Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

Last week's episode of Game of Thrones was a "let's get re-acquainted" kind of episode that most people expect at the beginning of a season. Thankfully, for a show of this quality, it did not disappoint. This week is a mixture of new happenings and checking back in with the rest of the storylines.

Of course, if you've watched already, you know that I've buried the lead. This week, everyone's wishes came true and that bastard Joffrey "Baratheon" got what he deserved. As a book reader, it's probably not appropriate for me to speculate on who was responsible, but I have had a great time listening to people's theories. They are widely varied, but one that I like the most is "all I know is that it wasn't Tyrion". I'd have to agree that the show is pointing that way as Tyrion is the only one who was actually looking for clues after his nephew died, and not just running for pie.

So, the King is dead and his little brother will now wear the crown. Tommen is the younger, but considerably less cruel second born child of Cersei Lannister. This doesn't create a power vacuum per se, but will definitely change everything in Kings Landing and it will be fun to see how this shakes out.

The stage is now set for conspiracy and intrigue for the rest of the season in Kings Landing, so let's travel just a bit north and east for a fun beach party thrown by everyone's favorite witch, Melisandre. Our first look at Stannis's crew this season shows him burning several "infidels", including his brother-in-law, as sacrifices to the red god R'hllor. Melisandre also comforts a small child with the notion that "there is only one hell and it's the one they live in right now". Clearly a great babysitter, also available for kid's parties.

We continue north to the Dreadfort, home of the Boltons and everyone's second favorite bastard, Ramsay Snow. Daddy is now home, and the Roose is loose. (Forgive me for using that line). Roose Bolton wastes no time in reminding Ramsay that he is a Snow and not a Bolton and sort of gives him a slap on the wrist for utterly torturing and psychologically crushing his hostage, Theon Greyjoy (now Reek). I've heard some people complain about how this storyline is just a bunch of torture and doesn't have much to do with what's going on. To them, I simply must say that you're not supposed to like everyone and everything that goes on. This story is about being real, not about pleasing you.

Finally we go north of the wall to join Bran, Meera, Jojen and Hodor. We're once again shown Bran warging into Summer just as the direwolf is making a kill. I'm glad that the show is able to have the warging scenes as in the book it was done incredibly well. The feel of warging translates well to the screen and you don't lose much in the change of mediums. Then Bran shows that he really could be the most powerful character in the whole story when he unleashes yet another magic trick. With just the touch of his hand to a Weirwood (the ancient white trees with red leaves and weeping faces), he is able to see a series of visions of both the past and the future. They do not elaborate on this ability in the episode, but I suspect it will be used a lot on the show as a way to show all kinds of places and events without having to have a long storyline take us there.

Altogether, I give this episode 5 stars. It's got everything you've expected from Game of Thrones, blah blah blah. Joffrey dies and that's why there are 5 stars. Deal with it, and pass me a piece of pie.

Everyone's favorite show to obsess over has finally returned for its fourth season. Viewers were treated with what you'd expect from a great episode of Game of Thrones. You had cannibals, fiery princes, some quips about chicken and a great quote from The Wire.

Let's start at the end because it was just a great scene. We're with Col. Sandor "Omar" Clegane who turns using the word "cunt" into an art form. He and Arya wind up in an inn currently being lightly terrorized by Lannister soldiers. One soldier in particular, Polliver, is on Arya's list she says every night. A very tense conversation about chicken ensues, which culminates in the Hound's now trademark line, "Fuck the King." This sets off one of the best fights we've seen in the series and ends with Arya killing two men and reclaiming her sword, Needle, and getting herself a horse in the process.

Now jump back to the beginning of the show. We were treated to a cold open featuring the Stark family's Valyrian steel sword "Ice", last seen removing Ned Stark's head from his body. Tywin Lannister, is celebrating his near total annihilation of the Stark house by melting down the sword and having two new ones forged with the metal.

One of the swords goes to his son Lefty, er, I mean Jamie. Jamie accepts the sword, but turns down the offer to leave the Kingsguard and rule Casterly Rock, much to the chagrin of his father who is not used to being told no.

I really like how the swords symbolize peaks and valleys and are used to frame the episode. Tywin melting down Ice showed him at the peak of his power. He's defeated his enemies and no one else stands in his way. He even has reclaimed a Valyrian steel sword that his family has been seeking for generations. The peak is accentuated by immediately being told "no" for the first time in a very long time.

Arya, on the other hand, has reached a low point in her life. She has been robbed of her past life, her family and anyone she ever really cared about. She's a prisoner being brought to a strange place in hopes of a ransom. She reclaims her sword, a piece of her old life, and with it starts down a road as the first Stark who can claim some revenge for the wrongs done to them.

Check out this week's podcast where we'll go over the rest of the episode, including the introduction of Oberyn Martell, Dany's Dragons and the proper use of Golden Hands.

First a little background: HBO's new dramatic series, The Leftovers, was created by Tom Perrotta (who wrote the novel The Leftovers upon which this series is based) and Damon Lindelof (of Lost fame among other TV and movie projects). In a nutshell, the series is about the daily goings-on of a modern day world that has been affected by the sudden disappearance of 2% of its population with no apparent conclusions that can be made based on the demographics of those people that have vanished. Having never read Perrotta's novel I am completely in the dark about the story-line here and where these characters and events may take us. Which is a good thing. I was an avid watcher of Lindelof's Lost, but I am glad that in this case The Leftovers is based (however loosely) on pre-existing source material.. so hopefully that means less smoke monster and a more well-defined story arc.

"Pilot" starts us off at a laundromat when the 'event' occurs and we play witness to one mother's perspective as her baby suddenly vanishes from the car seat she had just placed into the back seat of the car. This kind of vicious, rending emotional scene seems to be a theme for this episode, if not for the entire series. I do appreciate how we are introduced to the impact that this inexplicable phenomenon has made upon people not on a chaotic, global scale but in the smallest possible way. In one person's life. And as I mentioned previously, The Leftovers really succeeds in pushing all of the buttons available - squeezing out every last drop of grief, sentiment and sympathy from its characters and viewers alike. Perhaps this is a problem, though, because in order to appreciate the emotional depths to which this show wants to sink we should also tip the other side of the scale and add some lighter colors to the palette. Does this series need a Hurley? Maybe not, but hopefully we're treated to at least a glimmer of hope in the next few episodes!

Justin Theroux excels in his role as Kevin Garvey, the police chief in Mapleton, who seems to be in a great deal of emotional distress. If the events of the series premiere are any indication, the whole series will likely gravitate in some way around his family. Kevin currently lives with his daughter, Jil (played by relatively new actress Margaret Qualley), and we learn toward the end of the episode that his wife, Laurie, has at some point in the last 3 years become a member of the organization known as the Guilty Remnant. This cult-like group's members dress in all white clothing, constantly smoke cigarettes and travel around the local neighborhood in same-sex pairs, shadowing certain people that seem especially troubled and had members of their immediate family disappear in the big event that occurred on October 14th three years ago. There is also another organization somewhere nearby Mapleton in a secured compound that centers around someone called Wayne. In this episode, a congressman who has heard of Wayne's restorative or healing powers (or something of the like, we're not quite sure yet) pays a hefty sum of money to be taken to this compound and talk to Wayne. A very enigmatic character, surely a little more information will leak out each episode about Wayne and his abilities and purpose.

Kevin Garvey flashes back at one point to what appears to be an emotional breakdown that he had after the event on October 14th. Throughout "Pilot", Kevin is confronted with a stag: at one point he sees the stag in a row of bushes and then looks back to see that it has disappeared. Soon afterwards he has a strange dream featuring the same animal, and then at the end of the episode we see what appears to be that same stag again being devoured by a pack of wild dogs. At this point the strange character Dean (played by notable character actor Michael Gaston) who Kevin has been chasing after appears and says "These are not our dogs", a line that goes back to a scene at the very beginning of the episode where Dean pulls up and shoots a dog in front of Kevin, who screams "You cannot kill our fucking dogs!" after him as he pulls away in his truck. Is Kevin hallucinating the stag, or is he having a vision much like the one that Wayne from the compound has with his son in it earlier in the episode? These scenes allude to something much more interesting and larger than we can currently imagine. It appears that animals are going to play a large role here as imagery and in fact, the next episode is titled 'Penguin One, Us Zero'. Come on Damon, no penguins please!  

Beautifully directed by Peter Berg, "Pilot" is full of close shots and interesting perspectives that keep us attached to the characters and maintains the tense atmosphere from start to finish. Mapleton, the suburb in which all of this takes place, is written as a microcosm of the world so we can watch events unfold with a smaller perspective - but it also begs the question as to whether or not things like the Guilty Remnant and the compound with Wayne the prophet have a worldwide reach or if they exist only in a few small communities like Mapleton. In any case, this was a great series premiere that looks as though it will lead to a multi-season show with many story arcs. Although a little bleak to start, I'm confident that this show will paint with a larger emotional palette as we move on past the obligatory initial character development and the actors really slip into their character's skins.

After the violent and tension-filled first episode of HBO's The Leftovers set the tone for the season, I certainly didn't expect to get sunshine and rainbows from "Penguin One, Us Zero" and it didn't disappoint in that regard. Show-runner Damon Lindelof's style has always been to feed the viewers bits and pieces of information that don't immediately add up to anything substantial so that the final reveals pack more of a punch when they do arrive and all the pieces make some semblance of sense. This certainly seems to be the case here. We do get some new background information from several main characters and begin to understand slightly more about two groups whose motivations are hard to grasp: the Guilty Remnant and Wayne's Compound. A [dim] light is also beginning to shine on Kevin Garvey's (Justin Theroux) past and present struggles as well as his very sanity.

In the sprawling suburban Guilt Remnant complex, this episode focuses on Meg's (Liv Tyler) initiation into the organization. Kevin Garvey's wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman) has the responsibility of showing Meg the ins and outs and trying to coax her into becoming a member herself. She does this by trying to get Meg to realize that things are out of control for her and that she needs to give up control in order to regain some emotional stability. First, she takes Meg out to the woods with an axe and has her try to chop down a tree. This results in tears and frustration which builds up later to the point of Meg almost wanting to leave and go back to her regular life. Later, Laurie sees that Meg needs to connect to things on a more emotional level and when Meg realizes that although Laurie may still have friends and family on the outside she has surrendered to the Guilty Remnant's way of life, it begins to dawn on her that this may be the only way to bury her intense feelings about the event and how it has affected her life afterward. Later in the episode it's revealed that Meg has left in the middle of the night and Laurie has a look of disappointment on her face. She shouldn't - Meg is out chopping down that tree.. it appears she may be ready to surrender herself and become a part of the Guilty Remnant.

Wayne's compound is raided by the FBI based on statutory rape charges from years ago - it looks like Wayne's weakness is young girls. Surely we'll learn more about this going forward but for now the story may be centered around Tom Garvey (Kevin's son) and Christine (the girl to whom Tom showed affection but looks to be in love with Wayne). After Wayne escapes from the compound raid, he gives Christine over to Tom with instructions to keep her safe and then leaves. It looks like Tom has finally had enough of the path he has been on as he almost called his Dad on the phone and as soon as he and Christine were alone in the car he lets out a blood-curdling scream of desperation and rage just like he had in the compound's pool back in the first episode. Yikes. We'll either see him saved or he will become a force of destruction and misery in this series. Either way the build-up should be a good one as it unfolds.

Kevin Garvey's story gets more interesting by the minute, as it becomes more and more hard to tell for him (and to the viewer) what is real and what is not. Reality itself seems to be playing tricks on him and that is best shown in the scene where the Mayor is having a conversation with him at the police station and the bagels that he had just put into the toaster completely disappear. Fortunately for Kevin, this episode seems to be more about showing that the things he thought could be hallucinations (mostly because of doubt introduced by other characters) are real. Dean, the "mystery man" that we have seen previously, first parks his truck at Kevin's house and then actually shows up at his door. We might think that his is all just more flights of fancy from Kevin's overactive imagination, but Dean actual hands his daughter Jill a 6-pack of beer to take inside and she asks who the man at the door was afterward. Well, looks like he is definitely real.. unless it runs in the family (a real possibility). Kevin later opens up the toaster at the police station and discovers the bagels have fallen behind some sort of mechanism inside. We do meet Kevin's father in a mental institution earlier in the episode and he seems to be a very intelligent and well-spoken man.. at least until symptoms of schizophrenia seem to wander into the conversation. It's obviously going to be a focal point here.. is there something different about the Garveys? Or could it be just a history of mental illness in the family. Does any of this have to do with the reason why Wayne seems to have everyone figured out except for Tom? Surely there is more to the story here.

There is a little more levity here than in the first episode, which I certainly appreciate. We see some teenagers goofing off, bagels disappearing and then reappearing, and blow-up penguins. I think in order for this show to work on a week-to-week basis it needs to continue down this path and separate the seriously murky emotional overtones and physical violence with more penguins and jelly beans. Hats off, Damon - I'm still a little confused about where the Guilty Remnant is going but I will no doubt be tuning in for at least the next few weeks to find out. Also, the next episode appears to center around Christopher Eccleston's character, Matt, who is a preacher that has been handing out flyers suggesting that the people that disappeared were not in any way 'special'. I'm inclined to agree with you, Matt, especially when Gary Busey was among those taken. Although that might depend on your definition of 'special'.