Monthly Archives: May 2014

Game of Thrones, Television

Game of Thrones Recap: Season 4, Episode 7 “Mockingbird”

Leave a comment

“Mockingbird” was probably the episode I was most looking forward to this season after “Oathkeeper,” and it didn’t disappoint, at least not in delivering the Sansa scenes that I was expecting. It’s also nice to have another episode where I don’t have to discuss any scenes of horrifying sexual violence, but “Mockingbird” isn’t without its flaws. Like many episodes in this season, this one contains some real greatness as well as some adaptational choices that are just plain strange.

Spoilers under the cut for this episode and for some book-related speculation and criticism.

The episode opens with Jaime berating Tyrion for disrupting his plan to save Tyrion’s life. The specter of Jaime’s rape of Cersei still taints all of these interactions for me, but I still find myself feeling invested in this relationship between brothers. Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau have done probably their finest acting together this season, and this scene is sad and desperate and darkly humorous in turns. Tyrion’s belief in his brother’s abilities is so strong that he’s honestly shocked to learn that Jaime’s disability prevents him from standing as Tyrion’s champion in the upcoming trial by combat. Disappointed, Tyrion still has hope that Bronn will defend him in Jaime’s place, and he expects that Cersei will choose one of the Kingsguard as her representative. No such luck, however.

Cut to Cersei watching Gregor Clegane practicing his killing on some prisoners. The new actor playing the Mountain isn’t as terrifying to look at as season one’s Conan Stevens, but he’ll do. My favorite part of this scene was Cersei just casually stepping over the entrails on the ground. The shot looking upward at her and the Mountain, to exaggerate his size, actually felt a little too much to me, but I suppose it gets the point across.

Next, we visit the other Clegane brother, who is still traveling with Arya through the wartorn lands between the Twins and the Eyrie. They come upon a dying man, and we get to hear Arya’s thoughts on nothingness and the dying man’s thoughts on fairness. I love this whole scene so much, as it cuts straight to the meat of the main question posed by Arya and the Hound’s story so far this season. Why do we keep going when everything is so completely terrible and the world is so profoundly unjust? The answer, of course, is that where there’s life, there’s hope, but that mawkish sentiment is suggested here in the darkest of possible terms and is accompanied by the caveat that there are exceptions to that rule. When the Hound kills the dying man after giving him a drink of water, it’s an act of mercy and even kindness, but there’s no gentleness in it.

As Sandor stands, he’s attacked from behind by a man who bites his neck. He manages to break this man’s neck, and when he and Arya turn around, we recognize one of the men who was journeying north with Arya towards the Night’s Watch in season two. He informs the Hound that there’s a price on his head, but also brings news of Joffrey’s death. Arya remembers this guy, though, and tells Sandor that he threatened to rape her. The Hound asks, “Is he on your little list?” to which Arya replies, “He can’t be–I don’t know his name.” Sandor asks the guy his name (Rorge) and Arya promptly kills him.

At the Wall, Alliser Thorne is still busy being a dick to Jon Snow, threatening to have Ghost cooked for dinner if Jon doesn’t lock him up. Jon wants the tunnel through the Wall to be sealed shut, but he’s shut down. Thorne informs Jon that he and Sam will be watching the top of the Wall until the full moon, when they expect Mance Rayder’s army to show up.

I’m so incredibly disappointed with the Night’s Watch storyline this season. Things at the Wall are moving along at an absolutely glacial pace, and it seems at this point like they’re going to collapse the two Wildling attacks that happened in A Storm of Swords into a single enormous event. I’m still pissed that the only time we’ve seen Ygritte this season was when she was murdering peaceful villagers a few episodes ago, and now I’m pretty sure that the tragedy of her death (diminished as it will be by her lack of screen time and new hobby of killing farmers) is going to be upstaged by Stannis’s arrival at the Wall. We haven’t seen Mance at all this season, and Val and Dalla have never been introduced on the show. Instead, we got that ridiculous time-wasting adventure at Craster’s and cannibal Thenns. In the meantime, I pretty much can’t stand to even look at Jon Snow’s pouty face anymore, and judging by the episode titles and descriptions that are currently available, there’s going to be some contrived bullshit danger for Gilly in the next episode and we’re going to have to wait until episode nine before any of the book events for the Night’s Watch make it into this season.

And to add insult to injury, none of the changes made with regard to Jon Snow and the Night’s Watch this season make a lick of sense. The events at the Wall in the second half of A Storm of Swords are some of the best written action sequences in the whole series, and there’s a lot of great material there that they’ve just completely cut from the show. If the writers had kept to their sort of pattern where storylines appear in every other episode, it should have gone like this:

  • Episode 1 or 2: Jon Snow returns and has to deal with Thorne and Slynt putting him on trial for his “desertion.”
  • Episode 3 or 4: The first attack on the Wall, Jon leading the defense, Ygritte’s death.
  • Episode 5 or 6: Jon trying to convince the Night’s Watch of the threat posed by Mance Rayder. Maybe a scene with Mance Rayder regrouping with Tormund or something, introducing a pregnant Dalla and her sister Val.
  • Episode 7 or 8 or 9: The huge battle at the Wall, Stannis’s arrival.
  • Episode 10: Jon’s earliest meetings with Stannis. Possibly the choosing of Jon as the new Lord Commander, although maybe leave that til season five in order to give more time to Sam’s role in these events.

Or something like that.

I’m definitely most upset about Ygritte right now, though. We’re through seven episodes of season four, and not only is she still alive, but we haven’t even seen her but for a couple of minutes back in episode two or three. Her death is a huge emotional moment, for Jon and for readers, but I feel like it’s not being set up that way for viewers of the show. It’s especially disappointing because Ygritte on the show is so much more real and relatable and lifelike than she was in the books, where we only see her through Jon’s point of view chapters. She deserves better than this.

Back in King’s Landing, Bronn finally arrives to speak with Tyrion, but the conversation doesn’t go how Tyrion expected. Bronn’s circumstances have improved markedly since we last saw him. He’s engaged to marry Lady Lollys Stokeworth, which puts him in the way of being a lord if Lollys’s older sister were to die, but he’s come to Tyrion anyway to see if Tyrion can offer him a better deal. Obviously Tyrion can’t, but he appeals to their friendship. Bronn points out, however, that Tyrion has never risked his life for Bronn. They part unhappily, but not in anger, and this scene continues the pattern of Tyrion’s scenes being the best-written and most moving ones of the season so far.

In Meereen, Daario has sneaked in through Daenerys’s bedroom window to bring her some flowers that he claims he swam a mile to get for her. Daenerys is upset about his invasion of her space, but she’s charmed in spite of herself. He’s come, however, to ask her to send him away to fight. His only two talents, he says, are war and women, and since the only woman he wants is Daenerys he wants her to send him to do what he does best. Instead, she tells him to take off his clothes.

I both loved and hated this scene. I loved that Daenerys remains dressed, drinking a glass of wine as she commands Daario to disrobe, but I kind of hate that all we get to see is his ass. On its surface, this scene feels like a flipping of the usual script on this show, where nude women are regularly draped over fully clothed men, but Daario’s nudity is never on display for us in the way that female nudity often is. We only see his backside briefly, and there’s not the normal salacious lingering that we see when the camera focuses on women’s bodies. The shot is short, and the lighting is set to highlight his body rather than expose it, so there’s almost none of the titillation that we experience when we see women’s bodies. It’s not that the scene lacks eroticism–he’s a beautiful man and desirable–it’s just that there’s a coyness to the filming of male nudity that doesn’t exist when we see female nudity on the show.

The very next shot seems to function as a sort of “no homo” aimed at male viewers as we find Melisandre in her bath and talking with Selyse Baratheon. Because obviously, we can’t show a hot dude without balancing it out with some tits. That said, I actually like this scene, as I like all scenes that feature Selyse, who I think is a fascinating character. Selyse has come to talk with Melisandre about Shireen. Stannis wants to bring Shireen north with them, but Selyse wants to leave her at Dragonstone. Melisandre tells Selyse about the tricks she uses to bring men to the Lord of Light, and she flatters Selyse by telling her that she doesn’t need tricks. Selyse looks into the flames as Melisandre tells her that Shireen must go north because their lord needs her.

The morning after Daenerys’s fun with Daario, Jorah comes to talk with her and meets Daario in the hallway. Jorah is all prepared to be upset with Daenerys until she tells him that she’s sent the Second Sons to take back Yunkai. Jorah is thrilled that Daario is leaving, but he’s skeptical of the plan, telling Daenerys that without her there to rule he thinks that the Masters of Yunkai will only retake the city again, to which Daenerys replies that she’s ordered Daario to execute all the Masters. Jorah convinces Daenerys to give the Masters a choice and hurries out to catch Daario before he leaves. I liked this scene until Daenerys’s smug smile at the end.

Elsewhere, Arya is trying to get the Hound to let her sear his wounds shut to prevent infection, but he won’t let her because he hates fire. We finally get to hear the story of how Sandor got his scars, and it’s sad. When he’s done, he lets Arya clean and sew the bites closed, but it’s a pretty nasty looking injury.

At an inn on the Kingsroad, Brienne and Pod have stopped for dinner and a good night’s rest. HOT PIE IS THEIR WAITER, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this whole episode. When Brienne compliments the kidney pie, Hot Pie takes it as an invitation to sit down and talk. When she tells him that they are looking for Sansa Stark, Hot Pie acts all weird and then exits the conversation, but the next morning he comes to see Brienne and Pod as they are preparing their horses and Podrick is pointing out that maybe they shouldn’t be telling folks that they are looking for Sansa. Hot Pie tells them that he doesn’t know anything about Sansa, but he’s seen Arya. Then he does the best thing he could possibly do and gives Brienne a wolf cake to give to Arya if they find her.

In one last Tyrion scene, Oberyn Martell has come to visit. As in the book, we get to hear Oberyn’s story about meeting baby Tyrion and how disappointing that was. Oberyn hates the Lannisters, but he wants justice for his sister and thinks that fighting the Mountain is the way to get it. Oberyn will be Tyrion’s champion in the trial by combat. Finally, a glimmer of hope for Tyrion, for whom nothing good has happened in a long time.

Finally, we get to the part I was most looking forward to. At the Eyrie, Sansa is building a snow Winterfell when Robin Arryn comes out to chat with her. He asks her about her home and then offers to help her add a moon door to her castle. When he knocks over a tower, she gets upset at him for ruining it. When Robin responds by stomping on the rest of it, Sansa slaps him, which sends him running away crying.

Littlefinger sees the slap, but approves rather than condemns Sansa for it. She asks him why he really killed Joffrey, and he gives her a line about punishing him for hurting someone that he loved (Sansa’s mother). Then he talks about how Sansa might have been his child in a better world, tells her that she’s more beautiful than her mother ever was, and kisses her. This is every bit as creepy as it was in the book, and of course (as in the book) Lysa sees the kiss but not the part where Sansa pushes Littlefinger away.

I actually really like the way this turned out on screen. They managed to make Littlefinger clearly a creep and a predator, but they also managed to capture the ambiguity of Sansa’s feelings about his advances. She’s not receptive, but before she pushes him away she’s also not exactly unreceptive, as if, after so long alone and unloved and physically isolated but also being a young girl of an age to be curious about exploring her sexuality, there’s some part of her that is a little bit intrigued enough to play this out for a little while. It’s a fine line to walk, because I wouldn’t want to see his actions come off as anything other than gross and predatory, but I think that this moment is an important one for Sansa because it marks the beginning of an evolution in the way she exists in this world. Cersei told her ages ago that a woman’s best weapon is between her legs, and while I don’t think we’ll see Sansa become a full blown femme fatale anytime soon, I think she’s starting to get an inkling of what that means for her.

When Lysa summons Sansa to the throne room, she’s already got the Moon Door open and ready. After a short, calm talk about what happens to people when they get thrown through the door, Lysa grabs Sansa by the hair and threatens to kill her. Fortunately, Littlefinger shows up in time to save Sansa, soothing Lysa before dropping the bombshell that the only woman he’s ever loved was Catelyn Stark and then pushing Lysa to her death. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t use “Only Cat” as the line here, but this is almost made up for by a great shot of Sansa, who knows what he’s going to say before he says it. Her look is just priceless, and I can’t wait to see the rest of what happens at the Eyrie. I didn’t see Marillion, so I’m curious to see what story Littlefinger uses to cover up his murder of Lysa.

Game of Thrones, Television

Game of Thrones Recap: Season 4, Episode 6 “The Laws of Gods and Men”

Leave a comment

This is the second episode of Game of Thrones in a row that didn’t have any horrifying rape scenes, so that was nice. There was some stuff in “The Laws of Gods and Men” that I really liked, one very nice surprise, and one sequence that I feel terribly let down by, but it was overall a solid episode I think. At least, it is as solid an episode as I think I can expect to see in this season of, frankly, bizarre choices on the part of the show runners.

As always, spoilers under the cut for the episode and some book-related commentary and speculation.

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this episode, to be honest, after the first half of the season, but I got excited as soon as I saw Braavos in the opening credits. I wasn’t disappointed.

The episode opens with Stannis and Davos arriving in Braavos, sailing under the Titan of Braavos. I do have some mixed feelings about this as our first glimpse of Braavos in the books was with Arya, but I’m glad to see Stannis and Davos getting a little more to do in the show. I love the audience with the bankers, and I was surprisingly pleased with Mark Gatiss as Tycho Nestoris. The real standout part of this scene, however, is Davos’s speech to try and convince the bankers to support Stannis. We finally get a really good look at Davos’s shortened fingers, and it’s a wonderful speech that conveys Davos’s deep and abiding love and respect for his king as well as Davos’s cleverness and commitment to their cause.

The next scene was a real surprise. We last saw Salladhor Saan (Lucian Msamati) in the first episode of season three when he returned Davos to Dragonstone and then sailed off, presumably abandoning Stannis forever as a lost cause. I honestly had no expectation of ever seeing him again, especially considering the penchant of the show for treating its POC characters as disposable and systematically minimizing/eliminating their roles. But here, Salladhor is, telling some long joke to a pair of prostitutes in a Braavos bathhouse when Daavos shows up to throw gold at him and drag him, rather unwillingly, on some as-yet-unknown journey. I’m so happy about this. If the show is going to veer so wildly from the books, the least they can do is give us some Davos/Salla buddy comedy.

Next up, the show manages to mostly ruin an otherwise excellent and stirring speech by Yara Greyjoy, who is apparently still persisting with her quest to rescue her brother, by cutting it with shots of Ramsay Snow and Miranda banging. Then Yara leads her men into the Dreadfort only to find Theon sleeping in the kennels and so far gone that he’s unwilling to leave with her. We’re then treated to an absurd fight scene when shirtless Ramsay shows up. Yara demands he give her Theon, but instead Ramsay looses his dogs, sending Yara and her remaining men fleeing into the night. “My brother is dead,” Yara intones as the return to their boats.

Can I just say that this was some of the most anticlimactic bullshit I’ve ever seen this show commit to film? I hated the Craster’s Keep/Bran story over the last two weeks for similar reasons, but this probably actually pisses me off more. As with the Craster’s/Bran stuff, there is much more interesting stuff in the source material that they could have utilized, that would have moved the story along at a better pace, and would actually have made sense. The thing is, I can see Jon Snow doing something as stupid and trivial as returning to Craster’s, and I suppose I can see why they would feel that Bran’s story needed a little more action.

This adventure of Yara’s, however, is just silly, and it’s actually a sort of character assassination, or at least making some of her character development out of order. In the books, it’s really not until A Dance With Dragons that we see Asha/Yara having anything approaching the concern for Theon that we see here. Even then, much of her concern is for how their mother would be affected by Theon’s death because Asha Greyjoy is a character who is deeply aware of other women and how they are affected by war and loss–something we haven’t seen any of in Yara so far. Because, obvs, who cares about female characters, right? I feel like this “rescuing Theon” thing is a way of softening and feminizing the character when, in the books, she was ready to let Theon fail on his own merits (or, rather, lack thereof) and she considered herself to be Balon’s only rightful heir.

We ought to be having a Queensmoot by now, but instead we got this boring, anticlimactic, ultimately inconsequential drivel. I imagine Yara’s speech will make for great gif sets on Tumblr, but it doesn’t make any actual difference in the story.

Following the botched rescue attempt, we do get an excellent scene with Theon and Ramsay that actually does move things along a little. Two thoughts, though. One: it pisses me off that the show will film graphic depictions of rape, even using nudity to film rape in a way that seems meant to be titillating to [male] viewers, but they act all demure about showing Theon undressed–not even a butt shot. Two: They could have given us just this scene, without any of the botched rescue stuff, and it would have worked fine to advance this storyline. The Yara time could have been much better spent actually moving along with the events that should be happening in the Iron Islands.

In Essos, Daenerys’s dragons are becoming a (huge and gorgeously CGI’d) menace. When a goatherd comes to tell her that they destroyed his livelihood, she orders that he be repaid three times the value of the goats. This is basically straight from the books, but what happens next isn’t.

Her next petitioner is none other Hizdahr zo Loraq, a major character from the book who seems to be being portrayed quite differently (so far, anyway) on the show. In the books, we first meet Hizdahr when he has come to petition Daenerys for the sixth time to reopen the fighting pits of Meereen. Here, we see a Hizdahr (played by Joel Fry) far younger than the Hizdahr of ADWD (or at least younger than I ever pictured him) who has come to ask that he be allowed to give his father, crucified on Daenerys’s orders, a proper burial.

I like that Hizdahr is being shown as someone with a probably legitimate grievance, although I do wonder about the messaging here, i.e. this idea that maybe there were some “good” Masters who didn’t deserve to be included in Daenerys’s first act of retributive justice as queen. Living in a country where the myth of the “good” slave owner is still alive and well and being used to try and humanize the perpetrators of massive-scale injustices, I worry that it’s an irresponsible narrative to perpetuate in any way, even in a fantasy setting. It could be, however, that the writers are trying to make Hizdahr becoming the Harpy a more sympathetic action, making him a complicated and multifaceted character rather than simply a villainous one. I’m not sure I trust these writers and directors to handle that sort of nuance, however.

I’ve complained a lot in the past about changes made to Daenerys’s storyline, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the way that her rulership of Meereen is being introduced. I think this scene does a good job of showing how self-righteous Daenerys is and how willing she is to abuse her power when it suits her. I feel like we’re seeing how her actions directly lead to the resistance to her rule and later things like the Sons of the Harpy and their acts of terrorism. Mostly, though, I’m just hoping that Daenerys’s time in Meereen sticks fairly close to the book because it’s honestly one of my favorite parts of the entire ASOIAF series. So far, it seems promising, but I’m afraid to really get my hopes up.

The rest of the episode is all King’s Landing, and it’s great.

First, we get to see a Small Council meeting. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these scenes, which are always some of my favorite bits of writing on the show.

Oberyn is complaining because it’s early and he’s probably hungover. He wants to know what he’s master of now, and Mace Tyrell (who finally gets some lines!) is quick to claim his own position as Master of Ships. Once Tywin shows up, it’s straight to business because they’ve got a trial to go to in the afternoon.

We finally get some much needed Varys time, as he’s been criminally underused so far this season. He starts by telling the rest of the council that Sandor Clegane has been seen in the Riverlands (Tywin orders a bounty for the Hound’s head). Then he moves on to update them all on what Daenerys is up to these days. Cersei dismisses the news of the dragons (“baby dragons” she says) and Varys points out that they are getting bigger ever year, which makes me wonder just how much time is supposed to have passed in the show. In the books, by this point, it was around two and a half years after King Robert showed up at Winterfell, and maybe a year and a half or so after the dragons hatched, but the show’s timeline may be a little different in order to address the problem of all the rapidly aging pubescent actors. I like this, though. It feels important to establish that some rather long period of time has passed. It’s also nice to see Daenerys finally being treated as a serious threat by the leaders in King’s Landing. Tywin isn’t as heavy-handed as Robert was, though, and rather than trying to have Daenerys assassinated, it seems that he plans instead to undermine her by exposing Jorah as a spy. This is something that I’ve been wondering for years how they were going to handle, and I’d even begun to worry that it was going to somehow be cut from the show, so I’m very excited to see this important development being set into motion.

After the council meeting, Varys stands contemplating the Iron Throne when Oberyn comes to chat. They discuss Essos and the merits of travel, and I liked seeing Varys being a little unsettled by Oberyn’s perception in noting that Varys is from Lys. Possibly the most notable thing about this scene, however, is that it establishes Varys as being a confirmed asexual character on a popular show. Maybe now we’ll stop having to hear snide remarks and jokes about his purported interest in little boys.

Elsewhere, Jaime comes to escort Tyrion from his prison cell to the throne room for his trial. Unshaven, with longer hair than we’ve seen him have in the past and wearing a perpetual scowl, fourth season Tyrion is quite changed from the Tyrion of previous scenes of the show. He’s still sarcastic, but he’s clearly bitter and in a very dark place.

When they reach the throne room, Tommen makes a brief statement recusing himself from judging the trial before he leaves the room. Instead, Tywin sits on the Iron Throne (as if born to it, by the way) with Oberyn Martell and Mace Tyrell on either side of him. Tyrion of course denies involvement in Joffrey’s murder, and so the trial commences with a parade of witnesses delivering a litany of damning evidence, mostly concerning Tyrion’s behavior before the royal wedding. Throughout the ordeal, Tyrion is forbidden from speaking in his own defense, responding to the “evidence” presented, or cross examining anyone. Perhaps my favorite part of this scene is the shots of faces in the room when Pycelle refers to Joffrey as “the most noble child the gods ever put on this good earth.”

While this farcical “trial” is going on, Jaime stands around looking increasingly uncomfortable, and during a brief adjournment he goes to his father to beg for Tyrion’s life. Jaime offers to leave the Kingsguard if Tywin will let Tyrion live, and Tywin quickly agrees. It really seems that Tywin never actually intended to have Tyrion executed. He never actually said that was what would happen, and when Jaime makes his offer Tywin has a whole set of terms already prepared as if he’s put a lot of thought into this already. As the trial resumes, Jaime tells Tyrion about Tywin’s agreement, and it seems that they have a plan to get through this.

And then the final witness comes out, and it’s Shae.

Shae’s testimony is devastating. On every level. Tyrion is destroyed by it, from the first moment that he sees her walk to the stand. Shae’s anger and hurt fill the room as she addresses her testimony to Tyrion, for all that she never looks at him except to confirm his identity and to remind him of his own hateful words when they were last together. The story Shae tells is calculated to be as damaging and humiliating for Tyrion as possible, and it may be Sibel Kekilli’s finest bit of acting in her entire run on the show, and the sob in her voice when she finally spoke directly to him just about broke me.

Much has been made of Peter Dinklage’s performance in the last minutes of the episode, and it’s every bit as good as everyone has said. The episode closes with Tyrion demanding a trial by combat and the shocked and outraged reactions of everyone in the room, and it might be my favorite final scene of any episode of the series so far. If nothing else, it’s got me enthusiastically looking forward to the next couple of episodes to see what happens next. A+ use of a cliffhanger ending.

Game of Thrones, Television

Game of Thrones Recap: Season 4, Episode 5 “First of His Name”

Leave a comment

So, the good news this week is that I’m not completely enraged by last night’s episode of Game of Thrones–only a little enraged about the treatment of one character. The bad news is that, unencumbered by the fog of general fury that surrounded the last two episodes for me, I’m finally able to articulate some of my not-rape-related frustrations with this season so far.

As always, spoilers under the cut for this episode and for book-related commentary and speculation.

“First of His Name” gets its titular scene out of the way immediately as it opens with Tommen being crowned king. The more I see of Dean-Charles Chapman, the more I like him in this role. I’m still concerned about how things are going to work as he goes through puberty over the next couple of years, but I do think an older Tommen makes sense and he certainly looks the part.

While Tommen is being crowned, the camera pans around the room, lighting briefly on the faces of those most concerned with the proceedings–his “uncle” Jaime, Cersei, Tywin, and Margaery. While Tommen sits the Iron Throne for the first time, a newly modestly-dressed Margaery (at least ostensibly in mourning for Joffrey) watches from the side of the room and smiles encouragingly at him. Cersei notices this and steps between them, then walks over to talk with Margaery herself. As Cersei strode over to Margaery, I was fully expecting a renewal of the conflict between these two women, but that’s not what happens at all. Instead, Cersei talks to Margaery a little about Joffrey, straight up telling the younger woman that Joffrey would have been her “nightmare” and calling Margaery out when she prevaricates, pointing out, quite rightly, that Margaery knew exactly what Joffrey was.

The conversation next turns to Tommen, and Cersei admits that a mother is not enough help for the boy king–he needs a wife. Cersei asks Margaery if she’s still interested in being queen, and Margaery smoothly lies that she hasn’t even thought about it, saying that she’ll have to talk with her father about it. Cersei replies that she’ll have to talk with her own father as well. Interestingly, it’s Margaery who shows her claws here, reminding Cersei of her upcoming wedding to Loras and subtly mocking Cersei’s age by threatening to call her “mother”. This is actually the one thing I didn’t love about this scene. It seems pretty obvious that Cersei is still not a fan of Margaery, but she sees the wisdom of continuing the alliance with the Tyrells and I suspect prefers the devil she knows over any other. It’s also obvious that Cersei doesn’t buy Margaery’s act for a moment, as attested to by some lovely eye rolling. I feel like Margaery is misstepping here by antagonizing Cersei when she’s finally trying to make nice with her.

In Meereen, Daenerys is having a meeting where she learns what’s been going on in the world while she’s been busy taking the city. Joffrey is dead, Daario and the Second Sons have taken the Meereenese navy, Yunkai has been retaken by its slavers, and Astapor has fallen to a butcher king. With the Meereenese navy at her disposal, Daenerys now has the means to transport her army to Westeros and take King’s Landing, although it’s still uncertain if she’s capable of taking and holding all Seven Kingdoms. Dany sends everyone out of the room but Jorah, to whom she confides that she’s basically having a crisis of confidence. How can she rule the Seven Kingdoms if she can’t control just Slaver’s Bay? This is probably the best acting I’ve seen from Emilia Clarke since season one. and a lot of her performances this season have seemed wooden and weirdly theatrical. It’s certainly the most real and human I’ve seen Dany in a long time, and I actually felt for her all the way up until her “I will rule” bravado.

I’m really curious to see how the show handles Dany’s time in Meereen, and I hope they don’t insert any contrived drama as they have in this season with Jon and Bran’s storylines. What I’m really wondering about the Dany storyline, though, is when is the break with Jorah going to happen? With Barristan already revealed, I’m not sure how they’re going to handle that on the show, but I can’t imagine that Jorah’s exile will be eliminated because it’s incredibly important for Dany’s development. Honestly, this needs to happen soon.

In the Vale of Arryn, Littlefinger and Sansa have arrived, and we get a short speech about how impregnable the Eyrie is. When we actually get to the Eyrie, Lysa and Lord Robert are as creepy as ever, although it looks like she’s finally stopped breastfeeding the boy. I absolutely adore Lysa Arryn in the show, however. Her great show of warmth when she meets Sansa is perfectly deceptive. Her smile as she greets the girl and her grimace when they embrace makes this almost a tragic scene for Sansa, who is so hopeful that she’ll be loved and accepted by her aunt and then so confused by her aunt’s odd behavior.

The best part of the whole Vale of Arryn sequence comes after Sansa and little Lord Robin leave the room. Lysa immediately starts crawling all over Littlefinger, who suffers her attentions the way I suppose any cold, calculating, ambitious, amoral misanthrope might. She’s ready to get married like right now, but he protests that they ought to notify the other lords of the Vale for the ceremony. It’s only when Lysa starts to go on about all the things she’s done for him (poisoning her husband, tricking her sister) that he agrees to the immediate wedding so she’ll shut up.

Meanwhile, Cersei and Tywin are hammering out the details of Tommen’s wedding to Margaery. Tywin also wants to know when Cersei intends to seal the deal with Loras. It’s kind of nice to see a somewhat softer side of Tywin here. He can’t or won’t apologize for Cersei’s marriages, but he does acknowledge that he is aware of and perhaps sympathizes with her feelings on the matter. In this scene we also see him, finally, taking Cersei into his confidence. He tells her that their gold mines have stopped producing, that the crown is in debt, and generally highlights how important it is that she play her part in things. Tywin does, however, refuse to discuss Tyrion’s upcoming trial with Cersei. By this point in the scene, I was very much hoping that it was going to segue into a Tyrion/Tywin scene, and I was very much disappointed when it didn’t.

Arya is reciting her litany of names, which is keeping the Hound awake. She tells him that these are the names of people she plans to kill. As she rolls over to go to sleep, she says that there’s only one name left: his.

Back at the Eyrie, Sansa seems to be bonding with her aunt Lysa over a plate of lemon cakes when things veer swiftly into bizzaro-ville and Lysa jumps straight from reminiscing about her own sister, Catelyn, to jealously accusing Sansa of seducing Littlefinger. Once Sansa is worked into a terrified panic of her own, Lysa switches just as quickly back to comforting aunt, reassuring Sansa that soon Sansa will be a widow and free to marry Robin Arryn. This is a wonderful Sansa scene, really. I’m fairly certain that her almost hysterical reaction to Lysa’s accusations is at least partially feigned, and when Lysa mentions Sansa being Lady of the Vale you can see that Sansa’s eyes are already nearly dry and the wheels in her head are turning. Sansa is very quickly figuring out how to handle and manipulate people, and she’s also definitely picking up on how she fits into the political situation that Littlefinger has created.

On the road north from King’s Landing, Podrick is a terrible rider, and Brienne doesn’t think she needs a squire at all. I’m pretty sure that Brienne and Podrick are going to be my favorite people to watch for the rest of the season.

Elsewhere, the Hound wakes up to find Arya already gone from their campsite. She’s gone to practice her water dancing, which Sandor mocks, goading Arya to stab him. Needle won’t even pierce the Hound’s armor, though, and this earns Arya a backhanded blow that knocks her flat on her back. It’s a harsh lesson that the Hound is trying to impart, and I don’t think that it’s being received the way he intends. He might be trying to make clear the value of “armor and a big fucking sword,” but Arya is learning that she’ll have to figure out creative ways of overcoming these things.

In another invented scene for the show, Cersei and Oberyn talk about Myrcella. Oberyn tells Cersei that Myrcella is safe in Dorne, playing with his own daughters. He assures Cersei that they don’t hurt little girls in Dorne, to which Cersei replies with perhaps my favorite Cersei line in the show so far: “Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” It’s sad to see how resigned Cersei has become to her place in the world, which is basically what every Cersei scene in this episode has been about. She’s prepared to accept Margaery for Tommen, she’s prepared to obey her father regarding Loras, and she’s having to deal with the loss of Myrcella. Early in the scene with Oberyn, Cersei asks what use is power if they can’t protect the ones they love. As in the books, Joffrey’s death seems to have broken something inside Cersei, but here it seems to be her heart rather than her mind that broke. I really hope that this is how they continue to portray Cersei in the show instead of the over-the-top cruel, almost cartoonishly evil madness that she suffers from in the books.

Back with Brienne and Pod, Pod has lit a rabbit on fire trying to cook it without skinning it first. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Pod’s education has been sadly neglected. He can’t ride, can’t cook–most of his time with Tyrion was spent pouring wine. When Brienne asks if he knows anything about combat, he tells her that he did kill a man at the Blackwater. Only after learning about this bit of bravery does Brienne finally let Podrick help her remove her armor, and his look of gratitude and relief is adorable. Have I mentioned yet that I can’t wait to see more of this pair?

Finally, we get to see what’s going on in the North as Jon and his men have arrived at Craster’s. Locke is scouting and finds where Bran is being kept. Jojen is visibly ill, which is not being explained very well, and he’s having a vision of the place they need to go. When Locke returns to the rest of the Night’s Watch, warns them away from the hut that Bran and the Reeds are being kept in, and they plan to attack when it’s dark.

Back at Craster’s, Karl has decided that it’s time to rape Meera because apparently the writers of Game of Thrones have decided that every episode must have at least one act (or at least threat) of sexual violence against women and that no woman on the show is safe from the predation of men. With Meera, it’s particularly upsetting to me, as she’s one of the few female characters in the books who actually never finds herself in this sort of danger. She has to survive in a hostile environment and worry about snow zombies in the books, but she’s never threatened with rape.

If I’m honest, though, I have to admit that this entire returning to Craster’s plot and involving Bran, Hodor, and the Reeds in it just makes no sense to me whatsoever. In the books, Craster’s and the Night’s Watch deserters don’t make another appearance after Sam flees with Gilly, and they aren’t missed. The book’s events at the Wall, between the attack where Ygritte is killed, Jon’s struggle to rally the Night’s Watch to defend against Mance, the battle with Mance Rayder, Stannis’s arrival, and Jon’s election as Lord Commander, provide plenty of material for a season of the show, and even Bran’s road trip starts to get interesting in the books once they make it past the Wall and meet Coldhands. I just hate everything about this entire portion of the show, and what pisses me off the most (after the gratuitous objectification and degradation of women) about it is that it’s eating up a lot of screen time–20 minutes in this episode alone!–that could be put to much better use showing things that actually contribute to the story.

I hate that Meera is threatened with rape. I hate that Locke is anywhere near the Wall/Night’s Watch. I hate that the Night’s Watch guys attack just in time to prevent Meera’s rape. I hate that in a stupid, emotionally manipulative near miss, Bran actually sees Jon and then OF COURSE doesn’t stay to talk with him. I hate that this whole sequence is so long and that so little actually happens.

I did like:

  • that it was one of Craster’s wives who actually killed Karl by stabbing him in the back. Good.
  • that the show seems to be introducing the idea that Bran warging into Hodor is a violation.
  • that the wives refused to return to Castle Black with the Night’s Watch.

Mostly, though, I’m just glad this chapter of the show is over. Because it was awful. And just a baffling set of choices on the part of the show runners.