Game of Thrones – First of His Name

I don’t speak German, so maybe someone who does can enlighten me – is there an enormous compound word for that feeling when a deeply enjoyable experience is spoiled by something proportionally small but significant? The hair in the soup, the sour note in the chorus, the one bad joke that your friend keeps repeating…the thing that makes you come away from something you liked going “Yeah, but, damnit,” especially when it would have been so easy to avoid. Maybe even German doesn’t have that kind of compounded nuance.

As regular readers could easily guess, I’m talking about Game of Thrones’s propensity for rape and sexual violence, wielded like a cudgel in “First of His Name” to dull and dent an otherwise sharply plotted episode. Without spending the whole review on it, we have a scene where a woman is threatened with rape by a villain, defended by a man, and then saved at the last moment by circumstances outside her control; the woman is an otherwise self-assured and fairly kickass character who has no agency in this scene (in fact, this whole episode!) other than being victimized by a villain who, in turn, commits atrocities on screen just to up his villain cred. And then, having raised the specter of rape, the show whisks it away with an effective deus ex machina.

In other words, this is exactly the type of shitty fantasy writing that A Song of Ice and Fire was subverting in the first place. There’s a reason that ASOIAF became one of the most successful shows on television and Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth (to pick one of the worst offenders) lasted two seasons as a modern-day Xena/Hercules without the sense of humor. That reason begins with the writing, and while I won’t blame a reader who wants to steer clear of Westeros because it’s a dark and violent place to be, I’ll steadfastly argue that George understands the dangerous ground he’s treading on and navigates it to the best of his ability. Scenes like the pointless averted rape, reducing Meera Reed to a villain’s accessory on the same level as a skull drinking cup, start to make me question whether the showrunners can say the same.

And it’s all the more frustrating when you’re put in the position of “Yeah, but the rest of the show!” as I continually, like many other viewers, find myself. Game of Thrones isn’t a half-assed spectacle relying on the perfect ratio of breasts to blood to keep viewers distracted from an empty core; take the rest of that segment, quickly snipping the dangling plot thread of the mutineers and actually doing something with it. Witnessing Jon Snow in the final moments, as Craster’s Keep burns down around him, I realized what the whole point was – on the page, Jon is given more time and opportunity to establish himself as a leader in the Night’s Watch. The show had to truncate that, and hasn’t really touched on it since Season 1; the side trip, in which Jon was casually sent off to die by Alliser Thorne and instead took the opportunity to build his command credibility and strengthen ties with his brothers, makes an apt stand-in. And there’s still five episodes left for him to start showing off those new character levels.

Jon is definitely the character who makes the whole party go on a side quest to get his NPC pet.

The experience points for those levels, of course, came from a well-choreographed, chaotic battle that carried off three fan-unfavorites in one fell swoop. Rast was just a skeezy little fucker, and Karl Tanner, well, he had a skull winecup and never appeared in a scene where someone wasn’t raped or murdered, so his utility was limited. But Locke was a bit of a surprise. After his memorable Season 3 and sudden “promotion” to the frozen ass end of the world, he seemed primed to be a recurring thorn in Jon’s side; instead, he met his end at the hands of a teenage cripple wearing a simpleton as a murder-suit. Hell of a moment for Bran (and poor Hodor, staring at his hands like Lady Macbeth), and there’s some interesting parallels in the man who crippled Jaime being killed by the boy Jaime crippled. But as for Locke himself, well, his cornered-rat viciousness and surprising shrewdness will be missed. At least he went out quicker than his book counterpart.

And hey, let’s spare a moment for his would-be victims. Meera, as we’ve already discussed, was badly underserved by this episode (and the show in general); Jojen, apart from his unnecessary participation in the same scene, got to show off some neat tricks. The show’s done a good job with magic this season, keeping it as subtle and suggestive as the medium allows, and Jojen’s visions tonight were no exception. But this was Bran’s moment, as desperation drove him to cross a line that maybe ought not to be crossed – no matter how very satisfying it was when Hodor turned Locke into a Pez dispenser. Bran’s decision to forego a badly-desired family reunion, while a little cheap and torturous on the screen, is also some nice foreshadowing to just how far Bran’s party might need to go in their quest for…whatever it is they’re questing for.

Elsewhere in Westeros, Cersei gets a few moments, planting the seeds for Tyrion’s guilt with two of her three judges. (The third is Mace Tyrell, and I really hope we get the follow-up scene next week, because that’ll be goddamn hilarious). Her book counterpart might have openly tried to seduce Oberyn (or, you know, allow herself to be seduced by him because Oberyn Martell’s game never stops), but the Cersei of the show is a cooler and more subdued person and settled for playing off his sympathies instead. After a solid season and a half of being knocked down one peg at a time, it’s nice to see her starting to reclaim her power. I particularly liked the chat with Margaery, where the younger queen was set back on her heels a little – well aware of Cersei’s malice, she’s nevertheless disarmed, unsure of what to think of this understated charm assault. It’s a neat twist on Cersei, particularly since the audience isn’t even sure of what to believe.

And speaking of unsure what to believe, about the only things we are certain of about Littlefinger is that A) you can’t trust him B) he’s got everything under control. So when even Petyr Baelish, King-Shit Scheming Weasel of them all, is caught off-guard by how crazy you are…well, welcome back, Lysa Tully Arryn. Guest star Kate Dickie’s ping-pong approach to Lysa’s rationality is mirrored by the Eyrie material, whiplashing from one of the show’s most genuine laugh-out-loud moments on their wedding night to the despair of poor Sansa, finally in a relatively safe place, only to find herself at the mercy of her aunt’s misplaced jealousy and loose grip on reality. Meanwhile, Robin/Robert (I’m honestly not sure which name the show settled on) is still an awful little piece of shit.

Tommen was like 8 when Dany started out!

Our other major development is an inevitable but moderately unwelcome bit of news – Daenerys Targaryen, just like her book counterpart, is going to settle down in Slaver’s Bay for a bit and clean up her own mess. That choice in the books was predicated on the infamous five-year gap that never materialized; I had a bit of hope that the show, not needing to account for that, might take things in a different direction. And there’s still time for that, I suppose; I was caught off-guard by the timing of the moment. Dany originally made that choice at the end of Storm of Swords, a natural capstone on her growth throughout the book, and when we revisited her in Dance With Dragons she was struggling to come to terms with that. Here, it’s just tossed into the middle of the season, which makes me think that the show has some major moments ahead for our next five episodes of Meereen – and given the sluggish pace of the book material yet to come, that’d be a nice fit.

Overall, much of this episode’s attention to card-shuffling and pawn-moving was leavened by humor and action, keeping it moving along at a good dramatic clip. And yet, the hair in the soup is still there; with source material already so eager to confront darkness and horror, and so skillful at doing so, you have to ask what GoT is actually trying to get across with stuff like the Karl-Meera scene. Or, more uncomfortably, you have to ask “Are you actually trying to get anything particular across? Or are you just tossing rape in there because you think you can meet both your sex and violence quotas at once?” Both the source material and the show as-is deserve better, and I hope that as they stray further away from on-page material they’ll avoid falling into the very same lazy writing traps that Westeros was created to reject in the first place.

WHAT’S MY NAME, FOOL?!

Stray Thoughts:

-Much of the aforementioned humor, of course, came from Podrick and Brienne. Gwendoline Christie is a joy to watch playing a character who takes everything just a little too seriously, and Daniel Portman is starting to show some chops.

-It got a little uncomfortable when the Hound backhanded Arya in the face. I guess she did just try to stab him in the stomach, but just the impact of it spoiled what was previously a pretty entertaining scene. I guess “ha ha ha – oh fuck right everything is awful” is what Sandor Clegane would want us to feel, though. At least he didn’t threaten her with rape!

-I’d like to see Ellaria Sand again, and I’d like to see Oberyn lose his temper again. Pedro Pascal is doing a good job of keeping Oberyn a cipher, but he needs to show some fire.

-I mentioned before that the fight choreography was good, and one-on-one it was, but it’d have been nice to see the Watch using some semblance of unit tactics. Maybe it’s just cause I’ve been watching Vikings too, but if they’re going to establish the advance the Watch has over the wildlings, I feel like “fighting as a group” would be a good way to do it.

-That said, the Jon-Karl duel was extremely well done. It’s hard to make “guy with a huge sword vs. guy with two knives” convincing, but they did. Also, that killing blow was just the right amount of gruesome.

-Welcome back, Ghost! Hope there’s enough money in the CGI budget these days for you to stick around.

-The Eyrie and its approaches look extremely cool. You can say a lot about this show, but you can’t say their locations are anything but awesome.

-I’ve laughed out loud at Mace Tyrell three times this season and I don’t think he’s had real dialogue yet.

-”We don’t hurt little girls in Dorne.” Good line, Oberyn. Heh.

-Almost the final 20 minutes of the episode were entirely dedicated to Craster’s Keep, continuing my theory that GoT is at its best when it uses solid blocks instead of quick vignettes. It might have diminishing returns, though, but it’s nice that they are willing to use those segments.

Power Rankings:

Kristian Nairn’s seriously good, by the way.

5. Sansa Stark, just for the return of her A+ Sullen Teen Face.

4. Cersei Lannister, getting her groove back.

3. Jon Snow, turning a transfer to Siberia into a team-building exercise. Also, not getting stabbed to death.

2. King Tommen I Baratheon, [Title Drop].

1. YOUR WESTEROS WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS, BRANDON STARK! AAAND HODOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR!