Just finished "The Sopranos" and...

There is no scene in any TV show more masterfully crafted than the ending of "The Sopranos." The final scene features Tony Soprano waiting for other family members to come at a restaurant. Whenever the bell rings, he looks toward the door to see if they already arrived. Carmela and A.J. (his wife and son) came, and Meadow (his daughter) is trying to park her car outside the restaurant. While this is happening, a man is looking suspiciously towards Tony. The man then went to the bathroom. The bell rang, Tony looked toward the door, then the scene cut to black. The black screen lingered for ten seconds, and then the credits rolled.
At a previous episode, Tony and Bobby talked about what it feels to die. Bobby hypothesized that you may not even feel anything when it happens.
The man going to the bathroom is a clear homage to the restaurant assassination scene in "The Godfather."
For a show with lots of deaths, this death stands out since we witnessed the main character dying in his own perspective; the only TV death that made us really feel what it is to die.

Things to remember before we go to the seventh season of Game of Thrones:

1. There are barrels of wildfire all over King's Landing. Cersei only ignited those under the Sept of Baelor.
2. Euron is buiding a thousand ships.
3. There is a prophecy introduced in season 5 about Cersei getting choked to death by a valonquar (little brother).
4. Dragons can be killed.
5. There are mines of dragonglass beneath Dragonstone.
6. Dragonstone was once the stronghold of Stannis Baratheon. Ser Davos Seaworth was his right hand.
7. As of now, the White Walkers still can't pass The Wall because of the magic conjured within it by the Children of the Forest.
8. Ice dragons exist in The World of Ice and Fire and they are generally larger than fire dragons.
9. Tyrion once managed the plumbing system of Casterly Rock.
10. Nymeria, Arya's direwolf, is still alive.
11. Gendry is still rowing.
12. Ned is already dead.
13. Cleganebowl hype will never die.
14. Winter has come.

A Dream of Game of Thrones

I had a dream last night that I am watching the series finale of Game of Thrones. I only remembered the final scene of it: a wedding of Sansa and Tyrion. I didn't see most of the characters in the wedding, but I saw Arya, Bran and Brienne. What struck me most is the lack of visitors: there's only a handful of people. Given that this is a wedding of two persons from two great houses, there should be tons of spectators for the wedding. It looks like the winter laid a heavy toll on the population of Westeros. The setting is different, definitely not King's Landing's Sept.

At first, it didn't make any sense to me since they already had a wedding in season 3 and they definitely didn't stick together, but after contemplating the scene again in my mind, I think it's the best ending the series has to offer. It's poetic in a sense that they opened the show with the feud between the Starks and the Lannisters, and they end it with them joining houses.

One Hundred Years of Solitude Review

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez opened the gate to the town of Macondo-- a realm that is under the threat of constant tragedies and bliss of colorful moments. At the center of it all is the Buendia family and their neverending struggle to attain solitude and to escape loneliness. The book is riddled with bizarre events and characters. The storytelling technique implored in this book is what makes Solitude different from the other books that I’ve read. Marquez successfully managed to blur the lines between what is real and what is fantasy that didn't left the reader hanging from the plot. It's amazing how he managed to contour the tone of his writing that it's solemn when the ongoing story is about war, gleeful when it's about death, and dreamlike when it touches something that is real.

The magical realism has a lingering effect on me, that whenever I contemplate this book, I felt like I once lived in Macondo and became one with the Buendias. No book has ever left me in awe as One Hundred Years of Solitude and I can't wait to visit Macondo again for another time.

The Real Reason Why Jon Snow was Held the King in the North

Jon Snow becoming the King in the North doesn't make sense in the TV series. According to the rule of succession in Winterfell, it is Sansa, a true-born Stark, not Jon, a "bastard," who is entitled to be the ruler of the north. Also, he didn't avenged the Red Wedding, like what Lord Manderly said; it was none but Sansa's (and Littlefinger's) army who struck the largest blow against the Bolton army in the Battle of the Bastards. Jon's incompentence as a leader even almost decimated the whole Stark army thanks to him, but Sansa's decision to wait out the battle before attacking the opponent ensured their win against the Boltons. Sansa is the real person who avenged the Red Wedding. Added to that, it was Lyanna Mormont, a competent woman leader, who take away Winterfell's claim from Sansa. It doesn't make sense because the show is trying to portray feminism (and it is a lot cooler to see Sansa going head to head with Cersei and Daenerys). So what gives?

In "A Storm of Swords," before dying at the Red Wedding, Robb proclaimed Jon Snow to be his successor as the King in the North, if anything happen to him. During Robb's proclamation,  Maege Mormont (Lyanna's Mother) was one of the witnesses. The Mormont House, in the leadership of Lyanna, backing up Jon Snow's claim to Winterfell now makes a lot of sense.

These little but important moments in the books that were not included in the TV series made a lot of huge plot holes for the sixth season. This will not be a problem at the sixth book because George R. R. Martin, as we know, is seamless when it comes to the ongoing politics in Westeros. I think what happened really is that George only told the key moments that will happen in the sixth book without laying out to the showrunners how will it get to that point. They only know that Jon will be the King in the North at some point, but they don't know the series of events that will result to that moment.

Westworld Analysis

According to Jared of Wisecrack, the Westworld park is a metaphor for the Garden of Eden and the hosts, or the robots inside the park, are Adam and Eve because they don't know anything about eveything. Some of the hosts inavertedly found out about the truth that they are just robots inside a park used for the entertainment of humans (similar to taking a bite out of a fruit in the tree of knowledge). But instead of banishing them from the park, they are reprogrammed to their ignorant selves. This means that the whole story of the TV series is the story of creation in a loop: after eating the fruit of knowledge, they are programmed to erase the things that they know and then they are brought back again to Eden. Wyatt, one of creators of the park, wanted to give the hosts a sense of free will, which means he is basically Lucifer tempting the hosts to get a sense of the truth. Of course, Ford doesn't agree with him. As an alternative to free will, Ford put a storage of painful memories to the minds of the host to simulate basic human personalities to them. But not all costumers of the park were easily decieved by this. The Man in Black, after witnessing the misfires of not giving the host a sense of free will, followed up Wyatt's plan. His plan was a little different; instead of putting free will among the hosts, he wants to inject ethics in the park. You see, the hosts in the park doesn't know good from bad since they are just programmed to do the things Ford commanded them to do, so the park has no concept of ethics. The Man in Black executed his plan by doing bad things among the host. Although the hosts are always reprogrammed to their original selves, his plan worked since the painful things that he did were stored in the hosts' memories.
In the season finale, Ford then gave the hosts their own free will as a testament to his friendship with Wyatt. The Man in Black was successful in putting a concept of ethics in the hosts' mind. The hosts aren't ignorant beings anymore like Adam and Eve and they got out of the Garden of Eden.

God, I love this show.

(You can watch Wisecrack's video here)