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
Always a pleasure, these!
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