Eh, the show crossed that line quite a bit already- "Kids, you already know the story of your mom's yellow umbrella…"

I really enjoyed the Diane/Alicia scenes, both this week and in the previous few. They always had this "superior you just don't click with" vibe at LG, but now that Alicia is out on her own, they're peers, and it's really rich relationship without the showing having to point it all out.

Nope, I'm on board with Peter and Alicia, too; it's like Alicia and herself said in Season 2, it's about more than sonnets, it's about building a life together. Peter and Alicia have done that, and while it's not a great life, a lot of that is on Alicia; Peter has seemed to be willing to play any role she asks of him.

This is one thing that's actually pretty realistic in the show- the best political operators are generally the politicians themselves, not their staffers. Look at how hacky guys like Carville and Rove get after they're decoupled from their candidates.

Yeah, I figured you might be able to get it done in a weekend, if you have a pretty big team. But I was willing to let it go as an illustration of Eli's hyper-competency.

"First of all, there's no reason to think that the last scene of the film is the same "top layer" we see earlier."

I agree that it tonally "fits" better. Moreover, besides that last shot, there's not really any diagetic evidence that the "top layer" of the film is just another dream. Maybe it doesn't need such evidence, but given how meticulously the rest of the "layers" were set up and distinguished, that seems really out of left…

Man, that's really smart. Add in that you've got the audience surrogate a murderer (Hitchcock would be proud), and that really explains why it's so compelling.

And while again, it's not my job to write the show, I would suggest: If the goal is to get the characters in a place where they'd "break up", and these are characters who are currently detailing with the loss of a child, physical mutilation, a dawning conscious/realization that you've been a shit you're whole life,…

"Then maybe I'm just desensitized to it."

Eh, I disagree with some of that (I think the text- maybe just by virtue of being "in Cersei's head"- brings out her struggles as a woman in Westeros society a little better, and think Talisa was pretty much only there to be violently killed)…

The other two were Telisa and…the red-head prostitute from Season 2? I'm completely blanking on her, 'cause she was honestly was such a non-entity.

And of course, not to go all "death of the author" on you, but there really is only so much I care about what a storyteller *wants* me to think. If anyone's telling me the story of a world with vastly different social norms than my own, and they're asking me not to compare the two sets of social norms, they're just…

I hit "Reply" too soon- my full comment:

I very strongly disagree; as someone very wise one said, the story is "a correction of medieval fantasies to an extent". And of course, GRRM/B&W have outright said that we're supposed to be taken aback by the extreme brutality of this world (Benioff actually called the Jamie/Cersei scene "horrifying"). Moreover, if…

Nonetheless, we're pretty clearly meant to find those norms barbaric and deplorable, or at best silly. We're not, for example, meant to empathize with the people who dismiss Jon Snow as a bastard.

Yeah, the director said he envisioned it as a "no, no, yes" situation, which is bad enough on its own, but didn't really come across on screen anyway.

"My only problem with this article is we are viewing these acts through a modern lens."

Two major problems with that: 1) At no point do the books or shows indicate that we are supposed to adopt "medieval" morality. In fact, we're invited to condemn even the more mundane failings of the ostensible "heroes" of the story (such as Robb's decision to let his men plunder).
2) I often hate the "change the…

And additionally, the fact that the current scene is generating more commentary than previous examples of violence does not indicate that anyone thinks those previous examples were significantly more morally defensible. Ultimately, this scene rises or falls on its own, and the moral judgement on previous scenes is…