Noel is on assignment, so this week Kate is joined by The A.V. Club’s Caroline Siede for a full 2+ hours of TV talk. First up, we go through our week in TV, starting with the comedies, including a look at the season two premiere of Angie Tribeca and deep dives on Silicon Valley and Veep. Next up are the genre offerings, including the Outcast premiere and lengthy looks at Game of Thrones and Orphan Black, and we round out our week with the dramas, including the premieres of Feed the Beast and UnREAL, one of which we love and one of which, not so much. Then in lieu of the DVD Shelf, Caroline and Kate bring back the Season Spotlight and take a look at Grantchester season two.
Download m4a — Download mp3 — m4a RSS feed — mp3 RSS feed
Listen on Stitcher — Listen on Google Play
Season Spotlight: Grantchester Season 2 with Caroline Siede (1:39:55)
Our Week in Comedy
Angie Tribeca premiere (14:55)
Steven Universe (16:47)
Silicon Valley (18:18)
Veep (27:47)
Our Week in Genre
Outcast premiere (34:51)
Game of Thrones (40:22)
Orphan Black (56:56)
Preacher (1:05:40)
Our Week in Drama
The Americans finale (1:12:56)
Feed the Beast premiere (1:14:36)
UnREAL premiere (1:26:37)
Music Featured: “Raw” by San Holo; “Rusty Cage” by Johnny Cash; “Kill Our Way to Heaven” by Michl
Follow Kate on Twitter
Follow Noel on Twitter
Like The Televerse on Facebook
Rate/Review The Televerse on iTunes: m4a — mp3
I mostly agree on how the Game of Thrones massacre was more writer-motivated than character motivated, but Kate’s point that “If they’re dead they can’t grow more food” brings up an important point made by Mancur Olson (and I suppose Thomas Hobbes even earlier): there is a distinction between roving bandits and stationary bandits. A roving bandit does not expect to be around after the food is grown, they gain no benefit from it. A stationary bandit, like a government, will be there to seize food in the future. That’s why it has an incentive to not steal all the food. The Brotherhood depicted on the show (and unlike the books, as far as I can tell) are roving bandits who kill, steal and move on.
In your discussion of Grantchester you mentioned a white character having an “asian” wife. Was that east asian or south asian? Across the pond the term “asian” is generally used to refer to south asians, which they’d distinguish from, say, Chinese. Here in the US large-scale east asian immigration preceded south asian, so it tends to be the other way around. At the same time, large scale south asian immigration to the UK is generally dated to the mid 1960s (the 50s era of the show was more associated with Caribbean immigration).