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Well, if Peter Dinklage’s rant at the end of this episode wasn’t Emmy bait, I don’t know what is …

Hello and welcome once again to the Great Chris and Nikki Game of Thrones co-blog! I am your host, Christopher Lockett (Lord of the Pulled Pork, Keeper of the Sacred Clarence, Pretender to the Heisenberg Goatee), and I am yet again joined by Her Ladyship Nikki Stafford (Queen of the Buffy Rewatch, Most Prolific High Priestess of TV Posting, Scourge of Sparkly Vampires Everywhere).

But what I am prattling on about? To the episode!

 

Christopher: Judging from a lot of the discussions I’ve been reading, the writers are making fans of the books increasingly nervous with this season’s deviations … and this episode will likely only serve to ratchet up that anxiety, given that essentially its first half comprises storylines that do not appear in the novels. I remain fairly sanguine, as I simply cannot imagine that the series will change the overarching story in any substantial ways. These narrative doglegs are interesting, however, for the simple question of how the writers will get us back on track. Certain things have to happen, and some of these departures make me wonder just how the writers will unknot the threads down the line.

Sorry to be cryptic, but that’s about as spoilery as I’m comfortable getting.

Let’s talk first about Stannis’ visit to the Iron Bank of Braavos, but before I say anything about that I need a little moment to geek out about seeing Braavos appear in the opening credits. This city is one of GRRM’s most intriguing inventions, modeled on late medieval Venice, and about as close to an egalitarian society as one is able to find in that world. Like Venice was in its heyday, Braavos is a hub of commerce, a city run not by hereditary nobility but by its moneymen and merchantmen. And we meet the most powerful of the former. Stannis and Davos cool their heels in an impressively austere room while Stannis paces and complains about being made to wait. Davos is more patient, observing that this is the Braavos way, and starts to relate a story of his smuggling past … and stops, presumably thinking that it might not be the time to remind his king that he used to be a criminal. And then the doors open and in walks … MYCROFT HOLMES! My, but that fellow does get around in the corridors of power. (If only Tyrion could have hired his brother later in this episode).

As mentioned, this entire sequence does not appear in the novels. Stannis does ultimately have dealings with the Iron Bank, but that comes much later, under rather different circumstances. I find it interesting that the series is choosing to make the Iron Bank more prominent: not just because they’re having a major plot point pivot on whether or not Stannis will get bankrolled and hence have the resources to renew his war with the Lannisters, but because they’re emphasizing that crucial aspect of GRRM’s writing I mentioned last week: the pragmatic logistical component. Stannis is a man of unwavering principle, but his legal claim on the Iron Throne holds absolutely no water for the bankers (something Stannis should have understood in the first place when Mycroft bluntly dismissed the title of “lord,” and then further repeated all of Stannis’ titles back to him in a bored voice). He points out the fact that patrilineal right has counted for little in Westeros’ history, that its history books are littered with such words as “usurper,” and that the question of who is the rightful king is always open to interpretation. “Here our books are full of numbers,” he tells Stannis. “Much less open to interpretation.” And again, the question of logistics: he makes Davos list all of Stannis’ forces and resources, which amounts to a whole lot of not very much. “You can see why these numbers don’t add up to a happy ending.”

I like that it was Davos who convinced them—Davos, the pragmatic man, who points out in no uncertain terms why the Bank’s current arrangement with King’s Landing is a losing bet: Tywin is rock-steady and reliable, yes, but he is also old (sixty-seven, apparently), and he is the only stable presence there: Tommen is just a boy, Cersei is crazy, Tyrion’s on trial for killing Joffrey, and Jaime is a king-killer.

I love this bit, even if it does feel a little disingenuous—one has to assume that Mycroft has already worked all this out for himself. Then again, it may be that he’s just taking the measure of this would-be king. A bird in the hand, after all … Tywin might be a thin thread to hang the bank’s investment on, but until Davos’ impassioned speech, he has no reason to think Stannis is anything more than just another usurper. And Davos speaks Mycroft’s language in terms of payment and debt, showing him his mutilated hand, his punishment for years of smuggling as the price for entering Stannis’ service. A Lannister may always pay his debts, but as we gleaned from Jaime’s discussion with his father, Lannisters are as dwindling a resource as their gold.

After Davos re-hires Salador Saan, we cut to Yara’s raiding party, as she reads Ramsay’s letter to her crew and riles them up. This raid on the Dreadfort is odd on two fronts: one, it’s geographically problematic; and two, it is a complete deviation from the books. What did you make of Yara’s abortive attempt to rescues Theon?

Nikki: I too loved it when the doors opened and freakin’ Mark Gatiss strode in. I’m sure there was a huge audience of cult TV that squeed in that particular moment. He played it so straight, never wavering from that pasted-on smile until Davos began challenging him, and then we saw that confidence begin to waver. I, too, was thrilled with that scene (Stannis never would have been the one to say anything to convince him; that guy seems to be trapped in an arrested development where he requires everyone around him to do and say everything on his behalf) but it was brilliant.

And yes also on Braavos making it into the opening credits model. Just as my husband moaned, “Does this 28-minute opening sequence ever CHANGE?!” they showed it and I sat right up and exclaimed, “Ooh!! New city!! Ooh!! Back it up!! Big statue!!” Fantastic.

The Theon “rescue” sequence was heartbreaking. As Yara climbs back into the boat after failing to capture Theon, she bluntly says, “My brother’s dead,” and we know that’s the story she’ll take back to the Iron Islands and her father.

And the sad thing is, she’s absolutely right. Theon is dead. Now we have Reek, a quivering, shivering, shadow of his former self, who thought his sister was nothing more than another trick by Ramsay to make him think he was about to be rescued, rather than his actual rescue party. Yara’s departure means there’s no more rescue coming for him, and Reek’s complacency and actions in that moment solidified that he was 100% Ramsay’s puppet. As viewers, we internally beg Reek to go with Yara, to just be Theon again and run away rather than hinder the rescue mission. And yet… the writers oh so cleverly pull us in on the whole ruse in the following scene, when Ramsay tells him he’s drawn a hot bath for him and wants him to get in. Now we’re right there with Reek, shouting no, no, don’t get in there, he will drown you. And just as Ramsay has brainwashed Reek, he’s brainwashed all of us. He doesn’t do anything at all to Reek when he climbs into the tub; he simply begins washing him. Notice how Reek grabs the edges of the tub, almost to brace himself for the expectation that Ramsay will try to dunk his head under the water. Notice also the sadistic smile that creeps over Ramsay’s face when Reek drops his britches and one can only imagine the scarred, mutilated absence between Reek’s legs that Ramsay stares at. Now that Ramsay has his total loyalty, he tells him it’s time for Reek to pretend to be someone he’s not: Theon Greyjoy.

I thought the cutaway here to the Daenerys story was utterly brilliant. As I’ve been saying on here for a few weeks now, Daenerys (my girl, always my girl, please don’t take any offense to what I’m about to say oh First of Your Name, Mother of Dragons) has been “freeing” the slaves and punishing the slavemasters, but that opens up a whole new host of problems. Last week Ser Jorah told her that in Astapor and Yunkai she’s left more of a mess behind than perhaps was there to begin with AND she took the city’s armies from them, so now they’re utterly defenseless. She pulls the slaves on side and makes them love her, but it’s only so they’ll follow her into battle where most of them will be slaughtered. She expects their love and loyalty, but she’s freed them from one master only to control them herself. Cutting away from Theon’s story — where Theon has been beaten into submission, to the point where he now loves Ramsay, who seems to be freeing him from the life of torture he’d received from . . . Ramsay — reminds us that Daenerys frees them from one hell only to plunge many of them into another.

In this episode we see that the dragons are roaming the countrysides and fields, looking for herds of goats that they first barbecue and then eat. The goatherder approaches Daenerys on her throne and tells her what they’ve done, and she promises him three times what the goats are worth, and he backs away happily, grateful for his queen. (Did anyone else think that was his son’s bones in that blanket? When he first opened it I was horrified until I realized he was saying that was one of the goats. Apparently I didn’t notice the giant HORNS when I watched it the first time.) Daenerys looks thrilled that she’s made someone happy, and excitedly calls in the next supplicant. And… yeah, it’s not as happy as the first one. This guy is the son of one of the masters whom she had crucified (against Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah’s advice) and now she realizes the world isn’t black and white, with slaveowners being bad and slaves all being good: sometimes the slaveowners are good people, who fought against cruelty to the slaves, who treated the slaves well. In attacking the city and doing what she did, she looks like a despot who is forcing the people to trade one cruel monarchy for another. We know Daenerys wants the best for people, wants to be loved, and cares about her people, which sets her apart from other rulers, but this job ain’t as easy as she thought it was going to be.

What did you think of the Daenerys scene, Chris?

Christopher: I thought it was very well done, and unlike much of this episode, more or less hewed to the novel (more or less—there were a few deviations, but it got the gist of things). Dany has placed herself in a difficult spot, insofar as that she wants to be a liberator, but in order to do so, she has to be a conqueror too. And she faces a quandary we see through much of history: in liberating one segment of a population, it is necessary to overturn the customs and structures of another, and however much the revolution might be guided by moral imperatives, chaos and injustice are inevitable. In the case of something like slavery, there are no neat solutions, as the institution of slavery itself deforms a society in myriad pernicious ways.

One of the things that is admirable about A Song of Ice and Fire is that GRRM doesn’t shy from this basic fact, but places it front and center. There is a lot in the depiction of Daenerys’ “liberation” of the slave cities that is cringeworthy—first and foremost being the image of an extremely white person playing magnanimous saviour to pitiable people of colour (the final shot from last year’s season finale exemplifies this)—but on the level of storytelling, the degree to which the entire process is shown to be fraught is well done. Hizdahr zo Loraq’s entreaty reminds us of the grey areas, that not everyone is as deserving of punishment as others. On the other hand, I wanted Daenerys to remind him that, whatever his father’s opposition to the crucifixions, he was still complicit in the institution of slavery. The defense “well, I didn’t want to go as far as the others did” isn’t really a viable one when it comes to war crimes.

The fates of Astapor and Yunkai are also poignant for us because they resonate with so much of what has happened in the past hundred years in terms of the legacies of colonialism and wars of choice like Iraq. Daenerys’ blithe assumption that those cities would become peaceable simply because she ousted their tyrants and liberated the oppressed reminds me of nothing more than the neocons’ naïve belief that all you have to do is overthrow a dictator and say “you’re a democracy now,” and suddenly there will be a Starbucks on every corner (yes, I’m oversimplifying). But to her credit, Dany at least recognizes her mistakes and attempts to come to grips with them. Will she succeed? I actually can’t say, because GRRM hasn’t gotten that far in the novels. But I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that things get much, much worse in Mereen before they gat better.

The cut-aways in this episode are quite good: from Ramsay to Daenerys, and from Daenerys’ struggles ruling to a meeting of the Small Council, with Oberyn taking up his new position there. His presence, as Tywin intended, is symbolic of the Seven Kingdoms finally resuming something resembling equilibrium … but for how long? The obvious antipathy between Mace Tyrell and Oberyn reminds us of long-standing feuds, and Oberyn’s own vendetta against the Mountain sneaks in with the mention of the Mountain’s brother. And of course we hear tell of a new threat—Daenerys and her army and dragons. There is a palpable anxiety in the room when she is mentioned, in spite of Tywin’s attempt to dismiss her with the oddly (for him) naïve comment that dragons have not been a factor in war for three hundred years. Really, Tywin? What, do you think she’ll arrive on the shores of Westeros and the people will collectively say, “Oh, dragons are SO three centuries ago”? It’s tempting to think of that line as a stumble, but I’m more inclined to think of it as a betrayal of Tywin’s actual nervousness. After all, if “that Targaryen girl” does in fact return, Tywin Lannister becomes public enemy number one. He’s trying to reassure his people … but he’s also trying to reassure himself. And am I alone in sensing a little bit of goading glee in Oberyn when he tells everyone just how formidable the Unsullied are?

Oberyn is more and more becoming an intriguing character. Obviously Tyrion’s trial is the most spectacular part of this episode, but I loved the little exchange between Oberyn and Varys. It was very reminiscent, deliberately so, of Varys’ verbal fencing with Littlefinger. But where Baelish and Varys were politely implacable enemies, we don’t entirely know Oberyn’s intentions … and he doesn’t know Varys’, as we see in his somewhat clumsy attempt to feel him out. It is made very clear just why Varys is such a formidable player: like Littlefinger, Oberyn is ruled by desire. Where Littlefinger’s is focused, Oberyn’s are more diffuse and hedonistic; but in both cases, neither person can quite understand Varys, who is not ruled by his passions.

Oberyn: Everyone is interested in something.
Varys: Not me. When I see what desire does to people, what it’s done to this country, I am very glad to have no part in it. Besides, the absence of desire leaves one free to pursue other things.
Oberyn: Such as?
Varys: [looks significantly at the Iron Throne]

This exchange is wonderfully cryptic. He is after the throne itself? Isn’t that a direct contradiction of what he has just said? Or is there another, subtler meaning in that look?

What do you think, Nikki?

Nikki: One thing I love about doing these back and forth discussions with you is that almost every week, we write down exactly the same dialogue exchanges to be used later. The Varys/Oberyn (I can’t help but think of them as Dr. Evil and Mr. Sofia Vergara now… thank you Gay of Thrones) one I have written down word for word in my notes, just as you did. I, too, am intrigued by Oberyn and think he’s the best addition to the cast this year. He’s someone with his own ideas, who, like Tyrion at the beginning of season one, chases his passions and often gives the finger to political behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that everyone else takes so seriously. For Oberyn, life is about joy and passion; he’ll sit on the Small Council and seems happy to do so, but only for him to get an inside view of the goings-on, and then toss out a bon mot or three (my favourite in this episode being when he comments that the Unsullied are powerful on the battlefield, not so much in the bedroom, ha!).

The scene between the two of them sizzles because every time we learn the tiniest little tidbit of Varys’s past life, it feels significant. Here he keeps his hands hidden inside his sleeves as always, and occasionally gives a little nod or quiet word to either affirm or deny Oberyn’s leading questions. But that nod to the throne at the end… wow. It certainly looked like he was admitting he was the dark horse who’d lately thrown his hat in the ring, but we know he’s been playing it all along. But does he actually want to sit on the throne, or be the trusted advisor to the one sitting on the throne? The line “the absence of desire leaves one free to pursue other things” is such a loaded one. Could he be referring to Tyrion: with Shae out of the way and stuck in a loveless marriage, there’s no passion or desire in his way. Or Jaime Lannister, who, post–rape scene, seems to have lost all desire for Cersei? Or does he mean himself? While everyone else is giving in to the very passion that Oberyn deems significant — including Lord Baelish, who despite his cunning, is still ruled by his unrequited love for Catelyn — Varys just slowly and quietly keeps his eye on the prize. The question is, what prize, exactly? And for whom?

He’s not the only one with his eye on the prize, however. Tywin holds many keys in this episode, and while he certainly shows his vulnerability in the Small Council scene when he waves off the dragons like they’re not important, as you pointed out, he’s back in charge when Jaime comes to him to plead for Tyrion’s life. In that scene Jaime comes storming in and thinks he’s trying to strong-arm his dad into a bargain: you let Tyrion go, I’ll step down from the Kingsguard, marry, and have children that will carry on the Lannister name. He thought that was his initial offer and that a negotiation would ensue, until Tywin triumphantly pronounces, “DONE!” and stops Jaime in his tracks. Jaime stepping down from the Kingsguard, Tyrion being banished to the Wall never to be seen again, and the Lannister name being carried on through the most viable genetic line Tywin had? Exactly what Tywin’s wanted all along. How much of this entire trial was simply a means for Tywin to get what he wanted?

The trial (hilariously sent up as The People’s Court in this week’s Gay of Thrones) is definitely the highlight of the episode, for sure, and one of the highlights of the entire series thus far, but it’s split up: we have the initial scene of Jaime walking Tyrion to the “courtroom” in handcuffs as per Tywin’s orders, with Tyrion announcing loudly, “Well . . . we mustn’t disappoint Father!” Note how when they’re walking down the aisle, someone defiantly shouts, “Kingslayer!” from the crowd. We assume the disdain in that person’s voice means the insult was being thrown at Tyrion, but notice the irony that it used to be the compliment they paid to Jaime Lannister. I guess whether Kingslayer is a good or bad word depends entirely on which king it was that you slayed.

In this scene, we get a parade of untrustworthy people lying through their teeth about Tyrion’s guilt, which is brilliantly played out as Tyrion sits small in the prisoner’s dock, the top of his head barely showing above the rail, listening to these people while not being able to defend himself. What did you think of Tywin’s control over the trial and Jaime in that scene I mentioned? Or the group of people who come out in the trial and what they said? How much of what they said do you think was directed by Tywin, or are they all speaking of their own volition?

Christopher: A little from column A, and a little from column B … As I mentioned before, though much of this episode departs from the novels, the trial unfolds practically word for word. And I should correct you on a specific point: the only person who actually lies outright is Shae. Everyone else more or less tells the truth, but tells it in such a way that puts Tyrion in the worst light possible. One interesting deviation from the novels is Pycelle producing Sansa’s necklace and declaring that the missing stone had left “traces” of the poison used to kill Joffrey (in my notes I’ve written “C.S.I.: King’s Landing”). I remember thinking, back when Littlefinger drops the necklace onto Dontos’ corpse, “Aren’t you worried that it will be found when the boat drifts ashore?” (in the novel, they burn Dontos and his boat to destroy the evidence). But on reflection I thought of course Littlefinger wants that damning evidence to make its way back to King’s Landing—so much the better for him to strengthen his hold over Sansa, to make her appear more unequivocally guilty (not that Cersei et al really need more evidence).

The most heartbreaking witness (besides Shae, of course) is Varys, who relates precisely Tyrion’s words to Joffrey after news of Robb Stark’s death, but then also colours his testimony with a little speculation, musing that perhaps Tyrion’s marriage to Sansa had made him sympathetic to the North. That, for me, is always such a painful moment (in the novel as well), specifically because of what Tyrion reminds Varys of—that Varys had been Tyrion’s friend and had thanked him for saving the city. But Varys is in no position to aid Tyrion, as he’s already warned him … whatever power he wields is tenuous, and in spite of his seemingly omniscient capacity to obtain intelligence, he cannot openly thwart powerful people. And so he will have to play Tywin’s game. None of which makes his testimony less damning or less painful for Tyrion, which prompts his question and Varys’ response—neither of which, I should note, are in the books. “Have you forgotten?” he demands. Varys’ answer is as hauntingly cryptic as his earlier discussion with Oberyn: “Sadly, my lord, I never forget a thing.”

How amazing is Conleth Hill in this role? As I’ve observed before, he’s nothing like the Varys of the novels except for his baldness. Oberyn could be excused for making assumptions about the sexual preferences of the novels’ Varys, who plays the part of a simpering, mincing, effeminate castrato. Conleth Hill’s Varys possesses a quiet dignity. I don’t know which version is better: the powdered, fluting Varys, it becomes apparent in the novels, is merely a performance, one mask worn by a master of disguise. We have not yet seen any chameleon-esque tendencies in Hill’s Varys, but that implacable equilibrium he radiates makes him such a compelling character—especially when displayed in contrast to the histrionics of those around him.

And then we cut to Tywin and Jaime, and it is a scene that, as you say Nikki, makes one wonder just how subtle Tywin is. Even given how much he hates Tyrion and is shamed by his very existence, it seems unlikely that Tywin would be so eager to see his flesh and blood executed for treason. And yet, that is precisely how the trial appears to be weighted: the deck has been stacked very neatly against him, and every avenue Tyrion might take in his own defense blocked. There seems no chance whatsoever of a not guilty verdict. And so Jaime pleads with his father for a way out, a chance for Tyrion to take the black. As you say, Nikki, Jaime presents his offer of leaving the Kingsguard and returning to Casterly Rock as the opening move in negotiations and is caught flat-footed by Tywin’s immediate acceptance. How much of the trial has been orchestrated by Tywin to arrive at this very resolution? It’s win-win-win for Tywin: the troublesome Joffrey replaced by the malleable Tommen, his despised son humiliated but not dead, exiled to the Wall, and his beloved son brought back into the fold to make a new generation of golden-haired Lannisters. Is he really that clever?

Perhaps not. Perhaps he then overplays his hand. Shae’s testimony is the most damning and the most mendacious, and that which most hurts Tyrion, provoking him to reject the whispered deal about taking the black and demanding trial by combat. There is little doubt that, even without Shae’s “evidence,” Tyrion is doomed. Shae is there to put the final nail in the coffin. Which makes me wonder: at whose behest is she betraying her erstwhile lover? Who brought her back? Did she return of her own accord to revenge herself on Tyrion’s final words? Was she captured, and gives this false testimony in exchange for her life? If so, who put those words in her mouth? Tywin? Is Tyrion’s father doing this to make a perverse point about his whoring? Or is it Cersei’s doing, making absolutely certain that her hated brother dies?

What do you think, Nikki?

Nikki: When the doors opened and Shae walked in, my husband gasped loudly and my hands flew to my mouth, and I moaned, “Nooooo… not Shae!” It was an absolutely devastating moment, and the look on Tyrion’s face speaks volumes. Until then he’d become resigned to whom he was, what was happening to him, and just hoped that Jaime would come through for him. And then… Shae walked in.

You are absolutely correct that the people who come before Shae aren’t outwardly lying; when I said they were all lying about his guilt, I meant exactly that: they’ve taken his words out of context and suggested they were precursors to a murder he didn’t commit. They weren’t lying, but they were providing a misdirection by way of context. Tyrion took the poisons that Pycelle accuses him of, but that was to save the city during the Battle of Blackwater. Cersei quotes him out of context, as does Varys, and the soldier at the very beginning. All of their witness statements add up to a murderer proclaiming what he’s about to do . . . except the context in which each of those statements was uttered, of course.

But Shae . . . ugh. That was just so heartbreaking and painful, and I asked all the same questions you did. The day before the wedding, Shae is serving everyone at the dinner where Joffrey is given the sword, and Tyrion overhears Cersei telling Tywin that Shae is the whore she’d told him about. It’s in that very moment he decides he must save her life and send her away, but to do so he destroys her soul, making her despise him by calling her a whore and telling her she didn’t mean anything to him. I still think Dinklage’s performance in that scene is extraordinary: it’s one of the only times we ever see Tyrion outright lie about something, and every word that comes out of his mouth pierces his own heart even deeper than it pierces Shae’s. His voice cracks and is almost a growl by the end of the scene, and his face is screwed up with sorrow, which she takes to be disgust.

And now, days (weeks?) later, we see that he succeeded: she hates him. Varys whisked her away to another life, and now she’s back to exact her revenge. She never believed him when he told her exactly what they’d do to her if they found out she was his lover, yet she clearly believed every verbal dagger that spewed forth from his mouth in that terrible scene. To me, Varys is clearly at the bottom of this: he’s the only one who knew where Shae had gone to. And when he steps down from delivering his testimony and Tyrion asks him to recall that they were friends, he drops his head and says, “Sadly, my lord, I never forget a thing.” And clearly, he’s remembered Shae, where she went, and that by turning her over to Tywin and Cersei, he makes sure he gets more brownie points than ever before.

Was Tywin behind it? Cersei? They could have been in collusion to get her back, but I don’t think Tywin colludes with anyone, and I think Cersei’s been too drunk and in mourning to have actually gotten her act together to have created this conspiracy. I think it was Tywin, working with Varys to get her back.

Regardless of who did it (it was totally Tywin), the impact it has on Tyrion is immediate and horrifying. As her web of lies becomes more and more complicated, and eventually devolves into sordid lies about their sexual acts (which is where Oberyn sits up and starts becoming interested), Tyrion is not only feared and hated, but mocked. He becomes the laughing stock of the courtroom, and if he wasn’t already tiny inside that prisoner’s dock, he shrinks further in this moment. “Shae . . .” he finally says. “Please, don’t.” It’s the only time he begs, the only time he asks for someone to stop torturing him. He stood silent and in shock as Cersei pointed at him at the Purple Wedding and was walked away. He told Jaime and anyone who would visit him that he was innocent, but he never rattled his jail cell bars or screamed his innocence to passersby. He strode into the courtroom, silent, and never yelled, “THIS IS NOT TRUE” when people took the witness stand. But now, quietly, he begs her to stop lying, to stop breaking his heart.

But she’s only doing what he’d done to her. Lying to break his heart, to make him hate her the way he made her hate him. The difference is, he was trying to save his life, and Shae is trying to have him killed. “I am a whore, remember?” she fires back at him. And that’s when he realizes that despite Shae’s betrayal, despite his father’s machinations to get him into this very spot, despite his sister’s coldness and failure to see the truth, despite his innocence… he was the master of his own downfall. For he really DID say the things Cersei said he did. He DID take the poisons out of Pycelle’s store, even if it wasn’t for this and was ages ago. He DID call Shae a whore and turned her against him. He DID regularly use prostitutes and drink himself senseless and was everything his father ever accused him of being.

And it’s in that moment that he suddenly rises up. At first quietly, then in a booming voice, he says that he wishes to confess. “I am guilty,” he pronounces. “I’m guilty of being a dwarf. I’ve been on trial for it my entire life.” Jaime looks shattered, Shae looks like she has second thoughts about what she just did, Cersei remains stone-faced, and Tywin simply looks satisfied. As you said, Chris, he can’t have his son executed for treason, because while he wouldn’t care about losing the son, he wouldn’t want the blot on the family name. Instead he can send him to his certain death on the Wall. But… might Tyrion think he’d somehow won if he didn’t execute him? Hm… can’t have that. So… let’s destroy him from the inside. Tyrion’s outburst at the end of this episode is exactly what Tywin wanted: proof that he has triumphed over the son who was always too smart for his own good.

As Tyrion digs his hole deeper, turning to the disparaging and naïve citizens of King’s Landing, he tells them that he wishes he’d had the guts to kill King Joffrey, that he wishes he’d had enough poison to take out the whole lot of them. Amongst the gasps and oohs and aahs and chatter that rises up from the courtroom, you just see the look of quiet glee on Tywin’s face. And finally, to everyone’s surprise, he turns back to his father and tells him that he’s done with this, and demands a trial by combat. Cut to Jaime and that, “Oh… right” look on his face. Remember when you told Tyrion just a few episodes ago that if you’d been at the Eyrie you would have been his champion? Looks like you’re about to get called out on that.

I am positively giddy about the next episode. The ending of this was SO spectacular, so upsetting when it cut to credits (my “NOOOOOOO!!!” was heard throughout the neighbourhood) I just can’t wait until next week.

Near the beginning of the first book in the series, we are introduced to Tyrion Lannister when he has a conversation with Jon Snow about who has it worse: the dwarf or the bastard. And this is what GRRM writes:

[Tyrion] favored Jon with a rueful grin. “Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.” And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.

In this scene Tyrion once again stands tall, but makes himself the most hated man in King’s Landing. I mean, things can only get better from here, right? 😉

Hello again, everyone, and welcome once again to the great Chris & Nikki co-blog, wherein we gab about the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. This week’s was pretty impressive—I’d place it among the best episodes of the show so far. So much to love: Tommen is crowned, Cersei arrives at an apparent détente with Margaery, Arya learns a harsh lesson about swordcraft, Daenerys enters the queen-in-training program (Mereen campus), Sansa has some thoughts about frying pans and fires, and the Brienne-and-Jaime buddy comedy gets a spinoff.

And of course, one or two things happen north of the Wall.

But I’m getting ahead of ourselves. What shall we start with, Nikki?

 

Nikki: So let’s start in the Eyrie, that place with the creepy Lysa and her much creepier son, Robin. We haven’t seen these people since season 1, when Robin urged his mother to send Tyrion flying through the moon door. Baelish told Sansa they were heading there, and I watched their entrance with one eye closed because I thought, oh my god, if she’s still breastfeeding that kid I’m switching over to Mad Men. She wasn’t . . . but he wasn’t far from her breast. And he’s even loopier than he was when he was younger: when he wasn’t dancing around Sansa and asking her if it was true that her family was slaughtered, he was taking Baelish’s precious gift of a glass bird (transported all the way from Westeros and up the mountains of the Eyrie without breaking it) and just flings it through the moon door to show them, you know, what he means when he refers to the moon door. (Note to Robin: next time, JUST POINT.)

But we can’t really blame the kid for being more than a little off; look at his mother, after all. She tells Sansa about how Catelyn used to eat so many sweets she was making herself fat (as she’s pushing the same sweets into Sansa’s mouth), then hints at the story of Catelyn being so drawn to Brandon Stark that he forced Baelish into a duel that almost killed Littlefinger (a story from Book 1), then pushes down on Sansa’s rings, seriously hurting the girl’s hands and scaring her by suggesting she’s a whore who’s trying to seduce Lord Baelish before taking her to her breast and whispering “there, there,” reassuring poor Sansa that soon Tyrion will be executed and she will be free to marry Robin and become Lady of the Vale. The “DA FUH?!” look on Sansa’s face when she catches that last part is priceless.

Oh, and then there’s the snogging with Littlefinger, which I could do with never, ever seeing again, where she promises him that she will scream across the Vale when he makes love to her that night . . . a promise that she keeps, much to Sansa’s dismay. The union between Littlefinger and Lysa didn’t seem to make a lot of sense at first; of course, he’s connected to her through his love of Catelyn (if you can’t have one sister, you might as well have the other… then again, switching from Catelyn to Lysa doesn’t quite seem like switching from Brandon to Ned). And Lysa is a powerful woman still, so the marriage could be worth something. But now we discover that they’ve been connected for years, ever since Baelish convinced her to poison her husband Jon Arryn, which then orchestrated the whole Robert Baratheon goes to Winterfell/Ned becomes the Hand of the King/Ned sniffs out the bastardy issue/Robert dies/Ned dies/all hell breaks loose thing. So there’s that.

Wait… WHAT?! Baelish was behind everything?! The entire game of thrones that began with the death of Jon Arryn wasn’t, in fact, executed by Pycelles or Cersei, but Baelish? Ooh… THIS just got more interesting.

What did you think of this episode, Chris?

 

Christopher: In many ways, this has been my favourite episode so far this season. So much happened—there are an awful lot of exclamation points in my notes. One thing I think worth mentioning is that this episode flipped back and forth between storylines a lot more frequently than we’ve tended to see. The trend for a while has been spending a good chunk of time on one thread, and then moving on … but we had a lot of backing and forthing, which gave this episode somewhat more of a dynamic feel to it.

That being said, we had only one sojourn with Daenerys this go-around, and the final sequence was a long stay with Jon Snow, Bran, and Locke (though to be fair, it did switch quite frequently between their perspectives). I’ll start with Daenerys, who is now considering her options. What to do? She has proved her worth in conquering three mighty cities, amassing in the process an army large enough to challenge King’s Landing. But as Jorah reminds her, King’s Landing is one thing—the entirety of Westeros is another. And she hears disturbing news from Astapor and Yunkai: those cities she has “liberated” have reverted to old practices, old despotisms, with unseemly haste. It makes you remember Tywin’s advice to Tommen last episode: King Robert was mighty in battle, but made the mortal error of mistaking prowess in war for competence in ruling. So much of this show is about the nature of power. Daenerys has shown just how formidable she is, but at the same time just how transient her influence is. Without her actual presence, these cities have no compunction to play by her rules.

But unlike other tyrants we’ve seen—unlike King Robert, or Joffrey, or Viserys—she recognizes as much and rejects her advisors’ urgings to sail for King’s Landing. “How can I rule the Seven Kingdoms,” she asks, “when I can’t rule one city?” How indeed … and so she opts to stay in Mereen—and prove her worth as a ruler.

The nature of kingship (and queenship) is much on display and in debate in this episode. We begin with Tommen’s coronation—and can I say just how Christian and British that sequence is? The prevailing seven-pointed church of Westeros is an obvious analogy to Christianity, but I don’t think it’s been quite so explicit prior to this bit. But that parallel is quite significant, as it reminds us of the principle of divine right of kings. Hence, the conversation between Margaery and Cersei is, to put it mildly, somewhat loaded. Before I get into the substance of it, let me praise Natalie Dormer and Lena Headey for some extraordinarily understated acting. Anyone who had not seen the series to that point could be forgiven for thinking, “Oh, nice … they’re helping each other through their grief, and they’ll work in concert to aid Tommen.” HA! What a lovely depiction of honeyed barbs, especially on the heels of Margaery’s secret shared smiles with the new king, and Cersei’s rather pointed intrusion into her line of sight,

All of which helps to highlight the series’ troubling of the very notion of divine right. Margaery, looking at the diminutive Tommen on the Iron Throne, offers the saccharine platitude that “he sits the throne like he was born to it.” What I loved about this sequence was how blunt Cersei is: “But he wasn’t,” she asks, “was he?” What followed floored me: Cersei admitting, to her dead son’s bride, that her dead son was a monster. Though she doesn’t use those precise words, the meaning is plain. What an incredible moment of incommensurable conflict: the acknowledgement that Joffrey was a monster, alongside the mother’s fierce love for her first son. It’s obvious here that, though she obviously loves Tommen—who is, by all indications, a far superior human being to Joffrey—she cares far less for him than she did (does) for the wee prick.

But her admission is staggering, as is her suggestion that Tommen might be the first king in centuries who is actually good. “Who was the last decent king, I wonder?” she muses. A question to our readers: how many of you had the hair on the back of your neck stand up at that moment?

Of course, all of Cersei’s seeming commiseration with Margaery (not that we believed it) was belied by her conversation with her father. What did you think of that scene, Nikki?

 

Nikki: This was definitely Cersei’s episode. So much so, in fact, that near the end I began to worry she was about to be killed off. (“Let’s give Lena some great scenes and then… off with her head!”) I think this season has gone a long way to making Cersei a more sympathetic character. That wine goblet is ever present, as much a constant accessory for Cersei as her rings and braided hair, showing how much she needs liquid courage just to get through her day. The conversation with Margaery was exactly what you said it was: staggering. In fact, I was so enthralled by what was happening that my note-taking ceased, and I scrambled to catch up after and had to rewatch that scene. Those two actresses are marvelous together, and as you pointed out, the moment of Cersei stepping between Tommen and Margaery as Margaery flirted from above and Tommen giggled on his throne was so powerfully symbolic.

And yet, for the first time, we got a real admission from her. Yes, as you say, the sincerity was undercut by the later discussion with Tywin, but for her to respond to Margaery’s loyalty to Joffrey with the curt, “He would have been your nightmare” was shocking. She’s gleaned what Margaery’s been up to, and so Cersei decides to take the reins rather than let Margaery get away with it: she encourages her to marry Tommen, forcing Margaery to act coy and say she’d have to ask her father, and then Cersei admits she’ll have to do the same. Of course they do: for all the power they wield, they are nothing.

And then we cut to the Tywin conversation where he confirms that the Tyrells are their “only true rivals” when it comes to resources, and they need to get them on side. The Lannisters had the gold, but it’s dried up completely and has yielded a total amount of zero gold (no ounces, pounds, or tons). Tywin admits that Robert Baratheon had created a tremendous debt now owed to the Iron Bank of Braavos (I couldn’t help but picture Gringotts). We knew this already because Tyrion pointed it out when he became Master of Coin, and it was in fact Littlefinger who did the drawing on the bank to cover up Baratheon’s massive spending and hide the mess he was making. He explains to Cersei that the weddings are necessary: despite her disgust, she must marry Renly to tie them to the Tyrells, just as Tommen must be with Margaery.

And here, once again, that theme of kingship in this episode comes to the fore: Baratheon was a terrible king who spent so much money that he’s left the kingdom in terrible debt to a bank that sounds like quite the formidable foe (“It is a temple, and we live in its shadow,” says Tywin), and now all sorts of alliances must be made with other houses that have nothing to do with military power, and everything to do with paying off old debts.

But for all of Cersei’s campaigning in this episode — first talking to Margaery, then to Tywin, and finally to Oberyn, and to each one repeating that her brother Tyrion killed Joffrey and he must pay for his actions — little does she know that the real killer is in the very House with whom she’s making these alliances.

The scene between Cersei and Oberyn further heightened my sympathies to her. I know she’s conniving, but just as she explained her love of Joffrey to Margaery — “You never love anything in the world the way you love your first child, no matter what they do” — her love for her other children is deep, too. She was devastated when they shipped Myrcella off to Dorne, and she goes to Oberyn to ask if he’s seen her. He tells of her laughing and playing in the water with his daughters and loving life, which, given the hellhole that Westeros has become, is like a dreamworld in comparison. (Is it possible he’s lying, or can we hold on to the hope that he’s telling the truth?) She asks him, “What good is power when you cannot save the ones you love?” When we first met Cersei, she was trapped in a loveless marriage but finding solace with Jaime; she had her children around her, Tyrion was in his place, Jaime was by her side, Robert was off fondling other women and barely noticing her existence, and her son was going to take over as king. Even then, she was an unhappy woman because of the alliance made to Robert, who made her life a constant misery. But now her father barely tolerates her, Jaime hates her and he disgusts her, her beloved first child is dead, and her daughter has been shipped elsewhere. As I said in last week’s recap, the women on Game of Thrones often have the look of power, but very little of it is actually theirs to wield, which is not the show necessarily being sexist, but providing an example of the sad reality around us every day. I literally gasped at the beauty and harshness of the next line Cersei uttered:

Oberyn: They don’t hurt little girls in Dorne.
Cersei: Everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls.

Cersei might be cold, calculating, and lack empathy, but in this episode we are reminded of how she was turned into that person: she has been used as a pawn her entire life, and everything she’s ever loved has been taken from her.

And similarly, everyone that Arya has ever loved has been seemingly taken from her. In this episode, we see her recite her list once again before sleep, and the final name (which I knew was coming all along) adds an extra punch. Everywhere in the world, they indeed hurt little girls. But not all little girls know how to wield a sword.

 

Christopher: Not all little girls wield a sword, it is true, but Arya’s showdown with the Hound reminds her (and us) of the great chasm between theory and practice. Arya is like a kid who thinks he can fight because he’s got his brown belt in karate, and proceeds to get his ass handed to him when he provokes someone who actually has experience fighting. The Hound’s amusement in this scene is brilliant.

Arya: No one’s going to kill me.
Hound: They will if you nance around like that.

Also brilliant is the utter contempt in his voice when Arya tells him Syrio was killed by Meryn Trant. We of course saw what happened, and we know that a fake sword is no match for actual steel and plate armour—no matter how brilliant the swordsman—and we further know that Syrio sacrificed himself to spare Arya … none of which really stands up to the Hound’s derision and his brutal confidence in his own abilities. I think, perhaps, we can safely say that our sympathy for the Hound is ebbing? Certainly the contemptuous backhand he deals Arya reminds us just how unsentimental this man is. And he cares nothing for Arya’s hate, sleeping soundly by her even though he has made her list of death. It doesn’t do to underestimate Arya, but neither should we overestimate her: Needle’s failure to so much as poke a hole in the Hound’s armour would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. Never has Arya’s beloved sword looked more like a toy.

That’s one of the things I love about this series and the novels on which it is based: GRRM doesn’t merely not shy away from the brutal calculus of life and death in this world, he makes it a central theme. In some ways, Arya is practically archetypal: the young hero with a unique talent, who through determination and spunk bests seasoned warriors. Except that when you think about it, she hasn’t: everyone she has so far killed, she has killed by accident (the boy in the stable back in King’s Landing) or by trickery or stealth. All of which is entirely appropriate for a slip of a girl with a toothpick sword, but like the fact that even a brilliant swordsman like Syrio cannot defeat a mediocre one like Meryn Trant when the latter is encased in steel, so too the Hound’s size, strength, and utter willingness to kill will always trump Arya’s skill.

Arya’s feeble confrontation with the Hound reflects a broader reality as well, one acknowledged by Tywin: stuff matters. Having just spent a semester teaching a class on The Lord of the Rings, GRRM’s emphasis on the material necessities for war and governance is particularly striking. Tolkien’s novel is a masterpiece, but has little concern for questions of logistics. How does Gondor feed its armies? How does it pay them? From where do they procure the raw materials for weapons? And so forth … these questions are never raised by Tolkien, much less answered. Game of Thrones, by contrast, functions on the basic principle that armies must be fed, paid, provisioned, and that the money for that has to come from somewhere. Littlefinger’s ostensible mismanagement of the Iron Throne’s finances takes on a rather more sinister character, doesn’t it? As you point out, the revelation that Jon Arryn—whose assassination essentially put this story in motion—was killed by his wife at Littlefinger’s behest is one of the more shocking revelations in a series that raises shocking twists to the level of art. I remember nearly dropping the book when I read that. Littlefinger does seem to be behind everything, and has been working toward all of this for a very long time. But rest assured when I tell you his is only one of the conspiracies shaping the destinies of our favourite characters.

Speaking of our favourite characters (how’s that for a segue?) it looks as though we’re getting a new buddy comedy starring Brienne and Pod … though this one looks like it will feature much less sharp banter and a lot more slapstick. What did you think of the way Brienne’s new storyline is proceeding?

 

Nikki: As you know, my love of Brienne runs deep. And I think much of that love stems from the fact that her story is a perfect blend of comedy, tragedy, pathos, sadness, and triumph — moreso than possibly any other character on the show (save, perhaps, Tyrion), her story runs the gamut of emotions. This week there’s a lot of comedy — Pod unable to keep his horse straight, Brienne trying to convince him to just go away but he’s unwilling because it would make him a bad squire, Pod catching a rabbit on fire because he didn’t realize he needed to skin it first — but within that comedy we get a very big revelation for Brienne: that one of the Kingsguard tried to kill Tyrion during the Battle of Blackwater. This seemingly unimportant piece of information that Pod tosses off in the midst of explaining to her that he killed a man once to save Tyrion’s life could end up being a very valuable piece of information later. It’s possible Brienne could be killed (noooo!) before she’s able to actually use this piece of information — after all, GRRM often brings us to the brink of something happening and then shatters it — but here’s hoping that it becomes useful to her. What definitely happens in that scene is that Brienne develops sympathy for Pod, and realizes that what he might lack in skills he makes up for in loyalty. It’s a lovely moment when she allows him to remove her armour for her. But you can see from the look on her face that she’s rather shocked by what he just told her.

And, as you said above, that’s the thing I really enjoy about Game of Thrones and the books upon which it is based: that so often what would be a “dun-dun-DAAAAHHH!” moment on any other show — quickly given, used, and resolved — just becomes a puzzle piece on this show that might be used, or might be a dangling red herring. As you so rightfully point out, Arya could be a coming of age story of a girl who proves that a person is a person, no matter how small… or, in the world of GRRM, she can be a girl who longs to prove that, but will still end up dead in a ditch because her sword is about as useful as a twig my son would pick up in the woods and pretend to swordfight with. (In fact, I didn’t actually recognize Needle at first and wondered why she was parrying with a twig rather than Needle, and then realized… “Oh.”)

But the same goes for Daenerys. As much as I adore her (I repeat: my fealty lies in the House of Targaryen), I’ve always thought it rather convenient that she frees the slaves and has some of them follow her and… then what? What about the people left behind? Are the people really better off? What about the ones who don’t follow her? Aren’t they vulnerable right now? She just took all of the Unsullied out of Yunkai, isn’t that their only defense?

So in this episode, when her advisors explain that actually, things turned to shit in Astapor and Yunkai after she “liberated” them (definitely a commentary on recent world events), I was rather delighted. It’s not all sunshine and light, and GRRM shows the downside to military victory: his novels might be in the fantasy genre, but he shows the very real trials and tribulations attached to these circumstances; the military occupation and triumph might be done with the best of intentions, but sometimes with disastrous results. I was also very happy to hear her talking about Westeros — she’s always been so removed from the goings-on in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, with her own story being entirely separate from the others (excepting the occasional references to her whereabouts that are mentioned in small councils) that hearing the two of them come together was rather wonderful. Unlike the men who reign over these other areas, she will stop, strengthen, and rule, getting to know her people and her kingdom before moving forward. “I will do what queens do: I will rule.”

Daenerys — her power and intelligence — is the perfect antidote to the sad lot of the other women in the story. And with that… we move to Craster’s Keep. Whoa. Talk about a crazy suspenseful sequence, where both my husband and I started to worry that Jon Snow might die next (NO! Not Jon Snow!) simply because Bran was this close to reuniting with him, and we remember what happened to the other Stark brother when Arya got that close to him. Eep! But first there’s Jojen’s revelation that they’re all just accompanying Bran to the weirwood; then the threatened rape of Jojen’s sister; then Bran turns Hodor into a killer, which resonates so deeply as Hodor stares at the blood on his hands in confusion and heartbreak; then the return of Ghost (YES!); then the horrifying death of Tanner… I literally had my knees pulled right up to my chin and was holding my hands out going, “Geeeeyaaaaahhh noooooo!” as Jon Snow s-l-o-w-l-y pulled that sword back out of his head GOOD GOD. Seriously, between that and the horse episode of Hannibal, which I just saw this week, I think I’m giving up eating popcorn while watching television. But what an insanely amazing end to the episode. You had revealed to us that Locke was a construct of the show, so I figured he wouldn’t last long on the show, but I really thought this entire sequence was rather spectacular nonetheless. What did you think, Chris?

 

Christopher: I completely agree—it instantly became one of my favourite sequences on the show thus far, and is remarkable on two fronts: first, it was not in the books (I’m hard pressed to think of any of my other favourite bits that weren’t), and second, it had Bran in it! The last time Bran was in an awesome sequence, he was in a coma as his direwolf killed his would-be assassin.

It also renewed my faith in the writers. I should have known better than to worry about the appearance of Locke at the Wall and the apparent collision course between Jon and Bran. They sidestepped a potential rupture in GRRM’s overall story with a certain narrative elegance and a lot of brutal violence (as is their wont). And in the process they emphasized both Bran’s importance to the story and the cost of their mission—both in terms of what his protectors are willing to endure, as well as the actual human cost of blood spilled. But it was the Hodor moments that made this sequence as brilliant as it was. Poor Hodor … it’s quite an accomplishment to inspire that thrill and triumph of Hodor’s sudden badassery, while simultaneously cringing because we know just how much of a violation it is to make the gentle giant a killer. As you say, Nikki, the aftermath as he’s looking at his hands in hurt bewilderment is heartbreaking.

As is the necessity of Bran slipping away without having a reunion with Jon Snow. We recall from season one that they’d had a warm relationship, with Jon gently encouraging during his archery lesson, and the genuine hurt on his face when he sits next to comatose Bran’s bed to say farewell. Bran must desert one of his few remaining family members; and Jon will not know that the brother he thought dead by Theon’s hand is very much alive.

In other words, this final sequence is exemplary of what Game of Thrones can do when it’s on its game: exciting, suspenseful, and deeply satisfying on a visceral level, but also riddled with pathos and regret (but also love and warmth—if Cersei’s grief and Arya’s hate are the emotional low points of the episode, Jon’s reunion with Ghost is certainly the high one). For all the blood that’s spilled at Craster’s Keep and the deep satisfaction of seeing Tanner and Locke get their comeuppance, there’s a powerful ambivalence, best embodied by Craster’s wives … effectively imprisoned and enslaved by Craster, then imprisoned again by Karl Tanner and his mutineers and repeatedly raped, they nevertheless refuse Jon Snow’s offer of asylum. But neither can they return to the only home they’ve known, with its memories of Craster. “Burn it,” says the leader, in spite of the fact that that will leave them with no shelter as winter encroaches. Their wounds run deeper than winter’s chill.

Do you realize we’re now at the mid-point of this season? As with all good things, this goes too quickly. So thanks once again, Nikki! And thanks to all of you following the show with us. In the meantime, be good and work hard, and remember that if you suddenly wake up to find yourself choking a Night’s Watch impostor, don’t panic. Just go with it. He was probably an asshole anyway.

Hello again and welcome to the great Game of Thrones co-blog, starring yours truly and my brilliant partner in thronegab, Nikki Stafford. Take it away, Nikki!

Nikki: Let’s start at the very beginning (cue Julie Andrews… on second thought, let’s not cue Julie Andrews…) with my girl Daenerys. As we discussed last week, she has raised a massive army based on loyalty and love and gratitude for freeing slaves. But there’s a new dark side that’s been cast with this week’s outing.

We begin with Grey Worm taking lessons from Missandei on reading or learning English (it wasn’t exactly clear to me what she was teaching) and they begin discussing who they were before Dany freed them. Grey Worm said he was always Unsullied, never anything before that, and Missandei doesn’t accept that, and tells him he needs to remember back to when he was a human being, before that was taken away from him. She remembers her village being burned, reminding me of the child from last week’s episode who watches his village being burned and massacred by the Thenns and wildlings; was she like him? Will he grow up to be a slave?

Grey Worm won’t remember this, because his brain has been washed clean of anything he ever was before the Unsullied, and despite what Missandei says, he doesn’t ever see himself returning to the Summer Isles. “Kill the Masters…” he mutters to himself. And, in an uncomfortable return to his roots, he dresses up as a slave along with other former Unsullieds and they sneak into the tunnels where the slaves of Meereen are discussing whether or not to rise up against their masters, falling heavily on the side of “not.” This scene is made even more intriguing because of the “disguises” that Grey Worm and his fellow soldiers are wearing — they aren’t posing as slaves, but showing the other slaves that they were once just like them, and now, with the weapons they have brought to them, they too can free themselves of the masters. The powerful become so because they convince the weak they are, well, weak, and the vulnerable people never actually look at their numbers and realize hey, there are more of us than there are of them! (Think of high school classroom politics: there are usually about 10 “popular” kids in each grade, and 50 “unpopular” kids… but no one ever actually runs those numbers to realize how preposterous it all is.)

But here’s where it gets interesting. The slaves do rise up and quash the masters while declaring fealty and love to their new Mhysa, Daenerys calls for an eye for an eye, wanting the masters crucified at the same mile markers as they’d crucified their slaves. Ser Barristan Selmy tries to advise her against it, telling her that she should answer injustice with mercy. She defiantly tells him she will answer injustice with justice, and the men are hammered into the posts, with their left hands nailed to the horizontal slab of wood, while their left hands are nailed to their ribcages, just as they’d done to their slaves. Now, instead of 163 slaves, you have countless masters pointing the way to Meereen with their grisly bodies, and Daenerys shows them absolutely no mercy as she stands at the top of the tower of Meereen, just as she showed no mercy to Doreah, her handmaiden, and Xaxos, whom she locked in the vault for eternity back in Qarth. As the sigil of the House of Targaryen waves behind her, we hear the screams of the fallen masters below, echoing up to the Khaleesi like a national anthem.

Now, while I’m focusing here on the opening of the episode, I saw Twitter explode at 10pm over some major deviations from the book. Am I right in assuming (from what I could gather over there) that the end of the episode, with the white walkers, is actually from future books and not from the third book, Chris?

Christopher: There were rather a large number of deviations from the novels in this episode. The one thing the Mereen sequence hewed to was the way in which Daenerys’ people entered the city through the sewers. They did that in the novel, too … except there it was Jorah and Barristan leading an actual attack. And they were in the vanguard for reasons I cannot share here for fear of spoilers. Suffice to say, we’re rapidly arriving at a point where the series is making irrevocable changes: the nature of the subjugation of Mereen, the presence of Locke (not a GRRM character) at the Wall, the scenes at Craster’s, Bran’s capture, Margaery’s secret midnight rendezvous with Tommen, and of course the final scene with … a White Walker? It was a Walker who took Craster’s boy to the mini-Stonehenge, but it looked like an entirely different race/species of ice demon who touched the infant and transformed him.

The thing is: unlike other televisual adaptations of novels (Dexter, for example), Game of Thrones has worked in pretty close concert with the writer, from having him on board to write an episode every season, to demanding his notes as a condition of the contract (in case he dies before finishing the series), to generally using him as an invaluable resource. All of which tells me that nothing happens without GRRM signing off on it (officially or otherwise). Which raises an interesting question: is that scene in the mini-Stonehenge at the end of this episode a spoiler? Does it reveal something that we’re going to learn about in The Winds of Winter? Are Weiss and Benioff giving us a glimpse of what we can expect from future novels? Or are they merely inventing something that GRRM leaves implicit?

But to get to the substance of the episode … we must be approaching the mid-point of the season, because tonight’s episode was one of those in which a huge amount of stuff happened, but there was no particular note that resonated—nothing that will have the proverbial water coolers abuzz with discussion (excepting those water coolers populated by people who have read the novels, apparently). Which is not to say this wasn’t a good episode, just that it was one of those bridges we tend to see mid-season that moves the story along without offering any truly OMG moments. I suppose the one thing approaching that in this episode is the sort-of reveal of who actually killed Joffrey. But we’ll come to that later.

After the Mereen sequence, we’re back in King’s Landing … and oh, my, but Jaime has been getting much better fighting with his left hand. Until Bronn again teaches him an abrupt lesson and smacks him across the face with Jaime’s right hand. This was a nicely-crafted scene for a variety of reasons—some of which I cannot mention, because spoilers. But if I can drop hints, their discussion about how Tyrion evaded Lysa’s grasp by demanding the right of trial by combat is something to keep in mind. Bronn reminds Jaime that Bronn only ended up standing for Tyrion because Lysa (or as I suppose we now have to call her, the future Mrs. Littlefinger) asserted that the combat must happen immediately … negating the possibility of waiting for Tyrion’s first choice of champion, his brother. Bronn tells Jaime that Tyrion knew he would have ridden day and night to defend his brother. But now?

Now Jaime is caught between love of his brother and love of his sister. And Tyrion is more than a little embittered by that fact, responding badly to Jaime’s attempts at banter, just as Cersei is more than a little paranoid about the fact that Jaime visited Tyrion. And at no point in that meeting between Jaime and his sister is there a hint, a sense, a reverberation of the fact that he raped her the last time we saw them together. What did you make of that, Nikki?

 

Nikki: I think, like everyone else watching last night, the moment Jaime entered the room I waited for there to be some comment about the rape. After all, the internet went crazy with the discussion over it last week. Yes, they have a history together, and yes, knowing these two I would presume their sexual relationship is a rather sado-masochistic one, and within the parameters of what they are used to, perhaps, maybe part of their foreplay is for her to say no and him to say yes. But… he did it beside their son’s corpse. The very setting of the rape defines it as rape, whether she was hesitantly welcoming or not. She is at the lowest moment of her life emotionally, her father just reminded her that she will never have power and as long as he can manipulate Tommen the power will be his, she knows that Margaery will have her talons in Tommen in no time (and we all know what Cersei thinks of Margaery), and she believes her younger brother is her son’s murderer.

But maybe the writers want us to see it as just another day in Westeros. After all, we’re not screaming about the injustices being done to the Craster daughters right now at Craster’s Keep. And we didn’t even mention what was happening to the innkeeper’s daughter when the Hound and Arya showed up to kill Polliver and his crew. Or how about Sansa just being betrothed to whomever suits Tywin’s fancy? Or Margaery being used as a pawn for the Tyrell family, being married off to unsuitable men just to further their power? Or, you know, Viserys telling his little sister to strip and clean herself in boiling hot water right after he tweaks her nipple and slaps her ass? We swoon over the relationship between Khal Drogo and Daenerys, and overlook the fact that he rapes her on their wedding night (she’s 13 in the books, and on the show is sobbing openly as he has sex with her) and she must take charge of their sexual relationship in order for him to respect her.

There have been many words written about the complicated portrayal of women in GRRM’s novels and on the show. It’s the most positive portrayal of women on TV right now. It’s an incredibly negative and nasty portrayal of women on TV right now. It shows women rising up and being powerful. It shows women as helpless and powerless in the face of a masculine universe.

I think it’s all those things, which is why I could turn this into a giant paper on feminist responses to Game of Thrones and why they are correct and why they are terribly wrong. But I won’t. Because our posts are already too long as it is. 🙂

Suffice to say, I wasn’t exactly surprised when Jaime walked in and there was no mention of it, because I think Cersei has resigned herself to being a pawn in the masculine Lannister family: aside from whatshername who was stuck on a boat and sent to Dorne, I can’t name another female Lannister. (Come to think of it, I guess technically I can’t even name THAT Lannister. Starts with an M. I’ll think of it.) Cersei is alone in this family, and has always been alone in this family. Her mother died giving birth to Tyrion, and the only comfort and acceptance she’s gotten has been in the incestuous arms of her twin brother. Tyrion loathes her, her father dismisses her, she was married off to a boor of a man… being raped beside her son’s corpse probably feels like a Tuesday to Cersei, not a monumental event that will shatter her psychologically. She lives in a different world than we do. Does that make it right? No. Does it make my love of Jaime and his character more complicated now? Absolutely. Am I happy that Brienne went off and left Jaime behind so we can love Brienne while having to work out our difficult feelings about Jaime separately? YES.

(Myrcella. Her name was Myrcella. Whew.)

I adore Brienne, and have from the beginning. As I said to my husband last night, I’m still in awe over the perfect casting of this woman. “Find me a woman who’s 6-foot-3, very plain-looking, almost unattractive and man-like, and yet very feminine, beautiful in the right light, who can play tough and vulnerable at the same time.” I can only imagine how much the casting director must loathe GRRM at times… and yet, they found the perfect woman. Brienne is tough, but very vulnerable and lost at times; plan and masculine-looking (Pod calling her “Sir” is hilarious) and yet gorgeous — none of us shall forget what she looked like in that hot tub — very tall, and yet one who can be made to look small just by the look on her face. We almost never see her smile, which I’m sure is one of the actress’s tricks; if she did smile, she would probably be beautiful, so she keeps her face very shocked and angry-looking all the time, and it works. As she rode off on her horse with Podrick at her side (what a GREAT duo, I never would have thought of it but can’t wait to see what they do with it), my husband said, “I really hope they have a great storyline for her, because she’s one of the best characters on the show.” Yes she is. Let’s put her in the “GRRM writes amazing female characters” category.

In the scene that you mentioned with Tyrion and Jaime, Tyrion is very quick to defend his wife’s honour, telling Jaime that she couldn’t have killed the king. “Sansa’s not a killer . . . not yet, anyway,” he says. I immediately wondered if that was foreshadowing. We cut to Sansa being over on the ship with Baelish and saying the same thing about her husband, that there’s simply no way he could have done it. I love that the writers on the show have included scenes of Sansa and Littlefinger in every season, as if building up to them ending up on this ship together in the fourth season. What did you think of their conversation, Chris?

 

Christopher: I loved it. There have been some wonderfully crafted character arcs on this show; one of the best things about the revolution in television these past ten years or so has been its ability to employ its long-form storytelling in the service of developing layered, complex characters who evolve as they suffer life’s indelicacies. And the best shows take their time, so that the Ellis Carver we see in the final episode of The Wire or the Jesse Pinkman at the end of Breaking Bad are utterly different people than they were at the start. We see this most strikingly in Game of Thrones, I’d argue, with Arya; but Sansa’s evolution has been far more subtle and in some ways far more profound. She did not have much to do last season as she languished in King’s Landing, but we see from her conversation with Littlefinger that she has been paying attention.

And you’re absolutely right, Nikki, to observe that we’ve been privy to a handful of strategically placed scenes between Sansa and Littlefinger that, taken individually, don’t amount to much—but by the time Sansa clambers over that ship’s rail, the two of them have established a connection. Or rather, Littlefinger has established a connection with Sansa, who was certainly unaware that anything was happening. Their conversation thus is as much of a reveal as when we first saw Littlefinger again—as Sansa slowly starts to piece things together, we see she’s pretty damn far from the obnoxious child she was in season one.

If this season is teaching us anything about politics in Westeros, it’s that it doesn’t pay to be a capricious or unpredictable king. We see Tywin’s satisfaction at the malleable and decent Tommen, Tyrion wonders if his father is responsible for Joffrey’s death for the sake of stability, and here Littlefinger confesses to orchestrating Joffrey’s death because “he was not a reliable ally.” And … cut to the other half of the conspiracy, in which we see Olenna and Margaery spinning their own plot … though not until Olenna shares a scandalous little secret, namely that she seduced her late husband away from her sister and basically ensnared him by being so spectacular in bed that he was helpless before her (and speaking as someone who first discovered The Avengers and the knee-trembling spectacle of Diana Rigg in a catsuit when I was about Tommen’s age, her claim to have been “very good” rings absolutely true). Keep in mind, of course, that she hasn’t yet spoken of her late husband with anything other than contempt until this moment: her nostalgia for literally fucking him into submission betrays no pleasure at the memory, just pleasure in remembering how good she was. There is no affection here, just satisfaction at having played the game well … and reminds us that Olenna, like Tywin and Littlefinger, has absolutely no sentimentality for anyone but her inner circle, seeing people as objects to be used as means to an end.

Reflecting back on your earlier comments, Nikki, I’d add that in addition to depicting a neomedieval world in which cruelty and pain are inescapable facts of life, Game of Thrones does something that Rome also did wonderfully—namely, to counterpoise masculine and feminine power. The scheming of Atia and the feud she engages in with Servillia have a lot in common with the behind-the-scenes maneuvering done by Olenna, as well as the nascent conflict with Cersei.

With Joffrey out of the way, they now need to consolidate power by taking control of Tommen—which Olenna knows will be difficult, as Cersei will guard him like Cerberus. Did you catch Margaery stroking her necklace? A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man, and that read rather loudly as an assertion that Margaery and Olenna are pretty much willing to do whatever the hells they need to get what they want.

Which for the moment, fortunately for Cersei, involves sneaking into Tommen’s bedchamber. Margaery mercifully does not employ her grandmother’s tactic and go all statutory-rapey on Tommen, but proceeds with a little more subtlety. What did you make of that scene, Nikki?

 

Nikki: Nudge nudge… say no more. First of all, I do have to say I didn’t see Tommen coming. The kid’s been in a handful of scenes and has barely uttered more than a grunt, and I never even noticed him standing there. I was going to say last week that the casting directors were once more brilliant in casting this kid way back in season one before he actually had to do anything spectacular… until I checked this week and discovered that no, he’s actually being played by a new actor this season. That makes a little more sense. But, at the risk of being totally cougary myself, I do have to say they’ve cast a really good-looking guy to play him. I don’t know yet if he has any charisma in the books, but so far the actor is playing him as cautious and smart, yet wide-eyed and quiet. And when Margaery comes into the room to see him and Mr. Pounce joins them on the bed, let’s just say when she leans forward to talk to Tommen, I don’t think Mr. Pounce was the only thing jumping up in that scene. She’s as brilliant as her grandmother when it comes to subtlety and tactics, and just like Grandma Peel (yes, when Olenna made the comment about being really fantastic back in the day, my mind immediately went to Emma Peel in a catsuit, too!), Margaery knows how to use her feminine wiles to get what she wants. I love that she’s able to control Tommen far more than she ever could Joffrey, which not only makes me intrigued for the little “secrets” they’re going to keep from Cersei, but also hopeful that for once, maybe one of her kingly husbands might actually survive the marriage.

Speaking of getting things up, let’s move northward, shall we? (In case you’re wondering, I’m in a self-imposed contest to come up with the worst segue ever. I’m thinking that one might be a major contender.)

Over at Craster’s Keep, Karl Tanner is holding court, using dialogue from the Al Swearengen School of Emoting. I recently stayed with a couple of friends in the UK and they showed me several episodes of The Thick of It, starring Peter Capaldi as a foul-mouthed governmental director of communications, but in these scenes in this week’s Game of Thrones, Owen from Torchwood makes Capaldi’s character look like a Sunday school teacher. As he drinks wine from Mormont’s skull, he lords over everyone else, encouraging them to fuck the girls to death (subtle, dude) and take what’s theirs. In the background you can see Craster’s daughters in various stages of undress, beatings, and being brutally raped. It’s a horrific scene, made worse when the old woman comes in carrying yet another male heir of Craster. The mother in me cringed at the newborn baby playing the role of the newborn baby, and I remember thinking note to all expecting mothers: do NOT agree to let your newborn baby appear in an episode of Game of Thrones. It never turns out well for the wee bairn.

But THEN… Bran moves into the mind of Summer and sees Ghost (a reunion of direwolves!!) and then the whole lot of them gets caught. And THEN… they beat on Hodor and stab him. I had no idea how much I loved the big lunk until that happened, and then I was furious and frightened that this might be the end of the character. I literally sat up straight on the couch and yelled, “DON’T YOU DARE HURT HODOR!!” When Tanner smacks Bran and jokes that where he came from in Gin Alley, if he’d struck a highborn he would have lost his right hand, I couldn’t help but think please please please let this be foreshadowing. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Game of Thrones so far, the pricks seem to get theirs in the end. I’m gleeful about what could possibly be awaiting Tanner.

I was shocked when you said that Locke wasn’t in the books, Chris; you did actually say that back when he was lopping off Jaime’s hand, but of course I’d entirely forgotten that you did until you just mentioned it again. So if it’s not in the book, I wonder if we should fear Locke at all, since one would assume Bran’s story wouldn’t be messed with in a big way (i.e. you wouldn’t kill off Bran on the show if he survives in the book)… or would it? With all the divergences from the book that you mention above, it made me think that maybe the Game of Thrones guys are either doing what you said — they know the ending to the books and are now turning things more quickly to that end, knowing they can’t keep the show going for another eight years — or they’re following The Walking Dead’s lead on moving so far away from the books that the readers can no longer predict what’s coming next … to the extent that when something major DID happen this past season that was exactly from the books, it caught everyone — including the readers — off-guard.

My guess is the first, because what has really set GoT apart from so many other adaptations is its fealty to the books, and I would hate for that to be destroyed. But now I also see why the readers would be up in arms: you all choose to read the books because you want to read it from GRRM first, and don’t want the show to spoil it for you, whereas those of us who started on the show watch it first and read later. But if they’re going to jump ahead and include information from future books that haven’t yet been released, they’re taking the choice out of the hands of the reader/viewer and surprising them with spoilers.

Any final words about Locke and those white walkers at the end, Chris?

Christopher: Locke’s current role is puzzling. I understood why they created him initially; in the novels, Jaime’s hand is cut off by a psychotic group of mercenaries called the Bloody Mummers, who had originally worked for the Lannisters, but then switched sides to Roose Bolton. So the series was consistent insofar as Jaime loses his hand to Bolton’s men. But the whole infiltration of the Watch and the capture of Bran are huge deviations from the novels. Assuming they mean for Bran to escape and carry on north, then this is just a little diversion from his main storyline—probably created because Bran’s storyline is otherwise JUST SO DAMN BORING. But Locke seems to be developing into a fairly significant character. I have a few thoughts about how this might play out so that the main storyline is preserved, but I think I’ll keep them to myself for the moment.

Though it is worth pointing out that, to go on this mission, Locke must take the oath. And while he presumably plans to desert and return to Roose Bolton, the penalty for desertion is death. Full stop, no appeal. However much the Night Watch is mocked in the southern regions of Westeros, that law is about as absolute as they come. Would Roose shelter him? If I was Locke, I’d be leery of trusting Roose Bolton with my life …

As for the White Walkers … I suppose it’s possible that we’re getting a glimpse into the books’ mythology, something that won’t necessarily be made explicit in them. Why do the White Walkers demand this horrifying sacrifice? What happens to the babies? Well, now we know—they’re made into more White Walkers (not such a great galloping shock, that).

But I’m not overly concerned with the series deviating in any fundamental way from the books, and not just because the outcry from the fans would be enormous. It makes a certain amount of sense for series like Dexter or The Walking Dead to go off in their own directions: the Dexter novels are discrete, stand-alone stories, and (from what I can glean) the Walking Dead graphic novels could potentially go on forever, as there is no cohesive, overarching story. But A Song of Ice and Fire is building to a specific conclusion (dragons, meet White Walkers; White Walkers, these are Daenerys’ dragons), and the showrunners have in their possession GRRM’s notes and plot outline. I have to assume that the changes they make, however baffling, won’t paint them into a corner. It’s sort of like when J.K. Rowling read the screenplay for The Order of the Phoenix, and asked “What happened to Kreacher?” The writers said they left him out. “Noooo …” said Rowling. “He’s actually kind of important.” So we have a brief little glimpse of the sour house-elf.

Well, that wraps things up for another week! Once again, Nikki, a pleasure. We’ll see everyone here next Monday. In the meantime, as my favourite CBC personality used to say, be cool, stay warm, and be good to the people you love. And strongly encourage your cousin to switch her wedding venue from Westeros to Narnia. Even if she loses the deposit.

Hello again and welcome to the great Game of Thrones co-blog, featuring Nikki Stafford and myself, who gets to ride along in her TARDIS of televisual commentary (sorry, I was watching season five of Doctor Who earlier and watched an episode in which Ser Jorah Mormont appears. Iain Glen does get around).

Tonight episode picked up pretty much precisely where last week’s left off—which is just a great way for me to remind everyone that Joffrey is dead. Do not pass GO, do not collect your two hundred gold dragons. Dead. And his former betrothed Sansa has been liberated from the scene, which brings us to …

Nikki: And the episode begins with Sansa racing off across the waters, escaping the accusations of the Lannisters for the death of the Little Shit (one week later, STILL GLORIOUS) and her connection to Tyrion, and is placed safely in the hands of…

Goddammit!!

From one psychopath to another. Now, as we discussed back in our book discussion, Lord Baelish is more sympathetic in the books (we see how Catelyn mocked him and how much he yearned for her love but was physically helpless to fight in any battles to win her hand) but on the show, he’s a scheming bastard who in season 3 arranges for the torture and death of Ros, the prostitute who’d been working for him and who he assumed betrayed him. The last we see of him is having a verbal sparring match with Varys, telling him that he believes chaos is necessary to move ahead. He has already asked Sansa once to join him on his ship, and she refused, and so, we assume, he leaves for the Vale of Arryn…

…when in fact it looks like he just threw down an anchor and tried to come up with a new plan to get Sansa on that ship. And if this means that he is behind Joffrey’s death somehow… woo, that plan was a doozy. In the previous episode, Ser Dontos approaches Sansa with a necklace that he says belonged to his mother and is the only thing of value that he owns. He’s thanking her for saving his life back at the beginning of season 2, when she talked Joffrey out of beheading Dontos and making him the king’s fool instead. But it turns out the necklace was a ruse to get Sansa on-side. Dontos clearly didn’t think he was betraying Sansa or putting her in harm’s way, and was instead saving her from certain death at the hand of the Lannisters (which is probably true). Because of Baelish’s unrequited love for Catelyn, one assumes he’ll keep Sansa safe, not only because she’s the daughter of his great love, but because she looks like Catelyn, and he appears to be partly in love with Sansa, too. But when it comes to Baelish, one should never assume anything. Just like the lovely Ser Dontos never should have assumed he could have done a job for Baelish and gotten out of this alive.

And man, that ship must have been anchored waaaay out in the waters, since it was mid-day when Sansa got into the dinghy, and it appears to be midnight when she gets to the boat.

Were you happy to see Littlefinger again, Chris?

 

Christopher: I keep thinking to myself, there’s something to be written about the fairly singular pleasure those of us who have read the books have in anticipating key moments as they occur in the series: both in terms of wondering how they will be rendered, whether they’ll be done well or not (and so far, to my mind, there haven’t been any missteps); and in terms of anticipating how you lot who haven’t read the books will respond. When the shadowy man who has helped Sansa onto the ship steps back and we see Littlefinger, I came close to punching the air and saying “Yes!” Not because I didn’t know it would be him, but because the reveal was crafted so beautifully. Knowing that you, Nikki, and thousands of other people who haven’t read the books were having a frisson of shock and surprise was almost as good as experiencing it myself. Or perhaps even better. I’m sure the Germans could come up with a word for the experience.

All of which is by way of saying: yes, I am delighted to see Littlefinger again. Though I did wonder (out loud, in fact) “what that hell’s going on with his voice?” It’s like Littlefinger suddenly remembered he was Irish. And don’t get me wrong—I love hearing Aiden Gillen speak with his natural accent, but it was a bit surprising after hearing him speak in a neutral, clipped mid-Atlantic accent these past three seasons. Also, his voice was hoarser than normal … which I suppose is partly because he was whispering, but it was something of an odd effect. He sounded like Irish Batman.

One of the things I liked about this episode is the way, in the first three scenes, we get a contiguous set of schemes: first Littlefinger, then the Tyrell women, then Tywin staking immediate claim to the mentorship of the new king. Let’s talk about Margaery and Olenna first: this scene is understated but deeply significant, at once touching in the obvious affection Olenna has for her granddaughter but also a wonderful display of the Queen of Thorns’ ruthless pragmatism. A shame, she observes, that Joffrey did not have the courtesy of consummating the marriage before dying. Margaery perhaps can be forgiven for having a moment of despairing cynicism, wondering if she is cursed—but what is interesting is that she seems more concerned (however glibly) that she might herself be somehow deficient, rather than railing in totally justifiable anger at her role as a pawn in the game of thrones. Of course she doesn’t: she has shown herself to be precisely as pragmatic as her grandmother in the matter-of-fact way she dealt with Renly’s sexual preferences, and again in the shrewd way she worked with Joffrey, learning to seduce him not through sex but feigned interest in his enthusiasms. Her momentary despair comes from the fear that Joffrey’s untimely death has upset her family’s ambitions … but Olenna sets her straight, observing that “Your circumstances have improved remarkably.” After all, she points out, the Lannisters need this alliance—they cannot hold the throne without the power of Highgarden, and so will wed Margaery to the new king … who is younger, more malleable, and above all, not a psychopath. “You did wonderful work on Joffrey,” Olenna compliments her, and adds “The next one should be easier.”

Cut to: the next one! Prince Tommen, standing beside his mother, gazing down at his elder brother’s corpse, complete with those flat stones with creepy eyes painted on them. Poor kid doesn’t look like he knows what to think … I mean, I can only imagine what it would have been like to be Joffrey’s little brother! (We get a somewhat better sense in the novels—for instance, Tommen had a pet fawn, which Joffrey killed and skinned and had made into a vest). On one hand he’s aware of the enormity of the situation, but on the other, he can’t be excessively sorry that the little shit is dead.

Enter Tywin, who proceeds to engage his grandson in a Socratic dialogue about what it takes to be king. What did you think of that scene, Nikki?

Nikki: Irish Batman, hahahahaha!!! I was wondering the same thing about that accent? “Where the hell has Baelish been sailing?!”

You wrote, “Tommen had a pet fawn, which Joffrey killed and skinned and had made into a vest.” Good Christ, he was even worse than I thought. Like many of the fans this week, I’ve been thinking how I would have liked to see Joffrey tormented the same way Theon has been before Joffrey finally kicked the bucket; he was let off too easily. Ugh.

Anyway, Tommen has been such a minor character thus far that I barely remembered he existed, but for the first time we see him step up and be questioned by Tywin, who is calm, pragmatic, and as you say, leads the conversation but requires Tommen to come up with the answers. Throughout this utterly brilliant bit of dialogue, I kept imagining Joffrey answering the same questions:

Tywin: Your brother is dead, do you know what that means?
Joffrey: It means the best man has won, and I AM KING! Bow down before me, grandfather.
Tywin: What kind of king do you think you’ll be?
Joffrey: The ONLY king, grandfather, does it matter what kind?! (swagger, looks to the left for confirmation from a guard, smirks, puts his hand on his sword) Now bow down before me.
Tywin: What makes a good king?
Joffrey: I’ll show you what makes a powerful king if you don’t bow down before me RIGHT NOW, Grandfather. How much do you like your head?

Instead, Tommen answers with humility and deep thought. He suggests “holiness” is an important quality. Tywin tells him about a man who was holy, but made a terrible mistake and died. Perhaps “justice.” Definitely important, says Tywin, but the most just king he can recall was killed by an unjust brother. “What about strength?” Tommen asks. For that one, Tywin pulls out Tommen’s own “father,” Robert Baratheon, and tells him how strength didn’t do him much good in the end. What do they all lack? “Wisdom,” Tommen answers wisely, and at home we think, oh my goodness, the Lannisters might actually have a shot under the rule of this kid. For the past three seasons, the Lannisters have been the bad guys, despite the fact both Jaime and Tyrion are two of the most sympathetic characters, and Tywin, despite having evil moments, is a genius. With Cersei and Joffrey in power, the Lannisters were loathsome, the house we were fighting against. And now, with Tommen, that might shift.

As Tywin and Tommen walk out, Tywin puts his hand on Tommen’s shoulder, a gesture I never saw him make with Joffrey, and one Joffrey never would have welcomed or even allowed. Tommen is wise, and he will listen to his even wiser grandfather.

Jaime enters the room to see Cersei, staring down at Joffrey (and I second your creeped-out feeling on those hand-painted stones for eyes, geeeyaaaah). I must mention that I thought Lena Headey was pretty fantastic in this episode and in the previous. There’s so much love for this little monster because at her heart, she’s a mother who loves her son no matter what. During the Tywin/Tommen scene she just continues to stare at her son’s corpse, with anguish on her face, at one point quietly suggesting this isn’t the time or place for this conversation. And now that Jaime enters the room, he rapes her beside their son’s corpse, an intensely uncomfortable scene. Was that in the books the same way, Chris?

Christopher: No, in the books Cersei was still reluctant, but Jaime didn’t force her. An important difference here between the books and the series is that Jaime doesn’t return in the novel until after Joffrey is killed. In fact, it is in the presence of Joffrey’s corpse that Cersei sees him again for the first time, and that simple difference makes the hasty, uncomfortable sex somewhat more understandable (if still awkward and creepy. Also, in the novel, Cersei is having her period, which makes the scene more than just figuratively messy). I wondered to myself whether this rape scene—because, really, there’s no other way to describe it—was written for the express purpose of denuding our growing sympathy for Jaime. He has gone from being a smug and hateful villain to someone far more sympathetic and thoughtful. Did the writers think he needed to be taken down a notch? Or perhaps Cersei raised a little in our sympathies?

One way or another, I think the scene was a catastrophic misstep, made all the worse by the fact that the bit leading up to it was amazing. I agree with you entirely: Lena Headey was phenomenal here, her grief palpable and no less powerful for the fact that we’re all sitting there shouting at her that her son was a monster (or maybe that was just me). Jaime’s confusion was also poignant, as was his shock when Cersei implores him to kill Tyrion.

I think part of my problem with this scene is rooted in my problem with Lena Headey as Cersei. As you know, she has long been the one bit of casting that hasn’t worked for me, which is no reflection on Headey’s acting—I think she’s done a superb job. But she plays Cersei as cold and aloof. There is very little sensuality there, very little sense of the pungent sexuality that addles the minds of the men about her. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I had any sense of chemistry between her and Jaime when they’re alone—all of their scenes together, alone, have tended to be him being flirtatious or ardent and her being standoffish. The one time before this we see them having sex—the scene that ends with Bran being thrown from the tower—I did not get the sense that she was into it at all.

By contrast, in this scene, that first moment when they kiss was the first bit of real chemistry I’ve seen between them. For a moment Cersei loses herself—but quickly recalls her grief. Jaime’s anger at being rebuffed, and the expression on his face as he stares at her, is a great little bit of face-acting. You can see the tumult in his mind: his desire for the woman he loves, his jealousy that she is more interested in grieving her son than being with him (which is consonant with the novels: Jaime’s POV chapters make it clear that he’s more or less indifferent to the children he fathered on Cersei—all he wants is her), and his helpless anger at being caught between his love for his sister and his love for his brother. That, I think, is where the “You’re a hateful woman” line comes from, her outsized loathing of Tyrion, but it is also perhaps the realization of a painful truth long suppressed.

But the rape? Frankly, it makes no sense, not unless you’re truly invested in keeping Jaime firmly on the villain side of the equation. I think it would have been a more powerful scene if he had just stalked out after the “hateful” line, with Cersei’s pleas following him.

I have a sneaking suspicion this scene will be fodder for a lot of arguments.

One last word on Tywin’s Socratic lesson with Tommen: I think you’re being somewhat optimistic there, Nikki … yes, Tommen is far more thoughtful and kind than Joffrey, and yes, I think we can look forward to a more equitable kingship under Tommen (always assuming, of course, that the principals here escape GRRM’s capricious death pen); but I saw this scene as Tywin cementing his power. Joffrey was unpredictable; we know his petulance and childishness sat poorly with his grandfather (of the various theories about who the poisoner is circulating on the web, this scene gives weight to those saying it was Tywin, who didn’t like being hand to a sociopathic king). What is the ultimate and more crucial lesson for Tommen? Wisdom is the most important quality for a king. “But what is wisdom?” Tywin asks. “A wise king knows what he knows and what he doesn’t.” Which is to say: listen to your advisers. Which is to say: listen to me. “Your brother was not a wise king,” he tells Tommen. “Your brother was not a good king. Perhaps if he was, he’d still be alive.” This last sentence spoken with a glance over his shoulder at the grieving Cersei as he leads Tommen away. This for me was the crux of the scene: visibly separating Tommen from his mother as he continues to murmur advice in his ear, Tywin silently rebukes his daughter for having been so catastrophically indulgent with Joffrey.

The next scene brings us back to Arya and the Hound, whom we had left at the end of episode one having vanquished a handful of Arya’s foes. Then, we were all delighted by their newfound camaraderie … but in this episode? It strikes me that this episode is, in part, about disillusionment. What did you think of the Hound’s cynical treatment of their host, Nikki?

Nikki: Just as the scene with Jaime and Cersei reverses our sympathies on both of them, so does this scene with the host turn my sympathies against the Hound. And yet, at the same time, cements his place as a guy you don’t mess with. On the one hand, I thought it was a dastardly thing to do, so awful and thoughtless, basically ensuring that they’ll starve even faster than what the Hound assumed was already inevitable. But on the other, I wouldn’t want the Hound to turn into a puppy, and we were on the road to that happening. They need to keep showing his teeth to remind us that he’s dangerous, and I like that about the character a lot. I still love his sarcasm most (when Arya says she wants a map and he growls, “Just point out the next map shop you see and I’ll buy you one” he is utterly brilliant), but I like this sense of danger about him so we never get too comfortable around him. Just as a Hound should be.

Arya is constant in her sense of justice for the weak, and therefore turns on the Hound with furious vengeance, but he instantly puts her in her place, cutting her deep by aligning her with the weak hosts he’d just robbed by telling her the weak end up dead, and adding, “How many Starks do they have to behead before you figure that out?”

Harsh. But important for her to see and understand. By ensuring she never gets too comfortable with things, he also prevents her from ever letting her guard down, which could be the thing that saves her in the end.

Meanwhile, in the North… Sam is worried that Gilly is surrounded by too many men of the Night’s Watch, and therefore relocates her to Molestown, a horrible dump of a town nearby filled with frightening people who loathe anyone or anything that comes from north of the Wall. Yeah… Gilly will be totally safe there. Yikes. As she was trying to settle the baby and turned her back on Sam, my heart broke for him, but I also was terrified. Will she even make it through the night there? Is Sam doing the right thing at all?

And then there’s Tyrion, my favourite. Imprisoned, blamed for the death of his little shit nephew, he meets with Podrick, who tells him Sansa is gone and there’s no one left to vouch for him. Even at his lowest, he still manages to crack a joke, saying that Cersei is the only one he believes is innocent, “which makes this unique as King’s Landing murders go.” Ha!! But even more importantly, he begs Podrick to testify against him if that’s what they’ve asked him to do, because while he wants to be exonerated, and we know he didn’t do it, it would kill him for Pod to be somehow sacrificed in the name of Cersei wanting Tyrion condemned above all others. There’s never a sense of defeat about Tyrion, even as he looks worried about it, as if he knows somehow he’ll get out of this pickle despite his sister wanting his head on a spike. He knows Cersei’s weaknesses, and maybe he’s already putting together a plan of how he can use them. Or, perhaps, he has a better relationship with Tommen than we know at this point, and if, as you say (clearly having a better sense of Tommen/Tywin and their future from the books than we do from the show at this point), Tywin is the one who’s really in charge at King’s Landing, would he really let Cersei kill Tyrion?

Speaking of knowing what’s coming up while reading the books, last season you mentioned that Stannis using the leeches was going to become very important, and in this episode he takes credit for Joffrey’s death and relates it back to that scene. What did you think of all the Stannis/Davos material this week? (And also, did you catch the Monty Python reference when Shireen tells him you can’t pronounce “knight” like “kuh-niggit”? Ha!!)

 

Christopher: I laughed almost as hard as when the Hound said, in the first episode, “Man’s gotta have a code.” I kind of love that the writers aren’t above tipping their hats to their audience. I also love the fact that, once upon a time, knight was pronounced “kuh-niggit” (or more like “kuh-nict,” actually), and that the Python boys all knew that (Terry Jones is actually a medieval scholar).

The Stannis/Davos scenes were much as their previous scenes have been this season—they feel a little like placeholders, reminding us that they’re there without doing much to advance that story. There was an acknowledgement of that in Stannis’ concern: that if he doesn’t press his suit, he’ll be forgotten. Certainly for the moment he’s doing little besides brooding on his rock while his wife descends further into religious fanaticism. That being said, there seemed to be the suggestion that Davos is about to change the game. The scene with Shireen was interesting, as it unfolded similarly in the novel—except that his epiphany was dramatically different, so I’m not sure what’s happening now, aside from that he seems to be about to take out a loan from the Iron Bank of Braavos … or possibly not. Recall from when Tyrion was Master of Coin last season, and he lamented the sorry state of the throne’s finances to his father? The Iron Throne was in a lot of debt to, among others, the Iron Bank. Perhaps Davos sees an opportunity …

But if I can return for a moment to the Hound and Arya scenes … the Hound is such a great character, in both the series and the novels—and Rory McCann has done a spectacular job in portraying his odd blend of pathos, cruelty, and personal ethics, all sedimented over top of profound, roiling anger. GRRM does a disturbingly good job of depicting out-and-out sociopaths like Joffrey, Viserys, or the Hound’s brother Gregor, but it’s the characters like Sandor Clegane that set these novels apart and add a degree of complexity you don’t find in fantasy that imitates the Tolkien model. He is a distinctly Darwinian character: adaptable but merciless in the face of weakness. He is not wantonly cruel—he leaves the farmer and his daughter alive and unmolested—but unsentimental. He made a cold calculation: sooner or later other bandits would be along to kill the man and his daughter for their silver. If they’re about to lose it anyway, it might as well go in his purse.

Arya’s fury at this seeming betrayal is something of a relief, too. There has been a sense since the two of them paired up that they’re both changing each other, with the Hound becoming more sympathetic and Arya becoming colder and more ruthless. Watching her kill Polliver in the first episode was deeply satisfying, but also disturbing: we’ve watched Arya go from playing at violence with Syrio to becoming a practiced and unflinching killer. It’s good to see that her basic understanding of right and wrong hasn’t changed, though one wonders how much longer it will endure.

Tyrion’s scene was heartbreaking, and it offers a cynical commentary on life in King’s Landing. He knows all too well that he dooms himself in ordering Pod to accept the bribe—but also that his loyal squire would be dead if he did not. In ordering him to save his own life, Tyrion shows more capacity for human compassion than any display of grief on his sister’s part could. He has been an adept player of the game of thrones, but at a certain point he cannot do what his father, sister, Littlefinger, et al do, which is see other people merely as pieces on the board. At a certain point, he is unwilling to sacrifice others for his own sake. Whereas his father capitalizes on events to cement his power, offering Oberyn revenge on the Mountain in exchange for his cooperation and thus solidifying Dorne’s loyalty. “Give it to my father,” says Tyrion, “He never fails to take advantage of a family tragedy.”

Meanwhile, in the North, Tormund’s wildling band, augmented by the terrifying Thenns, descend on a village, killing all but a child they send to Castle Black . Speaking of characters we’ve grown to love behaving viciously, we see Ygritte killing helpless people as efficiently as Alabaster Seal does. What did you think of this spot of pillaging, Nikki?

 

Nikki: The Thenns are terrifying in a way the wildlings never were. The wildlings were feared, but the Thenns are merciless, and when they kill, they eat the corpses. Now that the wildlings are working with them, they become an unstoppable army, made all the more real when we move to Castle Black and realize that they have 100… against 100,000 of Mance Rayder’s people. AND… they still have rangers up at Craster’s whom they know will tell Rayder that. If Rayder finds out just how unmanned that Wall really is, the south doesn’t stand a chance.

And then there’s Daenerys over at Meereen. Back in episode 1, neither of us was too sure of this new casting of Busted Josh Groban for Daario, but he sort of won me over in this scene, where he goes up against Meereen’s champion in a literal pissing contest. Daenerys once again goes for numbers over seeming power when she targets the slaves, telling them that they could be free to follow her if they just throw off their collars. And then she hurls all the collars at the city — the ones they’d been taking off the mile-marker corpses that they’ve been burying for the past 163 miles. It’s a glorious scene, especially when you see the looks on the faces of the slaves, followed by the realization on the faces of the slave-owners. Ruh-roh. I’ve pledged my allegiance to House Targaryen since season 1, and my loyalty remains unchanged.

We haven’t yet discussed Tywin jockeying for the support of the Dornish by offering Oberyn a seat on the judge’s council at Tyrion’s trial, where he reminds the viewer that he’s trying to unite the seven kingdoms against my girl Dany. I’ll leave the final word on this to you, Chris.

 

Christopher: If Tywin could have witnessed the final scene of this episode and seen Daenerys in action, he’d be a whole lot more anxious about things, I think. Daenerys will be a formidable enemy not because she gains the people’s respect (though she does) or inspires fear, but because she has earned their love. However masterful a strategist Tywin is, he will never be loved—though he’ll do his best to make certain Tommen is.

We haven’t developed a solid sense of Dorne as a place yet—in the novels we learn it is sort of the outlier of the Seven Kingdoms, and has always had a fairly elevated sense of itself (which is why Oberyn’s brother calls himself a “prince” rather than just the Lord of Dorne). Meeting Oberyn and Ellaria certainly evokes the sense of its exoticism. This episode kind of bludgeoned us with the stark contrast by having Tywin walk in on what was essentially a mini-orgy—and reminded us that Tywin is a cool customer, keeping his face utterly impassive while Oberyn flaunts his hedonism. I of course know what will come of this putative alliance, so I’ll just say that for all of Tywin’s shrewd plotting, one wonders if he underestimates the passions of other.

And that is all for this week! Tune in next week, for the further adventures of Chris and Nikki watching television and yakking about it!

Well hello again, old friends, and welcome once again to the great Game of Thrones co-blog between myself and the talented and beautiful Nikki Stafford. As always, we will be posting our impressions, critiques, and interpretations of each episode after it airs, and as always we’ll be simulblogging™ on this humble blog of mine, and on Nikki’s far more widely read blog Nik at Nite.

So after a long year, and (appropriately, I suppose) even longer winter, here we are again—season four! When we last left Westeros, the ruin of the Stark clan had shocked everyone with the notorious Red Wedding; Jon Snow was limping back to Castle Black full of arrows courtesy of his erstwhile wildling lover Ygritte; Jaime Lannister was finally returning to King’s Landing, minus one sword hand; Sansa and Tyrion were unhappily married; the Jaime-Brienne buddy comedy was in the process of being superseded by the Arya-Hound version; and Bran was slowly, slowly making his way north.

So where are we now? I cede the stage to Nikki to start us off.

Nikki: Valyrian steel, murdered families, brothel visits, a Lannister hand nailed to a table, backstabbing, arguing, and a little shit of a king.

Why, Game of Thrones must be back!!

I’m going to start with the one-handed knight himself, Jaime Lannister. The Kingslayer is back, and now owns a sword forged with Valyrian steel… Ned’s Valyrian steel, by the way. You would think Cersei would be falling at his feet in relief, that Tywin would finally have the beloved son at home and be holding a parade, and that Joffrey would be honoured to once again have his father uncle in the Kingsguard.

But it turns out, when you return to King’s Landing as damaged goods, your past deeds don’t mean shit. Ol’ Leftie is no longer the Great Kingslayer of old. Tywin tries to remove him from the Kingsguard, telling him instead to return to Casterly Rock and rule in his name. When Jaime is shocked at the suggestion, Tywin doesn’t mince words in telling Jaime that he’s a cripple, that he’s less of a man, that he can’t possibly properly protect the king, and that he’d basically receive an Honourable Discharge from His Highness The Little Shit. But Jaime pleads that his only wish is to serve, something that makes Tywin visibly sneer in disgust. He waves him away with the back of his hand, telling him to just take the damn sword, adding his biting goodbye: “A one-handed man with no family needs all the help he can get.”

Cersei spurns him, insipidly telling him, “You took too long,” when he told her what he did to fight his way back to her side. After her 45-second summary of The Series So Far, she pulls away from him like he’s some disgusting creature, whines that she’s had to live all alone all this time while being terrorized by her father, brother, and horrible son, and that he wasn’t there to save her. And then to return missing an appendage? He might as well slap her in the face. He’s no longer whole, and she doesn’t want him to touch her.

And finally, the little shit. Joffrey lords around the room, and Jaime doesn’t betray any surprise that his “nephew” has become even more insufferable than he’d been when Jaime left (Jaime probably saw it coming). As Jaime remains calm throughout the scene, constantly bowing to Joffrey’s insults and never failing to call him, “Your Grace,” Joffrey gets crueler and crueler. Jaime apologizes for not having been around, joking that he’d been a little busy. “Yeah, busy getting captured,” spits back Joffrey, immediately turning to the other guard for backup that he is simply HIGH-larious. Joffrey prances about the room, finally landing on a book that contains all the great deeds of the knights of King’s Landing. He flips through the pages with a purpose, posturing as he reads out the great deeds of Jaime’s predecessors with mock solemnity and awe. And then he gets to Jaime’s page, which is only half-filled, with a blank page beside it. He pretends to be shocked. “Someone forgot to write down all your good deeds!” “There’s still time,” whispers Jaime, with rage simmering just below the surface. “Is there? For a 40-year-old knight with one hand? How can you protect me with that?” “I use my left hand now, Your Grace. Makes for more of a contest.”

Jaime Lannister left King’s Landing as the great hope of the Lannister clan: he was the Kingslayer, Cersei’s lover, unknowing father of a king, unbeatable in battle, admired by all. He returns to a disappointed father, a disgusted lover, and a sneering king. He’s less than a man, worthless and a disappointment to everyone; his brains and brawn mean nothing to anyone because his body is damaged.

In other words, he’s become Tyrion.

Jaime is calm and measured in two of the scenes, doing a good job of suppressing his heartbreak with Tywin and keeping his head down and voice quiet around Joffrey. With Cersei he’s far more emotional and hurt, as if her rejection hurts him far more than the others. As he slams the book of knights closed after Joffrey leaves, we can see these comments are getting to him. Will it turn him against his family?

Later, with Brienne, she reminds him of his oath to protect the Stark children, or, in the immediate case, Sansa. He doesn’t know where Arya is, but Brienne tells him he must do everything in his power to keep Sansa safe. He argues that he can’t exactly steal her away from his own brother and whisk her off somewhere else to “keep her safe,” but she won’t listen, causing the two of them to banter back and forth like the days of old. “Are you sure we’re not related?” he says to her, clearly annoyed. “Ever since I’ve returned every Lannister I’ve seen has been a terrible pain in my ass. Maybe you’re a Lannister, too. You’ve got the hair for it… but not the looks.”

Brienne: [glare]

As an aside, I was a little surprised to hear Joffrey say that Jaime was a 40-year-old man. I remember back in season 1 being surprised to discover that Cersei was in her early 30s, so her age might have been mentioned at some point for me to have assumed her to be that young, and Jaime is her twin. Perhaps they’re simply changing the age at this point in the show because it’s less likely to believe you’re washed up at 32 than that you’d be washed up at 40. And now, being 40, I shall crawl away and cry.

This episode featured two new people: Prince Oberyn and his paramour, Ellaria, played by the gorgeous Indira Varma from Rome and Luther. What did you think of their portrayal here, Chris?

Christopher: I’m quite delighted with Oberyn and Ellaria. When I saw pictures of Pedro Pascal, the actor playing Oberyn, I wasn’t convinced—he looked at first glance to be too slight and a little too pretty to be playing the Red Viper of Dorne, who is described in the novel as somewhat more ruggedly handsome. But I have no complaints about how Pascal is playing him … he brings a dangerous calm to the character, a sense of the threat always simmering behind flat eyes. The confrontation with the Lannister men (not in the novel) was very well done, and conveyed precisely how dangerous—and how impulsive—he is. One of the things clearly communicated about Oberyn in the novel is that he is hot-headed, given to acting without thinking and doing it with no warning whatsoever. That’s obviously at play here, but it’s balanced by a cold deliberation and precision.

As for Indira Varma … well, I’m happy to watch her in anything, as she is not only mind-numbingly beautiful but is also an extraordinarily talented actor. But as Ellaria Sand? That is one of the best pieces of casting I’ve seen on this show so far (and that’s saying a lot). Though I think it’s worth mentioning—Lucius Vorenus, John Luther, and now Oberyn Martell? Isn’t she starting to get typecast as a woman drawn to mercurial, dangerous men?

With the arrival of Oberyn and Ellaria, we’re getting introduced to more of Westeros’ fraught and bloody history. Part of that history was recounted in the conversation between Tyrion and Oberyn, but it bears repeating: Rhaegar Targaryen was wed in a dynastic marriage to Elia Martell of Dorne, Oberyn’s sister. She had two children with him, but Rhaegar was in love with someone else (Lyanna Stark, sister of the lamented Eddard). It was in part Rhaegar’s ostensible abduction of Lyanna that drove Robert Baratheon (who was engaged to her) to rebel. When the Lannister forces sacked King’s Landing, Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane, brother to the Hound, raped and killed Elia and killed her two children. Since that day, the rage and desire for revenge has simmered in Dorne … and now the hot-headed Oberyn has come to King’s Landing with vengeance on his mind. This should turn out well.

Speaking of volatile creatures … oh, how Daenerys’ dragons have grown! They’re getting quite massive. And dangerous. I love the opening bit where we find Dany reclining on a rock with Drogon’s head in her lap, purring like a giant kitten. For a few moments we get to enjoy an entirely maternal moment: the Mother of Dragons looks here like a mother indeed, until her other children returns and, like this dickish older brother he is, Drogon steals their food. And when Daenerys attempts to play peacemaker … well, it’s all fun and games when her dragons scare the crap out of her enemies, but it’s another thing entirely when they turn on mom. “They’re dragons, Khaleesi,” Ser Jorah observes. “They can never be tamed. Not even by their mother.”

Um. OK, I think I might have noticed a slight flaw in Daenerys’ plan.

We’re also introduced in this episode to the newest incarnation of Daario Naharis. The impossibly handsome, cleft-chinned Adonis from last season has been recast with … Sonny, the heroin-addicted musician from Treme. I think I’m going to have to wait and see on this particular choice. It’s not that I don’t like Michiel Huisman as an actor (I loathed Sonny, but that spoke to the actor’s talent), but he is almost the antithesis of how I imagined Daario based on his description in the novel. The previous Daario also did not conform to the novel’s depiction, but he was at least more overtly handsome and smugly arrogant. Huisman has the swagger, but not the looks—and certainly, he’s far too scruffy to even remotely resemble the piratical mercenary we first meet in A Storm of Swords, who is described as having flamboyantly dyed hair and beard, clad in colourful silks, and twin swords whose pommels are shaped like women in wanton poses. (Full disclosure: in my dream casting of this series before HBO picked it up, I always imagined Daario played by Joseph Fiennes).

His apparent rivalry with Grey Worm is an invention of the show, and makes very little sense in terms of his character—Daario would never consider a eunuch (and a former slave at that) either his peer or his rival. And I don’t buy Grey Worm rising to Daario’s goads. Aside from the obvious joke about the pointlessness of dick-measuring, Daario would be as little concern to Grey Worm as vice versa. It makes for a fun little scene, but I just don’t buy it. And I found Daario’s flirtation with Dany far less convincing than last season’s … I didn’t care for Daario much last season either, but there was a more tangible chemistry. But I will withhold further judgment until I can wait and see.

What did you think of Sonny’s reincarnation as a swaggering sellsword, Nikki?

Nikki: It definitely took me by surprise, and made me confused; I tend to avoid Hollywood talk and didn’t know that Daario had been recast (after watching this episode, I looked it up and it would appear Ed Skrein, who originally played him, and who might have been the most beautiful man on the show, has been cast as the younger Jason Statham for the Transporter films and he left GoT to follow that opportunity. And, not having watched Treme in a while but instead more recently watching its far soapier network cousin, Nashville, my immediate response to my husband was, “Uh… what the hell is LIAM doing on Game of Thrones?!” And that accent? Terrible. Which is suprising, because he pulls off a great American accent in Nashville and Treme and rarely betrays that he’s actually Dutch, but he can’t seem to quite find the accent he’s looking for here. British? Northern British? South African? Perhaps that’s just growing pains, and he’ll be more comfortable with it in the scenes to come. If there’s one thing actors can get away with on Game of Thrones, it’s having strange accents. I say go with the Dutch, since Daario could pretty much have any accent; I’m not sure why they told him to try on British instead.

I thought he was intriguing and slightly dangerous and I didn’t know whether or not I could trust him when he was being played by Skrein. I’m not sure Huisman can play him with that same enigmatic quality, but again, I guess time will tell.

What did intrigue me was the scene where he showed Daenerys the plants, explaining that when she enters Meereen (which you see in the opening credits for the first time), she’ll need to know the plants of the area, and the rivers, and the people. He shows her three plants, and that one is dull but makes an excellent tea, and the other strange and beautiful, also making a good tea. But the third one is the most beautiful and strange-looking of the three, and is poisonous. Like Dany’s dragons, she’s learning that things aren’t always as they seem. As you said, when Drogon turned and screamed at her before flying away, my heart sank: if you can’t tame the dragons, you can’t make them necessarily work for you. And without the dragons, Daenerys just lost her main source of strength. (I’m still rooting for her, though!)

I am happy to say that now that I’ve read the first book, I understand the whole Rhaegar thing so much more: before, it was something mentioned offhandedly all the time, but its true significance kept getting lost on me. Now I realize just how heinous the Mountain was, and what Rhaegar had to suffer through before he was killed, and also why Dany’s claim to the throne is such a strong one. But also how complicated Rhaegar’s situation was, and that he’s not exactly the good guy, either.

Speaking of complicated characters, let’s talk about Tyrion. I loved the scene of him with Sansa, as she sat at the table in her abject misery, thinking about what had been done to Robb and her mother and her sister-in-law that she’d never even met. The world has become hopeless to Sansa: she’s an orphan, her eldest brother is dead, as far as she knows Bran and Rickon were hanged and burned at Winterfell, and Arya is probably dead too. And she never had a particularly soft spot for Jon Snow, so I doubt he even enters her mind at this point. As far as she’s concerned, she’s all alone, and it won’t be long before the Lannisters have their way with her, too.

Tyrion happens to be one of those Lannisters, but he’s someone who’s been the butt end of every Lannister joke since he was born, so he sympathizes and identifies with Sansa and her pain. He creates a beautiful eulogy for Catelyn, telling Sansa, “Your mother, I admired her. She wanted me executed… but I admired her.” His words are very powerful, as he remembers how much Catelyn loved her children, and wouldn’t want Sansa to starve herself to death the way she is right now. But to Sansa’s mind, what point is there to eat and go on living? At least if she starves herself her death is in her own hands. As she gets up and tells Tyrion that she’ll be in the godswood because it’s the only place where nobody tries to talk to her, you can see the misery on his face. He actually cares about Sansa. He’s not in love with her — he’s still very much in love with Shae, which is why he pushes her away in this episode and seems terrified that she’s in his room — but he does care for her very much. But Sansa is not in the mood to be comforted by a Lannister, and we can hardly blame her.

Hm… of the three Lannister children, two of them are sympathetic to the Starks and want to protect the family from further harm. Unfortunately, Tywin, Cersei, and Joffrey are a more powerful triumvirate. But for how much longer?

Another person mourning the results of the Red Wedding is Jon Snow, who tells Sam how much he looked up to, and sometimes even hated, Robb for being so good at everything, prompting Sam to say that’s how he often feels about Jon. And then Jon must go before the Night’s Watch tribunal to answer for his connections to the wildlings… or “free folk” as he accidentally calls them. What did you think of this scene, Chris?

Christopher: What I liked about this scene was what I liked about Jaime’s successive humiliations: the show does a good job of taking what comprises pages and pages and pages in the novel(s) and compressing it into a few relatively short but deeply poignant sequences. Jon Snow’s interrogation at the hands of his old nemesis Allister Thorne and the newly-arrived Janos Slynt (whom you’ll recall was the treacherous captain of the city watch in King’s Landing, whom Tyrion sent to the Wall) is somewhat more protracted in the novel. What we lose in its abbreviation is Jon Snow’s initial humiliation when Slynt arrives, as he is thrown into a cell and forced to endure a host of sneering accusations. We get the gist of them in this brief scene, whose brevity is both a blessing (we don’t have to endure endless interrogation) and a curse (we lose some of the depth of feeling). There are also some chronological inconsistencies between the show and novel, but in the interests of not spoiling plot points I’ll wait to expound on them in a later post.

The scene between Jon and Sam is original to the show: though it certainly articulates feelings one suspects Sam has about Jon, Sam is never quite so bold in the novels. It was a nice moment, however … a pause before Jon faces the music, and a useful reflection on fraternal relationships (considering that Sam is now Jon’s brother in a way Robb never could have been).

Meanwhile, while Jon is having to atone for the fact that he slept with a wildling girl, the wildling girl in question is having to deal with accusations herself—even as she is obviously in the midst of plotting her revenge, fletching what appears to be an overabundance of arrows. Toramund’s question, “Do you plan on killing all the crows yourself?” has an obvious, if unvoiced, answer: “Just one … but I plan to make absolutely certain he’s dead this time.” Toramund’s accusation, “If that boy’s still walking, it’s because you let him go” is too true, and must rankle Ygritte’s wildling heart. There’s a cruel symmetry to Jon and Ygritte’s respective situations: they are both absolutely loyal to their people, yet in crucial ways they both betrayed them. But whatever the sanctity of Jon Snow’s vows, it is difficult not to see Ygritte as the wronged one in this equation—if only for purely emotional reasons.

Besides Ygritte’s enormous stockpile of arrows, things look bleak for Castle Black as we meet the reinforcements Mance Rayder has sent south of the Wall: Thenns, who in the novel are an entirely different breed of wildlings. The scene when they arrive does a good job of encapsulating the tribal divisions in Mance Rayder’s army, and reminds us of what he told Jon Snow last season: that the only reason he could actually get the wildlings to work in concert was their fear of the White Walkers. That doesn’t obviate their internecine conflicts and hatred—it just gives them a common enemy. Toramund is suddenly no longer the scariest wildling in the room, and the very question of Jon Snow’s betrayal, which he was berating Ygritte over a moment ago, becomes his own reason for being defensive. “I answer to Mance,” he growls when the leader of the Thenns challenges him on the same point. The newcomers appear as monsters from a nightmare, bearing tribal scars, contempt for weakness (which one would not have thought to seen in Toramund, or to have seen him get defensive about) … and a sack full of dismembered Night Watch brothers, which they proceed to spit and roast in preference to whatever game Toramund’s people were cooking.

[shudder]

What did you think of that scene, Nikki? And is it just me, or when you say “the Thenns,” does it sound like you’re referring to a one-hit 90s band?

Nikki: LOL!! I thought the Thenns were terrifying, which had a lot to do with the dark, one-note, foreboding music that played as they first walked into the canyon where the wildlings were sitting. (I just wanted to add that I loved watching Ygritte make the arrows, especially when she’d carefully slice the edges of the feathers.) But it also had a lot to do with their leader Styr, played by Yuri Kolokolnikov. I had to look him up, because he’s so mesmerizing I wanted to know what else I’d seen him in, but apparently this is his first English-speaking role. Was anyone else thinking Roy Batty from Blade Runner? Because I certainly was. But much scarier. I’m guessing the Thenns tattoo themselves by carving shapes into their skulls and then letting them heal? I second your [shudder] and raise you a [geeyaaaaahhh].

Of course, the scariest person in this episode was probably The Hound, and quite honestly, I’d love to see an Odd Couple–type show starring Arya and the Hound, just for their banter. (Of course, only after they’ve developed the Brienne and Jaime Hour.) They are hilarious, with Arya complaining about his stench to mocking him about his skewed morals.

Hound: “I’m not a thief.”

Arya: “You’re fine with murdering little boys but thieving is beneath you.”

Hound: “Man’s gotta have a code.”

I do hope I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed that the Hound wasn’t whistling “The Farmer in the Dell” while walking up to the inn immediately following this scene.

And what a scene it is. Arya and the Hound first peer in from the bushes, and he’s happy to just sit and watch and wait until the time is right. Unfortunately, when Arya spots Needle and the man who’d taken it from her, she changes his plans. Quick recap: Polliver is the guy who looks like Eddie from Nurse Jackie, who was working under the Lannisters when they attacked Yoren and then marched them to Harrenhal (that’s when Arya and Gendry, along with the others, were put in the pen and then pulled out one by one and tortured with rats inside buckets on their heads). He took Needle and killed Lommy, that little curly-headed kid who was with Arya. He’d been wounded when they attacked, and because they weren’t about to carry a kid back to Harrenhal, Polliver walked up to Lommy and pushed the sword up through his throat.

And now, Arya does the same to him. It’s a great scene, first with the Hound and Arya bickering in the bushes:

Arya: “He killed Lommy.”

Hound: “What the fuck’s a Lommy?”

Arya: “He was my friend. Polliver stole my sword and put it right through his neck… He’s still got it, my sword. Needle.”

Hound (sneeringly): “Needle. ’Course you named your sword.”

Arya: “Lots of people name their swords.”

Hound: “Lots of cunts.”

OK, so maybe the Odd Couple sitcom wouldn’t work on ABC.

When Arya runs to the inn, the Hound tries to stop her, but it’s too late. So he plays it cool, goes in, becomes belligerent, slurping rudely at his beer and demanding two chickens to eat, until the place goes nuts. And in the midst of the melee, with the Hound killing and maiming anyone who comes near, Arya manages to get Needle and return the favour that Polliver had given to Lommy. It’s a great moment, but also a shocking one — if you think of where Arya was just a few short months ago, she never would have been able to kill someone in cold blood like that. But now, not only does she do it, she enjoys it. The half smile that she gives as she looks down on him speaks volumes. Arya was never innocent, but we realize that she’s become ruthless when she has to be. Which she’s going to have to be if she’ll survive all of this. Both Maisie Williams and Rory McCann shine in this scene; they’re such fantastic actors. In this episode you see mutual loathing become mutual respect.

I think we’ve actually covered everyone at this point! Bran doesn’t appear in this episode, nor does Theon. Perhaps we’ll see them next week, along with what is probably going to be the Little Shit’s wedding. Is it too much to ask that he trips while coming back down the aisle and accidentally falls on someone’s sword? Because, other than being a truly awesome moment, it would certainly save Margaery from what will no doubt be the worst night of her life.

Any final thoughts?

Christopher: It was very wise of the writers to end this episode with Arya and the Hound … much of the rest was Red-Wedding reaction and Lannister angst (albeit very well done) and setup for what was to come in terms of the wildlings and the Wall. It was satisfying to conclude with a wee bit of the ultra-violence, no? I second your thoughts on the general awesomeness of Maisie Williams and Rory McCann—I was particularly taken with the way McCann plays the Hound’s studied hostility to his brother’s men. As you observed, he does not want to go into that inn … but when Arya effectively gives him no choice, he plays it with the cool menace of a man who holds his antagonists in utter contempt. The scene plays out almost precisely as it does in the novel, but with one crucial difference—something I will not mention here, because spoilers.

Well, that brings us to a close! It has been a long year waiting, and there’s always the worry that the new season will disappoint. But in the words of Syrio Forel: not today.