I was finally able to watch this last night along with The Wife. Not a terrible episode, but a bit weak comparatively. Still, the worst GoT episode is better than 90% of the alternatives.
The King’s Landing scenes were mostly drudge-work: we see Cersei interacting with her father, with Margery, with Oberon. We get a little more set-up for the Iron Bank scenes that are apparently coming next week. No Dinklage.
Dany finds she needs to stay in Slaver’s Bay and crush dissidents. Let’s hope that’s more interesting in the show than it was in the books.
Most of the stuff in the Eyrie was cringe-worthy, and thus very effective. Crazy Aunty Lysa and her warped kid doing the whole bipolar thing with Sansa sitting in the middle of the storm. You feel uncomfortable and hate to watch or listen… but in a good way. It’s like a Ben Stiller movie; but one of the good ones.
The only thing in there that was a bit “off” was the whole exposition thing where Lysa confesses in detail to killing her first husband… to the guy that told her to do it. I understand the necessity of that, but man did it seem ham-handed. Anyone remember how they handled that reveal in the books?
The Arya/Hound show is always fun to watch. Their relationship is just so wonderfully dysfunctional.
The Brienne/Pod show was good and bad. Some of the stuff showing Pod’s ineptitude was fine, like the horse thing, but it’s difficult to imagine someone his age in Westros not knowing that they have to skin a rabbit before cooking it. I did like the scene where Pod relates the story of the Battle of the Blackwater; Gwendoline Christie had some great reaction shots throughout.
I actually enjoyed most of the stuff related to Crater’s Keep in this episode. It was fun to see some of Jojen’s visions, though they did have kind of a “sound stage” quality to them… perhaps intentionally. I could have done without the almost-rape of Meera; I’m pretty sure I already disliked Karl plenty without that scene driving the point home.
I really liked the scene with Hodor being possessed - nicely communicated to the audience, and a great link to the line by Rast last episode: “If I had [your body], I’d be king.” I also liked Hodor’s horror at what he had just been made to do. Interestingly, I think that might have been the first life that Bran has taken - he didn’t show too much emotion at having half-ripped a guy’s head off. I wonder if we’ll see some fallout from that?
On Jon Snow’s duel with Karl, I never would have given it a second thought if not for the thread above: a skilled knife-fighter is going against a guy with a big sword in close quarters. If anything, it simply gave the lie to the Hound’s observation that a “big fucking sword” and armor trumps all.
Actually, what annoyed me was the “street brawl” fighting that erupted in the courtyard. The Night’s Watchmen charge in against an unprepared and theoretically drunken group of opponents and immediately pair off into a set of “fair” fights instead of doing the obvious thing and ganging up on the mutineers one after the other.
