Oh it is. It gets compared to Game of Thrones because of all of the intrigues, but it was actually made as Turkey's answer to The Tudors. It's based on the life of Suleiman the Magnificent (hence the title) and of Hürrem Sultan, his favorite, legal wife, and the mother of his successor, Selim. The costumes are…

History informs fiction and some Grand Viziers really were bad guys. Pargali Ibrahim Pasha was one of them.

Fucking loved that visual of Jenny mounting her horse with two pistols strapped to her corset. It reminded me of the women in the Mexican Revolution of 1910; many of them new mothers too. Strap the kid to the front, the rifle to your back, and forward march!

See, I was all, "if she was just going to toss it (*), why didn't she give it to the horses?!?"

My goodness! This was a *juicy* installment. Blood by the gallon, exposed brain matter, dead babies, and a freaky deaky cult praying over a woman wearing a nightgown stained with her own miscarriage.

Indeed. Semen does what pitocin does. Pitocin, however, doesn't make your brain secret endorphins and oxytocin the way sex does, so your left with painful contractions and no pain relief. So sex is better.

No worries. In fact, that's part of that philosophy: that labor should be an intimate experience between the laboring woman and her partner. Partner helps the woman relax during the contraction through touch: snuggles, kisses, caresses, even le sexy times if the woman's up for it.

I think it may have been mentioned or alluded to in the ep, but it seems like Ian suffers from some kind of PTSD, judging by his reaction to having shanked Horrocks. Book readers, can you confirm?

That part ("like when your man's inside you") seemed odd to me at first, but then I realized that the uterus contracts during orgasm, though not as much as it does during labor. In fact, some circles teach that labor doesn't have to be a painful and difficult experience. That, given the right state of mind, relaxation…

I haven't laughed this hard since "Adventures in Chinchilla Sitting." It feels like Bob's is back on track after a couple of weeks off. Of course, an okay episode of Bob's Burgers is still way better than anything else on tv.

I think the Castor plan to take Helena was to use her biological material to find a cure for the boy clones. They can't, now that she's preggers (well, they can, but perhaps don't want to), so they're going to pick apart poor, damaged Rachel.

If the Castor clones and the Leda clones are siblings and Dr. Coady is the "mother" of the former, then that means she's the Leda original. DAMN I LOVE BEING RIGHT.

Yes.

James Spader was born to play smarmy assholes and Ultron is the smarmiest of all the assholes James Spader has ever played. Including his Pretty in Pink rich bitch.

For a show that prides itself on getting the science right — or at least kinda right — they kind of screwed up with Dr. Hofstadter. Granted, I don't think the show has ever mentioned her specific field, but given that she's written books on parenting (one ep mentioned that Leonard was her guinea pig growing up), that…

It was *dark,* I'll give you that, but it is by no means bad. In fact, I'd say that this is Whedon's answer to Nolan's The Dark Knight. It's less of an origin story than its predecessor, there's more action, the stakes are higher, and it is GRIM.

***SPECULATION POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

Is it wrong that I want a show about Jenny and Claire running an 18th century Highlands estate? Ian and Jamie can be in it too, but only for comic relief and/or to create conflicts that advance the plot ("did you give back the rents *again* you silly goose? ")

Did the first two episodes air, or is someone being very naughty? Two eps were posted online.

Ned is a hell of a litigator. Great impeachment technique. I wonder if he showed up to represent Claire because Jamie asked him to keep an eye on her while he was sent away or because Ned's genuinely fond of her.