Yes, but I’m assuming they left if they want to keep her arc intact. If Littlefinger was told that The Hound was out at the gates with someone claiming to be Arya Stark, the rest of her storyline would be very different.
There was no such scene in the books, right? I can’t remember if at some point the Hound just hears that Aunt Lysa is dead and is like “Oh GREAT! Now what?”
Yeah, they never get to the Eyrie. In the book, The Hound dies right after the fight at the inn. He’s lasted a lot longer in the show.
It’s going to be interesting how that is handled on the show. There’s a lot of speculation that he doesn’t die, and he’s one of the brothers Brienne meets later.
“Dies”
No way that character dies between chapters/books. Rule of thumb for GRRM, if they don’t die on the page, and if people (commoners) claim that they are dead. They ain’t dead. Also, if people die in first person perspective, they are not dead.
But, one note.
Wasn’t Barristan at the meeting where they discussed Jorah? Did he old-man forget that fact? I was always wondering why he didn’t say anything yet. But I guess he didn’t know?
Probably best to wait until you can get your hands on the document even if you did know, having evidence for that sort of claim seems important when getting rid of the queen’s top adviser.
Funny comment I saw on a review (something like): “… Sansauron coming down the stairs. One Lemon Cake to rule them all”
Teiman
5488
This episode was to weird to me, nothing made much sense. Except the crunch thing, people like the sound of something crunched… thats why people eat potato chips.
So you’re saying that the episode was like a Teiman post ;)
Teiman
5490
I can’t put it in words. But is what the characters did on screen break completely to what the characters are.
Why aria laugh with the news of other of is extended family dead?, tiryon long talk about crunched beetles. That one I have read comments that put it on context, so sort of make sense now, but don’t made any sense to me while watching the episode.
Why aria laugh with the news of other of is extended family dead?
Because the Hound was going to ransom her to Lysa Arryn, and now he can’t.
Oh I think this one is easy enough. In this case, Arya is almost acting as a proxy for the audience, laughing at the sheer incredulity of the situation: she barely escapes the clutches of the Lannisters, is seconds away from being reunited with her father… and then he is killed. She manages to escape the city with a guy who will take her to Winterfell to be reunited with her family… and that protection is killed. She manages to escape and starts to work her way North… and then is captured. She manages to escape Harrenhall… and then is captured. Her new captors promise to take her to her mother… and then she is kidnapped. Her kidnapper tries to take her to her mother/brother… but they die seconds before she arrives. Her kidnapper then tries to take her to the Eryie to her aunt… who dies the evening before they arrive.
It’s a ludicrous sequence of escapes, captures, near-misses, and good/bad luck. We the audience see this and can chuckle about it… and apparently so can Arya, albeit bitterly.
I’m reminded of a drive I took with my wife and daughters the other month. We were running late, but we’d make it if traffic wasn’t too bad. As it turned out, traffic was fine, but there were twelve traffic lights between us and the destination. Every. Single. One. of those light turned red just before we got to it. After the fourth red light, I was annoyed. At the seventh, I was snarling at the windshield and complaining bitterly about the idiot engineers who didn’t change the timing on the lights on the weekends. But by the tenth and eleventh light we were all howling with laughter.
hepcat
5493
It probably would’ve been clearer if the Hound had just turned towards the camera and they played sad trombone.
Razgon
5494
I don’t normally feel squeamish, but thats actually a nice picture to see now. I really did not like that scene. Well, the fight itself was awesome, but the ending, even though I knew it was coming, I was kinda hoping this was one thing they had changed because man Oberyn was rocking it!
And yeah, Arya is simply brilliant, and wow at Sansa. Such a great show, even though it does get a bit gratuitous for me at times, with the violence.
Another funny comment on the interwebz: “how can a show that starts off with some kids getting new puppies go so horribly wrong?” or words to that effect.
Yeah, that was actually one of the more horrible things I’ve ever seen, even though at least some of it was implied rather than on-screen (give credit to the screaming and the sound effects guys, I guess).
When I rewatch this season, I’ll be skipping the last couple of minutes of that episode. Once was enough. Blargh.
Reading that snippet of the fight from the books reminds me that for some reason I just don’t “get” GRRM’s writing style. I just don’t enjoy reading the words, it feels like the only reason I’m reading is to find out what happens, not enjoy the writing itself. Am I crazy? Not just the first GoT book (never did finish it), but also some of his short stories from way back when (“The Pear-Shaped Man”) and novellas. Am I alone in this? Thank goodness for HBO, I get all the plot and none of the writing. Unfortunately I know I’m missing a lot of background material though. =/
I think the writing is serviceable. I wouldn’t call the writing great, but it moves the story along as intended. I’d never sit there and marvel at him being an amazing wordsmith or anything, just a very creative person who knows how to catch a reader’s attention.
Left to his own devices Martin is very much a TV writer - he specializes in short punchy scenes that end in a cliffhanger and are long on action and dialogue and short on reverie*. When he strays from that in ASOIAF it tends to be with things I think he believes his readers expect out of a fantasy novel - namely historical digressions and long, long lists of things. These often feel labored: every time he describes a meal I feel like he’s reciting today’s specials from the menu.
He’s generally good on place descriptions, though. Each location does come off as different, and he doesn’t spend pages when a paragraph will do, unlike some people (cough Tolkien.)
*And when his characters do slip into reflection, they often use TV/movie devices to do so. Like the thing where thematically important bits of dialog for a character get repeated in italics. Remember that thing I said two books ago, Jon Snow, it’s important. That’s just his version of the TV/movie trope where the hero flashes back to the important bits of dialog so the audience will remember what’s going on. Having watched too much Simpsons long ago, I always think of this device as “Lisa needs braces - dental plan.”
My intro to GRRM was his amazing SF story called “Sandkings.” I think it was in the first issue of the old OMNI magazine (around 35 years ago). Go read that.
