As I explained last week, I’ve come to a place in my streaming queues where I am just not sure what to watch. I’ve got a long list of things that I’ve put off for later, but I did that because I didn’t want to watch them at the time. I’m not sure I want to watch them now. I also don’t see anything that Netflix is pulling off their queue that I was itching to see, so that won’t force my hand.
Forced to choose something, I picked up again with two historical-fiction series that I’d stopped watching when it became necessary to wait (or pay) for the next season. One is on Amazon and one is on Netflix. I’ll save the latter for later.
On Amazon’s stream, I resumed my watching of Vikings. I had left off with Season 5, Part 2 (aka Season 502) and so picked up with Season 6 (600). It begins with [spoiler alerts for everything Season 5 and before!] the deposed King Ivar the Boneless traveling the Silk Road. He ends up in Ukraine, captured by the Rus who are ruling Kiev. Having established dominion in Kiev, Prince Oleg of Novogorod decides that the coming of Ivar is a sign that he, Oleg, must turn his militaristic attentions Westward, perhaps to bring Scandinavia under his domain.
It isn’t exactly what is going on the world right now, but it is awfully close.
As to the quality of the new season, it is too soon to tell. Vikings has always been more historically suggestive than historically accurate and the new season would seem not to alter that formula. I am particularly bothered by the alternating scenes between a winter in Ukraine with summer in Norway. I suppose one mustn’t assume that the two story lines are simultaneous but it’s hard not to wonder how there can be so much snow on the ground in the middle of the Scandinavian summer.
Oh well. I’ll keep watching to see if Prince Vladimir Oleg can be resisted.
et tu, Bluto? 
Pingback: The Whips and Scorns of Time | et tu, Bluto?