HOTD: A House of the Dragon Podcast - 307 – The Bear and the Maiden Fair

On this week’s episode of our summer Game of Thrones rewatch, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, Brienne picks on someone her own size, Joffery tries talking politics with his grandpa, Robb YOLOs his way through a fraught political position to buy some extra time to consort with his queen, and Sansa and Tyrion lament their respective fates. For feedback we discuss the relative intelligence of wights, debate the apparent height of the Wall, and consider people’s pet theories on what things will look like post series-finale of Thrones. See you back here next week!

Better Cast Saul - 403 – Something Beautiful

We continue to be pleased at the pace Better Call Saul is maintaining in the early stretches of season 4. Checkov’s letter? Bam! Here it is. Waiting to see how long it will take for the other shoe to drop on Nacho’s flip by Gus? Blam! Blam! You got it. There’s also some suggestion of how Jimmy eventually becomes an important underworld connector in the Breaking Bad timeline, if you know how to connect the dots. Plus, we get a pair of nifty back-alley surgery/thievery sequences. All this and tons of feedback, coming your way!

Bald Move Pulp - Sharp Objects Ep. 7 – Falling, Castle Rock

On today’s BMTV, we discuss the penultimate episode of HBO’s Sharp Objects, “Falling”, as well as our thoughts on the first six episodes of Hulu’s Castle Rock. Sharp was an especially wild hour, chock full of stomach churning child abuse and problematic sex scenes between damaged and self-destructive people, before promising a truly epic conclusion from the setup of a five way collision between Camille, Amma, Adora, Alan, and Chief Vickers. Will Detective Willis find his way into the middle of this perfect storm? 

Bald Move Pulp - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002)

Special thanks to Brian Strader, previous commissioner of the podcast for the underrated sci-fi saga, Babylon 5. This time he’s back to, as he says, “play ‘TV Show Dumpster Fire’ roulette.” Unfortunately we think he may have lost by betting on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. We were suitably impressed with the detail of the animations, certain aspects of world building, and the themes were philosophically engaging here and there. Unfortunately, other aspects of the world building struck us as silly or worse, the dubs and probably general translation on the version we watched were almost universally bad, and the themes that were otherwise engaging have been either dated or made more engaging by later works such as Altered Carbon.