Rubes

I think they'll end up with a good coach one way or another, but I'm still wondering what the heck they're going to do at goalie.

Hell, maybe they could ask me to be a consultant to provide a fan's perspective on some of those decisions. I wouldn't charge much.

Rebounded fairly well from last week's horrible episode. More odd gratuitous nudity, though...can't really see the reason the Sand Snake needed to bare it all (not complaining, mind you), but I also can't really see why she had any interest in saving Bronn. The writers have done a pretty shabby job with the whole Sand Snake/Myrcella storyline, it's really cringe-worthy, but the rest of the episode was pretty entertaining. I was hoping the capture of Cersei would have been a bit more...exciting, like in the books, but overall I thought they did a pretty good job of it.

It's really odd. I'm such a proponent of seat belts, I basically never go without it. But something about being in the back seat of a cab makes things different for me. No idea why, but I find that I just don't do it for some reason. I've been better at it lately (though admittedly I don't ride in cabs very often), but this will certainly change that for me.

Orton?

Thanks for the update.

Good Lord, man, and you're already closing in on 25,000 posts? I've been at this for well over a decade and I still can't top 10,000.

Are you allowed to do that in your own thread?

I agree, the Cleveland helmet looks pretty cool.

Wow, that is just bizarre.

Please don't make me give up this thread.

Great to hear! There are some pretty good treatments for CLL these days, but it does play havoc on the immune system.

Keep crossing those fingers, gents. We made it through the tank, we can make it through this.

I would have an aneurysm if that happens.

I think Aegon is a fake, but probably doesn't know it himself. I think he's the "mummer's dragon" as told to Daenerys, I believe. The three-headed dragon is likely Daenerys, Jon, and Tyrion. In fact, I think by leaving Aegon off the TV show, the producers are basically acknowledging he's not going to be part of the main story and ending.

Looks good on paper, but there are a number of things that have to fall the right way, including Miller actually being able to play in the NFL, Incognito getting back to form, and Henderson actually making some progress in his second year. Fingers crossed, but rarely do that many things work out optimally.

Point taken, although if he lives in a place like Gross Pointe, it doesn't get much grander. The real point is that it's often hard to convince family to uproot and move somewhere else, especially if the wife has lots of friends and he has school-age kids.

I'm guessing he wants to come to Buffalo, but he's having a hard time bringing his family around to the idea.

I need a visit to Ted's and one to John & Mary's. Aside from those, I need wings, a beef on weck, and a fish fry -- I'm not particular to where, since so many places in Buffalo do those so well. Amazing how once you get outside of Buffalo, people just can't seem to do those the same, yet there are dozens of places in Buffalo that just kill it.

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. The problem that the TV show is having is that they are struggling to condense the massive complexity of GRRM's world into a simplfied version. I don't mind that certain characters are repurposed for different story arcs (such as Jamie and Bronn), but what I do have a problem with is how really awful some of the scripting is, and how badly it's mangling the characterizations of the books. Littlefinger's plot, for instance, is very different now because of his different travels -- which is okay, but his plot is now convoluted and just plain dumb. If any one person had seen him with Sansa and reported it back to Cersei, his plot is foiled. Yet he makes no effort to conceal Sansa's identity, or the fact that they were together going to Moat Cailin and the Boltons. Ugh.

That, and the fact that (a) Bronn and Jaime could just waltz into the Water Gardens and stroll right up to the princess, and (b) Bronn and Jaime meet up with Myrcella at precisely the same time that the Sand Snakes do? Seriously? As I read elsewhere on the intertubes: "The show’s version of the plot, such as it is, is extraordinarily basic and seems to lack even basic features of planning (like knowing where exactly Myrcella is when they spring into action)." The whole way they have dealt with the Sand Snakes is embarrassingly bad. It's like they are trying to save a whole lot of money by making their scenes ridiculously simple (and as a result, uninteresting). At least Xena was intentionally cheeky. The whole scene with Tyrion and Jorah being captured by pirates is just lousy dialogue. They could have just followed the book ever so slightly by having the pirates intend Jorah for the fighting pits from the start, and keep Tyrion around for entertainment. All they did in the show was just introduce a bunch of fake drama and tension for no reason. As someone elsewhere said: "Luckily there was still time to fit in a 'Tyrion has a big rooster reference.'" It also feels like Lady Olenna was added into the script just because everybody liked her, kind of like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. She's a good actor, but she has no real role here, and she just seems tacked on for fun. Finally, that Myranda character that is in love with Ramsay Bolton is just annoying and vapid. Honestly, this is getting pretty nitpicky, but it really seems like this season the writing has taken a nosedive.

Ugh. Some decent things in that episode, but it's really going downhill. The scenes in Dorne were especially cringe-worthy. Now that the TV show is going in all sorts of different directions from the books, the quality of the writing is really getting bad. I'm pretty disappointed.

I'm not sure I follow...in the TV series, Lancel *is* one of the sparrows, and his role is very different than the books. In the TV show, I think they're using him as the one who nails Cersei because of his knowledge of her role in Robert's death, as well as the fact that she used to bang him (if I remember correctly -- didn't Tyrion use him to spy on Cersei?). Now that he's a sparrow, he is the pious one who will turn in Cersei and bring her down. Because of that, I'm not sure I see the same cool scene playing out. In the book, she is brought to where the Sparrows are torturing one of the Kettleblacks who she is both banging and plotting with/using to bring down Margaery. So once she sees the torture, she realizes he has just ratted her out, and she is toast. Not sure how they could do that in the TV show quite so much. But who knows... The snippet for tonight's episode mentions Arya beginning her training, so should be some good stuff there...

No, you're right, I think she said the broken tower. I forgot about that. Who knows what that means.

Thanks for the update. He's lucky to have such a great support group. We wish him our best.