Directed by: Alik Sakharov
Distributed by: HBO
Written by Anna Harrison
Overview
In these retrospectives, I will be looking back on “Game of Thrones” through my viewpoint as a fanatical fan of George R. R. Martin’s original book series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Mostly, I suspect this will be an exercise in venting my frustration about the adaptation of the books and pointing out where things went wrong in my mind—and I have a lot to work out.
For ease of reference, the show “Game of Thrones” can be abbreviated as “GOT” or “Thrones,” and the books in “A Song of Ice and Fire” can be abbreviated as “ASOIAF.”
The books in the series are “A Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows,” “A Dance With Dragons,” and the as-yet unpublished “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.” These can be abbreviated as “AGOT,” “ACOK,” “ASOS,” “AFFC,” “ADWD,” “TWOW,” and “ADOS.”
Chapters within the book will be referred to by their point-of-view character and a Roman numeral indicating what chapter within the POV it is (ex., Catelyn I, Jaime II, Arya III, and so on), as Martin does not number his chapters nor name them besides indicating whose POV we are about to enter.
85/100
Finally, at long last—it’s the moment we’ve been waiting for. Not Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) execution, not the Red Wedding, not even the Purple Wedding. Not the upcoming shadow baby, not dracarys, not the Battle of the Blackwater. No, folks.
It’s Brienne of Tarth!
Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) has been dispatched to parley with Renly Baratheon (Gethin Anthony), whose large army—bolstered with the support of House Tyrell—could pose as either a threat or a shield to Robb (Richard Madden). While there, she finds the camp engaging in some very serious warfare tactics: they are… hosting a tournament. Whilst Robb and Cat must untangle political alliances and fight for every inch of ground, Renly drinks and boasts and makes merry. Luckily for him, there are some who take this whole thing seriously, such as Brienne (Gwendoline Christie), who wins a place in Renly’s Kinsguard by defeating the famed Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones), at this tourney. Hidden as she is in her armor, and with Christie’s towering six-foot-three stature, it’s a shock to Cat and viewers alike as she takes off her helm to reveal that she is, in fact, a woman.
Beauty, they called her… mocking. The hair beneath the visor was a squirrel’s nest of dirty straw, and her face… Brienne’s eyes were large and very blue, a young girl’s eyes, trusting and guileless, but the rest… her features were broad and coarse, her teeth prominent and crooked, her mouth too wide, her lips so plump they seemed swollen. A thousand freckles speckled her cheeks and brow, and her nose had been broken more than once. Pity filled Catelyn’s heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?
And yet, when Renly cut away her torn cloak and fastened a rainbow in its place, Brienne of Tarth did not look unfortunate. Her smile lit up her face, and her voice was strong and proud as she said, “My life for yours, Your Grace. From this day on, I am your shield, I swear it by the old gods and the new.” The way she looked at the king—looked down at him, she was a good hand higher, though Renly was near as tall as his brother had been—was painful to see. (Catelyn III, “ACOK”)
Brienne has very little screen time this episode, but she nevertheless makes quite the impression. Her imposing height and prowess with a sword contrast with her awkwardness while not fighting—she hardly meets Catelyn’s eyes and does not appear to have a way with words. Or perhaps I just think this because Brienne is the beating heart of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” a woman who can still be the shining ideal of a knight in a world that routinely beats that idealism out of its denizens, and I love her dearly. People like to claim that the world of “ASOIAF” is grim, dark, and fatalistic, but how can it be when characters like Brienne can still exist?
Of course, not everyone realizes how perfect Brienne is. She is an anomaly, a freak, and even Renly, who made her a part of his Kinsguard, mocks her behind her back alongside Loras, his lover. Once again, “Thrones” positions Loras as the political snake in Renly’s ear; it’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the Tyrells are very politically adept and Loras is not that deep of a character in the books, but this again serves to paint Renly as the man who would be the best king. Here is a good and just man who is a better king precisely because he does not want it! This is reinforced by Renly inquiring after a common man’s foot injury to show he is a man of the people, not like the other hoighty-toighty lords and ladies of Westeros. While book-Renly is gregarious with most to their faces, everything is a grand game to him: his camp is full of loud and young warriors who prefer to drink rather than fight, he hosts feasts regularly (replete with fools whacking each other over the heads with bladders), and never considers a single policy. He is not a bad person, per se—as far as these Baratheons go—but charm alone does not make a good king, and his inability to take anything seriously does not bode well for any potential kingship, nor does his leapfrogging over his brother Stannis (Stephen Dillane) to make a grab at the throne for no other reason than he wants a new shiny toy. As Catelyn thinks, “They are still unblooded… It is all a game to them still, a tourney writ large, and all they see is the chance for glory and honor and spoils. They are boys drunk on song and story, and like all boys, they think themselves immortal” (Catelyn II, “ACOK”). Or, as she puts it more succinctly in both book and show: “They are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.”
(It is a shame that Brienne’s rejoinder didn’t make the cut. “‘Lady Catelyn, you are wrong.’ Brienne regarded her with eyes as blue as her armor. ‘Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it’s always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining’” (Catelyn II, “ACOK”). Sweet, sweet Brienne.)
Renly Baratheon is not the only king who lusts after a throne for the wrong reasons. Balon Greyjoy (Patrick Malahide) continues his nonsensical bid for the Iron Throne; while Renly thinks this all a grand game, Balon takes his war seriously. Unfortunately for him, Balon is very stupid. He wants the throne because the Ironborn words are “we do not sow” and he cannot comprehend that, maybe, not sowing anything might have long-term consequences. In a world dominated by patriarchal stupidity, Balon is perhaps the worst offender of all: “Winterfell may defy us for a year, but what of it?” he posits to Theon (Alfie Allen) and Asha—no, sorry, Yara (Gemma Whelan). Well, Balon, if Winterfell defies you, then you will never have the entire North, and if you will never have the entire North, then you cannot be King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Let us not forget the other Greyjoy idiot in the room, though: Theon. He is so desperate to prove himself to a father who hates him, who thinks him weak and feminine (the worst thing a man can be), that he will sever ties with the brother who loves him. Balon tells Theon, “Your time with the wolves has made you weak,” and so Theon burns the letter he has composed to Robb Stark (Richard Madden) warning him of Balon’s impending attack. Darkness surrounds him as he does so, and Theon’s face is lit only by a single candle as Ramin Djawadi’s score fills in what words cannot convey. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes of “Thrones” so far. Without any dialogue, the scene recolors our perception of Theon, who before this episode hardly registered as anything except a bit of a twat and now, while still being a twat, is a tragic one. Martin must, by nature of the written word, devote paragraphs and paragraphs to conveying this; the show manages this almost wordlessly. Theon, ward of the Starks, is gone; now Theon Greyjoy, Prince of the Iron Islands, rises in his place, “harder and stronger.”
Theon’s time at the Iron Islands has been greatly reduced for the show—gone are the feasts, gone are Victarion and Aeron Greyjoy, gone is Wex Pyke, Theon’s squire—but the emotional impact remains the same. It might even be greater; in the books, Theon is less sympathetic at this point and still quite the cad (to put it kindly) up until the moment his grand plans come crashing down, but his emotional beats in this episode are so excellent (especially when he yells at his father, “You gave me away! Your boy, your last boy! You gave me away like I was some dog you didn’t want anymore, and now you curse me because I’ve come home!”) that I cannot find fault with most of the changes, save the erasure of Wex.
Meanwhile, as threats to the Iron Throne close in on all sides, it falls to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) to ward them off. This means alliances, and alliances mean marriages. Unfortunately for Tyrion, he himself is also beset by threats on all sides in the form of Maester Pycelle (Julian Glover), Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen), and Varys (Conleth Hill). Scratch that—really it’s Cersei whom Tyrion views as his biggest threat, and it’s Cersei to whom one of those three players gives their loyalty. Thus Tyrion enacts his infamous “one, two, three” trick to sniff out the rat.
This is a hard thing to do via the written word. Readers must not sniff out Tyrion’s plan, but they also should not grow frustrated with being so obviously kept in the dark that they throw the book across the room, never to pick it up again. Upon rereading, the clues should be obvious. Tyrion, the point of view character, must never think directly about his plan, lest he give it away, but must have a clear reason for doing what he does. Martin makes it look effortless, and we feel just as pleased for Tyrion as he does for himself once his plan is in place, but to pull this off, his outline must have been labyrinthine. The only hints we get are flashes of Tyrion thinking “One,” “Two,” and “Three” (Tyrion IV, “ACOK”). George R. R. Martin does love his rule of three.
In the show, editing can do the heavy lifting. “Thrones” has flexed its editing before, but this episode is perhaps the crown jewel of what we have seen so far. Tyrion invites Maester Pycelle to a meeting, explaining his plan to marry Myrcella (Aimee Richardson) off to Trystane Martell of Dorne, which Pycelle mustn’t tell to Queen Cersei. Only as Tyrion explains that Pycelle must not tell Cersei, the camera pans and suddenly Varys is in Pycelle’s place, and Myrcella is getting shipped off to Pyke to wed Theon. But no, she is actually going to win the loyalty of the Vale by marrying Robin Arryn (Lino Facioli), and Littlefinger will help secure the match, earning the haunted castle of Harrenhal in the process. The editing lets viewers in on the trick early on, unlike the novel, but still keeps us guessing as we can’t know Tyrion’s next victim until the camera pans over. It’s an excellent interpretation of an already-excellent scene, using the medium to enhance the source material, as it should be.
Of course, some things are lost in the process, as must be the case with any adaptation. A man comes to inquire about the Iron Throne’s debts, and Tyrion sends him to Littlefinger, even though the Master of Coin is likely embezzling funds. Ser Alliser Thorne (Owen Teale) arrives from the Night’s Watch to warn of wights and dead men walking, but Tyrion sends him away because, “Of all the black brothers he’d met on the Wall, Tyrion Lannister had liked Ser Alliser Thorne the least” (Tyrion IV, “ACOK”). (Surely this will have no consequences!) Tanda Stokeworth tries to get her simple daughter, Lollys, married to Tyrion. Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman) mumbles through Tyrion’s meetings. Tyrion ignores the pillage and rape of the Westerlands by his father’s men, as well as the food issues within King’s Landing itself. Littlefinger puffs up his importance to the Tully family. Theon Greyjoy never enters the conversation at all; instead, Tyrion omits that he plans to wed Myrcella to Doran Martell, giving Pycelle only a letter to Dorne instead (which Pycelle, of course, reads). To Littlefinger, he says the same as he does in the show, and then Varys, having heard from his little birds only that Tyrion has sent a letter to Dorne and plans to send Myrcella to the Vale, deduces that it is Tommen who must be going to Dorne to foster. Either way, when Cersei confronts Tyrion later—an entire chapter later, in the books—about Myrcella wedding Trystane Martell, the traitor is revealed.
But… while this trick is fun and clever, Tyrion is so paranoid about Cersei that he fails to shore up any support from others. He foists the Iron Bank on the man partially responsible for the Iron Throne’s financial quagmire, he is blind to the plight of the smallfolk both in and out of the city, and in sending Pycelle to the dungeons, he guarantees his guilt in the trial over Prince Joffrey’s (Jack Gleeson) upcoming death. Tyrion is very smart and very capable, but like all the Lannisters, is blinded by his own grudges and vendettas.
It’s something that he will soon have in common with Arya Stark (Maisie Williams, whose wig is really so awful in this episode), who is still on the road with Night’s Watch man Yoren (Francis Magee), Gendry (Joe Dempsie), and the other Night’s Watch recruits. Arya is having trouble sleeping, but not because of the snores of the other recruits; no, instead, she cannot sleep because she sees her father’s execution every time she closes her eyes. “How do you sleep when you… when you have those things in your head?” she asks Yoren when he comes to join her. He ponders the question, and then launches into a monologue about a boy named Willem:
You know, we’ve got something in common, me and you. You know that? I must have been a couple of years older than you. I saw my brother stabbed through the heart right on our doorstep. He weren’t much of a villain what skewered him. Willem, the lad’s name was. He ran off before anyone could spit. And I just stood there, watching my brother die. Here’s the funny part. I can’t picture my brother’s face anymore. But Willem, oh, he was a nice-looking boy. He had good white teeth, blue eyes, one of those dimpled chins all the girls like. I would think about him when I was working, when I was drinking, when I was having a shit. It got to the point where I would say his name every night before I went to bed. Willem. Willem. Willem. A prayer almost. Well, one day, Willem came riding back into town. I buried an axe so deep into Willem’s skull, they had to bury him with it. Willem’s horse got me to the Wall and I’ve been wearing black ever since. Well… That’ll help you sleep, eh?
For the first time in this retrospective, a show monologue is deserving of its own block quote. (Cersei’s speech about her first baby could have merited one, probably.) Yoren is not much of a character in the books, and certainly does not expound upon his backstory like this, but the show’s decision to expand on him is a welcome one, and Magee packs a punch with little screen time.
The irony of this speech is not lost on me, however. Here is Arya, a little girl who cannot sleep because of the violence she witnessed, and here is Yoren, a grown man who gives an entire monologue about how revenge eats you alive. He does not say as much, but what did killing Willem get him? Magee makes it abundantly clear that Yoren is not a happy man, that he is not particularly fulfilled by ferrying Night’s Watch recruits to and fro, and that his obsession with Willem did nothing but gnaw at his insides. Arya, young and traumatized as she is, will only focus on the “revenge” bit, even copying Yoren and whispering her tormentors’ names every night like a prayer. Then the show, instead of following Yoren’s logical, if unstated, conclusion—look at where revenge has gotten him!—decides to have no self-reflection and instead presents Arya’s revenge as badass and cool. Aura and hype moments only. But in this scene, at least, she is still just a scared little girl, and revenge is rightfully shown as an empty victory. For now.
Fun Facts, Tidbits, and Future Events:
- Arya doesn’t get captured right away in the books. She and a handful of recruits escape (and pick up an orphaned toddler christened Weasel along the way) for one chapter before being captured by Gregor Clegane (Conan Stevens in season one, Ian Whyte this season) and his men. No great loss here, and it’s a nice way to speed up her storyline, which can be slow in “Clash.”
- One of the funniest lines in the series comes from the “one, two, three” trick chapter, sadly not in the show (likely owing to the scant attention paid to the Vale’s mountain clans):
Littlefinger stroked the neat spike of his beard. “Lysa has woes of her own. Clansmen raiding out of the Mountains of the Moon, in greater numbers than ever before… and better armed.”
“Distressing,” said Tyrion Lannister, who had armed them. (Tyrion IV, “ACOK”)
- Another great quote from Tyrion IV, showing Jon Arryn’s murderer in plain sight:
“If I gave her [Lysa] Jon Arryn’s true killer, she might think more kindly of me.”
That made Littlefinger sit up. “True killer? I confess, you have me curious. Who do you propose?”
- Varys tells Tyrion, “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” This quote is from an earlier chapter in “Clash”—Tyrion II, to be exact—but is quite interesting here as it contrasts Cersei’s show-only “power is power” scene. She has more faith in her family name and institutions of power than Tyrion does, despite her paranoia, though neither are great at the whole optics thing.
- Jonathan Ryan plays “Drowned Priest” in this episode. Aeron Greyjoy, Balon’s brother, is also a drowned priest, just not this one, I guess. Justice for the Damphair!
- Brienne is not the first warrior woman in the books. Maege Mormont, the Lady of Bear Isle and brother to Lord Commander Jeor Mormont (and thus aunt to Iain Glen’s Jorah), and her daughter Dacey Mormont are both part of Robb’s army. Dacey gets killed at the Red Wedding, but Maege is alive and well, as is her second-oldest daughter, Alysane, who is a supporting character in the whole Stannis plotline in the North that they butchered in the show. She guards Asha Greyjoy while the latter is a prisoner with Stannis’s army.
- Littlefinger lies in the books about taking both Cat and Lysa’s (Kate Dickie) virginities.
- Once again, I find Jon’s (Kit Harington) plot so distressing in the show that I will not speak on it for now. It’s just really stupid and paints Jon as a loser.
- Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) has a wolf dream through Summer, where the camera acts as Summer’s point of view. There’s some good sound design here and it’s a fun little scene. Also, Maester Luwin (Donald Sumpter, who is really lovely and grandfatherly in this scene) drops some show-only lore about himself and namedrops the Children of the Forest.
- In the books, Shae (Sibel Kekilli) becomes handmaiden to Lollys Stokeworth (see above tangent about what was missing from Tyrion’s storyline), but it’s a very smart move to make her handmaiden to Sansa (Sophie Turner, who really shot up about ten feet in between seasons, good lord). It brings good actors together and gives both Shae and Sansa someone new to interact with.
Episode Ranking:
- “What Is Dead May Never Die”
- “The North Remembers”
- “The Night Lands”
“Game of Thrones” Season Two Trailer
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