Nancy Pelosi is Second not Third in Line for the Presidency

My wife Tina called my attention to a funnily annoying meme last night:  commentators on MSNBC keep saying that Nancy Pelosi (as Speaker of the House) is "third in line for the Presidency".  I just heard Stephanie Ruhle and Malcolm Nance say that.

But, actually, the Speaker of the House is second not third in line.  The President is not first in line - he's already there (unfortunately) in the White House.  The first in line to succeed him is the VP.  And the Speaker of House is second in line.

Look at it this way: if you're waiting in line to see a concert, the person who is lucky enough to be first in line is not yet seated or even in the theater.   If the line has been moving, everyone who was first in line who entered the theater is no longer on line.  (They could be online, reading their email or tweeting, but that's something else.)

Ruhle and Nance and everyone who has been getting this wrong could benefit from Bertrand Russell's theory of logical types.  If you're counting all the clothespins in a bag, you don't count the bag, too.   I realized a while ago that even people who pick up the trash understand this.  You empty the garbage pail, but don't take the pail away with the garbage.   The pail itself is not garbage.

Regarding the President, whoever is in that office is not on any line of succession.  That's because the person in that Oval Office has already assumed that office.   It's even incorrect to say that Nancy Pelosi is third in command.   The responsibilities of government don't work that way.   In many ways, the Speaker of the House is far more powerful than the Vice President.

But she does stand behind the Vice President in one very significant regard.  She's second in line to succeed the President, behind the VP who is first in line.

The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel

An instantly classic episode of The Orville - 2.4 - tonight, in which Billy Joel plays a role.  Yes, his long retirement tour proved to be a ruse for a trip in a time machine he took 400 years into the future, to join the crew of The Orville.  No, not really.  It was the music of Billy Joel that played a role tonight, and it's thoroughly believable that it would still be listened to and much admired by Captain Mercer.

The centerpiece of the plot concerns his budding romance with the lady cartographer, who, in a nice piece of twist, turns out to be a Krill that Mercer has had some bad history with.  He killed her brother.   The Krill and humans don't get along.  And Teleya used some kind of genetic masking to pass The Orville's sensors and be identified as a human,

Before the episode is over, she and Mercer are not quite back at the precipice of love again. But Mercer has saved her life, and struck an important blow for interstellar-species detente. It's the kind of moment we saw in the some of the Star Treks.  But The Orville is increasingly blazing a path of its own in the stars and our popular culture.

The subplot was good, too.  Gordon wants to climb up the ladder to command.  It falls to Kelly to guide him, and she does a good job of that with compassion and toughness, when needed.   But I did miss Alara, and I'm still eager to know if she's off the show.   A search of our 2019 Internet shows no one knows what's going on with her.   My recommendation: weave her departure into some long-range plot, and bring her back before the end of the season.

In the meantime, keep playing Billy Joel.   My request for his next number: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood".

See also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive

1st starship to Alpha Centauri ... had only enough fuel to get there

You: Review from An Unconflicted Fan

I've been hearing a lot about You recently - originally on Lifetime, more recently binge-able on Netflix - usually along the lines of "I didn't like it at all, but I couldn't help watching it".  Count me as someone who also couldn't help watching it, but/because I liked it a lot.  Indeed, pathbreaking, revelatory, and tour de force are not too much to say about it.   Including that last episode, and that jolt of an ending.

The series has something of American Psycho in it - being about a stalker and a kind of serial killer - but it's much more than that.  It's about why people are especially afraid to fall in love with people who love them deeply.  It's about the power of books, and words, and lies.  And it's about a world - our world - in which social media have made it so easy to deceive.

Our protagonist Joe Goldberg (who manages a bookstore with a handy basement) does have a heart in him somewhere, as Beck, his obsession, tells him.  He does his utmost to protect Paco, his neighbor's son, in danger of being beaten by the lout who lives with Paco's mother.   Joe will do almost anything to support and protect Beck, except when that gets in the way of his own self-preservation.   He may be a sociopath, but he's a much better than average boyfriend.

There's a literacy in this story, more than a passing glance at fables and white and black knights and princesses, which leaven the depravity, and serves as almost a co-equal foundation of the series.  There's an understanding of human nature, what makes us all tick, that supports Freud's contention that the difference between sanity and psychosis can be razor thin.   All of this animates a plot that's full of surprises and twists, though I did guess a few of them. Penn Badgley as Joe and Elizabeth Lail as Beck are just perfect in their parts, and I can well understand why Joe loves Beck so hard.

Netflix has called for a second season.   I'll be watching it for sure, an unconflicted fan.

 

Project Blue Book 1.2: Calling Roy Thinnes

Having just watched the second episode of Project Blue Book - 1.2 - I've come to realize what at least a part of this series really is:  a version of Roy Thinnes' The Invaders (1967-1968), still, for my money, about the best extra-terrestrial invasion series ever on television.   Thinnes' character does a great, largely futile, job trying to alert our world to the invaders' presence.  And it's tough, seeing as how they can induce heart attacks when needed in powerful people who are beginning to suspect their existence.

There's definitely an alien presence in Project Blue Book, making that part straight-up science fiction (though of course I could be wrong if extra-terrestrials are really among us).  They, or one of them, presumably killed that poor lady in the mental institution.  Presumably, the blond (played by Ksenia Solo), and the guy who looks like the guy who usually plays sleazy attorneys (Currie Graham), are extra-terrestrials, too.

Or maybe not.  They could be working for the government - our government - in which the generals are keeping a lot of things from the public, including a flying saucer literally under wraps.  That our government keeps things from us is true.   That they kept - and for all I know, are still keeping - flying saucers from us is unknown, but, for the reasons I mentioned in last week's review, likely fiction.

So, given that there really are extra-terrestrials afoot in this science fiction series, who isn't?  I guess everyone is suspect, including even Quinn.  But, at this point, I'll give him a pass, as well as Hynek, though you just never never know with these kinds of stories.

In its mix of reality within fiction within fiction - a docudrama based on a real scientist, Hynek, and a government that really lies to us all the time, so why not about flying saucers - Project Blue Book continues to be an unusual series, and worth watching.

See also:  Project Blue Book 1.1: Science Fiction, Or?

here I am talking Ancient Aliens a few years ago on the History Channel

 

Dirty John Season 1 Finale: Truth Stranger than Fiction

Dirty John wrapped up its first season last night - there's supposed to be a second season, I assume with a completely different story - with an episode that seals this first season as a sterling example of truth stranger than fiction.  (I didn't review last week's episode 1.7 because it was mostly rehash.)

John comes close to killing Debra's daughter, Terra.  Her instincts with a knife save her, and she fatally stabs John.  As he's laying there in the hospital, waiting only for permission of his family to take him off life support, Debra says she can't do it.  Fortunately, John's sister is there, and she has no problem at all sending this monster to whatever hell awaits him.

But Debra ... she's good to the last drop.  After all of this, including the near-killing of her daughter, she can't bring herself to give the ok for John to be taken off life support?   She obviously inherited that insane forgiveness gene from her mother, to a grievous fault.

If this were purely a piece of fiction, I would find it too unbelievable to enjoy.  I would be utterly unable, in Coleridge's apt terms, to suspend my disbelief.  But since this is based on a true story, what are we to make of it?   For me, the lesson is that Debra in her own way is as crazy as John.  She doesn't hurt people, but she enables someone who does.

The acting in this series was excellent.  But since the storyline defies belief, even though it is true, and that is even more disturbing, I can't say I was enhanced by watching the series.  Nonetheless, glutton for punishment that I am, I'll no doubt watch season 2.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted ... Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans ... Dirty John 1.4: The Forgiveness Gene ... Dirty John 1.5: John's Family ... Dirty John 1.6: Getting Wise

 

True Detective 3.1-2: Humanistic Disturbances of the Soul

True Detective returned for a third season last night, with a completely new story with new characters, as was the case with the second season.   The first season was masterpiece, justly lionized. The second season was widely panned, but I didn't think it was as bad as the critics made it out to be.  The third season is much more like the first.

Indeed, it has the same narrative template as the first season - a detective and his partner consumed by an unsolved case, shown at the three stages in their career, when they first caught the case, ten years later when the case is being re-opened, and in retirement (in the season 3 story, when someone is making a television special on the case).  There's even some kind of unclear, quasi-religious element.

But there's one big, significant difference.  Detective William Hayes (wonderfully played by Mahershala Ali) falls in love with a teacher in the victims' school - a boy, Will Purcell, 12, kidnapped and murdered, and his sister, Julie, 10, just kidnapped.  That's in 1980, when the crime is committed.  Ten years later,  Hays and the teacher, Amelia, are married with two kids, and her book about the case is about to be published (in 1980, she tells Hays that she always wanted to be a writer).  Unlike Matthew McConaughey's tortured Detective Rust Cohle, who lives alone throughout, and is close to possessed or psychotic - one of the very best performances I've ever seen on television or in the movies, period - Hayes has a relatively normal life, is obsessed by the case but troubled rather than nearly psychotic, and is suffering from just the beginning of Alzheimer’s in 2015, meaning he's much more compos mentis than Cole at this point in the third stage of the story.   Indeed, this obsession is "working" Hayes' "brain" - as he says - helping reverse or postpone his mental decline.

And I think this medical rather almost supernatural context is a big plus.  Because the one part I wasn't especially thrilled with in the first season was the dive - or ascension, depending upon how you look at it - into, I don't know, religious ecstasy, Blakean demons, in that riddled season.  Hayes' soul is deeply unsettled, to be sure.  But it's a less mystical disturbance, and he has someone in addition to his professional partner with whom to share it - Amelia, and later, his family - and that makes for a more humanistic narrative.

Lots to look forward to here - I haven't even talked about who is the likely kidnapper/killer - and I'll be back with reviews every week.

See also Season Two: True Detective: All New ... True Detective 2.2: Pulling a Game of Thrones ... True Detective 2.3: Buckshot and Twitty ...True Detective 2.4: Shoot-out ... True Detective 2.7: Death and the Anti-Hero ... True Detective Season 2 Finale: Good Smoke but No Cigar

And see also Season One: True Detective: Socrates in Louisiana ... True Detective Season One Finale: Light above Darkness

 
 philosophic crime fiction:  The Plot to Save Socrates 

Ray Donovan Season 6 Finale: Snowfall and Mick

An outstanding season 6 finale tonight for Ray Donovan, in which just about everybody gets their just deserts, except, maybe, one.

I won't go over the body toll, in case you haven't seen this episode yet.  I will say it was good to see them go.

The one ambiguous note was a biggie.  After Ray gets Bunch out of custody, Bunch tells Mick that although Ray made some deal to get Bunch free, Ray couldn't make that deal for both of them.  The big implication is that Mick will have to turn himself in, after all.

But there's also a big question mark hanging over that.  Why didn't Ray tell Mick that Mick had to turn himself in?  Why didn't Ray take Mick to the police himself?   Why did they let Ray take Bunch away, without Mick right there for the exchange?

All of which leads me to think there's something more going on.  I think we haven't seen the last of Mick, and we're not going to see him in prison again.   The snow falling, the remembrance of James Joyce past, all speak to something else. 

Whatever that is, we should be in for another excellent season next time around.  Ray's seeking help.  Lena has gotten her revenge and should be up for working for Ray again.  Bridge has really come into her own.  And as I've been saying for weeks, Mick has come into his own in this story, too - with an astonishingly good performance by Jon Voight.   Mick's finally acting like a father - to all of his children.  He says all the right things, and they're truthful, to his kids.   There's nothing in this show like seeing all of the Donovans together.   Even if Ray intended to bring Mick in, I'm thinking that snow changed his mind.

Yeah, there's nothing like the Donovans all together, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that next season.

See Ray Donovan 6.1: The New Friend ... Ray Donovan 6.2: Father and Sons ... Ray Donovan 6.4: Politics in the Ray Style ... Ray Donovan 6.6: The Mayor Strikes Back ... Ray Donovan 6.7: Switching Sides ... Ray Donovan 6.8: Down ... Ray Donovan 6.9: Violence and Storyline ... Ray Donovan 6.10: Working Together ... Ray Donovan 6.11: Settled Scores and Open Questions

See also Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script ... Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings ... Ray Donovan 5.8: Paging John Stuart Mill ... Ray Donovan 5.9: Congas ... Ray Donovan 5.10: Bunchy's Money ... Ray Donovan 5.11: I'm With Mickey ... Ray Donovan 5.12: New York

See also Ray Donovan 4.1: Good to Be Back ... Ray Donovan 4.2: Settling In ... Ray Donovan 4.4: Bob Seger ... Ray Donovan 4.7: Easybeats ... Ray Donovan 4.9: The Ultimate Fix ... Ray Donovan Season 4 Finale: Roses

And see also Ray Donovan 3.1: New, Cloudy Ray ... Ray Donovan 3.2: Beat-downs ... Ray Donovan 3.7: Excommunication!

And see also Ray Donovan 2.1: Back in Business ... Ray Donovan 2.4: The Bad Guy ... Ray Donovan 2.5: Wool Over Eyes ... Ray Donovan 2.7: The Party from Hell ... Ray Donovan 2.10: Scorching ... Ray Donovan 2.11: Out of Control ... Ray Donovan Season 2 Finale: Most Happy Ending

And see also Ray Donovan Debuts with Originality and Flair ... Ray Donovan 1.2: His Assistants and his Family ... Ray Donovan 1.3: Mickey ... Ray Donovan 1.7 and Whitey Bulger ... Ray Donovan 1.8: Poetry and Death ... Ray Donovan Season 1 Finale: The Beginning of Redemption


 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Outlander 4.11: Meets Pride and Prejudice

A quieter than usual Outlander 4.11 tonight, reminiscent of something Jane Austen might have written, a story of manners, as Aunt Jocasta tries to arrange a marriage for the unwilling - and very pregnant - Brianna.

Well, I don't think Jane Austen ever wrote a novel about a young woman in need of marriage, already pregnant, but the 1820s weren't all that much in the future of Outlander's 1770s, and this episode did a pretty good job of it.  The two initial suitors are both obviously unsuitable - unappealing - to Brianna, and the man she wants to marry her is Lord Grey.

She wants him to marry her for all the wrong reasons ... well, for one big wrong reason.  She sees him going at it with another man, and figures he would therefore be safe for her to marry.  She still loves and wants Roger, and she reasons that Lord Grey would not expect anything carnal from her.   He at first turns her down - for the right reasons - but after he learns her full story, and she his, he comes in at the last minute and announces their engagement.  Jane Austin would've been pleased.

Speaking of Roger - boy, was I fooled last week by those time-traveling stones in America, not far from the path the Mohawks were taking with Roger.  I guess that should have tipped me off.  But what do I know about frequency of appearance of those crazy stones across the world?   So that was all Roger's dream.  But Outlander needs to be careful.  Too many crucial developments that turn out to be dreams can be injurious to a narrative's getting us to suspend our disbeliefs, and Outlander has reached its quota.

One undilutedly good thing in 4.11 which I'm sure isn't a dream: Claire and Jamie apologizing to each other near the end, and being fully together as they should.   Happy endings are always welcome in episodes of Outlander, and this isn't even quite the ending of this excellent season.

See also Outlander 4.1: The American Dream ... Outlander 4.2: Slavery ...Outlander 4.3: The Silver Filling ... Outlander 4.4: Bears and Worse and the Remedy ... Outlander 4.5: Chickens Coming Home to Roost ... Outlander 4.6: Jamie's Son ... Outlander 4.7: Brianna's Journey and Daddy ... Outlander 4.8: Ecstasy and Agony ... Outlander 4.9: Reunions ... Outlander 4.10: American Stone

And see also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife ... Outlander 3.8: Pirates! ... Outlander 3.9: The Seas ...Outlander 3.10: Typhoid Story ... Outlander 3.11: Claire Crusoe ...Outlander 3.12: Geillis and Benjamin Button ... Outlander 3.13: Triple Ending

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History

 
Si

The Orville 2.3: Alara

A really outstanding episode of The Orville tonight - 2.3 - high on powerful storyline, a little less broad humor than usual (but enough to get some chuckles) - and that was before the shocker of an ending.

It's always satisfying to see a nonhuman world fleshed out, and we get that as Alara goes back to her home planet Xelayah and her family, to get a slow cure for her physical deterioration.  Plus we get a good psycho story, in the form of John Billingsley playing an intelligent neighbor driven over the edge by the need to avenge (a perfect part for Billingsley) the death of his son, which he sees as due to Alara's father (played by another natural in the role, Robert Picardo).   We get beautiful seaside scenes - which reminded me of where we go for summers on Cape Cod - and an unnerving rendition of  you can't trust the neighbors.  (I told my wife that now I'm a little worried about our neighbors on the Cape).

But that ending... Alara announces, after she returns to The Orville and is back in the fold, that she want to go home to her planet and family.  This is a refreshing, even brilliant, twist on similar stories we've encountered many times before, in science fiction and otherwise, which always end with the character in question returning from that alluring shore leave to resume her or his professional post.  Kudos to Cherry Chevapravatdumrong for writing this and Seth MacFarlane for approving this (though I have no idea who came up with the twist).  Jon Cassar, whose work I always liked in 24, did a good job directing.

But amidst all this praise, I can't say I'm happy at all about Alara leaving.  I'm hoping that the real twist here will be that she rejoins The Orville pretty soon.  When departures like this happen, it's always possible that the actress called this shot, because she got a starring role in a big movie.  Halston Sage could certainly carry such a role - but I'd still rather see her continue her fine work on The Orville.

I'll keep you posted.



love across alternate realities

See also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive

1st starship to Alpha Centauri ... had only enough fuel to get there

Project Blue Book 1.1: Science Fiction, Or?

Project Blue Book, the docudrama on the History Channel about Dr. Allen Hynek and his research into UFOs, couldn't have come at a better time.   I mean, a better time for me.  I read and reviewed Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding, about John W. Campbell and the golden age of science fiction,  And Hynek's story - at least, as it begins on Project Blue Book - begins in 1952, which many people, including me, would regard as the peak of that golden age.  Asimov's Foundation trilogy, which had first been published as a series of stories in "Astounding" (the magazine), was smack dab in the middle of being published as three books.  Robert Heinlein had just published, a year earlier, his Puppet Masters, to this day one the very best books about an extraterrestrial invasion ...  But I digress.

Or maybe not.  Because Project Blue Book - the docudrama - is right at the nexus of strange-but-true and science fiction.  Hynek is called upon by the Feds to give his scientific imprimatur to their insistence that flying saucers were nothing more than natural phenomena like birds or human technological phenomena like weather balloons.  The perspective of the docudrama is that we the audience know better, and Hynek quickly comes to know better.

Unsurprisingly, the government apparently knows better, too.  The first episode leaves us with the impression that the government knew we (the Earth) were visited by flying saucers, but they (the government) did not want the public to know.  This is a familiar characterization of our government on many issues, and may or may not be true in real history about flying saucers.

Speaking of reality, I'll own up to being skeptical to agnostic on extra-terrestrial visits.  I'm a skeptic, because if we've been visited, are being visited, by beings from outer space in space ships, why don't they ever land on 58th Street in Manhattan in front of CNN so everyone in the world can see them?  Or, if they don't want us to know anything about them, they've been doing a pretty poor job of that.  But I'm ultimately agnostic on the question of UFOs because there's certainly no reason in principle that there aren't intelligences other than ours out there in the universe, some of them far more advanced than ours in their penetration of the cosmos.

Back to more mundane matters, it was good to Aidan Gillen (from Game of Thrones and many other memorable performances) in his portrayal of Hynek.  The first episode offered several phenomena - like damage on the pilot's plane - that weren't explicable by science, according to Hynek.   One of those, however, a pilot hearing a California radio station in Fargo, North Dakota (that's right) high in sky at night could be explained by the long distances some radio waves can travel at night.  I wanted to shout that across the screen to Hynek.  But if all of this turns out to be science fiction, that's more than ok for me to watch on television.  Hey, strange things do happen in Fargo, if memory serves.


here I am talking Ancient Aliens a few years ago on the History Channel

 

Vikings 5.17: No Harmony in Iceland

Floki and his flock in Iceland made their biggest appearance so far in Vikings in this week's episode 5.17.  Except ... it turns out to be a flock at war with itself, which leads to a spiraling series of events that result in multiple killings and one suicide.

Floki tried in vain to stop all of that.  But he has no sway, and is reduced to looking on with horrified eyes  at what his settlement has come to.   It's deeper than sad to contemplate.  After that promising start last week, it's come to this.  Floki is even losing faith in the guidance of the gods.

There's an obvious and painful lesson here about all human beings.   We are given to and driven by all kinds of demons, always present as a check on our more noble instincts.  There's a lot of relevance in that to our current age.

The other notable part of last night's episode was the introduction of the "Danes" as attackers of England.  The scope of Vikings has been expanding from Kattegat to Norway and now Denmark.  And, indeed, in history there were many more than one or two bands of Viking raiders.

Ubbe's offer to militarily defend Wessex from the Danish raiders continues the tradition of Rollo in France.  It was a pattern that was repeated many times in ancient and medieval history - a plundering group is brought into the fold by the target, and comes to defend the target against other foes.  This often worked very effectively.

Back to relevance to our current world, Ivar's little speech in which he urged his people to give up democracy, and him take care of them, was a chilling presaging of the rise of fascism in the 20th and 21st centuries.   Not only is there no harmony in Iceland.   There's no harmony anywhere.

See also Vikings 5.1-2: Floki in Iceland ... Vikings 5.3: Laughing Ivar ...Vikings 5.4: Four of More Good Stories ... Vikings 5.5: Meet Lawrence of Arabia ... Vikings 5.6: Meanwhile, Back Home ... Vikings 5.7: A Looming Trojan-War Battle, Vikings Style, and Two Beautiful Stories ...Vikings 5.8: Only Heahmund? ... Vikings 5.9: Rollo ... Vikings 5.10: New and Old Worlds ... Vikings 5.11: Rollo's Son ... Vikings 5.12: "The Beast with Two Backs" ... Vikings 5.13: The Sacrifice ... Vikings 5.14: Fake News in Kattegat ... Vikings 5.15: Battle ... Vikings 5.16: Peace and War

And see also Vikings 4.1: I'll Still Take Paris ... Vikings 4.2: Sacred Texts ...Vikings 4.4: Speaking the Language ... Vikings 4.5: Knives ... Vikings 4.8: Ships Up Cliff ... Vikings 4.10: "God Bless Paris" ... Vikings 4.11: Ragnar's Sons ... Vikings 4.12: Two Expeditions ... Vikings 4.13: Family ... Vikings 4.14: Penultimate Ragnar? ... Vikings 4.15: Close of an Era ... Vikings 1.16: Musselman ... Vikings 1.17: Ivar's Wheels ...Vikings 1.18: The Beginning of Revenge ... Vikings 4.19: On the Verge of History ... Vikings 4.20: Ends and Starts

And see also Vikings 3.1. Fighting and Farming ... Vikings 3.2: Leonard Nimoy ...Vikings 3.3: We'll Always Have Paris ... Vikings 3.4: They Call Me the Wanderer ... Vikings 3.5: Massacre ... Vikings 3.6: Athelstan and Floki ...Vikings 3.7: At the Gates ... Vikings 3.8: Battle for Paris ... Vikings 3.9: The Conquered ... Vikings Season 3 Finale: Normandy

And see also Vikings 2.1-2: Upping the Ante of Conquest ... Vikings 2.4: Wise King ... Vikings 2.5: Caught in the Middle ... Vikings 2.6: The Guardians ...Vikings 2.7: Volatile Mix ... Vikings 2.8: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative ... Vikings Season 2 Finale: Satisfying, Surprising, Superb

And see also Vikings ... Vikings 1.2: Lindisfarne ... Vikings 1.3: The Priest ... Vikings 1.4:  Twist and Testudo ... Vikings 1.5: Freud and Family ... Vikings 1.7: Religion and Battle ... Vikings 1.8: Sacrifice
... Vikings Season 1 Finale: Below the Ash

 
historical science fiction - a little further back in time