Classically Abby - July 16, 2020


The Last Kingdom - Husband VS. Wife SHOW Review! 🎬|| You should DEFINITELY Watch This On Netflix...


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

196.44516

Word Count

6,134

Sentence Count

415

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary

In this episode, Jacob and I review Netflix's The Last Kingdom. We talk about the premise of the show, the characters, and why we should see all four seasons. We also talk about why we chose to watch the show and how we feel about it.


Transcript

00:00:00.040 Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be
00:00:04.040 doing a review on Netflix's The Last Kingdom.
00:00:12.080 So Jacob and I just recently finished watching the four seasons that are
00:00:16.080 available of The Last Kingdom and we really wanted to talk about it with you
00:00:19.040 guys. So do you want to start us off a little bit? Yeah so in terms of how we
00:00:23.680 decided to watch the show, we'd seen Deadwood seasons 1 through 3, season 1
00:00:28.480 is good avoid seasons 2 and 3 or else you'll understand that production
00:00:32.140 nightmares behind the scenes for a show can make something good in the first
00:00:35.800 season trash season 2 and 3. Not great and I feel really bad because I recommended
00:00:40.840 that earlier in quarantine when we were just in the first season. Just watch season 1.
00:00:44.260 Same thing with Westworld. Just see season 1. Yep. But as you'll see from us
00:00:48.700 talking about Last Kingdom, see all four seasons. Yes. All four seasons. But in
00:00:53.080 terms of how we decided to watch it, it was a lark. I'd been listening on the
00:00:55.900 great courses to a series on Viking history and my wife can attest that I've
00:01:00.880 been on a Viking kick recently. To be fair, I'm just gonna interrupt you to say
00:01:04.520 that my husband is amazing at history. He knows so much and it was always
00:01:08.780 impressive to me and he always wants to learn more so. You just keep
00:01:11.740 complimenting that guy and we're all gonna start hating him so you probably
00:01:14.860 shouldn't do that. Liked all that Viking history stuff but Viking board games but
00:01:19.120 Viking video games and so I thought ooh we are waiting for a new show to watch why not a
00:01:24.400 Viking show and so I looked up watch Vikings or Last Kingdom because I've been
00:01:28.160 vaguely aware of it. People said Last Kingdom's where the characters are at and
00:01:31.300 they were right. They're so right! So we got in, saw the first episode, loved it, kept
00:01:36.780 rolling through and then it's just been a non-stop The Last Kingdom marathon for
00:01:40.960 the last few weeks. Yeah and it's one of the reasons that quarantine hasn't been so
00:01:44.380 bad is that we've been watching it together. Well that, we've been in Nebraska. The Last Kingdom
00:01:49.000 watching that together during this quarantine has been so much fun. It's so
00:01:53.320 good you guys and I just cannot believe how well it holds up all four seasons.
00:02:00.160 Yes because we have been as we mentioned from Deadwood, as we mentioned from West
00:02:04.540 World and then those of you who have seen Game of Thrones you can attest to the
00:02:07.960 same. A lot of marquee prestige television falls apart as you watch it and
00:02:15.280 every single season of The Last Kingdom has been good, has been consistent
00:02:19.960 quality and we want to keep watching and the characters even, for the most part,
00:02:23.740 are consistent and really fun to watch. We've been burned before when it comes to
00:02:28.300 many times. When it comes to shows getting worse season after season. So this
00:02:33.340 one's been pretty good. Hopefully it keeps up this pace as it keeps going. We'll find out
00:02:37.000 next year because the fourth season was only released in April. Right. So let's get
00:02:41.160 started with the premise of the show. Okay so the premise is we're in 860 AD
00:02:50.580 England, about that time, and for those of you who know this from history, you
00:02:55.000 already know the Vikings have been invading England. For those of you who
00:02:58.160 don't know, awesome, the Vikings invaded the heck out of England. They invaded
00:03:03.540 Ireland, they invaded Scotland area, just for like a few hundred years there were
00:03:07.860 ongoing wars between the Vikings coming in from Scandinavia and then the German
00:03:12.400 tribes who had settled there after the fall of Rome, who were the Anglo-Saxons.
00:03:16.240 And so the premise of the show is the Vikings have taken over basically half of
00:03:19.680 the country and our main character as a boy is a nobleman of one of the northern
00:03:25.260 kind of duchies, areas of land in England. His dad's killed, he's taken captive by the
00:03:31.800 Danes and then eventually actually just raised as the son of the guy who took him
00:03:35.700 captive and so culturally he's a Dane. But he was like 10 or whatever when he got
00:03:41.080 kidnapped so he knows he's a Saxon, he has a right to inheritance of his
00:03:44.940 father's holdings when he was a kid and so he's caught between two worlds. You're
00:03:48.720 kind of watching his journey going through his struggle between being raised a
00:03:54.180 Dane kind of falling into that category more as a man and being born a Saxon.
00:04:00.020 And so he's constantly struggling with that, moving through the history of England and
00:04:05.980 really how England was established as its own nation, which is pretty cool.
00:04:10.140 An important thing to note for those of you who are not familiar with the history component,
00:04:13.260 England, the one country in that landmass, did not exist yet. You had the Anglo-Saxons as a people
00:04:20.320 with a separate little petty kingdoms, it's called the Heptarchy, there were seven of them at a certain point in time,
00:04:25.420 and so it took a series of Alfred the Great was the monarch, him and his descendants to have the
00:04:32.260 vision of united Anglo-Saxon England as one kingdom, and then successively bringing that to fruition.
00:04:39.300 So this show occurs alongside that and it's like Forrest Gump or a lot of those other historical fiction
00:04:45.220 movies shows where your main character finds himself being hyper important to historical events.
00:04:51.420 Yes. It happened to be that he was not written about, but let it be known, he was there and he did stuff.
00:04:56.820 I do. And the show even directly addresses that. I was going to say, that's one thing in the show that's pretty funny,
00:05:00.340 is that they specifically address, oh, they left him out of history for certain reasons I don't want to give away.
00:05:05.580 We don't want to do spoilers too much in this review, just because this really is more of a, you should watch this.
00:05:10.860 We're trying to convince you. Watch it and then discuss it with us on Twitter.
00:05:14.220 Yes. He was left out of history by one of the characters, and that's why that had to happen.
00:05:21.180 And that's why we don't know him in, you know, the real, the real world.
00:05:24.540 But now you know. But now we know. So you can spread his name.
00:05:27.500 Yeah, which is kind of funny. So moving on to the themes of the show from the premise.
00:05:35.980 What are the themes of the show that we really like that they tackle?
00:05:39.180 So the big thing in the show, the background conflict, it's not just petty dynastic squabbling like a lot of Game of Thrones was.
00:05:46.700 Here you have a nation of people, the Anglo-Saxons, who've been Christianized, and fun fact in history,
00:05:53.020 it was Irish monks who came over to the pagan Germanic tribes that had invaded England and settled there in like the 400s, 500s, 600s,
00:06:01.420 and converted them to Christianity. So the Irish made the English Christians.
00:06:05.340 And the English made the Danes Christians. The ones who came.
00:06:09.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:12.620 So you have the Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and then you have the Vikings who are invading.
00:06:17.020 The Vikings are pagans, and they are pagans, pagans. And by that I mean you get to see them talk about their gods,
00:06:23.980 you get to see their worship rituals, you get to see their beliefs, you see how their beliefs impact
00:06:28.300 their view on life and death, you see the foreignness of these two cultures. So for whatever reason,
00:06:34.060 everyone speaks the same language in terms of everyone speaking English, so you never have Dane characters
00:06:39.180 not being intelligible to the English-Saxon characters and vice versa. Okay, but beyond that,
00:06:44.940 the cultures really are foreign to one another. And you see how that, the religion and the culture,
00:06:51.260 the desire for land, these two peoples cannot readily be accommodated, and they do not want to accommodate
00:06:56.620 each other, and you get why each one does not want to accommodate each other, and how in their terms
00:07:02.220 they see it, which I really like. Yeah. Because way too much bad modern writing is, well, you know,
00:07:07.900 let's take Game of Thrones. We have a medieval-inspired setting where hypothetically religion would
00:07:12.380 matter, but everyone's basically an atheist, and they'll pay lip service to things, and everyone
00:07:15.980 talks like I'm a millennial, and everybody, no, no, no. People come across like they're in their time
00:07:21.100 and place and in their religion and in their culture, and that is special and is compelling. Yeah,
00:07:25.340 it's a very interesting dynamic where you have the Christians and the Danes who are pagan just
00:07:32.060 constantly at war with each other, both, you know, literally and also, you know, religiously. But
00:07:39.180 the reason this works is not just because it's kind of an overarching thing. Overarching? Overarching?
00:07:45.500 Whatever. You decide. Overarching thing. We'll put up a Twitter poll. Of, of, you know, this is the
00:07:51.420 Christians and the English and these are the Danes and the pagans. It's actually something that
00:07:55.340 plays out between the characters as individuals, and so you're not just seeing it at, you know,
00:07:59.900 throughout the story as kind of something that frames it, but really it gets into the nitty-gritty
00:08:05.260 of the relationships between not just men and women, but also between like Beocca and Uhtred, who you
00:08:11.900 don't know who that is, but just other men between their relationships. So it's, it's really fascinating.
00:08:17.420 Well, one thing this show does very well is that it avoids the trap of coming across like,
00:08:22.620 oh, well there's a difference between Danes and Saxons, Christians and pagans, and so that's a hard
00:08:27.980 line. These people don't intermix, and the only context in which they'd intermix would be conflict.
00:08:33.260 No. Instead, you see how there are Danish pagans who fight for the Saxon side opportunistically,
00:08:39.260 or because they have other interests that align with the English. The English are where,
00:08:43.660 or the Anglo-Saxons, they're not English yet, the Anglo-Saxons are wary of them, but will still
00:08:48.940 employ them and use them for their own purposes. The conflict is still there, but it's not literally
00:08:54.300 the only thing that goes on at any time, and vice versa. You have Saxons who will work to help Danes,
00:08:59.020 because they have their own opportunistic things. These people are different, the broad conflict is
00:09:03.180 there for a reason, but also life is more complicated than that. So it doesn't diminish the conflict,
00:09:08.860 but it also doesn't make it unrealistically the only factor in play. Much like real life,
00:09:14.540 the differences between people in terms of culture, everything else, really, really matter,
00:09:19.420 but also they're contextual, and it really matters what you're discussing at any given point in time
00:09:23.500 for whether or not people will work together or be enemies. Yeah, and I think another two themes,
00:09:28.860 I think, that also play throughout the show is the idea of destiny, and how, well, sorry, there's a tagline
00:09:36.060 in the show. If you watch it on Netflix, and you do not skip the intro, you're going to get a recap
00:09:40.780 every episode. Yes, that's true. The show is intelligently written. It would be for an
00:09:44.860 audience that can follow along. It's not a very, very highbrow show that's hard to follow along,
00:09:48.460 but it's a smart show. They say in the beginning, every single episode, the main character narrates
00:09:55.580 this absolutely condescending recap. It is really funny. Like, oh, this is exactly what happened,
00:10:02.140 and says slowly. Yes. And then at the end of every recap, he says, destiny is all. Oh my goodness,
00:10:13.340 it's too much. The idea of and the theme of the pagans depending on destiny and the Christians
00:10:20.060 depending on choices. Depending on choices and also divine providence. Yes. And so the Christians are
00:10:25.020 caught between the two. Right. They think everything's in God's hands, but it's on them to be worthy of
00:10:29.980 divine providence. Yeah, exactly. And it's very different. Again, it's that religious thing,
00:10:34.700 but it's just a more specific version of it. Yes, you can have some of my seltzer.
00:10:38.620 Enjoy it. And then the third thing I was thinking about with this show and the themes of it,
00:10:45.260 I think would be the family structures and the kind of inheritance, because the main character has that
00:10:52.140 inheritance to the land that he so wants. In the north of England. In the north of England,
00:10:56.300 and then you also have, you know, Alfred the king who and his family... Oh, we've established him.
00:11:00.860 Yes. So the kind of the foil for most of the show is Alfred and Uhtred. Uhtred being this Dane that
00:11:07.100 we've been talking about and Alfred being the king and who's trying to create England. And so Uhtred and
00:11:14.540 Alfred, you can see the difference between their family structures and also the difference between
00:11:19.100 their version of inheritance. So now we're going to talk about characters. So the main character of
00:11:27.100 the show we definitely talked about, we just kind of didn't tell you about him and his name. We didn't
00:11:31.260 give his introduction. Yeah. So his name is Uhtred and he is the one who is half Dane, half Saxon.
00:11:37.500 His name is Osbert. Excuse me. His name is Uhtred. Uhtred Ragnarsson.
00:11:41.100 His name is Osbert. He was baptized as Osbert. Only the second time. He also happened the first time.
00:11:48.140 Didn't even watch the show. So yeah. So Uhtred is the one that we really follow throughout the show.
00:11:53.580 And the way that you know which season is which is by how they do his hair. So that really clarifies
00:11:59.740 things for us. It's always the kind of hair that you would find in the modern day at a male participant
00:12:05.660 in Burning Man or Coachella or a similar music festival. But in this time period, unlike in the
00:12:11.980 modern day, it indicated masculinity, strong values, strength, having a family, and swinging axes into
00:12:22.060 the faces of other people. In the modern day it means vapes, oddly sized shorts, Birkenstock sandals,
00:12:31.100 bad tattoos, and listening to trash music. So yeah. Uhtred is the main character. He's the one that we
00:12:37.500 follow throughout the story. And he is really well drawn. A lot of the time, the main character of a
00:12:43.580 show is the least well drawn, I find. Bland. Yes. Bland and or too perfect. Yeah. Refer to Harry Potter.
00:12:52.620 Exactly. Which is... Or Luke Skywalker. Yeah. I was thinking Star Wars. Yeah. It's usually a technique,
00:12:57.660 actually, where they want you to be able to put yourself into the shoes of the main character.
00:13:01.980 But this show isn't doing that. They're just telling a story. And Uhtred is the main character.
00:13:06.940 He's really well developed. You see his struggles throughout. And they're very interesting. Well
00:13:11.980 acted and well written. It's like he's the team leader on an ensemble cast, rather than just the
00:13:17.820 protagonist who you're going to follow all the time, forever. So he comes across with as many
00:13:23.900 foils, like bad traits and good traits as any other character. And we like him because he earns it.
00:13:29.820 Not because we're just oversaturated with Uhtred in our face all the time. Oh, and something I forgot
00:13:34.300 to mention about the show that's not about character is that this show is constantly,
00:13:41.180 and I'm going to use this phrase, which is a joke now on the internet, subverting your expectations.
00:13:45.660 Oh. But not in that annoying way. For its own sake. Yeah. Not like Game of Thrones,
00:13:50.540 where they just randomly would kill people and, oh, they subverted your expectation again by killing
00:13:55.020 someone. Or how at the end of the Night King was killed by Arya, because literally in there after
00:13:59.260 the episode dialogue, well, everyone expected Jon to do it. Right. So we thought, wouldn't it be cool
00:14:04.700 if we had a character who had no connection to this plot line, just, you know, do that instead.
00:14:10.220 Yeah, exactly. So it's super frustrating on shows like that. But this one, it's not that you can
00:14:16.540 tell that the writers are trying to subvert your expectations. It's not shock value. Not at all.
00:14:20.300 It's like the characters are actually acting in their own best interest, and you as the viewer are
00:14:26.540 trying to understand it in terms of plot, and the writers are understanding it in terms of the
00:14:32.060 character and what the character would actually do. Now, to be clear, background for the show,
00:14:36.860 it is based on a series of novels, I think called the Saxon Chronicles, something to the effect,
00:14:41.100 by Bernard Cromwell. This is the guy who did the Sharp series. It comes across like a good novel
00:14:47.820 writers play with characters rather than a commercially produced show with the studio,
00:14:54.060 with executives, where these are the beats we would naturally hit in a plot. And so if you're good
00:14:59.420 at cliche genre expectations for television shows, you've seen a lot of it, you know, oh, well,
00:15:03.900 they'll kill off this character here because they'll give emotional weight to things, and then
00:15:07.740 you feel nothing. Instead, it doesn't feel like if you're good at knowing cliches, you could predict
00:15:12.940 this show. Instead, it's, oh, things may or may not happen, but it's because that's what would happen
00:15:17.900 in this situation. And it feels like, like what you're saying, feels like one person is telling
00:15:23.020 the story, not a room of executives, which is the opposite to me of like The Witcher, you know,
00:15:29.180 when they turned The Witcher into a show. To me, it felt like there were 16 executives sitting in a
00:15:33.020 room and they were trying to say, okay, well, this needs to happen. And they all wrote for Teen Vogue.
00:15:37.100 And exactly. So I don't, you know, it doesn't feel like the writer of The Witcher books was the
00:15:43.820 one telling the story of the show. For The Last Kingdom, the writer of the books, it feels like this
00:15:49.820 is just his story. It feels as if it's spoken with one voice by a competent storyteller who wants to tell
00:15:54.140 the story rather than get good ratings for sweeps week. Yeah, exactly. So you can take care of
00:16:02.860 telling us about Uhtred's foil. His foil is Alfred, i.e. Alfred the Great, as he is known to history,
00:16:10.460 Alfred of Wessex. So I mentioned before the Heptarchy, there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
00:16:14.780 within the landmass of England. And there was one kingdom that was not, at least in the time of the
00:16:20.460 show, I don't know English history that well. One kingdom that's not really been smashed and
00:16:25.100 pulled apart by the Danes or subjugated or weakened, and that was Wessex. Wessex is the area of England
00:16:31.020 along the southern coast. And so that is apparently where Winchester is because that was their capital.
00:16:36.460 And so Alfred the Great is the guy who ends up becoming king rapidly into season one, who has
00:16:41.980 the unitary vision of an England in mind. It's similar to how if you refer to North America as
00:16:47.340 North America rather than THE America. You know, you wanted to somehow make a united empire of Canada,
00:16:52.780 the US, Mexico, and then a little sliver of Central America. If someone had that vision, insane as it
00:16:58.620 is, they would be the Alfred of the modern day. So he wants to make a united Christian England,
00:17:04.620 but none of that is at hand. And so he, by force of will, wants to make it happen. Now this character
00:17:09.660 is spectacular because he is stern, he is strategic, he is physically weak, he has a lusting after the ladies,
00:17:16.940 he is a complex character, and he's deeply pious. And so his failings hurt at him, his responsibilities
00:17:23.260 are keenly felt by him, and he's got a serious intensity. He feels like what royalty and that
00:17:29.660 like traditionalist sense of like, oh, if only we had a king. What they fetishize as an image is
00:17:34.780 embodied in this guy, not without flaw, WITH flaw, with the flaws of that kind of a thing, but with a
00:17:40.860 strength of will and kind of like a power to him, that is just really well brought across by his
00:17:46.780 actor. And one thing that we found very interesting, Alfred the Great, as I mentioned, he has his
00:17:51.580 Crohn's disease, he's physically a slender man who's weak, and he exudes power. Yes, that's exactly
00:17:59.180 what I was going to say. Everything he says has the force of law and authority. And that's what's so cool
00:18:03.180 about that foil with Uhtred and Alfred is that Uhtred physically just looks really strong, looks
00:18:10.060 powerful. Then you look at Alfred, and he is so frail looking. With a bowl cut? And somehow it's
00:18:16.540 not to his disadvantage? Well, I mean, he doesn't look great, but the fact is that his character,
00:18:23.500 his actor, and the way that he was written, he is very emblematic of strength. This show,
00:18:28.940 you get power from just authority. You see how a king, even if he didn't have troops directly at his
00:18:33.420 command, would have power over people because the culture respects the authority, and the authority
00:18:38.220 is wielded. And you see how women in this show wield a feminine power, which doesn't come at the
00:18:43.980 point of a sword or from a bicep or whatever, but it is as powerful as anything else because we live in
00:18:49.820 civilization. In the context of civilization, you don't resort back to violence all the dang time. In fact,
00:18:55.260 that's the last thing that happens. Yeah. So if we're not all going to fall apart and start fighting each other,
00:18:59.980 people's soft power and authority of persuasion and social consequences, it matters. So the king
00:19:06.380 matters. The women and their approval or their influence, it might not be the direct person in
00:19:11.340 charge, but they are strong and it comes across. Yeah. It's just so well done. And you know, you have
00:19:16.940 all of these side characters that are also really fleshed out. Actually, one of my favorite characters
00:19:21.980 is not one of those two. And it's Father Beocca. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say Finan,
00:19:27.580 the Irish charming rose. I mean, I do like Finan. Yeah, yeah, I know you do. I like all the characters.
00:19:32.540 A lot of the characters are just so well done and so well explained that they're fascinating and you
00:19:38.620 actually care about their stories. But what's great about this, as opposed to Game of Thrones,
00:19:43.340 and I don't know if this is what you're going to, if this is what you're thinking, you don't spend
00:19:47.180 so much time with the side characters that it feels like there's so many storylines that you
00:19:52.780 have to keep track of. It's really well balanced. It's like, this is a character that we care about.
00:19:58.300 We're not going to spend 15 minutes of an episode on this character, but you're going to see him
00:20:02.940 throughout. You're going to know him. You're going to like him. And this is another character where
00:20:07.020 they're important and they get their own story, but it's not like you're trying to follow the threads
00:20:12.460 of 15 different people. For the most part, when it comes to the side characters, unlike Game of
00:20:17.180 Thrones, where the side characters would have an agenda they were trying to accomplish, so they had
00:20:21.900 a plot line they were doing. In this show, you'll spend time on the side characters. They have their
00:20:26.780 own story, but their story is just characterizing them and developing them and letting more of who they
00:20:32.060 are come across. They don't have an agenda to accomplish in the same way. Basically, they're there
00:20:37.020 as retainers and household members to assist the agenda of the more main characters trying to get
00:20:43.100 stuff done, which means that they serve the proper function of a side character, which is help move
00:20:47.660 things along, provide dramatic weight and interesting conversations and foil, and if one of them gets
00:20:52.220 hurt or does something good, we care, but they don't make it so we have to keep track of more stuff.
00:20:56.940 Yeah, and I just like them in their presence. Exactly. And I think that the part of the reason this show
00:21:02.060 is so good is because it's based on history. So you can't, it's not like, oh, uh, we don't know where
00:21:07.660 the last season's going to end up, but we know what we're going to do in the first two seasons.
00:21:11.500 They know where they're going overall. So the reason that I like Father Baioca so much is-
00:21:16.140 Who's Father Baioca? I will explain. Okay guys, so the camera died. I apologize, but we're back.
00:21:22.060 As it always does. And it does. Every time. I got about 35 minutes on this camera
00:21:27.180 battery. And then it's done-zo. Such a small battery. It is what it is. But I was talking
00:21:32.940 about Father Baioca. The reason that I like him so much, and the reason that I do like him so much,
00:21:37.500 is that he is Uhtred's father's priest in Bebbanburg, which is their northern English
00:21:45.340 fiefdom that they control. And he was there from the very beginning, knew Uhtred, and baptized him
00:21:52.300 before he was taken by the Danes. And then he went over to Alfred when Uhtred was taken.
00:21:58.300 The first episode. So the lovely thing about Father Baioca's character is that he is trying
00:22:03.580 so hard to do the right thing for Alfred and Uhtred, even as Uhtred has become a Dane, has become a pagan,
00:22:11.100 but Father Baioca still sees the good in him and encourages it always. And their relationship
00:22:16.620 makes Uhtred better. Yes. And that's why I love his character. It is my favorite. So in line with
00:22:22.940 what I was saying before about the authority of Alfred, despite being physically weak, the authority
00:22:28.620 of the women in the show, despite being women, as someone might say, oh, you're a woman, how do you
00:22:32.860 have power in the medieval ages? You see it. Yes. Here with Father Baioca, you see the authority of
00:22:37.660 the church, of a religious figure. Father Baioca, as a pious religious man, brings that authority
00:22:43.740 to bear. And it has an effect on people, has an effect on people just because he has the role
00:22:48.460 of a priest, but then also it genuinely is compelling. And so people are brought along with
00:22:53.340 it and he doesn't just use it. He believes it and acts it out. So there's one character,
00:22:58.940 a woman who's in the events of the show, horrifically, emotionally scarred. And so you think,
00:23:04.620 oh, this woman's going to do like some kind of kill Billis revenge narrative or something like that.
00:23:08.460 And he, Father Baioca is on the scene, steps and says, no, takes her under his wing and then actually
00:23:14.540 heals her mentally with faith in Jesus and Christianity and everything like that, but
00:23:18.940 genuinely compassionately. And it works and it's compellingly brought across. It's like, wow,
00:23:24.540 really no show does that. Yeah, that is spectacularly performed. And his relationship with Uchid is
00:23:29.500 fascinating because Uchid's the Dane pagan, doesn't believe in Christian God, but he's useful to Christian
00:23:36.540 society and he's useful to the kingdom of Wessex and he's at heart a good man. And so Baioca knows
00:23:42.300 all this and is very accepting of him while also giving him stern rebukes for when he acts out of
00:23:46.860 hand and acts too pagan and things like that. It's great. It's great. And then I just want to say
00:23:51.180 very briefly, like how Father Baioca is played by the same character, same actor who played
00:23:55.340 Quirrell in Harry Potter. Yeah, random little side note. I don't like Harry Potter, but I was interested to
00:24:00.940 know that. It's very random. But my little side note just about the female characters in the show
00:24:06.860 is that they are really, really well done because they are given enough time on screen, but it doesn't
00:24:12.700 feel like they have to have a strength narrative that doesn't fit the time period, which I feel like
00:24:19.740 every show that's... One character has it halfway. I think it works for her and I think it works for all
00:24:25.980 the characters in the show. All the females in the show are kind of working within the framework of
00:24:30.780 the time period of the history, in my opinion, for the most part. And yet they're not bland,
00:24:35.420 they're not boring, but nor are they reduced to being like subjugated. Instead, they are powerful,
00:24:42.300 motivated characters, but powerful in a realistic and compelling context for what that would mean.
00:24:47.820 And they get stuff done. Yes. So that is something I did want to mention because I feel like in
00:24:53.180 a lot of TV shows, they feel like they have to change the history to make it more PC and this
00:24:58.460 isn't that. They're just... This is like historically true. So a big thing in the show, part of what makes
00:25:03.980 it so compelling, anything that we watch is all about the human characters. Why? Because we connect
00:25:08.860 to people. Even your biggest misanthrope, as long as he watches TV and it's like an actual narrative
00:25:13.820 fiction, you still care about people in some way. That's why we watch anything. And so the strength of the
00:25:18.140 writing is the strength of your characters. And what we really like is that the characters really
00:25:23.100 develop and they mature over time. So our main character of Uchid starts as 18 or 19 year old
00:25:29.500 Danish venturer pagan and he's impetuous and he does things that make us not like him and think,
00:25:35.740 oh, you're vile. Get out of here, buddy. I don't sympathize with you anymore. And then changes and not
00:25:42.380 like a massive change of heart, but like tempers, cools down, becomes more mature. And then you see
00:25:47.340 a new set of characters enter the scene because this show has crazy time jumps and now our main
00:25:51.980 character has organically matured to be a voice of reason and is calmer and is still competent and
00:25:57.900 still motivated and still identifiably himself. That is impressive. Very few shows do that. You might
00:26:03.580 know about me. Most of you probably don't. You're going to laugh at me when I say it. I was a Russian
00:26:07.500 literature major in college, which is worthy of scorn on its face. No, no, no. On its face. If you hadn't
00:26:13.340 done Russian literature, then you and I never would have gotten together, which will be in an upcoming
00:26:18.700 video. The discussion of that. But I will say on the marriage of Russian literature, it's amazing.
00:26:22.860 It's a great time studying the major, but you're free to laugh at me for the mere title of Russian
00:26:26.540 literature major. But what's great about the Russian novels is take War and Peace. The novel spans
00:26:31.900 such a long period of time. Characters genuinely grow from an 18 year old to a real man,
00:26:37.100 into a wise man. It's fantastic. This show manages to do that. Very few shows now how to do character
00:26:43.020 growth. So you're with the character. You see the major like, wow, that's what I like this. I'm
00:26:47.500 invested in this journey. Another thing interesting about the show and the other thing I want to talk
00:26:51.660 about that really brings it across that this show is so special is you see the distinction of Alfred
00:26:57.420 the Great's vision for a Christian England and why he's different from his peers and why there's a unique
00:27:04.140 kind of element of his conflict with the main character Uchid. The Dane warrior pagan who wants
00:27:10.380 to fight for the Saxons so he can get to his birthright in the north and things like that and
00:27:14.380 feels like the Saxons are kind of his people. Alfred sees him as useful, gets to know him as a man,
00:27:19.500 but still doesn't fundamentally trust him even though surrounding his visors do because Alfred has the
00:27:23.740 vision. A united Christian Saxon England. He's so worried that relying on a Danish pagan will undermine
00:27:31.340 that vision and like muddy the waters on it and it's just such an interesting push and pull about
00:27:35.420 the idea of that vision one man has that we historically know happened and the surrounding
00:27:41.420 characters being a little bit more opportunistic. That level of detail is not always the best brought
00:27:46.860 across in the show. Sometimes it just feels like Alfred's a little harsh on Uchid for no reason,
00:27:50.940 but when you understand that's what they were trying to do, the idea of making that attempt for a
00:27:54.540 narrative again it's that nuance, it's that sophistication which is realistic and ultra compelling.
00:28:00.140 Yeah, what I'll say is that it touches on big ideas, big topics. Now it doesn't- Without intellectual
00:28:05.420 fancy speeches, which I like. Yeah, I think it's a really well done show. Of course, we're just gonna
00:28:10.620 warn you in advance, there's a character in the third season that we're not a huge fan of the actress
00:28:16.380 for, so I'll just say her name and then you guys can recognize that we don't condone her acting.
00:28:24.780 We don't condone that component of the show. Yes. Skade. Skade. But you'll see when you get there.
00:28:30.060 The Danish witch who's basically a Coachella gal. Shh, we're not gonna say much more. I don't
00:28:35.660 want to give it away. So bad. So modern. But the last thing I did want to say and then maybe we'll
00:28:41.420 tie this up is that the show really doesn't rely on sex, which I really think is nice. It's in it a
00:28:49.100 little bit. Well, once a season. You need it once a season. You usually compare these kinds of shows
00:28:55.100 to things like Games of Thrones, Game of Thrones, and there's one Game of Thrones. There's apparently
00:28:59.980 multiple Thrones, but one game. Yes. In that show, obviously, it was a lot of sex. In my opinion,
00:29:05.500 too much sex. This show really doesn't rely on it very much and because of that, I think that they
00:29:10.940 do a really good job of developing, you know, romantic relationships outside of just lust, which I
00:29:17.900 think a lot of shows nowadays rely on lust. This show's got great domesticity. Yeah, they do.
00:29:22.380 It does. And a lot of shows today rely on lust to depict love and this show, in my opinion,
00:29:28.940 doesn't really do that. A little bit. A little bit here and there, but more because he's a Dane and
00:29:34.700 that's a little bit part of their culture in the show. Yeah. I don't know if it's true generally.
00:29:38.860 Maybe in the modern day. Danish fans, please comment below. Has anything changed in your culture
00:29:44.860 since 860? Since Vikings. But yeah, that's one thing about the show that I think is nice and
00:29:51.500 a definite nice thing about it. That heartwarming aspect when like a depicted husband and wife seem
00:29:57.420 to have a connection and understanding in like a home and hearth with like a spirit and like a loving
00:30:01.980 atmosphere of its own. When it's done well, it really brings it across and it shows it as so desirable and
00:30:07.980 wonderful. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. Let me know in the comments below if you have seen
00:30:13.340 The Last Kingdom, what you guys thought about it. I'd love to hear. Do you have anything else to
00:30:17.980 say? Yeah. When I posted on Twitter that we were going to do something about The Last Kingdom, we
00:30:22.700 liked it. Someone commented, yeah, you should. That show is so great, but also so terrible. What do you
00:30:29.580 mean? I actually didn't know what that meant. Where's the so terrible? I don't get it. What are you doing?
00:30:34.380 I liked it personally. Love all of it. Well, thank you guys so much for watching today's video. Please
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00:30:56.860 at the right angle, if you want to see some of his stuff, and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!