Recap

It’s Game Of Thrones Season 2, Episode 3 entitled “What Is Dead May Never Die,” the rallying cry of Theon’s nautical hometown of Pyke and the White Walkers who are suing them for the rights. Either way, I’m pretty sure they both stole it from a Cannibal Corpse song.

The episode opens where the last one left off, with the nosy Jon Snow being knocked out by Craster, who then tells the Wall Commander he wants all their men to leave immediately, and keeps derogatorily calling Snow “Bastard” with no regard for the fact that he’s f***ing his own daughters and feeding half the kids to zombies (“But your MOM and DAD weren’t MARRIED! EWWWWW!!!!!”) Jon pulls his commander aside to tell him the BadBabyNews.org, but his commander is already aware, and explains that fraternizing with “harsh men” like Craster is a tough but necessary compromise for beyond-the-wall survival:

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It’s Game Of Thrones Season 2, Episode 2 entitled “The Night Lands,” and by “Night” they mean “More brothers and sisters spending the ‘Night’ together” and by “Lands” they mean “So many babies are getting super killed in these ‘lands.’” Very symbolic title!

For the second straight episode, we’re introduced to a new location – Theon’s nautical hometown of Pyke, and its familiar skyline:

Theon’s penis sails back to its hometown, the rest of his body attached, to recruit men and ships for a siege on King’s Landing, or at the very least, for him to have sex with when he tires of all the women and non-ships. There, he encounters a helpful and moderately flirtatious lady who offers him a ride (IN MORE WAYS THAT ONE!!!! Actually it is very much just in one way):

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It’s the Game Of Thrones Season 2 Premiere, entitled “The North Remembers,” and my God, I knew I was excited for this show to come back, but once that theme music kicked up, I’m not gonna lie, it did have a sliiiight erectile effect on me. And that wasn’t just because 7 naked characters were banging the ‘HBO Original Programming’ logo.

Game Of Thrones is back you guys!!! Tyrion! Robb! Direwolves! Baby Dragons! Vagina Elves! The entire cast of Ocean’s Thirteen added and each one claiming the throne!

There’s even some NEW CITIES in the opening credits:

Alright, lock up your wife-daughters, and let’s teach this Recap how to make plausible orgasm sounds…

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It’s The Walking Dead Season 2 Finale, Episode 13, entitled “Beside The Dying Fire”, not to be confused with the title of one of those Soul CD compilations from a late-night infomercial where every other song is Luther Vandross’ “Here And Now” scrolling by in yellow and you’re like “oops, stayed up til 8 am again!” and you go to work on negative .01 hours of sleep. It’s not that fire. It’s a zombie fire.

The episode opens with a visual explanation of how that horde of 8 trillion zombies congregated and got to the farm, starting with walkers eating a horse carcass who abandoned the horse to follow the sound of a helicopter, then followed more and more sounds until finally their swelling numbers heard Carl shoot zombie-Shane and they turned towards the farm. So, the walkers prioritize following noise over eating food that’s right in front of them? I thought they followed noise because noises usually lead to food? And wouldn’t they have had to stop and find food somewhere along their journey towards the noises? And also wouldn’t they have heard Andrea shooting Daryl days earlier, or Daryl shooting Dale the day before, or Shane’s gun going off, or the motorcycle, trucks or RV engines that are constantly whirring, or the sound of the dining room table being perpetually set?

Ahh, whatever. Trying to keep up with the inconsistencies in this show is as useless as Hershel trying to keep the walkers off his land:

That said, please welcome to the finale EIGHT TRILLION WALKERS:

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It’s The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 12 entitled “Better Angels” – I apologize for my lack of Recap last week, but I was sick all week with a crazy inner-ear infection (here’s Dennis Hopper’s medication to prove it). I enjoyed the ‘cold logic’ vs. ‘symbolic humanity’ debate, but two parts really bothered me in last week’s episode (and not just cause I was high on meds and kept having nightmares about murders on my block):

1) How did Dale not see that walker?? He approaches a cow with its stomach torn open laying in the middle of a field, with his gun drawn because everyone is constantly on the lookout for zombies, and manages to get attacked from behind by a walker while the camera’s on him in a tight “Horror Movie 101″ shot. Also, did the walker tear the cow’s stomach open, start eating it, then walk away and hang out kind of nearby so it could get the drop on Dale? And we’ve established that the walkers possess regular human strength minus the decay of their bones and cartilage (hence the well fall-apart guy), but one manages to tear Dale’s stomach open with its bare hands while he’s struggling? I call walking BS on that entire scene.

2) Also, how frickin’ unsupervised is Carl?? He wanders into the prisoner’s barn alone, then wanders off and almost gets killed by a walker in the mud, then later wanders into the prisoner’s barn again just as Rick is about to execute Randall. He wouldn’t be that unsupervised in a world that DOESN’T HAVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE OCCURRING, let alone one where THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS SUPER OCCURRING.

Anyway, onto this week’s episode! And if you liked Regular Crazy Shane, you’ll love the intensely-90s commercial for Shane – Nacho Crazier flavor:

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It’s the Top Chef Texas Finale, entitled “Finale,” because it is actually, seriously the very last episode of Top Chef Season 9 – no more snowy nonsense, no more Last Chance Redemption Island Of Temptation The Benefactor All-Stars, it’s just Sarah Grueneberg and Paul Qui competing to see who is the better chef: Paul, or Paul and also Bravo made a giant mistake.

Sarah kicks things off by declaring “This is the goal I’ve had this entire competition.” She is LOCKED IN. That is also the goal of literally everyone who has ever gone on Top Chef or any competition show. No one’s ever been like, “My goal is to make some friends, cook other peoples’ food, then get eliminated in Week 3 cooking a risotto that represents Daniel Boone’s courage then release a sex tape.”

Tom explains that for the final challenge, each chef will design a four-course tasting menu at their own Vancouver restaurant and serve it to 100 people with the aid of some past concheftants. Awesome! No fuss, no extraneous time-wasting hoops to jump through, just the two final competitors and an extra Quickfire to determine who their final helper chefs are. And to sweeten the pot, making a cameooh-god-is-she-awful appearance is none other than Heather ‘Fan Fave’ Terhune:

Before we go Reelin’ In The Chef Years with a no-stakes competition between loser chefs we don’t care about, Bravo gives us a highlight reel of the Top Chef Texas season thusfar:

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It’s The Walking Dead Season 2, episode 10 entitled “18 Miles Out”, and what better way to escape from The Oscars’ awkward, inorganically-delivered dialogue and big meaningless speeches than by watching another episode of The Walking Dead!

Kidding, kidding, at least this episode had way more zombie face-stabs than The Oscars telecast. At least I think it did, I blacked out early in the third hour and might’ve missed Oscar’s tribute to zombie face-stabs (a series of random celebs talking about the magic of zombie face-stabs intercut with the “I’ll have what she’s having clip” seven times).

After a cold-open showing us a glimpse into the future of Rick, Shane and newly-rescued Randall frantically fending off walkers, we open on Rick, Shane and the newly-rescued Randall traveling “18 Miles Out” from the farm to release him, but probably eventually having to frantically fend off walkers. To disguise the location of the farm, Randall has a mask over his face and headphones blaring music:

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It’s the Top Chef Season 9 Finale Part 2, entitled “Fire And Ice,” a devious move by Bravo to trick people into thinking Game Of Thrones is back on their viewing guide and accidentally recording it.

Obviously, there can only be one guest judge for the “Fire And Ice” challenge:

Just kidding! Prince Joffrey declined because he thought Sarah was acting too much like a spoiled child. The actual guest judge is this old flame:

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It’s The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 9 entitled “Triggerfinger,” a double-meaning on Rick & Company literally having their fingers on their gun-triggers, and the current, tightly-wound, “Who’ll shoot first?” mental showdown between Rick and Shane as their various group allegiances threaten to turn inward. Or it’s the name of Sammy Hagar’s next supergroup, we’re not sure. Either way, we WILL see some human faces falling off sooner than later.

The episode opens with Lori unconscious in her upside-down car while a walker ominously paws at her windshield, not unlike a zombie puppy begging for a refill of its water bowl. (Blood bowl? Nah zombie puppies probably drink water, then just eat like flesh milk bones or whatever). This is a very cool scene, though clearly, the writers just really wanted to have Lori fend off walkers in an upside-down car but couldn’t think of an actual reason for this scenario to happen.

Rick, Hershel and Glenn, meanwhile, are still holed up in the local bar after murdering Philly Dave and the Peeman (also a popular morning radio show), and they hear the voices of people who’ve come to look for their disappeared companions. After a tense, silent standoff, Rick decides he’s had enough death for one day and tries to reason with them very verbosely:

Looks like everything’s gonna be alllllllll ri- NOPE everyone’s shooting at everyone!

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It’s Part One of the Top Chef Season 9 Texascouver Finale, entitled Culinary Olympics, and let me just begin by saying, many people have incessantly complained about this season (most notably my mothers’ texts at 11:01 every Wednesday), saying that it’s the worst Top Chef season yet. I haven’t totally agreed, as I believe peoples’ reservations are more a factor of just Top Chef fatigue in the show’s 9th season mixed with a largely uninspiring cast (with one head-and-shoulders favorite who should’ve been named the winner six weeks ago). The challenges, on the contrary, have actually been very good this season, as they’ve mostly bypassed gimmicky themes (Bi-Parti-Sandwich, or “Cook something a penguin would eat!” “I think a penguin would love this braised shortrib”) and arbitrarily-restricting challenges in favor of challenges that showcase the chefs’ actual ability and give them more creative freedom (the “Pee Wee bikes” was a rare gimmicky exception, but at least it wasn’t the Finale).

Last night’s episode, however, was the complete opposite. It was the most gimmicky challenge imaginable, running the chefs through numerous obstacles that 1) Had nothing to do with actual cheffing, 2) Were not the least bit interesting to watch, and 3) Had NO BEARING on the dishes they ended up presenting. It was, in a sense, a betrayal of this season’s most redeeming aspect: Letting the cooks just cook and not having them lose because their sweet pea risotto wasn’t an accurate thematic encapsulation of what The Luxor Hotel is all about.

Anyway, with all that being said, let’s DO SOME RECAPPING! Here are some dumb photos and words:

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