Illustration by Alex Bedder

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. The Spider has perhaps the greatest scene all season in this week's episode, wherein he finally tells Tyrion (and the audience) how he lost his balls and why he hates magic. Real talk: since Varys was originally planning to tell Tyrion this story in season one, how often do you think he trots out his death box to make a point? Things to consider: that the moral of Varys's story to Tyrion was "Revenge is a dish best served cold," and the way more awesome points one could make if the climax of his tale was "And now ... look what's in my box"; Varys trying to persuade the Queen of Thorns to recognize Littlefinger as a threat.

So the box is like Varys's PowerPoint presentation/magic trick that he can trot out every time he needs to give his message some oomph or rhetorical flourish? With like a live human just hanging out inside it? Damn, son, that is cold, even for this show. Seems pretty unlikely, though, for any number of reasons. If the story he tells is true (and really, it loses all effect if it is not), then Varys has been waiting his whole life for this moment. This revenge isn't just cold; it's been cryogenically frozen for years like Ted Williams's head. So now that, after years of biding his time, accreting power by the tiniest degrees, we finally has the opportunity for vengeance, he's going to put the lid back on and wait some more? Sure, he'll probably stretch out his actual torture of the magician, because he's patient, and this show is all about the torture. But he's gonna start right away, not put the box and his revenge away until the next time he happens to need to make this particular point. Besides, the Spider doesn't need visual aids to give his arguments force, not when he can whip out perfectly-crafted gems like "He'd let the world burn if he could be king of the ashes" as if he'd just thought them up.

2. Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" is known as being one of the best examples of the man-vs-man narrative conflict. But considering the ease with which Jaime, Theon, and Sam throw in the towel, can we find a better archetype for Game of Thrones. Man vs. White Walkers? Man vs. Lady Knight? Man vs. Queen of Thorns? Man vs. Eunuch? Man vs. warg? Please show your work.

Oh, but it is really all just man vs. man, when you get right down to it, right? One of my friends recently made the excellent point that in Game of Thrones, unlike, say, The Lord of the Rings, magic exists in the world, but it is largely irrelevant to the main story. Sure, there are dragons, but the way Daenerys has used them so far, they may as well have been a huge pile of diamonds, or nuclear launch codes. And the Knight's Watch has just proved they don't need White Walkers to kill them; they can do it just fine themselves. It's like Macbeth: sure, there are ghosts and witches, but in the end it's all just people being shitty to one another.

But "The Most Dangerous Game" is specifically about big-game hunters becoming the quarry in a hunt of human beings. And this episode presented us with quite a few variations on the "hunter becomes the hunted" theme: the Hound is hounded for his past crimes, the scheming Littlefinger is schemed against, the head of a slave army becomes his own army's target, and Cersei's dad uses the exact same words against her that she used to insult Tyrion in the first episode of the season. And most notably, of course, Theon, who unsuccessfully hunted the two youngest Starks, has now been literally Most Dangerous Gamed, set out to pasture like a scared rabbit and then rounded back up. With so many characters being given their just deserts, as it were, this episode was more emotionally satisfying than we've come to expect from GoT. But we're only a third of the way into the season, and this satisfaction is bound to be short-lived, what with so many other shoes left to drop.

3. Cersei is quickly losing ground this season; first with her son and then, most awesomely, by her own father. "I don't distrust you because you are a woman, I distrust you because you are not as smart as you think you are." Out of all of Cersei's failings--being an evil, manipulative, walking Oedipal complex; consorting with her brother; almost killing her youngest son preemptively with poison--is "not being as smart" as she thinks she is really the BIGGEST reason to distrust the Queen?

Well, of course not. The best reason to distrust her is that she is trying to glad-hand her own dad right now, after abjectly failing to glad-hand her own kid and her black sheep brother. She is flailing, and so she's stabbing above her station, and for someone who previously was so measured and careful, that signals a very dangerous level of desperation. Cersei has always been someone not to trust, but never so dangerous as now, when she's unpredictable as well. Varys claims to be scared of Littlefinger, but at least he understands Littlefinger's motives. Cersei is on the brink of some wildly erratic behavior, and when that grenade gets launched, it's best to be far, far away.

4. Softball: Who gets the best speech/last word this episode? There are so many!

Those are two very different things. Last word, obviously, must go to Daenerys, who has an almost literal drop-the-mic-and-walk-off moment. But as for best speech? You're right, there is a wealth to choose from, but I think the edge goes to Theon's. Everyone else is so rehearsed; their speeches are artful, planned, and thus less interesting. But watching someone work out just how huge an asshole he is, coming to understand it in the moment of explaining it: priceless.

5. "I ship them so hard," is something millennials say when they want two fictional characters to hook up. But Game of Thrones gives us almost the opposite when the Queen of Thorns asks Varys: "What happens when the nonexistent bumps against the decrepit?" What's the grossest possible coupling has GoT presented to us thus far, and can you think of a grosser one? (Hint: Beastiality, maybe?)

Grossest, there are perhaps too many to mention, from young Robert Arryn and his own mother's breasts to Theon almost getting ass-raped to ... imagining Robert Baratheon actually fathering his hundreds of children. But who do our nameless millenials ship the least? I believe that distinction belongs to Littlefinger and Sansa. If everyone seems to think that for you to hook up with a gay dude instead is your best course of action, you know that your other alternative has to be just the grossest. Objectively, the idea of a whoremonger not sampling his own "wares" seems gentlemanly, not to mention sensible. But somehow Littlefinger is grosser because he doesn't screw his own hookers. The fact that he instead wants to do a sweet little teenager because she has a "good name" is the rapiest thing this show has yet presented us with, and that includes actual rapes.

Illustration by Alex Bedder

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. This is the first "bottle" episode of Girls we've seen, as it exists mainly between two characters in essentially one setting. But because this episode involves a new character and an unfamiliar environment, it seems less like an episode of Girls than a self-sustaining parallel universe created outside that of the show. Describe in detail the alternate world or multiverse that Hannah enters. What does it look like, smell like? How is beauty defined in this alternate world? What values are lauded? Who do the residents worship?

Funny you should call it a bottle episode: the whole point of a bottle episode is generally to save money on sets, extra actors, etc., so that a show can use that money to spend on other episodes (especially big flashy season finales). But that certainly doesn't seem to have been the case here, what with the big-name actor and the amazing lavish new set. And even if dressing that set wasn't insanely expensive, it is hard to avoid the scent of money that pervaded everything in the episode. This world was really an alternate world for Hannah, in other words, a world of money--richness of a kind and to a degree that she had never known. That was this world's beginning and end, even if she fooled herself into thinking it was about being seen as beautiful or about feeling happy. That's not to say her realization wasn't profound, but the show certainly didn't shy away from how the root of everything she was feeling lay in the value of the objects she was in contact with, the sweater and the shower and the sheets and the steaks.

The important thing about alternate universes, as we all learn from The Wizard of Oz while we're still young, is what they teach us about the real world we must eventually return to. This episode, a kind of independent short story about money, highlights the theme that has run beneath everything else in Girls from the very start, not just in their struggle for employment or to make rent, but crucially in the way each character sees herself: as someone who deserves, or doesn't deserve, her life.

2. Find the missing adjective: "Patrick Wilson is the ____ man's Bradley Cooper." Things to consider: The "same plot, different outcome" of the thriller Hard Candy; Cooper's recent appearance in a SoulCycle in Brooklyn; your personal feelings about the Watchmen film.

"Internally conflicted" comes closest. Where Cooper sails by on charm, Wilson has a too-beautiful smoothness (it is impossible to imagine him unkempt or unshaven, isn't it?) that borders on chilly, but seems troubled by an internal tremor whose flickers you always just miss seeing. (I'm thinking of his roles in Angels in America and Little Children more than the diverting but one-note Hard Candy or that travesty of a graphic novel adaptation whose name we shall not speak.) If I wanted to create a character who was a powder keg and then have him go off, I could do worse than Cooper, but if I wanted to hint that he was a powder keg but have his triggering endlessly, frustratingly deferred beyond the end of any theoretical film, Wilson would be at the top of my list.

3. Joshua is a pretty symbolic name: The Hebrew word for it is Yeshua, meaning "he who saved." Translating it from Hebrew to Greek back to English, you actually get the word "Jesus," and a Joshua figures into almost all major religions. How does this name apply to Brooklyn Joshua's relationship with Hannah, and what does he "lose in translation" every time she tries to call him "Josh"?

The word 'savior' keeps popping up here: Joshua is a doctor, someone who saves lives professionally, and he literally saves Hannah in the shower. And she also seems to suggest that she is going through a kind of true (if materialistic) emotional redemption here, thanks to him. But let's remember that Hannah is a biblical name too, a woman of words, who arguably invented religious poetry. The real dynamic that emerges here is Hannah explicitly trying to let go of her own savior complex, the feeling that she is somehow supposed to redeem her "generation" through her writing. When she reduces him to "Josh," especially when she quips that it is the same name with an extra sound at the end, she fights against this letting go, grabbing back at what she knows: the sounds of words, the names of things. Whatever desire Hannah may express to give up the "promise" she made to herself, she is far from ready to do so.

4. Outline a semi-plausible back story for a gorgeous, 40-year-old, separated doctor who inherently trusts strangers to come live with him for days at a time in his gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone, blows off work to listen to their problems, and spends his spare hours rifling through trash found outside his house in order to discern its original owners. Make it Not creepy.

Bonus: Find a way to include the one time Joshua was jacked off by another boy, while still making it NOT creepy.

From the bottom: Joshua wasn't actually jacked off by a boy; he just felt like he was losing control of the situation/conversation and wanted to insert his own (far too clichéd) story of a sexual peccadillo.

I didn't get "creepy" from Joshua at all--although when Hannah tells this story to her friends later, it will seem so to them, and probably would to anyone. He just seemed bored and sad. (This is, again, down to Patrick Wilson's acting; he doesn't look or act sad at all, and yet we know.) And Hannah didn't necessarily make him happy, but she was diverting, and she certainly didn't make him more sad. Until she did. And then he shrank away and disappeared.

Hannah is, and has really always been, the creepy one. Joshua going through his trash is sensible--he's trying to find the culprit. Hannah getting addicted to throwing out her trash at his house, on the other hand? More than just eccentric (and kissing him certainly doubled down on the creepiness). The episode ends with her trying to banish whatever lingering creepiness remains, normalizing her actions by taking out his trash, as if this was what she'd been doing all along.

5. For independent young women who spent the first season trying to find equality in their relationships, Jessa, Marnie and now Hannah have spent their "happiest" moments this season while playing house with much richer men. (Thomas-John, Booth Jonathan and now Joshua.) Is concubinage the new dating? What are the trade-offs to this type of interpersonal living situation, and what does it say about the children of this generation--who are not just women ... gay Elijah had the same setup with his boyfriend, and Ray has positioned himself as Shoshanna's live-in boyfriend--that they have no qualms blurring the lines between sexuality and materialism?

One of the most compelling things about Girls is the fact that (see answer to #1 above) it does not shy away from the ways in which money distorts its characters' lives. And this "concubinage" represents the way that its lack makes these people feel helpless, like they have lost their agency. These temporary living situations illustrate very well the temptation to simply give one's will over to another person, a temptation that has not disappeared from the world just because it's the 21st century and we have feminism and progressive politics. And the fact that they are young and thus relatively irresponsible drives it home: there is a dark side to footloose and fancy free, and it rears its head whenever you think about who is picking up the check.

Completely normal, happy person Carrie Mathison. (Showtime)

These questions regard the second season premiere  of Showtime's Homeland. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from SUNDAY'S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and example responses.

Well, it's still in the opening credits, so I doubt the beleaguered jazz metaphor for Carrie's thoughts--They're free-form! Sometimes brilliant! Most people would rather claw their own ears off than listen to them for an hour! But old Jewish men get it!--is going anywhere soon. Ugh, but seriously. Enough with the jazz. Also, enough with the untouched chess games sitting on the VP's desk. What do you think you are, Homeland? Lost?

Completely normal, happy person Andy Bernard. (NBC)

3. Two shows took detours to visit Gettysburg last season: Homeland and The Office. Coincidence? What could the battlefield represent for the two shows? Who had a worse reason for making the trip, Sgt. Brody or Andy Bernard?

What was Andy's reason for going to Gettysburg again? Oh yeah, something about building team spirit. Which was kind of the opposite of Sgt. Brody's take on Joshua Chamberlain, which was all about sacrificing yourself for the common good. Also to pick up a bomb vest, which apparently could only be manufactured in Gettysburg? I guess  if someone came knocking about all those old-timey ballistics you were making in your Muslim-owned gun store in Gettysburg, you could say they were for Civil War re-enactors.

In conclusion, the hallowed ground in Pennsylvania where the seminal battle between the North and the South was fought is either a testament to the triumph of brothers-in-arms over adversity, or to how long a recognizable war hero running for office can stand creepily still at a national military park without his behavior being flagged as odd. (Good thing Dana had her secret surveillance app on. Who needs Virgil when you have a 16-year-old girl with an iPhone?)

4. Is the portrayal of Islam in Homeland, in which it is both a spur to violence and a source of beauty and comfort, subtle and nuanced? Or is the show just 24 with a superficial gloss of balance, trying to have it both ways—keeping our sympathy for Brody while still using Muslims as the show's scary enemy? Is the show now raising the specter of an actual "secret Muslim" in the White House to feed off conservative fears or to poke fun at them? (And if the former, does that make us sympathize more with Jessica Brody?)

5. The final scene, burying the Koran, seems beautiful and tender, but it also calls to mind Brody's burial of Walker last season. Unpack some of the resonances here between those early scenes of pain and humiliation on the one hand and Brody's deceit, Jessica's desecration or Dana's near-outing of her father on the other. Does the fact that Walker was in fact still alive at the time mitigate or deepen these connections?

Oh, mitigate, for sure. Fuck Walker. That was such a poorly written character, in my opinion, because we had no idea what was driving him. At least with Brody you had his deep connection with Issa and the knowledge that the Vice President Walden and the head of the CIA and the Secretary of Defense--not all of America, mind you--needed to be held accountable. But what was Walker's motivation? He was just this killing machine for Nazir, and we're given no explanation about why. Stockholm Syndrome? I don't buy it. He was just the T-1000 to Brody's Terminator, and I'm glad he and his total non-character are dead now. I think Brody would have happily taken out Walker even if Nazir hadn't told him to. Because in his mind, at least, Brody is not a terrorist. He doesn't believe in collateral damage the way Walker and Nazir do, at least assuming that everyone in the season finale was somehow involved in giving the OK to the drone strike.

As for Jessica, part of me wants to be like "Stop being so intolerant, lady!" And a second part of me wants to tell her to stop changing her hair because it's making me jealous how many looks she can pull off. And there's a third, small sliver that thinks I'd react in the exact same way, because this is the shit she was talking about when she was trying to convince Brody not to run for office.

Bonus question: How much does Damien Lewis look like Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore?