- THERE ARE METRIC SHIT-TONS OF SPOILERS HERE. One wouldn’t think I would have to point this out, as it’s a rewatch, but people will complain. If you haven’t already watched all the seasons of GoT up till the last one, DON’T READ THIS. Perhaps you can come back when you’re all caught up. (To be crystal clear: just because the comment is in season 3 doesn’t mean that it won’t contain spoilers for season 4 ... or season 7. Obviously there are no spoilers for season 8 yet.)
- (Speaking of “shit-tons” ...) I curse. Anyone who’s read any of my other blog posts will already know this, but perhaps you got here via some link or other and don’t know what you’re in for. Although the previous bullet point should have been a giveaway.
- My opnions are just that: opinions. I present them here in case you find them interesting, but I’m not trying to convince you to believe as I do. I ask that you show me the same courtesy should you choose to leave a commen
t— that is, feel free to share your own opinions, but don’t try to tell me I’m “wrong.” - Likewise, whatever moments I found worthy of comment are also my opinions. If I left out one of your favorites, sorry about that. Feel free to remind me of it in the blog post comments.
- My comments are always super-quick. If I want to expand on a particular thing, I do it as a pseudo-footnote. In this case, “pseudo-footnote” means “formatted almost exactly like a footnote, but way more obvious.” These “footnotes” are designed to be less ignorable, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ignore them if you want to. They’re just topics I wanted to explore a bit further. Sometimes only a sentence or two more, sometimes whole paragraphs. Read ’em or not: your call.
- There’s not a comment on every episode. Especially in the early episodes: sometimes there’s just nothing that jumped out at me that hour.
- I am watching the “Inside the Episode” shorts after the shows, for every show. Occasionally that will inform my commentary (but usually not).
- Once I’m done with the rewatch, I may keep some commentary on the final season. Or I may not; no promises.
Season 4
- Episode 1: Arya kill #3, and #4. (And, with that, the return of Needle!)
- Episode 2: This “Lord of Light” is a pretty sadistic god ... and, in this world, that’s really saying something.
- “War is war, but killing a man at a wedding ... horrid. What sort of monster would do such a thing?” —
Olenna (Oh, the irony ...) [1] - Aaaand there goes Joffrey. I have never been so happy to see a character die. [2]
- Episode 3: And, just like that, Tywin deftly (and literally) takes Tommen away from Cersei.
- “Your father lacks an appreciation of the finer points of bad behavior.” —
Davos (What an apt description of Stannis this is ...) - Episode 4: Oh, yeah ... Jamie gives Brienne his sword. She can use that Valyrian steel where she’s going to end up.
- Episode 5: Littlefinger, you dog! [3]
- Aaaand there goes Locke. Once again, no great loss.
- Episode 6: Why do I feel like Tywin set up this entire faux trial just so he could manipulate Jaime into doing what he wanted?
- Episode 7: “Nothing isn’t better or worse than anything. Nothing is just nothing.” —
Arya - Arya kill #5.
- Aaaand there goes Lyssa.
- Episode 8: Damn ... I think Grey Worm just told Missandei that it was worth being castrated in order to meet her. Kinda romantic, in a weird way.
- Sansa continues to make horrible decisions.
- Dany, on the other hand, doesn’t make very many bad decisions. But I think this is one. [4]
- The look on the Hound’s face, and Arya cackling like a madwoman ... another of my favorite moments.
- “Today is not the day I die.” —
Oberyn - Aaaand there goes Oberyn.
- Episode 9: I do believe Sam Tarly is the only person in this whole stupid show to promise someone he won’t die and then keep that promise.
- Aaaand there goes Pyp. And Grenn. And Ygritte, with one final “you know nothing, Jon Snow ...”
- “You’re right. It’s a bad plan. What’s your plan?” —
Jon - Episode 10: Aaaand there goes Jojen.
- The Hound vs Brienne: one of the best swordfights in the whole show.
- Aaaand there goes Shae. I’ve decided I completely don’t understand her motivations. At all. [5]
- Aaaand there goes Tywin. Never been more happy to see someone die since Joffrey.
Season 5
- Episode 1: This whole thing with putting rocks on corpses’ eyes with eyeballs drawn on them is so disturbing.
- “Who said anything about ‘him’?” —
Varys - Aaaand there goes the King Beyond the Wall.
- Episode 2: Sansa makes a terrible choice yet again. Good thing this is only like the fifth time, otherwise I’d worry there was some sort of pattern here. [6]
- I think Shireen is going to teach everyone in Westeros to read.
- Episode 3: This scene between Margaery and Cersei feels like watching someone poke a grizzly bear ...
- Aaaand there goes “I commanded the City Watch in King’s Landing!” Enh, I was getting tired of listening to him whinge on about it anyway.
- Making a deal with a crazy religious fanatic is not quite making a deal with the devil, but I still feel like this is a rare misstep for Cersei.
- “I’ll never hurt her. You have my word.” —
Ramsay (Hah!) - Episode 4: And this scene feels like Cersei is setting loose a maneating tiger and hoping that only the people she doesn’t like will get eaten.
- Ohhh ... hello! One last “you know nothing, Jon Snow” ... from Melisandre! [7]
- This exchange between Stannis and Shireen is heart-wrenching when viewed with the foreknowledge of the betrayal to come.
- Aaaand there goes Ser Barristan.
- Episode 5: Yet another “I promise” that will never happen ... [8]
- Most ... shocking ... marriage proposal ... ever.
- Episode 6: Arya kill #6 (sort of).
- “We both peddle fantasies, Brother Lancel. Mine just happen to be entertaining.” —
Littlefinger - Tommen, you idiot! That’s twice now you should have just had your big, strong knights slice up these angry little sparrows. You’ve got a date with a window and you’re just rushing headlong towards it ...
- Episode 7: Aaaand there goes Maester Aemon.
- Not entirely sure why the Sand Snake decides to save Bronn, but I’m glad she does.
- Tyrion finally hooks up with Dany ... this is the first moment through the entire series where I felt like we might be heading towards a conclusion of some sort.
- Cersei is often despicable, but this is probably the first moment when I felt she was being idiotic. [10]
- Episode 8: “I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.” —
Daenerys - Somehow I feel like Sam’s words to Olly are not being interpreted in the way he’d hoped ...
- “I"m right behind you, I promise.” Yep, never heard that one before ...
- Aaaand there goes the first White Walker to die from Valyrian steel in a thousand years. But definitely not the last.
- Aaaand there goes about half the remaining Free Folk in the world.
- Episode 9: Aaaand there goes Shireen. In a parade of tragic, senseless deaths, I think this may be the most tragic and senseless one of all.
- Aaaand there goes what’s-his-name that Dany made marry her. No great loss. [11]
- Do. Not. Fuck. With Drogon. [12]
- Episode 10: Aaaand there goes Shireen’s mother. Good riddance. [13]
- You know, for all Melisandre’s later complaining about being wrong, she’s not wrong about the Boltons being defeated ... she’s just wrong that it’s going to be Stannis doing it. [14]
- It’s just occurred to me that this is the second time Stannis disappointed Sansa. Without ever meeting her.
- Aaaand there goes Stannis. Not particularly happy to see him gone ... but not really sad about it either.
- Aaaand there goes Ramsay’s psycho girlfriend. Extra no great loss there.
- I STILL SAY YOU CANNOT JUMP OFF A 50-FOOT CASTLE WALL AND LIVE!!! And I don’t care how deep the snow supposedly was. [15]
- Aaaand there goes Ser Meryn Trant. Arya kill #7. [16]
- Aaaand there goes Arya’s eyesight.
- Aaaand there goes Myrcella. Weirdly, not that sad to see her go, but it’s quite sad for Jaime.
- These crazy sparrows don’t know who they’re messing with ...
- Aaaand there goes Jon. [17]
- Vicious body count this episode, if we’re looking at named, human characters. Six: that’s the most so far for a single episode.
[1] I actually saw her palm the jewel off Sansa’s necklace this time around. I’d never caught that before.
[2] If you watch the special features after the episode, the show runners seem to believe that, despite how terrible Joffrey and Cersei are, that we’re going to feel sorry for them in this death scene. One of them says: “They bring out the underlying humanity in these characters, that I think in the hands of lesser actors could so easily turn into just evil stereotypes, and could make Joffrey’s death a purely triumphal moment for the audience, and I really don’t think it is ...” Well, bad news guys: you have woefully underestimated how much these actors have made us positively hate their characters. The first time we watched it in my house, we actually cheered. Then, when it was properly over, we rewound and watched it again. It really was one of the top moments I was looking forward to in the rewatch.
[3] This is the moment when we finally realize the depth of Littlefinger’s schemes. On first watch, this was pretty shocking. That Lyssa was crazy was obviously never in doubt. That she was evil was still a bit unexpected. But it’s her interaction with Sansa that shows just how deep it run
[4] When she does make bad decisions, they tend to be rash ones more than anything else. She’s a very passionate person, and sometimes she doesn’t think things through. Her decision to crucify a random sampling of the masters of Mereen, for instance: that one is particularly egregious, because Barristan out-and-out tells her she’ll regret it ... and she does, eventually.
This is her next-to-last bad decision. There’s really only one more to come: the chaining up of the dragons. That one is more considered, although still the wrong call in the end. This one, thoug
On the other hand, Jorah did endanger her baby, which Barristan never did. So I suppose it’s understandable. Still, not one of my favorite Dany moments.
[5] The character of Shae is perhaps one of the biggest disappointments of the entire show. Her character in the books is a bit of a simpleton: one of the few women in the story who is weak and more-or-less useless. Her character in the show is much smarter, and more mysterious, and comes with hints of an intriguing backstory ... which we never learn. At first she seems honestly devoted to Tyrion, and I understand if she’s wounded by his attempts to drive her away. But she seems like she sees through this (as do we all: it’s not like he’s particularly subtle about it). So can she really be upset enough to want to see him dead? She shows up at Tyrion’s trial and not only testifies against him, but puts the nail in his coffin with out-and-out lies, knowing that this is going to sentence him to death. So, while I understand that she’s pissed off, I can’t understand being pissed off enough to want to kill the guy she was supposedly in love with just days or weeks ago.
Maybe she never actually loved him? Then I didn’t understand her even as much as I thought I did. Maybe there’s something in her personality that would make sense of her going into a murderous rage after being rejected. If so, that wasn’t communicated in her story as presented to us. And why then cozy up to Tywin? Is she playing him and doing an amazing job? If so, why do such a shitty job of playing Tyrion when she sees him last? Don’t forget: Tyrion doesn’t kill her because she slept with his father. Tyrion kills her because she’s actively trying to kill him at the time. (And I’m sure having slept with his father doesn’t help.) If she was a master manipulator, she should have tried to manipulate Tyrion in that moment ... maybe it wouldn’t have worked, but I bet that, even then, he still had a huge soft spot for her. In many ways, she was his greatest weakness. But the point is, she should have tried. Instead, she picks up a knife and attacks. This is silly. And even worse for being perhaps the only stupid move she makes in the entire storyline.
So, overall, I can’t fathom Shae. I don’t know who she really is, I don’t know who the showrunners want me to think she is, and I can’t make any logical sense of her actions, even if I assume she’s not a logical person.
[6] Think I’m exaggerating? Fine: she chooses Joffrey over Arya, Stannis over the Hound, Loras over Dontos, Littlefinger over Royce, and Littlefinger again over Brienne. Now, obviously not all of those would have worked out for her: the Hound may not have been any more successful getting Sansa to a living Stark than he was with Arya, and Dontos was just delivering her to Littlefinger anyway. And Stannis and Loras were more hopeful dreams than actual offers, but that’s what made them bad choices: choosing an actual Stannis in the castle over running off with the Hound in the middle of the night would be a no-brainer. But she threw away a real, present chance to escape the nightmare she was trapped in on the hope that Stannis might win the battle. Really, the only one of these choices I don’t fault her for was the pipe dream of marrying Loras: giving that up to sail off with Littlefinger (whether or not facilitated by Dontos, who she already knew was a drunkard) wasn’t a great option, granted. But it’s still a remarkable string of bad choices, and I don’t think I even remembered them all.
[7] I’d forgotten that line as well.
[8] In this case, it’s Shireen’s promise to Davos about the upcoming battle, which she will never live to see.
[9] In the behind-the-scenes short, the showrunners postulate that this is the first time in the entire show’s ru
[10] It apparently wasn’t enough to set the maneating tiger loose; now she’s tracked it back to its lair and is trying to pet it for eating all the people she didn’t like. And then seems surprised when it bites her arm off.
[11] I completely didn’t understand this death. The Sons of the Harpy are supposedly representatives of the Great Masters, who are obviously resentful of Dany, who freed all their slaves. But, in this scene, the Sons of the Harpy are killing more of the rich people than the former slaves. That seems rather counterproductive. As for Hizdahr (a.k.a. “what’s-his-name”), he enters the scene with apologies for being late, saying he was just taking care of some last minute preparations, which is as obvious a clue that he was in on the whole attack as it could possibly be. Yet he too is killed by the bad guys. Now, you might say that this was just a red herring planted by the writers to throw us off, except that that doesn’t make any sense. On first viewing, we have no clue that an attack is coming: it’s a huge shock when it breaks out. So there’s nothing to throw us off from. On repeat viewing, on the other hand, we already know that Hizdahr gets killed during this scene, strongly implying that Daario is wrong in his insistence about Hizdahr being aligned with the Sons of the Harpy, so what’s the point in trying to mislead us? No, the whole “red herring” theory doesn’t make any sense. And yet Chekhov’s gun implies that there must be some point to the line. So I don’t understand which side Hizdahr is on, I don’t understand which side the Sons of the Harpy are on (other than that they’re certainly not on Dany’s side), and I’m still entirely sure whether I’m supposed to be sad that what’s-his-name is dead now.
So, as I said: no great loss.
[12] This is Dany’s second great “fuck yeah!” moment. I dunno; there’s just something vicariously awesome about watching a big dragon show up and turn your enemies into crispy critters.
[13] Don’t forget: this is the woman who had to work up to burning her daughter alive by burning several other members of her family alive, including her brother(S4E2). And she was a shitty mother, even before taking this rather drastic turn for the shittier. So I shan’t be shedding any tears.
[14] Honestly, I think she broke him. I think maybe there was some chance he might have been the chosen one, before she talked him into killing his own daughter. Not that that would have been a particularly happy outcome. So I suppose it’s all for the best.
[15] How deep could it have been anyway? There was a weird thaw going on: it’s a major plot point of the episode.
[16] This is undoubtedly the best Arya kill ever. Not the most satisfying, to be sure (that’s still to come), but bloody and drawn out and reduces a total dick to whimpering jelly ... just great.
[17] I’m a bit surprised Jon falls for this bit of trickery. It seems over-obvious, especially in retrospect. Olly was very clearly not on board with this whole wildling thing, and he was just a bit too enthusiastic in delivering that news about Benjen.
I do like the callback to Julius Caesar here though. Everyone has to stab him once so that the killing blow can’t be ascribed to any one person.