Game of Thrones Wrap-Up

Okay, so I been watching Game of Thrones since the first episode 8 years ago, and quite honestly, I expected it to end a little better than this.  Game of Thrones spoilers to follow, but like, maybe half a dozen people at most read my blog, so I'm hoping they've already seen it.

I posted a few weeks ago about Arya killing the night king in epsiode 3 this season, and I honestly think that was the last decent thing that happened on game of thrones.  As I mentioned then, Bran should have smiled to warn the Night King he was about to die, and then thanked Arya afterwards, to let everyone know he was still at least partially Bran.  Right then and there, things started going badly for the entire series, and I'm going to explain why.  Let's recap the events of episode 3, just so we're all on the same page, so you can see where I am coming from.

All of the North and all of Dany's forces converge in Winterfell to defend it against the Night King.  As Jon Snow said, they'd never have survived the battle without Dany and the Unsullied.  Conversely, the Night King would have destroyed Dany and her dragons, without Jon's army, Arya's intervention and information (from Samwell Tarly!) that Dragonglass kills White Walkers.  However, the army of the Night King is all undead, and as we are reminded halfway through the episode, the Night King can replenish his troops after every battle by just raising the dead again.  There's no way to defeat the Army of the Dead without killing the night king, and Arya manages this, fulfiling her role as an assassin, AFTER pretty much everyone in winterfell is killed by the dead.  I mean seriously, there was like Jaime, Jon, Brienne, Arya, Ser Davos, and a couple other guys.  All the civilians ended up in the Crypt, but all the soldiers were up top, fighting.  The dead overran the place.  There was literally almost no one left, when Arya finally offs the Night King, and saves most the main characters in the nick of time.

Now, here's my problem.  Jon Snow and Dany now have no army left to send South to defeat Cersei.  I mean lt's face it, two dragons are great, and the last 3 episodes should have focused on those two characters using those two dragons to go ahead and confront Cersei, but they didn't.  Instead, Dany gets all "I want to kill Cersei NOW!" and sends her troops (now where did she get MORE troops?  EVERYONE just died at winterfell.  I just explained that, and the episode went to great lengths to demonstrate that only the main characters were left) south, and the small fleet of boats she sends are ambushed by Euron Greyjoy and the Iron Fleet.  So that kills off even MORE of Dany's imaginary army, any injured she might have managed to send south, and at this point, there should be like 3 guys and Tyrion left to send up against King's Landing.  They should literally have no hope whatsoever of taking King's landing without dragons, and in the same episode, Dany loses another dragon to the Ballista, so there's only one left.

Now, let's take a moment to quibble about whether one dragon could have taken out all the crossbows or mangonels or ballista or whatever the hell you call you big-ass bolt-shooters that took out Jon's dragon.  I always thought that it would be damn near impossble to fire those things straight UP, so if Dany had come at each ballista from directly overhead, it would be almost impossible to aim it directly upwards, and fire at the dragon.  Of course, if you've seen the subsequent episodes, that's not exactly what Dany did, though she did come at them out of the sun at first, making it extremely hard to see her coming.  So, between a bunch of ballista firing bolts at a dragon coming straight down at them (my idea) out of the sun (what they showed), I think MAYBE she might have got all of most of the ballista emplacements.  It could have gone either way, I think.  Now, how the hell dragonfire manages to make solid stone explode like gas-soaked matchsticks, I'm really not sure.  Real fire doesn't work that way, but I'm suspending my disbelief on that one for the sake of argument.

Now, in episode 5 or whatever, Dany takes out all the ballista, and she's pretty much free to do whatever she wants.  Now, here's where the breaker of chains and mother of dragons cuts off her nose to spite her face.  I don't know if she was freaked out about Missandei's death or upset about her crumbling relationship with Jon Snow, and I can understand her being angry about either of those.  And is it just me, or do the two most loving and pivotal relationships in the entire series revolve around incest?  Jaime/Cersei and Dany/Jon, right?  What the hell?  But anyways, the entirety of King's landing surrenders, and THAT makes Dany lose her shit.  I mean, I don't get it.  She's fine when she thinks she has to fight her way through thousands of soldiers to get to Cersei (who is directly responsible for killing Missandei, not the city), holding back her dragon on the wall to wait and see if the city is going to surrender.  And they DO.  Every last enemy soldier surrenders.  King's landing is Dany's, and all she has to do to take the Iron Throne is Kill Cersei.  There isn't even going to be a fight.  All she has to do is fly her dragon to the Red Keep and roast Cersei, or let her men take it, and Cersei is hers to do with as she pleases.  I mean, we all know Cersei's going to die at this point.  Even Killing Missandei was one last scene to show everyone her character is an evil bitch.  Everyone in Westeros hates Cersei.  We get it!  I'm surprised she's lived as long as she has.  But instead of attacking Cersei and the Red Keep, sparing the people who KNOW that Dany is their new Queen, and that Cersei is the usurper, Dany goes apeshit and starts killing everything.

Dany turns into a one-dragon wrecking crew, and uses magical dragon fire to roast every last living thing in the entire city, and destroy every last building.  No, really, they showed her doing that, in episode 5.  Systematically and methodically burning every street, destroying every building, roasting every living thing.  Even Arya knew it.  She told a bunch of people hiding inside a stone building that YES, they were ALL GOING TO DIE if they didn't RUN.  Which was proven correct as the building was destroyed immediately afterwards, and everyone got scorched to cinders except Arya, who was so covered in ash and unconscious that she was probably mistaken for dead.  So, everyone in King's Landing is dead, and all the buildings are so wrecked that repairing them with one remaining soldier crying in an alley and Arya's bloody horse, is going to be absolutely impossible even with hundreds of years.  Even Arya gets on her horse and flees.  At this point, nothing should be left in King's Landing but broken stone, Dany and her dragon.  Even the Red Keep looks like swiss cheese, the iron throne bared to the elements.  Sure, there were supposed to be Jon and some Unsullied left sacking the city after the dragon destroyed the gates, but let's face it, as I've already logically established, after the Night King's army overrran Winterfell and Euron's fleet destroyed the last of Dany's troops, there shouldn't even BE any Unsullied, Dothraki, or Northmen left, except MAYBE the main characters.

So we come to the final episode, episode 6.  Okay, I get it, the writers are pressed for time, trying to wrap everything up in 6 episodes, but come on, is that any excuse for sloppy writing?  We've got a coffee cup left in one scene, water bottles left in others, I mean, read the internets, guys!   Things are just falling apart, and it's nowhere more obvious than Dany suddenly commanding THOUSANDS of Unsullied and Dothraki.  I mean, where the Hell did they come from?  Arya and Jon are walking past Dothraki riding back and forth through the streets, hundreds of them at least, and Thousands of unsullied are gathered to hear Dany speak on the ruined steps of the Red Keep.  I mean, look, at this point, if everything I've said hasn't broken your immersion in the show by now, I don't know what will.  It sure broke my immersion.  I almost stopped watching when I saw Dany's whole army suddenly reborn, somehow.  They make this HUGE thing about how Dany has to get her troops all the way across the sea to Westeros, how she's not going to have any reinforcements once she gets there, how all her army is destroyed by the Night King and the POOF!  They're all back!  Ah, the wonders of CGI, amirite?  Ugh.  I'm so disgusted at this point, I don't even want to keep talking about this shit-show.

So, MAJOR SPOILERS, Tyrion resigns as Hand over Dany destroying everything, Dany puts him in prison, Grey Worm is murdering surrendered prisoners by the dozens, and Jon Snow visits him.  Tyrion talks him into killing Dany, and he does, in the most obvious manner possible.  It wasn't even emotional, it was an "of course, how boring" moment.  So then the dragon destroys the iron throne, which, I mean, why?  Why wouldn't the dragon burn Jon?  I've always wondered if Jon, also being a Targaryn, would be immune to fire.  Alas, I didn't get to find out.  In any case, Dany's dead, the dragon flies off with her body, and Jon is imprisoned for treason.  So they convene a council of lords to judge Jon's fate, but first, they have to deal with Tyrion's fate.  It seems nobody actually WANTS to be King, and that seems to me that almost anyone seated at that concil would have been a good choice as ruler.  Tyrion uses his sneaky word-skills to suggest Bran become King, and everyone is like HELLS YEAH MAKES PERFECT SENSE!  WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS BEFORE?  Uh.  What?  Really?  WTF ARE YOU THINKING?

Okay, let me stop everything for a moment here, and explain why Bran would be a horrible King.  Bran spends hours, days, sometimes WEEKS lost in his own little world, viewing the past, the future, seeing through the eyes of animals.  He's never going to be there when you need him.  Hell, all they had to do to get the Night King to show himself was wheel Bran over to a tree and LEAVE HIM THERE.  Bran literally did nothing from that point on, and honestly, did he ever do anything, in the entire show, that was of any use whatsoever?  Samwell Tarly could have told Jon his true parentage, if that needed to be said.  Who wants some guy who hardly ever talks, shows absolutely no emotion, cares about nothing, and has no idea what it's like to even be human anymore, to be King?  Few of those Lords gathered at that council at the end there, would have even known who Bran was, and nobody's going to elect some random dude off the street to be King.  How's he even going to father heirs?  Look, let's say you're some random surviving lord sitting at that council, and even the internet doesn't know who half those people were, because I checked, so you could have been.  Tyrion, a convicted criminal in chains waiting for your judgement of his guilt, starts waxing rhapsodic about how Bran is a three-eyed Raven, a Broken man who "flew beyond the wall on his own wings" and can see the future!  Come on, Tyrion, lay off the wine!  Would you believe that shit?  I wouldn't, and I read the damned books!  They should have laughed harder at that than they did at Tarly's idea to get the common people in there to elect a King, ffs.  Bran doesn't even have the common decency to say thank you to Arya for saving his life, how the HELL is he going to handle court politics?  Bran is an even more ridiculous choice than Tyrion or Jon say they are, if you spend 30 seconds even considering the idea.

SPOILERS, CONTINUED...  Sansa decides she's not bending the knee to Bran, which is just total pettiness at this point, and makes herself Queen of the North.  Bran immediately names Tyrion his Hand again, Bronn, Brienne, Ser Davos and someone else end up in the little council (how is that room even still whole when everything else is ruined?), and Brienne honors Jaime by writing his deeds in the Knight's Book or whatever that thing is.  Arya goes off to explore what's west of westeros, so, good for her, and Jon is forced to join the Night's Watch, which is still apparently still a thing, despite the Night King being dead now, as his punishment for killing Dany.  The last scenes of Jon are him meeting up with Ghost again, and heading North beyond the broken Wall, as Sansa is crowned Queen of the North and Arya sets off to explore.  The End!  But Dany's body was borne off by the dragon, so, is it the End?

I want to take a moment again here, and register my confusion as to how anyone is even bothering to stay in King's landing.  The Iron Throne is GONE.  They showed the entire city burnt and broken, but somehow, at the end, the city is full of life again, and boats are coming to the docks.  There was no one left to rebuild!  They had like two guys and a dragon!  It would have taken centuries to be rebuilt, even with all the people!  Anyone sane would have just abandoned the pile of rock!  Lazy writing.  Just simple, lazy, bullshit, non-logical, continuity-breaking writing.  Ruined it.  Ruined the whole damned show.  Eight years of my life, gone down the drain.

So who should have been King, if not Bran, you ask?  Tyrion or Jon would both have made equally good choices, to my way of thinking.  Both are main characters, both influenced the plot significantly, Jon is well liked and Tyrion could talk the birds down from the trees.  Neither of them wanted it, but I am sure they could have been talked into taking the crown.  I mean, let's face it, if Tyrion can get a council of Lords to proclaim some random unknown disabled person to be King, he's got the political mojo to make peace between anyone, and get anyone to do what he wants.  I think even Ser Davos or Brienne or Samwell Tarly might have been equally good choices.  Hell, The House of Baratheon had the last good claim to the throne, why not let Gendry have a shot at it?  He is the only remaining descendant of the last true king, from before the seven kingdoms were fragmented, and he's a good honest hardworking blacksmith.  I think he'd have done a fair job.  I'm sad at this point that Varys didn't make it, he would have been a decent ruler, if you forgive that lack of heirs thing.

I don't agree with Sansa becoming Queen of the North.  She had this look, sitting there at the Council, that she was just WAITING for someone to put her name forth to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.  I know she's been through a lot, and maybe she deserved to be Queen at some point, but she wants it so badly that she can't even bend the knee to her own family.  The minute Bran is named King, she bows out, declares herself Queen of the North, again fragmenting the seven kingdoms, and opening the doors to chaos.  Isn't this where we came in, eight years ago?  What a godawful, disappointing ending.  Tyrion says nobody is really happy with it, and somehow that's supposed to make it right.  No, I don't think that's how things are supposed to work.

So, let's muse about what else might have happened.  How things could have been wrapped up so easily, in so many other ways.  So, let's say Dany doesn't go nuts.  King's Landing surrenders, and that restores Dany's faith in Westeros.  She flies her dragon over to the Red Keep, roasts Cersei with her dragon, and VOILA!  All's well that ends well.  Tyrion is happy, Jon is happy, King's landing is not a pile of burnt ash, and Dany is happy.  We've got a happy ending!  You don't like that?  Let's try something else.  Dany DOES go apeshit, burns everything, and demands to be crowned Queen of Westeros.  During the Coronation Ceremony, Jaime manages to dig himself out of the fallen rubble that Cersei died in, and stabs Dany through the gaps in the back of the iron throne for killing his sister.  The Kingslayer earns his nickname all over again, and whether he dies or not is irrelevent, because he's rid the world of a greater evil than Cersei, namely, Dany.

Don't like that one?  How about this!  Dany flies to the Red Keep, intending to burn all of King's landing to ashes, but before she does that, she wants to destroy Cersei first.  She uses her dragon to kill Cersei, but Cersei has planned for this by loading the Red Keep with Alchemical Fire.  The Red Keep explodes, the Iron Throne is destroyed, and Dany and Cersei are both dead.  Sure, it's a huge blow to everyone, but it's still a happy ending, because both the psycho bitches from hell are dead.  Don't even get me started on how nearly every woman in this show is evil, murderous or crazy, it's just so man-centered I don't even know how to unpack the misogyny.

You don't like that ending either?  Try this one.  Everything happens just as it did, except before Jon can kill Dany, Grey Worm does it for him.  I mean, let's face it, Missandei dying is Dany's fault.  Why the hell was she even sent south with everyone else?  She doesn't fight!  Dany dragged her all over Westeros with her, and that's why Missandei ended up dying.  Grey Worm should have been furious with Dany for that, not King's Landing.  Grey Worm dying for killing the Queen is a lot easier to take, so he takes one for the team, and Jon becomes King.  They showed Grey Worm at the end, intending to sail to Missandei's island, but would you want some murdering soldier to be your protector, or someone with some heart?

Don't like that one either?  Try this one!  Cersei wins, but before she can execute anyone, one of the Faceless Men assassinate her.  I mean, let's face it, everyone in Westeros hates her, someone was bound to take out a contract on her life eventually.  Don't like that?  How about this?  Bronn decides that since Cersei paid him in gold first, he is going to kill her with the crossbow she gave him, and run off with her money.  Come on, these are all good ideas just off the top of my head, and any one of them is better than that last episode.  Ugh.

Okay, I am done with Game of Thrones.  Screw the prequels, screw HBO, and screw Hulu.  No, Hulu doesn't have anything to do with Game of thrones or HBO, I just hate the fact that they charge you money for their service, and then still collect money from advertisers to show you commercials.  The Cable companies do that, and that's why the cable companies are rich assholes who shouldn't be King of the Seven Kingdoms.  Until the next time I want to rant about a movie, or see something good, you guys have a Happy Memorial Day!  Seeyas!

The Silence (2019), Game of Thrones

It's finally Spring, and that means, Winter has finally come to WinterFell.  But before I get to the final season of Game of Thrones, I'm going to review a Netflix movie!  It's called The Silence, and since Netflix doesn't allow people to review their movies on the website anymore, I'm just going to do it here.  I've also changed my blog theme to a more summer-y view for both your and my viewing pleasure.

The Silence (2019) is a movie about a heretofore unknown species of flying predator that breaks out of a newly-discovered cave system in Pennsylvania and proceeds to eat the entire world.  They hunt by sound, so you have to be quiet.  Shh!

Sorry, that's a crappy synopsis, but it's been a while since I reviewed a good movie, and this movie sucks.  Let me begin with the critters.  Spoilers to follow, but ugh, don't even bother watching the movie on Netflix.  First, the critters are completely blind, and hunt by sound, much like bats, but without using echolocation, as far as I can tell.  Since they seem to eat everything they hear, or try to, there's no possible way the species could have survived by themselves underground.  It might be one thing if there had been a whole ecosystem down in that cave system, a huge food supply these things could have lived off of, but there wasn't.  Since the flying things seem to eat everything that makes a noise, they'd have eaten themselves to death thousands of years ago, dying of old age or starvation after eating every other source of food.  There wouldn't be any left.  Also, there are insane numbers of these things.  Where did they all come from?  It might be one thing if a few escaped, and without their usual predators to keep them in check, they multiplied out of control and became another invasive species, but we get invasive species all the time.  Sooner or later, something evolves to eat them.  Plus, the critters are always screeching and making tons of noise.  They'd have attacked each other, or thrown themsevles to death into fires or wood chippers or thunderstorms or whatever else was making noise.  Since these noise sources are used in the movie to kill some of the creatures, why does it not work on all of them?  It makes no logical sense.  There are literally millions of noise sources in the world out there, and the average human is very quiet by comparison.

The second thing I'd like to mention, the cult of humans worshipping them or the religious nutjobs who think they were sent from heaven or whatever, I mean, that's just ridiculous.  First, cutting out your tongue doesn't stop you from making noise.  It really doesn't.  It stops you from forming certain sounds with your tongue, and as I understand it, also makes you bleed like crazy.  I'm pretty sure the first idiot who cut out his tongue to try and silence himself would have been the last, because if he didn't die from it, the next person would realize what a nutjob he was in the first place.  Also, wtf is with humans who decide that every single thing that happens in horror movies is the best thing that ever happened to them?  Where are these people who are just living out their boring little lives and suddenly some geological event or virus sweeps the land and it's like a gift from god?  Shit, if you're that bored, sign up to netflix and start watching movies ffs, or find a goddamned hobby!

Aside from those two ridiculous things, the movie wasn't even that good.  There's like one scary part where they're all still in the minivan, and after that, it's all crappy bs.  They can walk around fine on gravel roads without making a sound (I've walked on gravel before, it is not soundless), they can go through underbrush without making noise (what, no rustling leaves?), and seemingly every single noise they make is juuuuust quiet enough not to attract attention until they want it to.  Come on!  Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but at least try to be consistent.  They've got some decent actors in this thing, who I'm not going to shame by naming them.  There wasn't even a lot of action.  There was one quick fight sequence at the end and it wasn't even against the monsters.  I suppose it doesn't surprise me that I had to stop this movie halfway through because I just couldn't stand the boredom anymore, and then came back to it when I had time to kill a day later.  It didn't get any better.  To quote a movie trope, go on without me, save yourself the horror.

To summarize, The Silence (on Netflix) really sucked.  Don't waste your time.  Moving on.

Game of Thrones finally climaxed on Sunday night.  After 10 years of foreplay or the longest orgasm in TV history (WINTER IS COMING!), Winter finally came to the aptly-named Winterfell.  Spoilers to follow, because I really want to talk about it, and after three days, if you haven't seen it yet, you're not going to.  First off, Theon died, which I was totally okay with.  I never liked his character to start with.  If I recall correctly, in the books (which GRRM will probably never finish),  Theon became a priest for the drowned god or something, which he never did in the HBO version.  That might have made the character more interesting.  Hodor was more interesting, and he only had one line of dialogue (albeit repeated over and over).  Theon didn't even die for a reason, but in a pointless charge at an enemy there was no way he could have defeated.

I read an online review of the battle itself, and some military guy savaged the tactics employed by Dany and Jon.  He estimated there was three weeks between the fall of the Wall and the arrival of the White Walker army, and said there should have been a lot more done to prepare the battleground for the inevitable breach of the walls.  I assume they had less than that amount of time to prepare, not only because the army of dead would have travelled night and day without stopping, but also because Winterfell was still taking in refugees up until a day or two before the white walkers arrived.  Sure, they could have churned out tons of dragonglass weapons in that time, but digging up the ground around the castle would have been impossible with all the people coming in there, and they still would have needed room inside to house the refugees.

The military guy was spot-on about Dany and Jon's inexperience as generals causing them to employ bad battle tactics, but I don't understand why Jorah Mormont, Tyrion, or any of the dozen other battle-hardened and experienced commanders didn't offer better strategies.  I mean, all of them have commanded men in battle, and even if Dany or Jon hadn't learned from all the battles they'd been in since the series began ten years ago, the group as a whole had half a dozen to a dozen experienced commanders handy to discuss battle strategy.  In any case, the battle went badly for the side of the living, as you might have guessed.

So I'm watching the fight going on, and the first thing I am thinking is, well, this fight has to go badly for Winterfell, because Cersei's army is coming up from the south.  Dragonglass isn't going to be any more effective agaisnt the gigantic army of the living coming up behind them, and there's not going to be anyone left to fight on, even if they win.  I assumed the army of White Walkers was just going to roll over Winterfell, and then destroy Cersei's army, which might at least reduce the vast numbers of dead (or add to it, depending on how things went).  At first, that seemed to be what was happening, because all the major characters seemed to be fighting for their lives and about to go down.  So, I figured I was right.  But nope, I was not right.  Surprise!

I'm only going to mention one other death, because the only death in the episode that was particualrly brave and worthwhile, was Lyanna Mormont fighting the giant.  And, I'm not even going to mention that there were dozens of giants fighting for the white walker the last time I saw a glimpse of his army, because there was apparently only one left for Lyanna to kill.  So the giant knocks little lyanna aside, and she comes running back, and the giant just grabs her and lifts her up to look her in the eye as he crushes her to death in his hands, and she stabs him right in the eye with a dragonglass dagger.  Epic!  Kills the giant, and dies in the process.  Heroic sacrifice!  The stuff of legend!  I loved it.

I'd always figured how things were actually going to end for the Night King, though, and this was demonstrated about 2/3rds through the episode when he walked towards the open gates of Winterfell.  Jon comes up from behind him, hoping to engage him in battle.  I can only guess that would have gone badly, though the battle would have been epic, but it never got that far.  The problem with going warrior-to-warrior with the night king is that there's no way you can get close enough to do that, as the night king aptly demonstrated by resurrecting an army of the dead to surround him before Jon could even get close.  Sure, Jon might have killed the Night king, but he was too worried about his own survival to try.  That's the problem with fighters, they're great at defense, but not so good at killing.  You need to be ready to die to get close enough for a kill shot, and that's where Arya comes in.  Arya's assassination was so damned awesome, even the faceless men should be honroing her instead of hunting her.

I'm not going to reduce the actual confrontation between Arya and the Night king to words, because it was just so simply awesome I don't think I can give it proper credit.  I will say that I thought Bran should have, I don't know, smiled or something, just before Arya struck, enough to give the night king a better reason to think Arya was coming.  I also think Bran should have at least thanked Arya afterwards, because, sure, maybe he did see the whole thing coming, but he's still partially Bran, and Arya is still partially his sister.  A little knowing smile from Bran would have made it so much more awesome beforehand, and a thank you would have been expected afterwards.  Damn it Bran, show a little more life, so I can actually like your character, ffs!  Maybe that'll happen next episode.  In any case, Winterfell seems so aptly-named at this point.  Now, how the heck are the few surviving people going to handle Cersei's army?  I'm worried Bran will try making a new White Walker to replace the old one, because that's how the indiginous folk fought off the First Men to begin with.  Don't do it, Bran!  You might know how, but you also know it was a mistake in the first place.

Okay, three more episodes of Game of Thrones to go, and I doubt I'll watch any of the spinoffs that I've heard are coming down the pipe from HBO.  I'm tired of waiting years to see a few episodes here and there.  None of us are getting any younger, and I might die of old age before I get to the ends of those series.  Shit, this one took almost ten years, ffs.  I was just past 40 when I started watching it, and now I'm pushing 50.  Who the hell has that kind of time to wait around for a series to finish production?  If this trend keeps up, whole generations of people could come and go before the next series reaches the epic finale.

And why does it take so long for anything worthwhile to happen in life?  I been waiting 15 years for Minecraft to add frogs and toads, and I'll probably die before that happens, too.  I should talk, right?  It's taken me three months just to post to my blog.  Ugh.  Life, amirite?  At least you won't get any Avengers: Endgame spoilers from me.  I haven't even seen it yet, and probably won't until it comes to the premium channels.  Until next time, people!  Hopefully sooner than 3 months.  :-)

PS: Oh, speaking of assassins, I wanted to mention Barry.  It's also on HBO, about an assassin who gets tired of killing, and tries to become an actor.  Sure, it's been done before (I think?  usually I only watch monster movies), but I like Barry because of the supporting cast and the wacky things that happen to him.  Henry Winkler (The Fonz!) is Barry's acting coach (as Gene Cousineau or whatveer his name is)!  Sunday's episode (right after game of thrones) had Barry trying to talk some guy he was supposed to kill, into leaving the area for about a year.  Things seemed to be going fine, but then we find out that Barry's target is actually a tae-kwon-do master.  Barry gets his ass kicked (mostly because he is doing his best not to kill this guy), and barely survives the episode.  The episode was kind of wacky, but pretty funny, and I enjoyed it.

I read in an interview with bill hader (who plays barry) that the tae-kwon-do guy was supposed to be some overweight, chubby older guy who didn't look anything like a tae kwon do master.  I actually saw a guy like that once.  I was going to watch a jiu-jitsu class (my friend was a student, and I was thinking of joining the class), and right before the class started, there was this chubby bearded guy with glasses who sat down on the mat across from where the jiu-jitsu class was going to begin.  I remember thinking "Man, this guy must be a new student, because he looks ridiculously out of shape!  If he can learn Tae Kwon Do, I shouldn't have any trouble with Jiu Jitsu!"  So, the guy stretches out a little bit, and then proceeds to leap into the air like a ninja, doing a series of high-flying kicks that would have made John Claude van Damme green with envy.  I was all like WHAT THE EFFING EFF!  :-o  I find out later that the chubby guy is actually the Tae Kwon Do instructor. Crazy shit.  Apparently, Bill Hader coudln't find somebody like that, and got Daniel Bernhardt instead.  I guess most people who take active martial arts like Tae Kwon Do are actually in great shape.  Who'd a thunk it?  :-/