Game of Thrones: Second Sons
On the surface, “Second Sons” wasn’t that much different from the last couple weeks of Game of Thrones: lots of set-up, checking around the world, and a loose thematic connection with one big Oh SHIT! moment holding it all up. But while it lacked the snappy dialogue of “The Bear & the Maiden Fair” or “The Climb’s stunning visuals, “Sons” was a much better paced, plotted episode than either of those, and a quiet contender for one of the season’s strongest yet.
The title of the episode is about as much “theme” as it needs – second sons, from Stannis to Sandor to Tyrion, unfavorites everywhere you look. But there’s another undercurrent running through the episodes, in moments of brutal and sometimes unasked-for honesty; characters getting or seizing the opportunity to finally say what’s on their mind, with mixed results. It’s part of the power of the episode, where even when there aren’t any more events actually happening than in the last few weeks, characters are making powerful and inescapable choices that very clearly set things in motion.
“Fuck you, OKCupid.”
Witness, for instance, Tyrion & Sansa’s god-awful clusterfuck of a wedding. Everyone there is miserable except for Tywin, who regards happiness as a cheap parlor trick of the human brain and will have nothing to do with it. There’s a great shot of Sansa & surrogate-father Joffrey (guh) walking down the aisle, framed by allies & enemies, united in the common cause of putting a smiling face on a cruel sham. Tyrion, frustrated & shitfaced, can’t keep it together – probably yearning for the good old days where he could slap Joffrey around the stables at will – and all that bile comes figuratively spilling out of his mouth. Probably better for him if he’d vomited literally. This is, I think, the first time that GoT has portrayed Tyrion’s drunkenness in a negative light, and Dinklage (naturally) does a great job with it.
There’s fun stuff all around, as Cersei gets less and less subtle (tending closer to the book portrayal), Tywin tightens his iron grip on everything everyone is doing at every time, and Loras Tyrell…well, fuck Loras’s life, basically. But I think the MVP award here goes to Sophie Turner, bucking the trend as Sansa, maintaining her armor of pleasant lies right up to the bedroom door and then giving her revulsion full flower. It’s a spectacularly understated performance from an actress who’s only getting better, and the show’s been giving her a lot to work with. I particularly like the revision of her objections to Tyrion; instead of a noseless imp with a bulging brow and a strong stream of self-pity, Sansa’s marrying, well, Peter Dinklage with a badass scar. But even though Tyrion is fairer outside and in than in the books, he’s a Lannister – he earned that scar fighting to keep Joffrey on the throne. Sansa can’t forget that, and nor, the show appears to suggest, should she.
A sad farewell to Mero; you were too good for this sinful earth.
The BBC-ish King’s Landing material, subtlety boiling over, makes a fun contrast to the episode’s other main set piece in sunny Yunkai. “Subtlety” is not the name of Daenerys Targaryen’s game. One has to imagine Emilia Clarke absolutely revelling in this season’s steel-spined material; I particularly like how, after two seasons pocked with vulnerability and rage, she’s made Dany something of an enigma, keeping secrets both in-story and from the audience. I actually very much liked her brief nude scene in “Sons” – I mean, okay, yeah, of course I liked it – but it was a neat callback to the helplessness of her first appearance, slipping into the bathtub to prepare herself to be sold. Here, she’s consciously using her nudity; not precisely seducing a swaggering sellsword but overwhelming him, displaying her utter lack of fear. She’s naked, but her face gives nothing away.
And hey, about that sellsword. Daario Naharis is, um, controversial in the books; at his best, he’s a foppish but dangerous cipher, but too often he devolves into a circus act, with Liberace’s wardrobe, Flavor Flav’s grill, and a culturally-appropriate blue Deadwood ‘stache. The gritenization of GoT serves him well; with low-rent philosophical one-liners and roguish confidence, actor Ed Skrein makes a more convincing salesman for Daario’s reputed prowess and daring than all the gold teeth and AquaNet in Essos. Naharis is still probably a sleazy shithead, but he’s an incredibly convincing one. It’s too bad he and Bronn will probably never share screen time. That’s a bromance made in sellsword heaven (where there are no STDs and all your enemies are chivalrous.)
The third main set piece is Dragonstone, where Gendry & Melisandre continue their exciting journey away from the printed word and into the land of…uh, the land of…Jesus Christ, Melisandre. Okay. At this point, I’m kind of enjoying her skewed creepiness. Mel’s convoluted plan to leech Gendry with a brief stop in blowjob-ville may not make sense, but with the setup they’ve been doing, it doesn’t quite have to. She’s crazy, you see, and has justification for all her craziness in the poorly-documented User’s Guide to R’hllor. I’m not sure it’s going to hold up, but Carice Van Houten’s having fun, and Joe Dempsie’s standing around with his shirt off, so there’s something for everyone.
More compelling was the Stannis & Davos material, starting with Davos’s heartwarming attempts to puzzle his way through a children’s picture book. “Sons” continued the trend of humanizing Stannis started in “Kissed By Fire,” and at this point, I feel comfortable saying he’s been rescued from the scrap-heap where the show at one point seemed content to consign him. The dialogue between the brittle king and his faithful smuggler, beautifully framed by iron bars, was a season highlight – and not coincidentally, a Stannis mission statement ripped nearly straight from the books. He’s made it clear that for all of Melisandre’s influence, his own ambition is to law & justice. Stannis might not be a nice man, or even necessarily a good one, but there’s something compelling about his commitment to an ordered world that works like it ought to. And unlike his fellow claimants, even the generally decent Robb, he’s willing to listen to people who tell him things he doesn’t want to hear. It’s about time that Thrones showed us that Stannis, and that’s worth a few minutes of inexplicable dick-leechings.
Nope. Nope nope nope. Just staying inside.
Finally, at the risk of going over word count, I loved everything about the final scene. Loved the dialogue. Loved John Bradley-West and Hannah Murray’s comic timing. Loved Michelle MacLaren’s direction of the creeping horror of winter, a little Hitchcock and a little del Toro. Loved the inhuman intelligence of the White Walker (keep it going, CGI team!) And most of all, loved Sam the motherfucking Slayer. Nailed it, “Second Sons.”
