Hell yeah I was too. Loved that part.
Some nice extra callouts to Dunk, Barristan the Bold, and even Yoren gets extra playtime. I didn’t mind it one bit.
— Alan
olaf
1762
Yeah I have to echo, Arya and Tyrion are owning the show. They crush their scenes.
I’ve seen some complaints that the writers are “ruining” Jaime’s character by giving the “real reason” why he killed Aerys, which wouldn’t be revealed till ASoS, but honestly, that part didn’t really register with me at all. Generally speaking my non-spoiled impression would have been that Aerys was just a nutjob if he’d been saying the same thing for hours and Jaime finally put an end to him. I was just kinda thinking, “Oh, ok.” They are trying to make him slightly more sympathetic, the problem is they more than compensate by making him out to be really, really bad (and I think the conversation he has with Cersei is also lifted from ASoS IIRC).
— Alan
Blips
1764
Is anyone else surprised by the architecture of kingslanding? Its far more extravagant than what I imagined it to be.
Also, the scene where Joff and the Queen are talking about invading Winterfell, that wasn’t in the book right?
Arya is fucking adorable.
A lot of stuff from tonight’s episode wasn’t in the book. This one was the worst of the three for me.
This post contains spoilers because this is the thread for them.
No one called out the credits change? Instead of Pentos at the end they swung all the way out to Vaes Dothrak. Cool stuff.
My favorite episode yet. I was keeping notes while watching, cos I’m a nerd superfan, but I’ll definitely be watching it again to soak in the details. I see Ser John caught the same thing I did. Hoo-rah to a shout out to Ser Duncan the Tall!
The small council scene felt rushed, like everyone was delivering their lines like they were extras from Farcry 2. Still, they had to get a lot of information featuring a lot of new characters very quickly, so it can be forgiven. They didn’t specifically call out who Renly was, which seemed like a misstep, but it can be easily fixed. Hopefully when they do say who he is, people remember him from this earlier scene. He’s cast well. I can see him as a young Robert. Missed Barristan Selmy from the scene, but the later scene with Robert, Jaime and Barristan more than made up for. Awesome casting on Barristan. I can definitely say that old duffer as having easily-missed strength in him.
As for the Wall? I can understand them giving Donal Noye’s speech to Tyrion, since it gives Tyrion a bit more to do and consolidates the number of characters needed for this bit of storytelling. I hope this doesn’t mean Donal is completely removed, but he’s not actually that major a character again until ASoS, so I guess he’s mostly gone for now. Benjen strikes me as very well cast. He looks a lot like he could be a Stark. Poor Jon, though. This is twice now that someone he’ll never see again tells him that they’ll talk tomorrow.
Lots of extra scenes in this one. While I can see questioning them as a fan of the books, I can also see how they make the story being told to us right now work a little better for the average viewer. Jaime’s barely seen at this point because he’s not a POV character in AGoT, so giving some of his more wicked moments from ASoS to him here makes sense.
Who cares about his hair? Syrio Forel is fucking awesome.
They did that for the second episode too; I did notice the change. I’m actually really excited to see what the Aerie looks like in tiny-clockwork-model form.
This whole episode felt rushed to me, to be honest. I understand there’s a lot to get through, but this episode jumped around like mad. I was reminded of exactly why I’ve never liked any of the Harry Potter movies: they’re like a series of “best of” scenes without any connecting tissue. Some people thought they were slow, but I liked the pace of the first two episodes a lot more.
I feel like they skipped a lot of build up with Viserys in particular. He went from calmly and quietly nasty to homicidal fury pretty quickly.
Cersei’s bluntness to Joffrey about his future sexual exploits explained an awful lot about Lannister family relations. I get the feeling Jaime was taught similarly when he was young.
Agreed. More Syrio.
Old Nan was so good, but she made me said. Did ya’ll see the “In Memory” for Margaret John at the end of the credits? They’ll have to recast her character for next season.
They may not. Old Nan is referred to a lot, but she doesn’t ever actually drive the plot in Winterfell. It would be very easy to just write the character out of the show. Mention her, but never show her. Seems like it would be appropriate.
Yeah they did, Renly says, I paraphrase, “Winter may be coming, but my brother is not” and refers to him as “my brother” a few other times, and has the stag pendant on collar.
— Alan
StGabe
1772
Spoilers I guess, about Dany:
I wish Martin had cut Dany from the first book or three entirely. She’s interesting but does not really mesh with the rest of the story-telling in the books. It always feels jarring to me to jump over to another continent where almost nothing that happens will directly influence anything in Westeros where the “real” story is (at least within the same book). I wish she were treated more like events over the wall: there are hints that something is going on but we don’t really get into the details until they become more directly relevant to our main cast of characters.
Tony_M
1773
You have to admit they are weird looking. We readers know its because they are from an ancient, foreign, inbred family tree. But theres been little mention of that in the show so far. I can see new viewers confusing them with elves.
Tony
Y’know what? You’re absolutely right. I completely forgot about that. Clearly I was still reeling from the decision to have Ned give Renly a manly hug.
It took a while to cover it in the books, as well. The ethnic makeup of Westeros is one of those things he sort of gives out in dribs and drabs, since for the most part the division between First Men, Andals, Rhoyner and Valyrian has seemingly little to do with modern politics and comes across more as background information. Though as the series goes on, the importance of background becomes more and more evident.
In a world where it is said of Malazan that ‘things really come together in the first book’, I’m not sure what the problem is. In the books it is made more than clear who it is she is and how she relates to the rest of the world and even though it seems that her chapters are divorced from Westeros by the end of the first book it is abundantly evident how important her character. From Dany chapter one of AGoT Martin is developing this character in such a way to justify who it is she is when she finally marches on the Sunset Kingdoms and why she has the resources she has. Sure, it’s possible that he could have introduced her in a later book and had her be all that she needs to be, but is it likely that it would be as satisfying? From interviews and blog entries, it sounds like somewhere around one half to two thirds of the way through book 5 a number of people, a Lion, at least one Kraken, possibly a Dire Wolf, end up in Slavers Bay where they will dance with the dragon. Her stuff in book 2 is pretty key to the overall arc of the series, even if she only has five chapters and seems to play a tiny role. Her stuff in book 3 is massively important for her character. But in book 5, well heck, it sounds like it all comes together in book 5.
I agree that the exposition of Renly at the small council meet was tenuous but it was there. Does anyone think that they have not made it obvious enough about Ser Jorah Mormount’s connection to his father who is in charge at Castle Black? I did like how you could see the gears turning in his head when he hears that Dany is preggers and makes preparations to leave the Khalisar for a while.
Like Bahimiron, I thought this was the best episode yet. It feels like we’re finally getting to the meat of the story now. I thought the introduction of Syrio felt weirdly detached from the rest of the episode, but it was awesome nonetheless.
Dean
1777
Have you noticed that at least once an episode we get an establishing shot of the dragon eggs to show we’re over with Dany? Right now, keeping those eggs in the minds of the viewers is more important than anything else that goes on with Dany.
Syrio and Arya having their first lesson was awesome.
I know we’re always going to have some compression in this series, but having Catelyn practically teleport to King’s Landing was a bit jarring.
BOOK SPOILER
I liked the little scene with Ser Jorah and the Dothraki (is it Qotho or Rakharo?) right up until Jorah stood up and all but announced his double-agent status. Lame.
Rakharo.
He announces he’s going to Quarth.
I’m pretty sure he said he was going to Qohor, one of the free cities, not Qarth, which would require he take a trip across the red waste.
