she still has a lot of fight left in her and to take it to the future while she’s going to take it to the streets. As Cassie looks at the injection that would activate her tether back to 2044 the lights begin to flicker and we get various of flashes of her in the red forest, inside the creepy house, the Witness approaching her, then him actually flashing into the hotel room (though it could be in her mind), and then her eyes turn full black the way the Witness as Aaron/Cole did earlier.

What could this mean? Could what Kyle said be true and that the Witness can go into people’s minds? This could be what “full immersion” meant but to what purpose?

Also if you are wondering why Kyle looks so familiar, it’s because the awesome David Dastmalchian was Kurt in Marvel’s Ant-Man! He did a fantastic job playing the complicated Mr. Slade and showed audiences how primaries can go dark as well.

This week’s themes seemed to revolve around death and friendship. Kyle felt that he was an immortal and was too important to be killed. The Witness telling Cassie that he wanted to destroy time so that there would no longer be death and suffering (but according the the primary, he wanted to be immortal himself). Jennifer then giving her two cents that death makes us love harder and thinks that its what ultimately makes us human. We also saw the strengthened bond between Cole and Ramse, while Cassifer’s relationship also grew as it was Jennifer’s turn to take care of Dr. Railly through her recent traumatic experience.

We learned a lot in this episode, most importantly that the Witness’ real identity is still unknown. We know that he can morph into different people and potentially can enter people’s minds. In a previous article I pondered on who the Witness could be (click HERE) and thought that we could possibly rule out Cole and Cassie, but now I’m not so sure. The writers have been incredibly clever in setting up twists so it really could be anyone darnit but the anticipation is part of the fun.

We’re nearly halfway through season 2 and the excitement just doesn’t stop. We’ve also gotten significant character growth for all the major players and it’s been so fascinating to see them deal with new circumstances out of their comfort zone. The stakes keep on getting raised on both sides and it seems that everyone will experience great challenges in the episodes to come and I can hardly wait!

12 Monkeys airs Mondays 9/8 central on Syfy.

Catch up on all things 12 Monkeys here.

‘Person of Interest’: “ShotSeeker” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 23, 2016

Person of Interest
Season 5, Episode 5: “ShotSeeker”
Tuesday May 17, 2016

I think the best way to describe Tuesday night’s episode of Person of Interest, “ShotSeeker”, is as a palate cleanser. The episode wasn’t bad, but truthfully, any episode following the monster that was “6,741” has big shoes to fill. I think my issue with this episode, and if I am going to be honest with this season as a whole, is that I do not really feel a connection with the number storylines. They almost seem to get in the way of the important stuff, or feel like a contrived vehicle to move another part of the plot along. There was a lot of interesting stuff going on this episode in terms of basically everyone, and it seemed like number storylines was more of a distraction.

The episode begins with Harold visiting the safehouse after fulfilling some of his Professor Whistler duties. Well that is an alias we haven’t heard in awhile. Are we really supposed to assume that Finch has been keeping up with his college professor identity while being in the subway basically 24/7?

Dear students,

Classes and office hours have been suspended indefinitely. If you need to contact Prof. Whistler he will be in a hidden underground subway nursing an ASI back to life.

Regards, University Administration.

So onto the irrelevant storyline (ha get what I did there). While the plotline weaves in and out of all the other stories, it isn’t really that interesting so I am going to try to sum it up quickly. This episode’s number is a caffeine addict named Ethan who works on the NYC task force ShotSeeker, a program that picks up the sound of gunshots around the city. This guy has supersonic hearing, like superman level shit. He can hear the sound of gunshots and tell you what type of gun they came from. I feel like that would be the best blessing while also being the worst curse. Want to eavesdrop on every conversation ever? Done! Want to fall asleep with a ticking clock anywhere in the vicinity? Nope, never gonna happen.

The reason that Ethan’s number came up is because he is investigating the disappearance of a chemist named Krupa a woman who has been missing ever since ShotSeeker misidentified gunshots in her apartment as fire crackers. As Ethan astutely points out “Last time I checked, this wasn’t the Fourth of July.” While the setting off of firecrackers in Harlem and the Heights is actually a common place during warmer weather (unfortunately I have first hand experience with this very loud and annoying practice) it almost always done outside, and not in the very small confines of a NYC apartment. John believes Ethan’s story and decides to help solve the mystery of Krupa, by handing him off to Fusco.

After some more digging, Root and Finch realize that Samaritan is behind the entire thing. It tampered with ShotSeeker, hacked into and stole Krupa’s world hunger ending patent, set up Ethan. For some reason, Samaritan finds it imperative to keep Krupa’s discovery a secret, and will kill to keep it that way. So in order to take the power of obtaining this knowledge away, Root disseminates Krupa’s paper to a myriad of scholarly publications.

So while this whole thing is happening, there are two additional, way more interesting and important subplots. The first involves Fusco, who in the beginning of the episode is approached by Elias’s old friend and business partner Bruce. Bruce approached Fusco in the park, while he was watching his son play hockey and demanded that Lionel tell him the truth about what actually happened to Elias, and if he didn’t he would inflict harm on Fusco’s son. Fusco basically responds with “You want answers? Join the line, kid. AND NEVER LAY YOUR FUCKING EYES ON MY SON AGAIN.” Since John and Finch STILL won’t tell Fusco about the machine and Samaritan, John tells Fusco he will take care of Bruce situation.

Well, suffice to say the John does not do a great job of taking care of this, because it results in John being kidnapped by Bruce and his guys. To make things worse, Root and Finch think that it is Samaritan that kidnapped Reese, as they are unaware of the C-plot going on this episode. I have to say, it was really touching to see Root come to John’s defense in this scene. We have seen Shaw and John work closely and bond, obviously Shaw and Root have a very, very special connection, and this season especially we have seen Root and Finch grow closer than ever, but we never see John and Root emotionally interact. You usually get the sense that Root and Reese those two people who if their mutual friends were not in the same friend group, they would never speak. But Root cares about John, and is not willing to have another member of the Scooby gang be taken away by Samaritan (even though Samaritan has nothing to do with the kidnapping, but that is neither here nor there) and is raring to go and save him. But, as expected John does not need anyone’s help. It is time to tell/show Bruce the truth….. that ELIAS IS ALIVE.Yup you read that correctly. After the crash in last season’s finale, Elias did not die! Fusco saved him and brought him to the safe house so he could be nursed back to house. That was not a twist I ever saw coming.

And finally, my favorite storyline of the episode: Root, Harold, and two baby ASIs. Harold has taken the kernel of Samaritan code that he and Root retrieved and has started to incubate a baby Samaritan. He plans to set up a battle Royale between two baby ASI’s, the Machine and Samaritan, in order to find any flaws that may be hiding inside Samaritan’s code. This monumental battle will occur inside a Faraday cage, and Root is not allowed to watch. Root is miffed to say the least as she is the one who helped Harold retrieve the Samaritan code.

Harold connects the third to a third computer, which is a computer version of a boxing ring (or something like that, I really get lost when Harold gets too computer-y), and the games begin. Let me rephrase that. The complete and utter massacre begins. Out of over a billion matchups between the two superpower computer gods, Samaritan has won every. single. one. This brings Harold and Root back to the overarching theme of their entire relationship: how to treat and raise The Machine as they discuss whether or not to give her code to let her “push back in the playground.” And then comes one of my favorite lines of the episode.

Finch: The Machine is infinitely smarter than either of us. If anyone here needs to recode the Machine, it should be the Machine.

I think it is really interesting to see how this conversation between Root and Harold on the subject of the machine has evolved over the past five seasons. Harold would NEVER have said this line, in season one, two or three for that matter. In the beginning Root was the rebellious rambunctious aunt who just wanted to set The Machine free, and Harold was the over protective and cautious father. While the pair still differ on how they view The Machine, over the years they have adopted parts of the others perspective as well. Root realizes now that The Machine needs to be nurtured in a certain way, and Harold has learned to put trust in The Machine.

Other Interesting Tidbits:

Fusco has taken upon himself to investigate everything the Nerd Herd is keeping from him, and Samaritan now has him flagged as a potential obstruction.
It is finally revealed that Samaritan is most likely behind the decrease in murders over the last couple of months, as they have been covering all of them up as missing persons and suicides (hence the increase in these). Maybe other people had picked up on that earlier, but I did not.

‘Game of Thrones’: Will Bran Bring Destruction to Westeros?

Jen Stayrook

May 23, 2016

“The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother’s milk. Darkness will make you strong.”
– the Three-eyed crow, to Bran Stark – A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 34

Spoilers through Game of Thrones 605: “The Door” and some spoilers for the fifth book of the series, A Dance with Dragons.

There’s a lot to discuss in this week’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Door”, and we’ll get to that in weekly recap of the episode, but for now, I want to talk about the implications of Bran’s rash behavior in tonight’s episode and how it could potentially lead to the end of Westeros.

We’ve seen a lot of Bran this season. Most of his time has been spent traveling through time with the weirdwood trees and Bloodraven as his guide. The scenes Bran has visited have all been from his family’s history: a trip to Winterfell with his father, aunt, and uncle all as children, and then later, at the Tower of Joy where Ned Stark and Howland Reed fought off three members of the Kingsguard to save Lyanna Stark. We don’t know the resolution to either scene, only that there’s something of importance in the tower, Ned is sent to the Vale as a ward, and Hodor was once named Wylis, a stableboy who could talk.

Bran revels in these trips down history lane. As a young boy, he dreamed of being a knight, a hero to defend Winterfell and his family. When he is pushed from the Winterfell tower by Jaime Lannister, those hopes are dashed, and he’s left as a cripple at the mercy and good will of those around him. Only with the help of Hodor, Jojen, and Meera Reed, is he even able to make it to the Land of Always Winter to answer the call of Bloodraven and begin his training as a greenseer, but more importantly for Bran, he’s able to walk again in these visions. He’s able to be whole and feel important, more than just a burden for others.

Greensight is an incredibly rare ability in Westeros, even more so than warging. With the help of the weirwoods, greenseers have the ability to see the future, as well as the past. Bloodraven has acted as historian, cataloging events throughout Westeros in the hopes of learning from the past. It is through Bloodraven that we learn the origin of the White Walkers, the biggest threat the world has ever seen. Thousands of years ago, the First Men arrived in Westeros and the Children of the Forest saw the men as a threat, so they used one of those First Men, bound him to a weirwood tree, and turned him into a white walker, meant to protect the Children from the First Men.

As things are wont to do, disaster struck and the Children lost control of the white walkers as they grew into the Terminators of Westeros, ready to annihilate all of humanity, Children of the Forest included. 8,000 years before the main events of the series, the Battle for the Dawn occurred. The Children and First Men allied, also creating the Night’s Watch, to end the Long Night and the reign of the white walkers who had risen against their creators and journeyed south. In this “Age of Heroes”, the First Men learned that the white walkers could be killed through the use of dragonglass (obsidian) and Brandon the Builder, with the help of the Children’s magic, built the wall that would keep the white walkers out of Westeros, and the Night’s Watch was assigned to guard the realms of men.

It’s important to know the history of the world because as the white walkers rise to power again, the knowledge of how the First Men and Children of the Forest defeated them the first time will be invaluable. They’ve been held at bay by the magic the Children of the Forest used on Bloodraven’s cave as well as the Wall, so as to keep themselves and the rest of Westeros safe from attack.

However, last night in “The Door”, Bran became anxious for more information. We’d seen his frustrations with Bloodraven’s teachings in previous episodes; he’s a boy who yearns for more knowledge, but Bloodraven warns him about the power he wields:

“Stay too long where you don’t belong and you might never return.”
“Why would I want to return? So I can be a cripple again? So I can talk to an old man in a tree?”
“You think I wanted to sit here for a thousand years watching the world from a distance as the roots grew through me?”
“So why did you?”
“I was waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to be you.”
– Game of Thrones 603: “Oathbreaker”

Bran doesn’t want to be a cripple forever chained to a tree. He wants to be free to explore the world, past and present as he pleases. He feels he’s been tied down long enough and once he senses freedom, he latches on to it, caution be damned. When he learns the truth of the white walkers, that Leaf and the other Children of the Forest were responsible for their creation, he lashes out in anger. Instead of asking more questions and getting more rules in return, Bran takes the roots of the weirdwood tree into his own hands, literally. Without Bloodraven’s approval, he journey’s into the sacred tree’s memories, only this time it seems he’s gone into the present, and the Night’s King sees him and touches him, marking him with his magic, voiding the warranty of the magic the Children put in place to protect them.

This act allows the white walkers and their wights entrance into Bloodraven’s cave. The ensuing battle leads to the death of all of the remaining Children of the Forest, Summer, Bloodraven, and Hodor, with Bran and Meera barely escaping with their lives. In one fell swoop Bran has killed the man who can show him important pieces of Westeros history that could save its people as well as wiped out the entire race whose magic could possibly defend against the invaders. Why the white walkers want to wipe out humanity and head south is still a mystery. They could be a society whose livelihood was thrown off course by the “heating up” of the world with the birth of dragons. They could be following a robotic-like protocol. They could be doing what humanity has done in the past and wiping out the “lesser” species. It’s unsure.

But the fact of the matter is: Bran has escaped Bloodraven’s cave with a beacon on his arm, a mark that disables the Children’s protective magic and is about to lead the white walkers and its army through the Wall into Westeros uninhibited. Bran the Builder made the wall 8,000 years ago and now we have Bran the Destroyer.

“ If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.”
– Qhorin Halfhand, to Jon Snow

What do you think about this revelation that Bran could bring destruction to Westeros? Let me know in the comments!

Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO at 9pm EST.

‘Outlander’ – “Faith”: The Beauty in the Darkness

Jen Stayrook

May 21, 2016

There are some bad things going down on Outlander right now so WARNING: spoilers through Outlander 207: “Faith”.

Last week Outlander ended on a pretty bleak note with Jamie breaking his promise to not duel Randall and Claire collapsing from a likely miscarriage. Things have been rough for the Frasers in France, maybe even more difficult than they were in Scotland. They’ve grown into different people, each shaped by the darkness they’ve come to inhabit over the past year. But at the end of the day, no matter what this couple has gone through, you know that somehow they’ll manage to find the light again and return to one another. Theirs is the epitome of a star-crossed romance and it’s why we root so much for then succeed, even if we know they’re doomed to fail.

“Faith” is the beginning of Act II for Outlander’s second season, mirroring the motions we saw in episode one. It starts off with a jump forward in time, to a vision of Claire and her child looking at a book about birds when the young girl asks if her mother has ever seen a heron. Claire reminisces about seeing one in Scotland and then we’re quickly thrown back into the “better” time period in Paris. Claire is in a hospital bed at L’Hopital Des Anges, bleeding out, but being aided by Mother Hildegard and the executioner/doctor, Monsieur Forez. Claire fades in and out, awoken by a fever, and Mother Hildegard tells her that sadly, Claire has lost the baby, and she too, could die if the fever does not pass. It is here that we have the best line of the night, if not of the season.

Father Laurentin: “Would you like to make a last confession, so that you may unburden yourself of any sins?”

Claire: “My sins are all I have left.”

It’s a line that sat with me the entire episode as I watched Claire through this journey of loss, mourning the death of her child, the hatred toward Jamie. Balfe is absolutely outstanding in “Faith” saying so much with so little dialogue. And we as viewers know this is not the last time that she will cry out in agony over the loss of her husband, as the future has told us she will do it yet again in the coming months.

As Claire is in a fevered state, Master Raymond comes to her side, donned in a hood and cloak so as to hide his identity from the King who searches for practitioners of magic. Raymond knows that the placenta is still inside Claire after the miscarriage and he rids her body of it, saving her life in the process. He then tells her that he didn’t call her Madonna because she was with child, but because she has a blue aura about her, just like the Virgin Mary. Just like him.

Claire, now physically healed from her ordeal, returns home, but Jamie has been imprisoned in the Bastille for dueling Randall, with an indefinite prison sentence. Claire’s return was the second time I cried during the episode (though not the last). I want to talk about this scene because this moment is the perfect example of what Outlander does so well when compared to other shows. Outlander allows the scene and the actors within it time to breathe, to take in the scenery, to really show off the internal struggle to the viewer. Claire wants to hate Magnus and Fergus and everyone else who let Jamie leave that day, she wants to blame them for her husband’s rash actions, but deep down, she knows she can’t and that these people love her, and that breaks her down. She’s grateful for their support and yet, they’re another reminder of what she has lost.

The truly horrific moment of the night came when Claire learned why Jamie broke his promise. Fergus, after a nightmare, confesses to Claire that he stole perfume from an English officer, the one we all know and love. And Black Jack, the monster that he is, rapes Fergus for it. The boy cries out and Jamie comes to his rescue, beating the ever-loving pulp out of Randall before he’s pulled off him by brothel bouncers. In a fit of rage, Jamie challenges Randall to another duel, one we already know the ending to.

Realizing that she’s been wrong about Jamie, that he was only defending Fergus, protecting Fergus from the same horrors he went through at Randall’s hands, Claire petitions King Louis XV for Jamie’s release from the Bastille. But King Louis XV, while a generous and intelligent man, isn’t selfless, and in return he asks for Claire’s help with a little matter in the defense against the dark arts portion of Versailles. Louis brings forth the Comte St. Germain and Master Raymond. The King is understanding of magic and knows that it has its uses, but he wants La Dame Blanche to ascertain whether or not either man holds a darkness inside him enough to use that magic for evil. Claire does what she does best, puts on a show even while her heart is still crippled. It’s one of the things I love most about her character, she’s so ably pulls her emotions into herself and gets the job done.

Through a deceptive use of bitter cascara, Claire proves Master Raymond’s innocence, but at the last moment, Raymond poisons the chalice, causing us to bid adieu to the most beautiful villain on Outlander.

Claire believes the ordeal to be over, but the King has other plans. He gently pushes her down onto the bed, and weeks after having lost her child, he rapes her. There’s nothing much to it, a few thrusts as Claire closes her eyes and remembers why she’s giving in to this awful act, and then it’s over. She adjusts her dress, grabs an orange off the table, and leaves. I want to be outraged, to throw a vase at the wall and stomp my feet, but…I can’t because I’m still just so sad about everything else Claire has suffered through this episode that rape actually comes in at the bottom of her list of grievances. And I still hear her in my head rasping, “My sins are all I have left.”

Jamie is released from the Bastille with a magnificent beard I’ll mourn the loss of for the rest of the season, and Claire can barely look at him. She tells him everything, that Mother Hildegard named the baby Faith, baptized her and buried her in the cemetery outside the church. She tells him how Mother Hildegard gave in to a wailing mother wishes and let her hold the child in her arms, singing and crying for nearly a day until Louise gently pulled the baby from her arms. She tells how she sobbed in the fetal position and she hated him for what he had to her, to them, and how she was prepared to hate him forever until she learned the truth of it all.

The final ten minutes of the episode are some of the most gut-wrenching, raw, and vulnerable on the show. Last season Jamie’s soul was laid bare for the world to see and in “Faith” Claire puts her heart on the table, completely broken and crying out in pain. She confesses that she doesn’t blame Jamie but herself because she knew the risks, she put Frank before their family and she went to the duel that day to stop him, and because of these things, her baby girl with beautiful copper hair died.

Jamie forgives her and echoes what he said midway through last year that he’d forgiven her for anything she had done or would do, even sleeping with the King of France. Jamie knows that everything they do, the good and the bad, is for the other, and that if they’re to survive, they have to bear the pain and the darkness of it all together. In the end, they journey to Faith’s gravestone together and say goodbye to the little girl they never got to know, and make their way back home, finally, to Scotland.

Random Thoughts:

I have a lot of feelings on the subject of both Claire and Fergus being raped. The biggest issue I have is Black Jack’s immediate instinct to rape anyone he meets alone in a room. I know he’s a monster and I know what he’s capable of, but he’s also a still-broken man in unfamiliar territory. He doesn’t have the backing of the English crown in Maison d’Elise and he’s already been smacked down by King Louis once before, so his ego wouldn’t be flying as high as it was in England. I would imagine he’d be more cautious about his actions, but it seems much like Ramsay Snow, there are few consequences for Randall’s actions.

Catriona Balfe knocked it out of the park this episode. She’s always top-notch but in “Faith” she’s the best we’ve ever seen her and I swear by all that is nerdy if she doesn’t receive acclaim for her acting this episode, there’s no justice in this world.

I miss Jamie’s beard already.

Outlander airs Saturdays on Starz at 9pm EST.

‘The 100’ – “Perverse Instantiation: Part Two”: Save This Broken Heart

Jen Stayrook

May 20, 2016

This week on the season three finale of ‘The 100’: Get in losers, we’re going to the City of Light.

Abandon hope all ye who enter: Spoilers through The 100 3×16.

Picking up where Part One left off, The 100 finale was a whirlwind of every emotion on my radar. In a season that has separated both fans and characters, the finale brought everyone back together, even my beloved, Lexa. It was a much sweeter affair than most were anticipating, but I, for one, am happy with being able to celebrate the groups victories in this broken world.

With Ontari brain dead, the delinquents were out of options for getting A.L.I.E. 2.0 into a nightblood. Clarke saving her mother from A.L.I.E. with their one-time-use EMP initially felt like an emotional response to Abby’s near-death experience, but Clarke is anything but driven by her emotions. Instead, she rescues Abby from ALIEKRU in order to use her medical skills so they can perform a similar blood transfusion to what Mount Weather did in season 2.

I appreciated the parallels to The 100 season 2 arc, with what Clarke et al were willing to sacrifice to save everyone. Clarke risks not just her life but the lives of everyone when she inserts the 2.0 chip and then in true Bellamy fashion, he takes the blame from everyone else by being the one to give Clarke the 1.0 chip. Even though Clarke was the one to enter the City of Light, the one to accept the night’s blood and the chips, I appreciate that Bellamy is still her equal when it comes to making decisions.

Clarke enters the City of Light and she revels in its immensity, the beauty of the towering structures, but it doesn’t take long for things to go kaput as Ontari’s body begins to fade, taking Clarke’s life source with her. Abby and Murphy are forced to act quickly and restart Ontari’s heart, with Murphy begrudgingly acting as heart pump.

Things head south for Clarke in the City of Light. A.L.I.E. begins to update her programming which means that those inside the City can now see her. Luckily for her, a familiar face comes barreling into the action with her dual swords kicking ass. LEXA. OH MY GOD LEXA HOW I HAVE MISSED YOU.

There were rumors about Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) being on set for the finale, and I speculated that Lexa would appear in the City of Light, but seeing it play out, I couldn’t have asked for a better reunion. I desperately want Lexa back on the show, desperately want her and Clarke to be happy, but since I know I cannot have those things, I will settle for this epic send off. In the span of about ten minutes we were treated to more romance and hugs than we’ve had all season and I know that’s in no small part due to outcry over Lexa’s death.

As ALIEKRU closes in on Clarke and Lexa’s location in the City, Jasper makes an appearance to try to stop them from moving on. Just as Jaha surrounds them with his mob of angry men, Raven makes a clutch appearance, offering Clarke a back door into the room with the killswitch. With too many of ALIEKRU around them, Lexa sacrifices herself to save Clarke, yet another selfless act from her. The two share a heartfelt goodbye with Clarke finally breaking down that wall and telling Lexa she loves her. It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for between these two and I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Meanwhile, in the real world, ALIEKRU climbs up the side of a freaking building to get to the delinquents. Led by Kane and Emori, the group breaks through their defenses because Octavia can’t cool her lust for revenge for ten seconds. Not that I blame her. If I had someone like Pike telling me we needed to work together after all he’d done to divide Skaikru, I’d cut him, too. When Pike tries to find reassurance with Bellamy, our boy B responds,

“I let my need for revenge put me on the wrong side… I wanted to see things like you. I needed that, to believe that they were bad and we were good, but I don’t know what to believe anymore. I just know I have to live with what I’ve done.”

I KNEW IT.

Anyway, Bellamy defends against ALIEKRU using the ol’ Pikachu method by electrocuting some water but still it doesn’t stop them from making it to the throne room. The group fights, friend against chipped friend and it HURTS.

Back in the City of Light, Clarke listens to the two sides of the AI, Angel Becca and Demon A.L.I.E., as they tell her about the impending destruction of Earth, how soon nuclear reactors the world over will begin to melt down, making the planet uninhabitable for human life. A.L.I.E. claims she is merely trying to save humanity but because she is an AI, she cannot find middle ground like Clarke wants and give the people a choice to stay in the City of Light or take their chances on Earth. Much like in the other season finales, Clarke is faced with a dark choice, force her people concede and possibly be safer or made the hard decision to kill some now with the hope that the rest can be saved later. In the end, she chooses the latter decision, as she has always done, risking the relative safety of the now in favor of the hope for the future.

When A.L.I.E.’s kill switch is engaged, those in ALIEKRU come back to life, so to speak, with all the pain and memories of their actions assaulting their senses at once. This scene was even more heartbreaking to watch than Lexa’s sendoff because Lexa was always doing what she thought was right. Those like Kane, Emori, and even Jaha to an extent, were prisoners in their own minds, unable to stop what they were doing to those they love.

‘

In the midst of all this bittersweetness, Octavia comes in with her sword and stabs Pike through the heart. Part of me wishes she had stabbed Jaha instead, but I can recognize that Pike’s journey was at an end. He may have thought he was doing the right thing, but it wasn’t, and he couldn’t own up to those mistakes the way Kane or even Bellamy have.

And in the end it’s Clarke and Bellamy on the throne together, side by side, once again making the tough decisions to save those around them. I LOVE that these two are equals. I’ve said it before that without the two of them together, things always head south, and now with Clarke admitting she ran from her problems, the pair can finally start to lead the way they were meant to. (But again, I’m definitely not advocating a romance. Please, please let them stay friends.) Also, add Raven into that mix of leadership because without her, they’d all be dead.

Random thoughts:

After muttering to no one in particular that he was finally happy, it seemed all but certain that Jasper was going to kill himself in the final moments. He didn’t, and I wonder if that was a bit that changed due to them filming two endings, but with him alive, I hope next season he doesn’t continue his “Clarke kills all my happiness” mopey montage.

Murphy acting as Clarke’s Flamekeeper makes me happy. He’s a character I was CERTAIN I’d never like and look how things have changed.

What happened to Indra!? I hope Octavia immediately went to take her down off a cross because she deserves better, especially after saving Kane last week.

Next season needs to have more Luna. I hope they make use of her boats and her excellent leaderships skills. They need more of her if they’re to save the planet.

I can’t imagine that Earthkru (heh) will try to get back into space. Instead, they’ll have to find a save place on Earth and protect it. I assume it’ll be similar to season 1’s arc.

Also, Arrow had a TON of references to The 100 this week, what with the mention of Mount Weather, an ark, etc. I know these are generic in terms of the apocalyptic nature of Arrow right now, but I like to think it was a subtle nod to the best show on the CW.

The 100 returns next fall for season 4. May we meet again.

‘Arrow’ and the Character Assassination of Felicity Smoak

Jen Stayrook

May 20, 2016

You have been warned: Spoilers through Arrow 4×22: “Lost in the Flood”

Is there a more hated character on Arrow right now than Miss Felicity Smoak? Over the past few months there has been an outcry from fans about Felicity’s rise to power, blaming her for Laurel’s death and the destruction of Oliver’s ability to shoot an arrow. Season 4 hasn’t exactly been kind to nerdy IT hacker/CEO, which breaks my heart because I adore the fashionable nerd, but why now? What’s changed in the past season to cause such an uproar over her character?

Felicity has been an integral character since the beginning of Arrow, providing a bevy of technical assistance to the vigilante for years, but in recent weeks her character has taken a bit of a nose dive and I attribute that solely to her mother, Donna Smoak. Or rather, to the poor use of her mother as a storytelling device.

Olicity (ugh I’m sorry, I hate that ship name, too) was inevitable. Even I couldn’t deny the attraction between the couple on their first meeting. He was sweet and aloof, she was a dork. As much as I wanted the pair to stay friends, they grew on me, and I accepted they were more than the hopes and dreams of Tumblr fans. Despite my reservations about the romance, Felicity and Oliver didn’t drag the show down because of it. In fact, the romance added a lightness the show needed to keep up with The Flash and even Supergirl. Things went south on Arrow because the show needed to end that romance in a believable fashion based on the notion that good television can’t have happy couples. Breakups make for better ratings, I suppose.

In case you forgot, Oliver and Felicity ended because Oliver hid the knowledge of his son from her and Felicity was (understandably) hurt by his actions. It’s unfair to compare Felicity’s reaction to how season one or even season two Felicity would have responded because Early Felicity was still in co-worker mode. But Present Day Felicity was preparing to marry this man, spend the rest of her life with him. It’s not too much to expect honesty from him, especially when, in her mind, she already knew his darkest secret.

Oliver is a withdrawn character, burrowing into himself when things get dark because he thinks that is the best way to cope and protect those around him. Felicity is the opposite and wears her heart on her sleeve. If she feels something, she says it and has no qualms about people knowing where she stands on an issue. If the show had played to this angle, I’m almost certain that the break up and ensuing fallout would have been better received. A conversation acknowledging Oliver’s mistake, explaining his reasoning, and so on, would have made the transition from fiancé back to friend easier to withstand.

Instead, there’s this notion that Felicity’s actions must be explained more, that there has to be a bigger reason for her to have left Oliver. And that’s where Mama Smoak comes into play.

In the penultimate episode of season four, “Lost in the Flood” and last week in “Monument Point” we were treated to a significant amount of Donna Smoak screen time. I don’t hate Donna’s character. In fact, she was originally a comic relief I enjoyed and a parental figure who was so much more than the dark “woe is me” we’ve become accustomed to on Arrow.

However, since Oliver and Felicity broke up, Felicity has taken on more of her mother’s, shall we say, obnoxious traits. Donna’s obsession with “not lying” has become Felicity’s obsession, to the point where even lovable Curtis points out the similarities between the two. Felicity didn’t break up with Oliver because it’s in his nature to hide the truth. Felicity broke up with Oliver because a lie is a huge no-no and that’s exactly why Donna left Noah years ago and Felicity is trying to keep history from repeating itself. It’s as if the writers are somehow trying to explain the breakup-that-was-promised as unavoidable because of who Felicity’s mother, and thereby Felicity, is.

In driving this point home, they’ve even taken to changing Felicity’s character to better match Donna. Her clothes are more over the top (even though she’s always been quite fashionable for an IT girl), her shoes are beyond unreasonable for someone who fights crime day and night, and her quirky nature has been turned up to volume 11 to remind us that she is Donna Smoak’s child and therefore, her bad decisions aren’t her own.

Felicity is a character who was, first and foremost, used for her brain. It was her intelligence, quick wit, and unfailing loyalty that attracted both Oliver and viewers alike. And while some of those things are still on display (she saves the world from Rubicon in the most recent episode and had some good lines like, “I am not pregnant. Is that the only news a woman can have?”), they seem to run far and few between these days. Instead of focusing on her we’re left watching as she’s caught in the middle of a marital dispute between two adults who make it a habit to single out from where she gets each of her significant character traits.

Felicity is Felicity. We don’t need to see her parents to know where she came from because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. What happened to the girl who joined Team Arrow on her terms? The girl who made a living off of giving Oliver a piece of her mind? The girl who said, “It feels really good having you inside me. And by ’you,’ I mean your voice. And by ’me,’ I mean my ear. I’m going to stop talking. Right now.”

I miss her.

‘Person of Interest’: “6,741” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 19, 2016

Person of Interest
Season 5, Episode 4: “6,741”
Monday May 16, 2016

To start off, I just want to say, one of the things that I love most about recapping is that it gives me the chance to express and put my feelings and thoughts about my favorite TV shows into words. But on the flip side, when an episode is so amazing that I have a million thoughts and feelings about it, the prospect of putting all of them into a legible recap is both daunting and anxiety-inducing. And Monday night’s episode of Person of Interest “6,741” was one of those episodes of television. So please, bear with me as I try to harness all of my thoughts, thinks, and feelings upon feeling about Monday’s episode and try to produce a coherent recap.

“6,741” could not have started off with a more striking image; a surgical room light reflecting off of Shaw’s eye.

It reminded me of the opening shot of Lost with the extreme closeup of Jack’s eye suddenly opening. Sameen is currently under the “care” of Samaritan operatives who are initiating Phase 2 of their grand plan which begins by inserting a mind control chip into her brain. Next, creepy Stewart comes into the room, inserts a needle into her arm and then remarks to a comatose Sameen about how both her eyes and grey matter are beautiful and then makes a slurpy noise with his mouth along with a zombie joke. Is this guy a contestant on some “How awkward and creepy can you be” show hosted by the evil creepy douchebags of the world? This guy has no right to even be in the presence of the badass awesomeness that is Ms. Sameen Shaw.

A British douchebag places an intersect-esq pair of glasses on Sameen as he asks her a bunch of question which elicits no brain activity from Shaw. Shaw is such a bad ass spy that she is able to control her brain waves during an interrogation. He then plays a game of “Dead or Alive” by showing her pictures of important people in her life, but nothing. Only when he shows pictures of Scooby gang does he get a rise out of Shaw who’s only response is “Did you come up with this game all by yourself or did it tell you to bore me to death?” YAASSSSSS!!! SHAW. IS. BACK!!! Doesn’t look like that mind control chips is working too well for you Samaritan, does it?

The next time we see Shaw, she is sitting in front of a mirror, staring at her extremely well toned arms as well as examining the wound left from her earlier brain surgery.

All of a sudden she smashes the mirror and takes out four Samaritan lackies before they inject her with a sedative. But come on, do these guys really think they can stop Ms. Sameen Shaw? Sameen stabs the nurse with a shard of glass, plays her own game of ‘Dead or Alive’ with the British douchebag by pouring poison in his mouth then taping it shut, jumps a fence to escape the Samaritan torture center and is home free only to realize she is surrounded only by water. The despair on her face is palpable.

That is until she sees a dinky boat which is her ticket back to “The Greatest City in the, GREATEST CITY IN THE Wooorrrllddd… work work.” Sorry Shaw, you have been gone for 9 months which means you have to wait an extra 150 years to get yourself a ticket to Hamilton.

The first thing Shaw does when she gets back to the city is find the closest pharmacy to get the necessary tools to perform self brain surgery. Pair of Scissors? Check. Lighter? Check. Okay seems like you are good to go Shaw, this will almost certainly turn out well. And well it does, because as soon as she starts removing the stitches with her “sterilized” scissors her vision is clouded by an overflow of light and random images. When she finally is able to refocus, she looks in the mirror to see her hands are covered in blood. She exits the bathroom to an eerily empty store and asks the clerk Bobby Jackson to borrow his phone to report that she is about to kill murder said Bobby Jackson, but not before she gets him to help her clean off her hands.

And, you know, it is the little lines here and there that really reminded me how much I miss Shaw. Like how amazing is this line by Shaw:

“Stop, stop wetting yourself. Alright, I’m not really gonna kill you I just need to make it look good.”

Just as Shaw had planned, the ASIs picked up on her very obvious breadcrumb and followed up on the murder tip. Even though Samaritan gets to the scene first, Root is right behind ready to save the day and her girl! The Shaw and Root reunion made my heart grow 4 sizes. The music in the background, the loving looks, (reel it in Alyssa, reel it in…) but this is all cut short when Shaw experiences another migraine and collapses.

When Sameen comes to she is laying on a line of seats on an empty subway with John and Root standing above. Remember when Shaw was performing self brain surgery a few minutes back, well that was like a fucking hermetically sealed bubble compared to her new operating room… a NYC Subway Car. Root strokes Shaw’s face, and tries to comfort Sameen by discussing their first encounter:

Root: “Remember how we first met?”
Shaw: “You tried to burn me with an iron.”
Root: “Fun, right? Maybe you’ll like this too, but it’s probably gonna suck.”

In Root’s own way, that is totally a comforting statement. Shaw passes out from the pain and this time she wakes up in Root’s apartment. (yup, ROOT’S APARTMENT) and the gang is there to greet her, but most importantly Bear is there! The only reunion I have been looking forward to more than Shaw and Root is Shaw and Bear. Bear just makes everything better.

Shaw wants to get right back into action, and take down Samaritan, and lashes out when Harold says the should slow down and make a plan, responding with, “Yeah, because action isn’t really your thing. Did you even look for me?” Mic. Drop. On that note, Harold, John, and Bear leave (why did they take Bear?!?!) so Root can take care of her girl.

Here comes the part where I am going to try really hard to not make the rest of this review just a Root/Shaw Shipper love letter, because this is finally happening.

When the boys leave, Root looks into Shaw’s eyes and says “I never stopped looking for you.”

Root moves in for the kiss, an advance which Sameen dismisses. After telling Root that she “really isn’t in the mindset for this” she turns on her side and Root sadly walks away. I have to say, I can’t really blame Shaw at all, and I was a bit surprised at Root’s forwardness. She just had Train Brain Surgery, it is understandable that she is not in the mood.

But, who am I to know what Shaw is thinking and feeling because, in the next scene, Shaw comes up behind Root and just goes for it. And man, do they go for it. I am not sure how to say this in a way that isn’t creepy, but them hooking up was basically exactly how I imagined it would be: super physical and aggressive but also sweet and loving. The only thing that made me really uncomfortable was that is was really rough, AND SHAW JUST HAD BRAIN TRAIN SURGERY. Besides that, it was pretty awesome.

But it doesn’t just end there, after their massive plate and glass shattering sex, while the two are laying in bed caressing each other, Shaw opens up to Root about the torture. It is such a touching moment because Shaw doesn’t open up to people. She dismisses uncomfortable feelings and tries to ignore them, but there in bed with Root, she is able to feel vulnerable. Finally, Shaw says, “I couldn’t stand you when we first met, but you wouldn’t stop bugging me” and goes in for another kiss. Swoon.

After Root falls asleep Shaw heads to the bathroom and while looking in the mirror she has another migraine/flashback. This time when she comes to she finds herself holding a gun and a block of C4. There are many scenes in this episode that show what a spectacularly amazing actress Sarah Shahi is but for some reason this scene really stuck out to me. Shaw is staring in the mirror, yelling at her reflection to “Get out of my he..” and then there is a knock at the door. She stops herself mid-word and collects herself while standing in front the mirror before putting the weapons in the drawer under the sink and having Root take her back to bed.

Shaw wakes up to an empty bed, but not to fear, Root is just on the phone. She calls Sameen “baby” swoon and leaves to pick up some breakfast aka Meet John at the local diner. You know that mind altering chip that was removed via Brain Train surgery, it was actually a placebo. John tries to get Root to see that there is a possibility that Shaw may have been turned, but Root is having none of it. Shaw, who heard the whole convo via a bug she placed on Root, is having none of it either, and decides to take matters into her own hand. She is going to destroy Samaritan, and the first order of business is to alert them of her exact location.

I think it is important to say here that from I think the scene that Shaw wakes up in the subway car, until this very moment, there has not been a single commercial. It was intense to say the least, and for one of the very few times in my life I was begging for a commercial break so I could finally let out a breath.

Back to the show, Shaw’s plan works, and about a millisecond later, they are raiding Samaritan’s lair. They capture the evil John Greer, and bring him to the basement dungeon area of an old NYC church, but unfortunately Root gets shot in the process. After a short interrogation, Shaw finds and removes a USB from Greer’s arm which they assume is a Samaritan kill switch. When Sameen is left alone with Greer and he convinces her that escaping, implanting the USB drive in his arm, and Shaw capturing Greer was all a plan hatched by Shaw. Samaritan broke her months ago and that kill switch she gave Harold, it is not a kill switch, but it is a beacon that will lead Samaritan straight to the machine. Finally Shaw shoots the asshole straight between the eyes and she and John go to warn Harold to not plug-in the drive, but it is too late. While heading back to the machine though, Shaw keeps having flashes and when John questions her about them, she shoots him dead and tells Harold that Samaritan did it.

Root leaves Harold and the machine to help Shaw and tries to convince Shaw to come with her back to the subway. But again Shaw resists. Instead she leads Root to a playground, and pulls her gun on her. Roots tells her that she if she wanted to kill her she would have done it already, but “Somewhere in your sociopathic heart, you know we belong together.” Root will keep Shaw safe, as long as they just head back to the machine. To which Shaw replies:

“But nothing’s safe. Do you know where we are? What they did to me? The torture. I told you I couldn’t escape it, but when things got to be too bad there was one place I would go to in my mind. Here. With you. You were my safe place.”

ROOT IS SHAW’S SAFE PLACE! Let me repeat that one more time. ROOT IS SHAW’S SAFE PLACE!

And then, instead of shooting Root, Shaw shoots herself to end the pain. And as she looks into the playground, images swirl around in her head, and the shot cuts back to the Samaritan lab, where Shaw has just concluded Samaritan’s 6741st attempt to find out where the machine is through placing Sameen in a simulation. And since attempt number 6741 ended again with Shaw killing herself instead of revealing the location of the machine, Greer has the technicians start it all over again with simulation number 6742.

I have to say, that was one of the best hours of television I have seen on network tv in a really long time. And not just because of the highly anticipated Root/Shaw reunion, which was very important for many reasons, but I think it was really powerful to see Shaw’s strength and vulnerability. Being tortured didn’t break her, it made her realize she needs people. She needs John. She needs Harold. She needs Bear. But most importantly she needs Root. Root is her safe place, which is kind of amazing to hear her say out loud because it is always Root who is expressing her feelings, never Shaw.

So I hope that was readable, and I will leave you off with a few other thoughts I had about the episodes:

I really love how this episode used shots of Sameen looking at herself in a mirror. There were three distinct scenes which are of Shaw’s reflections from a mirror. On a second viewing, I wonder if they used that to symbolize Shaw watching this from the outside the whole time.
Um way to screw the pooch CBS and air a commercial for the next episode which shows John alive and kicking RIGHT AFTER JOHN GOT SHOT AND BEFORE THE EPISODE ENDED. I get that it was pretty obvious that this was not reality, but I mean you basically spoiled yourself during the show.

Person of Interest airs Mondays on CBS.

‘Dancing With the Stars’ Review: Bruno Will Not Be in a Speedo Next Week

Kelley Lynn

May 19, 2016

Hey there, kids. So here we are at the Semi-Finals of our favorite dance contest show, and the stakes are getting higher (and Len needs another nap). There are 5 couples left on Dancing with the Stars, and this week, there were two rounds of dancing for reach. In Round One, each couple chose a 3rd dancer from the pro team to add to their routine for a kinky threesome that would make Bruno blush and Horny Carrie Ann jealous. In Round Two, each couple was given a dance style that they have not yet conquered this season. Let’s get cracking. There’s a new episode of “Wheel of Fortune” on later, and Len wants to catch it before he has his warm milk and heads off to bed.

PAIGE / MARK:

Round One: They chose pro dancer Alan Bersten , a troupe member, as their 3rd partner for their Samba. This dance was simply awesome. Loved the music, loved the choreography, and loved her. It is hard to tell the difference at this point between Paige and the pro dancers. Amazing hip movement and loved the part when the three of them were connected physically like an accordion. Len said: “Fire it under B for brilliance!” Bruno yelled like a maniac: “My little bird of paradise! You were the star attraction all the way through!” Carrie Ann made no sense and said words that made sounds. “Woohoo! Yes! Oyahh! Shut the front door! Oh boy! ” Backstage, Erin Andrews questioned Paige and Alan about rumors of a relationship between them, which was met with awkward laughter and silences. Scores were perfect at 10/10/10.

Round Two: The background package video expressed Paige’s childhood, country roots, and how she was bullied really badly as a kid and teen, to the point where her family up and moved to Reno. It was there that she went into UFC, and the rest is history. Their dance was the Argentine Tango, and it was HOT and awesome. She brought the heat and was incredibly sexy in this great number filled with passion. Bruno called it: “Nasty. Naughty. It was ‘Basic Instinct’ with a sprinkle of ‘Fatal Attraction’ plus ’50 Shades of Paige.’ If you don’t make the finals, I’m going to judge in my SPEEDO next week.” Oh dear God, no. Carrie Ann said “I love to watch you dance.” Len acted grumpy because it was too hot and steamy for him. Scores were 10/9/10, and Len drooled into his Quaker Oats.

ANTONIO / SHARNA:

Round One: They used Troupe member Haley Eubert for their Argentine Tango. They wore red, and it was filled with swag and passion. Carrie Ann loved the intensity of the movements, and the other judges agreed. Scores were 9/9/9 across the board.

Round Two: His package explained his rough childhood growing up in the Miami projects, bad neighborhood filled with drugs and violence. He said “I had ot become a man quick.” His parents divorced and his dad left, which he regrets now. He went into the NFL as an underdog and fought his way in. The dance was really good. Bruno hilariously commented on Antonio’s physique with: “Michelangelo couldn’t have sculpted a better torso.” To which Tom Bergeron reminded him: “But how was the DANCING, Bruno?” “Oh right, the DANCING!”, Bruno replied laughing. Len said that the dance had the “most spectacular lifts in the history of the show.” Scores were 9/9/10.

WANYA / LINDSAY:

Round One: They chose to work with Witney Carson for their Paso Doble, which was brilliant. The music was sharp, as were their moves. Carrie Ann loved it so much that she left the panel table and hugged Wanya. Len said he loved the little touches, and gave them a standing ovation. Bruno said something about thunder, and then lightning, and that it was the best comeback of all time. Wanya cried tears of joy backstage as they received perfect 10 scores all the way around.

Round Two: He grew up in the Philly projects, and sang since he was a very little boy. He wanted to help his family, and got a chance to when they were signed with Motown Records, and the rest is history. Their dance was The Charleston, and again, another brilliant dance that earned perfect ten scores. It was so fast and so much fun. Carrie Ann screamed that Wanya is her hero, and Len said: “I so hope you are in the final!” Bruno twerked as he gave his score, and then Wanya twerked too, and scores were more 10’s all the way around.

NYLE / PETA:

Round One: They chose to use Jenna Johnson for their Jive, which was a cute diner scene. Len said it “got a bit hectic, like my bladder control.” Okay, maybe he didn’t say that last part. Bruno called it charming, and scores were 9/9/9.

Round Two: He went to college for the deaf, became a math teacher, then entered and won “Americas Next Top Model.” They did the Argentine Tango, and Nyle was blindfolded for a small section of the routine, because why not make his life even more challenging and impossible??? He is amazing on every level. Of course, he nailed it. Len said “you never cease to amaze.” Bruno was mesmerized, and Carrie Ann loved his fearlessness. Scores were perfection with all 10’s.

GINGER / VAL:

Round One: They used Artem for their Paso Doble, which was very hot and sexy. The two men wore tattered clothing and suspenders, and she wore A WHITE DRESS. They passed her back and forth and it was really well done. Bruno said words that made no sense. Len said it was “full of attack, unlike my bladder function.” Scores were 9/9/9 due to a few timing issues and errors in steps.

Round Two: She was a shy kid whose parents divorced when she was young. In order to feel like she was controlling something, she suffered with anorexia in her younger years and fought it. Later, she started chasing tornadoes and began a love for the weather. They did the Quickstep, and it was awesome. Scores were 9/10/10. Bruno said that all five couples deserve to be in the final, which is true.

ELIMINATED: Antonio and Sharna, Wanya and Lindsay. The latter was shocking and sad, especially since they had just received TWO perfect ten scores. This is getting serious.

NEXT WEEK: The Finale!!! Two big nights, back to back. And Bruno will not wear a speedo.

‘Jane the Virgin’: Was the Season 2 Finale Too Much?

Jen Stayrook

May 18, 2016

Spoilers through Jane the Virgin Chapter Forty-Four, so if you don’t want to know what kind of shenanigans Rogelio gets into, skedaddle!

Jane the Virgin was one of my favorite new shows last year, right up there with Agent Carter (RIP), Galavant (RIP), and Outlander (pls no). The sophomore season of the CW telenovela has been a whirlwind of love triangles, major character deaths, drug lords, long-lost siblings, babies, and kidnappings. You know, the telenovela starter kit. The appeal to Jane the Virgin is that it takes all of those over-the-top telenovela tropes and neatly weaves them in with everyday problems, leaving viewers unsure of how any plot could end. Jane the Virgin’s season finale took every story arc, threw them in a blender, and upped the insanity to 12. In doing so, I’m afraid the absurdity of it all has ruined the impact of a possible major character death.

First, let’s recap where things are in Jane the Virgin: Jane chose Michael and they decided to wed; Jane has issues with grad school but let’s be honest, they’re minor, even though I love her new advisor; Petra has a long-lost sister who is plotting with their mother to take Petra down; Rafael still loves Jane and is making money mistakes with the hotel; Rogelio and Xo still love each other but are too stubborn to find middle ground.

In the finale, Jane and Michael finally get married and it’s adorable. The two hash out everything they need to the night before the ceremony, Michael says his vows in Spanish with the help of Abuela, and they’re serenaded by Bruno Mars at the reception. The wedding even had a classic “but I love you, Jane” scene from Rafael, but it was only a daydream sequence, something the show excels at. When Jane the Virgin does romance and lovable goofiness, it does it really, really well. Simple acts, like texting a significant other, is played up in Jane the Virgin and used as a storytelling device to help us fall in love with the pairings. However, as much as I swooned over the Jane/Michael scenes in the finale, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread behind all the sweetness.

A few weeks ago, editor Bilal and I were talking about the direction of the show and at one point I said to him, “Michael’s dead by the end of the season, right?” And he responded, “Oh, totally.” We saw the hallway shooting coming from a mile away, so when it actually happened last night after all the madness with Petra and Rafael getting duped again, instead of feeling sad at Jane’s loss, I just went, “Huh. Okay then.”

That’s not to take away from all of the amazing things Jane the Virgin has done over the past two years. This is a show that has nailed the guilt of motherhood, tackled the abortion issue, and depicted religion in a positive manner, not to mention crafting a compelling love triangle that has me waffling back and forth every episode. But there’s an issue that comes along with ending every episode on a cliffhanger and then having to end a season in a shocking enough fashion to keep viewers coming back for a third season. By upping the ante on every plot, the show loses the cohesion among character arcs that really pulls you in for a big moment. Petra’s turn in the finale was shocking enough, even if most viewers have a love/hate relationship with her character, but to then lose Michael moments later cheapened his loss. A show like Jane can reduce me to tears with a single dance sequence, so I wanted to feel the impact of Michael’s loss, but I was still too in shock from Petra to truly appreciate it.

As much as I hate to also mention it, the fact is that the show’s name holds a lot of importance. Granted, Jane the Virgin has done a fantastic job of not making “sex with Jane” the main theme of the show, but it is a subject that weighs often on the minds of viewers, especially with her getting married. The writers know this which is why Jane’s family sings to her at the cathedral to “go have sex”, leaving us with the knowledge that her special day can end one of three ways: they have sex, Jane leaves Michael, or something dire happens to Michael before they can “seal the deal.” Since Jane has left Michael once before that only left options one and three as viable. Michael has had a lot of screen time in the latter half of the season, building up enemies in the police department, which meant…you guessed it. Pew pew.

Do I think Michael is actually dead? No. Jane is a telenovela, after all. He’ll likely be in a coma for months, leaving Jane to deal with the grief and prospect of being a widowed virgin mother. And maybe once season three starts I’ll be given proper time to grieve his loss in her life, but for the time being, I’m disappointed such a pivotal moment was lost in the chaos.

’12 Monkeys’ Review: Cassie and Jennifer’s Road Trip To Hell

Nicole C

May 16, 2016

12 Monkeys

Season 2, Episode 5: “Bodies of Water”

Air Date: May 16, 2016

In this week’s episode of 12 Monkeys, Old Jennifer sends Cassie back to 2016 to find her younger self in order to find the other primaries. If Team Splinter fails to stop the Army of the 12 Monkeys from paradoxing even one more primary, time collapses. No pressure of course.

Interestingly however, the opening scene is with Olivia drinking some red forest tea in order to meet The Witness. His first message written on the wall of the run down house is “1957-1959 this was home.” When Olivia gets pissed off that the virus had been destroyed and he had not foretold of recent events, he answers with “time evolves.” The Witness then instructs her to find Cassandra and prepare her to which Olivia gets even angrier and claims that Dr. Railly is a threat and should be eliminated. Her leader writes a resounding NO all over the walls of the house before appearing in front of his minion. She wakes up with a nosebleed and Pallid Man being all self-righteous.

Going forward to 2044, Cole meets Old Jennifer who tells him that they need a guide who can help them find the other primaries. She can’t do in her advanced years since she can’t hear the voices as well, but 2016 her has the gift. He is all gung ho to go back and do this when she adds that it has to be Cassie instead of him. The good doctor is less than thrilled of course being 1) she strongly dislikes Jennifer and 2) she hates time travel. Sorry doc!

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing for Deacon as only one of his men returns from a supply run and we find out that a new villainous character called the Foreman is hunting him. He also kills the guy who survives knowing that he made a deal with the enemy to save his own skin enraging Ramse who witnesses the exchange. I’m sure that guy wasn’t happy Deacon didn’t die last episode.

Before Cassie splinters back to 2016, Cole and Deacon see her off and have a testosterone competition.

Deacon: Hey look it’s time Jesus.

Cole (to Cassie): See you soon.

Deacon (to Cassie): Watch your back.

Cole: Splinter safe.

How could one not love this scene?? Time Jesus!!!

In 2016, we see a very different Jennifer who has seemed to let go of her past and is taking medication to suppress her abilities. She is smiling and has a bounce to her step as she adopts a pet turtle (who is still alive in 2044 and is GINORMOUS!). True enough as well she ends up going to the hotel bar at the Emerson with two girlfriends (yes she has friends now!). Jennifer stalks one of the hotel attendants (who has a crush on her) and asks if the occupant of suite 607 is in. To her surprise she finally gets a yes and goes to meet Cole upstairs in the sitting area. Except it’s not her otter eyes, it’s Cassie. Dr. Railly cuts to the chase and says she’s here because she needs to know about the other primaries, but Jennifer defiantly explains that she’s fully medicated and no longer hears voices or gets visions. One of her girlfriends comes up to see what’s going on and she recognizes Cassie. The two women get into an all out fight to which the doctor is the victor (she has one mean roundhouse kick)! Whoops, that friend was a 12 Monkeys operative.

The two women leave to go on a little road trip. During their fiery car conversation Cassie realizes that taking Ms. Goines off her meds won’t be enough, they need a trigger. They head to Jennifer’s country home where we discover that when she had been a child, her mother had tried to drown her in the bathtub, convinced that she had been a monster. We get more of her background as well and find out that mom really had been mentally unstable with Leland committing her after the bathtub incident. Jennifer’s room is covered with sketches of monkeys, Jones, other people and places from across time periods. The primary also seems to keep hallucinating her dead mother (even with the meds). Cassie grows to sympathize with the other woman and she’s becomes nice despite their rocky start.

Jennifer then notices one of her old sketches and identifies Kyle Slade, another primary who lived in New York in 1975. This guy though sounds dangerous after she mentions that he did a lot of bad things. Before getting through to any others, Pallid Man and one of his goons appear in the doorway. Cassie quickly stands by Jennifer and points her gun at PM who says that she can’t shoot both of them. Realizing that he’s right, she points the weapon at the primary instead, saying that they can’t paradox Jennifer if she’s dead. PM gives her kudos but knows that she won’t actually pull the trigger. He’s right of course and the two of them are taken back to 12 Monkey HQ.

Olivia greets PM when he returns and instructs him to leave Dr. Railly to her and to not challenge her authority. Apparently The Witness has entrusted this cycle to her and he has a plague to reconstruct. PM concedes for now but ominously says that he wonders how much longer she’ll be in charge for. Watch your back Olivia, he’s looking to move up the ranks!

Cassie is forced to drink red forest tea for a full immersion, but what exactly that means is still unknown. Inside the house, she sees The Witness and he flickers back and forth from an image of scarred Aaron to his regular plague costume. So is Aaron really The Witness? I’m not so sure. It might just be a projection of someone Cassie trusts so that she becomes more willing to accept whatever was happening to her. Regardless, I totally gasped at that scene.

Jennifer saves the day after she over powers her guard and cleverly plays music on her phone and places it in an intercom far away from where Cassie is being held to lure Olivia away. Before that though, she sees a large parchment encased in glass with the plaque “Word of The Witness.” It’s some kind of time map that connects Cole, Cassie, Jennifer, Kyle and numerous other people and events. Jennifer even sees that she’s supposed to die on September 23, 2044. Not cool. She then races back to get Cassie but the doctor says that they have to deal with Olivia. In a brilliant move, Jennifer holds out a knife to the other woman and then pretends that she is falling for the words of the 12 Monkeys leader. Just as Olivia comes in for the hug, the primary stabs her and she falls into the empty swimming pool.

Can we take a moment to just acknowledge how amazing both Amanda Schull and Emily Hampshire were in this episode? Their characters have both gone through so much and to be able to get past their differences and support each other shows how far these two women have come. Nothing like saving the world and getting kidnapped together that helps you bond with another person.

Back at Monkey HQ Pallid Man leaves an injured Olivia (without helping her) and goes into the red forest himself. He then asks The Witness to entrust him with this cycle and his leader agrees, saying it is his birthright.

Meanwhile in 2044, Ramse and Cole take matters into their own hands and make a deal with the Foreman. They trick the West 7 leader into going out for a ride to investigate one of the temporal anomalies and then they leave him with the Foreman and his goons. The bros tell Jones back at the facility that they were vulnerable as long as Deacon was there because of his numerous enemies and so this had to be done. But being the crazy badass he is, the man just doesn’t die and instead manages to kill his captors. He returns completely bloodied and even more maniacal looking, but says he respects the boys for what they did because that’s what he would have done. Now though, Cole and Ramse will have to sleep with one eye open knowing that retribution could be just around the corner.

We end with Cole returning to 2016 to retrieve Cassie but she decides to stay and watch over Jennifer for a little while (she had a concussion). She admits to him that they are somewhat friends now and this must have been Old Jennifer’s way of making that happen. Awww that’s so sweet! He senses however that the doctor isn’t telling him everything, but we know she’s not ready to talk about her time with The Witness just yet. Cassie gives him the information on Kyle Slade and tells him to be careful because this one isn’t like the other primaries. Cole nods and takes a bottle of whiskey back with him to the future. Jennifer in the meantime is back in primary mode, furiously sketching Kyle’s hands are he is washing what looks like blood away. We flash to 1975 where Kyle himself is muttering the same words as Ms. Goines and then says that finally James Cole is coming for him.

I really loved this female-centric episode because we saw new sides to Cassie, Jennifer, and Olivia. Both Jennifer and Cassie showed how capable and strong they are, while Olivia showed vulnerability and doubt after recent events. The lives of all three women continue to be in flux and somehow they all have to adapt to survive.

Week after week 12 Monkeys continues to push the envelope on the unexpected and brings us new levels of crazy (the good kind) that makes the series addictive. It’s truly one of the best shows on television right now and I can’t even imagine how this season is going to end. The only thing I know for sure is that we had better get a third season (looking at you Syfy).

Final thoughts:

I love that Aaron is back for a hot second.
Brad who? Jennifer is the only Goines that matters!
When did The Witness create this time map thingy?
If Old Jennifer is supposed to die in September 2044, I hope that doesn’t happen soon, plus that isn’t definite anyways (so I tell myself).
Deacon is one seriously crazy dude, BUT HE’S SO AWESOME!
Was Jennifer’s mom a real ghost, or just in her mind? Regardless that was super creepy.
Jennifer and Cassie – Thelma and Louise
The red forest house has walls like etch a sketch!

12 Monkeys airs Mondays 9/8 central on Syfy.

Catch up on all things 12 Monkeys here.

I leave you with:

‘Game of Thrones’ – “Book of the Stranger”: It’s Getting Hot In Here

Jen Stayrook

May 16, 2016

This week on Game of Thrones: JON AND SANSA HAVE A STARK REUNION THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Spoilers through season 6, episode 4: “Book of the Stranger.” I’m not kidding. This is Game of Thrones. You know people die like every ten minutes, right?

In recent years, my biggest gripe with Game of Thrones has been the darkness, the negativity surrounding every facet of the realm to the point where I wondered why I should even continue watching the show. While there are still many bad things happening in Westeros and Essos, the fourth episode of season six, “Book of the Stranger” finally gave viewers some sense of happiness, something we can look to say, “That’s what I want to cheer for.” Bit by bit the heroes are beginning to pick themselves up from the ashes. I don’t doubt that by season’s end we’ll be looking back fondly at recent events, but at least we had them, right? Right?

Meereen

Tyrion has a job in Meereen now that requires him to do more than drink and know things and praise R’hllor for the development. His plot this season hasn’t been the worst but it hasn’t exactly been edge of your seat exciting, either. Remember the days when we would pray that a small council meeting would last the entire episode just so that we could watch Tyrion take jabs at Tywin, Cersei, Joffrey, or even poor, dumb Pycelle? We got a taste of that excitement watching him deal with the slave masters as Missandei and Grey Worm looked on warily. Missandei and Grey Worm know the slave masters intimately, much better than Tyrion ever would in his few weeks of servitude, but he tries to use their self-serving attitude against them to get what he wants. Ever the smug debater, Tyrion thinks he’s won with the masters while saving face in front of Meereen’s slaves. Grey Worm knows better and warns that Tyrion has done nothing yet but anger them. If I had to guess, the slave masters won’t honor his agreement because 7 years of slavery isn’t long enough in their eyes.

Winterfell

I hate when I’m right about Game of Thrones. Last week I predicted that Osha would try to same trick on Ramsay that she pulled on Theon and oh, look. She did. And oh, look. She got stabbed in the throat. Yet another character we all had high hopes for out the moon door. (RIP Ros, I still miss you.)

Castle Black

BE STILL, MY HEART. LOOK AT THESE BABIES HUG.

That tilt of her head into his face is going to rock me to sleep tonight.

After last week’s preview I was CERTAIN Jon would leave Castle Black before Sansa arrived because that’s just how these things go on Game of Thrones, but lo! Look at the two of them. LOOK. Honest to goodness I’ve never been so happy watching this bloody TV show. These are two characters who have suffered the most of any of them. They are good and do what they think is right and time and time again they’ve put that fallible Stark trust in the wrong people and it’s left them broken. But now, they’re together again and they finally, FINALLY have another person in their life they can trust heart and soul. While I know Sansa is hell bent on taking back Winterfell (as she damn well should be), I just want to bask in the beauty of their reunion for a few moments longer.

After the few happy moments between the two, they’re slammed back to reality when Jon receives a letter from Winterfell.

The threat against Rickon, Sansa, and all of the wildlings sends the dinner table into an uproar, with everyone itching to kick this bastard of Bolton’s ass. Even though Game of Thrones has taught me that such a move will undoubtedly end in heartache, I couldn’t help but cheer in the moment.

Meanwhile, Brienne of Tarth introduced herself to everyone at Castle Black, making her presence known to Red Woman and Ser Davos. Davos found out the hard truth about Melisandre and her relationship with the now extinct Baratheons. It’s odd that he waited until now to ask about Stannis and Shireen and my heart broke a little upon realizing that he still doesn’t know how Shireen died, but maybe that’s for the best. Brienne, however, had no qualms with telling Davos to his face that she executed Stannis and then sashayed away with her hand on Oathkeeper’s hilt, daring either of them to say one damn word about her actions.

Also: Brienne + Tormund = The Bear and the Maiden Fair <3

King’s Landing

This week was all about reuniting siblings (and about the sisters telling the brothers to man the eff up), so it makes sense that Margaery gets to see Loras after weeks of torture. Where Ramsay is malicious and everyone knows where he stands, the Sparrow is downright devious. He’s ten steps ahead of everyone else and knows just how to manipulate them. He meets with Margaery to ask what she would do if she were freed and she answers how most would answer: I want to see my brother, my husband, my family. The Sparrow nods and tells her a story about how he, too, once loved the climb, loved the finer things in life, but after hitting bottom, he realized that his time was better spent on the poor than on the wealthy. Margaery is unmoved by his story and instead of pressing the issue further, the Sparrow gives her the thing she wants most: Loras. Margaery claims that the Faith is trying to break him and he needs to be strong but in fact it’s the opposite; they let the two met in order to break her. Margaery and Loras have as close a bond as any brother and sister and here is this man she loves more than any other and he’s begging her to put him out of his misery. Instead of agreeing with her to fight, he’s given up, and now she knows she’s alone against the Sparrow. She knows that Loras is not secretly plotting his escape; he’s ready to sing for the Sparrow and that means taking Margaery down with him. The Lannisters, the Tyrells, and the Kingsguard can’t save them now, even if Cersei manages to ally all three of them again. Of all the villains in Game of Thrones right now, the Sparrow is by far the most frightening.

Vale

Oh, there’s Littlefinger. Last we saw him he was dropping off Sansa in Winterfell like she was a bag of friggin’ groceries. Now this dude is going to act like he’s completely okay with what Sansa has gone through and now he’s enraged and wants Robin Arryn to save her from the Boltons? Look, I’m all for bringing the houses together and getting that monster out of Winterfell, but if he’s going to try to play like he was mugged and the Boltons stole Sansa AND his lunch money, why wait until now? Because he knows he’s not alone? Young Robin might not pick up on Littlefinger’s lies, but the other lords of the Vale will. Granted, Robin could so easily throw them all out the moon door and I supposed that’s what the scene proved, that it doesn’t matter the lies you tell but rather which fools believe them and how much power their wield.

Vaes Dothrak

Jorah and Daario continue their valiant rescue attempt through the desert on their way to the Dothraki city of Vaes Dothrak. Poor Jorah still tries to adhere to the Dothraki rules even though they’re planning on stealing a khal’s widow and Daario is all, “Nah, eff that. I love this knife. MWAH bebe.” The pair get into a bit of a scuffle and I don’t know if it’s Jorah’s newly exposed Greyscale, his age, or the obvious heat stroke, but did not handle himself well in the fight.

Once the pair meets up with Dany, she spurns her rescuers and says that they can’t outrun the Dothraki, but she has a better idea. Dany’s “better idea” involves making friends with the other Dosh Khaleen and then standing up to the khal as they pass judgment on her future. The Mother of Dragons has had some awe-inspiring scenes, the emergence from the funeral pyre, the turn on the slavers, but standing in front of the khals, knowing full well that she had all the power, that she didn’t need Jorah, Daario, or dragons, damn that was awesome.

To some, this callback to Dany’s final scene in season one might seem like a waste. Dany’s arc causes the most division among fans, citing it as boring and pointless. While I agree the Meereenese Knot can get a bit tiresome, I think this cyclical nature of Dany’s rule is important for her as a character. When she started in season 2, you couldn’t get through an episode without her proclaiming, “I will take what is mine with fire and blood.” Now, Dany knows that she is meant to rule; she knows that with leadership comes a cost; she knows what she wants and how to take it. She doesn’t have to yell to get it. She just acts. But most importantly: she knows she can, and will, fail.

And it looks as though she is fulfilling Quaithe’s prophecy:

“To go north, you must go south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”

Random Thoughts

SANSA QUEEN IN DA NORF.

Theon returns home to the Iron Islands only to find out his father has been killed and ~~Asha~~ Yara is pissed at him. I suspect her anger was an attempt to bring the old Theon out from behind Reek’s shadow and not just because she was super angry he got good men killed. Not much else happened on Pyke except that Theon vowed to help his sister at the Kingsmoot.

I have to say I love the strength of the women in this episode. Sansa, Yara, Margaery, Dany, and even Cersei all stood up to the men they trust and made some tough decisions.

This Lannister-Tyrell deal to save Margaery has me fearing for Tommen’s life. I imagine that the Sparrow will finally pull that bastard straw out of his hat and the people are going to turn against the King, causing more chaos than any of them can imagine.

This recap needs more puns.

Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO at 9pm EST.

‘Person of Interest’: “Truth Be Told” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 13, 2016

Episode 5.03
Title: “Truth Be Told”
Date: May 10, 2016

Now that the machine is running smoother she is spitting out real numbers of real irrelevants that need real help.

So I guess I got the wrong impression about John and Dr. Iris’s relationship last episode, because when he said they had been “on a few dates here and there” I thought that basically meant they were no longer together. I was wrong, because this week he is meeting her parents. But the restaurant he picked was a pirate themed restaurant, that would probably be located in Time Square, for dinner. The reason he picked this place was so he could help an irrelevant, so two birds one stone type of deal. John Reese, a romantic through and through.

The machine is up and working, so not only does it mean that they can now save the world again, but more importantly we get our new Root identity. And, just to make everyone swoon, her new alias is an adorable package delivery driver. Man, can this woman get any cuter.

While on the job, she discovers that Samaritan has been installing malware on electronic shipments in order to infiltrate more systems quicker. In order to get a copy of the malware to study, she will need Harold’s help. But what is she to do with her delivery partner? Well hit him over the head with a heavy package of course, and blame him for not securing it. Dude, that is what you get for making unwanted advances on Root!

John’s number of the week line’s up with the Flashbacks of the week. The machine has given John the alias of a new employee at a consulting company. His number is a guy in the IT department, Alex. John’s first interaction with Alex may be the most awkward thing I have ever seen. After failing to bluejack Alex’s phone, Alex knocks over a coffee mug offering John a way to introduce himself… or hit on him? John was sputtering like someone who just worked up the courage to talk to a cute guy. It was as though John has never talked to another human being in his life. After helping Alex clean up the coffee he asks him for a beer. Alex gets all squirrely and declines, which means that Mr. Reese has to rely on his good ol’ spy skills to get any intel.

John spies on Alex after work and finds him breaking into a safe to snap pics of some top-secret confidential files. Files so top-secret, as it turns out, that they result in him being captured and kidnapped by the CIA . More precisely, John’s old boss from the CIA. The files in the safe were about Alex’s older brother Brent who had died while serving. He wanted to find out what had actually happened to Brent while overseas and was aghast to find out his older brother was a dirty Pentagon Official/Military Sergeant who stole weapons and sold them American enemies. Since the CIA does not know Alex was just searching for information about his older bro,they think he is a high-tech hacker looking to expose a CIA scandal. Oh, I forgot one of the most important parts, John killed Alex’s older brother for the CIA because he was a traitor. John decides that what Alex needs is closure on his brother’s death, not the truth so he tells Alex that his brother was not actually a traitor, but a stand up soldier fighting for his country.

This week’s mission/flashbacks made John realize that while he is fighting his war, he cannot have a normal life, he breaks up with Dr. Iris. Finally, good riddance. While I am sad that John can’t be happy, I am glad to be rid of her. Now it is time for Zoe Morgan to come back and date John.

Next Week: SHAW IS BACK!!!

‘Person of Interest’: “SNAFU” Review

Alyssa Berkowitz

May 13, 2016

Episode 5.02
Title: “SNAFU”
Date: May 9, 2016

This week on Person of Interest: The Machine realizes that life is not all black and white. Harold tries to reconnect with his creation. John is lonely and bored. Root misses Shaw. And Fusco is Fusco.

“SNAFU” begins with the newly reborn Machine on the fritz, which ends up creating the best game of “who wore it best” ever created in the world.

The Machine is having trouble with its facial recognition, and keeps switching which of the core four it keeps seeing. While I see how this can be cause for concern, I have no problem seeing Amy Acker play every character. Root and Harold come to the conclusion that the gaggle of stolen Xbox’s powering the machine is not providing it with the sufficient juice it needs to properly run. So, yet again, Harold needs to reboot her.

Meanwhile, Harold and Root are getting used to being new roomies down in the subway. Since Root is forced to live underground like a vampire until the Machine can provide her with a new identity, it is Harold’s job to buy all of the supplies necessary to redecorate their new pad. And what is on this shopping list? Black nail polish, a shag rug, and two pairs of Fuzzy Bunny Slippers of course! (The second pair of slippers are for Bear, not Harold, in case you were wondering).

Harold and John go out on a heist to steal some more computer processors for the machine. This is good because over the last few month, John has apparently been bored and lonely. So much so that even Fusco notices and tries to get him to join the Police Bowling Team. The two head over to a warehouse and I have to say, watching Harold recite physics while trying to jimmy open a locked door with a crowbar was pretty amazing. After the successful robbery, they reboot the machine, connect it to government files in order to regain her memory, and giver her a test run. After she proves she can identify John among a “busy” Time Square, the telephone starts to ring with numbers and it is off to the irrelevant races again. Root’s eyes just light up when she sees it is working, and realizes they can now look for anyone. And by anyone I mean Shaw. Root gets frustrated when priorities 1-100 on Harold’s list does not include finding Shaw. When Harold explains that it would be futile to try to find Shaw before knowing if the Machine was properly functioning, Root reluctantly agrees and sadly like a puppy walks away.

John and Fusco go hunting down the list of 29 numbers that the Machine provided them with and after checking out the first few on the list, it is clear that the machine is still not operating at 100%. John’s first number is just a high school kid who called in a bomb threat to get out of a test and his second one is a dude who was recently released from prison on a murder charge but is now on the straight and narrow (or is he?). Meanwhile Fusco is sent after a guy who has been dead for over a decade and an actor playing a murderer in a play.

Harold concludes that the Machine is unable to contextualize the information that it is receiving, and when he asks the Machine who he is, it does not call him “Admin” but instead labels Root and Harold as “Threats.” And without the standard courtesy of announcing “Stand Clear of The Closing Doors” she slams the doors shut and locks Root and Harold inside the subway car. To be fair, when the Machine looks them up she sees all of the murdering and kidnapping and robbing the gang has done.

Luckily, Root is a freaking BAMF. She grabs a briefcase and smashes open the subway window to escape. After clipping some wires they get the subway car to open again but as soon as the pair mention a Machine reboot the machine freaks the F out and overloads Root’s cochlear implant. At first Root is overjoyed that the machine is yet again communicating with her, but then realizes that the machine was really trying to hurt her. The machine reveals to the pair that they are threats in her eyes, and Root and Harold could not look any more hurt if they tried.

Seeing as John’s next number is actually a hitwoman the Machine hired to kill him, and Fusco still does not know about the Machine, Root and Harold have to fix this problem by themselves. Harold and Root try to reason with The Machine, but every time they get too close she shorts out Root’s implant. Root decides to take herself out of the equation and has Harold put her under anesthesia so she can no longer be a bargaining chip. As Harold tries to explain it that Team Irrelevant doesn’t hurt people, they save people it starts playing videos of Root killing and torturing people, and Harold killing the machine.

She shows Harold video of him teaching her how to identify good and evil back when Harold was naive and idealistic. He was teaching the infantile machine the difference between good and evil, right and wrong; she was to be Anubis weighing people’s hearts against a feather. Finally he asks the Machine was day it is and she says “R” which is mathematical concept that means all number or infinity? I am still not sure, but basically it means that the had everything in history was happening at the same time I think. He then starts reading to the machine all of the people that they have saved together over the years to give her an anchor in time. He explains that people are not “Good” or “Evil” but instead a mixture of both. Saving people, though, that is a pure good. Finally, the Machine looks at Harold and identifies him as admin. The machine is yet again on their side.

With the machine up and running, Root packs up a picnic for a family gathering in Central Park with her new Machine made identity a girl scout leader. These writers really know their audience.

While the sun may be shining, they still have a war to fight. And a Shaw to find.

Also…. Remember that Painter/Ex-murderer? Well he goes into the New York Employment office to get find a new job when a very suspicious women offers one to him on the spot. Not forms, background checks, or references required. All she says is: “You need a purpose, more specifically, you need a job.” Welp, that sounds familiar!

Get Your First Look at ‘Killjoys’ Season 2

Nicole C

May 13, 2016

July can’t come soon enough for season 2 of Killjoys, the action packed space series filled with bounty hunters, political intrigue, talking ships, and lots of badass characters.

Here’s our first look at the new season:

https://youtu.be/g1FQrIbZpN0

After that crazy finale last year we’ll finally find out if D’Avin really got level 6’d (like Fancy), how the people at Old Town fared after The Company’s swift and deadly retribution, and what Dutch and Johnny have been up to since their narrow escape.

Created by Lost Girl’s Michelle Lovretta, Killjoys follows the adventures of a trio of interplanetary bounty hunters working for the Reclamation Apprehension Coalition (or R.A.C.) chasing deadly warrants and getting into all sorts of trouble.

Killjoys returns to Syfy July 1, 2016 9/8 Central.

To catch up on season 1 click HERE.

‘The 100’ – “Perverse Instantiation: Part One”: Clarke’s Always In Trouble

Jen Stayrook

May 13, 2016

Spoilers through The 100 season 3, episode 15. You’re welcome.

It’s been a hell of a ride for The 100 fans this year. Between Bellamy’s descent, the rise of Pike, the rise of the CoLaid, and all those deaths, we’ve finally reached the final two episodes of season 3 and the chips have hit the fan. Let’s recap where things are so far: Clarke tried to get Luna to take the AI 2.0 chip and failed; A.L.I.E. has turned Kane and Abby, ruining all my future fanfiction; Raven is a broken genius; and Murphy is skyrocketing to the top of everyone’s list of favorites with his snark and penchant for diplomacy.

Since the Adventure Squad failed to recruit the amazing and OP Luna, they were forced to fall back to Plan G, which was to have a quiet moment alone with A.L.I.E. 2.0 in the woods. Clarke opted to go first because like hell is someone else handling her girlfriend’s remains (she’s kind of like Jasper in that regard). And then! A wild Roan appears, acting all tough and kingly and handsome, trying to steal Lexaboo but Bellamy puts a stop to that nonsense the only way he knows how, with violence and a good smolder.

Adventure Squad regroups back at Arkadia with Roan in his pokeball and I’m a little wary of them just openly talking about ALL of their plans, especially since A.L.I.E. was able to find them in the middle of the ocean, but hey, hindsight, amirite? Also, Roan admitted that he wasn’t the only one tailing them which tells me that Adventure Squad knows absolutely jack about staying hidden. Most of the Squad heads to Polis where they dangle the bait of Roan’s beautiful face in front of Ontari, hoping that even with an AI guiding her she won’t be able to resist his rugged charm. Meanwhile, Raven, Monty, Jasper, and Harper stay behind to figure out how to build a computer to squash A.L.I.E. and her virus.

And it’s here where I’m simultaneously shocked and angry to learn that Jasper has taken the chip. First off, where did he get the chip? Second, NO ONE saw him take it? I mean, none of these characters have any concept of personal space but what? They just let him go off alone all depressed? Third, my goodness Jasper being controlled by A.L.I.E. is super attractive to me. Is it the confidence? Is it the smiling? I don’t know but cut that out immediately. I love only one man on The 100 and that is Kane’s beard.

I digress.

Because Jasper is chipped and all, “What’s a motherboard TEEHEE” A.L.I.E., of course, knows the rest of Adventure Squad is coming for her. When Roan shows up at Polis’ gates and tries to get Ontari to play peek-a-boo, Clarke should have read the room and put the kibosh on the whole thing. It doesn’t help she made eye contact with Bellamy’s hiding place the entire time, totally not giving away their spot, or the fact that her backup was all in the SAME 3 FOOT OF SPACE, I MEAN SPREAD OUT GOODNESS. In a surprising turn of events where Bellamy didn’t shot Jaha in his stupid face, ALIEKRU found the delinquents and captured everyone, supposedly killing Roan in the process, thereby killing all hopes for a Broan romance.

Clarke is tortured by her mom because apparently none of the adults have any sort of mental strength to at least HINDER A.L.I.E.’s mind control abilities. After yet another failed torture sequence, you’d think that ALIEKRU would have learned by now that to get results you threaten the ones Skaikru loves, not the one you’re torturing. Sheesh. I thought AI’s were supposed to be intelligent. Abby is all, “See? I told you. Go get Bellamy and she’ll cooperate.”

Murphy comes to the rescue with grade-A snark (“Clarke’s always in trouble”) while Indra convinces Octavia not to kill Pike because he’s still recovering from her little cutting session and they want the pain to last for killing MY BOO LINCOLN.

I have to say, I enjoyed all the callbacks to earlier in the season during the episode: Bellamy watching Clarke as Roan’s prisoner through the gun’s scope, the assault on the elevator, Bellamy rescuing Clarke in the throne room. It’s nice to compare where these characters were at the beginning of the season to where they are now, how their response to adversity has changed. In the third episode of season 3, “Ye Who Enter Here” Bellamy goes along with Pike’s plan to kill the elevator guards. Twelve episodes later and Bellamy’s instinct is that the guards and everyone else can be saved whereas Pike still feels the need to kill on sight. Even with Clarke in danger, Bellamy isn’t as rash and reckless as he was in the beginning of the season.

Meanwhile, we need to hold a ceremony for person of the year: Monty Green. Not only has this poor delinquent killed his mother TWICE for the good of his people, he also left his new flame outside with Jasper, his BEST FRIEND, who is now controlled by ALIEKRU. That’s some inhuman levels of strength and I’m not sure if anyone else outside of Clarke and Raven have that kind of fortitude.

It’s interesting to note that the characters who will save Skaikru this season are the ones who are able to take those emotional attachments and push them to the side for the greater good. Clarke has been the subject of some controversy this season with whether or not she’s a good leader but when ALIEKRU hung her mother in front of her, Clarke didn’t break.

After a rousing game of Shoot the Jaha, Bellamy, Clarke, and Murphy find a brain dead Ontari and have to settle for Plan H, which is to cry under a desk with a bottle of wine.

Random Thoughts

INDRA SAVED KANE AND OMG THEY ARE THE BEST FRIENDS EVER. LOVE. Even though he’s chipped she knows he’s still in there and she saves him and HNNNGGGHHHH.

They have a lot of this arc to wrap up in one episode.
If Jasper wasn’t chipped until after the death of Shay, how did A.L.I.E. know Sinclair was dead beforehand? Is there another chipped delinquent? Could it be Harper and she teams up with Jasper?
Ontari kind of went out with a whimper, didn’t she?

The 100 airs Thursdays on The CW at 9pm EST.

‘Dancing With the Stars’ Review: Judge vs. Judge vs. Judge

Kelley Lynn

May 13, 2016

Well, kids, here we are just one week before the semi-finals of Dancing with the Stars and with only 6 couples left on the dance floor, Len needs a nap. This week, each pair dances one style in the first round, and then round two is Judge vs. Judge Team Challenge, where each judge works with 2 pairs, choreographing and teaching them, to face off against each other for points on the leaderboard. Also this week, each celebrity must dance a small portion of their couple dance, solo, without their pro partner. And Len must stay awake without the help of his meds. Let us begin:

NYLE / HEAVENS TO MURGATROYD (Peta): They had the Paso Doble, and in order for the audience and judges to get a sense of what it might be like to dance as a deaf person, they brilliantly included a section of choreography that was danced in complete silence. No music. No anything. Just exactly what Nyle hears each and every week. It was very effective and quite moving, actually, having the music just drop out in the middle of the very dramatic routine. Bruno called it: “Mind-blowing! Like 5 men dancing to the beat of a single heart!” Horny Carrie Ann said the dance “touched her profoundly” – yes, I bet she wants to be touched profoundly. Scores were 10/9/10.

ANTONIO /SHARNA: They did the Viennese Waltz. It was sexy and romantic. Bruno called it “dashing”, while Carrie Ann said a bunch of words in random order: “Football!! What?? What?? Oh my god! You’re a dancer! Yeah!” Calm down, lady. Take your meds. Scores were 9/9/9.

JODIE /KEO: Their dance was the Jive, which is probably my favorite style on this show, or one of them. It was really fast and uplifting and fun. Carrie Ann said it was her best dance yet, Bruno started yelling “Hallelujah!” to an imaginary Jesus, and Len squealed: “That dance made me happy!” Now THAT calls for a Hallelujah! Scores were perfect at 10/10/10, and Jodie was so thrilled backstage with her scores, that she exclaimed loudly: “Mom! I DID IT!”

PAIGE /MARK: Every time Mark speaks during the rehearsal footage, I’m always confused by his accent. I never knew he was British, but he clearly sounds British when he talks, but then only sometimes. Is it just me? Or does he just talk weird? Where the hell is he from? Anyway, his concept was quite awesome, in creating the look of a blizzard in the middle of the ballroom. A love story like Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy. They wore white tattered outfits, and it “snowed” onstage – very cool effect. I loved this dance. Len called Paige a “terrific dancer”, and Horny Carrie Ann once again spouted words in random order: “wowza!!! Yay!!!! Owza!!!! Layers of layers and …. yeah!” Okay then. Tom Bergeron, making a comment about the pair’s very white makeup, hilariously said: “For once, I am not the whitest guy in the room.” Scores were 10/9/9.

GINGER / VAL: They did the Argentine Tango, and it was amazing. Very passionate, sharp, and under purple-ish beams of light. Bruno said to Ginger (or Val?): “Tantalizing! Lets get it on right now!” Ummm, okay. Horny Carrie Ann chimed in with this gem: “Mmmmmm, yummy honey! I am hungry!” Ewww. Len fell asleep face-first in his alphabet soup. Scores were perfection at 10/10/10.

WANYA / LINDSEY: They did the Jive, and it was a Western type theme in a Saloon. He tripped on her bandana during the routine, and some of his steps were off. She kept crying afterwards because she was sad that they made mistakes, but it was still a fun dance. Len said: “You came out all guns blazing. Lost your timing, but great number.” Bruno called them “a wild pony at a rodeo.” Or maybe he was describing what’s in his pants. Scores were 8/8/9.

JUDGE VS. JUDGE TEAM CHALLENGE: Each judge worked with a team of 4, or 2 pairs together. The other two judges gave scores, with America voting for the third score on each. Turns out America was the toughest critic with scores.

Team Bruno (Nyle / Peta, Jodie/ Keo): They did an Argentine Tango, and it involved chair choreography, same-sex couple dancing, and sort of mix between ballet and Fosse-style. IT WAS AWESOME. I absolutely loved this routine. So different and modern, and I loved watching the two men dance together, and then the two women. HOT and very sexy. Scores were 10/10/9. The 9 was from America.

Team Len (Ginger / Val, Wanya / Lindsay): They did the Samba, and the theme was they were stranded on an island and then find these cute women to dance with. Len did a cameo toward the end. It was cute, but I found it VERY cheesy , especially for Len. He is always whining about too many props and “pomp and circumstance”, and this was FILLED with “stuff” in the background. They also didn’t seem quite as put together as Bruno’s group. Scores were 10/10/9, again the nine coming from America.

Team Carrie Ann (Paige / Mark, Antonio / Sharna): They did Paso Doble, and it involved lots of fog, powder, and rain coming down. Had a sort of contemporary and dark quality to it, and was danced to a strange version of the song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It was very modern and very good. But Bruno’s was the best. Scores were 10/10/9, and the nine came from America. Damn you America! You are so critical!

GOING HOME: Jodie and Keo. So she left with perfect 10’s, which is a nice way to leave if you have to leave. Next week, Bergeron warns of the double elimination. Also next week, Carrie Ann and Bruno say more stuff that makes no sense, and Len soils his Depends while giving his scores.

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GROUP ORGY (I mean … Date) IS ON FIRE:

BACK TO THE ORGY (Group Date):

DEREK AND JOJO AND CHOICES:

BACK TO DEREK AND JOJO:

GROUP ORGY (Date) NUMERO DOS: ESPN AND DOUCHE-NATION:

NIGHT TIME MADNESS:

COCKTAIL PARTY AND COLLECTION OF DOUCHE-BAGS:

ROSE CEREMONY:

Jones and Eckland Get Busy

Cassie Goes Back to the Future with Disastrous Consequences

Eckland’s Heroic Sacrifice

Cassie is Trapped Inside the House of Cedar and Pine

Cole Gets Shot

Sam Becomes Lost in Time

Ramse Leaves the Facility

Final Thoughts

Beyond the Wall

Braavos

Somewhere Out West in a Place Named Horn Hill

King’s Landing

Meereen

Random Thoughts

Castle Black

Braavos

Pyke

Vaes Dothrak

Meereen

Beyond The Wall

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts:

Random thoughts:

Final thoughts:

Meereen

Winterfell

Castle Black

King’s Landing

Vale

Vaes Dothrak

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts