Read the previous entry here. Read the next entry here.
As the second season of the series starts, it becomes clear that war is coming.
2.1, "A Secret and a Spark"
Written by Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond
Directed by Villads Spangsberg
Synopsis
Hospitable, yes? Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
General Amaya scouts across the Breach, a dangerous passage through the boundary between Xadia and the human kingdoms. She encounters a small party of Sunfire Elves, and a melee ensues; she repels them at some material cost, making an enemy of their leader and withdrawing.
Callum briefly recapitulates the events of the first season, as if in a letter to Harrow. He, Ezran, Rayla, Bait, Ellis, and Ava are at the magical nexus at the top of Cursed Caldera with Lujanne.
Fancy people saying fancy things. Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
In council at the castle of Katolis, Viren warns of draconic encroachments as presaging war. He presses for a retaliatory strike, one involving all the human kingdoms; the council resists the idea, partly on procedural grounds, calling for retrieval of Ezran and Callum.
There are worse things, though the time is not opportune. Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
The group at the magical nexus confers regarding next steps to take. Rayla exults in her restored dexterity before pressing to depart in haste; Lujanne confirms that they are pursued. Some delay is approved, and Rayla makes to reconnoiter the area. Lujanne takes the opportunity to teasingly instruct Callum in some arcane information--although not practice, given his disconnectedness from prevailing magical forces. Ezran works with Azymondias to develop the latter's ability to fly; it does not go well.
Viren muses over the death of Harrow as he returns to the royal suite. It remains in disarray, and Viren retrieves the royal seal, illicitly. He uses it to forge messages which he sends to the other kingdoms.
Danger, Will Robinson... Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
Rayla frets as she patrols. She encounters one of Lujanne's illusions on her first patrol; on her second, she runs into Soren and Claudia.
Discussion
For example... Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
The Orientalism identified earlier as at work in the series's depictions of elves remains at work in the present episode; the exoticized Sunfire Elf leader whom Amaya fights wears armor and bears weapons with markings reminiscent of Arabic and Chinese styles and ideograms. As in earlier instances, there seem to be some essentialization and reduction at work, even as the motion to be more inclusive is more commendable. (That it speaks to concerns eloquently addressed in a piece on The Public Medievalist, Christina Warmbrunn's "Dear Tolkien Fans: Black People Exist," also helps.) At present, though, the issue is and remains problematic, particularly given the orientation of the series at children--for reasons Paul Sturtevant discusses (attested here and here, among others)--even as there is overt movement towards the idea of stereotypes being wrong.
Such Orientalism is not wholly out of keeping with ideas typically attributed to the people of the European Middle Ages, however. Nor is the reference to the Pentarchy Viren makes, the explicit naming of the construct foreshadowed in the second episode of the series. As before, the name evokes the Early English Heptarchy, calling back once again to the medieval/ist underpinnings of the series. And the Pentarchy seems quite concerned with matters of precedence and protocol--quite in line with common medievalist understandings, although perhaps less so in practice.
A river doesn't run through it, though... Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
And, as is perhaps unavoidable, there is a fairly open visual reference to Peter Jackson's Middle-earth movies. The warding statues at the magical nexus clearly call to mind Tolkien's Argonath. Given the prevalence of Tolkienian reference in fantasy fiction and medieval/ist work, more generally, it is not to be wondered at--nor yet because of the series's presumed primary audience of children whose parents grew up around Jackson's films and reading their literary antecedents. But it does mark the series, once again, as being more medievalist than medieval, as does the crow-messaging introduced in the episode, which rings of Martin. The series's underpinnings are more in what is built upon the medieval than in the medieval itself, as such, though the foundations remain in place.
Read the previous entry here! Read the next entry here!
As the second season of Galavant begins, narrative focus begins to shift meaningfully--but not always admirably.
2.1, "A New Season, aka Suck It, Cancellation Bear"
Written by Dan Fogelman, Luan Thomas, Julia Grob, and Joe Piarulli
Directed by John Fortenberry
Synopsis
He's right, though. There are only so many times you can hear the song...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
Galavant and Richard continue to sail along their way, with Galavant trying to explicate and Richard complaining. The pirates conducting them--Peter Pillager and his crew--chastise them for an attempt to return to the dominant musical theme of the first season, offering another as they do so. The other major characters also join the new song, cementing it as the dominant musical strain and explaining current circumstances.
Isabella's situation receives particular attention; she is shown making multiple attempts to escape the pink prison in which she is held. Madalena, Gareth, and Sid (whose repeated silencing is lampshaded) also receive attention amid references to several contemporary-to-the-episode (it aired 3 January 2016, per IMDB) media productions. Galavant, Richard, and the pirates run aground on land familiar to Richard.
Unlike some things in a previous episode, this did not work well.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
In Valencia, Gareth begins to mutter discontentedly about his position in the overthrown court; Madalena remains queen, but his own status is ambiguous. The two sit in judgment over minor matters. Sid also asks about his status, highlighting Gareth's own ambiguity of position.
In Hortencia, Isabella's parents press her about the intended wedding with Harry. She argues against the whole affair, but her arguments are rejected by her parents out of hand. They leave her in holding, and she continues to pine for the absent Galavant.
It does seem hard to top him.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
Galavant and Richard proceed through a tangled wood, and Richard realizes they are in an enchanted forest from which some do not return--only to find that the Enchanted Forest is a bar in the woods. In the event, it is a gay bar, and Galavant is conscripted into working it by a disco-singing queen.
In Valencia, Gareth seeks Sid's help to clarify his own position in the kingdom. And in Hortencia, Isabella confronts Steve about his contentment before seeking aid in escape from Vincenzo and Gwynne. Vincenzo offers to help, covertly.
There is some clear influence.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.
Richard helps Galavant serve in the Enchanted Forest; the latter is caught amid an escape attempt, and Galavant rails against Richard. After, Richard encounters a long-lost avuncular figure who asserts that Richard's own father was gay and offers to assist Richard's escape.
Gareth confronts Madalena about his status. She condescendingly accedes to his demand.
Richard retrieves Galavant with some difficulty and effects their escape through the women's restroom. Galavant grudgingly acknowledges Richard's assistance and apologizes; Richard admits his incapacity, and Galavant commends him, encouraging his development.
Discussion
Early on, the episode makes reference to Game of Thrones (and you should read Shiloh's now-complete series on the series!), engaging directly with the ultimately more commercially successful and culturally-influential series. A later mention of "the White Walkers" functions similarly. The engagement, though, reads as a way to note what Galavant is not, which makes it less a re-grounding in current ("gritty," "grim," and "realistic") medievalisms and more a reaffirmation of the satirical--and decidedly medieval in echoing the fabliau, as noted--underpinnings of the series. It was a welcome note, and one that is sounded again in the continuing season as in the previous.
Far less welcome is the episode's treatment of women and gay men. Early in the episode, for example, Isabella is used to make a caricature of feminist discourse; she self-reports as a feminist before acting in such a way as to belie the report. The flattening of her character from earlier episodes continues, therefore, in a way that undermines some of the other work at inclusion the series had done even in her own character, as well as reducing her from a previously strong character to one conforming more neatly to misogynistic, patriarchal expectations of an often misunderstood medieval period and its descendants.
Similarly, the depiction of the gay men in the Enchanted Forest rings of stereotypes of flamboyance and hypersexuality, both of which have been used repeatedly and across decades to justify violence against gay men. That Richard is assumed to be gay because of his mannerisms and sexual inexperience with women does not help, either. And while it is the case that such examples as Chaucer's Pardoner might be taken as antecedents, and while it is the case that a camp aesthetic is decidedly present in many gay communities, that the depictions presented are a seeming first recourse does not argue in the episode's favor.
Hooray for 300 posts! Read the previous entry in the series here.
8.6 “The Iron Throne”
Written by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
This episode could have been two episodes. It probably should have been two episodes, because
the sudden and dramatic tone-shift halfway through was jarring. Also, I would
have liked a bit more time between “Dany’s dead” and “welp, let’s find a new
ruler.” That whole thing needed some time to breathe.
So let’s look at this in its halves because the first half
was as infuriating as all the Dany stuff has been this season and the second
half had its issues but at least resonated emotionally.
The Daenerys storyline feels like the writers set a trap for
us and for the character. (Either that, or they believed their own hype right
up until they decided to do Mad Queen Dany.) From the beginning, we’ve been
supposed to cheer for Dany. She was the good guy. She was overthrowing slavers.
She was liberating people—for real, not whatever “liberation” she was talking
about in her rousing speech to the Dothraki and Unsullied. The narrative told
us these were good things, that she was overthrowing bad, entrenched systems
that needed to be overthrown.
For the most part, the narrative was right. Slavery is bad and should be ended.
If a society can’t survive without slavery, it
shouldn’t survive.
This speech by Tyrion, casting Dany's killings of the slavers of Slaver's Bay as foreshadowing, feels like D&D wants us to view those actions as evil. Speaking as the descendant of actual, real world enslaved people? Nah.
The narrative even asked us to cheer when Dany did things
that are now used to show her burgeoning madness—crucifying the Great Masters.
Feeding one to her dragons. Burning the Dothraki khals. She was constantly and consistently rewarded for these
actions, sometimes in disturbing ways (the entire Dothraki nation falling to
their knees and then unquestioningly following her everywhere, anyone?). The
writers spent six seasons showing us that Dany was the good guy, if occasionally
a little overzealous.
And then we get Tyrion explaining how no, actually, killing
a bunch of slavers was somehow her “first they came for the socialists” moment.
Which is insulting to the audience, insulting to the character, and insulting
to survivors of the Holocaust, because for those who only know “First They Came…”
through memes, it’s a condemnation of all those who stood by and let the Nazis
get to the point where they were slaughtering millions.
Ok, I lied. Fuck this. The point of the "first they came" speech regarding the Holocaust is that THEY WERE ALWAYS COMING TO KILL MILLIONS. Anything else was a guise. The Nazis did not undergo a tragic downfall like Daenerys. This is a truly evil comparison. #GameofThroneshttps://t.co/CLqGMaN8cK
Put that alongside the Nuremberg quality of Dany’s speech to
her army (in a scary foreign language, no less), and the sudden Nazi imagery is just awful and offensive. Especially
since the show also bolsters the “white supremacist” arguments of the people
(like Cersei and the Tarlys) who were worried about the “foreign horde” coming
in and destroying everything—because they
did.
And then they
essentially held the city hostage by refusing to obey the commands of the (very
white except for that one Dornish guy—who even was that?) lords and ladies of
Westeros.
So, yes. Trap. Because we were supposed to root for Dany.
The writers set us up to believe she was doing the right thing. They hammered so hard how their show was so feminist because of all the powerful
women doing badass things like ending slavery and feeding their enemies to dogs
and wearing other people’s faces. Women On Top! as Entertainment Weekly put it. (Which has its own set of issues that I don't have room to get into here.)
And then they yank the rug out from under us, and instead of
a woman winning Westeros and sitting on the Iron Throne—you know, a good one,
not Cersei, who was also bad and evil, dontcha know—it turns out that she was evil all along. And the only
logical conclusion is that she goes mad (whatever that even means) and burns a
city to the ground and decides to set herself up as Queen of the World—which means
she has to die, at the hand of the man she loves, no less, because that’s what
women get in these stories.
So Drogon destroys the Iron Throne in a fit of grief? Or
something? I mean, destroying it is obviously what needed to happen because it
was clearly the One Ring and had to be thrown into the fires of Mordor, but
(and I can’t believe I’m saying this) Drogon’s reasoning/motivation isn’t clear
here. Carrying off Dany’s body makes some kind of sense, but since when does a
dragon have the cognitive capacity to understand symbolism?
That’s where this episode should have ended. If they weren’t
in such a damn hurry, it’s thematically and emotionally a great place for it to
stop, and then move the second half to its own episode.
Because now we pick up all the pieces and figure out which
white man gets to replace Daenerys. And I gotta tell you guys, I am not sold on Bran as king. Not only because,
again, the narrative didn’t set it up so it made sense, but because of the
reasoning we’re presented with and the way he’s treated and the optics of it.
So, first, Tyrion gets to be the one to propose making Bran
king because of course he is. Tyrion can do no wrong. Even when Tyrion messes
up, the narrative exonerates him because he was doing his best and just loved
his family (unlike a certain dragon queen I could mention). So much of this
would be so much more interesting if they’d kept even half of Tyrion’s characterization from the book (ex: see Jeff’s
take on the utter failure to adapt Tyrion here.)
Then, his reasoning is that people love a good story, and who
has a better story than Bran? May I propose just
about everyone in this series? Reminder: Bran was Sir Not Appearing in This
Picture in season five, and nobody seemed
to care.
Then there’s the whole issue of calling him Bran the Broken,
as if his disability is all there is to him. There are so many other monikers
they could have used, and I cringed so
hard every time they used this one.
Finally, let me point out that they overthrew a fiery,
emotional, passionate woman (read: “crazy, irrational, uncontrollable,
unpredictable”) for a cold, emotionless, all-seeing, all-knowing man, and if
that doesn’t say just everything, I don’t know what does.
Then the writers (and actors and Ramin Djawadi, gods bless
all of them) went straight for the Feels with the end game for each character.
Brienne finishes Jaime’s story in the White Book. Sansa becomes Queen in the
North. Arya hares off into uncharted territory. Grey Worm sets off for Naath. And
Jon joins the Night’s Watch again (why do we even still have that?) and sets
off to resettle the Free Folk north of the Wall.
I would like to point out that the two characters in this
show who murdered their girlfriends are shown as justified in doing so and end
up right back where they started—Tyrion as Hand of the King and Jon in the
Night’s Watch. Other than their own feelings, there are no real, serious
consequences for these actions.
This show, you guys. It has been one hell of a ride, and the
last half of that ride was on fire and
not in a good way. After the first four-ish seasons, it utterly failed as an
adaptation, and then the last three utterly failed as any kind of good or
compelling story. If this ending is where Martin’s going to end up (I have some
Doubts and also some Questions), he’s got his work cut out for him getting us
there (which is probably why The Winds of
Winter is taking so long).
I, for one, am perfectly happy to put this entire show
behind me, wrap up the few obligations I still have left now that it’s over,
and go read/watch something actually good.
Read the previous entry in the series here. Read the next entry in the series here.
“The Bells”
Written by David
Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by Miguel
Sapochnik
We’re almost done, you guys. It’s almost over.
This episode had one huge glaring flaw, but overall, it
might have been the best episode in the season. The cinematography was
gorgeous. The cello work in the score? Brilliant. The acting had me right on
the edge of sympathetic tears for the first 15-20 minutes. The tension while
everyone’s waiting for the bells to ring—magnificent. The juxtaposition of Arya
escaping and Sandor fighting Gregor—amazing. The production crew at all levels
deserves every Emmy they’re likely to win this year.
They even gave us some believable character moments. Leaving
entirely aside that I don’t think “Cleganebowl” will happen in the books
(Sandor’s a much different character there), it makes perfect sense for this Sandor. This Sandor is vengeance
personified and knows it, and knows that it’s terrible, and saves Arya from the
same fate. He can’t turn back—but Arya can, and does. It was nice to see her
humanized a bit.
I initially considered Jaime’s bit in this episode a flaw
because it continued the changes Benioff & Weiss have made from the books,
changes that I think are detrimental to Jaime’s overall character. However,
taken in isolation from the books, it demonstrates a consistency that not a lot
of characters in this show have. Would I rather see character development and Jaime stay with Brienne
and decide he wants to be a better person than Cersei? Sure. Does it make sense
that he doesn’t? Yes. If this is the Jaime they wanted to give us, at least he
was an internally consistent Jaime who recognized his own flaws and followed them
to their logical conclusion—like Sandor did.
The huge, glaring flaw? One guess.
The showrunners have no idea how to write women, or to write
about women. They never have. I’ve saidthisover
and over
in thisseries.
Added to this particular weakness is their push to get to the end as fast as
possible, which has led to sloppy writing that relies heavily on harmful
tropes, especially when it comes to women and people of color.
For Daenerys in particular, there’s an implication that
women can’t be trusted with power because they’re too emotional. The narrative
wants us to be afraid of her because she keeps burning people alive and not
listening to her advisors. But this is the same narrative that had her doing
similar things for years and wanted
us to view her as a badass. The sloppy writing comes in with the sudden turn in
season seven toward the narrative favoring Jon to be king and needing to get
Dany out of the way. But when you’ve already set her up to be the rightful
queen of Westeros, who’s been working toward that goal and helping people and
learning to rule for six years, how do you suddenly change the audience’s
sympathies?
By making her “crazy,” of course. Irrational. Emotional. Too
unstable to rule. Can’t be trusted with her finger on the nuclear button
because PMS or some shit. Not only is this a terrible approach to writing a
woman (women, really, because they did the same basic thing to Cersei, minus
the dragons), but it’s a horrific way of approaching and writing about mental
illness.
The Daenerys they’ve constructed on the show isn’t a
sociopath or a psychopath or whatever it is they want us to think she is
because of some “gods flip a coin” stuff. Right up until she nukes King’s
Landing, all of her feelings are absolutely valid. She listened to her advisors
and didn’t immediately take King’s Landing upon arriving in Westeros, and it
cost her her fleet and ultimately a dragon (the stupid trip beyond the wall
wouldn’t have been necessary if she’d already taken the throne by then). Now
her advisors are turning on her. The one person she thought she could trust
refused to do the one thing she asked of him, giving said advisors ammunition
to turn on her. She lost her best friend. If anything, she’s depressed, and she has every right to
be.
What the show is arguing, and has argued pretty much from
the beginning, is that mental illness (of any kind) leads to violence. By
default. Full stop. Everyone coded “crazy” (I apologize for the abelist
language, but that’s entirely the approach the show is taking, especially since
they never specify what kind of mental illness they mean) is violent. Aerys.
Viserys. Joffrey. Euron. Ramsay. Cersei. And now Daenerys.
That final “snap” into “Mad Queen” even came out of
literally nowhere and didn’t fit with anything they’ve given us about Dany up
to this point. I’d have believed her destroying the Red Keep after the bells
were rung. I don’t believe her just opening fire on the city like that. She’s
angry, sure. She’s angry with Cersei
for everything that’s happened since she got to Westeros—for losing Viserion,
for Cersei not helping with the White Walkers, for Euron killing Rhaegal, for
Cersei killing Missandei. So going after Cersei would have absolutely made
sense. But even at her most conqueror-y, Dany never just burned down a city for
no reason.
So why have her do it? My best guess—they wanted to have a
reason for Jon to turn on her. He’s been unflinchingly loyal, absolute in his
conviction that he does not want to be king, and they needed a reason for him
to flinch.
I suppose we’ll see next week.
Deaths:
Varys
The Golden Company
Euron Greyjoy
Qyburn
Sandor Clegane
Gregor Clegane (for real this time)
Jaime Lannister
Cersei Lannister
Lots and lots of soldiers and King's Landing civilians
Read the previous entry in the series here. Read the next entry in the series soon. 8.4 “The Last of the Starks” Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss Directed by David Nutter
Ho boy. Okay.
Do the writers want us to be #TeamNobody? Because this is how you get Team Nobody.
And I don’t mean that to be glib. Given the events of the last 5 or so minutes of the episode, I don’t think this is something to be glib about. I’m usually deeply sarcastic about this show (I don’t know if you’ve noticed), but this episode feels to me like it pushed one too many buttons one too many times and I just want to watch the whole thing burn.
Lots of little character moments happened, but two big ones stuck out at me, so let’s tackle those first.
The first is kind of a joint character thing: Jon vs. Daenerys. I’d have to go back through the archives to see when I started predicting that the showrunners would pit them against each other and that all of this “Dany burns everything/Dany can’t be controlled by her advisors” stuff was setup for “Jon is the one true king.” Since I don’t want to do that, though, I’ll leave it at called it. Not only is the writing on this show bad, it’s predictably bad.
This episode in particular hammers home the Dany=irrational, Jon=good narrative, but is ridiculously clumsy about it. For one thing, all the things Dany’s angry about, she has every right to be angry about. But women aren’t allowed to be angry, right? Women angry equals overly emotional, irrational, crazy, you know, all the stereotypes. (This is very similar to how they treated Cersei a few years ago before she went full Evil Queen; they wanted us to think she was paranoid while everyone around her actually was dropping dead.) So Dany’s male advisors decide that she can’t be trusted to rule well, so they’re planning to overthrow her before she even gets started and replace her with Jon, who does not want to be king. Did we forget what happened the last time we had a king who didn’t want to be king? We had Robert Baratheon, who bankrupted the crown, left a bastard in every port, failed to keep the alliance with the Lannisters together, and moped about Lyanna for decades.
(Quick side note: Robert’s Rebellion was a justified war. It wasn’t started because of Lyanna, and it wasn’t “built on a lie,” and the writers can go jump off a cliff for that whole in-universe backseat rebelling.)
So, in order to keep that problem from even coming up, Dany asks Jon for one thing. To not tell anyone about his heritage. Jon can’t manage that, not even to prove to his queen and the woman he loves (and, incidentally, his aunt) that he backs her claim to the throne. Jon’s parentage is what’s going to bring this whole thing down—without that knowledge, Tyrion and Varys probably wouldn’t even be considering having Dany assassinated to replace her with Jon.
Meanwhile, Jon’s been super busy denying being a Stark, like he’s forgotten that his mother still was one. He literally says out loud “I was never a Stark” before having Bran tell Sansa and Arya about his parentage. Since when does one’s father wipe out the heritage one gets from one’s mother? Having a Targaryen father and a (utterly ridiculous) Targaryen name does not make him 100%, no taksie-backsies, Targaryen. Not only that, but if Theon can be considered an honorary Stark—as Sansa leaving him her pin would seem to indicate—then surely Jon being raised by a Stark in a Stark household and literally having a Stark mother would make him a Stark. Blood isn’t everything, and Jon has no Targaryen influence at all.
And then he sends Ghost north, which I think is equal parts “he’s not a Stark anymore” and “we don’t have the budget for more direwolves.” (Maybe it’s “we’re about to get Nymeria back and we can only afford one direwolf” but I’m not holding my breath.)
In short, if we were going to end up with Jon on the throne, I’d much rather it be because Dany sacrificed herself and her dragons to save the world from Winter rather than whatever this all is. (I know what it is. It’s misogyny disguised as “strong female characters” and has been from the jump.)
Then there’s the other big incident in this episode.
Missandei.
So much went wrong here. From the obvious setup with her and Grey Worm being too cute and wholesome for this show to the chains to her last words to the beheading, it was all bad. But since I’m a white woman and not a critical race theorist, let me lead this bit off with some words from actual women of color:
Based on my mentions, it seems some people still aren’t getting where I’m coming from, so let me clearer:
The problem isn’t a female POC character dying in a book/film, the problem is when the ONLY female POC character dies in order to “inspire” a white character.
My issue isn't that Missandei's death happened. I never expected her & Grey Worm to make it to that beach. My issue is that her death is the one way she said she didn't want to die. She died in chains with no way to defend herself. Lyanna slays a giant. Missandei should have too.
You know what would fix or at least alleviate problems like this? Having more women of color on the show. When there’s only one, the way she’s treated becomes the way the show treats all women of color, full stop. And Missandei died in the way she most feared—in chains—in order to a) show that Cersei (despite Tyrion’s words) absolutely is a monster (which we knew); and b) motivate Dany to burn everything to the ground. A woman of color is killed off to inspire a white woman have her Feelings and that’s pretty much the definition of fridging.
Unfortunately, the first half of the episode was mostly pretty good before the proverbial shit hit the fan. The funeral was touching, Jon’s speech was actually pretty inspiring, and it gave the characters a chance to react to the battle and having survived it. Being not entirely immune to fan service (do they make a vaccine for that?), I squealed over Brienne and Jaime. (And then I got super annoyed that she was reduced to standing in the snow in a housecoat begging him not to leave and crying over him because seriously.)
Even Arya and Gendry’s thing actually makes thematic sense. Of course she would refuse him and instead ride off with Sandor to probably go murder Cersei. That’s the character they’ve built up since season one. That’s the kind of thing I expect from Arya, not whatever last week was about. (Shock value. It was about shock value.)
But even this opening party scene isn’t without its deeply problematic elements, and as usual, they have to do with Sansa.
Here’s the dialogue:
SANDOR: None of it would have happened if you’d left King’s Landing with me. No Littlefinger. No Ramsay. None of it.
SANSA: Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest, I would have stayed that little bird all my life.
The implications here are deeply troubling. First, that all the trauma she went through was somehow good and necessary for her character development, which is, of course, horseshit. Second, that she wasn’t already starting to grow up and understand the world before “Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest”; you know, after Ned’s death and Joffrey’s abuse and being forcibly married to Tyrion and everything that happened in seasons 1-4.
Third, it sounds very much like the writers are arguing that taking Sansa in the direction they did, far far away from her story in the books, somehow made her a better character. Granted that we don’t know the culmination of Sansa’s story in the books yet, but I highly doubt that she’s somehow worse than this ice queen David & Dan have given us.
Only two more episodes to go. Let’s see how big of a conflagration we get in next week’s episode and how Dany’s demonized for it.
Read the previous entry in the series here. Read the next entry in the series here. 8.3 “The Long Night” Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss Directed by Miguel Sapochnik
Okay, well. Here we are on the other side of the great big battle against the Big Bad, and we all survived. Well, most of us survived.
This episode was visually and emotionally stunning. Once again, Ramin Djawadi does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to making the story compelling. And once again, the thematic unity of the series is all over the place.
The placement of this battle at all is kind of iffy to me, anyway. One of the underlying themes of the books is that the battle for the Iron Throne is a distraction, that politics and petty infighting are keeping everyone from realizing the true threat. “Who will sit the Iron Throne” isn’t the point of the series. Sure, somebody will at the end, but the point is pulling together to defend all of humanity from this huge, unstoppable threat, and the people who can’t or won’t do that die. So I’m not sure how I feel about having this battle first, before taking down Cersei, who’s actively working against unity. It seems to me that her demise should be a direct result of refusing to help, by having to face her choices and dying because of the White Walkers, not in an otherwise perfectly mundane battle for the throne.
Also, none of the choices she made affected this battle in any way. A few thousand more men wouldn’t have helped. Ships wouldn’t have helped. So “all” she did was break her promise, not cost the north this battle. Everyone will go south to fight her because she’s a tyrant and a terrible queen, but not because she actually crippled the armies of the north.
99% of the episode is fighting, and I’m not a tactician, so I won’t attempt to pick apart the battle itself. (We’ll leave that to Jeff “BryndenBFish.”)(Click through for thread.)
I woke up feeling much more mixed about this episode than I was feeling last night. Last week, I woke up with a smile stretching my perfect cheek muscles, satisfied with last night’s meal, excited to talk about it all day.
Instead, let me focus on a few specific scenes or incidents, in more-or-less chronological order.
I was actually really glad to see Melisandre again; I love her character in the books and I wish the show had treated her better. I also like that she seems to have found her inner strength again and that she’s not attached to a man in order to have it. (The Arya thing is an entirely different matter and we’ll get to that closer to the end.) Instead of guiding some dude toward his destiny, she’s here on her own behalf to assist the armies of the living against the army of the dead. And her thing with the Dothraki arahks just looks cool. Of course, it’s also necessary, because it doesn’t look like the arahks are made of obsidian, which means they’re just regular steel. Why did nobody say anything about sending the Dothraki in to fight the dead with just regular steel?
In a meta-sense, it’s probably because they intended Mel to come in and do her fire trick anyway. In-universe, it’s ridiculous and makes it look even more like the Dothraki were expendable cannon fodder.
Which brings me to the Dothraki charge.
This show has never treated the Dothraki well. They went from “barbarian” to “noble savage” (admittedly a problem they inherited from the books), back to “barbarian” before Dany “tamed” them and bound the entire Dothraki nation to her cause. The idea of the Dothraki as “other” has never been interrogated or problematized. Few of them have been named, and most of those died or fell off the radar before we ever got here. So now we have a nameless horde of racially-otherized people being sent in as the first wave and getting utterly massacred. It felt very much like the first death in a horror movie, the one that’s supposed to show how serious everything is. It didn’t even have a last-stand, grand epic sacrifice kind of feeling. It just felt wasteful.
It did, however, give Dany a reason to throw the whole plan out the window and just take the dragons and charge in. Now, I’m not saying I necessarily disagree with her, especially her observation that “the dead are already here,” but it feels like either they needed to get there sooner and just open with the dragons rather than throwing thousands of Dothraki at the dead to make more corpses, or Dany needed to be able to see the bigger picture and stand her ground with regard for waiting for the Night King.
And then the dead reach the main force, and we get some fabulous face acting from Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm). I am so glad he survives this battle, though, again, that “let’s run away” scene was too sweet for both of them to survive the whole series. (I will be incredibly glad if they do, but I’m not holding my breath.) And everything is chaos, with a few standout moments. Brienne going down under a bunch of wights and screaming reminded me of her scene in A Feast for Crows when she’s fighting Rorge and Biter. Grey Worm is a big damn hero pretty much throughout, but especially when he’s guarding the retreat.
I seem to remember Sansa being better at the waiting-in-the-dark thing back in season two. She was much more effective during “Blackwater” than she is here; except for not getting piss-drunk, she’s acting much more like Cersei did than being the encouraging, supportive princess she was then. Also, I really wish they’d stop trying to create a Sansa-Tyrion friendship. There’s so many problems with it (there were so many problems when they were doing it in season three), and it’s just more of their inability to admit that Tyrion is an asshole, not the hero of the piece.
And then we have the dead World War Z-ing over the walls, and the Stark dead rising in the crypts (which every single Game of Thrones watcher I follow on Twitter totally called). I don’t quite buy it? Mostly because the last person to be buried down there was Lyanna, roughly 20 years ago, and the books talk a lot about how only their bones were left to be interred (because they don’t have the tech to preserve the bodies for a trip from King’s Landing or the Tower of Joy to Winterfell), so honestly there shouldn’t be enough left of any of the Stark dead to actually make a walking corpse. But I’m just glad they didn’t surprise us with a Sean Bean cameo (I wouldn’t have put it past them to “forget” that Ned was reduced to bones to be sent north).
This is where we give props to Ramin Djawadi again for the soundtrack, and whoever the sound mixer is who handled the post-dragon fight scene, because the choice to dampen the battle noises and have the piano line over it was genius. I do think it went on maybe a bit too long? But it was really pretty anyway. Also, you can very much hear that Djawadi also does the Westworld soundtrack in “The Night King,” which is the piano piece here.
I do wonder what Jon thought he was going to accomplish by standing in the open and screaming at Viserion.
The last 20 minutes or so show what I mean about shaky thematic and narrative flow. Jorah dies protecting Dany, which is absolutely appropriate considering his entire story arc. There was no other way for him to go out (even if it did mean he had to retreat and abandon the Dothraki during their charge).
But. It makes no thematic sense that Arya’s the one to take out the Night King. There has been exactly one vague hint in that direction—Bran giving her the Valyrian steel dagger. Yes, I know they retconned Melisandre’s prophecy to fit this. No, it still doesn’t make sense. If Jon’s purpose isn’t to take down the Night King, why did he come back to life? Why didn’t dragon fire hurt the Night King? During the “Inside the Episode” follow-up, Weiss says that they knew for “about three years now” that Arya would be the one to kill the Night King, which would put that decision happening around 2016, probably when they were writing season seven. Which means that they had no way of seeding that in or making it work thematically before that. I think they decided on Arya because a) they wanted a Stark to do it; but b) they wanted to create a surprise for the audience. But that’s a failure of storytelling, and one that Game of Thrones is particularly prone to; they throw in twists and shocks for the sake of twists and shocks, not because they’ve managed to very carefully seed and hint and misdirect and then everything comes together and it’s obvious this is what was meant to happen all along.
(Also, their claim that this was a decision they made three years ago indicates that this isn't how the battle against the Others will go in the books. For one thing, there is no Night King in the books, and for another, if Arya was to be the one to strike the final blow against whatever needs killing, that would obviously be something Martin would have told them in that infamous hotel meeting.)
Don't get me wrong; aesthetically I thought the scene was really cool, and I like that Arya got to be this level of badass. Her character arc and training storyline even make sense for it, taken in isolation. But she’s not in isolation; she’s part of a larger story, and that story didn’t effectively seed or foreshadow or prophesy (retconning notwithstanding) that Arya would be the one to effectively save the world. For such a buildup to taking out the White Walkers once and for all, I feel like the story needed to be there, and it wasn't. I'll probably take a lot of crap for this; I see lots of people online already who love this scene and are calling people who didn't sexist. But I stand by my opinion: cool does not outweigh a thematic through line.
Then we’re back on thematic unity with Melisandre dying now that she’s completed her life’s work. What she said about Beric—that the Lord of Light brought him back for a purpose and that purpose was fulfilled—holds true for her, as well. (And draws attention to the fact that it doesn’t seem to hold true for Jon.) Mel has lived for a very long time, she’s made some mistakes, she’s backed the wrong horse over and over, but she was instrumental in helping to defeat the Long Night, and now her watch has ended.
Next week: the war for the Iron Throne begins.
Deaths:
The Dothraki
Edd
Lyanna Mormont
Beric Dondarrion
Theon Greyjoy
Jorah Mormont
The Night King
All the White Walkers
Viserion (again)
Melisandre
Scores and scores of extras
Read the previous entry in the series here. Read thenext entry here!
8.02 “A Knight of the
Seven Kingdoms”
Written by Bryan
Cogman
Directed by David
Nutter
I solemnly swear that, unlike Cogman and Nutter, I will not
suddenly stop this discussion right as it gets to the good/important part.
This episode is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s
nice that they slow down a bit, and
do it in a way that doesn’t feel like wheel-spinning (see the first third of “The
Dragon and the Wolf”). It gives us a chance to spend time with the dozens of
characters we now have all in the same place and for a few reunions. On the
other hand, there’s a lot going on here that is seriously problematic, even
verging into the disturbing.
Because I love Brienne so much, despite the Really Bad
Choices I feel the show made in adapting her character, let’s start with the
titular scene. While waiting for the dead to descend on them and their doomed
last stand to begin, Brienne, Tormund, Davos, Pod, Jaime, and Tyrion are
sitting around having a drink. Tyrion refers to Brienne as “ser,” then corrects
himself, which offends Tormund, who still thinks Brienne hung the moon. He
doesn’t understand why women “can’t” be knights, and says “fuck tradition.”
Jaime points out that any knight can make another knight, and proceeds to
knight Brienne in a scene that’s beautifully acted and got me choked up in ways
I didn’t know Game of Thrones could
still do.
Do I wish Jaime had thought of it first? Sure. Do I still
kind of get squicked by the way Tormund drools all over a clearly disinterested
and even uncomfortable Brienne? Absolutely. Have I been waiting for Jaime to
knight Brienne since he started his redemption arc? Hell yes. Also, calling her
the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a nice Easter egg for book readers, since
her lineage includes Ser Duncan the Tall, and the Dunk and Egg collection is
titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Not all the conversations go this well. Both major
conversations Daenerys is involved in—once with Sansa and once with Jon—go from
bad to worse to over before they can
really dig into the problem they’re trying to hash out. We almost get Dany and
Sansa making up and being friends, but of course we can’t have it because they’re
women with a man in common. Sansa rightly wants to know what Dany intends to do
with/for/about the North if they survive this battle, but just before they
actually get to discuss that—beyond the clear you are part of my kingdom and I have dragons face that Dany’s
giving her—they’re interrupted by Theon. I hope that Theon’s “I want to fight
for Winterfell and the North” speech does something to Dany’s thought process
re: what they’re all fighting for, but I’m not holding my breath.
The other major conversation is Jon telling Dany about his
parentage. I’m really glad they just got right to it instead of letting this
secret hang over them for episodes and episodes (creating tension through
characters keeping secrets they don’t need to be keeping is one of my least favorite
storytelling tools; I’m looking at you, Supernatural).
However, there’s a few continuity issues in that I don’t remember Dany ever
really having any conversations regarding Rhaegar being a rapist? Barristan
told her about Rhaegar going amongst the smallfolk and busking on street
corners, but his relationship with Lyanna didn’t ever come up that I’m aware
of. And I highly doubt that Targaryens-first
Viserys would ever have called Rhaegar a rapist. In the books, every story Dany
hears about him is positive, and she identifies with him more than her father.
So her assertion that Rhaeger kidnapped and raped Lyanna—without something like
“the way your people tell it”—is weird and off.
(Dr. Kavita Finn has a much longer take on the way this episode is divorced from the entire history of Westeros here.)
But, again, Dany comes to the conclusion that Jon could
challenge her for the Iron Throne. At least she verbalizes that it’s because he’s
male and not just because he’s Rhaegar’s son. But before they can talk that
out, the horn blows three times and the White Walkers have arrived.
It’s interesting that Sansa mentions to Dany that men are
easily manipulated by women when Dany’s constantly manipulated by the men
around her. Case in point in this episode: she’s mad at Tyrion for not catching
on to Cersei having lied to her—on top of the other mistakes in judgment he’s
made. But then Jorah goes to bat for Tyrion because Seven forbid we ever think
Tyrion is less than perfect, and Dany’s halfway to forgiving him before Sansa
even has a chance to sing his praises (which is problematic all on its own).
Easily the most problematic bit, the one that squicked me
out the hardest, was Arya’s seduction (if you want to call it that) of Gendry. First
of all, we again had to start with Gendry’s sexual assault being downplayed and
even joked about. Then, it almost felt like a job interview on Arya’s part—how much
experience do you have? Great, then you’re the man for the job. This is also
the first time we’ve seen Arya show any sexual interest at all, other than the
crush she had on Gendry way back when they were traveling the Riverlands. And
even here, there doesn’t seem to be so much interest
as checking something off her bucket list. The cold, stonehearted (ha)
character Arya has turned into doesn’t have the same chemistry with Gendry that
twelve- or thirteen-year-old Arya had.
Then there’s the nudity. And yes, I’m aware that Arya is
eighteen—HBO made damn sure
to let us know that she’s “legal,” in a move that’s squicky all on its own. I’m
also aware that Maisie Williams is inher early 20s. But something about this scene feels like “now she’s old
enough for us to have her nude on screen” rather than an organic idea that came
from the characters and their relationship. I think if they had to have this at
all, it could have been written better (and directed better) to make it sweet
rather than bucket-listy.
Here’s the small things I noticed or had questions about in
passing but not enough Thoughts about to yammer on for several hundred words:
Dany says that she delayed her war for the Iron Throne for
Jon. But what happened to defending her people? Not wanting to be queen of ashes?
Becoming a queen by acting like one? I guess when you make a character so
easily manipulated, it’s hard to remember why she does anything.
Is Davos crediting “the Battle of the Bastards” (again, I hate that they’re calling it that
in-universe) as his first fight? Have they forgotten all about “Blackwater”?
And Stannis breaking the siege on the Wall?
How are they making these obsidian weapons? We see them in
the regular forge, but that’s not how you’d shape obsidian and I didn’t notice
anyone doing any knapping.
Sam needed to remind us of his man-cred again. White Walker!
Thenn! Protecting Gilly!
Gilly continues to be a delight and far too good for this
show.
I’m not entirely on board with Sam handing Heartsbane over
to Jorah. It thematically doesn’t make any sense to me.
Grey Worm is totally going to die. The “let’s run away
together” scene is way too sweet and wholesome for this to end any other way.
I am Here For “Jenny’s Song.” It’s mournful and sweet and
actually makes sense in context, unlike Ed Sheeran singing “Hands of Gold” or
Shireen, sans Patchface, singing Patchface’s
rhymes.
Next week: Waiting in the dark! Fighting in the dark!
Everything is dark! What is happening?
