5221

Did Littlefinger sound much more Irish than in earlier episodes to anyone else? I feel like he was doing a light English accent up to now but it sounded much different last night.

5222

I was about to make the same post. His accent sounded dramatically different.

5223

Re: Littlefinger’s accent–totally agree. The dialect coach must have been fired or something, because I’m noticing the fake-ness of Tyrion’s accent more this year, and now this.

5224

I will save you about ten clicks: the excellent Tower of the Hand Summary:

[After Jamie enters the city with Brianne,] Jaime goes to the sept to see Cersei, who is praying for Joffrey. Ser Osmund guards the door and does not recognize him at first, but finally lets him through. Cersei is disheveled and amazed to see him. She tells him of Tyrion’s threat to turn her joy to ashes2 and says he killed Joffrey. Jaime is starting to believe this, but he recoils at doing what she wants, killing Tyrion in his cell. He forces himself upon her, and they have sex. When it is over, Jaime tells her he wants to be with her openly and marry. Tommen would lose the throne, but he does not care. Cersei says he has changed and makes him leave.

5225

Ah! Thanks…that sure jogged my memory!

5226

Slower episode, but still entertaining. Felt like an hour-long set up for the rest of the season. Even as a set up episode, it was better than most of what is on TV these days.

As I’m watching the show, I’m realizing how long it’s been since I read the first 4 books (haven’t read book 5 and am not planning on it until I re-read the first 4). Every now and then something happens and it jogs my memory of something from the book. Seeing the purple wedding and Tyrion in prison made me remember how that whole story arch ends…and it makes me anxious to see just how they are going to present it on the show.

I also don’t remember a dang thing about Sansa leaving King’s Landing. I vaguely remember her being with Littlefinger and her aunt, but I’m not sure if I’m remembering that correctly.

5227

You are right. Littlefinger takes Sansa to her aunt for “safety” which ends in a rather un-safe situation for Sansa. The moon-door is also utilized again in quite awesome fashion. Littlefinger is a creepy uncle bamf.

Loved the reveal of Littlefinger, are they doing the same thing with the trial? I know that Oberyn ends up fighting Gregor in a trial by battle, but I didn’t think that he talked with Tywin in the books.

Charles Dance was on fire this episode, I’ll miss him. He has really been an MVP on the show, as he added a lot of depth to the “Bad Guy/Dad Guy” character that wasn’t in the books as much.

I also thought of this, in relation to Shae’s ending. Bronn, if we all remember in the books, was not going to volunteer as Tyrion’s champion… as he too was paid off. Likely, he was already on the take when he took Shae away.

I don’t know what they are going to do with her. I think GRRM orchestrated this so that us book readers would still be questioning things going into the likely final episode of the season. If she doesn’t get what is coming to her by the end of the season, it will be a huge disappointment. Is Tyrion gonna have to choke a bitch? I hope so.

5228

Interesting article from the AV Club charging that the show is more misogynistic than the books are/were: http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499 . The article cites Drogo and Jaime’s rape of their respective partners as evidence, as well as the creation and termination of the Ros character. And it’s all supposed to be for the titillation of male viewers, the article charges.

I am not sure I agree, though I haven’t read the novels. It seems to me all to be part of a deliberate effort to keep everyone unlikable and morally ambiguous. I can’t tell whether audiences would find last night’s scene in front of Joffrey’s corpse more or less palatable if Cersei had been eager to see her brother.

5229

Agreed, Moggraider. Either the writers didn’t correctly remember the scene in the sept and it passed through review without somebody’s dropping the editorial axe, or else the writers made a conscious decision to introduce the rape in order to muddy our appreciation of Jaime and increase our sympathy for Cersei. I also suspect that the writers ran out of good ideas (or else enough money) to convey the danger of life in Westeros in different guises.

I find it fascinating that there is such a pent-up market for amateur analysis of Game of Thrones, although I suppose, having read the books, Saraiya, unlike many of her compatriots, has some ground to stand on. I just wish she didn’t repeatedly use the word “agency.” It’s such a clinical, academic word – terminology – that pretends to mean something different than the much more straightforward phrase “personal freedom.” Indeed, “agency” is so over-used that I think it’s begun to turn individual experiences of rape into case studies. The purpose is less to help the victim than make a certain kind of analysis. It’s intellectually grasping: “Listen to me, I am going to talk about rape. Rape is very consequential for the victim! As if you didn’t know that, I am going to prove it!” I don’t disagree with the sentiment that rape is an awful crime that robs the victim of what it means to be a free-thinking, free-acting person whose choices in life, whatever they are, have some inherent legitimacy. I merely question the value-added of repeated references to rape as “agency-stealing.”

5230

I thought that in the books, Bronn had moved away and was married after he was knighted. I think Tyrion asks Podrick to send for him, but the response back from Bronn was something like “I don’t need your gold anymore”. As for Shae, again, I think that once Tyrion is thrown in the dungeon, you don’t hear anything about her at all…or at least, Tyrion doesn’t…until his last night in King’s Landing. I liked that part in the book because that was when it dawned on me just how much like his father Tyrion is, and for it to be revealed in a kind of reverse way really stuck with me.

5231

I don’t think anyone watching the rape scenes were titillated.

I am not sure I agree, though I haven’t read the novels. It seems to me all to be part of a deliberate effort to keep everyone unlikable and morally ambiguous. I can’t tell whether audiences would find last night’s scene in front of Joffrey’s corpse more or less palatable if Cersei had been eager to see her brother.

I think their choices serve a narrative purpose, I was certainly uncomfortable in that scene - as they intended.

5232

Welcome to the internet. You must be new here. If you’d like, I can have someone from the perversions division send you up a copy of their schedule. They’re pretty busy since they found this place, but I’m sure they could squeeze you in. I know Wednesday they’re having a “Two Girls, One Cup” sale!

5233

So this “Gilly in Molestown” stuff is entirely made up out of whole cloth, right? I remember nothing like that from the books.

5234

I think so I don’t remember it either, and frankly it doesn’t seem very sensible. Whereas most of the change made sense, like Jamie arriving for the wedding.

5235

I wonder if they’re just gearing up to dump the whole Mance Rayder babby storyline and Gilly along with it? Has Mance’s wife even been shown in the show?

5236

I think that “muddying” could be the theme for the episode. One of the great things about the Ice & Fire story is how characters swing from villain to anti-hero and back again. Martin comes close to redeeming people here and there, but he never quite closes the deal.

So in this episode we have Jamie - who we’ve come to like during his road/buddy episodes with Brianne - diving back into the shallow end of the gene pool with his sister, reminding viewers that despite his heroics and recent humbling, he’s still an incestuous scum-bag who will throw kids out of windows. We’ve got The Hound: despite his obvious growing affection for the wild child he’s sort-of adopted, we’re reminded that he’s somewhere near the 85th percentile of the biggest shits in the Seven Kingdoms. We’ve got Sam, who shows that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. Heck, we’ve got Jon Snow - one of the few classic heroes in the story - who shows that he is willing to sacrifice women and children if the math doesn’t work out.

Incidentally, watching it yet again last night, I really liked the scene where Ser Alliser Thorne asks Jon for his opinion on handling the Wildling raiders. You could argue whether Thorne was taunting Snow in the asking, or whether he was honestly seeking his opinion but didn’t want it to look that way (I tend towards the latter), but the director made good use of the exchange by showing a couple quick shots of random Night’s Watchmen turning to hear what Jon would say. That’ll tie nicely into the elections later.

I also like how B&W have made Thorne into a more reasonable, sympathetic character. In the books he was a martinet for Jon to overcome, but here he’s simply embittered and actually has some good points to make. They’ve got Janos Slynt to cover the “unreasonable admin” angle.

5237

I was bummed that Mole’s Town just looked like a shitty town. In the book it consists mostly of a series of underground tunnels, which I would have liked to have seen.

Also, Bronn turns down to fight as Tyrion’s champion because Cersei promises him a knighthood if he doesn’t. Shae does show up again at the trial, where she betrays Tyrion and says that she conspired with Sansa to kill Joffrey. The emphasis on her being gone will make this all the more shocking (!!) when she appears and lies.

Even with that, though, the way they built it up with Tyrion screaming and being mean to Shae will make him look like a shit for murdering her. Weird decision by the showrunners, as I’m sure he’s going to lose some fans now if they follow that part of the book.

5238

Yeah, I noted that too. I imagine it was too expensive to build a place like that when Styr & Company are going to burn it down in an episode or two anyway.

Not quite – in the books, Bronn is knighted due to his service in the Battle of Blackwater, just like in the show. Cersei arranges for him to marry Lollys, the long-suffering daughter of a middling house, and although he doesn’t technically betray Tyrion, he doesn’t do anything to help his cause.

I don’t know about that. I think they established early and often that Tyrion adores her and that everything he did was to save her life - and I can’t imagine that too many in the audience would fail to recognize the fact.

5239

I like to think of the scene where Tyrion yells at Shae to be like the scene in Harry and the Hendersons where John Lithgow throws rocks at Harry to make him go away.

5240

…although the sex scenes between Harry and the father felt more forced.

“Harry, I wish I knew how to quit you.”