Traitor's Blade - Sebastien de Castell (2014)

„We’re going to get a terrible reputation if we just keep travelling across the countryside crying all the time.”

The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris (2018)

The Serpent - Sarah Fine (2018)

 "I've never been in a duel where my opponent's first play was to throw a giant dildo at me."

Queen Victoria's Matchmaking - Deborah Cadbury (2017)

 „His studious grandfather, as a young nineteen-year-old, had ventured to correct no less an authority than the pope on the finer points of Egyptian influences on Greek art.”

The Affair 4x08 Episode 8

  

 

If you feel as dumbfounded, devastated even, by the latest episode of The Affair, as I do, you might as well go ahead and blame me because didn’t I fervently wish for something like this to happen? Not exactly this, mind you. But watching the last two or tree episodes, while there were certainly things I enjoyed, I came to the realization that the show just doesn’t intrigue me anymore as much as it used to, and there’s a simple reason for that: The Affair, for all its complicated characters and ever-evolving relationships, became predictable in its outrageousness. Literally all the supposed-to-be-shocking moments in the last episodes could have been seen from a mile away: Cole deciding he wants to get back with Alison, Noah getting involved with his boss, Vik sleeping with Sierra, even Helen sleeping with Sierra (because God forbid we have one last remaining main character who’s not a cheater)– all were obvious from the beginning of their respective episodes, if not earlier. I’ve gotten to the point where I felt nothing could actually surprise me anymore. And then episode 8 happened, and it was a gut punch, there’s no other way to frame it. When it ended, and I had a little time to compose my feelings, I had to let a loud „wow” to my empty room, because I just had to say something, anything, and unfortunately that was all I could manage.

 

The Affair 4x03 Episode 3

Remember when I outlined my problems with season 3 of The Affair and one of the biggest one was the fact that they for some reason ceased to put any emphasis on the little (or not so little) differences between the characters’ recollections, which is essentially what made the show so unique and intriguing in the first place. Well, it’s almost as if someone heard my complaints, and instead of remedying them, decided to double down on them just out of spite. The two parts of this episode, Noah and Helen’s respective stories, had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Noah showed up for maybe five seconds in Helen’s bit, delivered the best line of the episode („Two fucking kids, coming right up”), and that was it. Otherwise they were completely self-conatined units that could have worked as individual episodes of any regular family drama series, and the funny things is, I actually liked it this way. I can’t even explain why, but this time the fact that there wasn’t any major conflict between any of the main characters somehow felt refreshing. Weird, huh.

The Affair 4x01 Episode 1

 

As far as I’m concerned, season 4 of The Affair only has one job: get back to the roots of what made the show so great and memorable in the first place. Okay, that’s probably more than one job. After all, there are several reasons why season 3 failed to live up to its predecessors. The clear absence of an overarching mystery (like ’Who killed Scotty Lockhart?” was in the first two seasons), the minimal emphasis on (and significance of) the differences between the characters’ memories, and some truly bewildering narrative choices alll contributed to season 3 being, well, less than satisfactory.

The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry (2016)

  

„You told me once you forget you are a woman, and I understand it now – you think to be a woman is to be weak – you think ours is a sisterhood of suffering! Perhaps so, but doesn’t it take greater strength to walk a mile in pain than seven miles in none? You are a woman, and must begin to live like one. By which I mean: have courage.”

Reign 2x20 Fugitive

 

After weeks of having to watch Mary flip-flop between „I love you and we should elope together” and „I love you but we can’t be be together” and then Conde basically saying screw all that, I’m just gonna marry your mortal enemy instead, this week’s episode of Reign was delightfully light on the Mary-Conde-Francis love triangle/relationship drama, so much so that I could probably sum up that part of the episode in only a couple of sentences. In fact, that is exactly what I’m planning to do, and then devote the rest of this review to Mary’s ladies and their respective love lives, because let’s face it, every single one of those is a million times more interesting than what Mary’s storyline has been reduced to in the second half of the season.

Supernatural 10x20 Angel Heart

 

It’s been awhile since we last saw Claire Novak, the daughter of Castiel’s vessel Jimmy, and to be honest during that time I almost completely forgot about her. She was one of those characters that I really wanted to care about because I sympathized with their situation a lot, but there was something about her that just never clicked for me. Nevertheless, I was happy when she and Cas ended the episode she last appeared in in what I thought was a good place, with Claire taking off on her own but asking Cas if it was okay if she called him sometimes. I can only guess that she never actually called because in this episode she acted as if they never made up, so initially I wasn’t looking forward to yet another episode of Castiel trying to get closer to a grumpy Claire. Oh how things can change in only 40 minutes!