[For The Bastard Executioner‘s “Effigy/Ddelw” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

FX Summary:
Effigy/Ddelw. An unlikely suspect is charged with treason; Wilkin carries out his dutes at the new executioner.

“This is such a morbid show,” says Katherine Recap to me as the second episode of The Bastard Executioner opens. She has switched her Tuesday night — ahem — recap-responsibilities to the also-bloody (but ostensibly more charming) Scream Queens (you should probably check that out).

I can’t disagree with her. That morbid opening of this episode has hero — or at least main character — Wilkin Brattle with woods witch Annora, reluctantly knifing a carcass.

“Morbid,” she echoes. “Dead animals and rain.”

Just as Wilkin cuts, the scene cuts to a pair of stonemasons producing a bust of the now-dead villainous Baron. “Too much force… a gentler hand,” is the surprising piece of dialogue.

Cut again to Love, the kindly Baroness, and Isabel, her faithful servant. Love instructs Isabel to select a more colorful dress (“something cheerful”); her time of mourning that bastard of a Baron has apparently ended.

While the Baron’s widow is refocusing on cheer, his former right hand man, Milus Corbett (you know, Vampire Bill from True Blood), is anything but. Corbett is all crying over some weird grass action figures and a little medieval-style illustration of the dead Baron.

Cut back to Annora and Wilkin… It seems that body-chopping was Annora teaching Wilkin “remedies of the body”.

We then get a magical flashback, with a little boy dressed as a nun kicking the bejeezus out of some other cats also dressed as nuns with a quarterstaff… And a not-burned Kurt Sutter is watching! This is actually a pretty telling scene as far as the enigmatic The Bastard Executioner goes. It seems that The Dark Mute wasn’t always burned (we already know from last episode that he is not actually mute), and it seems used to be a monk; probably even warrior-monk, you know, like in D&D.

Wilkin tells Annora he was left with the monks by a nun, who told them he was fatherless. Was she his mother?

Annora says Wilkin’s mom’s story ended. This viewer wonders if Annora is actually his mom. Because reasons.

Back at the castle, a wagon is prepared with the bust of the dead Baron; while in the woods, teenagers with their left cheeks painted colorfully — almost like college football fans — argue about who gets to do what. An older youth, on horseback, tells three others that “they” approach; and instructs his little sister Nia (a wee ginger cutie) to wipe the color from her face, that she is only supposed to watch. She, of course, will have none of that; because foreshadowing.

Or as Sondheim once told us:

What happened then — well, that’s the play,
And he wouldn’t want us to give it away

Wilkin meets up with some of his old buds from the village. Discussion gets a bit heated. For those of us who were a bit confused about why the heroic (or at least heroic-ish) Wilkin is posing as a castle executioner — who will be presumably called on to punish or even put to death the innocent, or at least his countrymen — that is made clear. Wilkin and wingman Toran are there to determine the identities of those who burned their village and killed their families in the Pilot.

For his part, Wilkin can barely hold in his rage, “knowing” with certainty that Leon Tell is responsible for the death of his wife Petra (wearing her sapphire cross and all). Of course we the audience know that Leon actually spared Petra. The only thing certain about this situation is that it is quite going to end tragically :/

Wilkin and Toran have determined that four other knights as well as their new reeve (Vampire Bill) were responsible… It is just a question of which knights.

The ball proper gets rolling when the wagon carrying the stone likeness of the Baron is set upon by our face-painted youths.

“Noble cowards!” They chide, taunting men away from the wagon, berating them with slingshots.

Little Nia jumps onto the stone likeness, breaking off its nose… Then is immediately captured 🙁

Meanwhile, in the Maddox home, apparently the executioner’s widow has no idea that Wilkin isn’t actually her husband, and is only posing as “punisher” Gawain Maddox. Wilkin seems to think that she is just not breaking kayfabe (even when they are alone in the apartment) but this viewer at least gets the feeling that she is actually just unhinged from having such a particularly terrible life.

Wilkin doesn’t get much chance to solidify her understanding as he is called in to deal with the captured Nia.

Remember when Katherine called this show “morbid”?

The first suggestion is to pull Nia’s fingernails out to get her to talk [about rebel movements]; then someone else says “the pear” will be quicker.

WTF is the pear?

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Does “the pear” have something to do with what Monica on Friends used to refer to as “her flower” in the fat Monica flashback episodes?

Wilkin doesn’t know what to think, examining a LITERAL medieval torture device.

“You stick it in her slot,” says Toran, settling our wonderment.

“God in heaven,” replies Wilkin (echoing 100% of audience members).

Love will have none of this torturing a fifteen-year-old girl, suspecting that she was just part of some childish shenanigans rather than an actual rebel insurgent. Unfortunately Wilkin has already removed one of Nia’s fingernails before Love can get there. Also unfortunately, Nia ain’t talking.

… Not even her name!

“Giving me your name will bring no harm to anyone.”

Baroness Love figures out which village Nia is from via a combination of observations and general being-Welsh knowledge of the area. She wants to find the girl’s parents so that they “can make recompense” and she has an excuse to spare the girl torture and death.

Let’s all go! says Love. Assemble a caravan! Milus tries to object, but Love simply tells him to bring both their priest and their execration. I mean, who’d mess with that combination of redemption and revenge? Exactly.

Annora does something inexplicable with blood and a magic(?) snake. Shrug. Cut to commercial.

Love and her caravan of knights and nobles descend upong Nia’s fishing village. Nia’s mother sends for rebel leader the Wolf (Philip Jennings from FX sister-show and BDM darling The Americans), and tells her older son — the one who told Nia she couldn’t play at the top of the episode — that “that noble waif is the only thing keeping me from gutting you like a cod”.

Love offers Mother fair trade… Her daughter’s life for a meeting with the Wolf (little does she know Mother has already summoned him, or at least his forces). All mother has is “fish and poverty” for trade, claiming not to know the Wolf; the death of Nia would just mean one less mouth to feed.

Yay?

After this non-exchange, Wilkin identifies the older brother as just having been chewed out by Mother. Maybe he can get something out of him?

Big brother gives up his name (Mabon) after simply being asked one time. “I ripped out your sister’s fingernail and she didn’t give me her name.” Wilkin and company make Mabon feel pretty pathetic, informing him that they might kill her essentially for his mistake. Mabon gives them information about a secret cache of weapons as trade for Nia’s life… Under the condition that his Mother never find out it was him who gave up the goose… err… goods.

After a short interlude about bible stories and Quran-quoting, we see Love’s caravan ambushed by Welsh rebels. Wilkin spirits her away, showing off masterful sword skills in the Baroness’s defense. The priest Father Ruskin (Osip from True Detective) is surprisingly effective as well, both with mace and a hidden dagger. Toran begrudgingly saves the life of one of the knights… Who probably burned down his fillage and killed his family and stuff :/

Back at the castle, Milus tells Love that the deal Mabon made happened before the cowardly ambush, and that her head must roll or they will look weak in the face of rebellion.

Love says she will think on it.

Both Father Ruskin and Love separately notice how good Wilkin was during the rebel ambush; he tries to pass this off as handling a blade being part of his job. Love will have none of it! Swinging an ax is brutish: He’s an artist with a refined discipline.

But enough on the niceties. Love tearfully hands him her decison on Nia 🙁

The ghost of Petra appears to either help or haunt Wilkin. Love’s note becomes a snake that encircles Wilkin’s neck… and becomes paper again.

Wilkin runs to Annora for help, showing her the note. Annora gives Wilkin what we all presume to be poison, and tells him to give it to Nia about an hour before he has to do his work.

As Wilkin gives Nia Annora’s potion, Vampire Bill returns, and tells him never to open his big fat mouth in the direction of the Baroness again.

But… “I serve the Baroness,” he points out.

“Gawain Maddox serves the lady,” Milus clarifies. “Wilkin Brattle belongs to me.”

What what???

As we the audience absorb the idea that the show’s villain knows who the bastard executioner really is, we cut to the doom of poor Nia. It turns out that Love’s decision was merely to cut off Nia’s nose — in mirror to what happened to the Baron’s bust — not to actually kill her.

I am reminded of Katherine’s comment about how morbid The Bastard Executioner was at the top of the hour. There are not many shows where seeing a lovely young girl get her nose chopped off would be considered a happy ending relative to setup and expectations.

Top 8 Observations for “Effigy/Ddelw”

1. Sutter totally cheated on this one. Perhaps he’s just assuming his base audience for The Bastard Executioner are 100% transplanted Sons of Anarchy fans? A cold viewer would have had no idea that the burned The Dark Mute was the not-burned guy watching a young Welkin learn to fight in the flashback scene.
2. Man! Sorry… woman! Welsh women are tough! Nia won’t give up a word — not even her name — even after some medieval torture (though it is unclear how much Nia actually knows about Welsh rebels); and her mother was like steel and stone in the face of losing her child when negotiating with Love.
3. For someone who has devoted much of his adult life to a game called Magic… The magic / mystical elements of this show are driving me nuts. Blood, visions, angels, demons (which are apparently imaginary?), and snakes… The hoodoo abra cadabra is my least favorite part of the show right now.
4. The setup of Welkin getting Nia’s doom was super interesting, and not just for the plot twist; Love assumed Wilkin (Gawain) could read.
5. I’m all for a romp with some hot twins (Vampire Bill’s last scene being a team event with a two-girl gift package from the King), but wasn’t he secretly gay last week?
6. Maybe that’s why Milus was crying over the grass action figure at the beginning of the episode? Was he secretly in love with the Baron? I thought for a moment he might be remorseful for his executed brother but the little illustration swayed my opinion on that one. Also if I were being tag teamed by the aforementioned twins, I don’t think I would have leftover concentration to be playing with the aforementioned little doll (which he was).
7. The conflict in The Bastard Executioner to this point seems largely driven by the incompetence of young people spoiling the execution of otherwise sound acts of rebellion. In the Pilot Ash gets spotted and semi-identified, leading to the village burning and murders central to our protagonist’s motivations, and in “Effigy/Ddelw” had Nia “just watched” as she was instructed a lot of the violence would have been entirely avoided. The rebels gained very little and much of the cost has been dropped straight on Welkin’s shoulders.
8. Googling the word “ddelw” mostly just produced other recaps of this episode and did not give me any satisfying context to make my own better :/

LOVE
MIKE

While bdm and I were at Pro Tour Vancouver, Fetchland still sent a presence to Gen Con!

Check out this video of Emergents Genesis, the new game from Fetchland contributors Brian David-Marshall and Anthony Conta

comiXology summary:
Mileena vs. Skarlet! Reiko vs. Kotal Kahn! The brawl for it all continues as a surprise new character joins the fray!

I’m a sucker.

I’m a sucker for a bunch of things.

I’m a sucker for a bunch of things in the same way that BDM has 15 or so movies in his “top 5” favorite movies.

Things I am a sucker for:

Juxtaposition – If you put unlike things together in an artful or internally-logical / consistent way, I will like it (or at least you will get points for it). Here we have a character that is 95% super sexy [and meant to be gazed on that way]… Trim figure, barely-there top, shiny leather pants… But, oh yeah, monster mouth. Ew. Gross. Yet…

Surprise! – I was always more of a Street Fighter guy as a kid than a Mortal Kombat guy, but I played some Mortal Kombat; sure. Back twenty or so years ago when these characters were first coming out, Mileena was more-or-less a sprite of 1-2 other ninja girls, except she had a sash over her mouth. The sash was — gasp — to cover up her gross monster mouth. This was only to be revealed via Special Move ™. Surprise! Now a couple of decades in, Mortal Kombat-consuming audiences know about her monster mouth and she is not even wearing any cover-up here. So the surprise is in the slavish depiction of her opposite number on the cover. He sees that she is a monster (not just some slim-if-deadly ninja doll). But he is still mesmerized, on his knees. Surprise!

Jae Lee – When I took an art class at age 17, on the first day the instructor gave us a questionnaire about what we wanted to learn / accomplish in that art class. I vividly remember writing some approximation of “to learn to draw like Jae Lee” on mine (which was probably horrifying to the instructor, who though American, changed both his first and last names to the French approximations, accent marks and all). I recounted that story to BDM some time in the ensuing twenty years and he remarked “I take it learning to draw feet was not high on your list” … Hmmm, awesome cover or no, Jae did not make with the feet here, did he?

This is a digital comics cover; and while I am not a regular consumer of Mortal Kombat X, my take is that it is the cover for both #26 and #27; it had me doing a double-take, which is saying something given it was a tiny icon on a browse page and not even a real magazine on a real newsstand. Like I said, I’m not the usual audience, but I not only clicked, but upon recognition of a style, I clicked and further clicked to confirm that it was in fact a Jae Lee… Up to and including writing up this piece.

From a style standpoint (and this might go back into the “juxtaposition” section) it really got me thinking about how Lee broadened his execution here. The Mileena figure on the left is pretty classic Lee. Sharp lines, very graphic use of blacks for outline, accent, and deep, opaque spaces that can be interpreted either as shadow or color (black). But on the right, the opposite character is finished in a very different way. Note the ink work on his headdress… That’s very “brush” rather than “pen”. Ditto on his musculature. Notice how she is all smooth and he is all feathery muscle-wise? While I would not go so far as to say the figures are from two different pieces, they seem quite differently-finished to me. I don’t know that that is a weakness (I think the piece overall is plenty striking and effective), I do think that it is pleasantly noggin-scratching for those of us who kind of stared at this cover for half an hour. Mayhap Lee is stretching his skills a little, in a way that most audiences might not even notice; he manages to do his usual thing while still channeling a mote of Alex Raymond (perhaps for future invocation).

Either way, looks cool.

LOVE
MIKE

I know something you don’t know.

That’s the essential narrative of most Pro Tour Hall of Fame ballot articles; and to a degree the implicit reason certain members of the community are entrusted with Pro Tour Hall of Fame votes to begin with.

You know, I know something you don’t know.

“I know that so-and-so doesn’t have the numbers to back up a legit Hall of Fame bid, but did you know that he did such-and-such a thing in the across-the-Narrow-Sea community? (I know something you don’t know), so lemme tell you why I am voting for so-and-so (and why you should too).”

or

“I mean there wouldn’t even BE [this other slam-dunk Hall of Famer] if not for whosits-whatsits. Whosits’s influence on the nascent Eastern Latverian metagame development scene is simply unprecedented. YOU wouldn’t know that, of course; but I know something you don’t know.”

or

“Look man, I was there. You young whippersnappers and your spreadsheets, your medians and modes, counting your Top 8s like they are pennies around April 15… You just didn’t know, man. You didn’t see it. People just played that way back then. He was in the shit. We were all in the shit. I know something you don’t know: I WAS THERE.”

Because, you know, I know something you don’t know.

It was this reliance on secret knowledge that guided many of my early votes; and to be fair, many of all the early votes of the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. I voted in younger years for players like Brian Hacker* and Itaru Ishida. I could spend five or six thousand words on the narrative around my vote.

In my old age, though, I’ve declined more into the hard numbers. There are just too many stories. Call me crazy but I don’t see for inducting someone into the Hall of Fame because he cultivates a local gaming scene. There are tons of store owners out there cultivating their local gaming scenes and we are not inducting any of them into the Hall of Fame. I personally know one store owner who produced a Pro Tour Top 8 player, a key Director at WotC (who came up via the Pro Tour) and arguably the game’s most notable strategist; also a hell of a businessman who has grown a small market community by orders of magnitude over the last twenty years. I know another former store owner who produced not just three Pro Tour Champions, but three Hall of Famers! Who knows if any of them would have gotten out of high school without him? Those are wonderful contributors to our community; but the idea that we would induct them into the Hall of Fame is foreign… Unless they have the minimum requisite number of PT points? Does that make very much sense?

As balloteers we are tasked with evaluating Hall of Fame candidates on five criteria:

1. Player’s performances
2. Playing ability
3. Integrity
4. Sportsmanship
5. Contributions to the game in general

In my first year as a voter, I tried to come up with a system that celebrated each of these five criteria. That was the last year I tried to do something along those lines, as my ballot came out completely different than I probably would have liked. I knew something others didn’t know (or at least I thought I did); but I elected not to draw on that knowledge, apparently.

Others have not been so shy.

I know a former editor who voted for the game’s most notorious cheater because — gasp — he knew (or at least saw) something the rest of us didn’t. “Mr. Short has really changed,” he told me. “I know he has a terrible reputation as a cheater, but if you had seen how he handled that drunk kid in that one side event you’d have a new respect for him, too**.” I told you he knew something we didn’t know!

For most of the Hall of Fame, the only thing anyone talks about is the first category: Performances.

Even now in my dotage, I am relying on things that I know that other people don’t. It has just dawned on me that maybe they know and just don’t care. Maybe the secret things we think we know other people actually know, but don’t value. In a podcast I did with bdm and Craig Wescoe last week (my Team Ultra PRO teammate who I randomly ran into at FNM) I made some bombastic statement about voting for Shouta Yasooka but not Tom Martell (I noted that it’s fine to vote for Shouta but makes no sense to vote for Shouta and not Tom). Apparently there are plenty of people who are happy to vote for Shouta and not Tom!

From Paul Jordan’s article a few weeks back:

To me this is a clear-cut case. Shouta has more Pro Tours than Tom (but that just means that he has had more at-bats); ditto on Pro Points. Tom has one of the best Median careers on the ballot and the best 15-event Median more-or-less ever. The two are very comparable on most of the other stats (and are certainly more comparable than most of the voters seem to acknowledge)… Shouta has one more Player of the Year Top 10, one more Top 16, and four more Top 32s; Tom won twice as many Grand Prixs and has a second World Championship appearance. To me Tom has had a very similar career to Shouta in half as many tries. We don’t typically vote people in on the differentiating stuff (tonnage of GP Top 8s).

Justin Gary might make for an even stronger argument. One PT difference between the two of them (in Justin’s favor); Justin has a better median, 15-event median, number of Top 8s, Top 16s, Top 32s and Top 64s. Shouta crushes Justin on GPs (which, I assume, is where his PT points advantage comes from).

Here’s the thing about performances only: There is no clear-cut inductee this year. Basically everyone on the ballot except for Saito would pull down Hall averages. Even EFro! (Hall Median Top 8s — the most important statistic for most voters — is 5; EFro has “only” 4.)

That’s a toughie, isn’t it?

Or, from my vantage point, for conscientious voters, it should be.

Two weeks ago I thought I was 50% to vote for EFro; 50% to vote for EFro and Shouta.

Then I had a conversation with Jonny Magic that convinced me that Tom was a better candidate than Shouta, but that EFro was not as much a slam-dunk as I had originally thought (don’t forget, I voted for both of them last year). So I was 33% to vote for EFro, 33% to vote for EFro and Tom, 33% to vote for no one.

But I learned something you might not know:

Someone gets in.

If “someone” gets in, I’d rather it were EFro, who even with “only” four Top 8s, is at least the most powerful Magician in the world right now. It’s rare that we see a Magician at the height of his powers inducted into the HoF. But who knows? EFro might get his fifth visit to the Sunday podium, you know, next weekend.

… Which is how I landed on my ballot.

My 2015 Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame ballot: Eric Froehlich

LOVE
MIKE

* In fact, my article on voting for Brian Hacker remains one of my favorite Star City Games articles of all time. An excerpt:

When you swing with a two-drop, you are tearing a page out of a hymnal at the Church of Hacker. When you play a sub-optimal drop because it contributes to the whole of your deck or the redundancy of your deck rather than shining individually as a tier one card, you are tossing your cap in the air and running through the fountains of the graduation ceremony at the Brian Hacker Institute for Technologickal Arts. In the unlikely event that you roll into a club after a tournament money finish and swap tongue-lashings with a blonde with whom you share no other lingual fluency, or perhaps elicit a screaming “Azul!” from a crowd of onlooking Latinas hungry to take in a little spectator Magic: The Gathering, you are clumsily attempting to cram your feet into the worn basketball sneakers of the Hacker of old, the one who broke other people’s games rather than making them himself.

** Paraphrase, but that was his actual reason for reversing his position on, ahem, Mr. Short. I knew something you didn’t know, but now you know, too.

Related:

• Mike Pops his FNM Cherry
• The 2015 Pro Tour HoF by the Numbers by Paul Jordan
• One Man’s Ballot

comiXology Summary:
Gouged up from its sanctuary, the mutants’ last defender clashes with Sentinels above the ruins of New York City! Kate Pryde and her family take refuge in a Coney Island madhouse, and find dark revelations at last!

Kind of a weird Superficial Saturdays on this one (yes, besides being published on, you know, a Sunday)…

Brian David-Marshall (bdm) and I were standing around together between rounds at Friday Night Magic last week; my first Friday Night Magic ever, if truth be told, and we were going over all the new comics on the shelves. I was making a note on how basically all the currently printed Marvel Comics are marked as “Battleworld” or “Secret Wars” in a storyline somewhat reminiscent of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. We leafed through covers and pointed out the logos, and Brian noted how the current event is also resurrecting successful or at least iconic story lines of Marvel past, like Future Imperfect, Inferno, or the crossover concept of Secret Wars itself.

Which brought us to Years of Future Past #3.

“This cover is awesome! If anything is a Superficial Saturdays, this is,” ordered Brian. “I am not really into reading comics right now, but if anything was going to pull me from the gaming tables to the comics shelves it would be this cover.”

Let’s take a look at Years of Future Past #3 and check for some of the things Brian is talking about…

First of all, in the top-right corner, is a comic that is [something] about “Future Past”. You don’t need to be a die-hard comics reader to know that “Future Past” is a reference to an X-Men story featuring Sentinels because there was a great movie on the same topic last summer. But generally speaking, yes… Days of Future Past was a 1980s X-Men story that is very highly regarded; generally considered either #1 or #2 in the iconic Chris Claremont / John Byrne collaboration (depending on how much you like The Dark Phoenix Saga).

Interestingly Brian noted that he thought the cover was an Arthur Adams. It is in fact an Arthur Adams. Art Adams is one of those artists whose work is almost unmistakable once you’re any kind of familiar with it. I’d guess it has been twenty or even thirty years since Brian has read an Arthur Adams X-Men book… But he was still able to pick one off the stands from several paces. Art Adams is an interesting choice for cover artist here… Adams was one of the hottest, most hyped X-Men artists of the 1980s, but didn’t really contribute a huge number of issues or sustain a run on Uncanny X-Men in the same way that other giants of the era like Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, or of course John Byrne did. Adams was mostly responsible (or co-responsible) for bringing Longshot into the X-Men family via Limited Series and a couple of annuals that constituted the Asgardian Wars (a de-powered Storm flirts with regaining her weather control powers by getting a Thor-esque hammer, stuff like that). Yet Adams is an iconic 1980s X-Men artist in the minds of many readers, and the Years of Future Past editors are keying in on that with their choice here.

“That is Lockheed burning down a Sentinel!”

Brian was quite excited about this last point. I am not actually sure that that is Lockheed, Kitty Pryde’s pet purple dragon, as it is a gigantic dragon and Lockheed can sit on your shoulder… But it certainly looks like a giant Lockheed! Days of Future Past was Kitty’s story, and Lockheed is Kitty’s dragon, at least. Lots of fanboy heart-tugging seeing a beloved, typically-little guy incinerating the symbol of Mutant oppression, especially on equal footing.

From an illustration standpoint, I can’t disagree with Brian’s assessment of “awesome”. Adams does a great job with foreground and background detail here, actually making the foreground characters less detailed, shadowed by the illumination of Lockheed’s fire breath. I am usually a “flat color > ‘computer’ coloring” [I know, I know, “everything” is computer coloring], but I am a sucker for making lights look super bright on a page, and the colorist did an amazing job making Adams’s line work appear like molten metal here. Absolutely A+ on that front. Moreover, the shadow / scales / light source detail on Lockheed himself shows tremendous attention to detail.

But most important was Brian’s assertion that he would walk over and pick up this comic if we hadn’t already been chatting about them. When you choose a cover artist, especially one that is different from a talented interior artist (like Mike Norton on this book), it has to be to get people to give your book a chance. This one passed that test with flying colors — purple and gold, to be exact.

LOVE
MIKE

Listen to the latest episode of Top 8 Magic in which Brian David-Marshall and Michael J. Flores are joined at the intersection of Chinatown and Little Italy by Level 2 Judge and fellow-podcaster Chris Lansdell. Topics of discussion included playing in tournaments as judge, the (then) impending NBA draft, and some advice for players to pay keen attention to when they have to speak with a judge. (Hint; it is often the cover-up more than the crime that leads to extended time away from competitive Magic.)

Subscribe to the Top 8 Magic RSS on ManaDeprived

Subscribe to Top 8 Magic on iTunes

My partner-in-crime if off to Italy with his life partner and progeny until after the Fourth of July weekend. I should be able to muddle through a little bit of HTML until then (maaaaaaybe) but the real blow is the absence of Katherine which means two weeks of True Detective recaps fall on my shoulders. You can find Katherine’s take on the first episode elsewhere on this site (although unlikely via a hyperlink in this recap since I really don’t know what I am doing) and she was cautiously optimistic about where it was going.

My takeaway was how much the first episode reminded me of a James Ellroy novel. Colin Farrell doing his best accent-suppressed take on the trainwrecked Bud White, Taylor Kitsch jamming his secrets into Danny Upshaw’s closet, and… well there is no analogy for Rachel McAdams’ character since you don’t get a POV woman in an Ellroy novel until Kay Lake’s chapters in Perfidia. That comparison might not be there but there is zero chance that W Earl Brown isn’t a Buzz Meeks stand-in and the dildo-laden crime scene that is Casper’s home is pretty much every dildo-laden crime scene in the first half of Ellroy’s career. More Ellroy tropes would follow this week.

So where does NIGHT FINDS YOU find us?

As the episode opens with Vince Vaughn’s Frank Semyon laying awake and talking about water stains with Kelly Reilly’s Jordan Semyon I visualized one of those focus groups they trot out during election season to judge how the candidates fared during a debate. Each member of the group has their hand on a perception analyzer dial and they turn the dial right when they feel favorably toward the candidate and they turn it left when they don’t.

Vince Vaughn, in the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman, buried the needle in the opening. I just kept wondering how this scene would have played out with any other actor — hell, any other Vince, was D’Onofrio too busy? — but especially kept thinking about how much better Pizzolato’s dialogue sounded with McConaughey delivering the lines. I also wondered if there was any way Vaughn could unjam that needle from the left-most position.

We move from the water stained ceiling to the acid stained eyes of Casper on the coroner’s table. We also get a glimpse of the wreckage of what was once his junk — taken out with a point blank shotgun blast. File away for later how devastating a point blank shotgun blast can be. While Frank Velcoro, Ani Bezzerides, and Paul Woodrugh are getting the rundown from the coroner they are also given conflicting missions from their various higher-ups at the city, state and highway patrol bureaus. Bezzerides is put in charge of watching Velcoro, Velcoro reports back to Semyon and the mayor, and Woodrugh just wants to get back on the bike.

Semyon discovers that he has been left out in the cold by Casper with an under the table deal now undocumented. Five million dollars, earmarked for twelve parcels below Monterey, is not only missing but the price for those parcels has gone up. Semyon has also liquidated assets to get in on this deal and is suddenly willing to strip away his businessman’s veneer to claw his way back into the equation.

“My business partner takes my money and gets torture-murdered and what? I’m waiting on the Velcoro burnout to make like Rockford?”

Was that the needle unwedging itself from the left-most position?

We get some more insight into the players as we meet Woodrugh’s mom, played by Lolita Davidovich, in her trailer park getting her big, strong son to peel the skin off her KFC while deriding his ex-girlfriend as fat. Bezzerides and Velcoro start investigating and begin to take measure of each other while discussing vaping and robot fellatio. Bezzerides grills Mayor Chessani about Casper’s known associates while Velcoro plays along but ultimately cuts things short when her arrows start getting closer to the mark.

The task force is headquartered in what appears to be an airplane hangar where W. Earl Brown’s Teague Dixon is trying to help Woodrugh understand why he was so really so upset while getting hit on by a guy at the bank. Velcoro shows a glimpse of some real Rockford instincts pointing out that Casper’s regular bank withdrawals coincide with blank days on his calendar but he can’t stay to follow up as he has to meet up with his son to give him a new pair of sneakers.

I am always happy to see Abigail Spencer, who has had recurring roles on Mad Men and Suits and was stunning in Rectify, and I hope she gets more screen time as Alicia Brune, Velcoro’s ex. She is not happy with the way he brass-knuckled down on the father of Chad’s classmate’s father over the stolen shoes. Sole custody is the only solution that Alicia can find to keep Chad from Velcoro’s lack of decency and he responds by threatening to burn the city to the ground but the threat of a paternity test quickly backs him down.

Semyon comes to the aid of a man on the receiving end of a bump and beatdown under the freeway and he glibly lets the man know that he must have done something to piss someone off like writing a book on Vinci sweatshops. Vaughn gets the needle past 9 o’clock in this scene.

I mentioned James Ellroy earlier and there is no moment where the the similarities to the LA Quartet ring more true than when Bezzerides and Velcoro pay a visit to Casper’s botoxed psychiatrist played by Rick Springfield. As they walk through the clinic we see patients recovering from plastic surgery and I can only imagine they are working girls being cut to look like Veronica Lake. After putting up some token resistance about doctor patient confidentiality, Springfield gives up some details of Casper’s treatment. He had a weakness for young prostitutes but was making progress at the time of his death.

“There are kinds of secrets in the world all kinds of truth,” says the doctor as he makes the connection between Bezzerides and her father’s work with the Good People. Bezzerides wants nothing to do with talking about the past. Velcoro has no such reluctance as he basically fesses up to killing the man who raped his wife and being in the back pocket of Semyon as a result along with his assorted bad habits. Bezzerides does not like to distinguish between good and bad habits which seems like a fine time for Velcoro to ask about her knives.

“Fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands. Man of any size lays hands on me he is gonna bleed out in under a minute.”

Velcoro reveals that the reason they have been thrown together to investigate this crime is to fail but he won’t explicitly tell her exactly how compromised he is. Meanwhile Woodrugh and his butterfly-loving girlfriend break-up over a TMZ piece about his alleged blowjob shakedown from the previous episode. He heads downtown to smoke cigarettes and drink straight from the bottle while watching male hustlers get in and out of cars.

Semyon finds Casper’s fuckpad (another Ellroy trope) and points Velcoro in that direction while dangling a police captaincy in front of him but it holds no interest. Semyon reminds him that there are not many options for him other than a life in prison or doing what he is told to do.

“Everybody’s got the one option, you want it bad enough.”

My life has led me in a non-traditional job direction and I rarely regret that except when there are watercooler moments on television like the closing scene from this episode. Velcoro follows Semyon’s lead which is the where the murder clearly took place, only to get shotgunned twice — the second time point blank to the torso — by a man in a bird mask.

We have already seen the evidence of what a shotgun at this range can do to a man’s pelvis and it is hard to imagine how he can survive. Farrell certainly does not appear in the trailer for next week’s episode but we do hear someone discussing the crime in the context of “one of my detectives gets shot” and not in the context of “killed” so maybe there was a rock salt load in the shotgun or Velcoro was wearing a vest. Either way, I will be back next week, hand on the Vaughn-dial, to recap.

ComiXology summary:
Guest-starring the FF and Spider-Man! A cosmic force is tearing apart New York, and targeting X-23, Sue Richards, and Spider-Man along the way. What strange connections do these three heroes share, and is it the key to saving the city and the world?

My wife is an intermittently glorious person. She fell asleep in X-Men: Days of Future Past… But at least she deigned to watch it with us. She stayed up for the entirety of Guardians of the Galaxy, at least, and was willing to discuss which Flores family member was which Guardian (despite other disputes we all agreed that Clark = Rocket).

Early on when we were dating I bought her a Brian Michael Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man trade for a Christmas present. “You said you liked the art!” I said, indicating that I had been paying attention to something she had said. Rather than being grateful for the expression of a skill that would dull over time, it turns out that she had just been making conversation during one of the interminable treks to the comic book store that she endured on my arm. This did not end up one of the best Christmas presents she had ever received.

Writes a hell of a True Detective recap, though 🙂

But years later, overhearing some nerd-conversation about Wolverine, she interrupted, “Oh! I like that one!”

I raised an eyebrow.

Why?

“He’s so handsome!”

In her mind “Wolverine” is a six-foot-two, manscaped Australian Broadway star.

Not, you know, a five-three hirsute Canadian animal-samurai.

It’s not her fault. She saw X2 in the theater with me!

Ask any X-fan in 2015 to conjure a mental image of Wolverine and they are likely to pick a similar path to my better half. Wolverine is no longer small and squat. He loses a bit of his maniac underdog quality; we lose quite a bit of scale.

I am a sucker for scale.

We’ve had some really cool posts here on Fetchland over the first couple of weeks (I’m looking at you, Kitchen Table Gaming video), but my favorite thing so far is still the Jurassic World comparison chart I did in response to one of bdm’s “who’d win” questions:

Why?

Scale.

Ultimately I think that is the main reason I like this X-23 cover by Kalman Andrasofszky cover so much… X-23 is just so much smaller than the Thing.

We think of any and all superheroes — especially combat-oriented ones like the daughter of Wolverine — to be physically invincible in some general sense. Fast, strong, tough, skilled, merciless… We lose the ability to differentiate in some morass of “well [s]he could kick _my_ ass”. Perhaps its fair insofar that Peter Parker could either out-box a normal man with Spider-Fu or break him with super strength; that Reed Richards could either deck one of us mere mortals from across the room or surround and suffocate with that body that flows like elemental water… And those are the geniuses! It is only when we pair some juggernaut against another that differentiation becomes interesting. Well maybe X-23 couldn’t really beat the Hulk, we might start… But she’s probably tough enough mentally to stand up to him.

I like scale differentiation because it is one of the few things that puts superhuman or de facto superhuman feats of violence into context. A “master swordsman” of impeccable deadliness from George R.R. Martin’s universe is still probably going to suffer in a one-on-one confrontation with a bear. Imagine the scale difference between a bear and one of Dany’s baby dragons. Now a baby dragon and a full-grown wurm of Middle Earth; finally a Smaug and a kaiju from Godzilla or Pacific Rim.

We suspend our disbelief to an unreal degree every time Daredevil knocks out a hallway full of gangster toughs. We nod in the faith that he will prevail against whatever threat the writers put against him. An Avenger, we simply accept his billy club would defend the entire seaboard from one of the aforementioned kaiju, if need be.

X-23, who in other contexts just falls into a general bucket of “she could kick my ass or any living, real, human” (a la Daredevil) looks positively miniscule against Ben Grimm.

I mean she is giving him a badass look, and I have no doubts that if push came to shove she would dive in with both feet (kung-fu kicking, no doubt) but the idea that at her weight she could do anything to move — let alone injure — that rocky mass seems laughable. I am not convinced that her claws could meaningfully penetrate his stone armor (even if she somehow mustered sufficient force behind a blow).

That’s the gift of Andrasofszky’s cover: a real, more-or-less good faith, comparison between two uber powerful combat-oriented superheroes. No matter whose name is sitting in the upper-left, I have little doubt of who would win, push comes to shove, claw comes to cosmically-irradiated dinosaur hide. This is a rare gift, and much appreciated experience.

The only thing that is weird to me is that they used Andrasofszky at all. Phil Noto is the interior artist of this issue of X-23; besides being a generally awesome artist, Noto is himself used to shine up other artists’ books with his inventively laid out and colorful colors. No complaint, really (like I said I love this one for the almost brutal honesty of the scale depiction), just a little puzzled.

LOVE
MIKE

Top Level Podcast Summary:
Patrick Chapin and Michael J Flores discuss the exciting new Nissa, Vastwood Seer (Nissa, Sage Animist) and other Magic Origins cards in this Magic podcast.

I swear I didn’t know that Knight of the White Orchid was in Magic Origins 24 hours ago. Or more like 72 hours ago, based on when we recorded this week’s episode of Top Level Podcast.

But there we have it in all its two-drop glory: Knight of the White Orchid in Magic Origins.

Knight of the White Orchid and I have a bit of a special history. You see, I get stuff like this all the time:

@fivewithflores @Top8Games I'm not sure if she's officially spoiled yet, but prepare yourself for some Wayfinding/Borderland Ranging

— hamiltonianurst (@hamiltonianurst) June 17, 2015

God bless Brendan Hurst. This is a guy who came out of semi-retirement recently, based on the love of absurdly costed Dragons to win a PPTQ with my Five-Color Blue Dragons deck. He is also the guy who made the Mike Flores soundboard. Love his tweets, all of it.

But even Brendan pegged me with his comments on Nissa as “the Borderland Rnger guy”. I guess I’ve been the Borderland Ranger guy since before there were Borderland Rangers (previously they were Civic Wayfinders). When Pilgrim’s Eye came out (bdm) bet me on the Top 8 Magic podcast that I was going to be the Pilgrim’s Eye guy. I said it would never happen… and we all know how that turned out, ultimately. As I detail in this week’s Top Level Podcast… I never meant to be the Borderland Ranger guy!

(Go to about 2:25 to hear more; via Top Level Podcast)

… I actually just wanted to be the Knight of the White Orchid guy.

Not only did I want to be the Knight of the White Orchid guy, our puppeteering overlords in Renton, WA wanted me to be the Knight of the White Orchid guy! They even entrusted me with the preview!

The stars seemed to be aligning. I was supposed to be the Knight of the White Orchid guy. Knight of the White Orchid was “only” an effcient two drop, but it was beautifully synergistic with one of the then-Standard’s big bombs: Reveillark. My old Cabal Rogue and Righteous Babe teammate (and present Team Ultra PRO teammate) Brian Kowal was already synergizing Knight of the White Orchid and Reveillark and kicking butt with them together. Man oh man these cards seemed like they should go together like peanut butter and jelly… Scratch that: Peanut butter and chocolate.

With its ability to return creatures with power two or less to play, Reveillark made for great synergy with Knight of the White Orchid.

Knight of the White Orchid made me positively not-unhappy to go second. I spent many first turns setting myself up with Fieldmist Borderpost, even on the play.

But ultimately, we just didn’t work out. You know how one day Jennifer Garner is on the red carpet “best dressed couples” list with husband Scott Foley… And then five minutes later she is married to Ben Affleck? Wasn’t he just married to JLo? you are asking yourself. Me and Knight of the White Orchid… We just didn’t work out. I could never get it to give me a two for one. I resorted to hitting the opponent’s guys with Path to Exile just to stay even. Then when I got my Reveillark killed, half the time my re-bought Knights didn’t even dig for Plains. I was a worthwhile person (I hope); Knight of the White Orchid a solid 2/2 for WW in a long line of 2/2s for WW… But together we weren’t peanut butter and chocolate at all. We were more like peanut butter and bananas. Bananas!

I still wanted my 2/2s and land drops. I needed to get up to five or six, remember! And Reveillark wasn’t going anywhere (except the graveyard, where it belonged). Civic Wayfinder cost me one more mana, but unlike Knight of the White Orchid, always got there for me. I discovered new synergies with the two, and started returning the nominally naught-power Doran, the Siege Tower to the battlefield… In the same decks that I mustered the UUU for Cryptic Command.

Guess who has less than two power (but hits like it has five)?

“You want basic Island? I can get you basic Island! You want to play one Swamp? It’s yours. I know I’m not the hero you want, baby,” whispered Civic Wayfinder in my ear. “But I’m the hero you have.”

Rotations happen, as they do. Civic Wayfinder traveled West to the Undying Lands (as Elves do). But it passing didn’t leave me bereft for long: Borderland Ranger took its place immediately in the then-Core Set; and just in time to block an incoming Bloodbraid Elf without a loss of card advantage. It’s been a while. And we finally have the most exciting Core Set ever in Magic Origins.

In Magic Origins we have a kind of Borderland Ranger — really a non-Legenday Civic Wayfinder — that can only get Forests. I’ve been wondering if they would give us a more traditional look at Civic Wayfinder; it turns out Magic Origins is giving the one before the one we think of as coming first.

Maybe this time around?

LOVE
MIKE

[For Banshee’s “The Rave” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

Amazon Summary:
The Rave. An underling of Kai Proctor decides to hold a rave, selling homemade E pills to Banshee youth–including Carrie’s daughter. Catching wind of the plan, Lucas and his team orchestrate a raid, but the effects of a tainted batch of pills leads to trouble.

Welcome back to our recap / Power Rankings mashup of the made-for-Cinemax celebration of sex, violence, and authority that is Banshee. In case you missed last week’s first recap, you can check it out here or explore any and all things Banshee on Fetchland.

At the time of this writing I’ve actually seen nine of the ten first season episodes of Banshee. I wanted to get a little context and perspective before jumping into tv recaps with both feet. But my reaction having seen most of them is the same as the initial reaction I had watching “The Rave” the first time last week… I don’t understand how they ran this as the second episode of the first season. The first episode was like the surface of the sun: a bazillion nuclear explosions all detonating simultaneously, every single second. Forget about how tv pilots work in general (introduction of all the main characters, the setting, the conflicts)… It set our expectations with an over-the-top car chase that would have been perfectly satisfying in a summer action flick: Not something you see on television.

“The Rave” was a precipitous letdown by comparison. The scale of the conflict essentially deflated, and characters who were doing super cool things one episode earlier, um, suddenly weren’t.

I actually don’t mean this to be a negative, or at least not too negative. Even a show with all hits has a worst episode… I just don’t know why, coming off of that great pilot, you would position your worst episode second. If you’re a new viewer don’t get too down: Banshee bounces back quickly.

Power Rankings for “The Rave”:

III. Preacher

Up!
Previous Ranking: N/A
Previous Best Ranking: N/A

Wow this dog. Just wow. For a “character” with so little screen time, Preacher really made an impression. The slice-and-dice setup by Kai and the yum yum rapport with this beast would make the famous hunting pair Drizzt Do’Urden and Guenhwyvar positively jelly.

II. Hood

Neutral
Previous Ranking: 2
Previous Best Ranking: 2

While clashing with Brock might have been ill-advised, the de facto alliance made with Hopewell over the rescue of Deva more than makes up for it. Plus, Hood cashed in on his usual trifecta of [anonymous] sex, rave-ravaging violence, and pilfered police authority through the second episode.

I. Kai

Neutral
Previous Ranking: 1
Previous Best Ranking: 1

Kai moved with seemingly impossible speed in his final encounter with Hanson. “Sixty seconds”? Jeez. You really get the feeling that, between how quickly he lopped a guy’s finger off, tossed it to calibrate a taste in his ravenous murder-mutt, and had him out the door that this is not the first time Kai has dealt thusly with an out-of-line employee. Alongside the episode’s post-credits scene at the meat packing plant… You’ve really got to wonder what kind of wares Proctor is packing / purveying at the meat factory.

Banshee Biggest Loser: Hanson

Ah fiction: The Venn diagram overlap of “greedy” and “stupid” crooks just never fails, does it?

LOVE
MIKE