Game of Thrones Rewatch 5.3: "High Sparrow"

Read the previous entry in this series here.
Read the next entry in this series here.
 

5.3 “High Sparrow”

Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Directed by Mark Mylod

This episode has a very unintentional central theme of getting the core characterization of nearly every single character it deals with so, so wrong. And also really gross sex stuff, gross even for this show, and they managed to pack at least three different instances of gross into a single episode, so . . . hooray for them?

Let’s totally arbitrarily start with Arya, who’s serving in the House of Black and White to show that she can serve. In order to become a Faceless assassin, she has to be able to completely lose herself—become No One, as they keep putting it—which requires complete self-abnegation. Arya struggles with this, because although she’s become many people in order to survive her travels across Westeros (we don’t get as deep a dive into her endless name-changing in the show as we do in the books), at her core she’s Arya Stark, a wolf, and she’s very grounded in that identity. It’s the last thing she has, and she has to work very hard to let go of it. But at the same time, she wants to continue what she started with Syrio Forel and Jaqen H’ghar. As she’s gotten further from home, she’s lost more and more power, going from a young girl who can order Gold Cloaks around to a nobody scrubbing floors. She saw Jaqen’s effortless murders as a kind of power that she could have, and fixates on Braavos because that’s where Syrio was from. She wants the power to get revenge on her enemies, and therein lies another struggle, because the Faceless Men are supposed to be completely dispassionate about their kills and not have any enemies because they are No One.

In order to prove that she is no longer Arya Stark, but ready to become No One, she takes all of her worldly possessions down to the harbor and throws them in—all but Needle. She can’t give up Needle, so she tucks it under some rocks where she can retrieve it later.

For the most part, the on-screen portrayal of Arya’s struggle to integrate into the House of Black and White and show her worthiness to be taken on as an actual acolyte to the Faceless Men is pretty good. The issue comes with Benioff & Weiss’ post-episode discussion of the Needle scene. According to them, Arya is vengeance personified, and Needle is the tool with which she will get her revenge back in Westeros once she’s done training. They claim that Needle symbolizes vengeance, and Arya can’t let go of her need for revenge.

This is just wrong on so many levels, and their belief that this is who Arya is explains a lot of the issues that creep into her characterization later, particularly in season six. (It also continues a theme of Benioff & Weiss adapting plot points and scenes while completely cutting them loose from the canon context that explains why they’re there and why they’re important.) In the books, Arya stands over the harbor with Needle in her hands:

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile. [. . .] The Many-Faced God can have the rest, she thought, but he can’t have this. (A Feast for Crows 22, Arya II)

Considering that they have all the symbolism of Needle and why Arya can’t throw it away laid out in such a clear, unmistakable, obvious fashion, there’s really no excuse for them to believe that Needle = revenge . . . except that they want to turn Arya into a little killing machine, because women can’t be powerful without being violent, and characters can’t have actual nuance and layers. Sentimental attachment to her past is a weakness (read: girly), and thus Arya can’t have it. So Needle isn’t the last remaining link she has to her family and her home, it’s her revenge-murder tool.

Cersei and Margaery are fighting over Tommen, and herein is another characterization problem. Between aging up both Margaery and Tommen (Tommen far past anything that makes sense, as I’ve discussed before) and apparently taking book-Cersei’s impressions of Margaery (since we never see Margaery from inside the way we see Cersei) entirely at face-value, we get a really awful person instead of a generally sweet, mostly innocent, just-learning-politics sixteen-year-old. In the books, Tommen is around eight or nine, while Margaery is sixteen. There’s no expectation that the marriage will be consummated for several years yet. This is the crux of why Cersei’s plan to unseat Margaery actually works before it backfires on her—if she can prove Margaery isn’t a virgin, she can get Margaery for treason, either for cheating on Tommen (which is what she’s desperately trying to prove) or at the least, lying to the crown about her virginity before marrying Joffrey. (Without this particular motivation, there’s all sorts of issues with the Inquisition later.)

The confusion about Tommen’s actual age makes the wedding night scene particularly gross and difficult. The Game of Thrones wiki has a pretty good breakdown of how Tommen might maybe be eighteen at this point in the show, but that’s never made explicitly clear. The one time his age is referred to, back in season one, he’s eight. Even Dean-Charles Chapman estimated Tommen’s age at around twelve and tried to act younger than his own seventeen years. Without someone actually saying that Tommen is sixteen or eighteen or whatever—in other words, without an obvious and explicit retcon of the already-stated age of the character—the wedding night scene is super gross. Even with it, it’s kind of gross because it once again puts Margaery in the position of a siren, gaining power by using sex; not until the marriage is actually consummated does she start to seriously try to manipulate Tommen into getting rid of Cersei. Not only that, she gossips to her ladies about Tommen’s performance in the bedroom, even giving Cersei a sly little dig about how much Tommen’s enjoying himself. This is part of the claws-out Margaery they’ve written this season, a Margaery who’s done being nice to Cersei because Cersei’s never been nice to her and has no power anymore, who makes shallow, catty comments about Cersei’s age, her drinking problem, and her lack of said power, and then gives her ladies a knowing eye-roll when Cersei leaves.

I really don’t like this Margaery. I don’t have strong feelings about book-Margaery because she’s so background she barely has a personality, but that unfortunately left the door open for Benioff and Weiss to inscribe a sex-crazed, manipulative, stereotypical woman onto her. The fact that we’re clearly supposed to be rooting for her to win and Put Cersei In Her Place is just offensive, especially since they’ve made Cersei and Margaery the same person, and they expect us to hate Cersei and love Margaery.

Not only are Benioff and Weiss bad at writing politics, they’re abysmal at writing women.

Up north, the foundation for the absolute worst part of this entire season (“Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”) is being laid. Roose scolds Ramsay for flaying too many people, claiming that fear won’t hold the North for them. Ramsay disagrees, saying that it’s holding it pretty well right now. Roose says they need more than fear; they need alliances, and he’s got just the person for a marriage alliance in mind. Meanwhile, Petyr and Sansa have made it to Moat Cailin, and when Sansa figures out what Petyr’s plan is, she nearly has hysterics. He ostensibly leaves the decision to her, but really, what’s she going to do at this point? Petyr is the only protection she has. She’s trapped—again. So she goes to Winterfell, greets the Boltons with barely-disguised disdain, and an old serving-woman tells her that “the North remembers.” Except not really, because not a single person steps up to stop what’s coming.

Brienne and Pod are following Petyr and Sansa, and we get more morose-Brienne as she tells Pod about Renly being nice to her and how she’s going to kill Stannis one day in vengeance. I guess we needed this reminder because of how the season ends. The viewers can’t be expected to remember major events from three seasons ago that created central driving motivation for the characters, after all. The writers have to make sure we’re reminded constantly to set up the big revenge-killing.

Up at the Wall, Jon’s settling in as Lord Commander with Olly as his steward (for some reason). (My guess on that reason is we need him around for reaction shots and stink-eye to heavy-handedly set up the other murder at the end of the season.) Stannis asks if Jon’s thought about his offer, and Jon says he’s Lord Commander now and can’t forsake his vows for something as piddly as avenging his family and stabilizing the North. Stannis promises he’s leaving soon, but plans to leave the Wildlings with Jon, and warns him that his men might not like having them around. Jon agrees that the men don’t tend to like the “free folk” (cue a reaction shot from Olly because apparently Jon using the name the Wildlings call themselves rather than the slightly racist name everyone else calls them is a surprise). Davos tries to convince him that maybe protecting the realm means getting a bit dirty, like by taking out the Boltons, for example.

At dinner, Jon passes out assignments, giving Alliser the post of First Ranger and sending Janos to Greyguard to start rebuilding and repopulating. Janos says nope, no way, shove it up your bastard arse, and Jon has him taken outside and beheads him. This is another example of hitting a plot point while losing all context; in the books, Jon has endured months of Janos undermining his authority, after sending Jon (rather than Jon electing to go) to treat with/kill/get killed by Mance. This Janos is just a blustery coward, not one of the leaders of an active resistance to Jon’s leadership. Also, we don’t get to see Jon actively decide to follow Ned’s example; in the books, he first tells the men to hang Janos, then remembers his duty and sends for his sword and a block. (This causes some issues in the next season, as well.) Benioff and Weiss believe Jon had to kill Janos to keep and show his authority, but given the changed context, it looks like a serious overreaction to a single incident rather than a final ending of a months-long insurgency. (Or what’s intended to be; it actually ramps up a bit after Janos’ death.)

Over in Volantis, Tyrion is bored out of his mind and insists on seeing the city, against Varys’ advice. They take the time to inform the viewer and Tyrion about slave tattoos and their meanings (this will be important for how they treat slavery later), and see a Red Priestess giving her sermon praising Daenerys for freeing slaves. At the brothel, the most popular slave is a woman in a blonde wig with a blue dress open at the back to show her butt; she’s apparently cosplaying as Daenerys and everyone wants to bed the faux-dragon queen. Tyrion wanders over to talk to a slave sitting by herself; she immediately pegs that he’s completely broke, but talks to him anyway because everyone likes the blonde and nobody’s interested in her. Tyrion assures her that he thinks she’s pretty and would hire her if he had money, at which point she decides to go ahead and have sex with him anyway, as long as he has a bath first. He takes her hand, but then realizes that he “can’t do this” and goes out to pee in the river.

There’s a lot to unpack in this short scene, and it’s gross on a number of levels. First of all, they’ve attempted to establish that slavery is bad. They’ve said slavery is bad, and we’ve seen slaves not wanting to be slaves (understandably). What they haven’t done is show that slavery is bad beyond the abstract idea of being owned and traded. There’s a bit of it with the introduction of the Unsullied, but after that we’re just supposed to accept that slavery = bad and therefore Daenerys’ crusade is the right thing to do. (Please note that I’m not saying slavery isn’t bad—it definitely is—but the way it’s portrayed/used in the show is a problem.) Theoretically, this slave’s owner/boss is way worse than Petyr, since he owns his prostitutes, and look how Petyr treated his women. And yet this young woman offers to have sex with Tyrion, for free, because he seems nice. She doesn’t seem at all concerned that this might lead to some sort of punishment, even though in the language of slavery, she’s giving away her master’s property by not charging Tyrion for the services she’s about to render. What this does, ultimately, is imply that slavery isn’t all that bad, that it’s not much different than the type of voluntary prostitution they have in Westeros (remember when no less than three prostitutes didn’t charge Pod for their services?). So, if this is what slavery, specifically sex slavery, which you could easily argue is the worst kind, is like, and if that one old guy actually wanted to be a slave again, then what’s so bad? Why is Daenerys overturning the economy of an entire region? How is she the good guy in this scenario? Essentially, Benioff and Weiss have established a cultural issue, then completely ignored the implications of it and that it’s even an issue when it doesn’t immediately serve their story. They actually do this kind of a lot.

Second, here’s yet another example of sanctifying Tyrion because we can’t possibly have an actually grey or problematic “hero” (Martin has referred to Tyrion as the “villain”). As mentioned in the previous post, they already skipped his bad behavior at Illyrio’s manse, but this is another, more obvious way they’ve cleaned up his act for the show. This sequence does happen in the books—and Tyrion brutally rapes the slave, who doesn’t speak Westerosi, twice. The narrative makes no apologies for it, either; it’s wrong, Tyrion knows it’s wrong, the reader is supposed to know it’s wrong, and it’s where Tyrion hits rock-bottom, where he stays for several months before starting to get his shit together. Book-Tyrion is a drunk, a murderer, and a rapist. Book-Tyrion is not a nice person, and I think the reader is supposed to be a bit conflicted about liking him because he’s smarter than everyone else and always has a ready quip.

On a side note, this also kind of cleans up Jorah, who’s also in this brothel, because in the books, he’s here with a Daenerys look-alike on his knee. Since he can’t have actual-Dany, he’s opted for sex-slave fake-Dany, because that’s a) healthy; and b) a sign of true love. But the show narrative treats Jorah as a tragic, heroic figure who just has to prove himself to Daenerys so she’ll take him back and maybe even love him. (Gross.)

Finally, this gets back to a problem with the portrayal of prostitution that I’ve had since the beginning of the show—they’re always so happy to be doing their jobs. That these prostitutes are actually slaves makes it even worse. The only prostitute we’ve ever seen not particularly wanting to immediately offer her services is Ros, after the death of the baby. Otherwise, every single prostitute—and now sex slave—loves being a prostitute/sex slave so much that this particular one is actually sad because none of the men want to have sex with her. If this were a ploy to draw in a certain type of customer—it worked on Tyrion, after all—then I could almost see it, but that she then turns around and offers Tyrion free sex indicates that it’s not a ploy and she’s actually lonely because everyone’s ignoring her. That’s a serious problem. Benioff and Weiss had such an opportunity here to show the difference between Westeros and Essos, between voluntary prostitution and sex slavery, and they throw it away to heroize Tyrion and show that he’s Changed™ and won’t just go around randomly having sex with strangers after he had to kill his former lover/concubine for betraying him and sleeping with his father.

At this point, Jorah sneaks up behind Tyrion, grabs him, ties him up, and says he’s taking him to the queen. All suspense is lost here, because book-Tyrion doesn’t immediately recognize Jorah and naturally thinks he’s being hauled back to Westeros for Cersei. The viewer, on the other hand, knows exactly who Jorah is and who he’d refer to as a queen, so Tyrion’s fate isn’t exactly sealed.

Last but not least, the incident that gives this episode its name goes on in King’s Landing, where the High Septon is at a brothel (because of course he is), doing some sort of roleplay thing where the prostitutes are (barely) dressed up as the gods, and he gets to pick which two he wants to “worship” today. The camerawork in this scene is particularly egregious; not only is the Septon on his knees, so any shot of his face includes naked female crotch, there’s a couple of seconds where the “Maiden” walks toward the camera and we get a centered close-up of her ladybits. A bunch of Sparrows, including Lancel, come in and grab the High Septon and tell him he’s going to be punished. What follows is an abbreviated walk of shame that foreshadows Cersei’s later but also shows the serious discrepancies between how men and women are treated on this show. The Septon is shown briefly from behind and he’s smacked every time he tries to cover himself with his hands, but his scene lasts maybe a minute and the camera never pans below his belly in the front. Cersei’s walk, later in the season, involves extended, constant full-body nudity that lasts for an uncomfortably long time. The thing is, this juxtaposition isn’t even necessary, since the High Septon in the books (this is the third one) is murdered by Osney Kettleblack on Cersei’s orders because he was appointed by Tyrion and Cersei doesn’t trust him. The murder of a High Septon is one of the charges laid at Cersei’s feet during the Inquisition, one of the more serious ones. But this adaptation has taken away all of that and left the Sparrows only really concerned with sexual sin. The High Sparrow seems to be an early socialist, but the people getting punished aren’t greedy or mean to the smallfolk; they’re “sexual deviants” in some way. We’ll definitely get to all of that later in the season.

Cersei goes to make friends with the High Sparrow, already starting to weave him into her plans to get rid of Margaery. Spoiler alert: it goes very badly.

Next week: Loras goes to jail. Melisandre isn’t wearing underwear. Jaime and Bronn arrive in “Dorne.” A death in Meereen makes me really angry.

RIP: Janos Slynt

A worshipper at the House of Black and White

Number of times I used the word “gross” in this post: 8

All images from screencapped.net

Game of Thrones Rewatch 5.2: "The House of Black and White"

Read the previous entry in this series here.
Read the next entry in this series here.
 

5.2 “The House of Black and White”

Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Directed by Michael Slovis

This episode has a lot of new beginnings or attempts at new beginnings. Arya starts her training as a Faceless Man, Jaime and Bronn head off to Dorne, Tyrion heads to Meereen, Brienne finds Sansa, Cersei tries to rule, and Dany struggles to be a just ruler.

Arya sails into Braavos under the legs of the Titan, which would be more impressive if we hadn’t seen it already (still angry that Stannis stole her thunder here). The captain takes her directly to the House of Black and White, which is way bigger and more intimidating than I imagined from the books, and also more all-by-itself (it’s surrounded by other temples in the books). For a temple dedicated to death, where a cadre of secretive assassins is trained, this version is equal parts very noticeable and not very welcoming (despite the number of people who come here to seek death as a surcease from pain).

The not-very-welcoming continues when Arya tries to go in; an older man steps out, glares at her, tells her there’s no Jaqen H’ghar here, and slams the door in her face. She spends a long time (days, probably) sitting on the stairs waiting (and saying her prayers), then finally gets up, throws the iron coin in the water, and leaves. It’s probably a day or so later that she’s catching pigeons on the streets of Braavos—a callback to when she had to do so in King’s Landing—and ends up confronted by a bunch of bravos and rescued by the man from the House of Black and White. He gives her the iron coin back and changes his face back to Jaqen, telling her that he’s not Jaqen, but no one, and she must also learn to be no one.

I think what the showrunners were going for here was to ramp up the tension by suggesting that Arya might be at a dead end; she has nowhere else to go, as she tells the man who isn’t Jaqen, despite his reply that she has everywhere else to go. But again, the House of Black and White isn’t supposed to be barred to anyone—in the books she just walks in. Anyone seeking death, or considering seeking death, is welcome to come, sit for awhile, pray, leave a gift, and even drink from the poison well if that’s what they want. Or just pray and leave. Getting in isn’t the hard part. Getting them to accept her as an acolyte is. If their issue was (as it is with so many things) that it wasn’t cinematic enough, I humbly submit the description of the Kindly Man’s disguise meant to scare Arya: “Beneath the cowl, he had no face; only a yellowed skull with a few scraps of skin still clinging to the cheeks, and a white worm wriggling from one empty eye socket” (A Feast for Crows 6, Arya I). I understand why they swapped out the Kindly Man for not-Jaqen (though it makes it pretty clear that they’re abandoning a chunk of the Oldtown/Citadel subplot), but they could have directly adapted this part of the story and had the skull turn into not-Jaqen. Like a lot of changes through these next two seasons, they seem to be made because Benioff and Weiss can, not because it’s actually necessary for story, budget, or casting reasons.

The entire “Dorne” storyline is another one of those. The adaptation of Dorne was an utter travesty from beginning to end. With no other storyline did Benioff and Weiss drop the ball as hard as they did with Dorne. There’s no logical consistency, it suffers from serious trope-ism, the writing is terrible, and if they wanted to get Jaime out of King’s Landing, there’s an entire Riverlands storyline they could have been doing instead.

The whole thing kicks off with a threat from “Dorne”: Cersei’s been sent a viper (stuffed or a statue, I’m not quite sure) with Myrcella’s necklace in its mouth. Jaime says he’ll take care of it, and Cersei shoots back that he’s never fixed anything in his life and what is a one-handed man going to do? He’s going to go find a friend, that’s what. Because when we get a wisecracking character, we can’t let go of him.

Bronn’s walking along the beach with Lollys, who seems kind of silly but not actually disabled, as she is in the books. Bronn seems genuinely fond of Lollys, if a bit ambitious still (he all but promises her that he’ll take care of her sister Falyse who’s apparently a jerk), but all that gets yoinked out from under him when Jaime brings him a writ that says Lollys is going to marry Wyllas Bracken instead. So, we introduce Lollys (finally) as a reason that Bronn won’t defend Tyrion, actually bring her in for five minutes, and then boot her out of the narrative when we need Bronn to defend Jaime? That seems like really sloppy writing to me, not to mention that it takes Bronn’s entire storyline away from him, as well. Sure, it all occurs off-page, but it’s way more interesting than this whole “Dorne” thing. (And yes, I will continue to use scare-quotes, thank you.)

Meanwhile, actually in “Dorne,” Ellaria glares daggers at Trystane and Myrcella, who are walking in the gardens. She tries to go talk to Doran, but Aero Hotah stops her because Aero Hotah is a badass and I absolutely hate how this altered narrative treats him. Ellaria wants to know what Doran’s doing to avenge Oberyn, and Doran points out that death in a trial by combat is not murder, not like Elia and her children’s deaths were. She wants to torture and dismember Myrcella, then send the pieces back to Cersei, because that’s totally what Oberyn “we don’t hurt little girls in Dorne” Martell would have wanted. I hate that they replaced Arianne with Ellaria and then turned Ellaria into this cliché, because while the Dorne storyline in the books is kind of a slow burn, it’s such a great surprise when we find out just why Doran is waiting. He’s smart. He’s playing a long game. He’s good at politics and (one more time for the people in the back) Benioff and Weiss are bad at writing politics.

In the Riverlands, Brienne and Pod have come to an inn, where incidentally Petyr and Sansa are also staying, or at least stopping for a meal. Brienne repeats her heavy-handed offer of her service to a similarly distrustful young woman and is again rejected. Now, Sansa’s reasoning—that she can’t trust Brienne because she saw Brienne bow to Joffrey (because she was supposed to not bow and risk being shot on the spot?)—is utterly ridiculous. Brienne then runs out, frees all the horses, randomly murders a dude, and I’m a) continuing to be irritated by Brienne’s careless use of violence; and b) really confused as to what it is she’s trying to accomplish here. She and Pod get chased, kill a couple more men, and eventually regroup. Pod suggests that maybe being rejected by Arya and Sansa means she’s released from her vow; Brienne says Sansa’s in no way safe with Petyr, and she plans on following them.

Tyrion and Varys are on the road to Volantis, from where they’ll take the road to Meereen. Tyrion continues to be morose and drunk, and Varys clearly thinks he’s just feeling sorry for himself. The way they’ve treated Tyrion’s drop into drunken lechery is kind of disturbing, because frankly, Tyrion’s an alcoholic. He used to drink just to take the edge off the constant pain he’s in because of his disability, but now he’s also depressed and drinking to try to take the edge off of that. The show seems to give it this spin of “oh boo hoo I had to kill my lover and my father woe is me” instead of the deeply psychological pain he’s in. They’ve also removed most of his bad behavior and kept only the drinking, so we don’t get to see just how terrible Tyrion really becomes at this point. There’s a whole sexual harassment sequence with a slave-but-not-slave in Ilyrio’s house that they skipped right over, and they’ll skip over another bout of sexual assault in a later episode. Tyrion is clearly a fan- and showrunner-favorite, but unlike Martin, who also likes Tyrion, they don’t have the guts to show him at his absolute worst. It’s amazing how frequently they undo Martin’s anti-trope writing; Martin wrote A Song of Ice and Fire very specifically to challenge fantasy tropes and try to be more “realistic” (whether he succeeded and what his idea of “realism” is is a topic for a whole other blog), but Benioff and Weiss frequently hard-turn the narrative back to fantasy tropes, but with more sex and violence. Tyrion is an example of that; Martin wrote “grey” characters with lots of internal conflict and sometimes some serious self-awareness, and Benioff and Weiss have done a lot of black-and-whiting in response. Tyrion doesn’t have much internal conflict; sure, he’s going through a bad patch right now, but he’s awesome and he knows it, and the writers never let him go to the truly dark place that might put the viewers off of his character (Tyrion doesn’t get to rape a sex slave in a Volantene brothel, but Sansa totally gets to be raped in a storyline that doesn’t even belong to her).

Tyrion wants to get out and walk, but Varys says he can’t because Cersei wants his head. Tyrion thinks that’s ridiculous—how is anyone going to know he’s him? Is Cersei just going to kill every dwarf in the world?

Apparently, the answer is yes, because when she’s presented with a dwarf head that isn’t Tyrion’s, she chooses not to punish the killer because it might dissuade other people looking for Tyrion and “mistakes will be made.” She heads into the Small Council chamber, where she takes Tywin’s seat and begins arranging things to her liking, which Kevan doesn’t appreciate at all. She assigns Mace as Master of Ships and Master of Coin, Qyburn as Master of Whispers, herself as acting Hand of the King (until Tommen is old enough to choose one himself), and tries to offer Kevan the position of Master of War, but he refuses. He says he doesn’t recognize her authority to make these decisions; she’s “just” the Queen Mother.

Cersei has a lot working against her in her desire for power. She’s a woman in a man’s world, constantly fighting the patriarchal forces that push back against her. She’s internalized that misogyny to the point that she doesn’t believe that women should rule, just that she should have been born a man because she’s not like other women; she’s smart and savvy and driven and yet people won’t listen to her because all they see is a woman (in her mind, anyway). She’s also not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, as Petyr points out in the books, and manages to get caught in her own machinations. I think the show dropped some of this; the only really clearly bad decision she makes is with the Faith Militant, which backfires on her, but not as hard as it could because (as previously mentioned) the show cut out all the people she had sexually manipulated and a good chunk of the people she had “disappeared” into the black cells and Qyburn’s experiments.

Speaking of women rulers, Stannis is having a deadpan hissy fit about a letter he got from Lyanna Mormont claiming that the people of Bear Island only recognize the King in the North, whose name is Stark. He again pushes Jon to allow him to legitimize him and put him in charge of Winterfell, and Jon looks constipated. He discusses this possibility with Sam as the men are gathering to vote for Lord Commander, admitting that he’s torn between his long-held desire to be a real Stark and his vows as a member of the Night’s Watch. Sam responds by deciding to throw Jon in as a nominee for Lord Commander, touting him as the best thing to happen to this generation of the Night’s Watch. This scene, again, accelerates Jon’s timeline, as in the books they go through dozens of votes without a clear victor emerging, until Sam finally gathers his courage and goes to the most respected of the men to suggest that Jon would do a good job and isn’t the guy that the person he’s talking to doesn’t want as Lord Commander. Sam puts Jon up as a compromise candidate, but the thing that wins him the vote is Mormont’s raven showing up and yelling “snow” at everyone, suggesting that Jon is Mormont’s own choice for Lord Commander. Some of that comes through a tad in the show; Jon doesn’t win by a landslide, but by one vote—Maester Aemon’s. He doesn’t have a mandate, or even the support of most of the Night’s Watch. But here, it’s spun as those men are Stupid, Stubborn, and Racist, not that they have honest concerns about how Jon ends up running the Night’s Watch.

Also at the Wall, Shireen is teaching Gilly to read, and the writers get in what feels like a subtle dig at the viewers who have also read the books when Selyse tells Shireen that hanging around a Wildling is dangerous, because “you have no idea what people will do. All your books and you still don’t know.” Well, no, Benioff and Weiss, because your characters don’t act in logical and understandable ways, they just hop from plot point to plot point and then fight huge impressive battles. And book readers don’t know what the characters will do because what you’re doing here is barely adapting anymore and is more like fan-fiction. (Sorry, was that a bit snarky?)

Daario finds one of the Harpies and gives Grey Worm a lesson in subterfuge, and they haul the man back to Daenerys. She and Mossador both want to kill him immediately, Barristan urges restraint, and Hizdahr doesn’t understand why a poor man like this would want to be a Harpy—he couldn’t have owned slaves and therefore couldn’t have lost any, after all. Dany suggests that having slaves around made him feel better about himself, because he might be poor, but at least he’s not a slave. Mossador retorts that the man would have been paid to be a Harpy. The advisors argue over what to do, and Dany kicks them all out except Barristan, who gives her another lecture about not becoming her father. She agrees to hold a fair trial for the man, but Mossador has other ideas. He breaks into his cell, kills him, and nails him up to a wall with “kill the masters” painted beside him, probably in his own blood. Mossador thinks he’s done Dany a favor by releasing her from her dilemma, and doesn’t understand why she has him arrested for murder. She then hauls him out in front of everyone and has him beheaded, which starts a riot. So, she’s not willing to extend the same courtesy—a fair and public trial—to one of her own advisors that she was going to extend to the Harpy? Sure, Mossador confessed, but only to her and her people. The rest of the city only has her word for it.

Again, we see some really simplified and bad politics. The problem with Dany’s rule in the books is she keeps compromising her core values to try to make all of the people happy, eventually losing sight of who she is and what her purpose truly is. She even dresses like the Meereenese—which she very pointedly doesn’t do in the show—and refers to it as “wearing her floppy ears” from Brown Ben Plumm (Sir Not Appearing in this Picture) saying that if someone wants to be king of the rabbits, he has to wear some floppy ears. She ultimately does forge peace by marrying Hizdahr and opening the fighting pits, but that’s so far from who she is as a liberator that she strips off her tokar—which she explicitly refers to as her “floppy ears” in that moment—then rides away on Drogon and spends several weeks in the wilderness remembering who she is and what she has to do before encountering the Dothraki again.

Drogon shows up at the end of this episode, and he’s massive. She tries to pet him, but he doesn’t want to be touched, and he flies off out over the city. This both reminds us that Drogon’s out there and that he’s growing, and gives Dany a brief glimpse back at who she’s supposed to be after the bad decisions she’s made today.

Next week: Another royal wedding. Margaery is gross. Sansa learns Petyr’s plans. A girl tries to become no one. The Sparrows make their presence felt. The return of Jorah.

RIP:

Mossador

Unnamed dwarf

Unnamed Son of the Harpy

Game of Thrones Rewatch 5.1: "The Wars to Come"

Read the previous entry in this series here.
Read the next entry in this series here.
 

5.1 “The Wars to Come”

Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Directed by Michael Slovis

Commentary by Michael Slovis, David Franco (DP), and Ciaran Hinds (Mance Rayder)

So here we are in season five. The first season that doesn’t have a Martin-penned episode, which I’ve felt have sort of anchored the seasons—at least until season four, when half of his scenes ended up in “his” episode and half in a different episode, and “his” episode was full of Theon-torture that even Martin seemed super disturbed by. Season five overall was kind of a mess, as they move past the books or further away from the books, depending on the storyline.

We start with a flashback, which the show has never done before, though they might have been useful before now for a lot of backstory. It’s odd to me that, having avoided flashbacks in a series that rests so heavily on a massive history, they’d a) start now; and b) start with Cersei’s visit to Maggy the Frog. If we didn’t need Ned’s fever dream about the Tower of Joy, or Petyr’s duel with Brandon Stark, or the Battle of the Trident where Rhaegar died, we don’t need this. Cersei could very easily have just told this story, as she does later in the season. Also, it’s weird that they did it now, as the only reason we don’t see it until this point in the books is that Cersei isn’t a POV character until now. But the memory suddenly illuminates a lot of Cersei’s behavior, and maybe she could have been a touch more sympathetic in the show if we’d known about this from the start.

Not only is it unnecessary, it’s incomplete. They leave out a third of Maggy’s prophecy for Cersei, which in the books is: “Queen you shall be, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear. [. . .] Six-and-ten [children] for [the king] and three for you. Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds, [. . .] and when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you” (A Feast for Crows, Chapter 12, Cersei III). The show only handles the part about the more beautiful queen and the children; it leaves out the valonqar, which has generally been translated as “little brother.” The trouble is, leaving out this piece ruins yet another reason Cersei has for hating Tyrion so much. She assumes Maggy meant Tyrion would kill her, though there’s lots of fan theories about this prophecy, as well as which “another” is meant—Margaery and Daenerys are the leading contenders, though Sansa is also a possibility. (Cersei clearly thinks it’s Margaery, and it could be a case of there being many possibilities and Cersei’s choice cements it, kind of like Voldemort picking Harry instead of Neville.)

Not only that, but it’s entirely possible that the valonqar is actually Jaime and this piece could have foreshadowed Jaime killing Cersei. Now, if they don’t plan to have Cersei killed (because seriously, Cersei’s going to die before the end of this series) by anyone who could possibly be considered her little brother (and it doesn’t say your little brother, just the little brother), then fine, leave it out. But it could still have been used as justification for her hatred of Tyrion beyond “you killed my mother,” which is, frankly, a terrible reason for hating a sibling for the amount of time and with the ferocity she does.

At the Sept of Baelor, where Tywin lays in state, Cersei and Jaime argue about Jaime’s part in Tywin’s death—releasing Tyrion from his cell—and Jaime tries to argue that they’re all they have left now, and they need to stick together. Jaime doesn’t seem to be overly guilty about it, and they’ve once again hacked a good chunk of introspection out of the story; rather than Jaime standing vigil over the body for three days and thinking about everything (especially what Tyrion told him about Cersei), they have a five-minute scene with Tywin’s body and move right along. I get the need to streamline, I really do, but when “streamlining” turns into “hacking huge chunks out of the personality and character development of some of the main characters,” I tend to get cranky. (This show makes me very cranky.)

At Tywin’s wake, Loras tries to connect with Cersei again and she’s having none of it. Tommen and Margaery have a sympathetic moment and Cersei glares. She brushes off Pycelle and is stopped by Lancel, who’s here to set up the Sparrows since Brienne’s off-mission and doesn’t get to interact much with the smallfolk. He tries to apologize for his sins—seducing Cersei, killing Robert—but Cersei denies any knowledge of what he’s talking about. He offers to pray for Tywin’s soul, and Cersei says Tywin’s soul doesn’t need his help. These scenes really help to cement how bad Cersei is at making friends and influencing people, which is why in the books she needs Qyburn to help her stay in power. Here she just needs plot convenience.

At the Wall, Jon’s training Olly, who’s not doing so well, while everyone else sits out in the courtyard doing some sort of work (except Sam, who’s just kind of hovering over Gilly). Gilly asks if Sam shouldn’t be training, as well, and he gives Jon a horrified look before boasting that anyone who killed a White Walker and a Thenn doesn’t need training. I wish I could tell you this was the last time Sam brags about this, but it’s really, really not. Gilly remarks that her situation here is tenuous, and that the new lord commander, whoever that is, might send her away, and she recognizes the position that would put Sam in, since he promised not to leave her, but if he goes with her, he becomes a deserter.

Melisandre pops up to bring Jon to see Stannis, and on the way there she gets right to the good stuff, asking him if he’s a virgin, because Melisandre has no boundaries. Stannis wants Jon to use his influence with Mance to get him to put together a Wildling army to help him retake Winterfell. Davos gets to play devil’s advocate by pushing Jon about his feelings regarding the Wildlings; apparently some of the men didn’t like it much that he took Ygritte’s body north to burn her. This, unfortunately, becomes the core of Jon’s storyline—he sees the Wildlings as people, everyone else in the Watch is racist, and thus they hate Jon. It’s part of his storyline in the books, too, but there’s so much more to it (isn’t there always), and this simplified version is really black-and-white for the “world full of greys” we’re supposed to be given.

Stannis gives Jon until nightfall to convince Mance to convince the Wildlings to join him, or he’ll kill Mance. Because, what? Why? What? The reason given in the books—that Mance is a Night’s Watch deserter (and, not incidentally, calls himself a king and thus Melisandre wants his blood)—at least makes sense. Here, Stannis wants Mance to convince his people (who, it has already been established, are really bad at unifying and following) to follow Stannis, or he’ll kill him, which will totally get the Wildlings to follow him. The logic here does not compute. It also doesn’t compute that Mance, whose entire rasion d’etre was to rescue his people from the White Walkers, refuses to take this opportunity to rescue his people because it means accepting a southern king. Which, what did he expect when he brought his people south? Did he think they could just settle on lands technically ruled by a king and not acknowledge the king? Because that’s, frankly, stupid. The smart thing to do at this point would be to start to assimilate (which, spoiler alert, they totally do in the books). Instead we get a whole bunch of pseudo-philosophy about freedom and Mance is hauled off to be burned to death. The Wildlings all have trouble watching; Selyse is disturbingly happy; Jon actually leaves (earning him a disapproving look from Olly because, remember, Olly Hates Wildlings and that is the extent of his characterization), then comes back and shoots Mance so he doesn’t actually burn to death.

Over in the Vale, we’re abandoning Sansa’s book-storyline entirely and shoving her into the storyline of a minor, non-POV character. This turns into a major problem, and I’ll try to talk about how each step is a problem rather than blasting you with my whole what-even-are-they-doing-with-Sansa rant all at once. Right now, Sansa (with her hair very brown) and Petyr leave Robin with Robar Royce to learn to fight (he can barely lift a sword right now, and frankly, the way he’s being trained isn’t likely to make that any better). Petyr tells him they’re taking Sansa to the Fingers and they head in the complete opposite direction, passing Brienne and Pod on the way.

Brienne’s still upset about Arya, and Pod tries to comfort her, but Brienne refuses to be comforted. She again tries to send Pod away, and he again refuses to leave her. She’s completely disaffected about the whole nobility thing at this point, declaring that all the good lords are dead and the ones who are left are monsters. This is more about her own self-doubt and failure than anything else—failure to protect Renly, failure to return Jaime to King’s Landing unscathed, failure to protect Catelyn, failure to protect Arya. But it’s still a massive change from book-Brienne, who still had a lot of idealistic attitudes and really believes in Jaime, at least (though she doesn’t follow him so much as work with him). She’s aware that some lords are awful—she had several run-ins with Randyll Tarly, after all—but overall she believes in duty, honor, and chivalry in much the same way Sansa does.

 

Across the Narrow Sea, Tyrion has arrived in Pentos, and Varys liberates him from his crate with a crowbar. Now, by rights, this should be Ilyrio Mopatis, because Varys is hiding in one of his alter egos back in King’s Landing, but I’m kind of willing to give them this one because a) Conleth Hill disappearing for a season would be awful; and b) Varys is just hiding, not doing anything important (until he kills Kevan), so there’s no reason why he can’t replace Ilyrio for this part of the plot (it’s later that his presence in this storyline becomes a major problem). Tyrion is piss drunk and sloppy, perfectly willing and ready to drink himself to death. Varys bullies him a bit, telling him self-pity isn’t a good look for him and he’s smart and savvy enough to make a real difference in Westeros, if he can just find the right person to back. Varys thinks that person is Daenerys. Tyrion agrees to go, but not to completely let go of his self-pity or the bottle.

Meanwhile, Daenerys has an uprising on her hands as the Sons of the Harpy make themselves known by murdering one of her Unsullied. First, though, we need the obligatory gratuitous nudity; despite having had White Rat (the Unsullied in question) as a client before, and knowing that all he wants is to cuddle, the Son-of-the-Harpy prostitute strips completely naked and then is like “oh, right” and puts her skirt back on. Once he’s all comfy and relaxed, she slits his throat.

Daenerys orders White Rat buried with full honor in the Temple of the Graces, which I think is the only time we hear anything about the Temple because they’ve ditched so much of the politics of Meereen, including the indomitable Galazza Galare, who I really miss. Instead of a full complement of advisors—Meereenese, sellsword captains, former slaves, the Green Grace, Barristan, etc.—who all have their own perspectives and needs and ideas about how the city should be run, Dany’s down to like five advisors: Mossador, a former Meereenese slave; Barristan; Grey Worm; Daario; and Hizdahr zo Loraq for some reason. This contributes to the overall simplifying of Dany’s storyline and continues to make her look way too easily led by her (all male) advisors.

Daario, for his part, pushes her toward violence, because that’s how he deals with things. He thinks she should grant Hizdahr’s request to open the fighting pits, which she’s already refused (emphatically), and he thinks she should release her dragons as a show of strength. As discussed earlier, the dragons are in many ways a symbol of the Targaryen madness as well as weapons of mass destruction, so he wants her to literally unleash her beast and essentially burn Meereen to the ground. She goes to visit the caged dragons soon after, and is clearly afraid of them, even running away when one snaps at her. This is the only semblance of the struggle for balance we see in Dany’s storyline; she understands that her power comes from the dragons, but the dragons are a really big and dangerous power that she doesn’t entirely trust herself to be able to wield, let alone be able to wield wisely. She wants to be a good queen, not just a conqueror, and the dragons are a conquering force that have nothing to do with being a good queen, despite Daario’s assertion that a dragon queen without a dragon isn’t a queen. I don’t feel that this came through clearly in the show; it feels more like they’re just slowly paring down her support system in preparation both for Tyrion showing up and becoming the shining star of her council and for the choice she has to make in the fighting pit at the end of the season.

RIP:

White Rat

Mance Rayder

Next week: Arya reaches Braavos. Brienne is rejected again. The faux-Dorne plot thickens. Daenerys does whatever her councilors tell her to.

All images from screencapped.net