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.
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