Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Season One, Episode Nine

The mud born have been pushing to get their land back from the invaders.  From early on this season, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands there has been a lot of examination of colonialism and this episode is no different. The huscarls come across a human who claims that he was kept captive by the Warig and though they lose one of their men, they bring the man back with them to Herot completely unaware that they are bringing the leader of the mudborn into their territory.  After having killed Koll, a shifter living in hiding in Herot, one would think that this would make the Huscarls at least  a little bit suspicious of strangers but apparently this is not the case. Nothing like letting the enemy have a look at your defenses I suppose.

This week, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands laid it on pretty thick. It seems as though the mudborn have a chosen one whose birth was foretold. This chosen one will supposedly unite all of the mudborn and defeat the humans, chasing them from their land. Given that the humans are invaders and that they've slaughtered them at will, defiled their holy places and enslaved them, it's hard not to be team mudborn, though Beowulf: Return to the Shieldands is trying to suggest sympathy for both sides.

We finally got a little bit of Beowulf's backstory this week when he and Elvina are captured by the Warig. It seems that while Beowulf went to hunt down some escaped Warig prisoners, the Warig doubled back and slaughtered his wife and child, burning down his home. He clearly feels that all Warig need to die, missing the point that had the humans not invaded, murdered and enslaved perhaps his family might still be alive today.  I don't really expect much nuance from Beowulf at this point given that from what we have seen of his investigative skills  he's not necessarily the brightest person around.

For much of this season of Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, there have been plenty of clues that there's more to Elvina than meets the eye. When she is forced to reveal that she is a shifter in order to save Beowulf from being burned alive by the Wharig, I cannot say that I was surprised.  With all of the hinting the big reveal felt anticlimactic. Throughout most of the episode, Elvina kept stressing the value of all life, something that Beowulf clearly didn't agree with. With her big secret exposed, Beowulf finds that while he cannot kill Elvina, he can no longer see her humanity and demands that she stay away from him and never ever return to Herot. The moment when he tells Slean that Elvina is dead represents his absolute rejection of her.  His failure to see the bridge that Elvina could provide is a stunning example of how small minded Beowulf is and why the conflict will continue to rage. For a better examination of colonialism, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands needs to pull away from Beowulf's perspective.

The Walking Dead, Season Six, Episode Eleven: Knots Untie

Well, Richonne is all set, and now it's time to get back to the business of living.  The Walking Dead, despite being about surviving a zombie apocalypse,  has always been about human relationships and or human interactions. Last week we met Jesus, a beloved character from the comics for the first time.  When he first meet Darryl and Rick, Jesus thought they were up to no good and so didn't mention the fact that he comes from a community similar to Alexandria called the Hilltop.  Now that Jesus has broken out of his confinement, it's time to talk business and that means trade between the two communities.  He knows that the Alexandrians are well equipped in terms of guns and ammunition but less so in terms of food. With over fifty people to feed, food is quickly becoming a problem.

Rick agrees to travel with a group of Alexandrians to the Hilltop to see what can be arranged. Along the way, Abraham has the conversation of the night with Glenn, questioning if Glenn meant to make a pancake when he dropped the Bisquick. Glenn and Maggie are expecting and it seems that this is a planned child, much to Abraham's two condom wearing at a time astonishment.  Perhaps if he weren't sleeping with Rosita and daydreaming about Sasha, the idea of settling and raising a family wouldn't be so scary.

At the Hilltop, the leader Gregory turns out to be a massive douche.  Proving that Rick has indeed evolved, instead of bashing Gregory's head in and simply taking what he wants, particularly because the Hilltop only has spears and no guns, he sends Maggie to negotiate for them.  I gotta say, I loved seeing Maggie step up to the plate.  I loved watching her press advantage and outwit the douche who wouldn't stop coming on to her and calling her honey.  Yeppers, #teammaggie.

It turns out what Rick's group has to trade, is what they have always had - their strength.  When Gregory is stabbed by one of his own people, as a message from Negan, the leader of the Saviours that he is not happy with the food the Hilltop gives in order not to be raided, he knows his back is up against a wall.  The Alexandrians may not have much food, or medicine but they can fight and Rick knows this.  Rick suggests that they take out Negan's group in exchange for food.  Violence is an everyday thing to Rick who has very much come to have a kill or be killed mentality about the world. Covered in blood after killing Gregory's assailants he simply says, "what" in answer to the astonishment on the faces of the Hilltop people.

At the same time that Rick's group is preparing to go into battle, there's the looming issue of Maggie's pregnancy.  Maggie manages to get an ultrasound at the Hilltop and as luck would have it, their Doctor is an obstetrician. On the way back to Alexandria, Maggie and Glen share the photo of their unborn peanut with the group and each person takes a moment to reflect.  Bringing a child into the apocalypse is a scary undertaking no doubt but this child is also a very stark reminder of exactly what it is they're fighting for.  It's a return to some form of normalcy, to hope and to a future.

The Feast of the Drowned (Doctor Who: New Series Adventures #8) by Stephen Cole

The naval ship the HMS Ascendant has mysteriously sunk in the North Sea.  The Doctor isn't inclined to investigate until Rose and her friend get a ghostly visitation from one the seamen who was aboard ship.  Though it makes absolutely no sense, Keisha is determined to head to the Thames and throw herself in because she believes that somehow against all odds that she will find her brother and rescue him before the feast.  It would be bad enough if the Doctor, Rose and Mickey only had to deal with one person who had lost touch with reality, but many of the inhabitants of London are determined to throw themselves in the Thames and the ones who do, never resurface for some reason. With more and more people disappearing each day, it's a race to find out what is going on and how to stop it.

The Feast of the Drowned very much reminded me of the Waters of Mars, largely because the Doctor is fighting an alien species which thrives in water and takes over human bodies.  Part of the reason I pick up these Doctor Who books is to enjoy new adventures with characters I've grown to love and or miss terribly.  In fairness to Cole, The Feast of the Drowned was actually released quite a few years before the Waters of Mars but because I have already seen the episode in question so many times, this book felt very repetitive to me. It did however make me wonder if this book was the inspiration behind The Waters of Mars?

The repetitiveness was not at all helped by Mickey, and Keisha's fixation on the fact that Rose had disappeared with the Doctor for a year.  By this point, everyone should be over this. Keisha in particular seems very jealous of Rose and angry by the way that her friend has changed.  Because of all that Rose has seen, she cannot simply go back to being content bar hopping on a Friday night and this has created a disconnect.  She has moved so far past some people that the relationship will never be the same and Keisha seems determined to make her pay for it. I really just wanted to be done with the guilting of Rose.

In terms of characterization, I feel that Cole did a pretty good job with Jackie, Rose and of course our beloved 10th Doctor. One of the things I remember the most from Tenant's era is every alien being offered the chance to leave or end the damage they were causing before being annihilated by the Doctor. Tenant's Doctor was often brutal in his application of justice and we can see that coming into play in The Feast of the Drowned.  When the aliens who have drowned humans in order to use them as incubators for their offspring refuse the Doctor's offer of relocation, the justice he exacts is swift and final.  This time, there's no one to tell him to stop or to wait, no one to remind him of his own rules - the Doctor simply acts.

Hemlock Grove, Season 3, Episode 9: Damascus

And Olivia kills everyone, snarking gloriously all the way and continues to give not one single fuck about everything.

Ok, not really – but damn wouldn’t that be a better show?

Well, we don’t get Olivia rampaging around, exactly, though she’s still a terrible person. We do get a whole lot of death this episode – yes we’re racing towards a tragic ending

Firstly, let’s cover the anti-climactic, clumsy summation of the meta that defined the last season and has been largely forgotten and ignored this season: Spivak, the Jormungandr, ancient enemy of the Upir. Roman found out where he was lairing last episode and, with a last minute revelation, they find the weakness of the near immortal creature. Turns out the reason why the species are at war in the first place is that Jormungandr are super-duper vulnerable to upir venom (the war, by the way, is over who gets to eat humanity unchecked so we’re all kind of team nobody here, but the Upir, even with the jaw thing, are kind of classier and don’t wear ugly jumpers so we’ll go with them. I mean, if humanity has to be killed by an immortal predatory monster, it could at least have the common decency to be well dressed while doing so, right?)

You’d think all the bed time stories of how super dangerous the Jormungandr would include a note that “hey just bite ‘em”. So in between dripping Roman’s venom in the spawning pools of baby manta-ray monsters Roman and Peter find the big bad Spivak. After ineffectually shooting him a few times, Roman nibbles on him and lo the season’s uber big bad is killed in the time normally reserved for advert breaks

I’m quite sure this show is written by people of integrity and in no way did someone wake up and realise they had a storyline left and just decided “fuck it, bite him. Death. Back to the angst”. Of course not. Baby Nadia is rescued (she was being used for creating new Jormungandr and I’m not even going to try and decide how or why because I can live my whole happy life not knowing that, and this show likes incest too much for me to examine any of their breeding plans in detail).

Bitten, Season 3, Episode 3: Right Behind You

Time for my pouty frustrated face

I’m not frustrated by how this episode went, but by how it got there

Today, everything was revealed to the rest of the pack – so Jeremy et al are aware that Sasha Antinov and his kids are in America and that Roman wants them handing over – something Jeremy has already promised to do.

This puts the North American Pack in something of an awkward position – the Russian pack is bigger (especially after the recent losses the North American pack has suffered), even when Karl reveals that it’s not quite as united as it seems (relying on a whole lot of bribes to keep the disparate factions united) and Roman has been steadily moving more and more wolves into the US.

It’s not a good place for the Pack to be in. And it could have been a great storyline

Again, this frustration comes from my reading of the books – But I’m going to complain about it anyway. In the books Jeremy would have been awesome with this storyline! In the books he would have spoken to Clay and Elena and other wolves, taken their advice, explored options, thought and then made a decision – and it would have been a decision everyone would have supported because they respected him that much! It would have been excellent and told us, yet again, why Jeremy is such a supremely good alpha

Instead we have this Jeremy who frets about Elena keeping secrets and being distant – without for one second acknowledging that she may be being secretive because he is less approachable than a rabid porcupine! How about, for one second, realising that the reason people are keeping secrets from him is because he rides roughshod over every suggestion and concern raised? Even this episode, when Elena speaks to him he pulls the whole “I am Alpha. Do not question!” Why offer advice or objection when it’s rejected out of hand.

Sadly none of them make the obvious point that allowing Roman to hunt mutts in his territory, allowing him to bring in more and more wolves without permission doesn’t exactly make Jeremy look in control either.

The Originals, Season 3, Episode 14: A Streetcar Name Desire

The plotting from last week continues with Aya and Aurora coming up with a dastardly scheme with Davina’s help and Marcel’s disapproval to destroy the sire bonds. Marcel isn’t a huge fan of this because the likely way Aya will test if the sire bonds are gone is to kill Klaus which means if Davina (a teenaged witch with not great decision making skills) screws up all of Klaus’s line dies – including him.

Continuing from the Vampire Diaries, we have a visitor to New Orleans – Stefan. He gets some nifty paste off Freya that will conceal him from Rayna so she doesn’t hunt him down and repeatedly stab him in the head. Or heart. Or other bad place.

Of course he isn’t entirely welcomed since the prophecy does say an Original will be taken down by their friend – and Stefan counts.

Still they’re distracted by the bad guy plotting which results in Elijah and Klaus being trapped in mystical dream world with Tristan and Aurora (it’s a dream world the Stricts made for Tristan so he wouldn’t suffer eternal drowning). How do they get there? Witches. I’m sure people just roll dice to see what powers the witches have. I mean, this episode Klaus and Elijah are both taken out by one witch with a hand wave and a brief line – but in Vampire Diaries Bonnie took a full three seconds of staring before Enzo knocked her out.

This results in lots of sniping between the two sibling teams with Aurora, of course, being attacked constantly for being mentally ill. Let’s not recap the endless sniping

Hayley, Camille, Freya, Lucien (who they picked up along the way) and Stefan need to ride to the rescue. This involves Freya rescuing her brothers by destroying the symbols that represent them (queens on a chessboard – representing the women they betrayed. Which is terrible because there’s only 2 queens on a chess board and there would need to be so very many more).

While the rest of the gang try to break in. The easiest way to do this is to sneak Stefan into the building and remove his masking paste unleashing a pissed of Rayna on the Stricts

In case there was any doubt before, Rayna is a scary scary scaery hunter and many many Stricts die

Elijah and Klaus waking up also puts a severe crimp in the Strict coven’s day, Original vampires are cranky when they wake without coffee. On Davina survives (whyyy?) – and she manages to complete the spell, de-linking Klaus from his sire line.

Vampire Diaries, Season 7, Episode 14: Moonlight on the Bayou

Damon is desperately looking for a way to fix his shit and save Stefan from Rayna after Damon so epicly screwed up (with the help of Enzo) with Bonnie hanging around to help because being a good little helper is basically what Bonnie does (and can I note that I’m tired of everyone noting how helpful and friendly Valerie is for little reason when Bonnie has been pulling that without acknowledgement for 7 seasons now?)

This means going back to Enzo (very very short attention span) and learning about some people called the Armoury who were the ones who kidnapped Enzo when Matt asked for help. The Armoury’s purpose is basically to take dangerous magical artefacts and lock them up so they don’t do any damage (despite failing badly to hold Rayna). Yes, we’re borrowing a more incompetent and sinister plot from Warehouse 13 and The Librarians.

They’d quite like Rayna’s sword. They’re also happy to take Rayna herself. So an awesome plan would be to get Stefan to the Armoury have Rayna appear there and be taken out and then everyone can go home happy, right?

Until Valerie learns of the plan and points out they’ve dealt with the Armoury and they are ruthless and uncaring about who gets hurt. Sure they’ll use Stefan as bait, but won’t care whether Stefan, Damon et all die in the process and these are terribad people to work with.

Damon and Bonnie decide to leave – and both get rendered unconscious and imprisoned pretty much proving Valerie’s point. Also reminding us that the power of witches is random whenever the story writers want them to be. Bonnie ends up magicless because of an injection and Damon ends up in a cell with Tyler (who is there. As is Elena’s body. And probably everything else that has ever fallen through the plot box over the years) on the night of a full moon – and full moon werewolves are generally terribad awful for Damon.

He’s rescued before Tyler eats him by Bonnie who gets to him by CUTTING OFF ENZO’S HAND because she is Bonnie and that is awesome. This is despite Damon begging her not to risk her life for him… which of course she does and ends up hurt and hospitalised in the process (the anti-magic thing put on her stops her from healing with vampire blood)

During this episode we get a number of little moments which point us towards a Bonnie/Damon Romance. I think we’re definitely going there.

Sleepy Hollow, Season 3, Episode 12: Sins of the Father

Much of this episode was a monster of the week episode – and it was perfect for that.

Our main enemy was a ghoul controlled by Atticus Nevins – the old enemy who worked with old August Corbin (the old Sheriff, Joe’s dad, Jenny and Abbie’s mentor who guided them to the supernatural) who was using the monster for his own nefarious means and to ostensibly hold on to his crumbling empire (what with him being badly gutted by Pandora and then having to go on the run, all kinds of old lieutenants are now muscling in on his former territory and now being badly icked).

The gang does their usual excellent job of following twists and turns, running down clues, discovering the man who was actually coming to them for help was actually the one behind it all along, followed by a big shiny fight with the monster which they eventually destroy… though with Atticus escaping

I’m brushing over all of this not because it’s not good – because it was: it was well acted, well paced and great fun to watch – but because they details don’t matter to the overall show. It was fun, it was good and it was a great backdrop to approach what this episode was really about: recap and review

Everyone has gone through some various issues these last few episodes and this episode puts them all in one place for us to examine and recap to remember where we are.

The case lets us see Jenny, Joe, Abbie, Ichabod and Sophie work together – and continue to do so well

We have Abbie, struggling badly with her mental health after her ordeal in the catacombs. She’s hurt and hurting and having trouble adapting and getting back to where she was before. Ichabod is simultaneously caring while not intruding, similarly Jenny acknowledges Abbie has a problem, is there for her, but not pushing it beyond what Abbie is comfortable with. This is important, it’s vital they’re there to care for her but not to push past things she isn’t ready to deal with yet. When Abbie says she’s processing something or not ready to deal with something, they back off. I appreciate that a lot.