5401

Yeah he’s terrible at doing a posh English accent, but I’ve always switched my duckrabbit to hear it as him being idiosyncratic even in Westerosi terms - like he’s deliberately using an archaic dialect to annoy people or something - then it’s not so painful, it even has its own charms.

5402

Its supposed to be a bookworm person. One that don’t have a strong hand to fight, but can use a legal book to avoid a fight. It happends to be too efective at other things (like being smart) so he don’t have to use his culture. If you read too much worms, people like Plato, Aristototle,… are your childhood friends somehow, like the people on TV are the childhood heros or other people.

5403

There’s a Chicago radio station that runs ads for Comcast each week. In those ads, the dumb ass announcer feels it’s cool for him to try and connect with his audience by giving run downs of some of the more popular shows on the channels that Comcast carries. Inevitably that ends up with Game of Thrones. He then gives away almost every single damn plot point from the latest episode in this annoying conversational tone that drives me nuts.

So much for spoilers, you moron. Grrrrr

5404

I think that is what I really liked about that moment, is that it was kind of the end of Tyrion playing the game of thrones. His dad, who is pretty much the paragon of the game is boinking a whore. Completely hypocritical. This was one of those mind-blowing moments in the books. I was like… “What?” and then I was like “I should have seen it coming”. So good. The also kind of telegraphed this when Tywin asked about her from Cersei.

Also, I think Dinklage’s accent is all right. He talks the way his character talks. There is no “english accent” in Westeros. To further effect, I have heard multiple people think he was from England, like a lot of the cast. No matter how many English films he does, he will always be a dwarf from (New) Jersey.

5405

The most amazing accent-putter-onner is Ygritte - her natural accent is cut-glass posh Londoner, but she does an incredibly good Northern (Yorkshire-ish) accent. Good drama school tuition combined with a good ear and vocal control.

As a side-note, there’s quite a variety of regional English accents on display in GoT - many of the “North” character actors are pretty much talking in their own native accents. The regional accents being put on by some of the Scandinavian actors (e.g. Giantsbane, the Magnar of the Thenns) are also quite cute, in that the Scandinavian tinge makes them sound exotic, yet they’re hauntingly also like genuine regional English accents too.

5406

Welp. I guess we can all stop speculating about The Hound. I think it’s obvious where that bite is going to lead.

5407

Theoretically. However, note that Arya takes special notice of when the Hound mentions the fact about getting a stomach wound.

— Alan

5408

Zombie Hound!

5409

What?

Please elaborate.

What will happen?

5410

Another good episode, acting-wise.

Dinklage was (once again) really excellent in this episode, especially with his non-verbal stuff. I liked the crushing disappointment he conveyed when he realized that Jamie wasn’t going to be able to champion him. The line where he jokingly suggests to Jamie that the two of them dying due to this misadventure would really cheese-off their father was nicely married to Dinklage’s expression which showed that… he really wasn’t joking and kind of half-hoped that his brother would join him in a bizarre suicide pact.

Likewise, his scenes with Bronn were fairly well-done, and I liked his expression when Bronn basically tells him that their friendship is little more than a commercial enterprise. I did like how Bronn’s remark about how highborn ladies falling and dying “all the time” was echoed ironically later in the episode.

But the final scene with Oberyn was especially good. The close-up of Dinklage as he is told that his sister despised him literally from birth was great. He has a magnificently expressive face.

Eh, what else?

It’s tough to dislike anything in the Arya & Hound traveling show, but this week was a little weird. The existential back-and-forth about death with the dying farmer was… I dunno, like something out of a different show. It wasn’t bad at all, but it didn’t seem like it belonged in the gritty Westros that we know and “love”.

The Hound being ambushed by Biter and… bitten… was likewise strange. Existential ponderings or not, I just don’t buy both Sandor and Arya being so oblivious to their surroundings that a zombie… er, sorry… a nutcase could sneak up on them in the middle of an open courtyard like that. Plus of course that up to now all scenes with The Hound have shown him with some fairly stout armor and neck-protection. To top that off, Rorge was a psychopath nutcase to be feared in the book – here he not only fails to follow up on Biter’s attack, but he barely moves when Arya kills him and his death is played for laughs. Odd.

From a logistical standpoint, it annoys me that the two of them have been marching hard towards the Eyrie for what seems like months, but Tywin’s offer of 100 coins managed to precede them. Ravens, I guess.

But the scene in the mountains where they discuss his brother and his wound was back on track. His statements about wanting your siblings to love you despite them mistreating you had a nice parallel with the Oberyn/Tyrion conversation later too.

And although I thought how he got the wound was weaksauce, I kind of like the idea of Sandor’s future fever/“death” being caused by a dirty bite that he refused to have cauterized rather than a wound caused by a random soldier like it was in the books. Being laid low by his fears is more poetic than getting cut in a a worthless fight.

The Brienne/Pod banter was fun. The Castle Black stuff was pretty good – I guess my previous speculation that Thorne would be portrayed more kindly in the show than in the books was off-base.

I liked the Daenerys stuff this week. Daario is more interesting in the show than he was in the books and I liked her imperiously ordering him to do what he does best. Better, I really liked the debate between Dany and Jorah about viewing your defeated enemies as human beings.

We got to see more Red Woman boobs, which I can’t find any fault with (my wife can: “Her nipples are really small” she said). Not an especially pivotal scene except that we find out they are preparing for a sea voyage… and of course we book-readers know where that will end up. Interesting that the diseased daughter seems to be destined for something more in the show than in the books.

And then there was the final scene in The Eyrie. For some reason, it all felt very rushed to me: Maybe it’s just because Sophie Turner is so tall, but her childish outburst at Robin’s knocking over the snow-tower seemed out of place. Although it was established in the first season that Robin is a spoiled brat, I don’t think that last week’s short scene with him re-established that – the knocking over of the snow-tower seemed like an accident here, which made Sansa’s outburst even odder. Likewise, Littlefinger throwing Lysa out of the Moon Door felt a little rushed to me, like we needed another episode of build-up to it.

But all in all, another good episode. Bummer that we have a two-week break.

5411

Hey, you’re pretty good at this GoT reviewing malarkey :) Nice summary, agreed on all points.

5412

Robin said “Moon Door” about twenty times in his scene with Sansa. How much more build-up could you possibly need?

5413

This week seemed like it was pretty much all setup. Nothing much actually happened other than Lysa’s descent at the very end. Everything else was foreshadowing: the Hound is gonna get infected, the Watch is gonna get attacked, Oberyn is gonna fight the Mountain, etc. Guess that’s mid-season for you. Still, GoT doing a setup episode is better than full-on climax episodes from most other shows.

5414

Singing. I want singing about moons, doors, and moon doors.

A semi-serious answer - in the books, there was a great more to Sansa’s situation. She played at being this high-born but poor cousin for some time while whathisface the minstrel poked his nose in various corners and threatened to expose her, the various Lords and Ladies of the Vale played their little political games, and Robin was revealed to be both physically and mentally unbalanced/dangerous. I guess we’ll get some of the vale political stuff next week, but they certainly condensed much of the vale past what I expected.

5415

As someone who hasn’t read the books, it seems like there is literally no one in the Vale, it’s just Lysa and Robin in an empty castle all by themselves in some forgotten mountains. They used to throw enemies out of the moon door, but now basically no one cares or remembers they’re still up there by themselves. And now Peter brought Sansa there and hiding her there fits just fine with the idea that there’s no one else around.

I mean, I remember there were obviously other people there back when Tyrion was there, but you get none of that now. Do they have any kind of army? It’s implied there are more than the dozen men seen when Peter and Sansa arrive and he explains how that gate makes the Vale so well defended, but you don’t see many people. Are there actually normal people living up there? Other lords and ladies? Peasants? Is there a town at all? No idea.

5416

Well of course there are, they have all sorts of bannermen and minor houses/nobles that pay homage to the Aerie. There hasn’t been a need to show them or a huge army, so I’m sure it’s a budgetary consideration to keep it sparse up there. There really isn’t a whole lot more explicitly depicted in the books about the place either, to be honest. It’s remote and it’s easily defended, and it’s one of the major power regions of Westeros, on the same level as the North, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, Dorne, etc. And now Littlefinger and Sansa control it. That’s about all we know other than lists of fictional people associated with it listed in appendices in the books.

5417

Interesting that they have Lysa flying now, the penultimate ending of the book is that scene. I’m still assuming zombie Catelyn ends the season.

5418

I agree; especially since they have Brienne trying to find the Brotherhood now.

5419

Yeah. I still believe my idea from before that they will end with ZombieCat meeting up with Brienne and Pod, hopefully with one of the Freys just as additional poetic justice but essentially combining the scenes from the end of both Book 3 and 4 since they are so similar.

— Alan

5420

Well, we’ve got 3 episodes left. So, most likely, episode 8 ends with the duel(crunch). Episode 9 ends with Tywin and Tyrion. Episode 10 wraps up the season with a nice episode, ending with Lady Stoneheart meeting Brienne and Pod.