In season 1 we’re told (in an aside by Littlefinger) that The Hound was horribly burned/scarred by his brother (The Mountain) when the latter found that the former was playing with a toy without permission. This is important because a near-pathological fear of fire informs almost everything The Hound does.
It’s not well laid-out in the show, but almost all of Westros’ recent wars (before the current one) were caused because one Targaryen king acknowledged his bastard children, causing a succession crisis that reared its head every generation or two.
This is one of the (many) reasons that Lady Stark dislikes Jon Snow: elder bastard children are a legitimate threat to the succession of noble houses.
Didn’t hate this episode, but it was more a “move the story along” type of thing rather than one with a lot of great pieces.
I wonder if the letter that Talisa was writing (nekkid!) in bed was really to her mother? Should be a fun reveal later.
Any scene with Tywin in it is usually gold, and his throneroom chat with Joffrey was predictably good.
The Dany scenes were fine. The only down-side is that I guess we’ll be meeting the mercenary companies here soon, and I find all those characters to be annoying and largely time-wasters in the books.
The Jamie/Brianne stuff was pretty good overall, but I found the bear fight to be less exciting than what was depicted in the book. Pity.
The Jon/Ygritte scenes here were slightly better than the last few episodes, I thought… though the contrasting North/South got a little tiresome when he had to define “faint”. Do wildlings never collapse from hunger or stand up too quickly? Ever? I did like Snow’s warning her of the last six attempts by a King Beyond the Wall. The thing between the warg-guy and the redhead was okay.
This week’s torture-porn with Theon was a little more literal than normal, but my wife actually fast-forwarded through it once Ramsey showed up.
The King’s Landing stuff was just fine. Sansa finally realizes she’s an idiot, and Tyrion should rapidly be coming to the same conclusion about himself. Any scene with Bronn is gold.
The Arya scene was short and advanced the plot, so that’s fine, but I’ve got to say that for an elite group of hard-core outlaws, the BwB’s perimeter security is shit. Yet another scene with Bran and his bickering foster-family. Yay.
