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You know who you are, Republicans. In fact, I think we've got Republican Senators Tim Scott and Cory Gardner. They're in the house, which reminds me: Security, bar the doors. Judge Merrick Garland? Come on out! We're gonna do this right here, right now! It's like the Red Wedding.
Will season six culminate in a set piece with anything like the power of that great crimson nuptial betrayal? It's off to a good start, with the surprising emergence of Melisandre as a sympathetic, complex, and genuinely interesting character. All it took was the collapse of her surety coupled with a reveal of her true nature, and suddenly her character blossomed. Turning a hated figure (remember she demanded the burning of the child Shireen) into someone we might care for is a welcome trick for the show, recalling the callow Kingslayer Jamie Lannister's shift toward viewer sympathy after losing his hand. Still, it's going to take a lot of work to twist the plot into anything like season three and the Red Wedding.It means something when lines or scenes from television jump beyond the confines of a series into popular culture. From "the truth is out there" (X-Files) to "I am the one who knocks" (Breaking Bad), the phrases resonate even if you didn't watch the show. For me, as a kid, although I never watched a minute of Dallas (a nighttime soap opera), I knew that " who shot J. R." (and "it was just a dream") would resonate as a catchphrase with pretty much everyone. In DC, I know current and former White House staffers and plenty of others for whom the "Big Block of Cheese Day" (West Wing) still is marked on their calendar. Comedies generate such lines and scenes too, from "we were on a break" (Friends) or "master of my domain" (Seinfeld is a particularly endless supplier, with other signature lines as "no soup for you" and "not that there's anything wrong with that").
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