TV

How is Lady Pole?

Alive.

Having been resurrected by Mr Norrell last week she's happy and light on her feet. Ready to dance in fact. 

This remarkable accomplishment from Mr Norrell has given him the connections to turn his talents to thwarting the dastardly Napoleon. The magic starts to get BIG. We have thousands of conjured ships blockading French ports. The British Government is delighted. Talk turns to returning dead politicians and war heroes from the grave. Decomposition could be a factor so we don't get to see Zombie Nelson!

Welcome to an alternative history.

It's 19th century England, but not the one we're familiar with. 

There used to be magic, but it is now a non-existent curio, studied by theoretical magicians, not a single actual user has been found for 300 years. Claiming to be able to perform magic is strictly the province of charlatans.

Amateur magician John Segundus can't do magic either. His attempts fail, his peers at the local club deride his efforts. No gentleman would lower himself to even try.

Until Mr Norrell. 

Viruses that kill off people above a certain age are not a new idea in the realms of science fiction and genre television. You only have to look to long running series such as Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek and Deep Space Nine for examples of individual episodes and then there's full series such as The Tribe and Jeremiah that address the concept. But, with most of these series being at least over ten year's old, it was about time for someone to buff the dust off this trope and give it another try.

Endgame.

End of plot, end of season, end of Peggy?

We'll come back to that point in a little while.

This episode begins with the gruesome discovery of the effect of one of Stark's inventions, and what it does to one of the SSR boys. 

Now that it has been tested with sufficiently eye-gouging results, Ivchenko - sorry, Fennhoff and Dottie put their plan into action. Several people die as a result. Seems to be a theme this. 

And after all of the chasing and hiding...

Let's play find the lady. 

In fact let's play two versions.

One is straightforward. 

Find Dottie Underwood before she does something horrible. 

The other is more complex. 

The SSR boys play find out what their lady Agent has been doing. This involves interrogation by Dooley, Thompson and Sousa. All three take different approaches, but not the ones you might expect. Souza is bad cop, Thompson the mediator, and Dooley is downright complimentary.

As usual Peggy tears a strip off them. This time during her answers while they are interrogating her!

We pick up exactly where the previous episode left us, with Ser Jorah bundling a captive Tyrion into a boat.

Cut quickly to another boat. This one containing Jaime and Bronn. Jaime has a brief, whistful moment as they pass the kingdom of Tarth and he remembers his carefree days of frolicking in the woods with Lady Brienne. Bronn is tactful as always as he asks Jaime to pass on his regards to Tyrion next time he sees him, Jaime's response does not bode well for Tyrion's longevity.

And so, the 'Wax on, Wax off' begins: Arya learns how to sweep a floor.

Dear lord. Not another wedding. Hopefully it's third time lucky for Margaery as she and Tommen tie the knot. The prophecy from episode one starts to unfold as Margaery tries to package Cersei off to Casterley Rock through a not so subtle manipulation of Tommen.

From what I've been led to believe, this is where Arya's story starts to get very interesting. She arrives in Braavos full of hope in search of the Changy Face Man from season 1 whose name I appear to have temporarily misplaced. Now, watching this next scene, I was struggling to place something else I'd seen fairly recently that involved a girl going up to a temple for training and sitting on the doorstep until they agreed to take her in. I couldn't for the life of me remember what what it was until Emma dragged it out from the back of her subconscious.