Game of Drinks: Game of Thrones Themed Drinks

Drink-smith Carrie Watt with her Game of Thrones cocktails.

In Westeros they love their horns of ale and a good Dornish vintage.  Well, you may never taste the grapes of the Arbour, and we certainly would not recommend drinking like Cersei Lannister, but you can have some pretty damn tasty Game of Thrones cocktails at the Halyards bar in Brooklyn every Sunday night (at the Game of Thrones/Mad Men viewing party) courtesy of bartender miss Carrie Watt.

Ice & Fire

-Whiskey, jalapeno chili pepper, blood oj, splash of soda.

This aptly titled whiskey drink hits a lot of notes from the moment it touches your tongue.  Starting cool and leaving you breathing fire.  An initial refreshingly sweet flavor gives way to sour and the drink has a distinctly spicy sensation that stays in your throat long after it is gone.

Sanza Stark

-Titos, strawberry, lemonade and basil.

This drink matches the elder Lady Stark in both looks and flavor.  This pink, summery cocktail is light and sweet.  A bright lemonade flavor makes it great for a sunny day by the pool in Highgarden.

White Walker

-Vodka, Cointreau, lemon cordial, simple syrup

This milky white, icy vodka drink has a distinctly tart flavor and a powerful kick that can do you in very quickly if you're not mindful.  Delicious and strong, the lemon cordial gives the drink a visual consistency of an icy abyss.

Remember the Wedding

-Tequila, OJ, blood OJ

Named for the way the blood OJ ominously mixes with the tequila and OJ, this afternoon cocktail is sugary and strong.  The blood OJ sets it apart for both character and taste.

Lady Arya

-Beefeater gin, lemonade, cayenne peppers, cucumber and agave

A personal favorite, this gin drink is invigorating, feisty and great for anyone looking for something flavorful but not too sweet.  A well balanced mix between smooth and fiery, it perfectly embodies everyone's favorite pint-sized assassin.  You can bet the Hound would drink it by the hornful.

So there they are.  Guaranteed to make your journey to the Wall more enjoyable or your next royal hunt more exciting.  Make them at home for your next Game of Thrones viewing party or come down to Halyards in Brooklyn every Sunday night for the Game of Thrones/Mad Men trivia and viewing party (Starts at 8pm) and have Carrie herself make you one of your choosing.

The Eerie Greatness of HBO's True Detective and its Fantastic Finale

It is rare for a show's finale to live up to the sum of its parts.  Most of the time, fans are left to accept an ending, focus on the things that worked, and forgive the things that didn't.  Most of the time, the hype and expectations are so high that a show can't help but let its fans down.  That is why the season finale of True Detective was such an incredible feat.

A show with so much mystery and intrigue could have tripped over its own threads many times over in its final hour, but True Detective gracefully glided over it all with a suspensful, atmospheric finale that still left time at the end for revisiting of some existential themes, closure for the main characters, and even a little bit of a happy ending!

For a show that made its name on southern pacing, True D wasted no time getting down to business in this final episode of its first season.  The story bounces between Detectives Hart (Harrelson) and Cohle (McConaughey), who kick things off with some actual detective work, and our new found serial killer, played by Glenn Fleshler, who deserves a nod for crafting such a memorable, terrifying villain in only half an episode.

Once Hart and Cohle get on their suspect's trail it doesn't take them long to track him down.  After a brief set up, it is off to the showdown.

I doubt there was anything writer Nick Pizzolatto or director Cary Fukunaga could have done to make the final confrontation sequence more intense.  The sense of foreboding was palpable as you watched Cohle chase the Yellow King through the ruins of "Carcosa", a place possibly even more horrifying than its literary origins.

The fear and suspense the audience feels during these moments are noticably more intense than that of your typical finale because of the nature of True Detective.  It is a somber, masochistic show where characters constantly hurt themselves and others.  Everyone is lost.  And we've only known them for one season.  It all helps to make the idea of our heroes failing and the wicked villain continuing to rule his broken down kingdom with impunity that much more horribly possible.

It's much more plausible for an audience that Woody Harrleson could die at the hand of a malevolent maniac in a show after seven episodes than it it is Bryan Cranston gets offe'd by some nazis after we've grown with him over five seasons.

This alone was enough to make the finale great.  It could have faded to black when the light of that flair burnt out and no one would have complained.  But True Detective was not done with us.

First, we look at what our heroes got for their reward of "saving the day".  Hart is traumatized to the point of tears when his estranged family comes to visit him and Cohle, looking like a hillbilly Jesus, sits dazed looking out his window to the universe as he contemplates what he could've done differently, what he could've done better.

Then we get a brief but haunting tour of the evil Hart and Cohle endured throughout their journey.  Carcosa, Reggie Ledoux's stronghold, and the cornfield where the investigation started 20+ years earlier all still remain, completely intact, unchanged.  They are Ledoux's "flat circle", destined to exist forever untouched in the memories of those who witnessed them.

All of this was right in line with the eerie slow burn of True D, a show made of creepy, pulpy goodness.  But it was the final scene of the season that set the show apart.  After enduring criticism for being ovewrought and even sexist, An emotional, grounded monologue from Cohle brought everything back to what the show had really been all about: two broken people trying to do the right thing in spite of their demons.  We don't always love them, a lot of the time we don't even like them, but we understand them.

The shear ambition of this final scene was enough to admire True Detective and Pizzolatto, and it was more than enough to warrant a reset button for the second season.

Possibly more amazing than anything, was on a series so dark, so gleefully devoid of relief, the audience was given the final theme of the show, from the most miserable character on the show no less.  Rust Cohle consider's Hart's lament for the struggles of light in the darkness of the night sky and responds, "Once there was only dark.  Seems to me the light's winning."  The theme of hope.

Solving the Mystery of True Detective BEFORE the Detectives.

 The following post contains major spoilers from last night’s episode of HBO’s awesome True Detective.  If you are not caught up, read at your own risk.

Every True Detective in the land last night finally found out just who was the “Yellow King” in the exceedingly creepy (or depressing) episode, "After You've Gone".  But if you were paying attention, you should’ve already known, after all, I did. 

I, of course, had no problem setting off to tweet about my genius.

True Detective, tonight's episode left me breathless but also, I knew it! I called it way back in episode three! #nevermowanothermanslawn.

— Kevin H. MacLean (@KHMacLean) March 3, 2014

But in reality, the mystery was solved in story-telling 101.

The trick in unearthing the mystery of the murders wasn't in Carcosa or the Yellow King but in the final moments of the third episode of the season, “The Locked Room”.  This of course was the first time we meet the man who would be the “Yellow King.”

I instantly knew something was up with this guy from the moment he came on screen.  As the scene came to a close and nothing seemed to happen, I knew it wouldn’t be the last of Mr. Lawnmower Man, but it wasn’t just intuition, or even the way he carried himself.  It was much simpler than that.

You see, the character didn’t serve any purpose at the time.  He didn’t reveal any important information in the investigation, he didn’t provide any exposition or character development.  In fact, the only piece of information he gives that you can’t tell just by looking at the scenery is the seemingly innocuous tidbit that he “works for the parish.”  In a show as wrought with twists and hidden significance like True Detective, there is hardly the space for filler.

The only two possibilities as I saw them were that he was either a guardian archetype or a villain.  The quickest example I could give for the guardian archetype would be the old man in Home Alone.  An oft wrongly feared and/or misunderstood character, typically elderly or simple-minded, that tries to protect a more helpless character that is abused or otherwise imperiled.  This hypothesis can be discarded, however, because the unnamed landscaper is never given any back-story for the audience to wrongly fear or misunderstand him.

That leaves us with the villain role.  It is common practice in murder mysteries to introduce the killer as a minor character early in the story (see Seven, the photographer).  Don’t forget to appreciate the dramatic irony of detective Cole going off hurriedly on a hot lead when he was standing right in front of the actual killer the whole time.

Flash forward to last night’s closing scene.  It might have been hard to identify him at first, with the loss of his facial hair from earlier in the season, but that creepy Cajun accent was still there and he even reminded the viewers with a brief line about working at “public schools”.

If there was any doubt, it shook away as the camera came in for a close up to reveal his scar ridden face as he lamented to himself in chill inducing fashion that, “My family’s been here a long, long time.”

The Yellow King.