Hello Darkness Our Old Friend

This morning, after complications from pneumonia threw him into a four-day coma, Dr Rex Patch has died. 

Dr Patch was a close personal friend and advisor, and a bridge between the vanished writer Harry Hardiner and those of us who love to read and interpret his work. Dr Patch's best-known writings were critical and exploratory essays—the bulk of his Hardiner writings were collected up and used as source material for the first several editions of The Rosewire Companion, and his forthcoming collection of personal reflections will be published posthumously by Pinkum Press after what looks to be several years of poring through Dr Patch's intricate notes. 

I don't know how best to put it—we've lost a library, our wings have been clipped, the lights were turned off. Here at Pinkum Press, Dr Patch has had a constant presence both physical and intellectual. I type this, in fact, wearing a pendant around my neck which Dr Patch gave me when we reopened Pinkum Press—it is a small jade buddha on red thread. You can make out the buddha's smile. It makes me glad to think of all the times that Dr Patch smiled like that.

In selfish terms, I guess I always expected that my relationship with Dr Patch would lead me into some revelations of Harry Hardiner's whereabouts, or his ultimate fate. It seems silly in retrospect, but at the time, it was such a certainty I never bothered articulating it to myself or to him. That opportunity has passed, however, and all I can do to honor the man is continue my work.

With that in mind, I will upload today a PDF of the last work I ever put in front of Dr Patch—a fever dream of everything, a study of nothing, a revelation of a memory. His last words to me were about this document, which is rough and rushed and does not do linguistic justice to its ideas: he said, "I see now." And he smiled like a Buddha.

Rest in peace, Dr Patch. May angels sing you all the way up the ladder to your peace.

Wallreaders and Dr Patch Update

Good news, Wallreaders, Pinkum Press fans, Harry Hunters, and general rodonymatology fanatics! Dr Rex Patch, despite a couple of very scary days, has been moved out of the intensive care and will in all likelihood be coming home this week. He even had a few words for us:

 "Thank you to everyone who has sent their best wishes and prayers in the past week—it has not, altogether, been a pleasant experience, though the situation was ameliorated slightly by the unconsciousness. Generally, I am quite ready to return home and resume work on the Society of Algiers Hardiner Reader. At my request, David and the Pinkum Press crew will not release this week's Wallreaders game until I have been sent home—they don't smile on the use of computers here, and this is a David Silvester original that I'd quite like to be the first to solve! Plus, I'd like to catch up on Game of Thrones first. Thank you again for your supportive messages and your patience!"

If you can't tell, we're going to postpone this next game for a few more days—we're so grateful that Dr Patch is back in fighting form that we'd gladly put it off until next week, but he's just as anxious to tear into it as you are! So keep an eye out—and three cheers for Dr Patch for pulling through! 

Wallreaders Hiatus

This week we're taking a quick break from the Wallreaders Competition—we're very sad to say that on top of this weekend's tragedy, Dr Rex Patch is not recovering as well as doctors would like and has, as of last night, been admitted to the ICU. In light of his immense contributions to this code game, this site, Pinkum Press, Hardiner scholarship, and the gay community, we're going to instead offer some selected works for free. Go love each other—we'll keep you updated on Dr Patch's condition, and we'll be back next week.

Kiss Me, St Cloud

Love may be the most mysterious motivator in the universe. The mystery is not a question of the quality or value of the emotion, its fickleness, its seeming ubiquity. It's not the way it makes you feel, the way it will change you, the things it will make you do—anecdotally at least, the condition and action of love is well-documented. No: love is mysterious because of its origins, so apparently passive, and so immensely subtle that no amount of scientific doodling has yet produced a dating site which will allow you to upload GC/MS samples of your bodily fluids to ideally match pheromones with another. No document, refined over thousands of years, can teach you to inspire it in others. Love is effectively spontaneous, and it seems to act as its own fuel, burning until it has consumed itself. That's the mystery of love.

There is no such mystery with hate. We hate because something has been taken from us. 

This weekend's massacre is disgusting, horrifying, heartbreaking, and familiar in all the wrong ways—and the longer the investigation goes on, the more we'll realize that some of the truest tragedy was born out of factors that will be more familiar to the clubgoers than the shooter's Afghan-American family. We hate because something has been taken from us: and by all accounts, the shooter was sick and full of hate. What was taken from him?

We'll no doubt spend thousands of hours on TV talking about gun control (easy verdict and easier talking points), radical Islam and 'homegrown terror' (as though there is another type), and homophobia—but so far we've avoided what, to my gay little mind, is the purest and simplest explanation for the choice of target and timing and style of attack: the crisis, the absolute deadly crossroads, where being gay meets a cultural impossibility. In the shooter's case? That culture was Islam. But it could just as easily have been a Southern Baptist upbringing, or the AME, or any sort of secular conservative upbringing—or some more specific family dynamic where a son simply CANNOT BE GAY FOR ANY REASON. This shooting, from its first eaklings on the internet, has been connected to watching two gay men kiss in Miami. (First of all... had you been to Miami before?) You have a father saying, "No, it's impossible my son was gay. He was a terrorist. Why would he have shot gay people if he was gay?" Because, dad: you said "it's impossible my son was gay". It was a cultural impossibility, and yet, it was a part of his son that no amount of prayer, marriage, or violence could or should have expunged.

The knife's-edge dance between forbidden desire and filial duty (and what's going to get you to heaven) is maddening and injurious to even the healthiest, best-adjusted closeted gay man. But this shooter was not healthy, was not well-adjusted, and in wanting—needing—something that he could not have, he set himself up for the most American crime I can imagine: a man awash with opportunity but divested of the wherewithal to take healthy advantage of it is a man infected by hate, and that germen can, in conditions of deprivation and emotional turmoil, crystallize and spread until we are left what always happens when hatred hits critical mass. 

The parts of himself at war, a true jihad in the purest Muslim sense, which was not won by Western liberalism or even Islamic values—it was won by hate and despair, two nationless, godless, loveless forces which we will touch on in passing as we go on to squawk about assault rifles and what Muhammed thought of people whose hips like to touch hips with similar structural features. Yeah, obviously, we've got to have a wide-ranging conversation—a true conversation—after what has been so rapturously touted as the deadliest mass-shooting in American history: like we've been breathlessly waiting to see who Guinness will put in next year's book. And that conversation, without question, needs to result in actions. But those conversations and those actions should not be confined to policy: it is well past time that we as a nation confront what we perceive as the morality of homosexuality, and the pragmatics of its expression within families and cultures that don't traditionally conform to the mindset which allows it. 

I've said it before, and I must admit that the line comes straight from Dr Rex Patch in slightly modified form, but I hope never to have to say it again: it doesn't matter if gay people are legally allowed to be married if they can't invite their families to the wedding. I'll extend this here: it doesn't matter if "gay rights" are codified in the letter of our law if multiple extensive cultures simply turn a blind eye to (or worse, turn to aggressive 'therapy' for) same-sex attraction. There is no way to legislate morality, and no attempt should ever be made. Instead, religious and cultural leaders must, without fail, confront their biases and beliefs, and decide whether they want to create a world in which their congregants and adherants kill with impunity. Half measures are no measures. Love the gays or kill them. No qualifications. No rationale. It's not necessary. Get real, get right, get ready. Decide for yourself. But talk with everyone you can about it.

I choose love. I also choose to believe that an implacably vast majority of our nation will do the same. There is no Instructable for how to cherish your fellow human beings. But there is one for how to hate. We as a nation can do better to make certain that emotional and romantic needs are met, regardless of cultural background. It involves a nationwide ideological shift: something as subtle as love itself, and as powerful. That shift will never come while we can be diverted into reality TV like Celebrity POTUS. It's going to take commitment and sustained focus from all quarters. And no, this is not simply about gay people. Hell no. It's about the war between belief (secular and religious alike) and reality. Hatred comes in familiar pathways, ones we've all visited, ones that hopefully you readers have been able to mark on the maps and avoid for the future. We can't close all of those paths, but we can put roadblocks up for a lot of them. If we want to.

Want to.

Spaghetti Westerosi

Cold opens on Game of Thrones never seem to bode well for the characters they introduce. It's been a while—a good while—since a director decided to employ one on the HBO show, and much like the poor ranger in the very first episode, one of the major faces we meet will (not very much) later end up on the receiving end of some rather stark punishment.

Of course, the other face is one fans have been expecting back for months, scars, soulful eyes, and all.  

At this point, maybe it should go without saying that this post will deal with events from Season 6, Episode 7, "The Broken Man". It certainly does go without saying, and yet etiquette compels it nonetheless, that if you don't enjoy having those events spoiled in some form or another, just... just stop now.  

Because I'm telling you the Hound is back, Margaery is an expert fraud, and whoa law, Arya (maybe) got got. It was a far tighter episode than last week's, both thematically and technically, and more than a few moments made this episode stand out against the rest of the show like a bronze thumb.

Listen people: Winter is coming, but autumn in Westeros looks like a most promising season. One of the most striking elements of this episode was the use of light and color to soften shadows, rimlight characters' heads, and generally highlight the gentleness of the landscape over which armies ranged and communes bled. At times, the episode started to look like it was passed through an Instragram filter. Valencia maybe?

And with the trees changing color (and, I'm sure, the flocks of Dornish leafers coming to admire the foliage), we are met with a genetically satisfying shift in tone in the show—the petty storylines, the politics, are all still in play... and yet now they propel the plot about as much as Old Nan's stories did in Season One. No—now we're looking at human politics, and, well, environmental politics: vengeance, love, allegiance, family, hatred, obsession, madness... These are the dragons circling the narrative Wall, and, just like the introduction of the abject supernatural, their arrival was so gradual and natural that the beating of their wings may have been mistaken for wind. Character development—watching Arya move from tomboy to assassin to fugitive, or observing Sansa's tilt towards the underhanded—has benefited from a lengthy run, and we're collecting dividends.

No more so than in the case of the Hound. 

Yes, yes, we all knew he was coming back. Meribald in the books talks about him. His horse is outside the sept-monastery-tower that Brienne encounters. Yes yes yes yes, sure. But look how they did it! Guys! This past week's Game of Thrones was a Western of Eastwoodian dimensions! The brutal enforcer, world-weary and wary of his own past (but warier still of giving in wholly to the new peace which surrounds him), out on the frontier, helping settlers while remaining aloof, counselled by another former swordslinger with his own reprehensible past but a genuine (if imperfect) conversion to provide a hopeful model for our hero... is, despite his objections that he's done with that old life (and that he really doesn't care all too much for this new life, although he also doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave it), confronted by an outlaw band of no allegiance, one which most likely recognizes him from his mottled past, whose actions destroy his new peace and its adherent women and children, and eventually, once he is left no choice but to waste and mourn or just lay waste... he grabs his axe.

Perhaps most satisfying, the Western tropes scattered throughout the Hound's new storyline are mirrored throughout the episode—in 'Arya's' "I just got out and here they are, dragging me back in", in Jon and Davos and Sansa's renegotiated allegiances, in Margaery's signal to her grandmother, in Yara's whoring (and pep talks), in the swaggering showdown at Riverrun.... This episode may as well have been named "Once Upon a Time in Westeros". 

Allllright, pardner—we're getting closer to a Hound-Mountain throwdown, so let's stop reading a blog post and start hopping up and down on our heels for tonight's episode. And... DRAW!

Wallreaders Contest, Level Two

Another Wednesday, another cipher—and new opportunities for free plays and collections! Congratulations to winners from last week: it might have been a cinch, but you're the ones who cinched it. Ready to really get going?

Level One of the Wallreaders Contest was a pretty quick crack for those sharp quippy chaps, so if you haven't given it a shot yet, go see what you can do with it—it will help you get a leg up in this week's challenge! 

Okay, so you beat level one—but it was called "level one"...

This week contains Rex Patch's favorite puzzle of the month—and he's requested that I "name" this cipher a "Bon-pen", for reasons that are not immediately clear to me and that he, characteristically, refuses to elucidate. All I can tell you with any certainty is that he is simply tickled by that name—every time he used it at our last encounter was accompanied by spontaneous uproarious bellylaughter which startled the other customers at Golden Temple, yet passed from him to them in great contagious gouts... On even my flintiest days, I feel a deep affinity for Dr Patch and an awe of his his decades of experience and "felicitous attention" (as he calls it), and absolutely no mirth was necessary to convince me to accommodate him—but I'll admit the laughing helped.

It was good to see Dr Patch laugh his laugh those few weeks ago—and I know that's how he'd like us to picture him right now, instead of laid up in a gown and picline. The entire Pinkum Press family, past and present, is wishing him the speediest convalescence and, in the meantime, the flirtiest nurses.

This week's Wallreaders challenge—this "Bon-pen Cipher"—is for you, Dr Patch! Get well soon!

The Wallreaders Contest

It's here! Cryptologists and steganographers, enthusiasts of codes and ciphers, adepts of the hidden and caretakers for the covered-up—rejoice! This month marks the first Wallreaders Contest at Pinkum Press, and you shrewd participants will get the chance to crib nearly the entirety of our current catalogue for free! Of course, there's a little work to be done first...

We'll start with something easy and work our way deeper:

Can you beat level one?

In truth, this contest did not spring fully-formed out of a headache—for months now, before my novel The Furnace won the Tenth Book Prize, before Pinkum Press returned to business, before even I got to know author and scholar Rex Patch who helped to develop the concept for the contest, it's been one of my chiefest goals to honor the vanished author Harry Hardiner and the final mystery he left us: the enigmatic "MESHARE" left on his kitchen wall on the night of his disappearance. 

Hardiner's work is already coded, with stylistic veils tossed over some very deep and troubling veins of meaning: add to his Rosewire series the mysteries of his disappearance and the clues he seemed to leave us throughout his life and work, and you have a problem crafted for the online community of 2016. Yet... Which of you has ever put his or her mind to searching him out in earnest? Yes, I know, it's unlikely the man is alive. It's less likely the man ever intended to be found, living or not. Still, not to try to track him down—when we have detailed analyses of the position of the Night King's head in a shot of Game of Thrones, or entire websites devoted to Illuminati imagery in Beyonce videos... it has always felt insulting that Harry Hardiner has been allowed to fade into relative obscurity.

Harry Hardiner may be alive, he may be dead, and for all we know, he could have been abducted by aliens—but he is certainly not in the conversation these days. So, Wallreaders, this contest is dedicated to the writer's memory. 

Have fun with level one!

Game of Thones: An Apologia

There are no spoilers below that I can baldly identify, but this post is meant for readers who are caught up to Episode 6, "Blood of my Blood".

It first sent a ripple of doubt through you, then one of fear. One Sunday passed. Another. And no Game of Thrones recap in sight.

It occurred to me before I began that recaps and I are singularly at odds. The layout of a story is intriguing to me: but a recap suggests a linear transport back through the story, and if you want to go back Three-Eyed-Raven-style and live it again, there are far pithier hands already to the task (and a dozen or so online platforms to help you recreate each previous episode frame-by-frame by actually letting you go back and watch the episode over). David Silvester and linearity are not fast bedfellows. We had a thing in college and we keep in touch, but we don't get together now without a couple other people there. Recaps are not particularly pinkum of me, so without fanfare or adieu, I ditched them.

And yet, dear, GoT-addicted readers, you must not wail and gnash your teeth. Of COURSE I'm caught up! Of COURSE I want to talk all about Hodor, and storytelling in adaptation, and how the seamless evolution into the superfantastic is a perfect example of Harry Hardiner's Explosionism... But a recap is not, strictly speaking, the place for that kind of conversation. 

So in lieu of further recap posts, I will soon be posting other types of essays, analytical, speculative, dealing chiefly at first with Game of Thrones, but later branching off into other dramatic and literary works. There you are, readers—you're caught up on my thought processes. Do not despair: we've got a few more weeks left of a penultimate season, and there's plenty to write about before and after its finale!

Summer is for free things!

Next month, Pinkum Press throws its first annual Wallreaders Contest! Each week in June, a new set of puzzles will go out that will hook players up with coupon codes to free downloads from the Pinkum Press store.

Just to get the appetite up, though, here is a little gift for big spenders: all customers using the disguised coupon code below will receive 30% off all orders over $25. The writing's on the wall, readers—happy cracking!

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Game of Thrones, S6E2 "Home"

This post is for people who have seen season six, episode two of Game of Thrones, "Home". 

The premiere of Game of Thrones had me reluctantly disappointed—as I said last week, this is the writers' first chance to step wholly away from a George RR Martin book, and I am rooting for them to use screentime effectively and economically. Ar Ar might have cobbled together quite the work of civilization-scale intrigue, but sometimes he can take dozens of pages treading water through exposition. The HBO team has a phenomenal opportunity to burst forward through plot... especially since they've avowed not to pass seven seasons, and they've got two presumably massive tomes coming down the pipeline at them to adapt.

If the first episode engaged in a bit of ArArery, the second episode made it make a little more sense: in fact, there is a lot about the two episodes in sequence that makes them operate much more fluidly together than any two sequential episodes I can remember for a while. "The Red Woman" was Part One, and "Home" was Part Two. It's dorky as fuck to admit, but something that I might be looking forward to with perhaps more ardor than anything else? To see if "Oathbreaker" feels anything like Part Three, or another pearl on the strand.

A lot of what made "Home" so satisfying was in its schema: introduce a lot of these new threads that have outright redroomed a series that once almost felt like a period piece. Yes, the prologue included a snow zombie, but we were quickly able to forget that: the worlds of Westeros had memories and legends of magic, dragon bones, and five direwolves, but for the most part, we felt grounded in realism. Yet almost every scene in this episode reminded us that we have left the grounded world behind: Winter is coming, and it drags with it the horrors and wonders of the distant past—powers that we have no memory of controlling.

Let's look down the list at the backwards-talking dwarves peppered through "Home":

Bran and Max Von Sydow peer through roots into Bran's father's childhood.

A giant flicks a pesky archer into a pulp against the wall.

A populist cult cows the incestuous royal family while its reanimated monster cleanses the keep.

Fugitive Tyrion unchains dragons who seem to understand him.

Blind Arya will be welcomed back to the faceswapping temple.

Winterfell is now a place where babies can logically be fed to hounds.

The Salt Throne is up for grabs when a madman materializes in a storm.

And yes... the Red Woman finally did what we knew she would do, and pleased a man up from the dead.

Good lord of light. Whatever happened to the show where a horse horde felt exotic and far-fetched?

It says something for the confidence of this episode that the very first face we see is Max Motherfucking Von Sydow. That outright walking legend fits right in so far, and yes, gives plenty of gravity to a role that might best be defined as "old man stuck into a tree". We need it: and though we're not entirely certain why it feels so natural, we also need to meet Lyanna, a character so hidden from view that I think I called her Lysa last week, Ned and Benjen's sister and the Helen over which the war was fought that put Robert on the Iron Throne and drove the living Targaryan children across the Narrow Sea.

We meet an immensely significant character who has been dead for years, and to the HBO team's credit, it does not feel like a flashback. No, it's not quite as interactive as I was hoping it might be (though they had me fooled for a second!), but it is certainly immersive and immediate. What's best is, in this familiar setting, surrounded by familiar characters like Ned and pre-Hodor, Lyanna appearing could be appropriately mistaken for set-dressing for Bran's continuing character development—and sets the stage for another set of new characters in a less-familiar setting to enter into on the Iron Islands.

Bran's addiction to escaping from his own body is already a point of contention between the boy and the three-eyed raven: it's probably safe to assume that Bran will continue to endanger himself in order to warg and greensee, and with Meera's little scene outside the cave, it seems more than likely that she will have to take a major fall for him at least once. That little scene was another little subtextual cue: don't tune out: we're still in the world: we will be leaving this tree and stepping back out into danger before the end of this season.

Oh, Ser Robert Strong. Will you ever get a chance to fight your little brother again? If not, maybe the Faith Militant can convert Wun Wun to fight for them! The Lannisters' man is blue all over—we have very little idea how Maester Cly brought him back—seems very reminiscent of a certain Northern folk very fond of resurrection. Guess we'll have to wait for the Citadel to have any idea what might have gone on—Sam's got a lot of folks to meet, including a very interesting Sphinx that might have connections to a family we didn't see much of this week.

The Lannisters themselves seem to be on the verge of implosion: the more screentime the three remaining gold-hairs have, the more it feels as though they may become hell-bent on confronting the Faith, and there are very few situations that spring to mind which suggest a happy ending for Jamie and Cersei and Tommen. Still, it turns out Tommen does seem to benefit from a strong masculine force in his life competing with his mother's, er, tenacity. Even if he does go running to her... Dear Tommen. Mommy might be strong, but her being strong was what sent her naked back to the Red Keep. Better let Daddy-Uncle Jamie give you a little more input before you act rashly.

Yes! Yes, Tyrion wanted a little dragon for his nameday! What an adorable and germane memory for him to recall: it not only gives him the chance to acknowledge his lifelong devotion to dragons, but allows Tyrion a little agency in a sargasso of a situation, while simultaneously confirming that his father could be proven wrong and that yes, sometimes even in Game of Thrones, dreams come true.

Arya does NOT have to spend all season as a beggar after all, so we can assume that she's joining that theatre troupe sooner rather than later, and that's perfectly fine with me. Her scene was about as well-written as it could be coming off of a full five seconds of screentime truly begging, and it evidently proved to Jaqen that yes, she's ready to return to the temple. Let's hope that she learns everything she can about the sightless world before her eyes are returned to her.

The less said about the Winterfell scenes the better. I was hoping for just about any other resolution but this, but yes, it certainly looses Ramsay across the North to ruin as he pleases all the way to Castle Black. Odds are, he won't have to go all that way to have a shot at the bastard of Winterfell.

Pyke welcomed us back for a little burst of plot development last Sunday! We met Euron (had we met the Drowned Priest before?) and a question from the books was apparently answered: there was no "Faceless Man" on that bridge: just a faceless Euron, angling for a kingsmoot. We're set to hear a great deal about smoking Valyria at this kingsmoot, and perhaps even see a horn that might make the magic we've seen so far look almost as prosaic as a dragon skeleton. Guess Euron and Daario are NOT the same character after all; pity! It would have made for an interesting turn in the books. Still, Bran's visions earlier in the episode helped beautifully to ease this new plotline into the dwindling episode-set: Euron and his kingsmoot will likely play a huge role in the wars to come. Wonder if we'll ever have to visit Deepwood Mott...

Well, before we get ready to watch this week's episode, let's talk about the elephant in the room:

The Red Woman was indeed responsible for bringing Jon Snow back. Well, and Davos, I guess, for helping her give it the old college try. The artistry in framing and lighting that lovely longshot in the scene, where some of our view is obstructed by a doorway—just lovely to watch. Almost as lovely as Jon Snow's loincloth was frustrating. 

This week we'll start to see how much of Jon Snow was left behind in the return. A little maybe of the Dothraki Golden Girls. Maybe we'll even get to see a little Prince Rhaegar by a tower. And just maybe a little more technical pizzazz in the writing—come on. You know you're as excited as I am.

Game of Thrones, S6E1 "The Red Woman"

This post is for people who have seen the Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere, "The Red Woman".

Game of Thrones is back: a show with a convoluted mythology, adapted from an unfinished book series, stuffed with the most jaded theories on power and human connection that you might ever encounter. Of course a devoted fan of Harry Hardiner is going to be excited to hear that theme music after months of dead time—and of course, now that the show has officially left its book series in the dust (catch up, George RR, or disappear in a flash of light like a respectable author!), anyone who has attempted the Tenth Book Contest will feel a certain cameraderie with the writers of the HBO adaptation.

To write my Tenth Book The Furnace (currently under contract with Presse Algerienne), it was important to consider everything which Harry Hardiner had written in the first nine Rosewire books, to keep in mind everything I knew about the author and his choices, and to research as completely as possible all the extant theories before marrying that information to my own particular framework. Of course, the Game of Thrones writers have a distinct advantage: they can ask—have asked!—Martin exactly how his Song of Ice and Fire ends, and they have had him as a resource to check that their selection of detail for the show is building appropriately to climax.

All that to say, for someone who's finished an unfinished series, this season of Game of Thrones is a veritable dream come true. All that practice I've had with Rosewire had me acutely tracking earlier seasons' departures from the books (maybe in a future post, we can talk about GoT and the law of dramatic economy), and this season, without a novel to use as guiderails, has me calculating the converging trajectories of the show and the book series to figure out what characters and storylines are critical to the close, and which ones are mummer's dragons.

So after last year's finale and the dozens of questions it raised, I tuned in last Sunday ready for some exciting answers. Ready for the story to leap forward! The HBO showrunners have said they're locked into seven seasons—so that's two dozen episodes left to wrap up all these storylines? Well, "The Red Woman" had to light that rocket.

Suffice it to say, we didn't quite reach ignition. This episode is a little more like moving the rocket to the launch site. None of our questions from finale "Mother's Mercy" were answered—they were just raised again.

Now, before we get too much further into this, let me just say I don't think this is representative of a lack of skills. In fact, I can think of a couple of reasons why this episode should do this:

1) The writers do have to establish a new launch point for themselves, something they've created wholecloth, something not pulled directly from a novel, in order to set off in the right direction to complete the series their way.

2)  In a lot of ways, this episode serves as a sort of "last season on Game of Thrones", but with the addition of some forward momentum. True, it's a little unfortunate that we don't head into the meat of this season right off the bat, but like any introduction, this premiere gave us a good overview of what will be at stake this season. Of course, in some slightly pernicious ways, this same convention might serve as a slew of red herrings. We have no mention of the Children, the Citadel, the Iron Islands, armies of the dead, Littlefinger, Bronn, or trial by combat; we get only fleeting glances at the Sons of the Harpy, greyscale, Stannis, and the Wildlings. There is, assumedly, a lot of information in this season that we have not been exposed to yet. Bran's magic is a game-changer, but if Euron Crow's Eye shows up with a dragon's horn, that could throw us for an even bigger loop. The elements we have not seen yet may prove to be the most important aspects of this leg of the journey, and a "last time on" episode may be the writers' way of saying, "You think all that was gripping? Well, that was just the set-up."

3)  My primary theory right now revolves around the way action is presented in the show. Now, in the books, we are more or less well-aware that the story chapter-to-chapter is not taking place in strict chronological order: at the end of one chapter, you might be looking at a battle that will not take place for weeks in the next chapter. The show, out of necessity I believe, approaches the story as though each scene is more or less occurring at the same time in the worlds of Westeros and Essos. So yes, we might see Jamie sailing back into King's Landing with Myrcella in tow, but we accept that the voyage from Dorne might take about an afternoon—after all, Sansa and Theon have just left sight of Winterfell. If this season had leapt forward to some of the most critical action teased in last season's finale, we may have seen a jump in weeks or months. Cersei's trial by combat, Sam making his way to Oldtown, Sansa rejoining Brienne and Pod: none of these things required an 'origin story' in this episode (the situations are already well-developed), but ONE storyline DOES need to pick up exactly where it left off: Jon Snow. Yes, Jon Snow is still dead—but anyone who believes he'll stay that way is sorely fooling themselves. With the Red Woman pulling back into Castle Black just in time to work a miracle (and corpse-raising night fast approaching with or without her help), we know something of a resurrection is afoot.

That last theory brings me to why this episode could disappointment: if the primary purpose of this "let's get caught up together" episode was to allow for Jon Snow's revival, then we should have gotten into the business of it right away. Otherwise, a lot of this episode was treading water:

Jon Snow is still dead. Davos and Edd blah blah blah. The Red Woman is there.

Ramsey and his dad are pissed, but Sansa got away with the help of a small giantess.

Cersei's daughter is still dead. Did we miss the trial? No one seems concerned about it...

Queen Redux is stuck in Septa Unella's Reprise.

Dorne is for lovers. With uteruses.

Like all benevolent leaders, Tyrion is having trouble speaking the language of his city.

Daario and Jorah make the worst buddy movie.

Yes, Dothraki morning show. Yes, Dothraki Golden Girls?

Arya and Stick.

Dude Bro Crow will end you haters.

The Red Woman is still there. All there.

Tonight's episode will really test the skills of our writers: how will we decide to proceed? Draw out the inevitable? Or keep heading straight through without deviation or time hops? How will they bring Bran, Sam, and the Greyjoys back in? What will Jon Snow mach II look like, and how will he behave? What on earth was the point of showing us Melisandre looking like she just climbed out of the bathtub in Room 237? Or, for that matter, Cersei telling Jamie about the witch's prophecy? We'd better see some Ramsey payoff, too, or that uncharacteristic moment of mourning over the kennelkeeper's daughter was shoehorned in to make a monster human rather than more wrathful.

Just a few things I'd like to see in the remaining episodes of Season 6:

—In the books, Bran's connection to the roots of Westeros gives him a crow's eye view of history: it would be great to watch some 'history', but what would be really great would be to watch Bran influence that history and guide the intrigue of Westeros towards the defeat of the Night's King. No flashbacks—all action!

—Some of the history I'd love for us to play witness to? Rhaegar stealing Lysa Stark, the settlement of the First Men, the creation of the Night's King, the construction of the Wall, the Doom of Valyria (or at least its effects, one continent over), and, why not, a little peek at the establishment of the Citadel against the predations of magic.

—Speaking of Bran, wherever did Rickon and Asha get off to? Surely the young noble who wrote to the Boltons that they only recognize the King in the North whose name is Stark has taken them in... right? Where were they? Bear Island?

—The magical horn that Euron brings to the Kingsmoot in the books could potentially wake dragons or even bring down the Wall. With what we know lurks behind that Wall, that seems like a ludicrously bad idea... and one that a trickster and power-player like Euron could try to use to his flamboyant advantage.

—Will the Hound be found at a distant monastery, recovering from combat, ready to avenge himself against his frankenbrother and the Lannisters in a WWE-style throwdown?

—Can the Dornish march on King's Landing without a Targaryan? In the books, the children that Tywin Lannister killed and passed off as Dany's brother and sister may have been decoys like the farmer's children that Theon burned at Winterfell—and a young man raised as a Targaryan is on his way to Dorne carrying a dragon banner, ready to sweep towards the capital to take down Cersei and her son.

—For that matter, how long can Tommen possibly last now that his siblings are wrapped in golden shrouds?

—Something terrible has happened to Loras Tyrell. Right? Just look at how gay men have historically fared in Game of Thrones. I'm waiting for an apple-of-Sodom situation or something of similar ghastliness.

—Arya is going to join an acting troupe. I can't wait to see how she uses those skills in her journey. Plus: we get to see how they make theatre in Essos!

—The Citadel in the books is chock-full of mystery and elliptical details: Faceless Men, glass candles, rogue maesters, a cross-dressing Sand Snake, and Hogwarts-level student rivalry. If Sam meets a Sphinx in his first foray into Old Town, we'll be in for a nice, hot ride.

—If Jon is indeed part Targaryan, who on earth is going to make the connection?

—Okay, okay, okay: and when Jon is brought back to fight, who will be pulling his strings? The Red Woman and her god R'hllor? Bran and the Children? The ancient Night's King? Another force entirely that the people of Westeros and Essos haven't yet encountered, or perhaps have forgotten after centuries of propaganda?

Can tonight's episode satisfy the demands of its story arc?

We'll see in a few hours.

Just a few other hiccups from "The Red Woman":

—Tyrion walks around Mereen talking about how everyone wants to kill everyone, unable to speak the language, and accompanied by ZERO guards. Don't worry, though! Varys is there!

—Seriously: we CAN look forward to a Dothraki Estelle Getty, right? Especially after our Dothraki listicle...

—Dany lived around the Dothraki for months or years and never heard of the Dosh Khaleen? When she was married to a khal? It never got brought up once Khal Drogo died, despite being a cornerstone of the Dothraki culture?

—The Red Woman did absolutely nothing in an episode that was named for her. She took off a necklace and got into bed. Be kinder to her, writers!

—Septa Unella is the worst. So much so that the High Sparrow feels the need to acknowledge it?

—Daario has never been terribly interesting. Far less so now that he and Jorah are far away from Mereen, Dany, and now a fast-approaching kingsmoot. Can we give him a job?

—Dorne is hard to swallow all around. Here's hoping that this coup bears narrative fruit sooner rather than later, or it will continue to feel as shoehorned in as it does in the books. Hey! At least Myrcella is dead instead of just embarrassed to show her face!

Grows to Seed

If every seed could fall on fertile earth,

the taproots all would tangle underground,

competing for the chance to show their worth

by parting up the soil, feet unbound.

The weed could swiftly swallow up the fruit,

the toxic wind along the wholesome stems,

a wanderer can quash a seeking shoot,

and common brush can bury tender gems.

But choose a plot to plant and tend it well,

and let your neighbor love it when you're gone:

your oaks and oats will soar when others fell,

and not one mustard jostle for the dawn.

Go raise a tree and dig a dusty yard:

unrank the garden for an absent bard.

Move them Bones

If wit is meant to pass from pen to mind,

propelled and yet suspended by the page,

then what Will wrote to tell, he had designed

to weather all and amberize his age—

and yet the fuel's still fanning further sparks

which touch a synapse and light up a fuse,

all kindled from the deep and vasty darks

below the puns and sayings we abuse:

a Moor is still Iago'd, Shylocks stocked,

and Elsinore is in a rotten state;

the Globe resumed and scores of actors blocked;

a brave new world still standing at the gate.

Forbear your rest in undug dust, old bones:

be cursed, good friend, and ever shake your stones.