Directed by: Alan Taylor
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Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows,” “A Dance With Dragons,” and the as-yet unpublished “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.”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.
70/100
There comes a time in every adaptation’s life when it must decide what to chop and what to keep. Season one already cut supporting characters such as Mya Stone and Jeyne Poole, and now David Benioff and D. B. Weiss are handed the unenviable task of wrangling the ever-expanding cast of “A Clash of Kings,” including Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) and Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) as new point-of-view characters in new locations, each with their own unique populations. Existing POV characters such as Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) go from having ten chapters in “A Game of Thrones” to a mere five in “ACOK,” but having one of the show’s most recognizable faces gone for large swatches of the season is an impossibility. Other characters, like Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), double their amount of chapters. Thus Martin’s behemoth narrative must be whittled into a season of television while balancing an audience of television watchers far more fickle than niche fantasy readers. Naturally, there will be losses, some felt more heavily than others.
But first, let us check in with Arya, the one Stark child “The North Remembers” forgot. She, alongside a host of others, including royal bastard Gendry (Joe Dempsie) and the new, very mysterious Jaqen H’ghar (Thomas Wlaschiha), is making her way to the Night’s Watch, led there by Yoren (Francis Magee). In “ACOK,” Arya has the second most chapters after Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage)—ten to his fifteen—but many of them are, essentially, travelogues. “The Night Lands” condenses her first two chapters into maybe ten minutes of screentime, cutting much of her meandering on the kingsroad; while understandable and perhaps even necessary, given that some of Arya’s “ACOK” chapters can feel a bit too repetitive, this also means we lose out on many of Arya’s interactions with the smallfolk of Westeros. These moments help the world feel alive and drive home just how much ordinary people suffer when, as Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) once said, “the high lords play their game of thrones.” Without Arya’s stop at an inn, where she hears the rumors of her brother Robb (Richard Madden) riding a direwolf into battle, or how the innkeep’s brother was sent to the Wall for filching some bread from a lord, the world feels that much smaller, and the ordinary folk within it that much more insignificant. While an understandable decision here, it feels an ill omen now that we know what’s to come: the show will become so obsessed with the said game of thrones that everything else, including any character whose last name is not Stark, Targaryen, or Lannister, will fade into the background.
At least we still have Hot Pie (Ben Hawkey). Even if a whole host of other characters have been slashed from Arya’s story, Hot Pie, Jaqen, Yoren, and Gendry are more than enough to keep things interesting, especially once we learn the City Watch has been sent to find Gendry (and presumably kill him). Even out of King’s Landing, Arya isn’t safe—though at least her identity is still hidden from everyone but Gendry, who sniffs her out quickly enough. This doesn’t happen for quite some time in the books, but keeping secrets is often uninteresting on screen, so it’s good that the reveal happens earlier. The dynamic between Arya and Gendry is really wonderful, but made slightly uncomfortable in the show since Joe Dempsie is very obviously an adult at the time of filming and Maisie Williams is very obviously a child going through puberty. (Gendry is about fourteen or fifteen in the books, so still significantly older than Arya but also still a child. He was born the same year as Daenerys.) That said, Dempsie’s line read of, “All that about cocks, I shouldn’t have said,” after discovering Arya is not just a girl, but a highborn lady at that, is really great, and underscores how vast the class divide is between them.
The scope is also narrowing in King’s Landing. In his first chapter in “A Clash of Kings,” after Shae (Sibel Kekilli) asks him what he will do as Hand of the King, Tyrion says, “Something Cersei will never expect… I’ll do… justice” (Tyrion I, “ACOK”). Of course, he does little other than protest meekly when Cersei (Lena Headey) dismisses the Night’s Watch’s request for aid, though at the very least he does get rid of Lord Commander of the City Watch, Janos Slynt (Dominic Carter), who was last seen butchering children for the crime of being kingly bastards; in Tyrion’s words, “I’m not questioning your honor, Lord Slynt. I’m denying its existence.”
Slynt’s banishment to the Wall will have effects that ripple through Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) story, but for now the biggest effect can be seen with Bronn (Jerome Flynn): the sellsword gets a promotion and takes Slynt’s place as Lord Commander of the City Watch. In the books, this goes to Ser Jacelyn Bywater (then to Addam Marbrand, then Osfryd Kettleblack—not to be confused with Osney or Osfred or Osmund Kettleblack—and currently Humfrey Waters), though Ser Jacelyn’s erasure does not hurt any thematic thrust as some changes with Arya’s storyline do.
Curiously, this winnowing of scope does not affect the employees of Petyr Baelish’s (Aidan Gillen) brothel. I wonder why…! The obligatory “tits out” scene this episode, at least, does more than just arouse; show-only creation Ros (Esmé Bianco) gives us a glimpse of that smallfolk perspective missing from Arya’s storyline as we are reminded of just how terrible Littlefinger can be—if there weren’t enough hints for you already. He reminds Ros that her employment is precarious, and the moment that she becomes a “bad investment,” she will be sold to the highest bidder, no matter who they may be. This is a great way to lay the groundwork for what Littlefinger will later do with Jeyne Poole… oh, wait. Right.
Essos, too, finds itself affected by the culling of characters, though in this case, the death of Dany’s blood rider Rakharo (Elyes Gabel) was not a David Benioff or D. B. Weiss decision; rather, Gabel left to pursue better things. Rakharo was rather one-note in the show (and is not much better in the books), so his loss is not a great one, but given that Dany’s supporting cast—bar Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)—is already among the weakest in the show… well, it certainly won’t make her stint in Meereen more interesting. More on that later.
In fact, Dany herself hardly appears in this episode at all, dithering about until she and her khalasar arrive in Qarth later on. While part of me wishes Benioff and Weiss had kept her offscreen and built suspense around what she has been up to instead of sticking her in episodes for only a minute or two, television viewers have short memories and terrible object permanency. Plus, contracts often stipulate how many episodes an actor must appear in. It’s not that Dany’s scenes here are bad, but they are certainly a letdown from her triumphant emergence from the funeral pyre last season. Martin can cleverly play around with expectations by dumping readers into long chapters where she deals with the reality of having dragons in the middle of a desert; the show cannot afford such a luxury with so many plotlines to get through and only ten hours to do so. Thus she is caught in these early episodes, advancing neither the plot nor the themes of the show.
More focus is given to establishing both new characters—Stannis (Stephen Dillane), Melisandre (Carice van Houten), Davos—and older ones brought to the forefront for the first time, such as poor, stupid Theon. Last episode Theon volunteered to be Robb Stark’s (Richard Madden) envoy to the Iron Islands as Theon’s father, Lord Balon Greyjoy (Patrick Malahide, making his first appearance here), commands a vast fleet of ships. As Lord Balon’s last living son, Theon expects a welcome fit for a lord, or perhaps even a prince, given that Balon Greyjoy once styled himself King of the Iron Islands. (As a reminder, that notion was quickly quashed by King Robert (Mark Addy), but not before Balon had gotten his two elder sons killed, and soon enough Theon was shipped off to Winterfell to be the ward and hostage of Ned Stark (Sean Bean), ensuring Balon’s good behavior.)
Of course, reality seldom meets our expectations. After talking a big game to the captain’s daughter (Amy Dawson)—talks about how virile the men of the Iron Islands are, how talented they are at lovemaking, how a whole procession will wait for Theon on the docks—the truth soon smacks Theon in the face. No one waits for him. No one even remembers him. Pyke is a hard place, and Theon has been gone for a decade, growing soft on the mainland. Thankfully, there are still enjoyments to be found in the shape of a woman named Yara (Gemma Whelan). Theon hitches a ride with her to his father’s castle, flirting and groping her all the while, until he arrives at Balon’s hall.
After a thorough dressing down that robs Theon of all the pride and swagger he had before, Balon reveals the worst truth of all: Yara is Theon’s older sister, all grown up.
The blocking for this reveal is strange—Yara crosses to Balon, who wraps his arm around her side as they face front, like they’re in a stage production instead of a filmed show—but stranger still is Yara’s name. Yara Greyjoy does not exist in “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Asha Greyjoy, however, is a delight. So why change her name? Presumably to avoid confusion with the wildling Osha (Natalia Tena), but then… does Yara not sound like Arya? Do Melisandre and Missandei (Natahlie Emmanuel, who will debut next season) sound similar? It’s not the end of the world to change a character’s name, but the rationale is unsound and, combined with the changing of Robert Arryn to Robin (Lino Facioli) and Jhogo to Kovarro (Steven Cole), it shows a lack of faith in the audience. They can’t pay attention to exposition unless there are boobs on screen and they can’t differentiate between characters’ names, even if said characters never cross paths.
And even with the extra screen time given to Theon, his plot still has its own losses. His uncle Aeron, priest of the Drowned God, does not appear, nor are uncles Victarion or Euron mentioned. Again, this plays into the tendency of “Thrones” to ignore minor characters early on and then scramble to introduce them when they become major players; while it may seem—and perhaps even is—small potatoes now, the ripple effect will cripple the show.
Take the legend of Lightbringer, for example. When Davos goes to visit Salladhor Saan (Lucian Msamati), the pirate recounts to him the tale of Azor Ahai and his flaming sword: during a time “‘when darkness lay heavy on the world’” (i.e., the Long Night), Azor Ahai labored and labored to forge a blade to hold back the darkness.
“A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.
“Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns.” (Davos I, “ACOK”)
The show has only just set up Lightbringer and the prince that was promised, with Melisandre proclaiming dear old Stannis as said prince (also known as Azor Ahai, though whether or not they were actually the same person is up for debate amongst the “A Song of Ice and Fire” internet scholars), so introducing Nissa Nissa and the whole legend might have been overkill. Yet, as with Aeron, Victarion, and Euron, the lack of focus on these figures—myth or not—will lead to disaster down the road. “Thrones” is often unwilling to engage with the mystical aspects of its story, and when the plot demands it do so, the show has to bend over backwards to make it work, and the end result is often disappointing. (In this case, the “end result” is Arya Stark for some godforsaken reason, though all textual evidence points to Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and/or Dany. Hell, there’s more evidence that Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is Azor Ahai reborn than there is for Arya.)
But it is not just what “Thrones” leaves out that irks me. Oh, no. It is also what they add in. While the scene with Littlefinger and Ros had at least some merit, the sex scene between Melisandre and Stannis… well, it just proves that some things are better left a mystery.
As Stannis is not a POV character in the books, we do not see him sleeping with Melisandre. Of course, they are all but confirmed to sleep together—that is how shadow babies get made, after all—but the show strips away any and all mystique that their relationship possesses. At least they made Stannis awkward and fumbling at sex; that, at least, seems par for the course with his character. But to replace Stannis’s introspective scenes with Davos, his memory of his parents’ deaths, and a story of the old goshawk he used to train with a seduction is a great loss. We get rutting on a war table instead of this:
Stannis stood abruptly. “R’hllor. Why is that so hard? They will not love me, you say? When have they ever loved me? How can I lose something I have never owned?” He moved to the south window and gazed out at the moonlit sea. “I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King’s Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men.” (Davos I, “ACOK”)
Or this:
“When I was a lad I found an injured goshawk and nursed her back to health. Proudwing, I named her. She would perch on my shoulder and flutter from room to room after me and take food from my hand, but she would not soar. Time and again I would take her hawking, but she never flew higher than the treetops. Robert called her Weakwing. He owned a gyrfalcon named Thunderclap who never missed her strike. One day our great-uncle Ser Harbert told me to try a different bird. I was making a fool of myself with Proudwing, he said, and he was right.” Stannis Baratheon turned away from the window, and the ghosts who moved upon the southern sea. “The Seven have never brought me so much as a sparrow. It is time I tried another hawk, Davos. A red hawk.” (Davos I, “ACOK”)
Thus the show misses the animus of the middle Baratheon son. “Thrones” presents him as motivated entirely by an unyielding sense of justice and ambition. And yes, Stannis does possess those, but there is so much more. He was, once upon a time, a boy who took an injured bird and cared for her, only to suffer insults at the hand of his older brother; he was, once upon a time, a boy who saw his parents die outside his window as they returned with a gift in tow for him; he was, once upon a time, an eighteen-year-old (well, I guess older than that in the show) tasked with handling a castle under siege and keeping his baby brother alive, a baby brother who is now in open rebellion against him. There is a heart there, and the real tragedy of Stannis is that he will go on to rip it out. But sure, I guess bad sex is cool, too.
Fun Facts, Tidbits, and Future Events:
- I didn’t mention it in the bulk of the review, but the scene between Tyrion and Cersei in this episode is one of the best in the show so far. “You’re funny. You’ve always been funny. But none of your jokes will ever match your first one, will they? You remember? Back when you ripped my mother open on your way out of her and she bled to death,” Cersei tells Tyrion, to which he responds, “She was my mother too.” Both Headey and Dinklage are absolutely tremendous here. “Mother gone for the sake of you. There’s no bigger joke in the world than that.” It is such a treat to watch them share the screen.
- Also not mentioned in this review is Jon’s plotline in this episode, mostly because it really annoyed me. He has a huge stick up his ass the whole time and then loses a fight to an old man for no reason (that does not happen in the books). Sam (David Bradley), at least, has some decency and sense in this episode. They really, really mess up poor Jon this season.
- The opening credits get an update as Pyke and the Iron Islands are added to the map.
- Tyrion’s scene with Varys (Conleth Hill) involves him walking to his chambers for some reason, talking with Varys as the eunuch makes veiled threats against Shae, and then leaving after approximately one minute because he and Varys have a council meeting. The next scene is that council meeting, so why on earth was Tyrion going back to his chambers in the first place? Was he really going to have a quickie with Shae short enough to get him to the meeting on time? Was there no other scene in which Varys could make threats?
- Varys, in that same scene, says, “Storms come and go, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling.” Is now a good time to mention the theory that Varys is a merman?
- This episode marks the first appearance of Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman, whose father, Rob Donachie, plays Ser Rodrik Cassel, the loyal master-at-arms for Winterfell). I am very fond of sweet little Pod.
- Theon says of Robb, “He thinks of me like a brother,” as if Theon doesn’t much care for him. Oh, buddy. Theon’s chapters in “ADWD” are perhaps my favorite in Martin’s entire series and heartbreaking for a multitude of reasons, but one of them is this: “And Robb. Robb who had been more of a brother to Theon than any son born of Balon Greyjoy’s loins. Murdered at the Red Wedding, butchered by the Freys. I should have been with him. Where was I? I should have died with him” (Theon I, “ADWD”). His POV is truly among Martin’s best work. The show’s adaptation… not so much.
- The show did not even try to match any Greyjoy’s physical description—which is fine, to be clear—but just for kicks and giggles, this is how Asha gets introduced: “Ironborn, he [Theon] knew at a glance; lean and long-legged, with black hair cut short, wind-chafed skin, strong sure hands, a dirk at her belt. Her nose was too big and too sharp for her thin face, but her smile made up for it” (Theon II, “ACOK”).
- Salladhor Saan does not have nearly enough drip. All the colors are so drab in his scene. Compare that to his introduction in the book:
The Lyseni was a sleek, smiling man whose flamboyance was a byword on both sides of the narrow sea. Today he wore flashing cloth-of-silver, with dagged sleeves so long the ends of them pooled on the floor. His buttons were carved jade monkeys, and atop his wispy white curls perched a jaunty green cap decorated with a fan of peacock feathers. (Davos I, “ACOK”)
- That said, the relish with which Msamati delivers the line, “I’m not going to rape her, I’m going to fuck her” singlehandedly elevates that entire scene.
- Davos and Stannis are two bros chillin’ in a hot tub five feet apart ’cause they’re not gay. “A man chops off your fingers and you fall in love with him,” Salladhor says to Davos (ooh, backstory teasing). And later, Davos tells Salladhor, “King Stannis is my god. He raised me up and blessed me with his trust.” What are they?
- Why does Melisandre’s dress look like it came from H&M? Cersei’s are great this season. Why not poor Mel?
- Melisandre says that Selyse, Stannis’s wife, is “sickly, weak, shut away in a tower. She disgusts you.” While she does disgust Stannis, she is neither sickly nor weak nor shut away in a tower. Not sure what that’s about.
- Davos has about a million sons in the book, but only one in the show, Matthos (Kerr Logan), who is told by Melisandre that “death by fire is the purest death.” Foreshadowing!
Episode Ranking:
- “The North Remembers”
- “The Night Lands”
“Game of Thrones” Season Two Trailer
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