Game of Thrones, 1.10: "Fire and Blood"
- Baby dragons!
- This episode had some great scenes from the book that really translated well - the declaration of King in the North, the shot of the Night's Watch rangers heading north of the wall, Arya meeting Gendry, the confrontation with Catelyn and Jaime. They really seem ready to attack A Clash of Kings with all the energy it will require. I'm excited for next spring already.
- Sophie Turner really seems to be digging in as Sansa's story gets progressively grimmer and grimmer. At this rate, assuming they get to a third season, eventually we'll apparently be seeing some sort of masterpiece of pathos with her and Peter Dinklage.
- I wish they would've swept further across Westeros and checked in with at least Renly before the end of the season. I understand that there were necessary limitations based around the simple fact that they filmed without knowing whether or not they'd have a second season, which means no Stannis, no Greyjoys, no Tullys, no new sets for Riverrun or Highgarden, etc. It just made the sense of the developing war seem a bit lopsided in predominantly focusing on the Northern army and the Lannisters.
- The past few weeks sort of got away from me - partly because this was the only show I was interested in writing about, and it thus got lost in the Sunday-to-Sunday schedule, and partly because the really big events weren't surprises to me after reading the book. "The Pointy End" was well-written by George R.R. Martin; he seemed to add a shade of his own understanding of the various Starks that really shaped the episode well (Rickon speaks!), and the scene with Cersei dismissing Ser Barristan from the Kingsguard. (Of all the characters I'd like to hear more from in A Dance with Dragons, Ser Barristan's at the top of the list. I've got my fingers crossed for some chapters where he's just regaling Dany with stories of the Targaryens and Westerosi history.) "Baelor" did an unbelievable job with the final scene - I really liked the way they depicted Yoren finding Arya in the crowd as a sort of last mercy on Ned's part. And both the conversation between Maester Aemon and Jon about being a king's brother and the introduction of Walder Frey were all I'd hoped they'd be.
Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 10.7: "Icarus"
One of the major bummers about the Internet uproar over the finale of The Killing is that it overshadowed what seems likely to be one of the last great "ripped from the headlines" episodes of the Law and Order universe. (I won't completely rule out SVU making a serious rebound post-cast-adjustments, but it seems unlikely right now.) However much I hyped up the ripping of Spider-Man in my own mind, the actual episode was somehow even better. The depiction of stage flying was amazing. The faux songs were amazing. Cynthia Nixon as Not Julie Taymor was AMAZING.
The Killing, 1.13: "Orpheus Descending"
- I can't sustain the exquisite levels of exasperation and rage sustained by Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall in their reviews of this finale, but I can try to put a finger on what specifically about this show was so disappointing to me.
I stopped watching week-to-week about a month before this finale; the show's vaguely defined structure of introducing and dismissing suspects made it fairly clear that the audience wasn't likely to get any important information about who killed Rosie until the writers were ready to reveal who, exactly, that was. Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes continued to do strong work conveying the Larsens' grief, but there wasn't enough variation in their story from episode to episode. The political campaign wasn't engaging. Dismissed suspects faded away, out of the show entirely, where they could've been used to build the show's world. The show's story arc was oddly flat; in post-finale interviews Veena Sud said that she thought people were disappointed because they expected the show to be more like an average procedural. I actually think it's the opposite, as contemporary television structuring goes - people were disappointed because the show didn't behave more like an average serial. (And these days, I don't think anyone tuning into a show on AMC would expect a procedural of any kind.) The eight-to-thirteen-episode cable serial season, as it's come to be established in the past fifteen or so years, has come to represent a more thoughtful use of story and character with more rise and fall and flow than The Killing ever demonstrated.
The real disappointment to me, though, came in the finale's tying of Holder to some sort of conspiracy dedicated to implicating Richmond in the murder, at least in the short term. I watched the four episodes preceding the finale over the weekend, so I already knew that the show had been renewed. When I watched the Linden-and-Holder-focused "Missing," I thought that there could be something there for a second season. I could, conceivably, be engaged in a show about Linden and Holder solving an entirely different, better-written season-long mystery. But it seems that that dream is not to be. At the very least, the finale twist erodes the trust that had built up between them, and at worst it casts Holder as a villain and completely wastes the potential inherent in their partnership. It's not just that Holder was the only character I sort of liked after twelve episodes - Joel Kinnaman was more or less keeping the show afloat with his squirrelly energy - it's that the writers seemed so determined to keep everything shrouded in mystery for as long as possible that they ultimately left Linden not unrelatable but unaccessible. The best detective-driven shows can make you care about a case simply because their protagonist cares, regardless of whether they're "likable" in a traditional sense - I keep wistfully thinking of Veronica Mars and Hank Dolworth - but Linden is still practically a blank in all those respects. Upon the conclusion of this episode, AMC aired a commercial exhorting viewers to tune in next year to learn who really, truly killed Rosie Larsen. And all I could manage was a strangled cry that I simply don't care.
- The ads for the upcoming season of Breaking Bad felt like a mirage of quality storytelling and sustained story arcs in the desert of...whatever this was. I may or may not have exclaimed, "SAVE US, Vince Gilligan!" aloud to my television.
- I feel like Cold Case is being unfairly maligned in the criticism of the things that weren't so great about The Killing. Yes, the show often felt like one long episode of today's standard crime procedurals, with suspects introduced and dismissed as if the weeks between episodes were more like extra-long commercial breaks. But Cold Case, more than any of its peers, excelled at one thing at which The Killing routinely failed: establishing an emotional connection to the victim. The best Cold Case episodes made the victim feel like a real person, and made their death feel like a tragedy. The Killing did neither, and I think many of the show's other problems stem from the void that Rosie Larsen continues to be.
- I love reading online responses to shows like this, and this finale produced a smorgasbord of them. Here I'll cite Myles McNutt's interesting piece about the AMC brand and how The Killing may be undermining their image. I realized during over this past television season that I'm less and less willing to take it on faith that AMC's new shows are worth taking a chance on. I'll probably give Hell on Wheels a chance when it premieres, but I'll be much warier of its potential than I will be for, say, the new shows coming from HBO or FX.
- I understood why AMC decided to cancel Rubicon back in the fall, truly. But, I'll be honest, now the fact that this amorphous show gets to have a second season and we will never get more time with Rubicon's characters is kind of pissing me off.
Pretty Little Liars, 2.2: "The Goodbye Look"
- I love how these girls' parents try to dictate something like keeping them separate from one another but then contribute no real supervision to attempt to enforce it.
- In my imagination, outside of class all the other students talk about how blatantly obvious it is that Ezra and Aria are hooking up. (Oh, how I hoped Mona would actually say as much to Aria.) "He was giving our English class this heartfelt goodbye, but was so clearly talking to only her. He didn't break eye contact with her the whole time!" "I totally saw them making out on the hood of his car out in the parking lot!"
- Parents on teen shows are interesting. On the one hand, they can end up being a vital puzzle piece that makes the show great - your Joyce Summers, your Harold and Jean Weir, your Graham and Patty Chase. On the other, some work fine without them - I've basically accepted that we're never going to meet most of the parents on Glee, no matter how little narrative sense it makes. PLL, besides the obvious gap between imagined and actual authority cited above, tends to use them fairly well. Here, though, I find myself really, really wanting to meet the Cavanaughs. Who are these mysterious people who raised these two weirdos, perhaps the weirdest kids in a town full of strange, twitchy teenagers? What are their family dinners like? Do they not notice that Toby projects sadness all around him all the time, or that Jenna is seriously, seriously creepy, or do they just not care? Every time one of them mentions their parents, I'm like, "I must see these people made flesh!"
Friday Night Lights, 5.10: "Don't Go"
"Apt" seems insufficient as a descriptor for that episode title. I've had, I don't know, over a year to accept that this show is ending, but it didn't really hit home until this episode. Tim's parole hearing, especially Buddy's surprisingly touching speech to the board, broke some sort of emotional dam inside me, whence flowed a veritable geyser of tears. I'm not prepared for the next three weeks.
