Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker

Game of Thrones is a television show. This may come as a surprise to some of you who thought it was a series of books. I'd call it an American television show, but its scope is global. Anyhow, the thing about television that's different than a book is that it relies on visuals to move the plot along. Books use words. Stick with me here just like Bran is sticking with that guy who grew into a tree. A subtle pun rests in the prior sentence because trees have sticks. Anyhow, there was a great deal of exposition this episode, a few false starts, and then the end of a watch. With GOT, I often expect a great deal to happen. Though I sometimes then criticize the show for rushing through scenes and making a mess of it. Hello Dorne plot line. This episode was satisfying, in part because it was content with things not happening. The most exciting scene, a legendary sword battle, took place twenty to thirty years prior. 

We grant books their expositional scenes, though apparently Martin's are notorious for describing the exact flavor of the mead and pig's snout. In television, we often expect more. Mad Men, televisions best show for many years, was allowed to rise slowly towards a climax like an expert lover. Because GOT is so grand, it's hard not to want everything to happen all at once, and it's a relief when it doesn't. In part because the slow build of scenes and rivalries is what made the plot leading up to the Red Wedding just so good. What's Tywin up to with all those birds. Oh, I see, plotting an awful murder. Except I didn't see, which is why it's fun to occasionally linger, watching Tyrion try and coax something interesting out of Missandei and Grey Worm was delightful. My only real doubt in this regard is wondering if time lost in those lingering scenes. It wouldn’t be a problem in season one, but the viewer can start to feel the clock ticking on these final 19 episodes that need to bring us from fifty different narrative threads into one giant war with ice zombies who look like someone’s long haired grandpa. If that long haired grandpa was also a zombie who stole babies. I only had one grandpa like that. The other one was pretty normal. 

The show is bookended by scenes at the wall. The rearrival of the show’s hero, Jon Snow, is spiked with some nice dialogic turns. Rather than throwing Jon back into the world raging at Sir Alliser the bastard, we get a rather nice scene of Jon, genuinely perplexed at his plight. “I shouldn’t  be here,” he says, but even better, “I did what I thought was the right thing, and I got killed for it.” The Stark children have been learning that lesson for quite some time, and it’s nice that this time they could just bring the murdered child back to life. Even if he isn’t a full Stark, but part Targaryan as well. I found the scenes of him hugging the red-haired Wildling and his friend very touching, just as I found the scene at the end where he parted ways with Olly and Sir Alliser, touching. He seems genuinely troubled with what has transpired, and it’s believable that he leaves the wall, his watch, by virtue of his death, ended. However, I’m not entirely sure what  Jon Snow who isn’t only doing the right thing will look like. It’s not like he doesn’t know that the ice zombies are out there taunting him, so he better walk quickly, and in a southern direction if he wants to get anywhere worth being.

Remember Sam and Gilly? What about Gilly’s baby? Bran Stark has grown three feet in the same amount of time that child has gone from being 8 months old to nine months old. That said, their relationship is a sweet counterpoint to the usual muck and mayhem of a thrones episode, though I can’t even remember the last time we had a good scene of sexposition. However, like Jon, Sam needs to get off that boat, wipe the vomit from his hair and get to reading books because the white walkers aren’t moving as slowly as that baby’s journey through life.

Since Lost ended, television has always had one rule, flashbacks are great. The second is like unto it: having a sword fight with a dude spinning two swords at once makes it way cooler. Young Ned proves to be a bit light in the swordsmanship and benefits from a stab in the back to best the best sword in the land, which leads him, though he looks about 17, up into the tower to rescue Jon before his sister dies. Or whatever you think is up there…but it’s that.

Back in the weirdwood tree, Bran carps about being a cripple, while Hodor gently rubs his lower back and asks if they can slow Bran’s growth spurt down like Craster’s baby. Alas, says the man who lives in the tree, we’re just going to hang out and look at the past. Now roll me another one Bran and let me tell you about the time I rode a dragon.

Unsatisfied, with the incredibly fast pace of the Daenyrs plot line in Mereen, (the queen raises taxes by one denari, the populous is restless…is roughly what a video game version would like. Her plot is basically leveling to the nth degree), they move her back into the Doth Rahki home..or do they? If she gets condemned to death it’s clear that Drogon is going to come down and eat the Doth Rahki like goats.

Back in Mereen, Varus finally makes some headway into solving the man in the golden masks. Those masks look heavy and make them rather easy to identify. I think they should have gone with arm bands or something. Varus, ever the kind heart, manages to buy off the prostitute and put her on a ship, though the news he delivers is virtually useless—all the other rich people are working against us. This is peppered between Tyrion trying to get Grey Worm or Missendei to say anything interesting, but I feel like that particular show could go on for 8 more seasons without ever having that happen. Theirs is a love story that can never be told, and so I hope it isn’t.

Qyburn arrives back on the scene, creepy as ever, handing out odd plum candy to children. Qyburn, everyone thinks you’re creepy. Can’t you give them some chocolate or something. Does it have to be candied plums? Nevertheless, his spy network is now out and about seeking to find anyone who doesn’t like Cersei so the purple mountain can bash their head into a wall.

As I noted at the start, some things don’t happen. Cersei and Jaime march into the small council to declare war on Dorne and the council promptly walks out. Though it was a delight to see the lady Olenna, a real treasure of the show back to throw barbs at everyone in sight.

Tommen, full of as much rage as his kitten from the books, marches into the High Sparrow’s presence and appears to have a sermon delivered to him. It was your standard three point sermon, probably learned in seminary, but Tommen seems convinced and promptly forgets why he was there and starts batting at a yarn ball.

Arya continues her “training.” And by training I mean beatings and torture. As I noted before, I’m not quite certain what she’s gaining by eliminating her identity, since it’s her identity that lead her to become an assassin in the first place. Can she not just call it quits now, like when someone is ABD and decides to become a surf instructor instead of a history professor? Can she walk now? I think she should. I think she won’t.

And finally, we get Ramsay another pair of people to torture. Like most viewers, I’m confused by the nuanced presentation of Ramsay that the show has engaged in so far. Is he horrible? The worst? Or the horrible worst? I can’t wait to see what sort of unholy things he has to unleash on Rikkon and Osha to show the viewer that he’s quite evil, a fact which escapes us otherwise. I can only hope that he’ll be eating a sausage in a few episodes while Rikkon looks on in horror. Okay. I just hope Osha stabs him in the scrotum for five minutes straight. I guess we'll see. 

Game of Thrones Episode 2

The second episode of Game of Thrones was back and better than ever. Well, not better than ever, but good. Quite frankly, I always feel a twinge of excitement when I see the episode is going to be a long one. My hope is that Benioff and Weiss avail themselves of HBO’s varying run times as they start to wind this behemoth down to a close. And, besides the reminder of the violence and rampant nudity, even if it’s of elderly folks, GOT is nothing if not a behemoth. The show’s cast stretches far beyond the wall that stops most television shows short, which means that we often say thing like, “What the hell happened to Rikkon?” He was presumably eaten by shaggy dog. And remember the Karstak family? Me neither. Thanks for the “heads up” on that one GOT trailer.

The sprawling nature of the narrative that has paralyzed Martin into gibbering inaction is the very thing that the showrunners are not staring straight in the face like Tyrion into the eye of a dragon. And if this episode is any indication, they might actually pull it off. I was relieved to see the mild disclaimers at the beginning of the episode, as I thought the first episode lingered a moment too long here and there on scenes of violence, people bleeding out on the floor. This was  a tidy episode thanks to uncomplicated kill shots like that delivered by the Mountain onto the man of prodigious penis. That lack of violence, of nudity for nudity’s sake, helped this episode of GOT feel propulsive. And it felt propulsive in exactly the way that Martin’s books seem to have failed at. This was the first episode where you started to see that things were going to start getting tidied up for the final battle, which for years I’ve said is going to culminate with Tyrion, Jon and Dani riding dragons over a hoard of white walkers. The feeling suddenly dawned on me that this show was one day going to end.

If the first episode started the hash tag #alloldnakedbodies, (for the record, huge fan of the old naked body. Our culture is youth obsessed, though that might be true for many cultures throughout time. However, we basically shun older people and pretend like it isn’t happening. My hash tag is designed around the idea that every GOT episode should feature an old naked body. It’s time for the show to make up for all the gratuitous nudity and violence with a healthy dose of old naked bodies.)  then this episode was really about the triumph of the showrunners in starting to tame Martin’s material. 

The big reveal at the end, Jon's alive, was pretty much the worst kept secret this side of where Arya's wolf ran off to. I'm just kidding, where is that thing? Is it on a boat with Gendry? I'd watch that buddy comedy. However, the slow burn of Jon coming back to life after another failure by the red woman was satisfying drama. What does it mean? Beyond the fact that we get to see Kit Harrington's beautiful hair flowing in the CGI of wind? Well, it means the show has its true hero back. Of course, we don't know the form that heroism will take, if he'll be somehow reduced after having spent a couple of days with Ned and Richard Karstak and The Hound....(but he's alive, I hope). In drama, all you have is that moment, and they sold it for all it was worth, giving us the doubt of the once proud Red Woman and Jon coming back to life with just his wolf for company. One could easily make the argument that Jon coming to life is setting the final seasons of Thrones up for the kind of fantasy ending that Martin loathes. And yet, I think we know that at least 2 of these three dragon riders are going down in flames or ice in the final battle, so I'm willing to let people be brought back, if only so Martin or the showrunners can kill them off again. 

If you've been staying up late at night asking yourself, "What's happened to Bran?, like I have then you should probably get a hobby or something. The show was off the air for ten months. And yet, besides now being roughly as tall as Hodor, who apparently could talk as a boy, Bran, has learned how to walk through time. And isn't it nice that he said, "They look so happy," when watching the young Stark boys having a nice sword fight with Lianna parading around and Walder being dragged around by the ear. Yes, it was idyllic, but it was a relief to watch for the viewer and for Bran. This duality provided a nice contrast to the usual parade of death and violence. Outside the weird wood tree we're reminded that Bran can't walk, a sad reminder for Hodor/Walder as well, who's back has been slowly failing him for the last month as he lies slumped against the tree chanting his fake name. 

We take a quick jump to the North where, gasp, the Wildlings arrive just in time. Despite some of the predictable elements, we are left with interesting strings hanging, like Olly and Alliser being spared death's embrace. Though in the latter case I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps they give fourth chances up at the wall, or perhaps they are beheading him with Jon's fancy sword. And I am always happy to see Tormund with his wild beard, glaring at everyone around him and waiting to hew someone with an axe. He's a keeper. 

Back in King's Landing, once the beating heart of the show, we get the man of prodigious penis telling stories about, wait for it, his penis. This ends, rather predictably with his head being driven into a wall by The Mountain, who looks rather blue about the whole affair. If the run up to the arrival of the High Sparrow and his faith militant was a bit clumsy, the drama surrounding the standoff has been heightened as time has gone by. The High Sparrow, played excellently by Jonathan Pryce, has a wonderful conversation with Jaime, which starts with humility and ends with a threat, which is pretty much standard fair for the High Sparrow at this point. Thus, the viewer avoids two potential boss battles as we don't get to see The Mountain against the King's guard nor Jaime against shirless mace wearing bandits, who really wouldn't be out of place in the movie Weird Science or an episode of Arrested Development as hot cops if they just smiled more. Functionally, this standoff brings Cersei and Tommen back together. And, as usual, Lena Headey plays their scene of being reunited with aplomb. It's hard not to see that she doesn't want to look at Tommen, in part because she now fears she will lose him as well, but eventually she gives in, and now the Lannisters are back together and ready to fight wars on multiple fronts. If only we could get Twyin back, we'd be in heaven. 

The scene shift to Tyrion engaging in management is never a false one. Peter Dinklage is perhaps the strongest actor left on the show, and his excitement, fear and intelligence are all on display in the council meeting and as he stares into the face of a dragon. It's hard to convey as much as he does while acting with CGI, and Dinklage nails it and allows us to indulge in the fantasy of him riding on a dragon reigning fire down. Though he probably would be better suited to managing the water supply of the troops. 

Arya is once again beaten mercilessly while blind. And though it serves some kind of purpose for the narrative, losing her name and her identify can only happen partially. For even though the point of the faceless men is that they belong to no one, Arya whole heartedly belongs to someone. Her whole quest and identity is wrapped up in the atrocities she's witnessed. Thus, losing herself in order to become an assassin who can't choose their target would be a rather painful plot twist. 

Though many objected, rightly so, to Ramsey's scenes of once again reminding us why he's horrible, at least they were carried out intelligently. There is a long moment when it's unclear whether Roose had stabbed Ramsey or the other way around, in which the viewer is wondering if they'd just lost their greatest villian without a proper send off. Is it believable that Roose wouldn't have killed Ramsey off before? Is it believable that he would allow him within 100 yards of him? Probably not, which makes it see like a contrivance of the plot, but it was at least done with some interest. And then the painful moments when we know he's going to kill a baby arrive with that same false tension, is he going to throw the baby on the stones or in the fire? Why am I watching a show that has a dude who throws babies? However, it ends in rather tame fashion, with the child and woman being ripped apart by dogs. This is the only show on television where such a sentence could be seen as merciful. 

Up north, Theon tells Lady Sansa that he's headed home. His journey towards redemption happened rather quickly in this episode, and I'd have been delighted to have watched far fewer scenes of sausage being eaten while he was tortured if it would have allowed more screen time for Theon later in the show. However what's done is done and what's been cut off cannot be reattached. This is all a lead in to remind us that the Iron Islands exist, last seen in roughly season 3. Luckily, if you are writing about the show often enough these characters haven't slipped too far from memory. Asha, who gave up when the hounds were released after sailing a thousand miles to save her brother, is fighting with her father who bears an eerie resemblance to the Frey patriarch about the continued presence of Iron Islanders on land, where they are routinely being slaughtered. She loses the battle because he is king and then walks away in a huff only to find his, probably insane, brother to play an old game with. Everyone remembers the game where you shake on opposite sides of a bridge to see who can hold on while it's swaying. Sadly, the older brother loses the game and plunges to his death. (My first order of business if I'm yara or king crazypants is to get some regular old walkways installed between the towers. I mean, are they so poor that they can only afford rope bridges last seen in Romancing the Stone? Maybe the islanders need to be taxed more heavily. Hopefully future episodes deal explicitly with the economics of the Iron Islands. Fingers crossed. 

I've already written about the grand finale, sadly not oldnakedbodies. And here you can see that I've dipped into roughly 2,00i words of fantasy fan boy. And yet, the episode earned it. It wound up starting to stitch together threads that have been unraveling for three years and give us a road map to where the show could possibly go. Bravo. Now. Let's go take up a job as a stone mason in the iron islands and put some of that rock to use. 

Game of Thrones: Home

The most exciting show on television has returned to bring us what we’ve all been waiting for: either the return of Jon Snow or horrible scenes of violence. Okay. Okay. I kid. It brings us that amazing opening with triumphant music that makes you want to lay waste to villages and ride some dragons into your neighbor’s house for plunder. I love that music.

And so we begin where last we left, Jon’s cold body lying in the snow. Wait! Why did they just leave it there? Does anyone know what  treason looks like anymore. Obviously, not, as Sir Davos, one of my favorite GOT characters, probably because he advocates for not sacrificing children, stumbles on the body and takes him inside to warm him up. Who made marshamallows? Was sadly not heard that day.

Then we get a scene cut to Sir Allisir. Who has more chances than a cat. He manages to shout down the mutiny by appealing to the night watch’s sensibility. A questionable move and turn in the room. Everyone goes a murdering this episode though. He blends right in.

And now we get back to Ramsay. Who hasn’t missed Ramsay? The most nuanced villain this side of….well….Sauron? He enjoys killing puppies and then reanimating them to kill them again by feeding them to his dogs.

And then finally, we get to something happy, which is Lady Sansa sprinting through the woods with Theon. Or, the woman who was raped by Ramsay running with the man he made into a eunuch. In case you weren’t sure, he’s bad. Theon, in what I can only describe as questionable decision making, decides to hole up for the night at around 2:30. This doesn’t go so well, nor does his plan to ward off the dogs by standing there confused. He’s not much of a planner. As such, it takes the arrival of Brienne, riding roughshod over shoulders with Podrick to save Sansa. And then we get a true GOT oddity, a touching moment, Lady Sansa accepting Brienne’s request to watch over her with the help of Theon. Sansa has grown so much since season one when she was falling hard for the prancing prince Joffrey.

Theon then plans to go home. Nothing says going back home like a father who left you for dead and a sister who ran away when dogs chased after her. This can only end well.

We return to the incomparable Lena Headey waiting excitedly for her daughter to arrive home. The way her face changes as the whole scene dawns on her is damned fantastic. Strangely, she harkens back to the witch at the beginning of the last season who told her that all three of her children would die. For a moment, she’s broken, and then Jaime reminds her of that old immortal quote, “Fuck everyone who’s not us.” This Shakesperean sonnet brings the queen back to life and presumably, to war. We also get a brief moment of sand snake trash talk before they stab the prince in the back of the brain. This plot line seems to have sprung from another world, a clumsy one, a hasty one, one that I would find on channel 5 after a long day at school. Xena, warrior princess. Thus, the death of Prince Doran is promising only insofar as it moves us back out of Dorne, which once looked so promising. Or at least beautiful. It has always seemed as though only the prince and three other people live there. Now he’s gone.

Tyrion and Varus stroll around the city of Mereen, blending in with the natives. And by blending in with the natives I mean offering to eat their children and being the only dwarf who walks the streets. But still, no one notices…or do they because suddenly someone is roasting s’mores over in the ship yard and the whole fleet is gone and someone forgot graham crackers.

We briefly check in, (classic first episode check ins) with the two men who are riding for Dany’s heart. The problem is that one of them has a heart of stone, or body or whatever. Then we cut to the Khalasa comedy hour, where Dany is told that she’ll be raped. Welcome back to GOT, except, wait, she had it written in her contract that she’s not doing nudity anymore, so off to the first wive’s club she goes.

The episode moves into the trials and travails of Arya Stark. A rather tired plot line that has bogged down one of Thrones most lovable characters for far too long, but alas, her journey isn’t over yet, she has to be beaten while blind, which is pretty much just standard issue for Thrones.

And then the close, #allthenakedoldbodies. A tired Melisandre removes her necklace to reveal what people have suspected all along, she’s a witch. I think this means they need to burn her or she if she floats or maybe burn her while she floats The specifics escape me. Seeing the amazing Carrie Van Houten turn into game of crones was actually a wonderful touch. I love that the camera lingered on the old body as if it was the young body, the sags of flesh and passage of time that will come for us all. Too many young naked bodies on this show, too much reinforcement of death at a young age. What’s really coming for us is what has come for the red woman, age, and with it, silence. GOT, to make up for all its nudity should strictly show old naked bodies from now on. I can only hope that the show runners are up to the challenge. #allthenakedoldbodies