TV Cast S01 E04 - Once Upon A Time

Join Alaisdair & Todd as they discuss all the latest in tv news and review.

This week we focus on Once Upon A Time's season finale and summer spin off show

As well as talking Game Of Thrones and The Mindy Project.

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REVIEW - Game Of Thrones - S03E05

Things are heating up in Westeros as we reach the halfway point for Season 3. The battle for political supremacy in Kings’ Landing between the Tyrells and the Lannisters takes in interesting turn. We finally meet Stannis Baratheon’s family, the Lord of Light proves it’s power again and Jon Snow finally gets laid (he’s as shocked as you are).

Cersei gets Littlefinger’s and discovers the Tyrell’s plot to marry Sansa to Loras. Tywin decides that the only way to prevent the Tyrell’s from gaining the key to the North is for Sansa to marry Tyrion instead. Stannis visits his incredibly crazy wife and adorable daughter (Shireen) the latter of which is heartbroken to hear that the Onion Knight (Davos) has been imprisoned for treason. Later that night Shireen sneaks into the dungeons to visit her friend.

The Hound defeats Lord Beric, which naturally upsets Arya, even after The Lord of Light brings Lord Beric back from the dead. The Hound is set free and Arya discovers that the Brotherhood plan to ransom her to her brother. Jaime and Brienne finally receive the treatment befitting political prisoners and Jaime confesses how and why he stabbed the Mad King in the back. At Riverrun Lord Karstark kills the two captive Lannister boys and Robb has him executed despite protests from his mother and his wife.

Also Jon Snow earns the trust of at least one Wildling by showing Ygritte how they do it down south and Daenerys bonds with the Unsullied elected leader, Grey Worm.

Many fans have dubbed this “the episode of the butts” and that’s not an inaccurate description. There is a lot of nudity, and that’s something that I’m pretty okay with. Yes I know Game of Thrones is an intelligent grown up fantasy with an amazingly rich world filled with fascinating characters, but it’s also a HBO show, which means butts.

All right leaving my hormones behind, this episode was fantastic. What it lacked in shock value it made up for emotional dialogue driven scenes that showed new sides to fan favourite characters like Jaime Lannister, Arya Stark and Jon Snow. Jaime’s revelation was particularly well handled. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was brilliant, you could feel the pain in his voice but he still managed to maintain that trademark Jaime charisma.

As someone that is a fan of the books the most interesting part for me is watching Robb Starks world slowly unravel around him. His desperate attempt to live up to his father’s legacy in a world where honourable men do not survive is heartbreaking but I just can’t look away. I might be a sucker for punishment but I can’t wait to watch the rest of his story unfold.

Review by Yvonne Popplewell

More of Yvonne’s work can be found at her blog.

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REVIEW - Game of Thrones - S03E04

I don’t care if it’s too early to say, this is my favourite episode in season 3 of A Game of Thrones. ‘And Now His Watch Has Ended’ is as somber as it sounds, but it is also spiked with adrenaline and enough gambits to have people speculating for weeks. As usual we focus on King’s Landing, but we also spend a substantial amount of time with Theon, Brienne and Jamie, the Night’s Watch and Daenerys. We also briefly touch on Arya and the Hound as well as Bran and Jojen, but the focus lingers on the aforementioned five groups more than the younger Starks.

After the slow start to season three it might surprise viewers to learn that there is not one fight scene in this episode: there are two. One is towards the end of the episode where the Night’s Watch, after being forced to work for Brother ‘I Feed My Sons to Whitewalkers’ Craster, hit an all-time low that ends in the ugliest brawl yet. The earlier one involves (wait for it) Daenaerys using her new army of Unsullied to kill every slaver in Astapor.

Both scenes are beautiful for different reasons. With Daenerys we have a bittersweet situation turn into the most one-sided battle in the series yet. The Night’s Watch meanwhile grew more and more miserable until their men start dying from hunger and their swords flying out of their sheaves. It was horrifying, yet it’s executed very well. My only real complaint about these scenes is that they were both so brief.    

Mixed in amongst these scenes are a few little scheming sessions in King’s Landing. Given we see these all the time you would think I would be sick of them. However, you get some of the best exchanges and moments from these little walk and talks in King’s Landing. Margaery in particular has been giving us some great scenes when she’s with Joffrey and Sansa. It’s also nice to see Varys in a more prominent role given all he seemed to be in season two was ‘that eunuch with spies all over the place’. 

Given the sass and snark can seem repetitive at times I don’t blame anyone who would fast forward some of these scenes, but doing so takes away some of those little bonding moments and all those more sinister moments laced in the dialogue.  

‘And Now His Watch Has Ended’ also continues the trend ‘Walk of Punishment’ started with Theon and Jaime. 

It is hard to feel sorry for Theon Greyjoy after an entire season was dedicated to him murdering children and destroying his home in Winterfell. This episode does a surprisingly good job of making me feel like maybe he didn’t deserve torture. The same happened with Jaime when he lost his hand; we see him at his most human when he has been reduced to a joke by his captors. It only drives home the point that he’s a good guy at heart when Brienne realises he lied to save her.

This enthusiasm might seem a little much, but if you’re the kind who has been itching for a fight since the premiere, this is a good episode for you. If you’re the kind who thinks the politics are the best thing about the show, this is a good episode for you. It caters more to the fans of the quiet scenes because of how one sided the fights can be, but that doesn’t diminish the impact this episode has.

Review by Greta Rehak

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Review - Game of Thrones - S03E03

As the next A Game of Thrones is on the horizon I can’t help but dread it. No, the episode isn’t a bad one—on the contrary, it’s a great episode. It’s the kind of episode that messes with your emotions and makes you unsure who you want to root for. I dread the next episode because what this episode leaves me with is a blend of excitement, sorrow, confusion and fear.

Like the previous two episodes, ‘Walk of Punishment’ focuses more on the politics and where every major player’s head is. There are no duels or battles like there were last episode, but it’s still worth a watch.

As revealed last episode, Catelyn Stark’s father had died and this episode features his funeral. During the Stark’s air time we focus on Catelyn and her loss rather than the war. Michelle Fairley once again pulls off a wonderful performance as she tells her uncle Blackfish how she would wait at the window for her father as a child and how he would always come back to her.

Though I didn’t tear up, it was the closest I came to it throughout the entire series’ run. Another awful scene is where Sansa finally gets the chance to tell someone what she really thinks of Joffery. It is horrible to see the fear on her face and in her voice, but that was nothing compared to her teary pleas that the Tyrells don’t call off the wedding makes me worry something is going to happen to her.

Beyond the Wall we learn that the Wildlings are about to attack the Wall…and Jon Snow is going to take part of that attack. While this revelation isn’t as emotion fuelled as Sansa’s or Catelyn’s, it fills the viewer with dread. There is no way this is going to end well.

However, this is A Game of Thrones, so there has to be some witty banter peeking through the gloom, right?

Nope. Almost all the lighter moments are dulled by something darker. Brienne and Jaime have a brief exchange as they are lead to Harrenhall, but it is loaded with grim undertones. There’s more emotion lurking beneath Jaime’s wit than usual I suspect, which culminates in the one good act he’s done on screen later in the episode.

We get a tiny bit of awkward humour from Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie’s time with the Brotherhood of Banners, but there’s something darker lurking just around the corner and polluting the smile Arya gives Hot Pie as she admires his baked wolf.

As usual we get some amusing moments from Tyrion and Bronn once Tyrion is named the new Master of Coin (you read that right), but they’re pretty sparse in this episode. Oddly enough, I think this a good thing; in such a painful episode Tyrion and Bronn having a merry old chat through King’s Landing would be out of place. While I love their exchanges, I do feel that sometimes people forget there are main characters other than Tyrion.

Speakin of main characters, Danaerys has simultaneously continued redeeming herself in my eyes and made me want to scream at my TV. I’ll try to avoid revealing what she did (partially since people who missed it won’t believe me) but it is both the most stupid and selfless thing that she has done the entire series. Both men in her queensguard advise her against it but she still does it. It is a nice gesture and shows she is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of her people, but it is going to hurt her in later episodes.

Though this review is quite verbose, I’m only scratching at the surface. There are more uncomfortable sequences in this episode than I am letting on. It is a good episode, but it’s still painful to watch at times. 

Then again, if it wasn’t painful to watch scenes like this it would mean we weren’t invested in the characters so it’s both a good and a bad thing.

Still, hopefully the darkness lightens up tomorrow.

Review by Greta Rehak

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REVIEW - Game of Thrones S03E02

After a slow but informative start Game of Thrones is back into the swing of things this week. It's got everything the last episode lacked and more. This week's episode acted as 'here is what's happened since last season' part two. Except this time we got even more scheming, more new characters and so much more sword fighing.

The episode starts off with Bran walking through the woods, trying to shoot that mysterious three-eyed crow that keeps appearing in his dreams. As he's aiming to shoot he remembers the lessons his brothers Robb and Jon taught him all the way back in the pilot episode, and pulling at our heartstrings in the process when Eddard's disembodied voice echoes through the woods, “and which one of you was a marksmen at ten?” While it was an unimportant scene, merely added to introduce the characters, it's parallel to the scene in the woods makes it a painful reminder of how far the Starks have come since then, and been torn apart.

In this same scene we're introduced to a boy that turns out to be Jojen Reed (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), who tells Bran that the crow is Bran himself which is why he can't kill it. After this, Bran wakes from his dream with Shaggydog and Summer (who oddly seems to have changed colour) staring at him. They later on come across Jojen Reed again but this time outside the dream, where we find out that he has been looking for Bran, with his sister Meera.

Jojen seems to understand much of what is happening to Bran and explains to him that what he is doing is warging (being inside and seeing through the eyes of) Summer, his direwolf. But that his abilities are not nearly limited to that but he has the gift of Sight: to see the distant past, and present thousands of miles away, and the future. The Reed siblings are a nice introduction to the story, and Brodie-Sangster has the wise old man in a young boys body thing down to a 'T'. While Meera is a nice change and seems comfortable with her role, despite Osha's misgivings that a boy like Jojen needs his older sister to protect him.

Meanwhile in Robb's camp, news has reached them that Catelyn's father, Hoster Tully, has died and that the Ironborn torched and massacred everyone in Winterfell before fleeing. On the journey towards Riverrun one of Robb's Lord's casts doubt on the decision to march for Riverrun when there's no fighting to be had and during the process makes the observation that Robb's war was lost the day he married Lady Talisa.

While Lord Karstark is an embittered, grumpy old man he makes an interesting observation that seems to be shared (although unspoken) by others in Robb's camp including Catelyn, who is still her son's prisoner. And it's intersting that Robb should not listen to his mother, despite frequent ability to demonstrate a political understanding of the North and Riverland lords, whom she is both familiar with via marriage and birth. Yet while Catelyn's warnings are unheaded, Lord Karstark voicing his doubts show that she is not alone in her doubts about Robb's hurried marriage.

Perhaps one of the most boring scenes however was Catelyn's talk with her daughter-in-law. What was possibly supposed to be a heart-to-heart really became a confession for Catelyn, where the writers decided to lay blame on her (unsurprisingly) for all the events that have happened because she broke a promise to the gods to treat Jon Snow better if he recovered from a case of pox he'd contracted when he was younger.

While they are trying to develop and show another side to Catelyn's character, especially regarding Jon who she so vehementally hates, blaming her for the events of the series is entirely unnecessary and ridiculous and rather just seems as if they are punishing her for being human. Yes, hating Jon Snow is misdirected and unfair on him but so is placing the blame on her all these events.

Arya meanwhile, has apparently told Gendry and Hot Pie all about her deal with Jaqen H'ghar, the good looking and much missed foreign assassin from last season. Gendry, in a rare moment of insight, berates her for misusing the gift when she single-handedly could have ended the war in her family's favour by having Tywin Lannister and King Joffrey killed. The argument is cut short when they are set upon by a band of men wandering through the woods calling themselves the Brotherhood Without Banners and led by a man named Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye).

After the initial confrontation, the group are taken to a local inn where Arya, still unknown to the group as a Stark, challenges Thoros to a duel when he doubts her ability to swordfight. She hesitates and is immediately disarmed much to her embarassment, but the moment ends when a prisoner is dragged in and unmasked. It turns out to be the Hound, who apparently escaped after the Battle of Blackwater Bay. Arya, who recognises him unsuccessfully tries to escape unnoticed, and is identified by the Hound as “the Stark bitch”. Now that Arya's been recognised, it'll be interesting to see how the Brotherhood reacts since as their title suggests they are without allegiance.

Things are also looking bad for Theon, who last season was last seen being knocked out by his men and then abandoned while the Bolton forces arrived to retake Winterfell. He is now prisoner to those men and being tortured in an unnamed location. All hope seems lost for him, except for a servant (Iwan Rheon) who promises to come back later and free him. While Theon was never particularly my favourite character, especially after his actions in season two, it was still upsetting to see him be tortured. Hopefully his sister finds out and is able to come to his rescue.

However on a much lighter note, this episode it seems Sansa is possibly going to be taken underwing by the Tyrells. She is invited to tea by Margaery and her grandmother, the Tyrell matriarch Lady Olenna Redwyne (Diana Rigg). The bluntly spoken Lady Olenna, otherwise known as the Queen of Thorns, is a riot to watch and absolutely stole the scene, if not the episode. The so-called Queen of Thorns seems to have a few schemes up her sleeve though, especially in regards to her grandaughter's marriage to King Joffrey.

For Sansa, it seemed a relief for her to finally tell someone what Joffrey had done to her. After the equally dangerous and lonely company Sansa found herself in last season, it then is nice to see that she has a possible friend in Margaery. Although not she is not completely trustworthy, since this is Game of Thrones and everybody has an agenda, but her seeming sincerity and kindness may be what Sansa needs and is desperate to find. And this is obviously something that Shae has noticed too, as she tells Tyrion “we need to protect her”.

This was a great episode, it was captivating and I couldn't look away even for a minute. It's also a nice change of pace that in the past two episodes we haven't had an unncessary sex scenes which leaves more time for the advancement of the plot.

Review by Sofie Kiriakidis

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REVIEW - Game of Thrones S03E01

Once again, it’s time to return to Westeros.

When I went into ‘Valar Dohaeris’, I knew that it was going to be tough to top all the drama in last season’s ‘Valar Morghulis’. This episode was more subdued because it had the tough job of both recapping what happened last time and laying the foundation of what we should expect this season.

This said, ‘Valar Dohaeris’ is a great episode. Though we do not wander far from King’s Landing, we get a good look at life beyond the Wall and insight into why Jon Snow has chosen to desert the Night’s Watch. With the addition of Danaerys’s attempts to rally a slave army to help her take the Iron Throne, we have a more focused storyline in the episode despite over five simultaneously occurring plotlines. It’s a pretty strong start to season three.

Granted, the Stark army and Stannis’s fallen forces were squished in there too, but it’s brief and relevant enough not to be jarring.

I don’t know if I simply never realised it before, but I couldn’t help but notice the prominence of house colours in certain storylines. For example, the brief look into what was going on with Stannis’s army was through a green filter, the Starks and the Night Watch got a dreary grey, Danaerys and her Dothraki were red(dish) and the Lannisters got that bright gold that they love so much. It was a handy tool to keep track of which set of heroes was on-screen.

Though the focus is on King’s Landing, we get more plot twists and new ingredients in the other storylines. As much as I love Tyrion and wanted to punch Tywin in the face after last season, there were all these tantalising little details dangling in front of me that kept getting yanked away to focus on the Lannisters. Then again, the focus on Tyrion and newcomer Margaery was hardly a letdown.

Danaerys has always seemed more passive than the other main characters and her only function so far has been to hatch dragon eggs. One of the things that I liked about this episode was we got to see her do more than complain and act entitled. Her reservation towards using the slave army and playing with the child at the end are small events in the hour long premiere, but I found myself caring about her storyline despite wanting it to go away last season.

Jon Snow is a character I’ve felt has a similar problem in terms of being self-entitled, but not to the extent that Dany is. We see him take action, achieve great things and grow into a mature adult. The part of his storyline that really shined last week was his speech about being on the side that’s stopping the White Walkers. Last season he was told to infiltrate the wildling army so the power of the speech is compromised, but it had me wondering just how much his defection was an act. Only time will tell.

Speaking of details, regular viewers might notice that there is not a smidge of sex in this episode. Yes, at one point we have Bronn talking into a woman’s crotch, but given the common complaints I get about Game of Thrones and sex, it was great to see an episode that doesn’t have any.

King’s Landing needed to be the focus after last season’s plot explosion, but I hope that the next episode will focus on something else…like what happened to the six other characters I care about. It might not have a lot in the way of the swordfights and sex that the show is known for, but it is a strong start to an interesting plot.

Review by Greta Rehak

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Game of Thrones Season 3 Sneak Peek!

Season 3 of Game of Thrones is fast approaching, and just to tease us HBO has released their first official "In Production" video for the new season. And what do we know to expect from season 3? Well new characters for a start! Fans of the book will recognise names such as Beric Dondarrion, leader of the Brotherhood Without Banners that was briefly mentioned last season; the Reed siblings; and Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall.

But for those of you who are only watching the show, this season promises to be very exciting with the writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss revealing that this season was the one they had been "anticipating from the very beginning". With such high hopes being placed on this season by the writers, we expect it'll be one to remember.

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