The Bad Wake Well

Just like in real life, there are horrible people on Game of Thrones, but last night's episode showed that, unlike real life, being horrible tends to come with great skills and talents. This sometimes strains credibility, other times it contributes wonderfully to tension. It led to one of my favourite scenes in the series last night.

Spoilers after the screenshot.

As you know, cutting off Theon's penis gave Ramsay Bolton absolute power over the cowardly young womaniser. In last night's episode, we learned that Ramsay is also capable of leading a band of twenty men and crippling an army without anyone knowing he's there. When did Ramsay become a brilliant commando? Somehow the fact that he flays people alive seems to inspire respect so I think we're supposed to assume a whole barrel of skill perks comes along with habitual impunity. If any of the more ethical characters had tried this--Jon, Jorah, Jamie (that's a lot of Js on this show. Too bad Agent Cooper's not here to do his rock throwing trick)--I think we all know things would've gone horribly wrong.

But okay, it led to one of my favourite scenes of the series, so I can't exactly complain. I'm referring, of course, to poor little Shireen getting burned alive.

I loved the build up to it with Davos visiting her and giving her the stag he'd carved for her. And Stannis talking to her about being forced to make the hard decisions. Stannis is motivated by ambition but there is actually an altruistic element here--his men are dying, and if his men die, and it's his responsibility to handle the White Walkers, then the choice could be between killing his daughter or allowing all of Westeros to be destroyed. Melisandre seems damned sure he's supposed to be the one who saves the kingdoms.

I couldn't help thinking of The Wicker Man (the original, not the one with the bees). Here we are in the middle of a pagan human sacrifice and we can see the rationale. It was horrific and wonderful.

For a more personal sort of killing we turn to Arya in Braavos. I have to say she doesn't seem like a very convincing liar so far, unabashedly staring at people all the time. But I'm still game to overlook it if this story resolves in a satisfying way, like if she assassinates guest star Mark Gatiss and prevents him from writing more Doctor Who episodes (I'm just kidding, I don't advocate the death of Mark Gatiss. Only of the part of him that writes Doctor Who scripts).

I wonder if Arya will actually be allowed to carry out a simple, straight forward revenge killing on Meryn Trant. Based on her luck so far, my money would be on "no", or if she she does it'll end up being a mercurial victory of sorts, like killing him somehow causes Sansa to be killed or something. At the very least, she'll probably be expelled from assassin school.

In Dorne, meanwhile, those of us spoiling for some Alexander Siddig action were finally rewarded with his longest scenes of the season yet, though it still doesn't amount to much more than a taste. But at least it's a tablespoon rather than the teaspoons we've gotten all season. Good old Dr. Bashir.

And what a lovely location.

He seems like an actually nice guy and appropriately enough he seems psychologically tortured. He's in a wheel chair, too, so I guess he won't be leading any twenty man raids on enemy camps.

Speaking of weirdly talented antagonists, the big set piece this time was the opening of the fighting pits where three extraordinary things happened.

Jorah shows up as one of the fighters and is suddenly not half the fighter he was two weeks ago when he defeated six men without killing them. Then around 40% of the crowd brings out gold masks and starts overpowering Daenerys' spear-wielding Unsullied with knives. If these guys really are the former slave masters they must have undergone some kind of insane training programme ever since she easily took over the city.

And, finally, the moment I think we all knew was coming but were really pleased to see it anyway, Drogon Dragon shows up and starts roasting the fuckers. I kind of liked that it still wasn't completely one sided, that the dragon seemed to be sustaining real injury from the Sons. Though, again; who are these guys? Maybe we'll learn they're a sect of elite martial artists who live in the mountains only to be called down when the slave masters are in direst need. Or something like that. It could work.

The Forest of Clothing

One useful concept to be familiar with when discussing people who are transgender is the distinction between biological sex and gender, the word "gender" over the past sixty years coming to refer to how an individual perceives him or herself and the role he or she inhabits in society. To understand the distinction, it can be helpful to see how sex and gender were regarded before the distinction was well known, so this is one of the more interesting aspects of 1965's Madamigella di Maupin. Based on a 1835 novel only very distantly based on the real life Mademoiselle Maupin (who, it must be said, was far more interesting) the film is primarily a satire of the French aristocracy and at times sharply funny. But its central character, a woman who pretends to be a man, provokes an illuminating glimpse of attitudes towards gender roles, homosexuality, and sexism.

The film opens with a garden party in the French countryside where the wealthy men and women laugh about the imminently invading army. Among them is the beautiful coquette Magdeleine (Catherine Spaak) who tells a suitor that she'd find him more interesting if he pushed her on the swing instead of asking her first. Near the end of the movie we learn he ends up living with another man "as though married"--and he's smitten by Magdeleine before she assumes a male identity. This is a rather subtle point, like a lot of the film's humour it depends on ripples of a lack of self-awareness in the aristocracy we only see the edges of.

When they're warned to abandon their homes and flee because mercenaries are rampaging and raping both men and women, Magdeleine's father disguises himself as a women. His reasoning is that while his obesity and age would be no impairment for male beauty this wasn't the case for women--"Men are always handsome" he says to which another man replies, "In other circumstances that would be comforting." He disguises his daughters as clergymen figuring that whatever else the mercenaries might be they are at least good Catholics.

So much for that.

Magdeleine escapes their clutches only to be pressed into military service by a group of soldiers who deem her, under the name "Theodore", fit enough for service when they see she can flex her index finger.

No-one has any trouble accepting Theodore as a young man. One man, d'Albert, falls in love with Theodore and wishes either Theodore was a woman or he was a woman himself. Male characters in the film are terrified at the prospect of same sex romance but one can take their homophobia bundled with everything else they have foolish apprehensions about so that while the director of the film and the writers of the story may have indeed been homophobic themselves the context of a farce casts an equally clear light on the bigotry.

Magdeleine falls for the captain of her regiment, Alcibiade (Robert Hossein), who's somewhat alarmed to find he's falling for Theodore, a fact exacerbated when the two rather absurdly find themselves cast in a parlour production of Shakespeare's As You Like It with Theodore cast as Rosalind. So Magdeleine is a woman posing as a man playing a woman posing as a man.

The ending of the film takes us back to a much more romantically conventional place but along the way we have an actually pretty satisfying portrait of the malleable and illusory dictates of society when it comes to the appropriate presentation of sex.

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The Early Bird Gets the Plastic Cup

Two Doctor Who audio play were listened to by me this past week. Both from 2004, I heard the Eighth Doctor's The Twilight Kingdom and the Fifth's The Axis of Insanity. Neither was really bad. Well, The Axis of Insanity was kind of lame, featuring a "Jester" character who comes off like Cesar Romero in the 60s Batman television series. He's taken over some kind of nowhere zone that sounded an awful lot from it's description like the "nowhere" we see in The Mind Robber but it's meant to be a totally different one. With the Doctor are Peri and the audio only companion Erimem who has gotten a lot more spunk by this time, the Egyptian princess distinguished herself by being a little vicious before, now she's a little more laid back and casual.

The Twilight Kingdom succeeded a little more on atmosphere even if the story itself wasn't particularly special--continuing in the "Divergent Universe Saga" where the Doctor, Charley, and C'rizz are trapped in some series of linked worlds without the TARDIS, the three find themselves in among a group of militant rebels holed up in a cave. There's a sense of a temporary situation that's grown all to permanent but no-one can quite say way, which is an intriguing mystery while it lasts.

No pictures this week related to Doctor Who so here's a crow I saw scavenging outside a grocery store yesterday. These fellows are so camera shy, I was rarely able to get good photos before. Now I have a better camera with a real zoom--instead of just cropping photos on the spot and calling it a zoom--so I was able to take pictures from my car.

The Diamond In the Wiffle Ball

I almost think I'd hate 1967's The Comedians less if it were a completely bad film. It's certainly mostly a bad film, a story about simmering revolution in Haiti that makes just about every mistake many expect from a movie from the 50s; it takes place in a country with a black population but all the important characters are white, black people are presented as either noble or vicious and always requiring moral guidance from white people, however disreputable or dubious the particular white person. And yet it has one interesting minor character, Major Jones played by Alec Guinness. This is even despite the fact that he wears black face in one scene.

It's obviously played for laughs but otherwise the film endeavours for deadly serious statements on human behaviour. So the fact that Major Jones, a wanted man, is able to sneak past guards to get into the Uruguayan embassy this way is insulting on multiple levels.

He's not the only star in the film--it's an all star white cast including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov, and Lillian Gish. James Earl Jones also has a minor role but this was long before he was well known. Everyone gives a fine performance in their clichéd or strawman roles.

Burton's character, Mr. Brown, is at the centre of the film, he runs a bankrupt hotel he inherited from his mother and is the cynical heartbroken ex-patriot in the Casablanca mould, except he's actually carrying on an affair with the object of his passions, Elizabeth Taylor's character, Martha, wife of the Uruguayan ambassador, Pineda (Peter Ustinov).

She and Brown sometimes fight, sometimes make love, all of it insubstantial water treading. I understand the very concept of the film is partly an indictment of these people who carry on their sordid lives while the country is terrorised by a military regime around them but their shallowness is so broad it's cartoonish. When Brown petulantly accuses Martha of considering him just a plaything it provokes eye rolling more than interest in his motivations.

Lillian Gish and Paul Ford play a rich, elderly American couple who have naively journeyed to the country to propose a plan to build a vegetarian academy of some sort. A scene where police breaking up a funeral push Gish to the ground is meant to be shocking but it's so poorly shot the violence looks about as real as a Terry Gilliam cartoon. Even worse is a scene where Gish comes downstairs in the hotel and her intervention somehow prevents Brown from being beaten by police.

I knew exactly how the whole scene was going to play out before Gish even came downstairs. I knew it wasn't going to make any sense but I knew it was going to happen anyway because that's just the kind of movie this is. In spite of it all, I admired Gish, a great silent film star, for taking on what for her would be a relatively risky role. For all the questionable racial politics in the film, it's still a step up from Birth of a Nation, in which she starred.

Yet, again, Major Jones is kind of fascinating in spite of everything else. Played by Guinness like one of his broader comedic roles--like The Lavender Hill Mob--he's never reluctant to brag about his military career in Burma. One assumes he's exaggerating, especially with stories about how he can "smell water". At the beginning of the film he's apprehended for having a letter of invitation from a government official who's been imprisoned. He's stripped naked and tortured, which mortifies him, yet when Brown visits him in his cell he seems to be taking it all in stride, saying he's been through worse ordeals. Guinness uses the right amount of subtlety to suggest this might only be a brave front--but one put on by a man experienced at lying.

His role is relatively small compared to Burton and Taylor yet he becomes rather crucial for the end of the film, a frustrating resolution in that it is both racially patronising and yet, just for the character Guinness portrays, a bit fascinating with a genuine insight into human behaviour.

The Satisfaction of Killing

I still remember the world outside my apartment though the memory grows faint--I've been in here reading again for days. But I have taken some breaks from reading things from 17th century. Last night I read the new story in Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirenia Digest, Le Meneur des Loups, about a gathering of werewolves apparently at least partly inspired by this illustration by Maurice Sand:

This is an illustration I first saw when I was a kid in a book called Meet the Werewolf, essentially a text book on werewolves aimed at children including folk tales, general characteristics of the creatures, and some information on people with diseases that may have inspired werewolf legends, like hypertrichosis. I still have my copy of Meet the Werewolf, a worn out little paperback now--when I was in third or fourth grade I read the thing beginning to end over and over. So I was happy to see the illustration again.

Le Meneur de Loups tells of several people affected with lycanthropy who have gathered in a house to share stories and obtain some mysterious form of aid from a knowledgeable woman. The piece consists mainly of character descriptions of each werewolf--an unsuccessful ballerina, a man from Sierra Leone who won't admit to eating people, a young woman inspired by "Slender Man" tales. It's interesting how each character's personality possibly reflects the nature of the curse and their own interpretations of what it means are revealed with nice subtly.

I also took a detour to the nineteenth century a few days ago to read the final issue of Django/Zorro.

Since the life had seemed sapped out of the series by Issue Five, Issue Six had sat unopened next to my computer for weeks before I finally got around to reading it. I was sure glad I did, though, because quite abruptly that old Django charm was back--which I took to mean Tarantino was back. It's hard to imagine in the meandering previous issues a line as strident as "Y'see . . . some sonsabitches just need killin'!" followed by Django doing exactly what we look for him to do.

Issue Six also picks up the good subplot about the essentially imprisoned wife of the Arizona baron and her love affair with the baron's son. Seven is a very nice continuation and conclusion.

Zorro actually ends up feeling pretty superfluous except in scenes where his old fashioned preference for avoiding bloodshed is contrasted with Django more than willingly exacting bloody vengeance. Maybe that's not so surprising, not just because I'm guessing Tarantino handled most of the Django stuff while Matt Wagner was on Zorro duty. Django as a character is simply more of our current current culture where revenge killing is seen as more and more reasonable. Or, if not in practice, certainly in fantasy. Even to people who aren't psychopaths, fantasising about killing can be pretty satisfying, ultimately much more satisfying, I suspect, than the real thing.

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The Presumably Important Pursuit

At one time, almost no-one in South America had even heard of Jesus, an alarming fact to the Catholic church. So for hundreds of years, Dominican and Franciscan friars and eventually Jesuits were sent in to rectify the situation. 1986's The Mission tells a story of that last group of missionaries, the Jesuits, less than twenty years before their order would be dissolved by the Pope due to external political pressures. The film is partly an argument as to the nature of those pressures--essentially, capitalism--but is for the most part simply a long, beautiful commercial for Catholicism. And I sincerely mean beautiful and with great performances.

The film stars five Catholic actors--Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, and Ray McAnally, the last of whom, who plays Cardinal Altamirano in the film, even trained to be a priest. All of those actors are Irish or of Irish decent (and Jeremy Irons lives in Ireland), despite the fact that all the characters they play are either Spanish or Italian (De Niro is Italian as well as Irish but he plays a Spanish character). Considering the recent fuss about Emma Stone playing a Vietnamese character, I guess this is something that probably wouldn't happen to-day. Though I'm less bothered by it in this case than I am curious. Did everyone meet in a pub in Dublin and say, hey, let's make a movie about Jesuits?

It's the kind of movie you see less often nowadays since Quentin Tarantino showed how important language is in Inglorious Basterds--where everyone speaks an English we're meant to take as Spanish. Well, everyone except the Guarani, who speak in their native tongue. This probably didn't seem strange when the movie came out and, even now, one can say that we, the English speaking audience, can understand the Europeans because its from their perspective the movie is told. But one of the problems with this movie, a problem rather reflective of the missionary attitude itself, is that, while arguing that the indigenous people of South America are people who deserve basic human rights it fails to establish any of them as people with the complex personalities of the white characters.

In fact, missionaries deliberately avoided teaching their subjects Spanish because they were worried about exposing them to other European influences, something the film doesn't mention. Instead, missionaries learned the vernacular language in order to communicate and take confession. We also see Irons' character, Father Gabriel, communicating with the music of Ennio Morricone.

Recent studies where Pygmy communities in central Africa found the soundtrack to Psycho to be jubilant suggest a flaw in the idea that refined European music is a universal language. But Ennio Morricone's score for this film is truly beautiful, if slightly overused, and pretty anachronistic coming from Gabriel's oboe.

It's not long before Gabriel encounters one of the chief obstacles in convincing the Guarani of peaceful European intentions--the mercenary Rodrigo Mendoza (De Niro) who captures members of the indigenous population to be sold as slaves. Native Americans in South America were still pressed into slavery in the mid-eighteenth century despite Bartolome de las Casas successfully advocating increased importation of slaves from Africa in order to spare the American people whom he considered more human (he later regretted encouraging the enslavement of African people). When Mendoza commits a crime he can't forgive himself for, Gabriel prescribes penance, which takes the form of Mendoza hauling his armour and weapons all the way to Gabriel's mission at the top of a waterfall.

He eventually becomes a Jesuit and helps Gabriel turn the mission into one of the idyllic, productive communities that Portuguese and Spanish authorities resent. Mendoza's skills as a mercenary come in handy when he leads the Guarani in defence of the mission once the Portuguese establish authority--though no Jesuits actually aided the Guarani in this manner in reality.

The director of the film, Roland Joffe, is agnostic according to Wikipedia but I can't find information on the screenwriter, Robert Bolt. Bolt also wrote A Man for All Seasons, a play and subsequently a film honouring Thomas More who resisted England's break with Catholicism. It's curious he would write one story about how it's important to maintain an old religion against new external influence and then another where it's taken as read than Catholicism must be imported to the Americas.

But as a Man or a Woman

How do you tell a guy he goes about things the wrong way when he happens to almost always be right? That's precisely the problem concerning Robert Mitchum's character in 1955's Not as a Stranger. A Stanley Kramer film, it's one of his most psychologically complex and yet also one of his most politically conservative. Conservatives who aren't feminist will often tell you that they value women for their own strengths and if you ever wondered what they mean, this movie will give you a good idea. This movie is most assuredly not feminist, despite the fact that Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra are billed under Olivia de Havilland.

As usual nowadays, I have to address the definition of "feminism" which is lately a matter of some controversy. The word has come to mean for many a belief in the superiority of women, a definition fostered in many cases by louder voices of poorly informed sexists. But as is often the case with language, the way in which a word is predominantly used tends to take priority over its originally intended meaning. But Not as a Stranger is not feminist in the original sense of the term--it presents a belief that women and men best fit into specific socially prescribed roles. It argues women are more instinctively drawn to home and child rearing than men and assumes that we agree that while women might make fine nurses they should never be doctors. And yet, perhaps unintentionally, the film undermines its own point of view slightly.

First we're introduced to the most improbably manly trio of medical students in history--Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Lee Marvin. Marvin wasn't a well known star yet but this movie is certainly filled with recognisable names--also in the film are Gloria Grahame, Charles Bickford, and even Mitchum's drunk father who appears in just one scene is played by Lon Chaney, Jr.

But of all these people, and despite the fact that Mitchum's character is clearly at the centre of the story, it's De Havilland who gets top billing. Those of you who only know her as a supporting player in Gone with the Wind or as Maid Marian in the 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood might wonder why she was clearly seen as such a valuable player. In fact, by the 1950s, she had moved from serial supporting love interest to being recognised as one of the great performers of her time after winning two Academy Awards for best actress, awards which had an even higher profile due to the De Havilland Law, the result of Olivia De Havilland arguing the illegality of studios keeping actors under contract for excessive periods, thereby inhibiting their freedom to choose roles. Here real life presents what looks like an unmitigated success of feminism--a career woman who successfully fights for a law securing career rights for herself and everyone else. Not only did she win the court case but her subsequent performances proved she really did know better about her career path than the man.

But Kristina, the character she plays in Not as a Stranger, is ultimately an argument that women should place career aspirations at a lower priority than home and family. A respected and skilled nurse, Kristina is worried she's too old ever to find a husband and she's fallen in love with a younger man, Lucas (Mitchum--who was in reality only a year younger than De Havilland).

Lucas is one of the top students and he knows it. He has the audacity to point out a doctor's mistake due to lack of knowledge during a theatre surgery, something which almost gets him expelled. But his prospects of completing his education are tenuous for other reasons, mainly that his father has spent most of the college fund on booze.

One day, while Lucas and Al (Sinatra) are at dinner at Kristina's place, one of her roommates lets slip that Kristina has accrued a sizeable savings. Suddenly Lucas, who hadn't seemed interested in the smitten woman before, wants to have dinner with Kristina again.

Does he marry her for her money? One of the nice things about the movie is that it isn't as clear cut as that. Lucas does seem to like her, he certainly respects her as a nurse. When Al suggests just what we the audience are thinking about his motives for marrying her, we're reminded forcibly how much bigger Mitchum was than Sinatra as he swiftly lifts the skinny crooner right up against the wall.

The message is clear--Lucas is disgusted by the implication that he could sink so low. But does he love Kristina as much as he wants to?

Most of the time, Lucas is right about things, like when Al accidentally removes a woman's mole even though it's the kind that can spread cancer cells when removed. Lucas upbraids Al angrily in front of everyone, as he usually does whenever his colleagues do something wrong. After all, he feels, it's a matter of life and death. But later Al admits to being wrong and Lucas admits to coming on too strong, showing he is capable of some constructive introspection.

The film is almost like two movies, the first being the story of Lucas at medical school and the second the story of his and Kristina's life in the small town where they move together into a beautiful two storey house. Kristina gives up her job and becomes increasingly worried that Lucas doesn't seem interested in having a baby with her. Then Gloria Grahame turns up as a bored, lonely, beautiful rich woman who requests a house call at 1am.

Still, the movie doesn't quite fall into the typical pot-boiler pattern. Both the first half and the second share a continued rumination on male frailty all the more exasperated by a need to believe in male strength. I wasn't sure Robert Mitchum was appropriate casting--he exudes so much genuine confidence and I kind of felt Lucas should come off as more of a bundle of nerves. But then I decided he works precisely because he comes off exactly as capable as he believes he is, otherwise no-one would put up with him. De Havilland, of course, is great, though one sort of wants to see a movie about her proving herself in her own medical career.

The Angry Unknowable Swarms

Well, that wasn't just a good Game of Thrones episode, it was one of the best and I would even dare to say it had one of the best action sequences in television history. One of the keys to it was surprise which unfortunately has probably been spoiled for everyone now for every news and entertainment site on the web splashing screenshots and spoilers in their headlines. Nevertheless, as a courtesy to the last three of you who haven't been force-fed the scoop, I give you a

Spoiler warning.

Oh, and Trigger Warning: Darth Maul

I would like to propose this as Daenerys Targaryen's theme song:

"A ruler who kills those who are devoted to her is not a ruler who inspires devotion." It's funny because it's obvious. Too bad Tyrion wasn't around when Daenerys publicly executed that one devoted fellow popular with the "common people". When Tyrion asks her what it was like when she only had the support of the common people and not the rich I noticed she wasn't quite able to divulge she hadn't exactly allowed that scenario to play out organically.

But Tyrion and Daenerys sitting down together over wine came out so much better than I'd dared hope. The actors have chemistry--Emilia Clarke seems to up her game quite a bit acting opposite Peter Dinklage, she has layers, visibly suppressing strong emotions provoked by Jorah and by Tyrion's criticism, consequently making her sexier than she's been in quite a while. And, yes, I'm a little ashamed of myself for saying it but, gosh, when she said she was going to "break the wheel" it was just so adorable. The music swelled so Tyrion didn't get a chance to say, "How? And to what end?"

The show's growing problem with a simultaneous obsession with and absence of the "common people" was tempered a little with Arya's story. This week she's been trusted with a mission where she poses as "Lana", essentially Molly Malone, selling cockles and oysters, though not crying "alive, alive-oh". Maybe in the future? I would like that. It would be ironic since she's all about killing.

There are so many extras and a sense of city life around Arya in Braavos, it's nice. The episode generally feels a lot more expensive than last week's markedly low budget outing, the single shot of a dire wolf conspicuously straining the resources of an episode mostly composed of scenes of one or two people in rooms.

Not that this episode couldn't go small when it needed to. Poor Cersei. I feel like I'm the only one who likes her. Think about how much harder it is to endure solitary confinement when you have no faith in a greater good. Of all the characters on the show, Cersei has always seemed the most alone to me, and that's saying something. The only thing she has faith in is fundamental human corruption and I rather think her current circumstances only confirm her belief, only they make her realise she wasn't broad minded enough. She thought life was cruel but it's even crueller than she thought. Reviews I read consistently try to read other things into her--people talk about how, for once, her name can't protect her. She hasn't had faith in her name since she was a kid, we saw that in the first episode's flashback. She always regarded it as a tool she would use for all it's worth because nothing else was going to save her, either.

Speaking of hopeless situations, what can I say about that fantastic, huge sequence sprung on us at the end? What seemed to be a scene about Jon negotiating with Wildlings was crashed by the very threat Jon was there to warn them about. Apparently, like Tyrion meeting Daenerys, this was also a big departure from the books. I suspect we're seeing things like this because Benioff and Weiss have been noticing that whenever someone talks about writing on Game of Thrones they talk about George R.R. Martin. I think they figured it's time to make hay while the sun shines. To their credit, they're doing a bang up job.

Ray Harryhausen skeleton warriors versus a giant, very cool. And that's just garnish. There were eerie moments in the middle of the action like the sickening sight of the people who were shut out of the gate, the weird quiet zombie children, and, of course, the revelation that Jon's got a magic sword. Like Siegfried, the spurned creation of Wotan who reforges the sword Notung to become a hero anyway, the bastard Jon Snow has his Longclaw. You know, things are looking pretty traditional for a show that's supposed to be about bucking tradition. But hey, what works, works.

Why aren't we getting tired of zombies? A few weeks ago, Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation remarked that the introduction of zombies are becoming the hallmark of lazy writing. Lazy or not, I wasn't sorry to see them last night. They clearly resonate with people to-day. I find myself compelled to connect the zombie menace with the show's inability to provide much character for the "common people" it puts at the centre of discussion. I think there's a subconscious horror here, perceiving vast quantities of angry, unknowable people.

I particularly liked the quiet ending where Jon Snow and his comrades row away from shore to see the undead hordes quietly looking back with a White Walker who looks like Darth Maul making eye contact with Jon. It was a wonderfully eerie and worrying moment filled with foreshadowing. Though if I were that White Walker, I'd make a priority of learning how to use a bow.

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