I did it, guys. I watched the first episode of My Lady Pain Jane. And I did it for you. So be grateful.
ALL RIGHT LET’S GET THIS SHIT STAAAAARTED
The episode begins with a recap of the historical events that the series is based on, more or less as they actually occurred, but with some editorializing that gives away what the tone of this show is going to be:
- Jane Grey is described as being a “pain in the ass.” Why? She didn’t get along well with her parents, but everyone else in the noblesphere really liked her and seemed to enjoy having her around. She was popular, that’s why it was thought she’d be a good substitute in lieu of Mary or Elizabeth.
- They say she was married to Guildford Dudley “without her consent”. There is ZERO evidence of this. By all accounts, they seem to have been pretty happily married, and the only really big argument they ever had was over whether he was going to be king after she was crowned—she thought this was inappropriate without an act of Parliament and named him Duke of Clarence instead.
- “History has remembered her as the ultimate damsel in distress.” Uh… have they? Does having a sad story make you a damsel in distress? I mean, it’s not exactly like any men swooped in to rescue her, or like that was ever even an option. But as the narrator says, FUCK THAT
With the necessary backstory out of the way, the show begins in earnest and we meet our heroine, Jane. Remember how I said I was going to be complaining about this being different than the book? Yeah, it’s already started. In the book, our Hermione Granger-wannabe heroine is introduced to us as she is ignoring her mother’s demands and instead has her nose in a book, The Unabridged History of the Beet in England: Volume Five. Well that’s too G-rated, okay? We gotta get them Bridgerton views.
So instead, our book-savvy and street-savvy heroine is using her wisdom to concoct a POTION TO CURE A RATHER DISGUSTING STD that her slutty maid/bestie has contracted after shagging a bloke with pustules on his ding-dong. She advises her friend that she can’t bump uglies for at least two weeks. Slutty maid is INDIGNATED! You can’t expect her to abstain for TWO WEEKS!!
This is how the AIDS epidemic happened, kids.
Guys, I have watched one minute and 43 seconds of this show, I’ve paused it twice and spent 20 minutes yelling about it, how am I ever supposed to get through eight episodes—
I’m sorry, I just can’t get over the fact that in the book this girl was so sheltered that she referred to marital relations as a “very special hug” and in the first TWO MINUTES of the episode she’s giving her friend a full gynecological examination complete with medieval forceps, and the show is making us watch that. BUT while her head is shoved up her friend’s skirt, we are informed that Jane herself is still virginal—but she’s not saving herself for marriage. She’s saving herself for HERSELF.
Yasss kween slay, go off girl
She’s going to be the real Hermione Granger and support herself with her book smarts, k? Her dream is to write the first book of herbology the world has ever seen, and become a rich and famous author. Ah, okay! So she’s going to WRITE The Unabridged History of the Beet in England: Volume Five.
This genital-laden exposition piece is interrupted when Jane is informed that the Duke of Leicester is arriving. Giving even less of a damn about history than the book did, I guess Jane’s father, Henry Grey (executed 1554, i.e. a year after the events of this show, for his involvement in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s attempted coup), is dead. And because of the patriarchy, all the wimmens of his family are reliant on the charity of Grey’s uncle, the Duke of Leicester, an ancient man with liver spots and one tooth in his head.
Okay, let me explain this in case you’re not familiar with this period of history. There are like 15 different ways this is an absolute disaster, so, with bullet points:
- There is no Duchy of Leicester; there is however an EARLDOM of Leicester.
- At this time, though, there was no Earl of Leicester because the last one had become King Henry IV in 1399, 150 years before this takes place
- I know you’re thinking you’ve heard the name Leicester relating to this time period, and you are correct because you’re thinking about Queen Elizabeth I’s boy toy. She created him Earl of Leicester in 1569. There was no one with that title between 1399 and 1569
- He was definitely not an ancient man with one tooth in his head at this stage
- In fact he was only 21 years old
- And also
- Burying the lede here
- He’s the brother of the guy who’s Jane’s love interest in this show
- So, in case all of this is unclear, he’s definitely NOT Jane’s great-uncle
So needless to say, when I heard “the Duke of Leicester is coming” and instead of it being one of the Dudleys, fucking Count Olaf (or, as another Glib suggested, Miracle Max, but the evil Miracle Max—Cursebinder Max) rolls up, I may have been completely and utterly a little bit dumbfounded.
Count Olaf informs us that there was traffic on the road because they were hanging Ethians. Jane’s sadist* little sister says burning would be a more efficient execution method. Would it, though? I’m thinking a guillotine conga line might be quickest. Count Olaf tells Jane that she’d be prettier if she smiled. Jane grimaces at him. Feminists around the world erupt into applause.
* no, really, as the episode goes on, this girl is actually disturbed
Olaf props his gout-ridden foot up on the table and treats us to a closeup of the flies buzzing around his pustuled toes. There is a surprising amount of pustules in this show already! Jane suggests the Power of Herbology. Olaf tells her that women have no business reading, a completely shocking and unexpected take out of a show like this. He also tells us that he didn’t allow his many wives who all died in childbirth bearing the gargantuan fruit of his loins to own any books. Wow, I can’t believe it. Stunning.
But gout and books are not the point of this meeting. Because he comes bearing news! He has arranged a marriage for Jane!
How do you think she’s going to react, guys?
Actually, her reaction did surprise me, because I didn’t think, four minutes and 36 seconds into the first episode, that she was going to snap, jump to her feet, and start screaming at the Duke—actual screaming with her voice breaking—that he’s a sexist misogynist asshole who’s wrong to tell women to smile or imply that they need a man to avoid a wretched existence, and that he’s a foul loathsome evil little cockroach. She also calls her mom a mercenary bitch and tries to punch her.
You expect them to build up to this kind of shit! True Feminist Hermione Granger took three movies before she started wearing jeans and punching Malfoys. But I guess times have changed now, we don’t have time to do any building up. We’re dealing with TikTok attention spans here.
I honestly didn’t know how the show was going to recover from this. I mean, she went OFF. She tried to hit her mom! But it was like nothing even happened! Nobody really reacted to her screaming fit other than her mom just sending her to her room, or to the fist fight other than just “well you’re getting married so tough shit.” I guess they’re used to Jane just going full-throttle feminist lunatic to the extent that it’s not even worth remarking on.
So, Jane must be a fun person to be around on a day-to-day basis.
Anyway, as the narrator informs us, “there comes a time in every person’s life when they can’t put up with their mother’s bullshit anymore.” Feminist! So Jane decides to run away. But she can’t go alone, she needs her slutty maid/bestie to go with her. Just one problem, though—Jane’s slutty maid is currently occupied, as the hot stable boy is busy enjoying her taco bar.
She… she had pustules?? On that?? She was supposed to not let anyone touch it for two weeks?? So uhhhhh I got bad news for the hot stable boy
Jane convinces slutty maid to run away with her. They make their faces get really close and I think for a minute they’re going to kiss, then get confused because aren’t they both straight? Well, they don’t kiss, but don’t rule anything out—so far, two pop songs have played and both of them have been by notorious lesbian bands, so I find myself questioning whether the Jane/Guildford romance from the book is actually going to happen in this show.
Jane and slutty maid don’t make it very far, though. For one thing, Jane moronically decided for them to leave just before dawn, you know, when everyone’s going to be waking up and it’s going to be light outside so people can see you running away. Not that it matters, since her mom sicced the fucking hounds on them? Her mom JUST finished talking about how they’re penniless (??) because Jane’s ahistorically dead father left them nothing (??) and Leicester was probably going to get sick of financially supporting them (because that’s something that nobility with dependents were allowed to do in this period of history. Just. Stop paying for their dependents because they’re sick of it. Noblesse oblige be damned!), so where’d they get the money for all these hounds and hunters to just be on her heels at the crack of dawn?
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS
Anyway, Jane’s mom, who is riding a horse astride! in this “patriarchal” society because feminists don’t know what that word means or how it works, apprehends them and threatens to have the slutty maid executed as punishment. Slutty maid is like “nah” and yeets herself into bird form. She’s an Ethian!
Note: there was a pronunciation guide on page two of the book that told you how to pronounce Ethian. The show is not pronouncing it that way. Because you can’t expect the barest MINIMUM—
So, as a reminder from my previous post explaining the premise of this stupid series, there are Noble Good Shapeshifters called Ethians and Bad Mean Anti-Shapeshifters called Verities. The show seems to have completely abandoned the paper-thin premise from the book that these are Protestants and Catholics. In the book, since the real Jane Grey’s family was Protestant, her family was pro-Ethian and so were all the people who were Protestant IRL, such as Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, their various noble supporters, etc. But in this show it’s just… Ethians are witches? So burn the witch? Or, actually, dunk them in water until they either transform (so you can hang/burn them) or drown, in which case they weren’t actually an Ethian but oops oh well?
So Jane’s family are super pureblood Verities goddammit, and thus the slutty maid turning into a hawk before their very eyes is LIFE-ALTERING because harboring an Ethian is illegal, and now previously racist Jane Grey is reevaluating her take on “witches are bad” because she was friends with a slutty witch and that makes things different.
So, back to square one. Jane’s mom goes to London in this weird little gondola. (The boat kind, not the Ferris wheel kind.) Is that a normal way of getting to London? Jane tags along after her in a second gondola that was just waiting in the wings for “follow that barge.” They arrive at Lord Dudley’s manor and Jane announces that she doesn’t want to marry his son. Lord Dudley says, “Nobody cares what you want.” Jane acts SHOCKED by this reaction. How can she possibly be shocked by this? She’s, what, seventeen years old and has apparently been having full-blown feminist tantrums on the daily the entire time, and everyone has been completely ignoring her the whole while, yet she continues to be stunned and wounded by being told “no1curr, Jane”
BRIGHTEST WITCH OF HER AGE
Jane tries to run away again and comes across some ponce in a pink Prince Phillip costume. He’s taunting the local ragamuffins. One of said ragamuffins calls him a fuckface. This book was for twelve-year-olds. Jane learns that this is “Lord Dudley’s son,” and just assumes it’s Guildford even though thirty seconds ago Lord Dudley was blathering about his other sons, so she knows he has more than one, but this clever, overly-educated waman apparently has a deficit in deductive reasoning skills.
The narrator tells us that the thought of marrying this prat is inconfuckingceivable. This book was for twelve-year-olds.
Jane decides to appeal to her cousin the king to get out of this. Thus we are introduced to King Edward VI.
No, not that one.
There we go.
The narrator informs us that even though Edward is king, he has no power; the real power is held by the noblemen councilors who boss him around and write his royal proclamations for him. You know, councilors like Thomas Seymour, who was executed for treason in 1548, five years before this takes place. Seymour, a right racist, wants Edward to read an anti-Ethian proclamation. I believe Thomas Seymour, brother of Jane Seymour, Edward VI’s mother, was a Protestant. But we’re not doing that here, okay?
ALL RIGHT, QUESTIONS:
- Thomas Seymour is white
- Thomas Seymour is Edward VI’s mother’s brother
- So does that mean Henry VIII was the black one? It must, right?
- But Henry VIII was Jane’s uncle, so WHY IS JANE WHI—
Anyway, since Edward is a Good Guy, he won’t read the mean racist anti-Ethian proclamation. He also refuses to enforce his own laws about executing Ethians who enter Verity territory. So Seymour retaliates by getting The Chair. He then puts the king in The Chair to remind him who’s boss. Is this buck breaking?
Jane bursts in to the throne room, demands all the courtiers get out, and hauls Edward out into the garden in The Chair. She asks him to cancel the wedding. He says he can’t because he needs her to fill this role because fuck, guys, this made more sense in the book? I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M SAYING THIS AND YET I TOLD YOU, I KNEW I WAS GOING TO BE SAYING IT! Because the book at least tried to follow the basic notes of history, so the Guildford/Jane marriage was arranged because in order to protect the Protestant Ethian line of succession, Edward nullified the Third Succession Act of 1543 (which undid Henry’s previous proclamation that Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate because he didn’t like their moms anymore) in order to keep Catholic Verity Mary from getting the throne, and set Jane as his heir because she was Protestant Ethian. But how does this work in the show?? None of the Protestants are Ethians, everyone’s a Verity! So why are we trying to keep Mary, a Verity, from getting the throne?? And the show has been telling us that Jane’s whole-ass family is poor as churchmice, but they’re next in line for the throne?? Why does she specifically need to marry Guildford Dudley if he’s not publicly an Ethian! She could marry anyone! The whole POINT was to keep the Protestants Ethians in power, but you got rid of that so now everything is only happening Because I Said So!
Anyway, Edward is dying. He has the Affliction. Which I think is tuberculosis. And he doesn’t want his sisters to inherit OKAY WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?? ELIZABETH IS BLACK BUT MARY IS WHITE
**WHO WAS THE BLACK PARENT???**
Anyway, while he’s telling all this to Jane, Mary is just stalking his ass like a hunter—think less Artemis and more Elmer Fudd, though. Like, she’s not being one bit subtle about this. The second she tracks him down she’s like “BLACKBERRY PIE???” and starts cramming it down his throat.
I already told you guys he’s being poisoned, right? That’s from the book and they definitely have to have kept that plot point because the way they showed her cramming that pie down his throat, it was like a giant neon sign was hovering over her head pointing and flashing “MURDERER, MURDERER”
(You will of course note that the white sister is the murderer)
So, within 15 seconds of taking a bite of that blackberry pie, he goes into full anaphylactic shock. This is a normal symptom of tuberculosis. Jane the Brain starts ordering people to grab some herbs that are conveniently growing within feet of them. Yass kween slay. Her herbal epi-pen works, much to the visible and unsubtle dismay of Mary. Seymour sends Jane away lest she accidentally save Edward from death again. Once Jane’s out of the way, Seymour tries to shove the blackberry pie at Edward again, but this time his dog intervenes and attacks him and destroys the pie. I’m only mentioning this dog thing because it becomes an important plot point later. Now that I’ve pointed it out, I’m sure you can guess why.
Meanwhile, the carriage that is supposed to be bearing Jane home pops a wheel. Jane, feigning impatience, asks if she can borrow a horse and just go home on her own. They let her and of course she fucks directly off. THIS time for sure she’ll be able to escape! Nothing will interfere this time, nosireebob! So she rides the horse—astride!—straight into town and heads right for the tavern, as you do. And there is a fucking rager going on in there. There’s a 90s girl-rock band on the radio, men and women and men and men are making out, but don’t think I haven’t noticed the lack of women and women making out, Amazon. You know your target audience and it’s rotten women, rotten to the core.
A man and woman are arm wrestling. The woman wins, as is typical. The man accuses her of cheating and they get into a fist-fight. We’re about to get a full-on John Wayne-style bar brawl, but then this absolutely wretched looking guy intervenes. I mean, my god, the man looks like Ratty Healey. He’s wearing a gold chain! No, he’s wearing TWO! TWO GOLD CHAINS!!
Ladies and gentlemen, I can exclusively reveal that this is our leading man, Guildford Dudley.
Guildford, who in the book liked to be called G. because that’s period appropriate. But this fucker looks like a G. This wanker is absolutely someone who’d call himself G. So G. pulls a fucking Disney movie introduction to himself—he breaks up the fight, they try to shank him, but he’s two steps ahead of them—he’s stolen their shivs! Right out from under their noses! And then he throws them at the dartboard, thwack thwack, two bullseyes! And then, now that he’s gotten the whole tavern’s attention, he declares open mic night and begins to assault our ears with a poem.
Okay, episode done now? No, of course not, we must continue to suffer.
His poem is in LATIN and the actor cannot PRONOUNCE THESE WORDS. But Jane is smitten, okay? I mean her jaw is open and she’s drooling and she’s doing the licking her teeth thing. Like she is thirstier than Taylor Swift for this stringy rodent’s dick. So she gives him a pickup line and then he belches in her face.
Oh no he di’int
So she tells him that his Latin was shitty and now they’re fighting
But then the INQUISITION bursts in, because there are reports of ETHIANS here! G. tries to get Jane to escape with him, but eww don’t touch me! So they get to behold as the soldiers try to arrest some Ethian dude named Archer, who proceeds to turn into a grizzly bear and maul the fuck out of the soldiers. Jane and G. start to flee while the anticipated John Wayne-style bar brawl ensues, only half the participants turn into animals. Halfway out the door, Jane spots her slutty hawkmaid, so she won’t go with G. because chicks before dicks! This doesn’t go too well for Jane, though, because slutty hawkmaid hawks out and escapes, but I guess in this show Jane isn’t going to be turning into a ferret like she does in the book, so once AGAIN she gets captured by the guards and hauled back to her mother! Who ever could have seen this coming!
Back at the palace, Seymour tries to give Edward more poisoned food. The dog goes bananas over it again and wow I guess they are doing this plot point already! The dog turns into a naked girl before Edward’s very eyes. That’s right! She was never really a dog! She was an Ethian! Petunia, the erstwhile dog, is an Ethian who was trained by Edward’s great-grandmother, who is not dead but is in fact alive and feared that Edward did not have the affliction but was being poisoned, which I already told you. So we’re square now, except no explanation is given as to why Petunia is naked, because in the book they always are naked when they change, but in the show their clothes just transform with them, so there’s not really a reason why Petunia needed to still be naked other than…
EXPOSITION!!!! You see, this is the moment in which Edward, deeply sheltered Edward, has discovered that he’s gay. According to the narrator. Because, having never seen a naked lady before, being so sheltered and all that, he just assumed women… had penises? And if they don’t, that changes a lot for him. Because penises are very important to Edward. Is this buck breaking? Anyway, the point is, if naked women don’t include penises, he is not down with this whole heterosexual thing.
Edward, you regressive fool—women can have penises! How problematic of you to assume otherwise! Cancel this king immediately
This entire scene served no purpose other than to let us know that Edward is gay, because instead of leaving with Petunia to the safety of his great-grandmother’s hiding place, Edward decides to stick around and figure out who’s trying to murder him, as if it’s a mystery, and Petunia, who got dressed for about 5 seconds, returns to being a dog. Now cut to Princess Mary, notoriously pious Catholic Verity, just ravishing the shit out of Thomas Seymour. You know. The guy who historically raped Elizabeth when she was barely pubescent before getting executed five years before this show takes place. Seymour gets in an absolutely fantastic jab about Sicilians, the only good line in this entire show and, I’m calling it now, the only good line that’s GOING to come out of this show.
Meanwhile, Jane has been apprehended by her mother a third time in just one episode, and this time by God she’s going to marry Guildford Dudley, goddammit. Or else… the mom’s going to marry one of her sisters off to the Duke of Leicester? I guess we’re supposed to believe Jane would be upset by this threat. Up to this point I have seen no indication that Jane gives a shit about anyone but herself, but okay.
The wedding begins, the show does its damnedest to make us believe that the prat who was called a fuckface earlier is the groom-to-be, and of course the grand reveal happens when Jane reaches the altar and discovers that she is, in fact, marrying the object of her tavern lust, Ratty Healey G.! Oh, well, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, right? Except she already had this grand scheme worked out, she can’t let it go now, right? She starts coughing up fake blood (courtesy of the sadist sister who has a cottage industry making fake blood), people start screaming she’s got the Affliction, she fakely passes out, and there’s G. standing over her smirking because he knows she’s faking all this shit and he ain’t even mad about it.
And cut to credits. I think that last two seconds of the episode may have been the only time I smiled during this entire episode, because G. there, he’s got her figured out, and for the briefest of moments I had a faint glimmer of hope that maybe her feminist shenanigans will have met their match.
Don’t worry, though, I’m sure that the next episode is going to dash all that hope quite thoroughly!
Epic.
And I can’t wait until the next installment.
🙂
**WHO WAS THE BLACK PARENT???**
Or, as W C Fields put it, the Ubangi in the fuel supply.
One of the rules of woke entertainment when it comes to characters seems to be that there’s no such thing as genetics, or particular characteristics being specific to a time and place, and that race and appearance are just totally random, even within families.
Hell, Death and Other Details had a whole surprise reveal that the part black sister was due to an affair. They dropped it in the last half of the season as a shocking twist, the fact they hadn’t touched on it before that led me to assume it was some sort of open family thing that had been hashed out years ago. But no. The part black character is shocked and surprised to find out that she isn’t the biological daughter of the two white bread parents.
You mean I’m gonna stay this color?
Also a rule of present-day commercial advertising. I have to do a double-take when I see a commercial with only wypipo in it.
The race swapping in and of itself doesn’t particularly bother me provided the actor can put in a good performance. And that it’s understood that the character is white. I mean John Wayne played Genghis Khan and a Swedish guy played Charlie Chan. It’s all of the woke nonsense and preaching that comes with it that I can’t stand.
In some regards it feels like blind casting, and if it were blind casting I’d be fine with it. I really enjoyed the Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Brandy, for example. But because of the fact that it’s beating you over the head with the feminism and other wokism, it reeks of agenda casting, which is made more awkward because the cast is 90-95% white, so the random POCs stand out more
When they’re referencing actual historical figures, they should at least resemble the actual historical figures. At least they used makeup to try to make Wayne look Asian. It’s like making a film based on Shaka Zulu and the part of Shaka being played by Cameron Diaz. It’s just so ahistorical and ridiculous it takes you right out of the story.
When they’re referencing actual historical figures, they should at least resemble the actual historical figures.
It needs to be somewhat believable even when not swapping race or sex. How about casting Peter Dinklage as Henry VIII?
How about casting Peter Dinklage as Henry VIII?
Yes, equally absurd, since Henry VIII was over 6 feet tall and very athletic when young.
The writing, acting, plot development, story line, etc. all sound just absolutely putrid.
Your review, however, is wildly entertaining. Thanks for suffering through this and writing it up for our entertainment.
…how am I ever supposed to get through eight episodes
Remember when in the 1980s a season for a show was 23 episodes? It was even more earlier in TV history.
Now a generous season is 10-13 episodes.
Even the actual Woke Charmed was a long season, 20-something episodes, which is why I wound up not being able to keep up with the recaps.
British length series.
First season of Perry Mason was 39 episodes.
Subsequent seasons were a mellow 26-30 episodes.
Great review. Thank you for jumping on that grenade. You have my deepest respects.
Henry VIII wasn’t the father?
Clearly genetics are not a thing in this universe.
To be fair, it predates Gregor Mendel.
Henry is Edward, Mary and Elizabeth’s dad. Jane is their cousin. Everyone’s kind of related to each other, which means the random insertion of black characters in there with no rhyme or reason is confusing af
Jane got around?
She’s saving herself for HERSELF
As Whitney Houston famously sang, “Learning to sex yourself,/Itis the greatest sex of all.”
That was something.
I keep thinking, that can’t be real, MLW is just making it up for fun, because the writing sounds AWFUL.
I am enjoying reading about it, good luck keeping your sanity.
Clearly the only qualification to become a writer in Hollywood these days is to be a young miseducated clown who is all in on the far left woke agenda and checks off DEI boxes.
aka AWFL?
Exactly.
Just WFL. Streaming service writers are getting paid fuck and all.
EvilSheldon:
I figure they’re living off trust funds or their parent’s money. So still AWFL.
Are there any trans characters yet?
Not yet, and between that and the implication that Edward is gay because women don’t have penises, the trans lobby is probably seething
Shockingly, there won’t be a second season: ‘My Lady Jane’ Canceled By Amazon Prime
Shh, don’t spoil my big reveal for the last episode
Shit, sorry.
I was looking forward to crossover episodes with The Rings of Power …
I actually think Rings of Power is why it got canceled. Before the cancelation was announced, I looked to see if there was going to be more and TV Guide said the renewal was almost a sure thing because the viewership was higher than the first season of Bridgerton had been. So I was trying to figure out why it did get canceled, and all I can think is that it’s too expensive with the costumes and the special effects, and they’re on the hook for ROP so they have to cut costs
I don’t get it.
My first thought was, “Come on, they did not write it to be that stupid”.
Apparently they did and it doesn’t sound like the show got any smarter as it went.
MLW, if you streamed this, you’d blow the Critical Drinker and half of his buddies right off of YouTube. Not that I’m suggesting that this would be a good thing, but…you could. It’s that solid.
I agree.
Ditto. This is great stuff.
Shh, don’t spoil my big reveal for the last episode
Does it involve a meteor?
*crosses fingers*
Just for fun?, I went on twitter and searched My Lady Jane.
Apparently it is the greatest show ever.
A typical review:
I… I apparently have a different opinion on what makes a good show. I notice there’s nothing there about plot, character development, conflict, or anything of depth.
Oh… and about half of those items would probably fit the Magicians. No one gets married to a magical horse who’s also a hot man, but there is some centaur doctors who were revered healers and doctors. There is a whole plot point about intelligent animals hooking up with humans though…
That’s what counts as ‘witty’ these days, huh?
Rhymes with witty, anyway.
🫠
married to magical horse … getting banged sideways
They’ve confused English monarchy with Russian.
So did she get clearance for that Clarence?
What’s her vector, Victor?
Roger, Roger.
Huh?
You, uh, ever seen a grown man naked?
For the TikTok generation, a 4 minute and 36 second build up is like waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ.
Fantastically written.
My guess would have been eth as in ether and ian as in Ian McKellen. The fact that a pronunciation guide was included in the book makes me suspect it couldn’t be that straightforward.
It’s B-U-C-K-E-T, pronounced “Bouquet”!
Thank you for this 😂
Looking very good for 94, a year ago
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Patricia_Routledge_from_GylesDamesPalladium050323_%2824_of_74%29_%2852727635532%29.jpg
Lurv that show.
Needs more Æ and Þ. None of these Norman corrupted spellings for me!
The eth is ð, not þ.
In the book it actually was spelled Eðian and it was pronounced with the eth to rhyme with feather. With the spelling switched to Ethian, I guess everyone who saw it thought the same thing as Pat
About half way through I thought “the only way this could be better is with diversity in Middle Ages England.” King Edward the Dark immediately makes his entrance.
Yes! I expected no less. You will never see a white king in a TV series again.
Except for villains.
As it seems everyone in the 16th century was gay and/or trans It really is quite remarkable that there were any more humans.
When was the turkey baster invented?
A weird trend that began with the Millennials and has only picked up steam with the Zoomers is that fully-fledged, even middle aged fucking adults never stop identifying with the media from their youth. It’s not just nostalgia, it’s that they still relate to the material as they did when they were children. A friend of mine was dating a woman a few years ago. 38 years old at the time. Mid-career financial professional. Master’s degree. Pulling in close to $200,000 a year in a fashionable metro area. And uses a week of vacation time every year to travel to Harry Potter World in Orlando, spending thousands of dollars on toys and souvenirs, which we collects as if they were museum pieces. Re-reads the entire book series every year. That’s apparently the audience for this sort of thing.
Peter Pan was supposed to be a cautionary tale.
Disney adults are going to be the death of us all.
I dunno, I still relate to the material that I read when I was a tyke. But that was stuff like Kings of the High Frontier and Stranger in a Strange Land and Gibson’s Cyberspace trilogy.
There’s a difference, but I’m not quite ready to classify it…
Relating to and still appreciating something and putting it in a central position in your life (up to and including directly transposing characters of said media onto thrmselves , politicians, etc.) are two very different things.
There’s a difference, but I’m not quite ready to classify it…
This. It’s hard to put a finger on when it goes from all in good fun to weird.
And to think they made fun of comic book geeks for decades for doing something similar.
That’s so smurfy!
A weird trend that began with the Millennials and has only picked up steam with the Zoomers is that fully-fledged, even middle aged fucking adults never stop identifying with the media from their youth. It’s not just nostalgia, it’s that they still relate to the material as they did when they were children.
I don’t think that’s a new phenomenon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaB_G1WNT70
I did take my kids to Disney World last year to restart family vacations after not doing anything due to pandemic/being poor. I do like theme parks, but looking around at the people who go is very unsettling, including the land whales. Had a good time overall.
We did Colorado/RMNP this year. My 6 year old said she enjoyed it more than Disney, thank God.
I love (generic) amusement park rides but I was never a fan of anything Disney so thank god we couldn’t afford that shit anyway because I would have been pissed to have been dragged into that crapfest.
Every Regency romance heroine ever.
MLW is a worthy successor to TWoP.
I was just thinking about TWoP earlier this year, and found out that a bunch of them started a new site. Which they stopped updating about a week after I found out about it. I can’t be the only one who enjoys reading recaps of episodes I watched to see if I missed something, right?
Heck I used to read the recaps on shows I didn’t watch because the recaps were so damn funny. I think I got through the whole of The OC without every watching the show.
MLW, I love your review. I laughed.
That being said.
Jesus H. Christ.
What is it about the modern television writer that makes them completely incapable of writing fantasy, of world building? Do they have worms in their brains?
Larry Correia describes his Hollywood meetings.
https://monsterhunternation.com/2023/12/30/larry-in-la-la-land/
lol that’s great
OMG – Unfortunately, I get to watch CNBC all day at work. The ads are also part of the “charm”. My coworkers and I have discussed given the ads that the average viewer age has to be 60 plus. Reverse mortgages (thanks Tom Selleck), step through showers and baths and ED pills abound.
The ad that I’ve never seen before is one for DuckDuckGo. They actually nailed Google pretty well. They had a fake split screen with Google on one side and DuckDuckGo on the other. The Google side has a big camera pointing at what you are typing and all kinds of pop up ads along the side. It’s actually rather clever.
However, you know that CNBC’s demographics come into play when the explain how to access it. First, there is the obligatory QR code on the side of the TV. Followed by the logos for the Windows App Store, the Google Play Store, and Apple’s App Store. Because remembering a URL is just too darn difficult!
In the break room I saw JD Vance on this morning. Didn’t watch much, but they seemed to be agreeing with him.
It’s about time for the Jimmie Walker Medicare enrollment ads.
FUCK. NO.
(Those have been missing in action for a while thank God.)
It is basically the same on every channel I watch. And it’s not even all old-people TV… Comet, Comedy Central, TNT, SyFy – it’s all dick pills and Medicare.
This book was for twelve-year-olds.
I can’t wait to see what they can do with The Once and Future king.
Neph and others with similar musical tastes:
There is a Music Cruise from Miami to the Bahamas with the following lineup:
https://www.undergroundgaragecruise.com/
Next May… long weekend.
I’ll pass that along to the girlfriend. She’s also aware of the Salty Dog Cruise and a couple others that have popped up.
I must salute you for getting through what seems an absolute shit show.
My initial guess is this was pitched to NetFlix who declined because they are already drowning under a plague of over-financed woke shows, so it went to Amazon.
“…less Artemis and more Elmer Fudd, ”
I love it.
I have to say it is painful to try and follow. I just keep hearing “We wuzz Kangs!” in my head.
I dont know why.
Yeah, I couldn’t follow the plot at all and I’m OK with that.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nypd-commissioner-edward-caban-resigns/5777883/
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban resigns amid federal nightclub probe
The development comes days after News 4 reported the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation division had joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the inquiry
The walls are closing in.
Fantastic work, MLW. Very much enjoyed, looking forward to more.
People must love it when I yell at them. Why else would they keep doing stupid shit?
🙄
TW: slate
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/north-carolina-robert-kennedy-early-voting-trump-sabotage.html
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Sabotaged Early Voting in a Critical Swing State
The North Carolina Supreme Court tossed a grenade into the state’s election on Monday, violating both state and federal law to grant Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cynical, last-minute removal from the ballot. Its 4–3 decision will compel election administrators to destroy nearly 3 million already-printed ballots that featured Kennedy’s name and redesign 2,348 different ballot styles across the state to accommodate the eleventh-hour change. This complex process will significantly delay the distribution of new ballots—which will, in turn, unlawfully abridge early voting for everyone while jeopardizing the voting rights of service members overseas in clear contradiction of federal statute. It’s a nightmare for local election officials, who must now disregard the laws they’re sworn to uphold. And it’s an affront to North Carolinians at large, whose right to a fair, orderly election has been sabotaged by a lawless court and the candidate it so obviously favors.
NC is a prime target for rigging. In 2020, they were a state that stopped counting on election night. Still went for Trump, but reelected an unpopular Dem Governor after days of finding extra votes for him.
It’s what the NW and soon Idaho have become with the influx of Democrat refugees.
violating both state and federal law to grant
Robert F. Kennedy Jr</sBiden.’s cynical, last-minute removal from the ballotFixed
They’re mad they gotta redo all those fake CommaLa ballots.
Do you know what a pain in the ass that incinerator is? Ugh.
Funny, the whole reprinting ballots thing didn’t seem to matter to them back in 2002. And that time it was only a month out from the election. I wonder what’s different this time…
Things like “hole in one” insurance for sporting event giveaways are pretty common. In this case the coverage wasn’t even for an entire car. It’s for a two year lease or $5k which suggests that is the lease cost or likely the lease is even cheaper.
I can’t believe that that the idiotic car dealership didn’t decide to suck it up and just eat the $5k after the insurance company decided to do what insurance companies do. I’ve no idea if the insurer was clear on the “rules”, but just subrogate against them. But the dealership decided to to what dealerships do.
https://www.jconline.com/story/news/local/2024/09/10/rohrman-insurance-company-reverses-purdue-students-contest-lease-win/75157709007/
Naturally after the PR debacle suddenly the dealership became a lot more interested in resolving this.
Way to prove stereotypes correct, dickheads. I’m sure the lease cost is a drop in the bucket compared to what they still dump on increasingly worthless ads. Yet rather than eating it after the insurance denied, they tried to weasel out of it.
Exactly. Stereotypes exist for a reason.
As much as it pains me to say anything nice about Bloomington (East ’till you smell it, south ’till you step in it!), Curry slidin’ in there with a free 2-year lease was both a smart business play and a class act.
Go Boilers!
“A lot of us here at Curry Auto are season ticket holders for different sports at IU, so when we saw this we thought, for a kid in college, we wanted to make sure he had a good experience, even if it was at Purdue,” Curry said.
Bob ROHRman!
Imagine a sleazy used car salesman, and you’re probably 90% of the way there.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/09/12/will-ferrell-dressing-up-as-a-woman-for-laughs-is-something-i-wouldnt-choose-to-do-now/
Good grief. These people are insufferable.
Brutal. Biden and Harris greeted with silence from Firefighters. Trump walks in behind them and gets a standing o.
https://x.com/dom_lucre/status/1834289721800818912
NPR MSNBC spin: awed respect for Brandon and Kommiela, derisive cheers for Trumphitler.
Has anybody seen Pie recently?
Elderly Romanian woman used amber nugget worth over $1 million as a doorstop for decades
https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-03/elderly-romanian-woman-used-amber-nugget-worth-over-1-million-as-a-doorstop-for-decades.html
Work is stupid fucking busy lately, so I’m dragging this from the morning links.
“Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics,” Garland is expected to say,
We now break away from this press conference to go live to Florida, as CNN has exclusive coverage of the FBI raiding Mar A Lago.
Sweet Jesus you are a brave woman. I’m surprised your brain didn’t go into limp mode so as not to damage anything.
Looking forward to next week’s installment!