It has been a BIG FUN WEEK for TV, my friends. I caught up on The Bear’s final season (spoilers below), plus my regulars, and Silo launched its third season with an episode that mostly left me trying to remember what happened in season 2. But in my defence, I was having a lot of feelings about Star City that night, and the tracksuit worn by my favourite KGB agent. I’m really gonna miss these comrades when that show ends next week.

Let’s watch TV!

ARMAND, YOU GUYS. He’s just so pretty! And chaotic! If there’s a fraught situation that he could possibly make worse, he will turn up to do just that. Infiltrating the band as their guitarist’s not-quite-a-sponsor? Absolutely. Attempting to make amends as part of the twelve steps? Apparently!

Regarding Langdon in The Pitt, I recall saying that I’m not a big fan of the apology and amends part of the steps. I may have used the words “self serving”. That was unfair when it comes to Langdon, and probably most addicts, but Armand? Please. What is he addicted to, if not causing mischief? And what is his apology tour if not a fresh brand of chaos?

I love him. And at this point, he is the only one who seems to be having even a little bit of fun, so why not let him? What could go wrong?

Don’t answer that.

Checking in on everyone else:

The episode ends on the suggestion that Lestat’s whole “vampire pride” schtick is inspiring other vampires, who are feeding too much and creating too many fledglings and upsetting the delicate human prey/vampire predator ecosystem. He’s gonna go wake up Akasha because his mum wants to watch the world burn, etc.

It’s an interesting threat, but also I do not love the way vampire ascendancy is intertwined with queer pride here. And that might just be me, having grown up in an ultra-conservative Catholic environment where people sincerely believed that queer liberation would inevitably lead to so much gay sex that the human race would become extinct. Like, I’m bringing my own bias and experience here, but it feels a little dog whistle adjacent. And also probably unintentional, which is worse? But I do not love it as the concluding note of the episode to air in US Pride Month.

Lestat’s pronunciation of “Chipotle” is a hate crime and I’m very into it.

Last week I started out by saying that Sheepstealer did nothing wrong.

This week I’m gonna begin by defending Rhaenyra: executing Otto Hightower was the correct decision in the moment.

I mean, yes, a trial would have also been cool. But here’s the man who engineered the usurpation and caused the war, not to mention that time he sold his teenage daughter into marriage with a grown man. Executing him was Westerosi realpolitik at work, and all credit to Rhaenyra, it only took her two swings.

Is Alicent going to agree? Intellectually, maybe, but I don’t think she was prepared for the reality. (Did she even know her dad was hanging out in her dungeons? I have questions! And only a hazy memory of season 2!) And seeing your dad’s severed head has traditionally led to, uh, problems. In Westeros.

And Alicent, bless her, has traditionally struggled with living with the consequences of her choices. I don’t blame her, because that’s a difficult thing even when you’re universally regarded as a fully fledged adult with real agency. Which women in Westeros are not. (We had a gratuitous attempted rape this week just to remind us of that!)

The important thing, for me, is that many of the characters I like are all back in the same city, and even in the same castle. Rhaenyra and Daemon are a force to be reckoned with as they re-take the Red Keep. I mean, it’s hard to tell because the cinematography is so muddy and colourless, and there were whole scenes where I couldn’t clearly see what was happening, but they’re a powerful team! I assume this will last for, oh, days before Daemon — who is, in his way, as much of a chaos goblin as Armand — does something to mess it up.

Alicent and Rhaenyra are … probably not gonna be allies again. Maybe ever? My memory of the book is even hazier than my recollections of season 2, but I feel like Rhaenyra is not going to be a cool or chill queen. I sense a villain arc in the near future, and I was going to make a joke about switching from Team Black to Team Green, but actually I’m Team Have You Guys Thought About A Constitution And A Democracy? Just Sayin?

Other reunions: Corlys is not dead! I fully thought we saw his body last week, but in my defence, it was hard to see anything happening on screen. He’s alive, slightly damp, and reunited with his illegitimate sons and one of legitimate granddaughters. (Rhaena and Sheepstealer are on their Please Don’t Tell The Queen We Got Her Son Killed Tour.)

I gotta shout out the Valeryons for being the most functional family in Westeros. Yeah, Corlys was a deadbeat dad to Addam and Alyn, and honestly he and Rhaenys could have done better by their kids than marrying them to Targaryens, but they’re trying! They’re improving!

Now they just gotta go check in with Rhaena and, you know. Her murder dragon.

People who are NOT getting shout outs: Aegon. Bro killed my man Simon Strong, the most decent person in Westeros! Come on, buddy. We already knew you were an asshole.

On the other hand, he’s now badly injured and in the hands of Alys Rivers. She was firmly in Daemon’s corner until he laughed at her demand for Harrenhal as the reward for her service. Bro, you can’t just dismiss a person’s aspirations to home ownership. Do you know how hard it is to acquire property in Westeros?

I don’t think Aegon is going to do much for Alys in the long term. But in the short term? If he owes her his life? Oh, the possibilities for mischief.

I don’t want to be engaged in House of the Dragon again, because I know how it ends and it all just seems pointless — but this was a really fun script. Imagine how good it would have been if the cinematographer had shown up to work that day.

They stuck the landing, you guys! I was a bit concerned after Gary, but it turns out that was ultimately Richie letting go of his grief and anger at Mikey. With that gone — and the car accident in its final moments being just a fender bender, Richie is fine, thank God — we can settle in for a fun little round of “the season covers one single shift”.

Obviously that raises the spectre of The Pitt, even though the format is not unique to The Pitt — but they’re actually very similar shows in some ways. Both mingle competence porn with emotional drama, and both are led by startlingly attractive men who struggle to deal with their trauma and emotional dysfunction.

(And isn’t it interesting that Carmy, though his behaviour is worse than Robbie’s in many ways, gets less hate from fans? Of course, one is a very pretty blue-eyed Italian-American Catholic played by a WASP and the other is explicitly Jewish and played by a Jewish actor. That’s probably just coincidence, though.)

Now we have to ask: should The Pitt end with Dr Robbie leaving medicine to be an intern at an architecture firm?

I find this conclusion for Carmy very funny, because he is famously bad at arithmetic, and his whole monologue in the interview demonstrates that he has no idea how to function in a normal workplace environment. But also, isn’t learning how to have a job what an internship is all about? Carmy has some money and a family who will support him as he puts his life together.

And Syd, as I’ve been saying all along, is the co-protagonist, and she spends this season demonstrating the leadership she’s going to bring to the restaurant she now runs. She makes mistakes along the way, but she sets a tone of respect and good manners. It’s a functional workplace, such that when Marcus cracks under pressure and lashes out at Luca, he’s able to apologise quickly rather than letting his feelings fester for a whole season.

Let’s talk about Richie. There’s a moment in, I think, episode 3, where he says something mildly disparaging about Carmy’s emotional intelligence, and then follows up with, “I’m not calling you a r- an R word.”

And this did not feel like a slap, the way the use of the slur felt in Widow’s Bay, because it’s not played for comedy but as a sign of how far Richie has come. He was a deeply unpleasant character back in season 1, seething with grief and resentment and anger at the world — because that was easier than being angry at Mikey, his best friend, who killed himself. His hostility to Sydney in those early episodes were not motivated by racism on his part, but it came across that way regardless. And that was intentional. Richie’s arc is about him realising that he can change, and then doing it. What if you could be a better person? What if?

(Also Syd got to stab him, and honestly? He deserved it.)

But also, being a kinder, more emotionally open person doesn’t make Richie flawless. He could not bring himself to cancel fifteen bookings, and that absolutely screws over his coworkers. Syd’s right to be mad at him, but on a writing level, I love that this guy who started out roiling with hatred for the world is now causing problems because he’s too empathetic.

Ultimately The Bear feels like a story about work. It says, If you do what you love, you will work unbelievably hard every single day of your life — so be kind. And whether you’re pursuing a Michelin star or a really good take away sandwich, the work matters.

I love that.

I WAS WRONG! THEY’RE ALIVE! MY VENUS COMRADES ARE ALIVE!

Probably. I assume that’s not a spaceship full of corpses that has done a mathematically-predictable loop around Venus and returned to haunt the Soviet Union.

But first! This week I read some rather good meta on Colonel Raskova, and in the comments I found the greatest meme ever made.

I don’t think the overall quality of Star City meta on Reddit is amazing (like, Irina is not siding with Lyudmilla because she’s a monster, she’s siding with Lyudmilla because the guy who’s working against her is giving powerful “I think I’m a nice guy and that’s why I’m going to destroy your life when you reject my eventual sexual advances” vibes), but it’s better than Tumblr’s “Is Star City queerbaiting and/or bad queer representation?” conversation.

But that’s all how I spent my time between episodes this week. LET’S TALK ABOUT MY FRIENDS THE COMRADES! And Lyudmilla. Not my friend, though I am obsessed with her Soviet leisurewear.

OKAY, SO. TIME JUMP. It’s 1971, presumably about nine months since Venera 7 launched, and Anastasia does NOT have a baby. Or a pregnancy. Which was my first sign that maybe the Venus Comrades were going to be okay, although also I was all set to start googling “single mother 1970s USSR surname” as soon as the credits rolled.

Anyway, Anastasia is not really okay, but she’s managing her feelings better than before Venera launched. She’s not drinking so much, she’s doing her job, she’s doing farm work while her dad — formerly a senior official, or at least in good standing with the Party — fails to cope with the fact that his daughter has surpassed his status.

This means she’s in a good position when the Party comes by to give her command of the next mission to Salut, The World’s First Space Station, Definitely For Science Not Espionage We Promise. They’ve fed too many cosmonauts to the KGB, so now they’re willing to risk Anastasia. Even though she hasn’t flown in a year and was never the best qualified person they had.

Checking in on the rest of the comrades:

The Chief Designer is not in the gulag, but under house arrest at his dacha, growing a truly alarming amount of vegetables under the watchful eye of armed guards. He’s not hugely thrilled when Lyudmilla turns up asking for a better way to get the spy photos from Salut, The World’s First Space Station, than chucking film canisters out and hoping they don’t land in America. I relish these conversations between fully fledged adults with opposing values. I was going to add “who respect each other”, but actually the respect only flows from Lyudmilla to the Chief Designer. Which is interesting.

With the Chief Designer out, and his replacement a KGB puppet who may or may not be good at maths, Sergei is looking for employment elsewhere. Unfortunately, the state likes him where he is.

This means he’s in place to do some VERY INTENSE ALGEBRA in the climax, as he figures out that Venera 7 is returning. Which was a great sequence, from the Mathematics Montage to his conversation with Anastasia (the only person on Salut, The World’s First Space Station, who knows about Venera 7). I assume it’s even better if you can do long division.

Over on the KGB side, Irina has been sidelined professionally due to her failure to bring in Tanya. Which New KGB Guy Who Is Hitting On Irina thinks is unfair, but given that Irina is the reason Tanya got away, I feel like it’s the least she deserves.

Lyudmilla is being undermined, if not quite sidelined, but the forces of Soviet Patriarchy are closing in. They just hate to see a girlboss win, you know? That’s definitely the problem. Not the pile of dead (or “dead”) cosmonauts in her wake. But Lyudmilla absolutely cannot be killed off before she teaches Irina to be less gormless. (I am prepared to bet money that when Lyudmilla dies, it will be at Irina’s hand as the apprentice becomes the master. But also I was absolutely certain the Venus Comrades were dead, so what do I know?)

Important question: IS IT RIDICULOUS THAT THE VENUS COMRADES ARE (probably) ALIVE?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, this is a crewed mission to Venus that was being kept secret from the government, it was already ridiculous. Literally minutes before we sat down to watch the episode, my flatmate and I agreed it would be absolutely stupid if they were alive.

HOWEVER. Because of the time jump, and the well-executed sequence in which Sergei realises what’s happening, and the fact that the characters have had to live with the loss of Venera for some time … I’m not mad. In fact, I am willing to swallow any plausible-sounding explanation we get.

(My flatmate recalls reading that the Soviet space program used less oxygen in its mix than NASA, presumably to reduce the risk of an Apollo 1 and also because oxygen is a bourgeois indulgence. And they had vented a lot of air before the system threw a spark. So maybe that was enough that they weren’t immolated, and then they had time to get into pressure suits and wait for Lakshmi’s system to get them more breathable air.)

Does this willingness make me a sucker? Probably, but I prefer to think of it as, this is the penultimate episode of the series, and the quality of the storytelling is high enough that I am prepared to suspend disbelief.

I have quite hazy memories of season 2, save that it mainly adapted a small chunk of the middle of the first book in the trilogy, and a whole episode took place in more or less total darkness. These were … maybe not the best choices.

I also have pretty hazy memories of the book, but I’m quite confident the whole “Juliette is the mayor but Camille is feeding her amnesia drugs so she doesn’t remember the outside, the other silo or her friends” plot is new. And in theory I like it, but in practice, Juliette’s whole deal is that she’s a force of nature who doesn’t know how to stop, and right now she’s sleepwalking through life.

We also have a subplot of (probable) flashbacks to (what I assume are) the events leading up to the whole silo project: Congressman Nate from Succession is trying to get into Senator LAURA INNES FROM ER!’s Iran Committee, ostensibly because his sister (Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey) is a fighter pilot, but actually because a journalist wants him to. I don’t know which iconic television role the journalist is known for, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Truthfully, I don’t have much to say about this episode because I watched it immediately after Star City and spent the entire hour going “VENUS COMRADES ARE ALIVE!” and also, “Can anyone remember what happened in season 2 of Silo?” But I’ve missed Rebecca Ferguson’s wobbly American accent, and this is my new Friday night show, so I’m sure I’ll get on board quickly.