天下制覇

Very subtle direction there.

Impressions:

Another episode of Intrigue, which, ironically, is not intriguing in the slightest. It even introduces another new character, a dandy nobleman with enough blonde hair to clog a hundred thousand drains. How he's different from the other plumbing-killer, I'm still trying to work out. I think it's because his hair is slightly more orange and he wears it in a ponytail. As for what actually happend this week, it's a fat load of cat piss. People stood around yapping. Our big ol' heroes… stood there and got talked at. The big event? Some throwaway assassination attempt, spawned out of the ether, which was easily thwarted, because god help us if our heroes face any actual adversity in any way ever.

That's how you could start salvaging the plot here in a heartbeat. Make them goddamned lose for once. Genuinely lose. Give them an actual challenge to overcome. Or at the very least, struggle to control the situation. Or, you know, round out a character or two through some honest to god development or at least some kind of arc. A spontaneous recitation of backstory is neither of those, and this episode didn't even provide that little, just sort of oblique references that there's stuff happening somewhere of some kind of import. And christ, is it depressing to be aware of both how generic a statement that is and how many episodes I feel like I've watched in recent months that it describes perfectly.