Month: May 2016

Game of Thrones 6.6 “Blood of My Blood” Review

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

*Warning! Warning! The spoilers are coming! The British, I mean, spoilers are coming!* Content warning: swearing.

Before I get into the review, I just want to take a minute to remember the soldiers who couldn’t make it to celebrate this past Memorial Day. I know not all of my readers are American, but I felt it appropriate since I like to honor those who died fighting for what they believe, even if I am a pacifist. This was a very plot heavy episode, aside from the first five minutes of the episode. A lot went down in this episode, and I’d like to break down the things I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy.

What I enjoyed: 
First off, how nice it was that Ramsay got no screen time in this episode. I like Iwan Rheon as an actor, but I seriously despise his character Ramsay. Next, it was interesting to see Walder Douchebag Frey for the first time in three seasons and to see Edmure Tully return as a prisoner of The Freys. Speaking of the Tullys, I liked seeing Sam take Gilly and his family sword as a big “Fuck you” to his asshole of a father after that very tense dinner scene. I enjoy that Sam stood up to his father after he disrespected Gilly, but I think it was still a rash idea to take the sword. I enjoyed seeing how the High Sparrow out witted the Lannisters by turning Thommen and Margary against them. Lastly, I’m happy that Benjin Stark has confirmed to be (mostly) alive and that he helped to save Bran and Meera from the White Walkers in that awesome fight scene at the start of the episode.

What I didn’t like:
While I think Arya made the right decision to spare Lady Grey from being poisoned (along with that great interaction between Arya and Lady Grey), I’m sad that Arya isn’t going to finish her training with the many faced God and Jaqen H’gar. I look forward to seeing the fight between Arya and the other assassin No Name girl. Otherwise, I have no real complaints about this episode other than the fact that we don’t know what has happened to Loras Tyrell.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here next week, it looks like we’re going to get more focus on the war for the North next week. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens at that time.

-KCard

Game of Thrones 6.5 Discussion

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

*Spoiler warnings: Somehow more culturally acceptable than trigger warnings on the internet, considering they both share a similar purpose.*

Hello again readers, Kevin here bringing a rather brief discussion on last night’s episode of Game of Thrones. I’m keeping this entry short because of how late I’m posting this blog entry. I really enjoyed this episode overall, especially how it built to a climax at the end that made our collective heads spin.

I enjoyed seeing Brienne and Sansa interacting with Little Finger, even if I still think Sansa should have put her pride aside and accepted help from Petyr’s army from The Veil. I loved how Dany forgave Jorah and told him to seek a cure for his greyscale after Jorah said he was going into a self imposed exile. I enjoyed how Tyrion was accepting help from the Red Priests, and the discussion between the red priestess and Lord Varys about faith and skepticism. I loved the battle between the Children of The Forest and the White Walkers. And despite how tragic it was, I loved seeing why Hodor lost his ability to speak because of Bran. That whole idea of connecting Hodor’s past to the moments of Hodor’s death while having Hodor “hold the door” to hold back the undead was absolutely brilliant.

I have no real complaints about this episode. Even with Hodor’s death I’m quite sad, but I’m also happy that this character death had real meaning behind it (unlike Osha’s death scene last week).

I’m looking forward to seeing what will happen next week, and how this turn of events will affect Bran in the coming episodes.

-KCard♤♧◇

Game of Thrones 6.4 Review “Book of The Stranger”

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

*Spoiler warning: A one, a two, a three: this blog contains spoilers on Game of Thrones. This blog does not contain how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsy Pop.*

Hello again readers new and old, I come to you all bearing my thoughts on the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Like any episode, they stuffed a lot of plot into one hour of television. Some moments were heart warming, others were very tragic, and many moments that were very well acted out and written overall.Rather than wasting your time with plot summaries since you’ve most likely watched the episode I’ll just state what I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy.

What I enjoyed:

First of all, I literally felt my hear melt when I saw Sansa reunited with Jon Snow in the one of the opening scenes of the episode. The fact that it showed Sansa and Jon catching up on where they left off, saying “I wish we could go back and stop us from leaving that day”. That’s a sentiment I’m sure many fans share to some extent (including myself). In a similar manner, I enjoyed seeing Theon interact with Yara and how they became closer as siblings to each other. I loved seeing Dario and Jorah interact with one another to try and rescue Danny, but how Danny ultimately saved herself and became the new ruler of the Dothraki in the process. That scene at the end where Danny burns the Khal and his men alive was just so epic, I’m still geeking out about it! I enjoyed seeing how Tyrion is trying the diplomatic approach with the Masters of Yunkai by giving them time to adjust to slavery ending. It was great seeing how The Lannisters and the Tyrells are working together to fight the faith militant, and how Margery was trying to help her brother stay strong. Lastly, I enjoyed seeing how Jon is getting ready to start pushing back against Ramsay, who is becoming progressively more evil with each episode. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ramsay became an evil cartoon of his former self by the end of the season.

What I didn’t enjoy:

I haven’t read the books for GOT, but I have read about some of the plot lines on Wikipedia (*prepares for impending fan rage in comments section*). It’s hard to say since the main storyline for the books is waiting for the next book to be released, but I get the feeling the show is starting to abandon George RR Martin’s original vision a bit. Meaning that we keep getting so many happy outcomes this season and so few negative outcomes it’s starting to not feel like the original storyline. The overall theme of GOT is to say that war just makes everything worse, but here we see Danny getting a huge army, and Jon Snow coming back from the dead to fight the monster Ramsay Bolton to reclaim the north. Speaking of Ramsay, I’m so pissed at he how killed off Osha with that flaying knife. It was by far the most rushed character death I’ve seen on this show since Ned Stark’s beheading. Oh well, GOT isn’t supposed to be all sunshine and rainbows. More like it’s the only cult crowd show on TV that isn’t supposed to give people happy endings (fan service aside). I guess we shall see where things will lead us in the next few episodes.

Today’s song will be Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a Rocket Launcher” because the lyrics tell of the struggles of war and it’s aftermath. I love that damn guitar solo!

-KCard

Game of Thrones 6.3 Review “Oathbreaker”

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

*WARNING: You’ve got the spoilers, I’ve got the spoilers! Everyday we’ve got the email, I mean, the spoilers!*

Hello readers new and old, Kevin here again bringing you my review of this week’s episode of Game of Thrones. Let me start off by saying I had to skip reviewing last week’s episode because I didn’t have enough time last Sunday or Monday night, but that’s thankfully not the case this week. I feel sad that I missed expressing my joy over the news on Jon Snow last week, but I’m glad I got to see the episode right as it came on the air. Anyways, this week’s episode wasn’t as shocking/surprising as last week’s episode, but there’s still quite a bit of material to cover this week. Overall, it was a pretty entertaining episode (though there’s no topping last week).

I’ll go straight into what I liked about the episode, and what I didn’t like. The first thing I enjoyed was seeing that Jon Snow has all of his memories, and that he saw nothing while being dead. The scene of Jon Snow being placed in that cloth and having the stab wounds on his chest was a fairly obvious reference to the rising of Christ, Meldisandre even called Jon the “savior” in this past episode. The scenes with Tyrion and Varys were amazing for Tyrion’s dry humor, and Varys ability to extract info from that woman helping the Sons of The Harpy in a merciful manner.The next thing I enjoyed was the conversation between Tommen and the High Sparrow where the high sparrow reminds Tommen that Cersei’s love for him is a gift from the Gods. I’m unsure if the High Sparrow actually believes what he’s preaching, or if he’s simply using his new found power to bring justice towards the Lannisters for their long list of crimes. It will be interesting to see how things get resolved with all of the chaos going on in Westeros right now.

Speaking of chaos, Ramsay is now warden of the north, a man who’s sadism surpasses that of any other villain I’ve ever seen (even more than The Major from Hellsing Ultimate). And Ramsay now has an alliance with house Umber and Rickon Stark as a prisoner. Why am I listing this as a positive? I’m not, I just really liked how Smalljon Umber called Ramsay out on his bullshit about power and tradition. What I do like is the idea that the north is eventually going to erupt into civil war between the Boltons and whichever factions pledge their loyalty to Jon Snow. And speaking of Jon Snow, it seems many fans believe we’re getting quite close to discovering Jon’s true parentage with all of these flashbacks that Bran Stark keeps having. Which brings me to my final “like” of this episode, the fight scene with a young Ned Stark and Ser Arthur Dayne was quite possibly the most badass fight scene we’ve had in this show since Prince Oberyn vs The Mountain in season four. The fight choreography was amazing, it’s like I was watching a medieval expanded universe Star Wars light saber duel! (See it here on Youtube).

I wasn’t so much a fan of Bran and Osha being captured, but the show needs to have an edge of darkness somewhere along the way (as if Ramsay killing his newborn baby brother and his mother with his hounds last week wasn’t enough). My only other complaint is that with Jon leaving castle black then there’s a good chance Sansa won’t be able to see him.

All things considered, I should remember that even though the Game of Thrones television series isn’t following the books as closely now, GOT’s overarching theme of “war just makes everything worse” is still very true. Most of Westeros and the eastern provinces are all in chaos and descending further into war, meanwhile the White Walkers are still preparing for their siege in the second long night of winter. My biggest interest right now is seeing what role Jon Snow will eventually play as the “savior” against the White Walkers.

Speaking of chaos and discord, today’s song will be Metallica’s “King Nothing” which lyrically describes how I’m sure King Tommen currently feels about the state of his reign.

-KCard