Game of Thrones 6x06: Blood of My Blood

A few characters we thought were gone forever return, and for the first time all season, no one important dies on this week's episode of Game of Thrones.

The Three-Eyed Stark
Hodor's a fine doorstop, but even he can't hold back an onslaught of World War Z style zombies forever. Meera drags Bran as far as she can, but the wights are soon upon them, and all seems lost. Until a masked man on a horse arrives and burninates the zombies with a censer. When the immediate threat gone, Meera and Bran hop on the horse (well, they don't really show how Bran gets up there) and they ride away. It turns out the dude is Benjen Stark. He was stabbed by a White Walker and left for dead, but the Children stuck a piece of dragon glass in his heart and he's been roaming around north of the Wall ever since. Bran worries that he's not ready to take over as the Three-Eyed Raven, but Benjen gives him some rabbit's blood to drink and tells him that he'll be fine.


Montage Assassin
After watching the acting troupe perform the second act from their ribald play about the recent political intrigue in King's Landing, Arya heads backstage to poison the lead actress. But after having a conversation with her about how bad the script is, she can't bring herself to do it and swats the poisoned rum out of her hands before she can drink it. Unfortunately, a girl was watching her and tells a man that Arya is no longer one. He says she can kill her but asks that he not let Arya suffer. Meanwhile, Arya retrieves Needle and goes to sleep with it beside her.


The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
Tommen has a short conversation with the High Sparrow, who allows him to visit with his wife. Margaery seems well, and has apparently taken the teachings of the ass-whopping septa to heart. Later, Jaime greets Mace Tyrell, who is leading a sizeable platoon of soldiers with the intention of preventing his daughter's walk of atonement. When they arrive, Jaime treats with the Sparrow, who says there's no need for atonement today because Margaery has already atoned by bringing the king into the fold. Tommen appears from the sept, along with a few of his Kingsguard in fancy, new Faith of the Seven armour, and the crowd goes wild. Afterwards, Jaime is booted out of the Kingsguard and sent to pacify the Riverlands. He doesn't want to go, but Cersei reminds him that she'll have the Frankenmountain in her corner for her trial by combat, so there will be some violent retribution in the near future.


Old Man River
Walder Frey is understandably upset at his sons for losing Riverrun. So he sends them to retake the castle with Edmure Tully as a bargaining chip.


Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam, Gilly, and Li'l Sam arrive at Horn Hill, which is a big-ass hall and home of House Tarly. Sam's mother and sister are happy to see him and his little family, and they get Gilly all dolled up for dinner. Unfortunately, while they eat, Gilly accidentally lets slip that she's a wildling. Randyll Tarly hates wildlings and severely berates his son for bringing one to his table. Since his wife is a kind woman, he agrees to house Gilly and Li'l Sam, but big Sam is banished from the family home forever. Initially, Sam's fine with that, but then he says fuck it and decides to take his lady and the baby with him when he goes, as well as the family's Valyrian steel sword.


The Widow Drogo
Daario and Daenerys discuss her next move now that she has a massive army. He figures she'll need about 1000 ships to get to Westeros. Then she hears something in the distance and rides off on her own for a bit. When she returns, she's riding on Drogon, which thoroughly impresses the Dothraki.


What I Liked
-The acting troupe performs season 4. Well, just the first couple episodes.
-Walder gives his sons a lesson on what losing is. He has a lot of kids, but they're mostly morons.

What I Hated
-Arya didn't kill the actress. What the hell was the point of having a montage if she wasn't going to use her mediocre skills to save the youth centre?
-Tommen. He's terrible, just terrible. We were poised for either gratuitous violence or gratuitous nudity, and instead we got whining.
-Daenerys is supposed to be leading 100,000 or so Dothraki, but it looks like only about 50 are following her. I know that extras on horses are really expensive, but pad that shit out with some dummies or something.
-Frey exposition. Hey, remember the Brotherhood Without Banners? They're still a thing, even though the producers dropped their plot for three years. Also, remember who was killed at the Red Wedding and whose wedding it was?

Final Thoughts
Another week without anyone so much as mentioning what's happening in Dorne. I hope the trend continues.

Bran drank fresh squeezed rabbit juice like a man. All that time eating whatever squirrels and raccoons they could find has given him an iron stomach.

The whole bit with Daenerys seemed really weird and tacked on to me. They had a brief discussion with no resolution, then she hopped on her dragon and made a not particularly rousing speech that somehow inspired all the Dothraki to keep following her, even if it means abandoning their homeland. I'm not buying it. They haven't given enough time to this plot, so it's just not ringing true. The Dothraki are following Daenerys because the plot says they have to, not because of anything in particular she's done to inspire their loyalty. They're willing to give up their land and their way of life to follow someone who murdered their leaders.

Who the hell made the new armour for the Kingsguard, and how did Jaime not find out about it? There are only seven of them total, and Jaime's their commander, so it's not like they could run off and get new uniforms behind his back.

I was pleasantly surprised that the aborted Tyrell attack on the Faith Militant didn't turn out to be some kind of double-cross. I thought for sure that Cersei would use it as an opportunity to rid herself of the Tyrells and their influence on her son. Instead, however, we got something that came completely out of nowhere: Tommen and Margaery found religion. Which makes me sad because I hate this storyline. The connivers and schemers are allied against the Faith Militant, and yet they find themselves powerless to do anything about them, and were totally blindsided by Tommen becoming a believer. While Qyburn isn't Varys, but keeping tabs on the whereabouts of the king isn't exactly the most difficult job in the world. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but a show still needs to have internal consistency.

This was an okay episode, but I think it spent too much time on what ultimately seems like pointless character development: We know Sam's a wuss, and we know Arya's not an amoral killer. Arya could've changed her mind about killing the actress after a single line, they didn't need to have an extended conversation. Nor did we need to see how big a jackass Sam's dad is if no one was going to wind up staying at Horn Hill, anyway. It's a bit confusing that they would spend so much time on those bits when other plot lines have been moving so quickly.

Game of Thrones 6x05: Door

The stories are merging! Soon we may make it down to less than five from the 47 we were dealing with before.

Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa gets a letter from Littlefinger, inviting her to a secret meeting. He tells her that he's mustered an army from the Vale and has them encamped at Moat Cailin. She's so pissed off at him for leaving her with Ramsay that she doesn't give a fuck, and comes very close to having Brienne kill him where he stands. After pointing out that he damn well knows what Ramsay did to her and making him think very hard about what he's done, she merely says she never wants to see him again. As he leaves, he tells her that the Blackfish has reformed his army and retaken Riverrun.

Back at Castle Black, Jon and Davos are figuring out how to build their own army. Sansa tells them about the Blackfish and sends Brienne to get him, while the rest of the band ride out to round up every Northern house they can get. Which leaves Edd in charge of the ten or eleven remaining members of the Watch, although even he's not sure if he's the Lord Commander or not.


Hey, remember the Ironborn?
It's kingsmoot time! Yara's the first to declare, and when Theon gives a quasi-elegant speech about how she's been leading men into battle and so forth while their father nearly led them into ruin, it looks like she's got it in the bag. But, then uncle Euron shows up, and he's a man with a plan (not a very specific plan, of course), so the local lords support him. While the high priest crowns him (which involves nearly killing him through drowning), Yara and Theon and every loyal soldier they can muster fuck off. Which was an excellent idea, since their uncle's first command as king is to find them and murder them. They're long gone, though, and they've taken most of the ships, so his second command is to build more boats.


The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
The Sons of the Harpy have ceased their attacks, and it looks like the slave masters have accepted the deal, returning peace to Meereen. However, with Daenerys still away, Tyrion worries that her brand might be suffering, so he calls in a marketing guru. They get the High Priestess of R'hllor to drop by, and while Varys is skeptical of her motives and abilities -as Melisandre was backing Stannis and that didn't turn out well- she knows all about how his dick was cut off by a sorcerer, and that seems to be enough of a demonstration of her powers. Daenerys is the prince who was promised as far as she's concerned, so the word of her greatness will be spread far and wide.


The Widow Drogo
Before she can take her Dothraki horde anywhere, Daenerys has to decide what to do with Jorah. She keeps banishing him, but it never seems to stick. Before she can make up her mind, he informs her of his illness and his love, then starts to leave. However, as he had pledged to serve her until his dying day, Daenerys tells him to stop, and orders him to spend the rest of his days looking for a cure so he can be her right-hand man when she conquers Westeros.


Montage Assassin
Arya's bow-fighting still needs work as the girl with no name is able to beat her ass pretty easily. Nevertheless, it's time for her second chance at becoming a real assassin. Not Jaqen sends her to the theatre so she can kill one of the actresses. It turns out the troupe is putting on a satirical play about the politics of Westeros and Arya's supposed to assassinate the woman who plays Cersei.


What'chu Talkin' 'bout, Hodor?
The Three-Eyed Raven shows Bran the origin of the White Walkers: The Children of the Forest made them because they needed an army to fight the men who had invaded their lands. Somewhere along the line, they fucked up and lost control.

Later, while everyone else is asleep, Bran decides to do some greenseeing on his own. Unfortunately, he winds up walking amongst the undead, and when the Night's King grabs his arm, it somehow breaks the magic seal around the tree cave they've been hiding in. There's precious little time before the army of the dead arrives, but the young padawan's training is not yet complete, so they need to do some quick work back in the Winterfell of 25 years ago before they run the hell away. The army gets there really fast, and though the remaining Children mount an admirable defence, they're quickly overwhelmed. Meera manages to kill an Other and smack Bran back to reality just long enough for him to warg into a terrified Hodor so they can flee. They're still pretty fucked, though. On the way out they lose Summer, the Three-Eyed Raven, and the very last of the Children who uses a suicide bomb to slow down the wights just long enough for Hodor, Meera, and Bran to get out the door. There's still an army behind them, though, so Meera yells at Hodor to "Hold the door" while she tries to drag Bran away. Bran somehow hears this back in the past, and through a combination of things that aren't really explained, he accidentally fries past-Hodor's brain and "Hold the door" is contracted to simply "Hodor". The big man holds it with all his might as long as he can, while his young charges flee into a storm.


What I Liked
-Tormund's still making eyes at Brienne. Their giant children will conquer the world.
-The play in Braavos was fantastic. If they scrapped the current "previously on" format and instead had the troupe perform a synopsis at the start of every episode, I would not complain.
-You've got to drown before you can be King of the Iron Islands. That's pretty hardcore.


What I Hated
-Summer went out like a punk. He just charged right in to a group of wights and got stabbed. They should've at least had him take out a few more before he died.
-Varys got all pissy with the red priestess. Did Tyrion not discuss his plans with the other advisers again?

Final Thoughts
While it's nice that they've been really moving the plot along in the last few episodes, the speed at which people travel has become so ridiculous that I feel I need to comment on it again this week. Littlefinger had time to muster an army, march them to Moat Cailin, and then travel nearly all the way to the Wall. Why even bother sending messages via raven when someone can ride a horse halfway across a continent in a day and a half?

Aiden Gillen and Sophie Turner put in an excellent performance for their scene together. Sansa's genuine disgust and Littlefinger's possibly genuine repentance both come across really well. It's a pity that he won't be around that much this season. He has Maze Running to do. Although, I expect him to return in episode nine or ten to rout the remaining members of the Stark loyalist army after they retake Winterfell.

Bran now has Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure style time travel powers. He can't really travel back in time, and he can't change the present, but he can set things up so that things he needs to happen will have already happened. However, I doubt he'll use his powers to do much more than steal his dad's keys or drop a trash can on his enemies. People use their magic so infrequently on this show that it's actually a little infuriating. There are several characters who basically have superpowers, but they mostly brood around like sullen Clark Kents instead of frying fools with their laser eyes.

I hope they delve into the White Walkers' motivations a bit more before the end of the series. While it appears that they were designed to kill men, and rebelled against their masters, it's been at least a thousand years since that happened, so my biggest question is: Why now?

The frequency with which they've been mentioning Stannis' death leads me to believe that he didn't actually die. I know that's antithetical, but it just seems a bit odd how people keep bringing it up. It's like how the entire cast was saying that Jon Snow was dead and not coming back. We all knew it was BS.

They've done some really good casting work this season. Rebellion age Ned Stark and Rickard Stark both look a heck of a lot like Sean Bean. The guy who plays Rickard even sounded a bit like him.

Arya really needs another training montage. The Stark children have both been trained quite poorly, and I fear it shall lead to their downfall. Bran's going to join the dark side after his wife dies, and Arya's going to become an emo kid and kill Han Solo.

It seems like they're trying to cut down on the direwolf cgi budget this season. There's only one left (that we know of) and there are still five episodes left in which to turn him into a nice coat and some mittens. It's not all bad, though, since it'll free up some money to spend on wight cgi, some of which looked just terrible.

What was the point of making it seem like Yara had any chance of prevailing at the kingsmoot? Did anyone out there expect that they would introduce Euron and then not have him take over as king? It just made it seem ludicrous that any of the lords would be on board with murdering the younger Greyjoys. If they'd laughed Yara off the island, that would have been one thing, but they were fully prepared to make her their leader just moments before Euron showed up.

Speaking of Euron, his plan to win Daenerys over with his giant cock leaves a lot to be desired. My expectation is that we're more or less done with the Ironborn for this season, and they'll only pop up again at the end of next season when their ships arrive in Meereen and Daenerys promptly steals them. The ships in Meereen were destroyed to delay the invasion of Westeros for at least another year, but the invasion still needs to happen, so a fresh fleet from Pyke is just what the doctor ordered. Why even bother with the Ironborn if that's what's going to happen? They could've just as easily had the people of Essos construct a new fleet.

Once again, there was no mention of Dorne. I'm fully on board with never mentioning it again, but it means that everything that happened there last season was just a huge waste of time. Which is funny, considering how they've been accelerating things this year.

So far this season we've lost Summer, Shaggydog, Balon, Roose, Walda, Osha, Trystane, Doran, Areo, Alliser, Olly, all the Children of the Forest, the Three-Eyed Raven, and Hodor. That's a lot of characters who've bitten the big one. My guess is they're making room for some of the other plot lines that the writers were going to completely ignore until they found out they were somehow important.

This was a better episode than last week's, although I still haven't been wowed this year. Perhaps the second half of the season will impress me a bit more.

Game of Thrones 6x04: Book of the Stranger

Stories are beginning to merge, which is good, because there were too damn many of them at the start of the season. And, hey, no Dorne stuff again this week, which is always a plus.

The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
Missandei and Grey Worm aren't happy about it, but Tyrion has a big meeting and offers the masters of Slaver's Bay seven years to wean themselves off slavery. He seals the deal with some hookers because everyone likes hookers.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa's merry band now includes her older half-brother as they arrive at Castle Black to find that Jon has not actually buggered off. Brienne tells Davos and Melisandre that she executed Stannis and that she's still pissed about what they did to Renly. Later, a letter from Ramsay arrives telling Jon he has Rickon and trying to goad him into marching on Winterfell. They don't have enough men, but they'll figure it out somehow.


Hey, remember the Ironborn?
Theon's home, but Yara's not happy because she thinks he's there to claim the throne. Instead, he says he's just there to help her out at the upcoming kingsmoot.


Wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels
Littlefinger returns to the Vale with a present for Robin. He then suggests that Lord Royce leaked his travel plans to the Boltons, which is how Sansa wound up married to Ramsay. Robin's an idiot, so he believes Uncle Petyr and threatens to toss Royce through the moon door. To save his life, Royce grovels a little and Littlefinger suggests he should use his military experience to lead the Vale's armies up to Winterfell to save Sansa. Little Lord Arryn agrees and the civil war is officially back on.


Ramsay, Shitlord of Winterfell
Because he wasn't enough of an asshole, they show Ramsay eating an apple, which has apparently become movie and TV shorthand to demonstrate that someone is a huge dick. His guards bring Osha in, and she thinks she's there to play hide the sausage because Ramsay had her cleaned up. While she's about to hop on the train to bone town and simultaneously grab a knife from the table to kill him, he tells her how he tortured Theon and got him to tell him everything, including how Osha helped Bran and Rickon escape by killing a dude while he was distracted by her boobs. Ramsay then sticks his secret killing dagger into her neck and watches her bleed out while he finishes his apple.


The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
Margaery finally gets to talk to Loras. They've been gay-bashing him pretty severely for quite some time, and although Margaery tells him to stay strong, all he wants is for the beatings to stop. Back in the Red Keep, Tommen confesses to Cersei that he's been having regular chats with the High Sparrow. She then concocts a plan, which I'm 95% certain is going to involve some kind of double-cross. She suggests to Kevan and Olenna that the Tyrell army should attack the Faith Militant just before Margaery is to make her walk of atonement, while the Lannisters, city guards, and Kingsguard stand down to create plausible deniability. Everyone thinks it's a fantastic idea and agrees immediately.


The Widow Drogo
Daario and Jorah have arrived at Vaes Dothrak, and they know exactly where Daenerys is and how to get her out. Except, she doesn't want to go. Instead she stands before the Khals and allows them to pass judgement on her. They're not happy about her sass mouth, so they resolve to rape her a lot, at which point she flips over the cressets and burns them all to death. Then she waives her nudity clause and walks outside where everyone bows to her because she's fireproof.


What I Liked
-Tormund makes eyes at Brienne. She's not quite a bear, but any port in a storm.
-Littlefinger's got some kind of plan. I'm not sure it's a good one, but at least it's something.

What I Hated
-Even though they probably had a few days to discuss it, Tyrion didn't tell anyone else his plan. How did that even happen? "What we talk about at meeting?" "You'll find out at the meeting, that's why we're having the meeting."
-It took Davos way too long to ask what happened to Shireen and Stannis. He doesn't have any work to do, so I have no idea how it didn't come up.
-Ramsay's letter was delivered by a courier almost immediately after Sansa and co. arrived. If someone could just ride after them and catch up when they had a decent head start, I don't know why he didn't just send a bunch of guys to catch her. It's not like he didn't know exactly where she was going.
-Killing the Khals was way too easy. Only two guards outside? No windows? Doors that can be barred without any difficulty whatsoever? Every Khal in one room at the same time. It's astonishing that it took this long for someone to kill them all. They're a marauding horde that's been rampaging across Essos for centuries, and their whole leadership could've been taken out by the twenty good men Ramsay used to burn Stannis' tents, or whoever it was who burned all of the ships in the Meereen harbour.
-All the Dothraki bow to Daenerys. Even the ones on the other side of the building who can't see what's going on.

Final Thoughts
They're called cressets, people. Braziers are for heat, not light.

Something that's begun to bother me recently about this show is that loyalty only seems to work to the advantage of really terrible people. To be sure, it doesn't always work for them, but it seems to work for them exclusively. The knights of the Vale are more than willing to kill Lord Royce on the whims of a slow, sickly boy, just because he happens to be their Lord. Whereas the Lords of the North are willing to betray anyone at any time for any reason... except for Ramsay. They'll get eaten alive by wildlings before they'll betray Ramsay. Because reasons.

Speaking of Ramsay, we know he's a shitlord. It's pretty much his only character trait. They don't need to keep reminding us at this point.

Presumably, a substantial portion of the Dothraki won't follow Daenerys because they enjoy the whole raping and pillaging thing, and she did just murder their leaders. But, that would make sense, so it's completely plausible that the writers will have the whole horde follow her without question. Once again, I have to ask why she would ever want to go back to Westeros. She now has a big enough army to forcefully end slavery forever, and she can rule a big chunk of Essos from her giant pyramid in Meereen. Why go to Westeros where the weather's not nearly as nice and she'd have to deal with constant threats to her rule?

What the hell did Jon do between the end of the last episode and the start of this one. It seemed like he was walking out the front gate, but I guess he realized it was chilly and he didn't have a coat, so he turned around and came right back. That must've been embarrassing.

Supposedly in good weather it takes about a month to get from Winterfell to Castle Black. But since people move at the speed of plot, it seems like they're right next to each other.

I'm having real trouble envisioning a situation where Cersei and Jaime don't double-cross the Tyrells. Cersei seemed entirely too pleased with her plan, and everyone agreed to it far too readily. But, unless it's some kind of double-double-cross, I'm going to be pretty ticked. Lady Olenna has shown herself to be pretty damned devious, so having her go down to such an obvious trick will seem entirely out of character. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Maybe it'll all work out, and the annoying and pointless Faith Militant storyline will end just as rapidly as the annoying and pointless Dorne storyline did.

This season's just not doing it for me, yet. At least they've sped things up a bit, and they're focusing more of the show on people whose motivations are clear and whose goals make sense.

Game of Thrones 6x03: Oathbreaker

On this week's exciting episode of Game of Thrones, oaths are broken, characters you've never heard of or can't remember die, and absolutely nothing happens in Dorne!

The Widow Drogo
The khalasar arrives at Vaes Dothrak and Daenerys gets sent to the home for old Khaleesis. They strip her naked, but her contract has a no-nudity clause, so they give her a nice burlap sack to wear and tell her that if she's lucky she'll get to live out her days with them. But, she didn't follow an obscure Dothraki rule about immediately going to Vaes Dothrak after her husband died, so she's probably going to get her head chopped off.

Temporary Blindness
Montage? Montage! Arya learns to be a girl with no name, and a man gives her back her sight.

Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam, Gilly, and Li'l Sam are on a boat headed for Oldtown, but since no women are allowed in the Citadel, Sam's going to drop Gilly and the baby off with his parents. Also, he's seasick, because it's funny to watch people barf.

The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
Varys uses his skills in bribery and subtle threats to find out who's funding the Sons of the Harpy... it turns out it's everyone. Meanwhile, Tyrion learns that he, Grey Worm, and Missandei have absolutely nothing to talk about.

What'chu Talkin' 'bout, Hodor?
In this week's flashback, Ned Stark, Howland Reed and some unnamed jobbers fight Ser Arthur Dayne and another guy outside the Tower of Joy. Arthur dual-wields swords and defeats four men at once. Fortunately, before he can finish Ned, Howland stabs him through the neck from behind. Then the Three-Eyed Raven cuts off the flashback before anyone can see what happens in the tower. He tells Bran that he won't have to stay with him forever, but he can't leave until he learns everything!

The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
Tommen goes to see the High Sparrow, and learns that religion's not all bad. Jaime and Cersei try to sit in on a small council meeting, but Kevan (who is back, apparently) doesn't want to include them. Ser Frankenmountain's presence prevents the council from expelling the twins, but it doesn't keep everyone else from simply getting up and leaving. Elsewhere,

Ramsay, Shitlord of Winterfell
Shitlord Bolton and Shitlord Karstark welcome Shitlord Umber to Winterfell. He refuses to kneel to Ramsay, but to prove his loyalty, he gives him a present: Osha and Rickon, whose identity he proves by displaying the severed head of Shaggydog.

Jon is Dead, Jon is Dead, I am the Walrus
Davos notices that Jon has popped back up and gets him some pants. The wildlings think Jon's some kind of god, Melisandre doesn't know what to think, and Davos has a "Who the fuck cares? I'm just glad you're back" attitude about things. Though he has a little trouble enacting the sentence, Jon hangs the traitors, then gives Edd his cloak of office and fucks off. His watch is ended.

What I Liked
-Arya got to have a training montage. It would've been better with some 80s pop music behind it, though.
-They hanged Olly. Good. Fuck Olly.
-Pycelle farts when he notices Ser Frankenmountain standing behind him. I do enjoy a good fart gag.

What I Hated
-They spend what seems like five minutes on the non-conversation between Tyrion, Grey Worm, and Missandei. The city's in pretty dire straits and they apparently have nothing to talk about.
-Another Lord pledges his loyalty to Ramsay for no particular reason. The Umbers following the Boltons makes even less sense than Lord Karstark not immediately shanking Ramsay.

Final Thoughts
Arya's montage needed some 80s pop music behind it. Eye of the Tiger or something like that. This show has dick and fart jokes, it's clearly not a serious program.

Lots of dudes getting stabbed through the neck from behind this season. I think that's an indication that the people of Westeros need to develop neck armour.

The actor they got to play young Ned seems to be in his early 20s. While in the books, Ned was only about 20 during Robert's Rebellion, Sean Bean was 51 when they shot the first episode, meaning young Ned should've been in his early to mid 30s.

Things aren't moving along much temporally this year. The plot lines don't all move at the same pace, but only two or three days have passed at Castle Black, and it hasn't been a whole heck of a lot longer at King's Landing.

The amount they've diverged from the books grows with each episode. In the books, Smalljon Umber dies at the Red Wedding, and only about half of their people grudgingly follow the Boltons because the Greatjon is held captive at the Twins. In the show, the Greatjon has apparently perished off screen, and the Smalljon betrays Rickon, ignoring the fact that the Boltons massacred his soldiers a couple years back. Characters have repeatedly pointed out that "The North remembers" and loyalty is kind of a big deal, and yet two of the major Northern Lords have sworn fealty to a conniving, betraying murderer. Karstark should have stabbed Ramsay and Umber should've rallied the rest of the northmen and marched on Winterfell. Sure, Jon Snow let the wildlings come south of the Wall, which could turn out to be a bit inconvenient, but that's hardly a good enough reason to turn a protected guest over to a guy who's probably going to slice his dick off.

Speaking of catchphrases, whatever happened to "The Iron Bank will have its due"? Yes, there was finally a Small Council meeting, but it doesn't seem like anyone has figured out how they're going to pay back all the money they owe. Nor will there likely ever again be a mention of all the money Stannis borrowed.

If her adventure doesn't somehow lead to Daenerys gaining command of a good chunk of the Dothraki, then I'll consider it a huge waste of time. Not that I know what she'd do with them, but it's a heck of a lot better than just getting saved by Jorah and Daario, and going right back to Meereen.

This episode didn't have any dudes getting smashed against walls, so it wasn't as good as last week's. Character motivations are still really unclear, and no one's ultimate goal is particularly apparent. Hopefully things will become more clear now that Littlefinger's finally coming back next week. I don't know what the hell he's got planned, but it better be damned interesting.

Game of Thrones 6x02: Home

We're back again for another week. Is Jon Snow still dead? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

What'chu Talkin' 'bout, Hodor?
The Three-Eyed Raven has spent the past year teaching Bran how to use his powers, which apparently include the ability to see into the past. As it turns out, Hodor was a stable boy named Willis, although it's probably spelled Wylys or something like that. Meera's a bit bored, but the weird child of the forest girl tells her they won't be hanging out under the tree forever and Bran will need her help when they leave.


The Adventures of Grumpy Dwarf and Baldy No Balls
The dragons in the dungeon are refusing to eat, so Tyrion unchains them.


Temporary Blindness
The girl comes back to whoop Arya's ass some more. Afterwards, a man who is not Jaqen H'ghar makes Arya three increasingly enticing offers if she'll tell him her name. She refuses, and he takes her off the street for more training. Could the next week feature a montage? I sure hope so.


Worst Kingsguard Ever
A drunk man makes some lewd comments about Cersei, so Ser Frankenmountain tracks him down and smashes his head like a grape against a wall. Later, Tommen and Jaime view Myrcella's body in the great sept. The High Sparrow shows up to jaw a bit, and Jaime sends Tommen to talk to his mother while he has a chat with the old man. He's fully willing to chop his head off, but the twenty or so members of the Faith Militant who show up to intimidate him prevent that.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Podrick tries to start a fire. Theon says goodbye to Sansa, then takes a horse and rides home.


Hey, remember the Ironborn?
Yara informs her father that the Ironborn have lost their last foothold on the mainland. He wants to invade some more towns, but she doesn't think it's a good idea. He's the king, though, so he doesn't have to listen to her, and he storms off... into a storm. While crossing a rope bridge, he runs into his brother Euron, newly returned from somewhere. After a brief, unkind conversation, Euron tosses his brother over the edge, thus bringing an end to The War of the Five Kings. Time for a kingsmoot.


Ramsay, Shitlord of Winterfell
Walda gives birth to a son, so Ramsay gives his father a big, congratulatory hug, then shanks him while Lord Karstark looks on. Ramsay then summons his stepmother and baby brother, leads them to the kennel and has the dogs tear them apart.


Jon is Dead, Jon is Dead, I am the Walrus
It's night, and with Davos and the loyalists refusing to surrender, Ser Alliser orders a brother to break down the door to the room holding Jon's body. Before they break through, someone bigger smashes down an even bigger door. Wun Wun charges through the gate of Castle Black, followed by Edd, Tormund, and enough wildlings to slaughter what's left of the Night's Watch. A few of the brothers want to fight, but when one of them shoots an arrow into the giant's shoulder, Wun Wun smashes him against the wall, and they quickly lose the will to fight. Edd has the conspirators locked up in the cells beneath the castle.

Afterwards, Davos asks Melisandre if she has the power to resurrect Jon. She met Thoros of Myr a few seasons back, so she knows it's technically possible, but she's never done it before. Davos convinces her to try, so she gives Jon a haircut while she chants over him. It doesn't seem to work, so everyone leaves the room a little bummed out. But, then Jon pops back to life as soon as he's alone.


What I Liked
-They only spent two episodes beating up Arya on the street. It would've gotten really old if they'd pushed it any further than that.
-Wun Wun smash! It's a very enjoyable moment.

What I Hated
-Tyrion confirms that the dragons know Missandei and consider her a friend, then doesn't take her with him when he goes to unchain them. What the hell was the point of that?
-The long, drawn out murder of Walda and the baby. That was a completely unnecessary scene. Immediately after he kills Roose, Ramsay says "Send for Lady Walda and the baby." We already know what he's going to do, and not showing it would save us three minutes of us waiting to see how he does it.
-Tormund doesn't kill Olly when he charges at him with a sword. Seriously, fuck Olly.
-Roose Bolton, evil genius, lets his son stab him to death. There's no particular reason why he would let his psychotic son hug him. Nor does there seem to be any reason why the Karstarks would support a sadistic killer over his more level-headed father. But the plot demands it, so Roose is dead.

Final Thoughts
The child of the forest's makeup has changed so much that I'm honestly not sure it's the same character. At the end of season four, she barely looked non-human, but now her skin seems to be a different colour.

I thought they were going to completely ignore all the stuff from the books related to the Greyjoys, but I guess they need some way to get Daenerys over to Westeros, and she's certainly not using the boats she had docked in Meereen.

There's no particular reason why Harald Karstark shouldn't immediately betray Ramsay and kill him. Almost everyone hates the Boltons, and most of their men follow Ramsay out of fear, not respect. There's no living heir, nor is there any way to produce one while Sansa is missing, and the Lannisters will march up and wipe them out as soon as winter ends. Granted, that could be several years, but spring will come eventually. And without any Starks around, the Karstarks have a pretty good claim to being the legitimate lords of Winterfell, anyway. A quick knife to Ramsay's back would get Harald a lot of goodwill, and a decent chunk of land. Which, of course, means that it won't happen. For whatever reason, the writers have decided that Ramsay is more or less completely invincible, even going so far as two of the greatest tacticians in Westeros (Stannis and Roose) into complete morons so he can defeat them. Everyone will believe his story about his father and stepmother being poisoned, and no one will rat him out to the Freys, even though it would be relatively easy to do without getting caught.

Ser Davos asking Melisandre to resurrect Jon doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. While he's seen her perform some pretty amazing magic in the past, he has no reason to believe that she has the power to bring someone back from the dead. He asks her because the plot needs Jon to come back, and the writers decided she wouldn't make the attempt of her own volition.

A lot of the stuff that goes against character or makes no sense seems to be happening because the writers know where they're trying to go, but they don't know how they're supposed to get there. Now that they diverged from and overtaken the books, the paths they need to take aren't spelled out for them, so they're moving the plot along in a really ham-handed way.

Petyr Baelish, brilliant mastermind, and proximate cause of a great deal of the current strife south of the Wall is still missing. He's probably hanging out with Gendry.

It doesn't matter how much walking around in his underwear he does in the next episode, Jon Snow is still dead to me, dammit.

Now that I've gone back over it, it doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot happened in this episode, either. Everything just moves really slowly and eats up a lot of time. Tyrion telling a story while he unchains the dragons is a nice character moment, but it doesn't really advance the plot all that much. Saying goodbye to Theon eats up a couple minutes, killing Walda takes three minutes, and resurrecting Jon takes five. Again, interesting character bits, but there's a lot to cover if the show's going to have any kind of satisfying conclusion. It was somewhat less stupid than the previous episode, though, and didn't include anything Dorne-related, so it's definitely a bit of an improvement. Plus it gets a bonus for Wun Wun smashing that guy against the wall.