Vikings

Feels like they are drawing out the attack on Paris a bit too much, especially with all the time devoted to the shit happening in England.
Hopefully next week delivers in a big way!

Such a great episode.

France used to be a powerhouse. Don't forget they were helping us out during the Revolutionary War because they were at war with Britain, but even earlier than that they had invaded Britain (Norman Conquest).

Miguex_sl said:

holy shit, dat carnage. what the hell happened to the french in the next 1000 years to make them the butt of every surrender monkey joke.

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Nothing. The surrender jokes stem from the same unrealistic perception of war that has people say things like "Russia got it's ass kicked in Afghanistan" or "The U.S. got it's ass kicked in Vietnam"---While both these countries technically withdrew from these wars, if you study them, the armies there won almost every engagement, and rarely gave ground (The few times they did it was less than 24 hours before they butchered their opponents). They left not because they "lost" but because it gets expensive killing people after a while, and people back home get pissed. Same reason why the U.S. "beat" Britain or Rome "beat" Hannibal in the second Punic war (They did technically, in Africa but not in Italy).

France had a series ofunproductivewars (Or difficult to quantify the productivity from--like gaining a treaty or a trade route). People take that to mean they "didn't win"--in reality, they usually DID win on the battle field but they just didn't have the means to finish the job or acquire territory from it (Because of a huge complex list of reasons--same ones you see today). So their "wins" go down in history as neutral, or not significant, the same way, you could say, somehow the U.S. got its "ass kicked" in Iraq (Which many people say)--even though we occupied the country for a decade and moved through it with impunity (I'm not trying to stroke America's dick here--just illustrating, through something we would understand, that it's VERY hard to get a perception that you "won" a war in the modern world where information flows so freely and people can see how unproductive they are. Even when you militarily dominate your enemy, which the French did often.).

Meanwhile, due to the nature of Europe, many of their losses end up with a partial loss of french territory (Temporarily); these of course people latch on to as pure, unadulterated losses--especially Americans since many here don't really "get" how ridiculously difficult it was for a country to survive in Europe, with dozens of enemies everywhere. In short, many people judge France by the standards of super powers who have borders or land types which arefareasier to defend.

All those things, combined with the somewhat humiliating (legitimately) loss of WW2? And you get the surrender monkey joke. It's as silly as most jokes about people built off of single anecdotes that aren't true. In reality, the French have had one of THE most fertile pieces of land in Europe, which is why everyone from Rome, to the Francs (Germans) wanted it before France was a thing. And for the last 1thousandyears, they've essentially held that land except for small periods where they had to concede some ground (But usually got it back within a single generation)...Which, in short means the French are some savage mother fuckers who have remained king of their hill despitemany, manychallengers.

Am I alone in not liking this siege episode? I know that the Vikings were supposed to have a big Valhalla fetish but the number of times these people have disdained any sort of armor and abandoned their shields is intolerable to me; their commanders at the very least would have had something better than leather and face paint. Those repeated scenes where men were suicidally disengaging from the gatehouse for no reason were especially absurd.

Stupid things that made no sense:

Let's not aim up a bit to hit the men right below our gatehouse.
Let's not shoot at the the poorly protected horses that are about to pull our gates apart.
Deadly Viking shortbowmen pinpoint firing through arrow slits.
Fleeing without any attempt to block arrows repeatedly.
Let's wait to use fire of any sort against our invaders until they are on our walls.
Let's wait to push the ladders off our walls until it's Rollo we're pushing.
A "holy" banner that even a senior priest didn't recognize being used to inspire troops.
Characters looking away at random things in the thick of battle and not dying for it.

Yeah it's nit picky but none of the above would have been difficult to fix with some care for detail.

I had a feeling Ragnar was playing along letting Floki be in charge, waiting for floki to fail and maybe losing some "frienemies" too at the gatehouse, but he almost lost his son as well for it. I don't like the gatehouse scenes either, they brought the "tools" from the back line to the door, but they didn't bother to leave a trail of rope when they did that? they had to run back to the horses afterwards? Too many warriors just running away and not using their shields. I love seeing the big wars, hopefully the next push for the city is better. The england side of things looks like it will be just setting up for stuff in season 4 here on out.

I laughed so hard at the execution prank.
Does that mean I'm going to hell, or valhalla?

faille_sl said:

I laughed so hard at the execution prank.
Does that mean I'm going to hell, or valhalla?

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Yeah that was pretty funny... hold my hair tight now!

Finally just watched the first episode. I'm liking the various things they are setting up. Rollo is a shithead.

Rollo is an asshole, but he is thinking the long game.

1) He does genuinely want the princess to like him and saw that she was pretty upset about the marriage, so he will be willing to let things progress more naturally rather than force it, which will help secure her as an ally. He never did have a problem with the ladies ;p
2) Over half the viking camp potentially betraying him was a huge risk. Now that he is married to the Princess and they still need him to help vs. Ragnar, it is of low risk to him to wipe out the Viking camp and remove that variable from the gameboard
3) With the Viking camp dead, unless another party passes on this information to Ragnar, they will have little intel on the ground and it will be much easier for them to walk into a trap/ambush

She implies that its Ragnar`s but they haven't made it clear if she is lying or not. Considering how many people she fucks on the show it could be anyone.

Hoss_sl said:

I forgot from last season, who knocked up the crazy queen of mercia?

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Better question is who isn't a potential father, she was fucking every man that got within 10 feet of her in the last couple seasons.

New episode, yet more characters from different places. I really feel like this show is starting to have the GoT-kind of "we need to follow 10 different people in 8 different places, so everyone gets about 6-8 minutes screen time every episode", except they're not doing it as well as GoT. Not that the show ain't still worth watching, would put it after Billions on must-see every week.

And I find it kinda hilarious that they cast 2 Finns to play 2 historical Norwegians (the new "king" on the newest episode and one more probably next week)