Game of Thrones Retrospective: A Man Without Honor (Season Two, Episode Seven)

Directed by: David Nutter
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Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows,” “A Dance With Dragons,” and the as-yet unpublished “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.”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.

60/100

By now, season two of “Game of Thrones” has settled into predictability. It displays greater confidence in its performances, aesthetics, music, and almost all things; this also means it displays greater confidence in its missteps. The good plotlines are very good, the bad plotlines… are very bad. Certainly I am being harsher on this season—which does feature some excellent work—knowing what comes later, for had the show had even a passably decent final four seasons, or even a good season eight after stumbling for seasons five through seven, I would be more inclined to forgive the missteps. But it did not, and thus the agonies of Qarth are multiplied tenfold. And the agonies of Jon’s (Kit Harington) plot. And the agonies of Talisa (Oona Chaplin). 

This episode does have one thing going for it that nearly makes up for all of those agonies, and that’s Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Unfortunately, Jaime’s appearance is tied to another deeply stupid change to Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), and so even the joy I felt at seeing him is muted compared to my annoyance at yet one more change that makes Cat appear moronic. It really is a shame that an episode featuring one of the best scenes between women so far, when Sansa (Sophie Turner) begins her period and Cersei (Lena Headey) gives her some frank advice, also has the show succumbing to its more misogynistic instincts, even if unintentionally. 

So let us start with that one good scene, all the way in King’s Landing. Sansa, still reeling from the mob last episode, has a nightmare and wakes up to another one in real life: her period has started, which means she can be wedded and bedded. Attempts to hide the blood on her mattress (with help from Shae (Sibel Kekilli)) fail, and soon enough she finds herself face-to-face with Cersei. When asked about her period, Sansa murmurs, “I thought it would be less messy,” which can perfectly sum up her life thus far. With the beginning of menstruation, another scale falls from her eyes. Or perhaps they all come cascading down as Cersei admits to Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) being “difficult” and tells Sansa, from experience with her own marriage, “You may never love the King, but you will love his children.”

The two women are more similar than they might seem at first glance. Cersei was once a child filled with dreams of marrying Prince Rhaegar, just as Sansa dreamed of marrying Prince Joffrey. Both had rude awakenings when they discovered how limited they were by nature of their sex; Cersei turns her anger outwards against the world and her own gender, but Sansa manages to retain much of her goodness and faith in others. (At least until later seasons. Jesus. It should also be noted that Cersei did kill her friend when she was young and start an incestuous relationship with her twin, so they are not that similar.) Thus this conversation is all the more heartbreaking and horrifying: Cersei both hates, envies, and pities Sansa, while Sansa sees the monster she could become. 

It will come as no surprise, then, that this scene comes from George R. R. Martin’s work, and the worst offenses in this episode do not. 

Take Arya (Maisie Williams) in Harrenhal. We finally witness some brutality from Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) as he rips the place apart in search of the assassin who killed Amory Lorch (Fintan McKeown), and it’s nice to be reminded that the man is actually pretty terrible, which is something the show seems to forget every so often. But still, he manages to be kind enough to Arya as the two once again dance around each other. When Tywin starts schooling Arya in the story of Aegon the Conqueror, she is quick to remind Tywin that Aegon’s two sister-wives, Visenya and Rhaenys, were pivotal to said conquering. 

Immediately after bringing up Visenya and Rhaenys to show Tywin that, presumably, women also matter and are cool, Arya proudly proclaims, “Most girls are idiots.” If I were to charitably interpret Tywin’s next line—“You remind me of my daughter”—then I would say that it’s a nice reference to Cersei’s internalized misogyny, but there is simply no charitable way to interpret Arya’s statement, which plays as genuine. In her very first chapter in “A Game of Thrones,” Arya tells Jon, “The woman is important too” (Arya I, “AGOT”). But the show cannot reconcile the fact that Arya might have typically unladylike interests without disdaining her own gender. If a girl fights, or doesn’t enjoy wearing dresses, or doesn’t partake in nurturing activities, she must be Not Like Other Girls. To be Not Like Other Girls, you must remind everyone around you of how girls usually suck, actually, but not you. You will tear them all down so you can stand on equal footing with the Cool Men. 

Had this been done with an ounce of self-reflection, perhaps I would give it a pass. But Arya’s statement is taken at face value: most girls are idiots. They are too preoccupied with their girly pursuits—never mind that those girly pursuits are often their only lot in life—to be as cool as Arya. It is why, whenever the show runs out of source material from Martin for its softer characters like Sansa, they suddenly become cold and thus “masculine.” They lose interest in anything that might be construed as too feminine. It is why, faced with characters like Arya and Brienne (Gwendoline Christie), whose relationship to their gender and gender roles in Westeros society is often fraught, the show opts to have them align with the patriarchy and punch down at their fellow women. Benioff and Weiss simply cannot comprehend a world in which women can reject their role in patriarchal society without rejecting their own sex or condemning them for simply existing within that society.

This is also why Talisa falls so flat—with no disrespect to Oona Chaplin, who sparkles with charisma and is utterly wasted here. The writing offenses surrounding her will grow tenfold next episode, but once again she proves to have no discernable personality outside of “spunky.” Any woman worth writing home about must, in some way, buck tradition and have miraculously modern sensibilities, or otherwise she’s worthless. Robb (Richard Madden), of course having never met any woman who speaks her mind like this—never mind that he is related to Catelyn and Arya, two of the most opinionated women in the entire series—is so taken with Talisa that he invites her to the Crag so that she can get medical supplies. That makes perfect sense, what are you talking about?

And this brings us back to the maddening change in Catelyn, which starts with an ill-advised escape attempt from Jaime. Jaime murders lesser Lannister cousin Alton (Karl Davies) for some reason, as apparently that was a necessary step to then murder jailor Torrhen Karstark (Tyrone McElhennon) and break out for about two seconds. Torrhen is dead by now in the books, slain by Jaime at the Battle of the Whispering Wood. Alton does not exist, and instead the role of Lannister-Stark envoy is filled by Cleos Frey, son of Genna Lannister and her Frey husband. Cleos lives long enough to set out with Brienne and Jaime on their journey to King’s Landing and has nothing to do with any escape attempts by Jaime. In fact, the only attempt to free Jaime from Riverrun—where he is kept in the books instead of the nondescript Stark camp—comes from Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), who sends a man to spring his brother. The plot fails. Jaime does not commit any kinslaying, for however much the narrative paints him as a villain until “A Storm of Swords,” he is not that evil. It is evil for evil’s sake, as the show is wont to do.

But these changes are not what I take umbrage with. No, it is what happens after Jaime kills Torrhen that irks me. When the Karstarks begin to call for Jaime’s head, Catelyn sets him free with the reasoning that, if he were killed, the Lannisters would kill both Sansa and Arya (both of whom she believes to be in King’s Landing). This is the same woman who used her political wiles to arrest Tyrion all those episodes ago, the same woman who held her own against Walder Frey (David Bradley) in negotiations, and yet she could figure out no other way to keep Jaime safe than to… send him all the way back to King’s Landing with Brienne, and in part because Littlefinger said so three episodes ago. She did not think to squirrel him away for a while until Robb comes back and can wield his political authority, nor to call on her mysteriously missing Tully bannermen (I understand not including Riverrun this season because of budgetary constraints, but damn would it have been more interesting than watching that muddy camp episode after episode). 

Of course, Catelyn frees Jaime in the books, too. This is her third most evil act according to many fans, right behind capturing Tyrion and being occasionally mean to Jon Snow. They often extend oodles of sympathy to our male protagonists—like Tyrion and later Jaime—who do far, far worse, but Catelyn is nothing more than a bitch. For those with any amount of empathy, however, Catelyn’s freeing of Jaime in “A Clash of Kings” is much more moving and much more understandable, for she believes Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and Rickon (Art Parkinson) dead. 

Their “deaths” at the hands of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) occur at the end of this episode, though rewatchers and book readers will know that Theon actually kills the miller’s boys, not the two youngest Starks. Cat, unfortunately, does not have access to this information, and her belief that her youngest sons have died wrecks her.

I cannot blame them, Catelyn thought. They do not know. And if they did, why should they care? They never knew my sons. Never watched Bran climb with their hearts in their throats, pride and terror so mingled they seemed as one, never heard him laugh, never smiled to see Rickon trying so fiercely to be like his older brothers. She stared at the supper set before her: trout wrapped in bacon, salad of turnip greens and red fennel and sweetgrass, pease and onions and hot bread. Brienne was eating methodically, as if supper were another chore to be accomplished. I am become a sour woman, Catelyn thought. I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once. (Catelyn VII, “ACOK”)

She goes to talk to her father (Hoster Newman, next season), who lays dying in Riverrun and cannot respond:

“I keep remembering the Stark words. Winter has come, Father. For me. For me. Robb must fight the Greyjoys now as well as the Lannisters, and for what? For a gold hat and an iron chair? Surely the land has bled enough. I want my girls back, I want Robb to lay down his sword and pick some homely daughter of Walder Frey to make him happy and give him sons. I want Bran and Rickon back, I want…” Catelyn hung her head. “I want,” she said once more, and then her words were gone. (Catelyn VII, “ACOK”)

Catelyn VII in “ACOK” is chock-full of these beautiful, melancholic musings from Cat. It ends as her scenes in “A Man Without Honor” do: she approaches Jaime in his cell and asks Brienne to give her a sword. Why rob Cat of these moments? Did they feel they didn’t have enough material to give to Fairley this season? If so, why not introduce Riverrun, where she remains for much of “Clash” and where the writers can explore the rich dynamics between Cat and her family? Why switch to this instead?

Is it an attempt to make her freeing of Jaime more “logical,” even if that logic is flimsy? Do Benioff and Weiss wish to downplay the effects of her grief, perhaps because a woman making an emotionally-driven decision is, to them, a sign of weakness and stupidity? Why rob Cat of so many of her most lyrical moments in “A Clash of Kings” as she watches, waits, and does her duty? Gone are her moments with Hoster and Edmure (Tobias Menzies, also next season), and instead we are treated to scenes of her nagging Robb for being a horny idiot and falling for Talisa. Think of what we could have had:

“Our duty.” Catelyn’s face was drawn as she started across the yard. I have always done my duty, she thought. Perhaps that was why her lord father had always cherished her best of all his children. Her two older brothers had both died in infancy, so she had been son as well as daughter to Lord Hoster until Edmure was born. Then her mother had died and her father had told her that she must be the lady of Riverrun now, and she had done that too. And when Lord Hoster promised her to Brandon Stark, she had thanked him for making her such a splendid match.

I gave Brandon my favor to wear, and never comforted Petyr once after he was wounded, nor bid him farewell when Father sent him off. And when Brandon was murdered and Father told me I must wed his brother, I did so gladly, though I never saw Ned’s face until our wedding day. I gave my maidenhood to this solemn stranger and sent him off to his war and his king and the woman who bore him his bastard, because I always did my duty.

From the very first episode, the show has flattened Catelyn. Considering the show’s track record, perhaps that is a blessing in disguise, but the disservice done to the series and this episode in doing so is, if not dire, enough to indicate a severe misunderstanding of the books. Color me shocked.

The rest of her interactions with Jaime are, by and large, taken from the books. One of Jaime’s more famous quotes occurs in this episode:

“So many vows… they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.” (Catelyn VII, “ACOK”)

This, to me, seems a pretty self-explanatory quote, but I must be a genius or something because the show seems to think that this is not straightforward enough. “But what if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocents?” Jaime adds in the show. I guess asking the audience to read between the lines is simply too much to ask.

So, too, is asking them to remember all of Daenerys’s (Emilia Clarke) extensive supporting cast, which at my last count, included maybe three other characters with speaking lines outside of Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen). Instead of expanding upon the thin characterization of the Dothraki in the novels, Benioff and Weiss decided the easier move was to kill them all off. I suppose that 2012 was only the beginning of wokeism, so we must forgive them for writing off all of the people of color, right? Surely the fantastic adaptation of the House of the Undying will make up for the sins of this godforsaken invented plot of dragons getting stolen and men declaring themselves kings of Qarth and warlocks dying left and right and such dull, dull, uniform colors everywhere, right? Right?

(Not right.)

Stray Observations:

• Jaime has some great lines in the book that are skipped this episode, such as, “I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act” (Catelyn VII, “ACOK”). Perhaps this is the first glimmer that the show will not follow the Tysha plotline, as the one who loves Jaime for a kindness he never did is Tyrion. Tyrion loves Jaime because he believes his brother hired Tysha as a prostitute to help him be less lonely, when in reality, Tysha was just a normal peasant girl who really did fall in love with Tyrion, then was brutalized for doing so.
• The catspaw who attempted to kill Bran also goes undiscussed in this episode. In the book, the crumbs are being laid to clue us in that Petyr Baelish (Aidan Gillen) lied to Cat about the owner of the catspaw’s dagger.
• Fun things that get namedropped this episode: Dark Sister, the Valyrian steel sword at one point wielded by Bloodraven (Max von Sydow in a tree later on); Jonquil, a woman from Westerosi legend; the Doom of Valyria, which caused the Targaryens to flee to Westeros with their dragons; the Brotherhood Without Banners; Mance Rayder (Ciarán Hinds), the King-Beyond-the-Wall; and Cinda Lannister, who is a made-up Lannister. Jaime does say that “there’s only one fat Lannister,” which could perhaps be a reference to his aunt, Genna Lannister. Genna never appearing in “Thrones” should be a crime punishable by death.
• Jaime gets a very great zinger this episode (as usual) upon his recapture after his initial escape attempt. “You’ve become a real she-wolf in your older years. There’s not much fish left in you,” he tells Catelyn Stark, neé Tully (whose sigil is a trout). But this one is straight from the books: “What was the name of that bastard he [Ned] fathered?” Jaime asks. Catelyn: “Brienne.” Jaime: “No, that wasn’t it.” Made me laugh out loud in the show and whilst reading. 
• Robb storming the Crag in the books is what leads to his meeting Jeyne Westerling and breaking his Frey marriage vows. He does not go there with a hot Volantene noble to get medical supplies. Shoot me, please.
• It was a smart move to give the viewers an emotional connection to the miller’s boys that Theon kills by having the miller appear in a previous episode seeking help at his mill. Bran advises that he adopt two orphan boys, making their deaths all the sadder as Bran will feel even more acutely that it is his fault. That is about the only smart move this episode. Not really sure how I feel about the whole “deducing-Bran-and-Rickon-came-this-way-by-finding-walnut-shells-on-the-ground” thing, but okay. 
• Tywin asks Arya, “Do you know what legacy means? It’s what you pass down to your children and your children’s children. It’s what remains of you when you’re gone.” This would be a great quote if the show did not buy into the “harsh but fair” idea of Tywin that many people without reading comprehension believe. Alas, his children are torn apart not by Tywin’s rotten parenting, but by bad writing.
• This episode marks the breaking point with Tywin and Arya for me. He sniffs out that she is not a commoner, and somehow lets her keep doing as she has been. No way, buddy. You really think Tywin Lannister would let that go uninterrogated? 
• This is the very first appearance of Ygritte’s (Rose Leslie) common refrain, “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” I don’t even want to talk about how stupid they are continuing to make Jon this season, but the little romantic scene between him and Ygritte at sunrise is very pretty to gaze upon.
• Oh, look, there’s Quaithe (Laura Pradelska). Quaithe continues to pop up in “A Storm of Swords” and “A Dance with Dragons” but is never terribly interesting. Quaithe likes to talk about Asshai, and it’s likely that George R. R. Martin intended for Dany to visit at some point, realized that would be too far, and has Dany hang out in Meereen instead. Quaithe is still around, though, offering cryptic advice whenever she feels like it. I don’t think about her all that much, but there you go.
• Cersei gets another great scene this episode, this time with Tyrion as they discuss their old wounds. Each needs comfort, each almost wants to give it, but their family dynamics are too messed up to do so. Dinklage and Headey are just phenomenal. 
• I wish they didn’t cut Alys Karstark, man. The Karstarks’ anger here would be so much better if they actually dug into that family a bit more and didn’t just have them pop up again in season six to side with Ramsay (Iwan Rheon).

Episode Ranking:

• “What Is Dead May Never Die”
• “The North Remembers”
• “The Ghost of Harrenhal”
• “The Night Lands”
• “The Old Gods and the New”
• “A Man Without Honor”
• “Garden of Bones”

“Game of Thrones” Season Two Trailer

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