Game of Thrones Season 5, Episode 7 Recap: "The Gift"

I was really hoping for an exciting, unquestionably excellent episode to help wash the taste of last week's hour out of my mouth, but we're still in Game of Thrones's mid-season semi-slump. It wasn't a flat-out bad episode, like last week's, but we're still in the slow process of setting up a lot of things that will (hopefully) pay off in big, satisfying ways before the end of the season. There was certainly some stuff to get excited about in "The Gift" - we're gearing up for a big snow battle, Tryion's finally hooked up with Daenerys, things in King's Landing are spiraling out of everyone's control! - but there was also a lot of wheel-spinning in this week's episode.

DORNE:
I'm going to get the Dorne stuff out of the way first because it's still so disappointing. Dorne seems so promising in theory, but everything is still paced so strangely and I'm not impressed. We haven't spent nearly enough time with the people who seem to matter here (Doran, the Sand Snakes, Myrcella) and then the time we do get with them is devoted to whatever that nonsense was with the antidote burlesque show in the dungeons. I guess I'm glad Bronn isn't going to be poisoned to death, but I'm still pretty annoyed we had to waste whole minutes on that scene, which still failed to inspire emotional investment in the Sand Snakes, even if did differentiate one of them from the others slightly.

Elsewhere, in more comfortable quarters, Jaime is allowed to speak to Myrcella and see that she's safe. She's more than safe, she's happy here, and ready to spend the rest of her life in Dorne, married to Trystane. For some reason, Jaime doesn't get why she wouldn't want to come back to  King's Landing, which, even before the Faith Militant rolled in, didn't exactly seem like a fun place to summer. Myrcella correctly points out that Jaime doesn't know her at all, which is exactly how I feel about everybody here.

THE WALL:
Things are slightly more compelling up North. Jon and Tormund are preparing to head beyond the Wall. Sam gives him some very significant dragonglass, so I expect that to get some use. Ser Alliser, Jon's newly minted First Ranger, is still not into his plan, and, judging from many, many cuts to his sullen glower, neither is Olly. Again: I'm not seeing how Jon is planning to get back into Castle Black if he comes back with all these unwanted Wildlings. It's especially not helpful that his most influential ally, Maester Aemon, is in bad shape.

Sam and Gilly are sitting by Aemon's bedside as he gets more and more delirious. He's really into Little Sam who, by the way, still seems really little. I know there's probably all kind of genetic defects at play because of the inbreeding, but surely that kid should at least be a toddler by now? How much time has passed? I'm no expert, but that baby seems way too young. Anyway, Aemon goes into raptures over the baby, mistaking it for his younger brother "Egg," which is my new favorite nickname. This is another interesting callback to the Targaryens of old, who seem to be cropping up a lot throughout this season. Again, it feels like a little nod to everyone's favorite theory. At the very least, it seems to be reminding us of Daenerys's family ties to Westeros, which is something we need after all the time she's spent across the Narrow Sea, but it's also worth noting that, with Aemon's passing, Daenerys is now (as far as we know) officially the last Targaryen standing.

Sam puts on a nice funeral for the Maester, in classic Night's Watch style, and they burn the body. His remains are probably still gently smoking when some Night's Watch creeps decide the mood feels right for some more sexual assault and general gross behavior. Watching some random goons menace Gilly is a little too much for me on top of what happened last week, even though Sam manages to distract them by offering himself as a punching bag long enough for Ghost to arrive to scare them off. Ghost is far and away Jon's strongest ally left at Castle Black, and that's a pretty bleak thought.

After the rumble, Gilly nurses Sam's wounds and they exchange concerns. Gilly is upset that Sam put himself in danger when he's supposed to be the one to protect Little Sam if anything happens to Gilly. Sam asks her what kind of man he'd be if he stood by and let that happen, and everyone watching unavoidably thinks of last week's nightmare, again. Sam doubles down on his promise to protect Gilly and her baby and she decides this is a good time to make things physical. Sam does not even put up a token protest about his vows. I'm pretty sure Jon is the only one who took those remotely seriously.

EN ROUTE TO WINTERFELL:
Somewhat farther south, Stannis is having Napoleon-invading-Russia problems, as I expected. His men are abandoning him, he's running out of supplies, his are horses dying, and they still haven't reached Winterfell, Davos wants to go back and wait out winter at the Wall but Stannis knows that could mean putting this off for a decade. If he thought that would be the day's worst advice, Melisandre follows it up with a doozy: she's seen herself walking the walls of Winterfell, but Stannis needs more king's blood to make her dreams reality, so they should kill Shireen.

Game of Thrones is so grimdark, its mission statement so relentlessly "everything and everyone is awful" that it is entirely possible that Stannis is going to give in to this suggestion. I am no longer surprised by monstrosity on this show. And that's a problem. In earlier seasons, it was easy to praise Thrones for subverting conventions by being uncompromising, but now it's repetitive and it's getting dull. It would be so much braver of the show to NOT be terrible for once, to let someone experience more than a fleeting moment of happiness, to let someone make the morally correct choice and still prosper. Five seasons of misery in, I would find that narrative choice to be truly shocking.

A nice moment from this scene was the casual reminder that Gendry is still out there somewhere. Gods bless that sweet dope, he's probably still bobbing around aimlessly in the safety of international waters, which is, frankly, the smartest move anyone's made on this show.

WINTERFELL:
Meanwhile, in other plots I'd really love to be less grim, Sansa is being confined to her bedroom, where she is attacked nightly by Ramsay, and Reek is the only person she sees. She does her best to rally Theon for his redemptive moment, but if it's coming, it's not coming this quick. Theon immediately tattles, because of course he does. We get a quick shot of Brienne here and I am praying, I am begging, please, let Brienne get in here soon and murder these assholes.

So far, Ramsay still holds the monopoly on murder. His latest victim is Sansa's Kindly Old Servant ally from a few episodes previous, flayed and displayed. No one is surprised. The more time we spend with the Boltons, the more desensitized I get to evil. It's monochromatic awfulness and, as Reek reminds us, it will always get worse. Every second we spend on this plot is another reason to consider quitting the show altogether. I expect that Sansa will find her way away from the Boltons eventually, but then what? Reason and experience tell us her life will only get more and more terrible, no matter how many times she escapes.

Ramsay and Sansa have a little talk on their way out to view his handiwork, and, with Sansa, we have to endure Ramsay talking about how pleased he is with her, how glad he is she's not fat or ugly (ughh), and giving her the most menacing cheek-kisses I've ever seen. They also talk bastards for a second. It makes me nervous to see Sansa provoke Ramsay by mentioning his unborn rival, but he seems to have taken Roose's assurances to heart and the worst he does (for now) is give Sansa an update on her own bastard relative, Lord Commander Jon Snow. For a moment, in her surprise, we see something that might be hope in Sansa's face. Jon is alive and relatively near, but even if he was currently at the Wall, she'd still have to get through Stannis's army to reach him. For his part, Ramsay doesn't seem overly concerned about the upcoming battle. He keeps referring to "we Northmen" during the course of this conversation, and yes, I guess the Boltons are Northerners compared to the invading forces, but it still makes me grit my teeth every time. Get these a-holes out of Winterfell, right now.

MEEREEN:
I could also stand to get out of Meereen, at this point, but at least things are looking relatively promising over there. We kick things off with Jorah and Tyrion, who are just outside the city. Jorah gets sold to fight in the pits and Tyrion insists they're a package deal. He's so determined to come with that he proves his point by beating up a dude with his chains. I would honestly read fanfic about these two. They're hitting so many tropes I love, I think I might be shipping them against my will. Am I alone in this? Am I crazy? Sorry that I'm trash, but there it is. Anyway, Tyrion and Jorah are each paid a single coin so they're technically not slaves, which is another reminder of how Daenerys's power here is still nominal and uncertain.

She still seems to think she can marry into some goodwill, but Daario thinks not. They're still messing around and he's upfront about his jealousy. He proposes she marry him instead, which she insists she can't do. He says this means she's the only one in Meereen who's not free, which made me roll my eyes pretty hard. I can't get into Daario as a love interest, and I don't find him very compelling as a character in general, much less as an adviser to Daenerys. His latest political plan is for her to kill all the Masters during the big fighting pit kick-off party, which is pretty 50 Shades of Red Wedding. As a rebellion deterrent, it's probably effective, but it's not consistent with Daenerys's Breaker of Chains brand, and it's not going to help her in the long run, especially in Westeros where she'll be fighting comparisons to her Mad King uncle who set people on fire for fun.

Given her reluctance to sit through the slaughter of the preliminary rounds of the fighting, there's still hope that Daenerys will resist unnecessary violence. Hazdir insists she has to watch the trials as part of the Grand Old Fighting Pit Tradition, but she's still ready to walk out until Jorah spots her from his the cells and comes out to get this reunion started. He incapacitates the other fighters and comes face to face with his beloved khaleesi, but she wants nothing to do with him. Luckily, Tyrion manages to break his way out and get to Jorah's side just in time to offer himself and as Jorah's sorry-I-informed-on-you gift.

I am so ready for this alliance. What Daenerys needs most is a long term plan, and none of her would-be advisers have been equipped to give her one until now. It's also been a long time since we've seen Tyrion in a position to make his mark on the realm, so it'll be nice to see him back in his element, assuming Daenerys is willing to give him a chance.

KING'S LANDING:
The most action-packed locale this week is King's Landing, where things are rapidly getting out of hand. Olenna gets a showdown with the High Sparrow and it is truly great. This is the spiritual successor to Olenna vs Tywin, two super powers who know what's up and didn't come to mess around. Olenna talks money but there are several hints in this episode that part of what the High Sparrow hopes to destroy with the Faith Militant is class inequality. Olenna plays her biggest card: the Tyrells have the resources and the food, and they can cut off that supply. The High Sparrow counters by pointing out that it isn't the Tyrells who farm the land and it will be the many versus the few. This is a great look for peasantry in medieval fantasy, as they are usually relegated to background victims or general scenery.

My problem with the High Sparrow stuff is that I'm not sure how religious everyone really is here. We haven't seen any truly religious people (other than Melisandre) until this season so there's a lot we still don't fully grasp. How religious is the general public? How much of the High Sparrow's rhetoric is genuine religiosity and how much of it is a power play? I'm fine with not knowing the High Sparrow's endgame just yet, but it would help to have a vision of religion in Westeros that isn't the lip-service of the highborns (like Cersei), the disinterest of the lowborns (Gendry, Bronn), or the violent fanaticism of the Faith Militant. Personally, I'm not sure the people of High Garden are so devout that they're willing to disobey the Tyrells, especially when obeying means that they themselves have more food for the coming winter. The threat seems to work on Olenna, however, because she takes a different tack.

We finally get to see some actual conspiring going down between Westeros's most notorious crime duo, Littlefinger and the Queen of Thorns. It's very clear they don't like each other, but, as Olenna points out, they are bound together now by the Purple Wedding. If Margaery and Loras go down, the future of the Tyrell house goes with them, and Olenna will have no reason not to burn Baelish's shit down. Baelish admits he returned to the capital to give Cersei the information she already basically had (meaning: the brothel guy who informed on Loras) and offers to do Olenna the same courtesy, which means Lancel's incesty past is coming into play, as we knew it would.

It feels like it took a long time for this plan to circle back on Cersei, mostly because she's the only one who didn't see it coming. When a distraught Tommen tells her how much he loves Margaery, Lena Headey's face goes through an incredible range of expressions and emotions: the trademark Lannister smirk, the wild-eyed protective mother, the grief of a woman being replaced. Cersei tells Tommen that he will never be able to understand how much she loves him, and it's true, he won't. Cersei's love is so all-consuming and fixated that she may well have destroyed the realm because of it. The same way that Robb's love lost him a war or Robert's love started a rebellion, Cersei's love may have consigned Westeros to religious rule.

Cersei's fate is truly sealed the second she goes down to Margaery's cell to take her victory lap. It's an echo of the vicious mean-girl brunch that got Margaery into this mess in the first place. Like Cersei did then, poor, dusty Margaery just has to sit there and take it, and just like Margaery, Cersei's victory is short-lived. When she meets with the High Sparrow, she barely has time to get some trial info and a tidy metaphor about stripping down the upper class's finery to see what's underneath before the he turns on her. Cersei's flashback from the beginning of the season now seems like high Greek tragedy: it was her obsession with fighting the prophecy's words that drove her right into the arms of her fate. If she hadn't been so maniacally devoted to her children, if she hadn't been so obsessed with keeping Margaery in her place, this could have been avoided.

If we are truly about to see the end of Cersei, it'll be a huge loss for the show. It's not so devastating to the narrative, as Cersei has largely outlived her usefulness, but Lena Headey has given one of the best, most complex performances on the series. There are few actors who could play a character so loving yet so cruel, so shrewd yet so blind, so compelling yet so loathsome. It will be a shame not to see her perfect, infuriating smirk every week, but short of Jaime regrowing his hand and returning to King's Landing just in the nick of time, I don't see a way out of this one for Cersei.

Note: an earlier version of this recap mistakenly conflated Aegon the Unlikely with Aerys, the Mad King. It has since been corrected.

Jam of the Week: "Feeling Myself" by Nicki Minaj feat. Beyonce

For this week's jam, there was no competition, no question, no doubt in my mind. A truly sublime music video was unveiled this week, a sensory and spiritual experience that defies description. What can one say about this song, this video? Nothing. We can say nothing. We can just continue to cry in awe and fear and joy and gratitude while we watch Nicki and Bey eat burgers, arm in arm. Thank you, Nicki and Beyonce. We don't deserve this, but thank you.

(That's obviously not the video in question, but it's pretty easy to find without paying Hov $20 a month, even though if anything on this good earth was worth me getting a Tidal subscription, it would be this video, so good effort, Jigga, well played, but you haven't caught me yet, you wily sonofabitch.)

It's The Real Thing: on Mad Men's Final Episode

Before Mad Men, Matthew Weiner worked on HBO's The Sopranos, another show that deserves a spot on prestige TV's Mount Rushmore. Despite its undeniable quality and cultural impact, the aspect of The Sopranos that is most often discussed is its ambiguous, open-ended finale. In some ways, I think that endless debate hobbled Weiner when it came time to end Mad Men. If any show would have benefited from an uncertain, unresolved ending, it would have been the realistically irresolute Mad Men. Instead, the show's finale felt closer to something like Friday Night Lights, another accomplished series. FNL ended in a flurry of crowd-pleasing resolutions that assured audiences that the characters they had grown to know and love would all be okay in the end. As a way to end a series, it's not terrible, but as a way to end Mad Men, it rings a little false.

The problem Mad Men was always going to run up against when it came time to end the show was that its protagonist, Don Draper, is an unstoppable force and a finale is an immovable object. Throughout the series, up to and including the finale, Don prescribes endless forward progress. In many ways, the show has followed his lead. Things progress naturally and relentlessly, on-screen and off. Every story that doesn't end in death continues, whether we see it or not. The characters are so complex and full that we believe their lives continue off-screen. When they return  years later, like Midge, Don's beatnik girlfriend from the first season, it feels natural. Similarly, characters disappear without closure, just as some people drift out of our lives for good. Faye, once the presumed future Mrs. Draper, disappears just as suddenly as Don marries Megan. Fan-favorite Sal is fired and never returns, while Duck stumbles back over and over. These characters flow in and out of each other's lives in a realistic, arbitrary way, and their lives have followed the same pattern. How can you satisfyingly resolve a show that has so staunchly refused satisfying resolution?

Aspects of the finale felt too neat to feel like real life, to feel like Mad Men. The most obvious example is the resolution of the Peggy/Stan relationship. Their love confession played like a romantic comedy, albeit one of the greatest rom-com love confessions since When Harry Met Sally. The scene is well-written and Elisabeth Moss is terrific in it, but it doesn't feel like a scene from Mad Men. Romance on the show has never played out like this, with unambiguous optimism and finality. In fact, nothing on the show has ever played out like that. The scene and the confirmation of the relationship in general felt like fan-service in the same way that Friday Night Lights used its finale to assure the audience that the Taylors' relationship was strong, or to hint that Tim and Tyra might someday be able to make it work. It's not wrong for a show like FNL where the underlying tone has always been heartwarming and uplifting, but on a more realistic show, like Mad Men, it rings false. As good as the scene was, as charming and as sweet as it was, did the audience really need to see it? We've felt the reality of Stan and Peggy's relationship for some time now. Fans have known where it was headed. If we'd just gotten the final shot of Stan giving Peggy a back rub while she works late, wouldn't we have put it together ourselves? Peggy is the character we root for the most, and it feels good to see her happy, but seeing it happen like this, especially right on the heels of that phone call from Don, doesn't feel organic to the show.

By comparison, Roger and Marie's romantic ending feels a little more real. Peggy's relationship is undoubtedly a victory. All series long, she has been searching for a balance of love and work, a relationship with a partner who will appreciate and support her ambition. Stan checks off everything on her list like he was made-to-order. Roger's relationship with Marie is more complicated. Joan describes it as "messy," and it is. In the course of the finale, we see them struggle with a language barrier and clashing personalities; it's not a perfect relationship by any stretch, but it's still progress for Roger, who has spent the series chasing younger women. Marie is finally an age-appropriate match, and we can feel optimistic about Roger's future with her without feeling like their story ends there. By contrast, Peggy and Stan's story felt cut off, the same way a rom com ends after the music swells and the camera pans out on the big kiss. Roger and Marie's story feels unfinished, which is to say it feels like Mad Men.

Joan and Pete have similar victorious moments that still feel open-ended. The Joan we see in the pilot embraces and enforces the patriarchy in a way the Joan of the finale refuses to do. She's grown and deepened as a character, and we leave her stronger and braver, but hungrier. Joan still has obvious desires that remain unfulfilled by the finale. Her relationship with Richard has ended disappointingly, and her business is just beginning, still being run out of her apartment. There are still obvious ways for her to fail and succeed, for her story to continue. Pete, even though he succeeds in rebuilding his family and appears to have renounced his futile ambitions to be the next Don Draper, ends the series on a similar note. He has certainly grown from the petty, jealous, insecure young man we meet in the first season. He can say to Peggy, honestly and cheerfully, that she is more talented than he is. He seems happier and more stable, but he's also uprooting his family, and Trudy has made it clear that she is not forgiving the past, even if she's ready to try for a future. Pete still has a lot of work to do, and nothing about his future feels guaranteed. When he and Peggy have their final scene (perhaps the best farewell scene of the series), they speak of her future professional success as if it's assured and, as an audience, we feel the same way. The only question is if it will really take her until 1980 to become her own boss. When we wonder about these characters, these fake people who have become so real over the course of the series, we won't wonder about Peggy the way we will about Sally or Joan or Pete. We worry about the others in a way we won't worry about Peggy anymore. Peggy got everything she wanted and, on a show that has been so centered on what it means to want, it felt too neat.

Don's finale moment is more complicated, because it can be read several ways. In a finale that largely lacked ambiguity, Don's final moments on the series are perhaps the most open to interpretation. I don't think there is any doubt that Don returns to McCann Erickson and writes the "I want to buy the world a Coke" ad that closes the series. Coke has been dangled in front of Don for seasons, since the first season in fact, and was strongly foreshadowed several times over the course of the final season. The woman manning the desk at the Californian retreat is echoed in the commercial, the repetition of the ribbons and braided pigtails and peasant top as effective as seeing Don's signature. The ambiguity arises in the question of what the ad means to Don.

Mad Men has been, in a lot of ways, a celebration of capitalistic creativity. Don and Peggy are obviously creative, and good at their jobs, but their creativity is still work, and still about making money and being recognized. The art they create is not art for art's sake, and, in fact, the show has little sympathy or patience for idealistic artist types. For Don and Peggy, their work is about consumerism, and when it is successful, it lives at the intersection of emotion and need, desire and necessity. Like the Burger Chef pitch, it's not just about the ideal of motherhood and family-bonding - the children are hungry. In some ways, the final episodes have examined the similarity between Don and Weiner, two creatives who are concerned about their legacy and are trying to create art that functions with the world. The empty SC&P offices felt like a struck set. The way the characters have moved onto new projects feels like a cast going their separate ways at the end of a show's run. Don's work throughout the series has often been about itself, aware of what it's selling and why. How aware is Don's Coke ad? Is he still talking about advertising, about the way he sells people the idea that they can buy a feeling? Is Don's enlightenment real?

Given the tone of the rest of the episode, I would say Don believes he has achieved enlightenment. Some have read the ad as a cynical attempt to package counterculture to sell sugar and call it universal love, and this interpretation is certainly valid, but we see Don make unprecedented personal progress in the finale. He reaches out to those closest to him (Sally, Peggy, Betty) via person-to-person call, where the finale gets its name, a title that reinforces the idea of Don connecting. He is able to break down with each of them in separate ways, to be raw and open, but it isn't until Leonard's confession at the retreat that Don bridges the distance physically. Throughout the series, Don is always telling people to stop crying, to put their feelings aside, to have a drink and move forward. During the course of his walkabout tour of America, he has been slowly unburdening himself of his possessions and his past, confessing not only Don Draper's secrets but Dick Whitman's as well. This hug is a moment between both halves of Don: Dick, the unloved child of a whore, and Don, the man who is obsessed with status. Leonard's breakdown is about the fear that no one sees his value, that he wouldn't recognize love if he received it, and rather than recoiling and attempting to suppress the breakdown, Don/Dick embraces him. He accepts his own fear, and we next see him comfortably still, no longer racing West in a fast car or scattering himself across the country. He sits on the edge of a cliff at the edge of the country, nowhere further to go, smiling easily and uttering an "ohm" that sounds like "home," like finally finding a place he no longer needs to leave. His enlightenment feels real, at least to him.

But how many times have we seen Don reinvent himself only to fall back into his old tricks? Is this another case of reinvention, or is it true self-acceptance, Don finally at peace with both sides of himself? Don has come to California on spiritual quests before, and he has always returned to New York and reverted to the same Don we've known for seven seasons. There is no concrete evidence that this won't happen again. If his enlightenment is read as real (which, given the tone of the rest of the episode, I believe is the case) then it feels overly sentimental and again, not like Mad Men. The hug he shares with Leonard doesn't quite feel real either. It feels like the same ghosts that have haunted Don across the country, a dream-like vision of his own subconscious. In some ways, having this moment with a stranger in a strange place it lowers the stakes of the moment.

Up to this point, Don's biggest moments of vulnerability have felt vividly real, full of real risk and real catharsis. When he tells Betty about Dick Whitman, when he tells Hershey about growing up in a whorehouse, even when he tells a group of veterans about how he accidentally killed the original Don Draper, we are aware of the stakes, of Don's vulnerability and bravery. These confessional moments have been out of place before - an impersonal home office, a professional conference room, a festive fundraiser - but now the setting encourages revelation. It's group therapy: Don's behavior here is accepted, even encouraged. This is the way he is supposed to act in this situation. Something had to happen to Don here, to get him to the Coke ad in a way that made his enlightenment real. Something had to touch him. But, to quote an earlier scene in the episode: does the hug feel honest? It feels honest in the moment, but what makes this moment of understanding and acceptance last outside this room? What's to say that Don will take this new-found emotional openness back to to New York, where this behavior is no longer the norm?

I think the show suggests that he reconciles this in the Coke ad, that he takes this feeling of self-acceptance, this urge to reach out to a stranger, and translates it into a language that sells a product without losing any of the sincerity of the impulse. In the famous Hershey and Kodak pitches, we see how much more comfortable Don is expressing and speaking of affection as a product, an item he can use as shorthand for words he has trouble saying. The tone of the finale, the neatness and optimism of the other stories, suggests that Don is honestly expressing his new outlook through the medium that has always most comfortable to him. It's an interesting choice, and perhaps the most heartwarming ending possible for a character who has spent so much of the show being unable (and often uninterested in even trying) to form connections with the people around him, up to and including his own children.

Peggy and Don are our protagonists, the characters we have spent the most time with, invested the most emotion in, and yes, it feels good to see them succeed, but the neatness of it galls. Peggy arrives on the show looking for a husband and a career, and she leaves with both. Don begins searching for himself and a legacy that will outlast him; he ends the series with both. On his podcast, Hollywood Prospectus, Andy Greenwald pointed out that long-running series often suffer from this same problem, that their pilots and their finales don't feel like part of the same show. So much rides on these two episodes alone that there is almost no way to create them in a way that satisfies everything an audience wants from them.

As a pilot, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is a fantastic piece of television. We meet characters that we find compelling, we are exposed to an environment we find intriguing, but we are also presented with a twist: Don's family. It sets up the world and the characters, but it reveals information in a way that, looking back, does not feel like Mad Men. The reveal of Don's wife and children is a "gotcha" that the show doesn't repeat. The truth about Don's past comes out slowly, piece by piece, spun out over the course of several seasons. The pilot suffers from the same narrative neatness of the finale, but it doesn't diminish the legacy of Mad Men at all, not least because Mad Men has never been about beginnings and endings. The format of a story demands these things, these set points of reference, but Mad Men, from the second episode of the first season to the thirteenth episode of the seventh, has resisted them. It has been a show about stories that are realer than the format allows.

By adhering to the format, Weiner lost some of the tone, but he has lost none of his legacy. In its middle episodes, on its own terms, Mad Men has been one of the most ambitious, densest, most literary shows of all time. Audiences are inevitably polarized by finales in their immediate wake, but by distancing the tone of the finale from the tone of the show itself, it's possible that Weiner has intentionally separated the two. Perhaps it would have been more satisfying if the show had kept to its ambiguous, complicated tone in its final episode, but it's equally like that it would have suffered the same fate as The Sopranos: reduced to its final moments.

Mixtape Monday: The Music of Mad Men

This week's playlist is an anomaly, in that it's not one I personally constructed. For the past few years, I've been subscribed this playlist on Spotify, and soon, it will stop being updated forever. Someone recommended the playlist to me (it might have been Vulture?) some time ago, and ever since it's been a favorite. This week's mix, in honor of the finale, is a collection of songs from AMC's Mad Men. 

Mad Men, when it first aired, was notable first and foremost for its set design and commitment to portraying the 60s in New York with accuracy and panache. The music was a big part of the show's commitment to the time period. Song titles and band references were dropped deliberately to solidify the verisimilitude. As time went on, Mad Men became a richer, deeper experience for viewers; it was more than just an aesthetic fantasy. Mad Men is without doubt one of the densest, most literary, most textually challenging shows of all time.

As the show deepened, the music gained greater significance, lost some of its rigid adherence to period propriety. There have been some anachronistic song selections over the course of the series, from The Decemberists to David Bowie. Even by the second episode, we hear The Cardigans closing the episode with "The Great Divide." Mad Men has always been very deliberate with the songs that play over its end credits, easing us out of the episode and solidifying the episode's central theme. In the case of the Cardigans, that great divide was between Don and Betty, already, even then, irreconcilably separate people.

One of the rarest, most enticing things about Mad Men has been this obsessive attention to detail. Everything is deliberate and calculated. Everything on this show had meaning and significance. There has not been a show since that has been so trusting with its audience, so sure that viewers will put in the work necessary to explicate the show's text. With the growing trend towards reboots and limited series, it may be a long time still before we have an extended series that rivals Mad Men in ambition and scope.

Stay tuned for an upcoming piece about the specifics of the series finale and the show's legacy, but in the mean time, enjoy this excellently curated playlist on Spotify.

The Music of Mad Men

Game of Thrones Season 5, Episode 6 Recap: "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"

I'm going to keep pretending that didn't happen for a second. It was a better world we lived in, twenty-four hours ago, and I'm going to cling to that world for as long as humanly possible. I don't want to talk about it.

BRAAVOS:
In fact, I don't want to talk about it SO MUCH, that I'd rather talk about this boring Arya stuff!! The episode opens with still more of Westeros's most dimly lit corpse spa. Arya, like the rest of us, is getting pretty fed up with how slow things are moving over here, but demanding answers from her cadaver scrubbing buddy only leads to a frustrating game of truth-or-lie. If you thought the original version was dull, the expansion pack with Jaqen H'ghar spices things up by adding a new feature where he whacks you with a stick! It's a fun game for everyone, especially Arya, who takes a few ribshots rather than admit that she felt anything less than vengeful hatred for The Hound.

Just when it seems like Arya can't do or say anything interesting in this place without getting slapped down (either physically or verbally), a tragic father-daughter duo arrive. The girl is suffering and her father is looking for an angel of mercy. Arya creates a soothing fiction to encourage the girl to drink from the House of Black and White's ominous water feature. Jaqen watches the whole exchange and decides Arya is ready to move on to the next level, which is a cathedral full of face skins. Neat! He tells her she's not ready to be no one, but she's finally ready to become someone else, so it seems like we might finally be getting somewhere with this story.

I generally like Arya's scenes on this show, not least because Maisie Williams is a very capable, sure-footed actress (I bring it up a lot but: remember that time she went toe-to-toe with Charles fuckin Dance???) and she's always interesting to watch, but I'm struggling to care about this slow motion training montage. It's a tough plot to get invested in, not just because of the pacing, but because we're not really rooting for Arya to succeed here.

Success in this place means giving up the character we've grown to care for over the years. When Arya was divesting herself of her worldly attachments at the water's edge, weren't we all relieved that she couldn't bring herself to part with Needle? When we root for Arya, we root for her to take her revenge, to scratch the names off her list and avenge her family. We want her to keep Needle, keep her quest, and keep her fighting spirit. That's not what this place is about. I'm curious to see what she'll get out of this training, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm hoping she gets it quick and gets out. Arya is at her best when she's playing off other characters; everyone here is no one and nothing has immediate consequence to the main action. She's one of Thrones's brightest flames but putting her in this vacuum has sucked all the oxygen out of her story.

ON THE ROAD TO MEEREEN:
Speaking of people currently far-removed from the main action, Tyrion and Jorah are still truckin. Tyrion's trying to get Jorah to open up. He complains about Jorah's poor conversational skills and even confesses to murdering his own father, but Jorah gives him nothing... until he accidentally breaks the news that Jorah's father, Jeor, was killed in the mutiny at Crastor's Keep. It's an interesting contrast, these two men in exile grieving fathers with whom they had complicated relationships. Tyrion expresses admiration for Jeor and sympathy for Jorah, but Jorah merely grimaces in a solemn, backlit shot, privately reliving all the ways he disappointed his father. This is a compelling pairing and I'm into it.

I'm also into Tyrion's (very valid!) questions about why Jorah is so convinced Daenerys is The Real Deal, and especially why he thinks she'll be able to come into Westeros, a country she has never really known, and rule it with any sort of authority and understanding. Jorah's response to this is pretty weak, though. He tells Tyrion the tale of the dragons' birth, which is, yes, a great story, but, as Tyrion points out, it's not any sort of real indication of her capacity to rule. Plus, we know it's not the real reason Jorah is so firmly on Team Dany. He switched sides before that happened, and his reasons for wanting to return to her are less about how great a queen he thinks she'll be and more about how he turns into a human heart-eyes emoji whenever he sees her. It's not surprising that he doesn't have much of an answer for Tyrion's question about what happens after she gets the throne, because that's never been his endgame.

Tyrion doesn't get a chance to pry this out of Jorah, however, before they're beset by slavers. Boy, this is rough country! People have been wandering through warn-torn Westeros for whole seasons seeing little more than peasants and the occasional roving band of Brothers Without Banners, but Tyrion and Jorah can't seem to catch a break. The slavers are very upfront about their plans to kill and dismember Tyrion and sell Jorah to a salt mine, which gives Tyrion a chance to talk their way out of it. Apparently dwarf dick is a big deal in certain circles, but, as we already know, Tyrion's dick is not dwarf-sized. He proposes that the slavers keep him alive as proof-of-dwarf before they sell his parts to a COCK MERCHANT, which is a REAL PROFESSION. Amazing. Why does anyone want to rule the seven kingdoms when they could open a quaint little COCKERIE and be a small town COCK MERCHANT? You know, live a simple life of COCK PEDDLING? That's the dream.

Anyway, while he's saving his own dick, Tyrion throws in a good word for Jorah. The slavers let slip that the fighting pits are re-opened and Tyrion suggests they send Jorah. Jorah backs up Tyrion's story with some reminders of his time among the Dothraki, and the slavers are convinced. It's a dangerous ride, but it looks like Jorah and Tyrion have hitched a lift to Meereen. Anything that'll get Tyrion to Daenerys's pyramid before the end of the season is a-okay with me. The pacing on this is good. They feel like they're moving faster now than Tyrion was when he was with Varys, and each of their scenes so far has felt vital and full.

DORNE:
This is more than can be said for the goings on in Dorne, which have been feeling rushed in general and felt almost blink-and-you-miss-it this week. We get a few quick establishing vignettes: Prince Doran's expecting attacks on his Westerosi hostage/ward, the Sand Snakes are still looking to start some shit, Jaime and Bronn are in disguise and coming in hot, and Myrcella's getting along great with her intended, the handsome, doe-eyed Trystane. He wants to get married ASAP but she wants to know if it's real. They have some cute teenage makeouts until they're interrupted by the King's Landing rescue party. Ugh! Uncle-father Jamie, please!! That's, like, sooo embarrassinnggg, omg!!! Jaime and Bronn don't have a chance to get far with their abduction plot though, because the Sand Snakes are - wouldn't you know it?! - also, conveniently, right there!

So everybody starts brawling, but it's pretty underwhelming, frankly. I want to care about the Sand Snakes, but the show still hasn't differentiated them enough for me, and their whole deal seems so ill-conceived and rash. I mean, their outfits are great! I'm mad about Oberyn too! I'm on board! But I need the show to do a little more work to get me to care about these people as individuals, rather than extensions of Oberyn. Speaking of Oberyn though, I'm betting the girls took a page out of his book and poisoned their weapons, which means Bronn is probably never going to get a chance to finish his jaunty Dornish espionage song.

The Sand Snakes don't get a chance to finish their fight either, because guess who else just happens to be right there? It's Doran's guards, and they break things up pretty quickly, unimpressed by Whale Rider Sand Snake's needling about their disinterest in avenging Oberyn and Dorne, and equally, if not more unimpressed by Jaime's one-handed fighting. The whole event felt like it was on fast-forward. The Sand Snakes are new characters and, from what I understand, they're fan favorites for book-readers. It would be nice to spend some real time with them, and some time in Dorne in general. Dorne seems like by far the nicest place in this entire show. I could hang there for a whole episode and not be mad about it.

KING'S LANDING:
We're back in King's Landing this week, and so is Baelish. Lancel and the Faith Militant try to hassle him a bit upon his arrival, but he's unfazed. He meets with Cersei and plays it super cautious. When he ventures to ask about the wisdom of having Loras arrested, Cersei's smug "wasn't me" is about as convincing as Shaggy's after he got caught red-handed freaking with the girl next door. Baelish is pretty quick to see there's no reasoning with this, so he cuts to the chase of his visit and spills the beans on Sansa's location and the Boltons' alleged rebellion plot.  When Cersei questions his loyalty, he gives the lamest equivocation ever: he "always counsels loyalty to the throne." Sure, buddy. Cersei is clearly riding high on the rush of getting one over on the Tyrells because she accepts this pretty easily, despite the fact that Littlefinger has never been anything less than one hundred percent shady and everyone knows it. This is especially dumb on her part, as it comes during the same conversation where she laments that they never should've trusted Roose Bolton after he proved himself a traitor at the Red Wedding. Somehow, Baelish convinces Cersei to let the wedding go as planned and allow Stannis and Roose to fight it out. He promises to take the Knights of the Vale up to handle whoever emerges victorious in exchange for being named Warden of the North.

I don't like asking book readers to explain stuff to me, because I don't want to get spoiled, but I can't take it anymore, I just really have to know: why the hell does everyone want the North so fucking bad??? I don't get it! It seems like a nearly impossible place to invade, given the fierce loyalty to the Starks and the fact that, weather-wise, it's basically Russia. There are many real life examples of how well is does not go when you try to invade Russia. It's a hell of a risk, and what's the reward?? What kind of resources does the North have to offer? It's a lot of area, sure, but it's a lot of area that's a) freezing and b) right in the line of fire for a whole nation of invading ice zombies! If I were the rest of Westeros, I would have let them secede a long time ago. Screw the North! It seems especially dumb to try to take it now, since Winter Is Coming blah blah blah. Let that place go, y'all have major problems to sort out elsewhere.

Speaking of problems to be sorted, I was hoping for someone to put Cersei in her place this episode and I thought for sure the time had come when my girl the Queen of Thorns rolled up. Olenna Tyrell is The Best. She spices up every scene she's in by at least twelve notches on the Emeril Lagasse Scale of Spiciness. Olenna Tyrell is a goddamn gift. She comes out swinging, assuring Margaery that the Lannisters have nothing on them, everybody's gay and nobody cares, and she's got this handled. When we see her seated opposite from Cersei in the very room where her iconic face off with Tywin went down, my expectations were high, but this was a funhouse mirror version of that scene. Tywin vs Olenna was two heavyweights, duking it out in a battle of wits, but Olenna vs Cersei is Game of Thrones's MayPac. Cersei is evasive. She refuses to accept responsibility and refuses to engage Olenna when the Queen of Thorns gets into the exciting threatening-and-bargaining portions of the showdown. It's kind of a non-event, by comparison.

What makes Cersei so frustrating as a villain is also what makes her compelling as a character: when it comes to her children, she completely loses her goddamn mind. She knows the Lannister gold mines are empty. Olenna's right: she needs the backing of the Tyrells to keep the kingdom intact. If she thinks she can hold it together with the strength of the Faith Militant alone, we know she's in for a rude awakening. Aside from the fact that everyone in Westeros knows a good reason for the High Sparrow to turn on her, in arming the Militant she released a dragon she has even less control over than Daenerys has over Drogon. They owe her no allegiance and they don't share her goals. Like Margaery in the post-wedding night read that lead to this mess, Cersei is wielding borrowed power, which means a lot of potential for guesswork and miscalculation. If Margaery thought Tommen could protect her, she was wrong, and Cersei will be just as wrong about the Faith Militant.

We know from the start of the inquest that Loras and Margaery will end the episode in jail, but we get a few body blows on the way there as Loras is forced to renounce Renly over and over, basically giving the ol' Gal Pal Defense. I didn't realize Loras had fought the Battle of Blackwater in Renly's armor. Ugh! You guys, I really loved Renly. He was such a dweeb, I really miss him, especially in downer episodes like this one. On a positive note, like Jaime before him, Loras is benefiting from the incarceration beard makeover and it's a good look. That's about it for good news this episode, though, because now we've got to fucking talk about what happened at Winterfell. Ugh.

WINTERFELL:
UGH!! Alright. Fuck. Here we go.

So, first of all, Cersei and Littlefinger mentioned that the weather was starting to turn and I kind of shrugged that off because, you know, we've been hearing that line for four and a half seasons now, but when we finally got up North, it looks like, yeah, winter is officially coming! It's dark during the day and it's snowing. Shit's about to get real.

In Winterfell news that's not the weather report, Myranda is still trying to freak Sansa out. She gets her naked and vulnerable and starts telling campfire horror stories about Ramsay hunting girls for sport, but Sansa's got her would-be rival figured out. She calls Myranda on her weirdo crush on Ramsay and tells her, stone-cold, that she can't be touched. Sansa Stark is home now, and she's not going anywhere. She's having none of this, and none of Reek either, when he shows up at her door to escort her to her winter woodland wedding. She does not give a fuck.

The wedding seems chill (no pun intended), if you ignore all the fucking images of flayed dudes hanging everywhere, but, well, this is a Westerosi wedding, so that's pretty on-brand, I guess. Myranda has really committed to baring some cleavage, despite the weather. This girl is not gonna let it go. Despite a long pause, Sansa gets through her vows, so this is happening, I guess. Ramsay gives her his creepy Grinch smile - ugh, ew - and we're off to the wedding night.

Again: I haven't read the books. But I know how this went down in Martin's version, and I read the explanation from the show runners for why we're seeing this version, and frankly, this is garbage. It's just unambiguously complete fucking garbage. This plot has been a tough sell from the very beginning. Sansa is wanted for regicide. It seems unlikely that the Boltons would be stupid enough to mess around with someone who is so obviously toxic, politically speaking, even to tie down the North. There's no way Littlefinger, a man who somehow seems to know everything, would somehow miss that Ramsay is a total fucking psycho, and I don't buy that he would let Sansa go into that situation unprepared if he knew this was a possibility. The logic here has been bent to the point of breaking, all so they could rewrite this to be a story about Sansa being further brutalized.

Benioff and Weiss have tried to explain this by talking about how much they love Sansa as a character and how excited they are about giving her more to do, but this isn't doing any service to the character of Sansa Stark. It's fucking 2015, are we still going to accept rape and sexual torture as a character building exercise? Sophie Turner put it best when she said that, following a lot of vocal Sansa-hate during season one, Benioff and Weiss "must have been like, 'Okay, let's do everything we can to make her the most abused, manipulated character!'" It's lazy to make a character likable by making her a victim.

Before this season, they promised a more proactive Sansa, but all we've seen Sansa actively do is accept her role as a victim, to agree to be brutalized and just try to endure it. This is bad enough, but it's even more enraging that they shot Theon's tear-streaked face while Sansa screamed, that the director (Jeremy Podeswa) made her suffering about Theon. It's not enough that she has to be abused, repeatedly, over the course of the series, this latest and greatest atrocity has to be in service of Theon's long-awaited redemption. If she was gaining any agency as a character, this scene robbed her of it immediately and gave all of it to Theon. And that's bullshit.

When George RR Martin hastily released a typo-ridden Sansa-centric chapter ahead of the season premiere, I thought it was an expression of his bitterness over the show potentially beating him to the finish line of his own work, but now, looking back, I think it's very possible he was distancing himself from this move. The excerpts I've read of that chapter (granted, only a few paragraphs here and there) give us a Sansa who is an active participant in her own story, not this perpetual victim who goes from dungeon to dungeon, passed from monster to monster. That's the Sansa Benioff and Weiss were promising at the start of the season, but it's not the Sansa they gave us.

I feel pretty sure that Benioff and Weiss are high-fiving about the furor this scene has caused. I would not be surprised at all if they're congratulating themselves on showing audiences the "harshness of reality" in Westeros, not understanding that this outrage is different from the grief-rage fans experienced when Robb or Catelyn or Ned got killed off. What does this teach us about Westeros, Ramsay, or Sansa that we don't already know? Westeros is a hard place to live, especially for women. We knew that. Ramsay is a monster. We definitely knew that. Sansa has been sexually assaulted by men before, and we know she's a survivor. Another pointless, brutal rape on a show that has been gratuitously full of rapes is not necessary. It's not good storytelling, to just keep terrorizing Sansa and calling it character development. There is nothing brave about this narrative choice. It was lazy and it was shitty. Plain and simple.

Jam of the Week: "Move On Up" by Lion Babe

For the past few weeks, I've been training for my first ever mud run. It's been pretty intimidating because upper body strength has always been my greatest physical weakness and I know it's going to be a lot of pulling myself up stuff, especially because I'm only 5'3". Basically, I've been having stress dreams about getting stuck in a mud pit, scrabbling at the sides like a Jack Russell at a glass door. The best way to power through this has been a lot of great, motivational work out jams.

Last week's Jam of the Week was actually a sneaky work out jam, but now that I'm into the final stretch (my run is SATURDAY!!), I want to give a shout out to this truly excellent finish-line's-in-sight work out jam: Lion Babe's cover of "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield.




First of all, one of my most immediate associations with this song is the training montage in one of the greatest movies of our time, Bend It Like Beckham. There's not much on this earth that can make you feel better about waking up early to run 5k than imagining yourself playing right back on the same team as Jess and Jules. Another great thing about this is that it's a little more chill than the original, a little subdued, which is great for weight lifting reps. High energy, quick tempo songs are great for cardio, but sometimes I like something slower that I can use to time my lifts and make sure I pay attention to my form and pace. This has that perfect steady, strong beat without being a downer. Plus, "Move On Up" has the most uplifting, believe-you-can-do-it lyrics of any song that wasn't a theme song for a kids' show in the 90s (looking at you, theme songs for Arthur and The Reading Rainbow).

This isn't just a personal training montage jam for me, though. I know a lot of people have finals right now or coming up soon. Even if you don't have finals, you've probably got something boring and terrible you need to do for work when you'd rather be outside in the sunshine now that it's finally starting to feel like spring/summer. This is your training montage too, buddies. Move on up. Kick ass. Jess Bhamra would want you to.

Check out Lion Babe's website for more of their work, or get their EP on iTunes.

Doing the Work: Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon, and Feminism

Even if superhero movies aren't your thing, the furor around Marvel's latest offering in their cinematic universe, Age of Ultron, has been pretty unavoidable. Amid accusations of sexism following the release of the film, Joss Whedon suddenly deleted his Twitter and everyone went nuts. In an interview explaining his decision, Whedon told BuzzFeed, "I saw a lot of people say, 'Well, the social justice warriors destroyed one of their own!' It's like, Nope. That didn't happen." And he's right. Apart from the fact that he, in his own words, left Twitter because it interrupted his creative process, SJWs hardly claim Whedon as one of their own. His previous work, despite its popularity and quality, has drawn plenty of criticism, especially as feminism has evolved over the years.

The bar for feminist work has been set higher than it was when Buffy first aired and Whedon hasn't done much to elevate his content to reach that bar, but still seems to insist on receiving his Ally of the Year trophy for achieving the bare minimum. His language in the BuzzFeed interview hints at someone who's feeling unappreciated by a fanbase he thought he'd locked down. "Believe me," he says, "I've been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That's something I'm used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause." As a general rule of thumb, if someone is using the phrase "militant feminist" unironically, especially a straight white guy, that person is probably not a feminist.

The only brands of "feminism" that other feminists attack tend to be exclusionist brands of faux feminism, branches that exclude women of color, trans women, or queer women. As the popular saying goes: "my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit." Whedon's self-described feminism has certainly not been everything it could be. There are valid critiques to make about his work, from a liberal perspective: the racist depiction and origin story of the First Slayer on Buffy, the lack of Asian actors on Firefly and especially his reasoning that this was fine because Summer Glau "kind of looked Asian," the attempted rape and resulting romance on Buffy, his obsession with the "break the cutie" trope, and, off-screen, the way he handled Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy on Angel.

With that said, the real problem of Age of Ultron is a problem with Marvel, and their lack of female characters. Black Widow is a de facto stand-in for All Women in the Marvel cinematic universe (MCU) because she's the only one. It becomes nearly impossible to give her a plot that doesn't become at least partially representative for what the writer and Marvel think All Women are or should be. It's not sexist in and of itself for Black Widow to pursue a romantic relationship or struggle with her forced sterility, but it's easier to read these stories as sexist when they're the only real stories about women we get in the movie.

Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) gets a minor character arc about becoming an Avenger, but there's not enough room in the movie to do her service. Maria Hill is mostly there to fire a gun and deliver exposition. Helen Cho is a plot device, but at least one that is respected and given a bit of personality, or at least as much of one as can be expected for her amount of screen-time, which is more than can be said for Laura Barton. The movie is too big, too crammed, to give proper consideration to all of its characters. It's no easy feat to tie in three different franchises and a TV series (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) into one movie, especially a movie that has to function as a sequel to Avengers and a prequel to Infinity War in its own right. The end result is a movie that is sloppily written, and the specific claims of sexism can mostly be explained by failures in the script.

The scene that has received the most criticism occurs between Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff, played by Scarlett Johansson), and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner). Bruce is trying to convince Natasha that a romance between the two of them would be a future-less disaster because he can't have a family. Natasha reveals that as part of her training in the Red Room, she was forcibly sterilized. Then she tells him that he's not the only monster on the team. The monster line in particular, I think, is just bad writing. I don't think it's supposed to refer to her forced sterilization, rather the "red in her ledger" from Avengers, the trail of bodies she's left in her wake. But it's unclear. You can certainly read it as Natasha saying she's a monster because she can't have children, and if in fact that was the intention of the line, someone needed to clarify that that was not the case, that she had a monstrous thing done to her, but that that thing didn't make her monstrous.

As a character, she has valid feelings about a complicated, terrible past, but when we have to consider that she's the only female Avenger (a problem Whedon did, to his credit, try to solve in the first film), it becomes problematic to associate monstrosity and her ability to bear children. In fact, with enough exploration, the story of women's bodies being policed and regulated has potential for real feminist commentary. The problem is you can't fit that in a two hour movie that has to do a dozen other things. The problem is two minutes of flashback/dream sequence doesn't make up for the gaping lack of a solo film. For the same reason, it also becomes complicated to give her a love interest, and again, poor writing makes this a harder sell.

There were certainly moments of connection between Natasha and Bruce in Avengers, but those who find their romance sudden in the sequel aren't wrong. Age of Ultron clearly takes place after some time has passed, even between the rest of the movies in the MCU. We get a token reference to Steve and Sam's on-going search for Bucky that began at the end of The Winter Soldier, we get a reminder of Selvig and his role in The Dark World, but there's clearly too much to keep track of. Tony has somehow done a complete reversal on his decision to destroy his suits at the end of Iron Man 3, and in fact, now has a whole unexplained robotic army under his control. I think it's safe to assume that something happened between Bruce and Natasha offstage between Avengers and Age of Ultron as well.

When Natasha flirts with him at the bar, it feels like something she's done before. Bruce even brushes it off as something that she does habitually. It's possible she's worked up to this over a period of months, and the relationship between Natasha and the Hulk is clearly closer than it was during Avengers. She's now the one responsible for tranquilizing the Hulk when the battle's over, and Hulk shows incredible trust in her. But filling in these blanks and investing emotional stakes in something this abrupt is a lot of work for audiences who are already trying to keep up with a dozen cameos, casual fans who are trying to keep track of the world-building and the plot, and uber fans who are looking for easter eggs. There's a lot going on in this movie already. It's a lot to ask for an audience to do so much work building a relationship, especially when a lot of longtime fans still haven't separated the MCU from the comics, where the two have no romantic history. The end result is a lot of "telling" to save the time it would have taken to "show." Multiple characters remark on an obvious or long-standing romantic tension between Bruce and Natasha, which doesn't do a lot to get audiences on board emotionally, even if it fills in the plot.

It shouldn't be sexist for Natasha to want a romantic relationship, and it's not even out of character for her to long for escape. Literally every other Avenger has a romantic past. The difference is that (with the exception of Clint Barton, see below) all of these romances have at least one whole movie of dedicated development and exploration, if not two or three. A few glances in Avengers is not an effective substitute. Without the time to develop the relationship naturally, it seems shallow. Like the monster line, it's easy to read this as sexist, either a source for Bruce's angst or a gross assumption that of course the woman is going to hook up with at least one of the guys.

It doesn't help that the MCU has teased a multitude of pairings between Natasha and the male Avengers, as Jeremy Renner famously (and obnoxiously) noted. Natasha got as much romantic tension with Steve in The Winter Soldier and Clint in Avengers as she got with Bruce. It makes the choice to pair her off with Bruce feel arbitrary. There were ways around this, if Whedon had put in a little more effort. He could have eased into the relationship more, could have included more set-up in Avengers, could have invested in more scenes that actually demonstrated their affection for each other, rather than a lot of lines that insist on its existence. There were a lot of ways he could have made it more palatable, but in the end, nothing is a substitute for a whole movie dedicated to Black Widow where a romance could have been explored fully and naturally, in a way that wouldn't make it definitive of her as a character.

It's not just Natasha who suffers from a lack of development. Clint (aka Hawkeye, portrayed by Jeremy Renner) suffers from a similar problem in the movie. He was brainwashed into non-existence for the majority of the first movie, and his treatment here isn't much better. Instead of actual character development, we get a manufactured reason to care about him: an idyllic, loving, heretofore unmentioned, cardboard cutout family. It's the laziest, cheapest way to raise the stakes on him as a character. If anything were to happen to him in the final fight (as it was heavily hinted it might), the audience wouldn't be upset because something happened to Clint, we'd be upset that he was leaving behind a pregnant wife and two kids. In the comics, Clint has a rich backstory. Even as the least useful member of the team, he has a unique role to play as an "everyman" among badasses, a character Whedon has historically loved (eg. Xander from Buffy, Wash from Firefly), but without the time to dedicate to his character, Whedon took a shortcut.

Iron Man's rape joke (his line about reinstating prima nocta) is another aspect of the movie that has been heavily criticized, and is perhaps the hardest to excuse, not least because it was a line that was changed from the original, funnier line in the trailer. Like the antiquated gendered slur that upset audiences in Avengers, this seems like a pointless use of old language to get away with a gross, sexist line. Whedon's excuse in Avengers is that the line is uttered by a villain, and was therefore in character. Frankly, the rape joke is in character for Tony Stark. Tony was specifically created by Stan Lee to be unlikeable. He's sleazy, arrogant, a war profiteer, and, generally, an asshole. The problem is, in the MCU, he's also the most popular Avenger, by a lot. Loki was also a hugely popular character, but at least it was obvious we weren't supposed to admire him, regardless of a number of fans who seem determined to excuse his genocidal ambitions.

These movies are kept at PG-13 for a reason; they're marketed to kids, especially boys, who are looking for heroes to emulate. Thus far, in the movies, Iron Man has been a role model, at least more so than in the comics. He's tried to correct his mistakes. He's been an example of scientific exploration and ingenuity. He's Robert Downey Jr., which means he's funny and quick-witted, and people want to be him. That's where the line becomes a problem. Whether it's in character or not, you can't really have a heroic character making rape jokes, especially if you're a writer who has a history of using the rape of women or the threat thereof as character development for men (see: Spike in Buffy or the planned gang-rape of Inara on Firefly). The most frustrating part of the joke was that there was no reason for it. Tony's "fair but firmly cruel" line from the trailer was still an asshole comment, and it was funnier. There was no reason for a rape joke.

But in spite of all that, I think this movie was actually a step up for Whedon. I know I wasn't the only one who instinctively recoiled at the introduction of Wanda Maximoff in the post-credit scene of The Winter Soldier. She looked exactly like one of Whedon's infantalized, insane, badass babydolls, the problematic "kill the cutie" trope he can't seem to let go of. Drusilla from Buffy, River from Firefly, Echo/Caroline from Dollhouse... he's done this kind of thing before and it was a valid concern that he might do it again, but he resisted that with Wanda. He might be learning! And in terms of sexism, even within the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy was certainly much more egregious than either Avengers or Age of Ultron. The fact is, if we're looking for the source of the sexism, Marvel itself is the real culprit.

By the admission of Marvel's own employees, the company has no interest in marketing itself to women and girls, much less making itself palatable to female audiences. Regardless of a number of noncommittal statements about maybe doing a Black Widow solo some day, or even the announcement of Marvel's first female and black superhero franchises (Captain Marvel and Black Panther, respectively), the company has shown zero commitment to diversifying its roster, and in fact bumped both of those movies back even further to make room for another fucking Spider-Man movie, and not even a Miles Morales Spider-Man, or Spider-Gwen: another fucking Peter Parker, because I guess a whole trilogy and a reboot just wasn't enough. Marvel is definitely the bigger problem here, but just because he's operating under a lot of restrictions for a sexist company doesn't mean Whedon holds up as a feminist ally, and certainly not to the degree he seems to think he has earned.

Overall, the main problem people have with Whedon is his insistence on allyship on his terms. He wants to be held up as King Feminist, but he also wants to indulge in his more sexist tendencies as a writer. When criticized, he pouts and claims the movement is destroying itself, rather than take responsibility and make an effort to take the criticism constructively. When a man wants to call himself a feminist but doesn't feel any responsibility to listen to concerns of female fans, that man is not a feminist. I think tumblr user gyzym put it best in a recent post responding to the criticism:

"say you’re a doctor, right? and you go to medical school and everything, you learn the things modern science has to teach you about healing the human body, and then you’re sent out into the world to first do no harm. that’s great! woo-hoo! congrats to you, and best of luck. but as a doctor, what you’re supposed to do is keep up with modern medical advances, you know? that’s what your patients expect of you; that’s what leonard “bones” mccoy expects of you; that’s part of the territory. and if you don’t do that – if, say, a patient comes to you with a problem that would have been treated with arm amputation when you graduated from medical school, but has since been found to be completely curable with a quick shot, your patient is probably going to be pretty angry if you cut their fucking arm off! and i mean, look, this is an imperfect analogy for a lot of reasons [...] the point is that a medical degree is not assumed to be the end of your learning about medicine, because that would make no sense – we’re learning and discovering new things about the human body all the time. being part of the field means keeping up. 

this same thing is true of feminism – and, for that matter, of all the other -isms. social issues are not static things; like medicine, they are are about living, breathing human beings. like medicine, we are learning and discovering new things about them all the time. we learn as people who have not gotten a chance to speak before find their voices, or a space for their voices. we learn as the distance of history allows us a perspective we didn’t have before. we learn as children who grew up in abusive systems get old enough to break them down. we learn as we unlearn things that we have believed to be true for years, decades, and centuries, and which turn out to have been harmful all along. it is an ongoing process. it is work. willingness to do the work is part of what it means to adopt the title." 

 At the end of the day, if Joss Whedon wants to insist on the title, he needs to do the work.

Mixtape Monday: Freeballin' All The Way To Baghdad

For the past few years, I've had a tradition of re-visiting Generation Kill in the late-spring/early-summer. This past week was my re-visit week. I can't recommend the series highly enough. I've never seen anything like it, before or since. I've never seen another show, not even the other "HBO War" series (Band of Brothers, The Pacific) deliver such an uncompromising critique of war, the military, and toxic masculinity while still being so compassionate to its characters as individuals.

One of the most impressive things in Gen Kill is the way these men remain human for us in inhuman circumstances. Evan Wright, the journalist who wrote the book as well as many of the teleplays, lived with these men and knew them; it's clear he wants the audience to know them as well. One of the ways the show keeps the characters human, as well as keeps the audience firmly in the early 2000s, is the soundtrack.

It was a conscious decision on the part of the creators to have no score for the show. The only music we hear is scenery, or else is created by the marines themselves. In his book, Wright documents the songs the men sang as they rolled through Iraq. It's eerie, the ways in which this invasion is like a family road trip. It's endearing, watching these men joke with each other and entertain each other. It's terrifying and hilarious and human and everything that makes Generation Kill so good. This week's mixtape is a celebration of the music of Generation Kill.

FREEBALLIN' ALL THE WAY TO BAGHDAD

soundtrack to an invasion

1. Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne
2. Lovin You by Minnie Riperton
3. Complicated by Avril Lavigne
4. Bodies by Drowning Pool
5. Boyz in the Hood by Dynamite Hack
6. Hot In Herre by Nelly
7. Tainted Love by Soft Cell
8. Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag by Country Joe and the Fish
9. Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus
10. On the Road Again by Willie Nelson
11. My Cherie Amour by Stevie Wonder
12. Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys by Waylon and Willie
13. Can I Kick It by A Tribe Called Quest
14. King of the Road by Roger Miller
15. Come Sail Away by Styx
16. Singalongs by The Cast of Generation Kill
17. When the Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash

Game of Thrones Recap: Season 5, Episode 5: "Kill the Boy"

Last night's Game of Thrones kept us in the North and the East, where Dany and Jon are struggling with some tough leadership decisions, Tyrion and Jorah are struggling with some nasty crustier versions of the monsters from The Descent, and Sansa is just plain struggling, period, same as always, jesus christ, someone please fucking help Sansa Stark.

MEEREEN:
We kick things off in Essos, where Grey Worm is recuperating from the Sons of the Harpy attack that killed Ser Barristan. Missandei sits by his side for three days and Westeros's Actual Best Couple (ahem, SNL) share their first kiss. They're a tiny, tiny pinpoint of light in this dark, dark world, and if anything happens to either of them, I'll take my revenge on this show with fire and blood. Let's at least have one nice thing, alright? Speaking of not being able to have nice things, Daenerys is still struggling to handle this rebellion. Daario suggests she just straight murder each of the heads of house of the families that used to run the city, but Dany isn't sure she wants to be that extreme just yet. Instead, she takes them all down to see the dragons, which seems like quite a gamble given how shaky that relationship was the last time she was down there, but the dragons play it perfectly. I guess it helps that she chucks them one of the Masters like a damn Beggin Strip. Daenerys goes into a Mother's Day appropriate speech about her maternal philosophy. As Mother of Dragons and Myssa to the former slaves of Essos, the main thing her mothering styles seems to have in common between the two is that she's totally lost control of her charges.

Despite all that, the demonstration certainly scares the Masters, but it doesn't solve the problem long-term. Daenerys, in a rare moment of insight, asks Missandei for advice. Missandei is resistant at first, but Dany points out that, as a former slave and a longtime resident of Essos, Missandei's opinion here is vital. In return, Missandei gives her a pep talk, basically telling her to create a third option. Daenerys decides to compromise: she'll open the fighting pits, but for free men only. To further prove her commitment to preserve the customs of Meereen, she'll marry Hizdahr.

It's a good start, but I'm not sure marrying Hizdahr is a good plan. Part of her strength as a leader is her status as a mythic figure. Marrying seems to bring her down to earth a bit. As usual, the Meereen stuff continues to drag on, and I still have trouble buying that Dany learned no lessons from her time among the Dothraki, where she won the people over by embracing their culture, even when she personally found it distasteful. Hopefully, Tyrion will get there soon to talk some sense into her and speed up the plot. Or, better yet, Varys could show up. As someone who grew up in Essos, I have a feeling his advice will be just as valuable as Tyrion's, if not more so, and it's clear that Daenerys needs all the help she can get.

THE WALL:
Up at Castle Black, Jon is also struggling with some tough leadership choices. He asks Aemon for advice, the gist of which gives the episode its title: kill the boy, let the man be born. (Basically: nut up.) This scene is interesting if the show is really going full R+L=J, since that makes Aemon one of Jon's only living relatives, not that either of them would know. In fact, my main concern with the theory is who would even be able to confirm it? Littlefinger's smile from last episode suggests he knows something, but none of the principals are still living, so it doesn't appear possible to have a first hand account. Of course, it's still possible that Benioff and Weiss were just messing with people. But whether or not Jon's got the right lineage is irrelevant for the moment, since, like Dany, he seems to have dug into his current location.

Jon's first big move as Commander of the Night's Watch is one he knows won't be super popular, but it's the logical thing to do. He takes on Stannis's plan of uniting the Watch and the Free Folk, but doesn't insist on anyone bending a knee. It's an easy concession for Jon to make, as he's never cared about it, even though Stannis obviously cares about little else (with the exception of his daughter and, apparently, the difference between "less" and "fewer"). Jon convinces Tormund to round up the Wildlings who are still north of The Wall. He'll make sure they have land and protection in exchange for their help fighting the White Walkers when the time comes. Tormund's condition is that Jon comes along to prove his offer is for real. Jon sells the plan to the Watch as best he can, pointing out that either they join with the Free Folk now or fight their zombified corpses later, but he still seems to have a lot of resistance, particularly from Olly, who reminds Jon that he watched the Wildlings burn and slaughter his whole village. Jon goes full Stark on the kid, reminding him that everyone he's ever loved is dead and also, ps, Winter Is Coming. Never get involved in a sob-story contest with a Stark, basically.

Stannis seems impressed by Jon's skills as a leader, but I have my doubts. For one thing, who is he going to leave in charge at Castle Black? One of the many dudes who hates him? The buddies of the dude he just beheaded? He's not real popular at the moment, and his plan relies on somebody letting him back in when he shows up with a bunch of Wildlings. His biggest supporters seem to be Aemon and Sam, but I wouldn't place bets on either of them surviving long enough to still be around when he returns, or to be effective enough to make a mutinous Night's Watch let him back in.

Stannis certainly seems to think the Watch is untrustworthy; he'd rather take Shireen and Selyse into battle with him than leave them at The Wall with a bunch of rapists and murderers. He and his massive army make their exit, but not before he gives Jon some stoic encouragement and reminds him he'd like his ships back. I thought the ships Tormund and Jon talked about before were a metaphor, but apparently they're literally going to put a bunch of Wildlings on a boat and sail them back down to The Wall? I'm not sure what's going on up there, geographically speaking, but sure, whatever.

Stannis also takes the time to check in with Sam before he leaves. Sam and Gilly are talking books and education (apparently Sam wanted to be a maester before he wound up on the Watch, probably would have been a better career path) when Stannis pops by to remind him that his dad was a badass (the only battle Robert ever lost, apparently), and pump him for information on the White Walker he killed. Sam reminds us about the dragonglass and name drops the Children, just in case we forgot Bran's still under a tree somewhere learning magic from a root person, which is, frankly, a plot I don't miss. Stannis tells Sam to keep reading, which hints that maybe there's something more to the dragonglass that we'll find out later. Whether there is or not, Stannis is not sticking around to find out. He's off to take the North while he still has the element of surprise, but the Boltons are already prepping for his arrival.

WINTERFELL:
First of all, thank all the old gods and the new that Brienne is not a dummy and has a good sense of when a dude is Not To Be Trusted. She and Pod are still trailing Sansa, and she is still just telling whoever about their mission, regardless of the fact that Sansa is still (presumably) wanted for regicide. The good news is Brienne's in The North now and The North remembers. There's a whole network of Kindly Old Servants who are as adamantly #TeamSansa as I am, and, with Brienne's help, they set up an alert system in case things with the Boltons get nasty (as I am 100% sure they will). They tell Sansa to put a candle in the window of the tallest tower if she needs help, which basically means that BRIENNE IS SANSA'S PERSONAL BATMAN. PODRICK IS ROBIN. THIS IS AMAZING.

It's the only good thing going in Winterfell at the moment though, because, as was foreshadowed, Myranda is not feeling this arranged marriage. She makes it clear to Ramsay that she's jealous and he makes it equally clear that she's not allowed to be jealous, or marry anyone else, or basically have any opinions on the matter. If anyone was naive enough to think his no longer being a literal bastard would make him less of a metaphorical bastard, this episode cleared things up pretty freakin' quick. Ramsay seems to think the matter is settled, but Myranda decides to Regina George it up a bit. (Sansa is still making her own clothes by the way, and to be honest, I'm impressed with the new, dark direction her winter line is taking. Kudos.) Myranda takes the opportunity to reunite Sansa and Theon/Reek, though I'm not entirely sure what her play is here. Does she think this will make Sansa back out of the marriage? Because Sansa's not the one with the choices here. Is she trying to keep Sansa from getting too close to Ramsay? Because, girl, I guarantee you no one's gonna fight you for him, especially after he spends dinner going full Joffrey on Sansa.

He's upfront about the fact that he's tortured the Theon right out of Reek. He then makes Reek apologize to Sansa for murdering her brothers, then decides that, as Sansa's closest living relative, he should be the one to walk her down the aisle. If Sansa wasn't wary of the Boltons before, she certainly is now. Ramsay's also feeling a little nervous about the security of his position, after Roose and his wife Walda announce that another Bolton is on the way, and this one is going to be fully legitimate. In their post-dinner strategy meeting, Ramsay makes his fears known by making a bunch of fat jokes (ugh), which Roose is not having. He's also not having any of Ramsay's nonsense at dinner, and just when you think maybe Roose isn't the worst person in Westeros, he tells Ramsay the story of how he met Ramsay's mother. It's predictably grim, full of rape and murder, so everyone here continues to be a literal monster and no one in surprised.

Against all evidence to the contrary, I flat out refuse to believe that something terrible is going to happen to Sansa here. The only question I will entertain about this plot is who's going to kill Ramsay and get her out of there. Brienne seems like a solid choice, but there has to be a reason that we've sat through whole seasons of this terrible Theon/Reek arc, right? It would seem fitting for him to redeem himself by making amends to the Starks and simultaneously taking his revenge on Ramsay and the Boltons. At this point though, I'm not picky. Just murder everybody, get Sansa out of there, enough is e-goddamn-nough.

SOMEWHERE NEAR VALYRIA:
Meanwhile, Tyrion is still slowly but surely making his way back to the main action, except now he's the one with the downer road trip buddy, because I guess he's being punished for bumming out Varys for three episodes. Jorah and Tyrion bond pretty quickly though. In fact, it's practically a Nicholas Sparks set-up: an unlikely pair brought together by circumstance, bonding through poetry recitation and peril... They've even got the tragic, undisclosed illness going for them now, because during their fight with the (super creepy! infinitely more creepy than the White Walkers!) Stone Men, Jorah contracts Greyscale, the disease that has been brought up ominously all throughout the season. Here's the payoff: Jorah's staring down the barrel of full-blown Westerosi leprosy-rabies, unless he gets whatever combination of treatments saved Shireen.

So what are the odds on Jorah repeating her miracle recovery? Killing off Ser Barristan was a departure from the books, from what I understand, and seems to have been in service of opening up a power vacancy for Tyrion to step into. It makes sense to prevent Jorah from taking that spot either, if Benioff and Weiss are as set on the Tyrion-Daenerys alliance as they seem to be. I don't think anyone would argue that it's a beneficial match up for both, anyway, and personally I would not be the least bit sorry to see the end of Jorah. Unpopular opinion here, but the dude creeps me out.