Tag: science fiction

The Man in the High Castle Recap Season 2 Episodes 6 & 7: Land O’ Smiles and Kintsugi

~ Metacrone

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After the slow-building tension of the past two episodes, the pace starts to pick up again with episodes 6 and 7. The characters are starting to put their plans into motion.

Joe talks with his father’s housekeeper, Frau Silva, and discovers that his father had a wife and two sons that he lost in the war. She refuses to answer any further questions after that, but otherwise continues to be ridiculously worshipful and kind of a stalker. Joe escapes her the first chance he gets and goes with Nicole to a Lebensborn overnight drug orgy in the country. While he’s stoned, he sees himself dead, and says goodbye to Juliana and his old life. When he wakes up in the morning, he tells Nicole he’s ready to go back to his father. That seems to mean he’s also ready to embrace being a Nazi, since he puts on the suit Frau Silva had left out for him the morning before, complete with Swastika armband. The Lebensborn appear to have organized themselves into some kind of Aryan superbaby cult. All it took was an orgy and a few hallucinations to convert Joe. Seems like the guy who went through that whole season 1 cross country ordeal and stood up to the great Obergruppenführer Smith multiple times might be able to hold out longer than one debauched night, but I guess he discovered it’s good to be wanted.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 3, 4 & 5 Recap: Nebulous Loyalties in a Tense Game of Chess

~ Metacrone

Travelers, Escalation, & Duck and Cover

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As we move toward the midpoint of the season, it feels like almost everyone is a pawn being moved around the game board by someone. Some players are even being fought over by two or more sides. Frank and Ed (especially Ed) are being watched by the Japanese and the Western Resistance. Juliana is being torn in pieces by the Reich and the Eastern Resistance, by the Smith family, and by George Dixon. Joe’s loyalties are divided by his father and Smith, and a bit by Rita, who may or may not have connections to the resistance. Smith is caught between his loyalty to his family and the Reich. He may also now have a deal with Kido. Tagomi is caught between his desire to save his own reality and the pull to stay with his lost family in the alternate reality. Both Smith and Tagomi are being pressured by Inpector Kido and, ultimately, the General. The General’s motives seem clear, but Kido is too complex to put down to simple motives. His loyalty is to the law, the Empire, and his family, but we’ve seen him exercise his own judgement about what’s best for the Japanese people in the long run before. He appears to be operating on his own again, doing whatever he feels is necessary to accomplish his goal.

The Western Resistance still seems far from benign to me. They manipulated Frank into joining them. Connell withheld Juliana’s letter and made Frank believe she’d betrayed him instead. Lem and Sarah both know Frank’s being lied to, yet they’re going along with it. Sarah’s even sleeping with Frank. Was the seduction part of the plan? Connell is a sociopath who is willing to achieve his goals through any means necessary. A romance with Sarah would further cement Frank’s commitment to them. I hope that’s it’s not true, but Sarah seems to have lost everything and to be just as ruthless as Connell.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 1&2 Recap: Three Castles

~ Metacrone

The Tiger’s Cave & The Road Less Traveled

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Time to catch up with Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle! We finally meet the man himself, Hawthorne Abendsen, and, not surprisingly, he’s a little nuts. The “castle” appears to be a giant warehouse full of alternate reality films. Metamaiden doesn’t like him. She’s confused about where these films are coming from, and how the supernatural aspect plays into the full picture of the show. I (metacrone) think he’s high strung from having seen so many potential future disasters, and he’s weighed down with the possible impact of his choices.

All three factions in the show’s world now have access to information about the alternate realities (and, consequently, have their own man in a high castle). The Resistance and the Nazis access it through films brought to Abendsen and Hitler, and the Japanese through Trade Minster Tagomi’s mystical abilities. Both Abendsen and Tagomi seem to have figured out that Juliana is an important, lynchpin character in some way. Tagomi appeared to feel that her locket was too important as a talisman to offer back to her, even as they were both staring at it in his house. I’m not clear about whether Hitler’s specifically trying to have her killed, but Smith has certainly been keeping up with her status and whereabouts.

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