I really enjoyed the keel-hauling scene. It seemed to serve as a kind of a reverse-baptism of Rollo, if not a reaffirmation of his Viking roots. That smile in between regurgitating mouthfuls of water was priceless.

I agree, Lagertha's siege certainly seems abrupt, and the justification more than a little flimsy, but I suspect there's more to it than the one line would have us believe (or at least I hope there is anyway). As several commenters have already pointed out, Lagertha is singularly adept at the long con, waiting until…

I suspect Lagertha is motivated by some combination of revenge, ambition, and—as Angela suggests below—preemption, anticipating a hit against Bjorn given the threat he represents to his half-brothers' claim to the kingdom. It's not completely fleshed out, but neither are the vast majority of viking raids in the show,…

Feline :)

Even if Fimmel wasn't directly influenced by Kinski's Aguirre, those erratic gestures and menacing looks sure had a similar effect. I'm waiting for Ragnar to board a raft of capuchins and shout "I am the wrath of god! Who else is with me?" A crippled teenager and 30 bribed septuagenarians, apparently.

Agreed. Sadly, I think staging a catfight is exactly what Hirst intends to do. The trailer for the second half of the season has Lagertha proclaiming "I can never forgive you for taking away my husband…and my world". There may be some satisfaction in finally seeing Aslaug's comeuppance, but…not at the hands of a…

Ford manufactured Bernard himself, in that very basement. His programming is presumably very different from that of the mass-produced park hosts. Which makes one wonder…how many of the other hosts did Ford personally create? At least one copy of Dolores…

Sidse Babette Knudsen after she married Evan Rachel Wood

Right. Sex and foosball. Totally the same thing.

Yes. How dare a company ignore the sexual needs of its employees. Don't they care about the competitiveness of their benefits package?

Mhmm. Those muted synth reverbs. Creepy as hell. I really hope they find some way to adapt the full "Gunslinger" track in the show. That score kinda made the movie for me.

Really good points.
They slipped in that bit about someone tampering with Maeve's code and I wonder if the changes kicked in automatically when Dolores issued the "violent delights" prompt. We haven't seen any of the engineers (or Bernard, or Ford) devoting any special attention to Maeve just yet, so it seems like all…

The idea of the park utilizing multiple models of the same host is becoming more and more compelling. There has to be some means of stabilizing group storylines when one or more hosts deviate from their loop to accommodate a guest, right? Still, I'd be pretty disappointed if this were the case. It would definitely rob…

Right you are Chris. The day they drop Lagertha is the day this lady viewer loses interest in the show. She's irreplaceable.

Stray observation: Jasper Paakkonen (Halfdan) uses the old sword-swallowing illusion to make it appear as if he's consuming raw egg and it totally fails. You can see the yolk break when it hits his shoulder. Blooper reel gold.

Aslaug: I thought…I thought someone was taking care of her.
Sigurd: No…obviously not.

And now Torvi carries the crossbow >:)
The most satisfying part of that scene was Torvi's lethal marksmanship right after Erlendur's condescending "No one expects you to be able to fire it properly". That bolt to the heart from twenty paces away suggests otherwise.

Ditto. The show makes it seem as if there was just a single farm between the Côte d'Albâtre and Paris. And even if the vikings had been REALLY discreet in orchestrating the portage, the smoke from their campfires (and the one torched farm) would have given them away in an instant.

Spot on, as always, sigrid

The Bjorn-Torvi-Erlendur love triangle as a whole is profoundly boring, not to mention poorly acted. We're lucky their interaction is limited to an exchange of glances here, a hushed conversation there, and this time (bizarrely) an imaginary bolt to the neck. They've taken way too long to set up the big showdown…