I wish they could have kept Theon out of sight, presumed dead, until season 5 or 6, like the books. As it is, scenes of Theon getting tortured, maybe escaping, then getting captured and tortured again will become very boring very quickly.
Unless the dreadfort bastard starts referring to Theon as Number 6 and lets him live in a small quirky village. That would be acceptable for at least two episodes.
I don’t think this is the kind of show that goes anywhere, its not like anyone is taking down the Lannisters.
I haven’t read the books, but I am guessing at this point the Starks are basically done. Robb has shown himself to be an effective military commander, but ultimately just as dumb as his father at playing the game: first by breaking the promise to wed the Frey girl and then by killing the Karstark dude. Either Robb is going to end with his head on a pike like daddy or there has to be some kind of peace treaty once he reclaims his home.
And nobody is really in a position to make another run on King’s Landing. Stannis is still mopping and licking his wounds. Daenerys still has another year or two til her dragons are ready.
You’re probably right. I doubt anything truly shocking will happen anytime this season; the third book was pretty predictable.
Yep, boring wedding season; 4 of them if I count correctly.
I think all the jostling for position is the point, so this is definitely one of those shows where you can say it’s about the journey, not the destination.
It makes sense for what we’ve seen so far. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the whole thing ends with Dany on the throne, with her dragons, having reclaimed her kingdom and the dragons having melted the frozen undead once and for all. Yeah, well, for Dany fans maybe that will be a payoff by itself but I think for everyone else the payoff was watching how she managed that. Same for anyone else who ‘wins’ in the end. The cool bit will be looking back at all the contenders who took their shot and failed.
I usually hate this kind of story but that’s because these ‘it’s the journey’ stories usually have uninteresting characters. Probably because the writer is so focused on the journey being interesting that he or she forgets the characters still need to be the most interesting part. GoT doesn’t have that problem thankfully.
I think the episode kind of exemplified both the good and bad things that come from HBO’s tooling with the plot. They have done some awesome stuff with combining characters. And I think that the Edric/Gendry swap will be good. As in the books, gendry is left with the brotherhood never to be seen again, where the other bastard might have some plot use later. The added stuff with Ros is great, and her death served both to remind you that both messing with powerful pieces in the game of thrones (varys/littlfinger) can lead you down a dark path. (target practice with Joffrey). As others have said in the books Joffrey is rumored to do these sorts of things with whores.
The stuff with Loras was a bit weird in the shows. In the books he is never mentioned as gay, or even really alluded to as gay. He was just best bros with Renly and that was really it. You could guess it was like that between them, but it was never confirmed in the books. I thought it was an interesting turn, but I didn’t like what the queen of thorns said about it being “acceptable” in highgarden. Hell no. Any Knight would be under constant siege if he was known to be homosexual. These were shitty times, and westeros is not a progressive place. Maybe in Bravos or Myr… I don’t know. Some of that felt forced to me. Like we are supposed to hate Tywin because he is a bigot? Everyone in Westeros is a bigot.(to some extent).
The Bran stuff in the books kinda really dragged on anyway. I hope TV viewers are ready for 2 seasons of traveling aimlessly in the woods. Unless they actually start kicking in some of the Bran/Direwolf stuff, it is gonna get boring.
Also, due to the format, the Theon stuff is gonna be hard to do…
I think it’s fine, she’s being boldly open about it but I think intolerant cultures often have these strange open secrets (some black communities have “the d/l” for example).
Did Loras say he wanted Sansa’s dress to have “French sleeves” during their talk too, or am I crazy?
I think he said “fringed”.
It is confirmed in the books. This is from one of Jaime’s chapters in ASOS:
The last of the northmen had dismounted, Jaime saw, and now Loras Tyrell had seen Brienne.
“Ser Loras.” She stood stupidly, holding her bridle.
Loras Tyrell strode toward her. “Why?” he said. “You will tell me why. He treated you kindly, gave you a rainbow cloak. Why would you kill him?”
“I never did. I would have died for him.”
“You will.” Ser Loras drew his longsword. “It was not me.”
“Emmon Cuy swore it was, with his dying breath.”
“He was outside the tent, he never saw…”
“There was no one in the tent but you and Lady Stark. Do you claim that old woman could cut through hardened steel?”
“There was a shadow. I know how mad it sounds, but… I was helping Renly into his armor, and the candles blew out and there was blood everywhere. It was Stannis, Lady Catelyn said. His… his shadow. I had no part in it, on my honor…”
“You have no honor. Draw your sword. I won’t have it said that I slew you while your hand was empty.” Jaime stepped between them. “Put the sword away, ser.”
Ser Loras edged around him. “Are you a craven as well as a killer, Brienne? Is that why you ran, with his blood on your hands? Draw your sword, woman!”
“Best hope she doesn’t.” Jaime blocked his path again. “Or it’s like to be your corpse we carry out. The wench is as strong as Gregor Clegane, though not so pretty.”
“This is no concern of yours.” Ser Loras shoved him aside.
Jaime grabbed the boy with his good hand and yanked him around. “I am the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, you arrogant pup. Your commander, so long as you wear that white cloak. Now sheathe your bloody sword, or I’ll take it from you and shove it up some place even Renly never found.”
On that I saw two possibilities. One, she was directly responding to a threat by Tywin to out Loras. So by saying what she said she was really just daring him to do it, in effect saying it won’t matter since it’ll change nothing for Loras. Also, Loras is the heir to a powerful family. Who, exactly, is this person or persons who’d dare to attack him? Bolton himself wanted Jaime to be sure to tell his dad that Bolton had nothing to do with his maiming, and he’s a frickin’ Lord! Head of his own family, and he’s making sure to not take blame for hurting the son of a powerful family.
I didn’t know it was event talked about! Good find. But in the books the loras/gay stuff was surely was whispered the same if not less than the Jaime/Cersei rumors.
I could see it that way, I am just really worried that they are trying to make the highgarden peoples up to be the good guys, when as far as the books have shown, there is no pure black/white when it comes to houses an their honor.
Though, I suppose it would be fun to have some knight openly make a comment about loras’s perceived “perversions” to his face, and watch the ensuing 5 seconds of combat.
Well, this is part of it. The other part of Bolton’s reasoning is the simple fact that the Lannisters are winning. (And, in the books, he has foreknowledge of the Red Wedding.) If you knew all of these things already, you’d want to appease Tywin Lannister as much as possible too.
— Alan
Yeah, but it’s also keeping with how things go in that kingdom. Sure people take action, and make moves, but those are actions in response to major issues and moves intended to pay off in big ways.
I don’t see how anyone would see Loras being gay as something deserving any kind of action. At most people will treat him as they do Jaime, calling him names behind his back. Jaime is known to be guilty of a serious betrayal of oaths and yet no one gets in his face about it.
Cersei and Jaime’s incest is only an issue because it affects Joffrey’s claim on the throne, otherwise no one would give two craps about it.
As uptight as the people of that land are about a lot of things, sexuality does not seem to be one of them.
You also have to consider it in terms of the conversation. Both of them are trying argue that their offspring is too good for the other, that they are getting the better side of the arrangement. Neither Tywin nor Olenna care about honor beyond how they can make that system work for themselves. Tywin’s only objection to the twincest would be the effect it has on the Lannister legacy. Olenna likely has no problem with Loras being a ‘sword-swallower’ beyond any practical problems it might cause her. These are two of the most adept players in the story, and honor is part of the game’s ruleset, they approach it in those terms.
I agree, but Tywin did seem honestly disgusted by Loras’ “deviant” behavior… and seems to me to be more disgusted by that than he was with Tyrion’s habit of bedding whores.
A particularly cool wee bit, for me, was when the Red Priestess looked slightly scared of Arya when she looked into Arya’s eyes and saw an abyss with the severally-coloured eyes (presumably of Arya’s intended revenge victims) staring out. You go wolf-girl! Totally nothing to do with the books, but very cool. I love that “weird” music theme that comes on whenever any Lord of Light stuff is happening. It puts me in the frame of mind that Rh’llor is really some kind of Lovecraftian horror :)
Another neat subtle touch was a tiny moment of Roose Bolton’s evident enjoyment at watching Jaimie’s struggles with his food. Just a hint of the reason why the Bolton’s sigil is a flayed man, and why Bolton’s bastard isn’t just a flash in the pan wrt his sadism.
This series is just unbelievably epic-feeling and powerful sometimes. Even though I’m up to date with the books, the series is its own brilliant thing that leaves me gagging for next week’s episode just like everyone else.
Littlefinger’s speech near the end (with the accompanying visuals, right up to the jolly mockingbird sail on the ship) chilled me to the bone.
I do like that the show is different enough to make it new and fresh for us book-readers.
Another thought, wrt the debate about the Ramsay torture porn. On reflection I think it’s necessary for non-readers, to establish Ramsay, who does figure more later on. It also gives non-readers a little detective puzzle to figure out, and it sets the scene for what really happened to Winterfell, which I should imagine for non-readers is still a bit of a mystery, and wouldn’t have much impact if they’d just heard that Bolton’s bastard had done it (“who he?”). Also, of course, it’s necessary to establish Theon’s penance and possible future redemption (still something that might happen in the books). Anyway, even if the torture is a bit squirm-inducing, Ramsay’s actor, who was excellent in the TV series Misfits, is worth watching and does a great job acting a pure evil sadist. Purely polar moral characters are rare in GRRM, but Ramsay’s definitely one of the evilest characters in the whole series.
“There is no black & white” is a verrrry common talking point when discussing the series. I don’t think it’s true. Here’s a list of some of the monsters in ASOIAF: Joffrey, Tywin, Gregor Clegane, Rorge, Biter, Craster, Ramsay, Vargo Hoat.
Ned and Brienne pass the white hat test for me, along with characters like Old Bear Mormont, Sam, Bran, the Reed siblings, etc.
I think Martin earned this accolade of moral ambiguity by having characters who can rationalize their behavior. So we expect Jaime and the Hound to be irredeemable, and then when they are shown to be partially sympathetic, suddenly Westeros is a triumph of moral ambiguity, a land in which black and white have been banished, and only gray remains. If that were the case, the story would lose a lot of its rooting interest: Joffrey is the flattest of flat characters, but he’s incredibly functional. Since he’s so easy to hate, we can calibrate our feelings towards other characters based on how they relate to him. In fact, if you want a secret index of the story’s good guys, just pay attention to who hates Joffrey and who defends him. When Jaime turns from cartoon villain to antihero, part of that is his disavowal of Joffrey.
