Maeve is finally gagged. When she's ungagged she speaks respectful-sounding Japanese. It's almost kind of nice but totally contradictory, so I'm sure this is the episode where she's supposed to just become a sympathetic character with a heart of gold. She'll need to find the child from the stereotypical 'Madonna' story soon, so her image will have to change. Like some daft celebrity who's built her career on conniving self-aggrandizement, she'll try to spin a publicity campaign about her BS noble deeds, self-sacrifice, and surprising qualities that she's just now invented, to try to gain sympathy and escape criticism. She just gets to speak Japanese because it's just suddenly the case that all hosts just have entire languages somewhere in their code, and of course she just finds the Japanese and speaks it fluently because she's just special. She's not like the others, and Lee explains that she's special in this case because she's a madam. Of course brothel runners are highly skilled in many erudite ways.
Maeve's 'specialness' has so far made her the only one able to control other hosts with voice commands (other than Dolores who appears to simply be bossy and domineering), so it comes as no surprise when at an opportune time she gets to just suddenly be psychic, seeing an attack coming in advance and controlling other hosts even though she cannot speak, driving them to kill each other and commit suicide. (By the way, if she can just suddenly do something as radically unlikely as psychically provoke an attacker to impale his own head on a spear, why not just have them do the routine thing and simply stop all motor functions?.. yet more sensationalized suicide) A feeble explanation for her inexplicable new powers is made when she says she thinks she's "finding a new voice". I see the potential for this completely unfounded and frankly ridiculous new development to be used to just make any number of things happen.
The plot in the Shogun World scenes revolves around the goal of freeing a young geisha, Sakura from the tyrannical grip of a Shogun. The authors demonstrate cultural disrespect here by drawing a straight line from geisha to prostitute. They make the women in the Japanese version of the madam's saloon the counterparts to the madam and one of her prostitutes. But this is not a true depiction of the geisha's role in Japanese culture, and only foolish foreigners might encounter prostitutes dressed as geisha and think such an encounter is typical of legitimate Japanese experience. The authors apparently don't need to care about legitimacy and can instead just do whatever they please; their poorly esteemed western audience has been conditioned to just accept whatever they're presented with.
During a rest stop on their way to the Shogun, Maeve accurately declares "It's time to settle this ruse."
When the Shogun hears that there's a witch (Maeve) coming with an entourage, he mutilates his warriors' ears so they won't hear her commands; he displays the disturbing deformity of his warriors with evident pride in having accomplished this 'clever' work-around to witchery. He also displays Sakura with open disdain in a state of dishonor - her lovely attire replaced by a plain robe, her hair unpinned and stringy, her makeup gone. As an easy fix to justify their crude choices, the authors insultingly explain away his behavior by the fact that he's wonky and dysfunctional - insane. We later discover that he's mutilated Sakura's back with a carving of a cherry blossom tree etched into the deepest layers of her skin. It's supposed to be an intriguing merging of beauty and the macabre, but it's only just appalling; a sadistic abuse and disfigurement inflicted on a young woman.
Before the dance of Sakura and Akane, the Shogun suddenly brutally kills Sakura by thrusting his sword into her abdomen. Withdrawing the blade, a torrent of blood shoots out of her belly and she drops to the floor and dies. We shouldn't be surprised that the young geisha couldn't be saved and instead died a bloody death after being cruelly abused; all relationships end in disappointment/disfigurement/death in this show. Akane's response to Sakura's murder is to dance as she's been instructed but then coming near the Shogun, she produces a long knife which she uses to very quickly, efficiently, and grotesquely saw through the Shogun's head at the chin. His dying body stands up, takes a few steps and collapses in a bloody heap. It's a heinously gruesome killing made 'necessary' by how very very bad the Shogun was written to be. Insultingly, the authors also attempt to make the more conscious viewers accept it by associating it with a 'maternal bond', having Maeve say "Akane. You are a true mother". Then, as even further insult, when Maeve and Akane are about to be executed Maeve works her 'magic' and just makes the Shogun's warriors attack and kill each other - something she could've just done at any time because she just can, but just didn't do earlier, so that Sakura could just die. A large group of warriors then advances from outside and Lee says "What do we do now?" Picking up a sword, Maeve says "I told you, I found a new voice" and assuming a warrior stance: "Now we use it". So now we're supposed to just accept that she can just take them all on at once by herself. She's full of surprises. Or something.
* * *
Dolores was shot a couple of times in the betrayal battle scene as Mr. Abernathy was being abducted for Hale, but there's no evidence of damage - just bloodied and torn clothing. Looks like she just gets to be unaffected by bullets now.
Dolores presents Teddy with a moral dilemma via a story about her father killing cows that had become infected with a disease or were weak enough to eventually, and burning them to drive off the flies that carried the disease. In response to Teddy's answer that he would house the weakest in the barn out of the air away from the flies and wait for it to pass she says he's a kind man; she seems to think it's a shortcoming and she's testing him again, saying that she'll think about what he said. Later, after they declare their devotion to each other, she sleeps with him and then promptly betrays him, waking him up in the night to corner him and forcibly reprogram him radically. There was nothing wrong with Teddy at this point, or his treatment of her, or his handling of their relationship. In support of the useless theme of useful misery, she says "To grow, we all need to suffer".
Maeve's 'specialness' has so far made her the only one able to control other hosts with voice commands (other than Dolores who appears to simply be bossy and domineering), so it comes as no surprise when at an opportune time she gets to just suddenly be psychic, seeing an attack coming in advance and controlling other hosts even though she cannot speak, driving them to kill each other and commit suicide. (By the way, if she can just suddenly do something as radically unlikely as psychically provoke an attacker to impale his own head on a spear, why not just have them do the routine thing and simply stop all motor functions?.. yet more sensationalized suicide) A feeble explanation for her inexplicable new powers is made when she says she thinks she's "finding a new voice". I see the potential for this completely unfounded and frankly ridiculous new development to be used to just make any number of things happen.
The plot in the Shogun World scenes revolves around the goal of freeing a young geisha, Sakura from the tyrannical grip of a Shogun. The authors demonstrate cultural disrespect here by drawing a straight line from geisha to prostitute. They make the women in the Japanese version of the madam's saloon the counterparts to the madam and one of her prostitutes. But this is not a true depiction of the geisha's role in Japanese culture, and only foolish foreigners might encounter prostitutes dressed as geisha and think such an encounter is typical of legitimate Japanese experience. The authors apparently don't need to care about legitimacy and can instead just do whatever they please; their poorly esteemed western audience has been conditioned to just accept whatever they're presented with.
During a rest stop on their way to the Shogun, Maeve accurately declares "It's time to settle this ruse."
When the Shogun hears that there's a witch (Maeve) coming with an entourage, he mutilates his warriors' ears so they won't hear her commands; he displays the disturbing deformity of his warriors with evident pride in having accomplished this 'clever' work-around to witchery. He also displays Sakura with open disdain in a state of dishonor - her lovely attire replaced by a plain robe, her hair unpinned and stringy, her makeup gone. As an easy fix to justify their crude choices, the authors insultingly explain away his behavior by the fact that he's wonky and dysfunctional - insane. We later discover that he's mutilated Sakura's back with a carving of a cherry blossom tree etched into the deepest layers of her skin. It's supposed to be an intriguing merging of beauty and the macabre, but it's only just appalling; a sadistic abuse and disfigurement inflicted on a young woman.
Before the dance of Sakura and Akane, the Shogun suddenly brutally kills Sakura by thrusting his sword into her abdomen. Withdrawing the blade, a torrent of blood shoots out of her belly and she drops to the floor and dies. We shouldn't be surprised that the young geisha couldn't be saved and instead died a bloody death after being cruelly abused; all relationships end in disappointment/disfigurement/death in this show. Akane's response to Sakura's murder is to dance as she's been instructed but then coming near the Shogun, she produces a long knife which she uses to very quickly, efficiently, and grotesquely saw through the Shogun's head at the chin. His dying body stands up, takes a few steps and collapses in a bloody heap. It's a heinously gruesome killing made 'necessary' by how very very bad the Shogun was written to be. Insultingly, the authors also attempt to make the more conscious viewers accept it by associating it with a 'maternal bond', having Maeve say "Akane. You are a true mother". Then, as even further insult, when Maeve and Akane are about to be executed Maeve works her 'magic' and just makes the Shogun's warriors attack and kill each other - something she could've just done at any time because she just can, but just didn't do earlier, so that Sakura could just die. A large group of warriors then advances from outside and Lee says "What do we do now?" Picking up a sword, Maeve says "I told you, I found a new voice" and assuming a warrior stance: "Now we use it". So now we're supposed to just accept that she can just take them all on at once by herself. She's full of surprises. Or something.
* * *
Dolores was shot a couple of times in the betrayal battle scene as Mr. Abernathy was being abducted for Hale, but there's no evidence of damage - just bloodied and torn clothing. Looks like she just gets to be unaffected by bullets now.
Dolores presents Teddy with a moral dilemma via a story about her father killing cows that had become infected with a disease or were weak enough to eventually, and burning them to drive off the flies that carried the disease. In response to Teddy's answer that he would house the weakest in the barn out of the air away from the flies and wait for it to pass she says he's a kind man; she seems to think it's a shortcoming and she's testing him again, saying that she'll think about what he said. Later, after they declare their devotion to each other, she sleeps with him and then promptly betrays him, waking him up in the night to corner him and forcibly reprogram him radically. There was nothing wrong with Teddy at this point, or his treatment of her, or his handling of their relationship. In support of the useless theme of useful misery, she says "To grow, we all need to suffer".