In Which We Imagine All The People Left Behind

I'm Going Back In The Hatch

by DICK CHENEY

The Leftovers
creators Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta

Imagine a world in which Justin Theroux woke up and the older woman he was romancing was simply no longer there.

Jennifer Aniston went to heaven on a jet plane. In heaven she no longer has to play a stripper or prostitute in every movie, she just portrays a mature woman in her fifties who knows what she wants from life. She has been absorbed, along with 2 percent of the world's population, into an afterlife while the rest of the proleteriats go on with their earthy travails.

We never see it, but we can assume Heaven is fantastic in HBO's The Leftovers. You would think being with only virtuous people would get annoying over time, but that is not the case, because God let some assholes into heaven as well, The Leftovers informs us at length. They serve hors d'oeuvres.

Most assumed that the guys responsible for Lost would never get jobs in the industry again, but when that pitch meeting comes around, Damon Lindelof tells a compelling anecdote about how their original idea for what was in the hatch was Demi Lovato nude and tied up, but Jamie Tarses nixed it.

Given that Carlton Cuse created the masterful Bates Motel, I have forgiven the fact that he looks and sounds like a cowardly lion and I now direct all my venom towards Damon Lindelof. The Leftovers proves he was by far the weakest link in Lost besides Desmond's lackluster gf.

David Carradine is sitting up alertly in his grave

It is hard to imagine who The Leftovers could possibly appeal to. It makes religious people look like zany cretins who smoke cigarettes constantly, it makes kids look like sex and drug crazed infidels, it makes minorities look like ineffectual pawns and victims in a whitewashed future and it has over three dream sequences just in the first episode. No one could possibly enjoy this.

At one point Theroux's daughter (Margaret Qualley) is choking some guy while he jerks off at a party. Afterwards she discovers a dead dog in the trunk of her dad's car, which she buries with her friends. At the conclusion of this disturbing set of moments, Lynne openly wondered to me, "At least stag films have the added aspect of turning you on or making you afraid."

Can you blame her for wanting a hard think after she chokes some bro while he comes for over an hour?

In the book version of The Leftovers, Theroux is very depressed that his wife (Amy Brenneman) has gone off to join the local silent cult Guilty Remnant, even though he was cheating on her with another white woman. Are you guys as tired of ww as I am? Not everyone has a white wife, I mean I do, but do I need to see my own life on television all the time? The answer is yes, but not every single time.

I identified just as well with Stringer Bell until I found out he was really British and pretending to be kewl.

Guys, our sheriff is 5'3" and he left his girlfriend of fifteen years for Jennifer Aniston. Crime may be a problem.

The Leftovers only has one clever trick up its sleeve. In order to make the rest of the cast look like a bunch of Julliard-trained professionals, Lindelof has chosen to employ the casual acting ministrations of Liv Tyler.

Tyler portrays a woman in an unhappy engagement. She is in the car with her fiance when he starts singing. At first she laughs good naturedly, but then he goes on singing and she decides to join the religious order of fanatics who devote themselves to reminding everyone else that they were not chosen by God to serve Jennifer Aniston pain au chocolat. In the cult she meets Theroux's wife, and her real romance begins. She sounds like Arwen throughout and never changes her facial expression, even when she's taking a huge shit.

God is the Marlboro Man confirmed

In order to assuage his feelings of loneliness and abandonment - even though no one in his family was actually even absorbed by the rapture - Theroux starts a relationship with his high school aged daughter's best friend. Fucking American Beauty. The devastating toll of boredom and cliche spawned by Sam Mendes' lack of directing talent continues to destroy lives even decades after its release.

Theroux actually overdelivers in this thankless role, but the fact that he is physically more suited to play a munchkin in the Michael Bay-directed resurrection of The Wizard of Oz hampers his credibility. Every single person in the show is taller than him, requiring more workarounds and odd angles than Tom Cruise looking up at Emily Blunt's chin. I really hope seeing this pilot is why Aniston postponed the wedding.

American Beauty was utter trash, and leaving Kate Winslet was even stupider

We all know that at the end of The Leftovers it is going to turn out that this was heaven all along, or some light at the back of the cave will be the answer to everything. Somewhere in there, Matthew Fox will be arrested for drunk driving. He could play the Devil, or alternately, he could be God. Come to think of it, this show could really use Matthew Fox: his best case scenario is portraying Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend in heaven. She deserves a good-looking guy.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He will not be recapping further episodes of The Leftovers, or even watching it all, until Liv Tyler retires from the acting profession.

"Big Girls Cry" - Sia (mp3)

"Eye of the Needle" - Sia (mp3)

In Which Cersei Plans To Eliminate This Other Woman

Do You Want To Meet My Dad? He's Disgusting

by DICK CHENEY

The Other Woman
dir. Nick Cassavetes
109 minutes

It is a popular and sexist myth that female friendships are more deepening and anechoic than any other kind of relationship, even, laughably, exceeding the rapport between a boy and his dog.

Kate (Leslie Mann) tries to make this kind of relationship happen with a high powered lawyer named Carly who was fucking her husband (Cameron Diaz), but it just comes across like a relationship between a cocker spaniel and a really old looking and dilapidated poodle. Leslie Mann (Kate) cries at least fifteen times in The Other Woman; the overall message conveyed is that she remains upset about something. Perhaps women enjoy watching other women cry: crying does, after all, constitute a part of life, but maybe not the laugh-crying that Mann does here. Her weird sobs and verbal ablutions are supposed to be a parody of hysteria, but come across like she's having a bad reaction to the gobs of makeup they heaped on her to make her outshine Cameron in every scene. (It worked.)

the director was like, "do a bad melissa mccarthy impression!" and she complied. oh, did she comply

Watching Kate and Carly ogling Kate Upton's mediocre body is a whole new kind of voyeurism, like the reverse of viewing The Big Bang Theory and thinking Kaley Cuoco is appealing. (She could never get a decent physicist interested in her, let alone one who was so amazing on Roseanne.)

How does Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) figure into these events? My working theory is that he was sent into our world in order to subtly convince Ms. Upton to never act in movies again, because her performance makes Grace Kelly's acting look Stanislavski-level. She is even worse than Jon Snow, and she is not as good-looking as he is, even if they were both women.

um, kate, we're rolling.

Jaime Lannister prepares to cheat on his wife by keeping an apartment in the city, only the most suspicious way to commit infidelity in the entire world. He presumably keeps photos of himself and Cersei there, and when he shows a new woman around the place, he winks meaningfully when he tells her the woman in the photos is his sister.

Once the two abandoned blondes recruit a third, they have an extremely emotional bonding weekend. Because Jaime wants to be with more than one of them, they poison him with female hormones and dip his toothbrush in the toilet. Some of the things they do would get them sentenced to life in prison in Canada, others merely reek of poor taste and shit jokes.

jason biggs' wife would have been fine with this. she was so cool when he had unprotected sex with laura prepon last year.

In the end Kate Upton and Cameron Diaz's father who is the same age as her (Don Johnson) get together. Yes, they become a couple, even though she thinks Miami Vice is the name of a urinary tract infection you get on spring break. My emotions at this pairing are best summarized by a gif of her smiling at him lovingly as they are both massaged by Asians. (Don Johnson's previous girlfriend was "Indian, beautiful.") The Other Woman makes The Hangover look confidently multicultural.

There is actually one character of color in The Other Woman, she is Cameron Diaz's secretary (Nicki Minaj), who explains that she only answers Carly's phone to have something to fill her time while her husband makes the actual money, and that "the best part about being pretty is that you don't have to work." If this is a joke, who is it on? Ugly people?

all racial stereotypes must die.... also, the only black people in Westeros are pirates and eunuchs AND YOU KNOW THAT NICKI

It turns out that not only does Jaime Lannister have time to cheat on his wife with a variety of women, he is also a criminal who steals money and plans to frame his wife for the crime. You would think this would make the harem even more angry at him, but they actually soften a bit — he's clearly a troubled person.

men bring women together. there is no other realistic way.

Kate's brother tells her that he always knew Jaime Lannister was a bad choice, most likely because he is very lonely and jealous of her happiness. Kate's feng shui business isn't exactly taking off so she enters her husband's workplace and that's when the worst thing that can happen to a woman occurs: Cameron Diaz marries her brother, who Kate has Hotel New Hampshire-type feelings for.

Kate is upset and alone, but it's a good thing she found out about the cheating, because now her ex-husband is bankrupt and she will most likely be paying him alimony, taking care of his dog, and writing a check for the property taxes on a massive Greenwich house she cannot afford. Meanwhile, he is free to return to Cersei or even find someone more understanding with which to share his waning days as a one-armed man.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He misses everyone a lot more than he thought he would: Hot Pie, the Hound, even Brienne, Gilly, that old Maester, Podrick, Lord Prestimon, Rand, Jesus and Melisandre.

he comes to all his left-handed sword practice with cute treats for his partner

"Blonde" - Alizee (mp3)

"K.O." - Alizee (mp3)

the identity of Varys' spies is revealed?

In Which Our Dragons Have The Run Of The Facility

Ser Kevan Will Save Us

by DICK CHENEY

In the histories Herodotus describes a rarity: an Egyptian king not born into the nobility. Amasis was a drunk and a thief before he became king. He would wander, inebriated, into the homes of the rich and wealthy, stealing what he could to restore whatever fortune he lost at gambling. When he was caught he would be presented to oracles for judgment; some confirmed his felonies, others absolved him of any wrongdoing. When he became King he ignored the gods who had said he was innocent, and started to revere those who convicted him. This is something like the philosophy a Lannister uses to strangle his whore.

Tyrion dumped Shae, married a ginger over fifteen years her junior, and murdered her in her client's bed. I'm surprised he did not rip out her teeth afterwards and hang them around his neck.

was he reading on there, or just constipated from incest revelations? Either way, it doesn't pay to linger. Walk around, see what you feel when you move a bit.

Call me naive and innocent, but I felt that Tywin Lannister's protestations from his death toilette maybe had the ring of truth. Was he really going to let his own son die? It's not like he has a billion — he has two and one is probably going to need to be recast after he leaves Thrones and the unforgiving role of a one-armed guardsman for a career playing opposite whatever is left of Cameron Diaz.

cameron, being on the receiving end of a direwolf bite is humiliating, but you did the important work of making leslie mann look attractive in comparison

Just kidding Mrs. Diaz, I enjoyed your winsome cameo as the skeleton who slaughtered Jojen Reed. When some white fogey in a cave — subsisting on god knows what besides the fever dreams of young marsh boys — explained that Jojen had known of his own death all along, I screamed at the betrayalthon. I was with the idea that some little girl ("the Children" jesus George it took you five years to come up with that?) was entering Bran's dreams, since it seemed like maybe there could be some kind of romance there down the road.  Now that I know some creepy old Gandalf was "watching them their entire lives," my erection has been reduced to a mere shadow of what it once was.

an old man has been watching you in your dreams, Bran. You fine with that?

I recently was forced/cajoled/bartered by my wife Lynne into watching X-Men: Days of Future Past. The discussion about whether or not to see the movie went a little something like this.

ME: I feel uncomfortable watching a movie made by someone who I know forced young people to have sex against their will.
LYNNE: You loved Blue Jasmine.

I had no comeback for that, and also, Lynne promised to watch the second season of Under the Dome with me, even though she commented that Hank Schrader would never do all those things and Stephen King was "a fucking stupid crone."

that is the worst wig I have ever seen, and I've seen an episode of Modern Family

X-Men: Days of Future Past was the worst piece of shit I have seen in awhile. Time travel movies are always absolutely silly, but this took the cake. At one point Captain Picard explained to Gandalf that he really had no idea whether someone could affect the flow of time, even though sending Wolverine back to the 70s was the entire premise of the film. The worst part of X-Men: Days of Future Past was having to look at Jennifer Lawrence's ungainly blue physique the entire time, and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender being forced by Bryan Singer to pretend she was appealing in any way whatsoever. Lawrence looked like a dirty blue towel wrapped around two exercise balls.

Afterwards I was so incensed I wasted my time with this utter dreck I convinced Lynne to allow me to use the galactic cap as reparations. (Menopause is for Democrats.) Watch this video, and thank me later, assuming you are okay with applying a preparatory adhesive to the tip of your jambalaya before sexual congress:

Stannis Baratheon's magical arrival on the scene to slay the wildlings was a bit implausible, but what the hey. This show will kill anyone off except Mance Rayder, he's the Ron Weasley of Westeros.

The creepy glance across the funeral pyre that Melisandre shared with our boy Jon Snow gave me chills. Funerals are a wonderful place to meet women, however, especially if the corpse in question was your OTP. Who knows if you might really click with her sister, or your King's shadow-birthing mistress?

was a double death out of the question? the likeability of these two makes Eric Cantor seem charming

The battle between the Hound and Brienne of Tarth brought up a lot of delicate mems of when I shot Condi Rice in the belly-button with a Civil War pistol in a violent reenactment of the Hamilton-Burr duel for my own amusement. I would be lying if I said I did not want the Hound to cut off the tall woman's sword hand so she and Jamie could be twinsies.

The fault here was really Jamie's: if you want to negotiate the safe return of Arya Stark, send a diplomat; if you want someone who is sure to not protect the girl at all and magically leave her post and abdicate her responsibility when things get the slightest bit difficult, Brienne was a fine choice. Podrick was just like "smh miss u Bronn."

Ser Kevan, you must restore the pride to the Lannister name. Twyin did too much dramatic walking away and turning for my tastes att

Cersei suddenly losing her mind about her marriage to the super-eligible Sir Loras came across a bit over-the-top. She is destined to suffer in mediocre subplots for some time while the real man of the family, Sir Kevan Lannister, takes his rightful place as Hand of the King. Jennifer Lawrence will be the newly recast Sir Kevan, and I must say the role of a mature man in his fifties much more befits her natural talents.

missing you greatly Drogon. When God takes a life, do they try to chain him in the basement? Then why lock up these beauties?

Daenerys Targaryen's emotional, subterranean imprisonment of the only two dragons she had handy really made me feel things, but not like good things. It was confusing to me why two absolutely glorious creatures were kept in a hidey hole while Piper Chapman has the run of her facility.

My idea of a spin-off to bide the time until George R.R. Martin finishes things up is the happy adventures of Drogon the black dragon cruising through the Valyrian ruins, consoling and befriending all old folks who live there, irrevocably altered by the radiation poisoning from the Doom. Somewhere among that wreckage he may find the disturbed, half-mad mutants whose intercourse produced Emily Blunt.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording and a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can relive all the tears, fears and Hot Pie-related bon mots of this season of Game of Thrones here.

woody allen also has a really nice house.

"Hawthorne" - The Felice Brothers (mp3)

"No Trouble" - The Felice Brothers (mp3)