Until today i've listened to all the episodes of Apoiaf except one.........episode 1, i dont know why i saved this one for last, but for some reason i did, i think it was because i was so hesitant to dive into the earlier episodes because they are so much different from the more recent ones........ what i thought might be fun to do, and something that might be helpful to the pod is if i listen to episode one and review it for the forums, highlighting both the strong and weak points of the episode..... and then going back and review the rest of the back catalog episode-by-episode, hopefully this will help newer listeners, or even veteran listeners who have forgotten about older episodes pick and choose which ones they might want to listen to, or re-listen to.........

here goes:

y...you... madman.

Episode 1: the ghost cow
cast: chris, mimi, ashley, amin, aaron



-this episode is FULL of unintentional comedic moments, and i think they are the highlights of the episode. this is actually a pretty good episode for brand new fans for the pod and the world of westeros; im actually shocked and HOW WELL DONE IT WAS..........can't believe i waited so long to listen to it.........

-unintentional comedic moments:

.....its so strange listening to mimi's voice, in the earlier episodes mimi's voice is at least 1 octave higher than it is now, but in episode one its like 3 octaves higher..... none of my knowledge in medicine can explain this, mimi defys modern western medicine........

....chris as the lead host:in my opinion he isnt as good as mimi, its not his fault as he had no clue at the time what kind of monster this podcast would become, but still, everytime he talks.....im internally wishing mimi would just take over....... chris also starts off introducing himself as the older podcast member, oh chris, you have no clue how much mimi will use that fact to harass you...

....mimi's legitimate attempts at being professional: fucking hilarious, she speaks so properly, lets snarky jabs from other hosts go unanswered, apologizes for her mistakes, she sounds like she's auditioning for a news anchor job and its incredibly endearing......oh mimi, you have no clue what kind of a star you are about to evolve into in the years to come....

...the age of the podcasters: mimi a senior in college, amin in college....aaron in college...........geezus christ, makes me feel incredibly old, but really puts in perspective how long of a ride this has been for them.........

.....the old news segment: this segment is so fucking hilarious for so many reasons
-they try SO HARD to make this sound professional, internally im just thinking : what are u guys doing? get to the dick jokes already LOL
-theyre announcing GRRm news: these fuckers have no clue how long theyre gonna have to wait for ADWD, no fucking clue......


......chris equates ironmen as the vikings, but then also compared the northmen as vikings before.......lol....oh chris......

....chris pronounces khal as cal, and hence the title of the episode, he calls drogo the ghost cal....haha mimi immediately picks it out and laughs.........

.....chris misprounces maester as maister...only unintentionally funny if you are aware that this is the first of many many times this dude will fuck up this word.....

-highlights:
........discussion of the major houses of westeros: actually pretty well done, they hit all the major ones, discuss their roles and try to predict the respective roles in the big picture, good discussion for new readers/showviewers.....

.......wow, ashley is the first to equate door creaking with sexual abuse........the birth of the creaking door theory.......holy shit......

......ashley does a good job introducing the heir to the north theory, and a few others, good book knowledge from her

final thoughts: wow, pretty well done, actually really well packaged and edited. this is LITERALLY a complete different podcast from what it is today, and its funny to see how it all started, going back and listening to this is like watching an episode of friends or saved by the bell where the whole gang meets for the first time.......good job guys

rating: 4/5 manwoodys

what is the running time on ep 1 i forget but what was the one that was 23 min?

nope, this one was almost 59 min.

That's "Fice and Ire"

Brave endeavor here but should be interesting... If you do go through with this, maybe you can add to the ongoing Best of APOIAF project when you come across classic podcast moments?

Ep 1... who knew that I would end up being the last surviving guy from the original cast (maybe episode 7 aftershow had something to do with that ) and that one day I would become the Lord of Kingsgrave and Hand of the Queen?

You are a brave man. I will check my host-statistics with your listings here - great.

If you find some great lines - please add them to the best-of-list.

Ashley - mother of the creaking door I couldn't remember that!

Eek. In a year or so we will have someone reviewing Linecom's reviews of APOIAF. CAN'T HANDLE THIS MUCH META!

lol, yeah this was meant to be my final catalog run thru, as i usually stick to new episodes and the ones that were my favs..........

as far as adding to the best of, part ill try.........it makes it tough b/c you have to stop and find the time stamps, as im usually doing something else as i listen to the podcast (in this case tediously logging in scientific data for my medical research projects), which sort of defeats the purpose..... but ill try..........

I... had no idea

Ok, I just relistened to the episode and we seriously need to solve the mystery of Mimi's voice. Either 1. Someone killed the Original Mimi and has pretended to be her this whole time or 2. She was tweaking her voice in order to sound more adult. Also, Chris would have been a much better host if he hadn't laughed so excessively. And why on earth has Skype gotten worse since 2008! The audio quality wasn't the greatest but at least the servers didn't crash and Ashley didn't sound like Microsoft Sam at times.

yeah its really strange, from a medical standpoint, mechanical alterations to one's voice resulting in a deeper pitch typically results from significant hormonal alterations resulting in an increase in circulating testosterone (which occur in males during puberty), or external alterations in the anatomical structure of the throat, ie. injury, surgery, medical procedures........

i think one explanation for the skype problems.......especially since i have guest hosted on the pod....is that they are significantly worse when a canadian, ie.amin/ashley hosts the call.......if you notice the calls hosted by an american typically results in a much more stable connection........ also, the americans, mimi/kyle/chris, consistently have better sound quality over the canadians......amin/ashley, this coudl be due to superior equipment, but this difference is noticeable even today, with all hosts having good equipment.........

i blame Bell and Rogers, we in the north exist under a tyrannical oligopoly of phone service.

I've noticed that on tv shows, when the actresses have children in real life, their voices get deeper. I think it's a hormonal thing.

Mimi...have you been having your own 'heir to the North'?

episode 2: Blowing our loads
cast: chris, mimi, ashley, aaron, amin

overall thoughts: this would be a great episode for new fans to the pod, or new fans to westeros, as the discussion revolves around the theme of death in the series, and respective tangents.....as an experienced listener of the pod i found this one much more professional, and not as much fun as the other episodes, as the banter and dick jokes are few and far between. but this is of course not a fault of the podcast as this was for them, a new episode and it was important for them to establish their opinions on alot of the "cookie-cutter" westeros topics. many of you are aware of my frustrations with the other GOTs/ASOIAF podcasts because their entire content is basically similar to this episode....touch on the very fringes of the show and not go any further, thank god for House Manwoody, and few other like BLAH, that have the balls and manwoodys to dive deeper

highlights:

-good discussion of the theme of death : shocking deaths, surprising deaths, saddest deaths, best deaths, and potential future deaths

-mimi wishes rape followed by disembowelment upon joffrey, which i dont have a problem with but is another cultural anomaly in which women can wish rape upon men while men certainly shouldnt wish rape upon women

-mimi responds to chris' claim that bran cant have sex, by stating that he could have sex if he warged into hodor's body, and "we all know he's well equiped" lol

-WOW talk about coming full circle, a FULL ON discussion of the "sansa hate" gets brought up for the first time on the show, who knew 78 episodes later it would result in 200 comments of the homepage lol........

-ashley really flexes her book knowledge by citing book evidence of foreshadowing for the san/san fans......i think after this one ashley officially becomes the mrs sandor clegane of house manwoody

-very end of the show
chris "give us feedback and mimi welcomes compliments"
amin "you can compliment me too, i wanna hear about my eyes"
mimi "shut up, ur wearing sunglasses in your picture, fuck you *giggling*).......who knew 4 yrs later this would still be the case


unintentional comedic moments:

-chris uses the "chink in the armor" turn of phrase followed by an immediate "what are we getting racist on the podcast now" followed by chris' confusion, followed by mimi quickly saying "never mind"
-(FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS BORING RANT):which brings me to a tangent: it still to this day amazes me at the cultural ignorance of SOME white people (certainly not all), this whole topic was blown into a huge issue with during the "linsanity" jeremy lin phenomena and ESPN. whats even more surprising was that the perpetrators in both cases, chris and the reporter from espn, are white guys who ARE MARRIED TO ASIAN GIRLS..........to be fair, all nationalities are guilty of cultural insenstivity whether, white, black, asian, hispanic... i suppose because the caucasian viewpoint dominates mainstream media, their mistakes get displayed more prominently than others....... and in more fairness, it didnt seem like mimi or many other asians in general get too insulted in cases like this, which doesnt discount whether or not its right or wrong, but i bet guys like chris would never be ignorant enough to use a harmless, completely not racist term like "niggardly" in front of black people, just for the sake of not creating an awkward situation.....

ok end of rant,

-chris calls wights, "weights", followed by mimi immediately correcting him.... followed by chris immediately making the same mistake again........oh chris, you are the facepalm of this podcast.......

-aaron calls rattleshirt "rattlecage", followed immediately by mimi being confused......

-mimi tells ashley "dont tell me u're rooting for sansa and sandor to get together" ....lol you have no clue how much she is mimi



Linecom1's Rating: 3.5/5 manwoodys

I think they started to give up their professionalism with ep. 3 "Tyrion the catcher" - and lost it totally in ep.6 "Cover Art Critique" (Cersei's cameltoe)...

You may start to notice a trend here...

are you in your bunk?

Good point there. And yet, apparently, "Ashley needs to read more" (part of the episode 80 backlash)

No problem, best of moments are really supposed to be that, ones that stick in your mind so probably one an episode or one every few episodes that will stay with you until you get back to your computer to enter it in.

By the way, I give your first review 5/5 lemoncakes

No mystery there... Mimi was faking it

So... certainly no conspiracy going on here .... *wipes sweat from brow*

hahaha, thanks, but i think careless's mind just exploded with the metta review of the review of the review........


btw my amin note after 2 episodes is.........you do a good job of staying in the background and only coming out to give insightful, useful contributions...........im looking foreward to seeing you step out into the spotlight more though.......

You Ser are a very committed man! As someone who loves the podcast but cant find the time to listen to the entire back catalog (joined house manwoody when season 1 started) i appreciate this work. I can use this to pick an episode when i do get the time. Keep it up!

episode 3, part 1: tyrion the catcher
cast: chris, mimi, ashley, amin (aaron comes in late)

(debbie downer note: its really unfortunate that mimi chose to use the word "midget" while making a joke in this episode, and equally unfortunate that the editor (i think it was ashley?) chose to include it in the cold open. if im gonna rag on chris in ep2 for cultural insensitivity it'd be impossible for me to not point this out. from my understanding people born with dwarfism as a community find this word incredibly insulting)

-overview: this is of the most popular episodes of the catalog, and arguably the most liked episode of the series. they hosts let their hair down and their manwoodys glisten (tmi?) as they discuss the themes of relationships, love, and sex in the world of westeros.

-i was looking forward to this episode again as this is clearly the one where the hosts find their niche as the "dick joke" podcast of the asoiaf fandom. even though i did enjoy the episode, i found that i didnt really seem to enjoy it as much as i thought i would, and here's what i mean:
-there were alot of 'fun' moments, but not really a lot of 'funny moments'. often times, in other episodes, the hosts are trying to have a semi-serious discussion that will devolve into funny and/or unintentionally funny moments. in this episode, however, i find that because the subject is inherently goofy in its own right, the hosts tend to "try" to be funny and reach for a lot of jokes (example: chris "ok ok, id sooo do jon snow"....we get it, youre a heterosexual guy and you are admitting to having intimate relations with another guy......*forced laughter*). these moments tend to occur alot in this episode. for this reason i dont think, for me, it would count as one of their best, but its still a fun listen.......just not really laugh out loud funny.......

-i think this episode would stand out more as a stand alone episode, but once you listen to this one as part of a string of episodes, the above mentioned effect is more noticeable.

highlights:

-in the beginning, with aaron absent, mimi says " we lost aaron......for those of who dont know him...he's pretty inconsequential....." LOL

-mimi's voice is gradually coming back to normal, but its still not there yet......

-good discussion on the lack of lack of successful romantic relationships
-good book knowledge from ashley again (3 episodes in a row) noting how sam and gilly is an example of a couple
still "intact" by the end of AFFC,

at this point the hosts are filling their roles with mimi as the facilitator and amin/ashley as color commentators. chris is still switching between trying to be the facilitator, then reverting to supporting commentator, while the whole time getting facts and pronunciations wrong. (note aaron does a good job with his role by being absent)lol

-mimi states that if she saw herself in male or female form, she'd go for it (have sex with herself)

-fun, but not funny, discussion of their blogspot poll asking which characters you would fuck (anyone here voted on it......or frequented the old blogspot page?)

-aaron finally arrives and states that if he were gay, tyrion would have to catch (title of the pod)

-ashley very vocal this episode on who she would do, whether male of female, one of her most 'unshy' episodes ever IMO, she also states that she doesnt like big breasts (i wonder if she'd liek them if they were pierced)



unintentional comedy:

-the discussion on what makes a strong female character: mimi doesnt think catelyn is a strong female character..good points from chris stating the difference betweeen a dynamic character vs strong character followed by chris immediately contradicting himself by stating a strong character is a dynamic character....

-chris is confused about what constitutes a relationship stating that as long as one person likes the other, thats a relationship, mimi subsequently questions if he stalked girls in high school.
-chris gushes over the hotness of asha and how he would bone her, aaron retorts that if chris ever met asha, asha would "peg" him LOL


rating: 3.75/5 manwoodys

thanks.......

oh god, my voice. how fucking embarrassing. it's my white girl voice that i utilize when i'm professional, nervous, or both.

unnaturally high.

- And here my first error appears. Ep. 3a seems to have 5 hosts - didn't catch that by only reading the info and hearing the first 5 minutes.

- Ashley is awesome - that is known. (And she showed in the beginning often that she and Amin had the least lack of knowledge about the books).

Ah, don't beat yourself up Brynden. No history is ever complete.

I take exception to your pronunciation judgments. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, because I can't seem to find proof, but I've heard and read from others more knowledgeable than I that GRRM told fans that ASOIAF names are pronounced however we want them pronounced. I, myself, struggled with reading the word "Maester" in my head for quite a while and finally settled on MY-ster because of its parallels with "maestro."

That bitterness aside, I think this is a great endeavor, and the reviews so far are overall good reading