Game of Thrones – The Watchers On the Wall
The final moments of last week’s Game of Thrones were as bleak and nihilistic as they get, reminding us in no uncertain terms that Westeros will probably destroy everything you love. After that gory note, viewers were owed some kind of palate cleanser – not a barrel of laughs or a triumphant orchestral Victory Over Evil, but something for the good guys. Maybe just a reminder that there are good guys, and that some of them have a chance to avoid being stabbed, decapitated, poisoned, flayed, defenestrated, exploded, or whatever the fuck you call that…thing that happened to Oberyn Martell. Or maybe more importantly that if they do, it might have a point to it.
“The Watchers On the Wall” was that reminder, in big 72-point font, bold and italicized like a surprisingly positive company email. Thrones is always strong in big splashes; it can’t bring you inside the heads of its characters as effectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, but it can bring the spectacle of the books to life in ways that rival even the limitless imagination of fantasy nerds. “Watchers,” an episode with a straightforward message and predictable but rewarding character development, didn’t need the reactive silences and tightly plotted vignettes of the show at its best; it needed the show at its biggest, and it delivered. Whatever else might be said about this episode, it was visually stunning, from the long tracking shots establishing the two-fronted, multi-layered battlefield to the resounding impacts of enraged giants and enormous scythes.
Really, it’s a damn shame that the earlier Watch material in this season didn’t hold up too well, because this could have been one of the show’s very best episodes. It might have been more impressive than the great “Blackwater” in terms of visual effects, was certainly better in terms of fight choreography, but where it fell down was the long-term storytelling. “Blackwater” seamlessly integrated the arcs of its characters into the depiction of the Battle of Blackwater Bay, with each turn of the tide narrated through a character we’d spent all season living with. Bronn and the Hound on the beach, Davos on his ship, Tyrion’s hopeless leadership and Stannis’s desperate fury, were all not just great moments in and of themselves but culminations of a season’s worth of storytelling. Even the quiet moments, with Sansa or Cersei and Tommen, fed back into the narrative of the battle, giving weight to the oppressive tension that the characters were feeling.
If Ygritte’s still wondering what “swoon” means, I volunteer to show her.
“Watchers” couldn’t quite grasp that. Take the penultimate bit of the battle, where Ghost’s release and Jon’s duel with the Magnar of Thenn turn the tide against the wildling strike force. It’s stellar action, well-choreographed fighting that manages to keep the focus on the significant characters without letting us forget there’s a full-scale battle raging around them. And there’s even some good characterization mixed in (more on that later). But when Jon finishes off Styr and stumbles into his final meeting with Ygritte, it doesn’t have the relief or impact one might expect. Jon is a character who can’t die yet because GoT is running out of convincing protagonists; Styr is a boss fight that Jon managed to beat. (“Sword doesn’t work, I’m out of Wolf – oh good, he’s weak to Hammer!”) There’s some similar flops with Tormund’s one-man rampage through the crow ranks or Sam’s cool-headed sniping of the Thenn warg. It’s not that “Watchers” doesn’t tell a story; it’s just that it could have told the story, the one we’ve been watching for four seasons, and it wasn’t given enough to do so.
It’s kind of unfair to compare “Watchers” to one of the best hours of television in the history of the medium, but that’s the bar GoT has set for itself. It’s not like this episode was devoid of great moments, though. Without the momentum of a tightly woven full-season plot behind it, something had to be done to gin up a little extra emotional resonance, and sadly for the very talented Josef Altin and Mark Stanley, Pyp and Grenn were thrown on that particular altar. Both of those characters lived on past this point in ASOIAF, but the brutal truth is that their roles in the story and in viewers’ minds can probably be played by any other couple of sympathetic and memorable watchmen. Pyp diverged a good bit from his page characterization, a relative innocent rather than the competent jokester of the books, while Grenn was pretty much on-point but appears to have absorbed Pyp’s extra badass and gone all-in on it to take on Mag the Mighty, King of the Giants. Probably, if we’re honest, a more memorable send-off than book-Grenn will get when he goes to that Mole’s Town brothel in the sky. They’ll both be missed, but they’ll both be replaced. That’s life in the Night’s Watch.
I kind of enjoyed his WWE-style snarling and snorting. That’s So Tormund.
Perennial fuckface Alliser Thorne fared better, surviving both dagger-stares from his subordinates and a clash with the wildlings’ one-ginger-army, and giving a pretty good account of himself as a leader. I actually expected the show to dispose of him, but he may end up as a composite of himself and a couple significant late-arrival Night’s Watch officers in story to come. (You know, those other Night’s Watch castles. Has the show even mentioned those?) His near-killer, the aforementioned Unstoppable Bearfucker Tormund Giantsbane, also lived, and will presumably be presented with a bill for the twenty or so perfectly good arrows the Watch shot into him to no avail. Tormund plays a big role in humanizing the Free Folk, but at Castle Black he demonstrated why someone might want these guys on their side against, say, a horde of undead commanded by ageless ice devils. GoT is pretty consistent about keeping its good fighters just “good fighters” as opposed to “inhuman badasses,” so it’s actually noteworthy when someone like Tormund gets to cut loose, and this was the episode to do it in. He had some giants for cover, after all.
And then on the other side of the scale you had Sam Tarly. Samwell may actually be a more prominent character than he was to this stage in the books, and it’s easy to see why John Bradley-West landed the role; his comic timing in early seasons hasn’t gone away, but only made Sam’s growth resonate more as he embraces responsibility and duty. Sam’s one of the few characters who really got a whole season to set up what happened at Castle Black, and it paid off; unfortunately, it also contained one of the most clangingly awkward moments of the episode, when he promised Gilly to do “what men do.” It’s impossible to ignore that the Night’s Watch is a brotherhood, but the books featured a handful of Mole’s Town women (mostly whores, because y’know, Westeros) joining the fight against the wildlings and giving a good account of themselves. I’m sure the intended implication was “men instead of boys,” but twinned with the erasure of fighting women from this episode that bit fell flat. I’ll be frustrated if next week features Sam being “rewarded” for his growth with the loss of his virginity, one cliché GoT would do well to avoid in an otherwise fairly strong character arc.
Especially when a new love formed the heart of this story, a romance two and a half seasons in the making and breaking. More than the show, the books are unabashedly romantic sometimes, placing all the brutality and sadism against a backdrop of an idealized past and playing with a surprisingly deft hand the heartstrings of young love. With Jon Snow and Ygritte, when you take out all the symbolism (Azor Ahai! Kissed by fire!) and realpolitik (someone had to start crossing that Wall), you’re left with a sad love story, and a very good one. Even if Jon is unambiguously now a Protagonist and Ygritte a character in his story, their basic arc together from beginning to end is just a great piece of fiction. In the books it has the true ring of young romance, teenagers who think they invented sex and invented true love and both at the same time; the show’s characters, older and slightly wiser, get more of the sadness but kept enough passion to be convincing.
I’m not too fussed about the logistics of how it ended, Ygritte unambiguously killed by a young villager instead of the lingering possibility that Jon’s arrow did the job. In the books Jon thinks himself that he doesn’t know whether one of his brothers killed her or he did, and doesn’t want to know; that’s because it doesn’t matter. Would he breathe a sigh of relief if it turned out to be Sweet Donnell Hill or Deaf Dick Follard, and go on about his life? He killed Ygritte when he left her at the watchtower; either that or he killed himself. It was going to be one of the two and they both knew it, and the show doesn’t fuck around with that fact. Ygritte stays her hand long enough for something else to befall her, but “something else” was always going to befall one of them, because everyone outside that magical cave wanted at least one of the pair of them dead. It just depended which side that person was on.
He was on Jon’s side, as it turns out, confirming things that a sadder, wiser Jon Snow had already learned by this point. “Watchers” might not have had a very satisfying conclusion plot-wise, but it was a clear watershed for Jon. One of the weaknesses of the episode was that so much of it rested on the shoulders of what might be GoT‘s dullest protagonist; up until now, both book and screen, Jon has had all of Ned Stark’s dour sense of justice but none of his leadership or strength of character. Castle Black is where that really changes, where Jon starts to become his own man and his own character, and the show has some neat little nods to that, like Jon using the unlamented Karl Tanner’s tactic of spitting in his opponent’s eyes to gain the upper hand. Ned Stark would never have done that, or at least, we’d never have seen him do it; we’ve seen Jon use a murderer’s trick to win a fight, listen uncomplaining to a cruel commander because there were insights to be gained, and send one of his best friends off to die because duty demanded it.
And next week, we might see him become an assassin, or die trying. “The Watchers On the Wall” was a bit of a letdown, especially with the cliffhanger ending, but it was also something GoT badly needed right now. Not a categorical triumph for unambiguous good, because that’s not this story, but an affirmation of the existence of good. It’s something Westeros gives us occasion to question, and we got it in Pyp and Sam opening the gate for Gilly; in Alliser Thorne holding his despised recruits firm; in Grenn and his men saying their vows to keep their knees steady while a monster out of myth bore down on them. ASOIAF was never that interested in deconstructing the nature of “good.” Evil, absolutely, George plays with that all day, but it’s never in question that people are capable of basic human decency or even, when stretched to it, outright heroism. In Westeros, good doesn’t get you very far. Sometimes it gets you the Wall. Sometimes, that’s where it’s needed.
Obligatory Helms Deep shot!
Stray Thoughts
-Keeping them limited today because I went on at length above, and because a lot of them are just going to be variations on “Holy shit though, did you see X?” You saw X. I saw X. We all saw X.
-Okay seriously holy shit though those giants were great. As much as I’d like to see the show throw more of its CGI budget at Ghost, remind us that he’s Jon’s companion and not just his neck-seeking wolf-missile, those giants were fucking amazing. And kudos to the show for managing to build them up and then find a way to shuffle the unfilmable giant-on-human close combat offscreen without making us feel cheated.
-I really did like the recitation of the vows. Cliché, sure, but after all the brutal subversion we needed a good heartwarming cliché. And anyway Grenn and those guys all died so don’t feel too weird about it.
-I know I was pretty blasé about Grenn and Pyp, but goddamnit those assholes better not kill Dolorous Edd. Man’s a legend in his own time.
-Holy Shit Though 2: the ice scythe. Yes.
-Low Bar Cleared Award: there was not a single hint of sexualized violence when Janos Slynt was alone in a storeroom with Gilly! Good job, HBO, keep it up!
Click the enraged giant for fun trivia!
-Maester Aemon and Sam’s conversation left me a little cold. I got the idea and it was nice to have some quiet characterization, but again, time that could have been used to build a little tension or investment towards the battle.
-If I could suggest one sweeping fix for how the Wall storylines fumbled this season, it would have been a little more interaction between the Watch and wildlings. Scrap the deserters plot and have Jon and the boys go a couple rangings south of the Wall, trying to track down the free folk they know are there. Play cat-and-mouse, build up the Watch’s camaraderie and Jon’s credibility as a leader, while really establishing the Thenns and humanizing Tormund and Ygritte some more. Then after a couple rangings where they lose men Thorne holds them back at the Wall.
-Shit, you could even keep the deserters. Just have Mance find and execute them on his way to the Wall. He’s an alright dude. There you go, HBO, my fees are very reasonable.
-There’s a lot to wrap up next week as is, and Jon walking into the biggest fire the north has ever seen isn’t going to be dealt with quickly. Luckily “The Children” will be 66 minutes, so hopefully nothing gets short shrift.
-And finally, enormous round of applause for Rose Leslie. Ygritte’s one of the best-loved supporting characters of the series, and it would’ve been easy for her to devolve on the screen – a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with an archery hobby. Instead, Leslie portrayed her as an older, harder version of the same essential character, gleefully trolling her way into our hearts, delighting in being one of the Free Folk but ruthlessly killing to preserve that freedom when called upon. She will be missed.
Power Rankings
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Cheer Us Up
5. Tormund Giantsbane. I mean, technically he lost and all, but good god damn.
4. Grenn (posthumously), stealing Donal Noye’s thunder. Grenn the Giant-slayer, that’s what they’ll call him.
3. Gilly. What is she, like, twenty at the most? And she’s already survived more horrors and dangers than most of Westeros sees in a lifetime, and kept her baby alive through it. Special kudos for evading the Thenns.
2. Sam Tarly. He’s not nothing.
1. Dolorous Edd. What, you thought I was gonna put that gormless Snow kid here? Fuck that. Look at this guy, commanding the Wall, knocking dudes off with a big-ass scythe, surviving the battle with style. Look at this motherfucker. Stay Dolorous, you sarcastic prince of men.
