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.
