Game of Thrones 6x10: The Winds of Winter

It's the season finale, so it's time to wrap some stuff up.

The Three-Eyed Stark
Benjen's technically dead, so the magic that sustains him won't allow him to pass through the Wall. He drops Bran and Meera off by a weirwood tree near the Wall and heads back north to do what he can to slow the Walkers. With no Hodor around to drag him, all Bran can do is visit the past. He goes back to the Tower of Joy where he was so rudely cut off before, and follows his father up the tower, where he finds Lyanna Stark bleeding out after giving birth to Jon Snow. Lyanna makes Ned promise not to tell Robert.


Mr. Sam Goes to Oldtown
Sam finally arrives at the Citadel, just as the white ravens are being released to signify the onset of winter. When he presents himself to the registrar, it turns out they haven't received any updates from Castle Black in quite some time, and their records are horribly out of date. Nevertheless, while they sort things out, Sam is allowed to access the fancy, cgi library. Gilly and Li'l Sam have to wait in the lobby.


Old Man River
With Riverrun retaken, it's party time! The Freys and the Lannisters drink to their victory. While Bronn makes time with some serving girls, Jaime sits down to have a chat with Walder. The elder Lord compares himself and his deeds favourably to Jaime, which doesn't sit well with him, since he's not actually proud of the whole Kingslayer thing. Later, after the party's over and the Lannisters have departed, Walder sits alone, eating a meat pie and grumbling to his serving girl about his sons' tardiness. The girl tells him they're already there, which is confusing, since they're nowhere to be seen. When she points to the pie, and Lord Frey discovers a toe, things become a bit more clear. She whips off her face, revealing that she was Arya all along. The last thing Walder Frey sees before he dies is a Stark smiling down on him.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Sansa apologizes for not telling Jon about Littlefinger and his army. He forgives her, but says they need to trust each other more, since they've made so many enemies. Later, Sansa sits alone in the godswood, and Littlefinger tells her that everything he does is in the service of one vision: His butt on the iron throne... also, Sansa at his side if he has the time. He goes in for the kiss, but she blocks him, still miffed about that time he sold her to a sadistic rapist.

Afterwards, the Lords gather for a meeting. Jon tries to persuade them to work together in the war to come, but they're far from united. Lady Mormont shames the Northern Lords who failed to support Jon's army, and reminds them that the North is supposed to remember things. They realize the error of their ways, and proclaim Jon the King of the North, much to Littlefinger's chagrin.


The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
It's time for the trial of the century. Every named character in King's Landing except Cersei, Tommen (who is held back by Ser Frankenmountain), Qyburn, and Pycelle assembles in the Great Sept of Baelor to see the gods mete out punishment on Loras and Cersei. Since Loras is the only one there, he goes first, and there's no need for a trial, since he admits everything and renounces his name and titles to become a brother in the Faith Militant. When they finish carving a star in his forehead, the High Sparrow dispatches a few brothers to bring Cersei to the sept.

Elsewhere, another small child leads Grand Maester Pycelle down to Qyburn's lab, where he's set upon by a gaggle of child spies who gleefully stab him to death. Back at the sept, Lancel notices a small child running down the steps and follows him down into the tunnels where he, too, gets a good shanking. He doesn't die, though, and he notices something fishy going on and begins to crawl towards a light in the distance. Up above, Margaery notices something's wrong, too, and tries to convince the High Sparrow and everyone else that Cersei must be up to no good, and they all need to get the fuck out. The Sparrow's not having it, though. The gods must be satisfied, so no one gets to leave, and they're going to try Cersei in absentia. They don't get much beyond the opening arguments, though, as Lancel reaches the light just in time to discover that it's a candle being used as a time-delay fuse to detonate the cache of wildfire Qyburn's placed under the sept. The whole place blows right the fuck up, taking Lancel, Kevan, Margaery, Loras, Mace, and pretty much the entirety of the Faith Militant with it.

Back at the Red Keep, Cersei smiles. She heads to the dungeon where she's had the ass-whooping septa chained to a table. She confesses all her sins, then turns the septa over to Ser Frankenmountain for as much torture and rape as he can dole out. Everything's coming up Cersei. Her son, however, is despondent, and throws himself off his balcony to his death. With Tommen dead, and all the Baratheons wiped out, there's no successor, and with most of the Small Council dead, there's no way to call a meeting to decide who ought to rule.

Coincidentally, Jaime is back from the Riverlands. As he and Bronn ride into King's Landing, they see the smouldering remains of the sept and wonder just what the fuck happened while they were gone. Jaime arrives in the throne room just in time to see Qyburn place the crown upon his sister's head.


The Queen of Burns
With her family dead, Lady Olenna has but one thing on her mind: Vengeance. She's not the only one who's interested in seeing the Lannisters dead, so she pays a visit to Dorne. When the Sand Snakes and their mother fail to convince her that they have anything to offer, Ellaria rings a bell, and Varys walks out of the shadows to steal one of Doran's best lines.


The Widow Drogo
Preparations are nearly complete, so it's time to depart the warm, safe lands of Essos for the frozen nightmare of Westeros. But first, Daenerys has to dump Daario. She's going to need to forge an alliance or two if she wants to hold on to the throne, and that means marrying a powerful lord. Daario's willing to come along and be her side piece, but Daenerys isn't up for that, so she orders him to stay behind and keep the peace while the people elect new leaders. Afterwards, she has a short chat with Tyrion and makes him her Hand. Then it's time to go, and the assembled Targaryen-Tyrell-Dornish-Ironborn fleet sails off into season seven.


What I Liked
-Jaime plays "Have you met Bronn?" That's a great game.
-"Shut up, Barbara, adults are talking." I hope they devote a whole episode next season to Olenna just calling people fucking morons.

What I Hated
-Trial by boredom. They spend waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long getting dressed at the beginning of the episode.
-The High Sparrow bars everyone from leaving the sept. The King and Cersei aren't there. Clearly, something nefarious is afoot. Even if he doesn't want to leave, there's no reason to keep everyone else there.
-Lancel was close enough to blow out the candles before they ignited the wildfire. I can't remember if he tried or not, but he definitely could've done it.
-Murderous children. There's a hell of a leap between relaying information and murdering a dude, and it just doesn't feel earned in any way.
-Fire solves everything. While I hated the whole Faith Militant story, wrapping it up so quickly and cleanly like that seems like something a six-year-old would do: "And then everybody blew up. The end."
-Cersei is crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Everyone in King's Landing except Qyburn and Ser Frankenmountain hates her. Literally everyone. She just blew up the local church and a good chunk of the surrounding neighbourhood. The food shipments from the Tyrells that were pacifying the populace would immediately stop. The people rioted once before, and this time there would be no stopping them.
-Bran can't quite hear what Lyanna says to Ned in the past. Is he going to have to go back again and really jam his head in close? What's the point of these flashbacks if they're still not showing us everything?
-Lady Mormont's speech somehow convinces the assembled Northern Lords to not only pledge their allegiance to Jon, but to declare him King of the North. It wasn't a particularly good speech.
-Tyrion becomes Hand of the Queen. Fucking why? On screen, she barely knows the guy, and what little governing he did in her absence damn near destroyed the city.

Final Thoughts
There was no tension at all in the pre-explosion scenes. Tension can only exist if there's a chance -however slight- that a plot could go awry. But we've all known for weeks that someone was going to get blown up, so there was no way Lancel was going to blow out the candles, and there was no way Margaery was going to get out of the sept.

I'm glad that Tommen's dead. He was a terrible character. But now who will look after Ser Pounce?

While it's nice to finally get quasi-confirmation that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, I'm left wondering why exactly Bran had to go back in time to find that out. What use is that knowledge to anyone at this point?

I understand that time passes between scenes, but it sure looks like Varys borrowed Littlefinger's teleporter. Part of the problem is that the various story lines don't move at the same pace. So it could be weeks or months at King's Landing, and only a few days at Winterfell. Sam's only just made it to Oldtown, but Varys sailed from Essos to Westeros and back in the space of two episodes. Plus, no one seems to age or really change their appearance in any discernible way. The Westerosi barbers must be really good.

The show moves the plot forward in a staggered fashion that I don't really like. It feels like things take forever to build up, and then they resolve everything in five minutes. This episode was the most blatant example. They spent twenty minutes setting up for the trials and having Loras confess and whatnot, and then blew everyone up. Why even bother showing Loras getting his head carved?

How the hell did Arya manage to bake the Freys into a pie? Killing them without getting caught, I could buy. But butchering them, bringing their meat into the castle, sneaking into the kitchen and baking a pie without anyone noticing seems a little ridiculous.

Cersei becomes Queen because the High Sparrow has a moment of absolute intransigence and stupidity, and everyone gets blown up. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeenient. She's basically replaced Ramsay as the personification of evil on the show. Everything went her way, and everyone who opposed her wound end up dead, even though no one at all with any power should support her, and the hoi polloi should be rioting until her head is on a stake.

A good number of the victories on this show are completely unearned. Battles are won through the lucky arrival of reinforcements that no one knew were coming, armies are sabotaged by magic ninjas, and enemies are burned to death due to extreme stupidity. Daenerys, Jon, and Cersei aren't where they are due to any particular cunning or intelligence; Daenerys is magic, Jon is lucky, and Cersei has some kind of forcefield that turns everyone around her into a moron.

This season's been pretty disappointing, overall. I'll keep watching, since I like some of the characters, but I won't be expecting much out of it.

Despite all its flaws, this was an average episode. I gave it an extra half-star because Lady Olenna told the Sand Snakes to shut the fuck up.

Game of Thrones 6x09: Battle of the Bastards

Only two plot lines in an episode of Game of Thrones? It's a miracle.

The Widow Drogo
Daenerys has returned to Meereen to find that the slave masters are laying siege to the city and half of it is on fire. Her solution is to burn everyone and everything, but Tyrion suggests a somewhat less destructive approach. They negotiate with the head masters, which involves burning one of their ships with dragon fire until their guards desert them, and slicing a couple of their throats. Afterwards, the Greyjoys arrive, and Yara suggests a sexy alliance, to which Daenerys readily agrees as long as the ironborn are willing to stop pillaging the countryside.


Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
The commanders of both northern armies meet to discuss a solution to their current conflict that won't result in thousands of men dying. Ramsay suggests that Sansa be returned to him and everyone else surrender, and Jon suggests a one-on-one battle for all the marbles. Neither solution seems workable, so they resolve to fight it out. After a strategy meeting, Tormund goes to get drunk, Davos takes a walk and finds the pyre where Stannis burned Shireen, and Jon goes to ask Melisandre to promise not to bring him back again. She tells him that if the Lord of Light wants him back, he's coming back.

The next morning, strategy immediately goes out the window when Ramsay releases Rickon and starts firing arrows at him as he runs away. Jon races to pick him up on his horse, but Lord Bolton is an excellent shot, and kills Rickon just as he's about to be saved. The youngest Stark dies in his brother's arms, and the battle truly begins as Davos orders the army to charge to save Jon from being wiped out by archers. As the two armies clash, Ramsay has his archers continue to fire, killing damn near everyone. Eventually, he sends in his heavy infantry to surround the remnants of Jon's army with an impenetrable shield wall that slowly advances, pushing their foes up the giant pile of corpses that has formed on the battlefield, where the remnants of the Umber contingent can mop them up. It's an excellent plan and would work, if not for the timely arrival of Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale. The addition of a couple thousand cavalry drastically shifts the balance of the fight, and the Bolton forces are annihilated. The few who remain retreat to Winterfell where they hope to wait things out, since Jon doesn't have enough soldiers for a siege. Unfortunately for them, there will be no siege. Despite being mortally wounded in the process, Wun Wun pounds his way through the gate and the remaining Boltons are slaughtered. While Jon shares a moment with his dying friend, Ramsay puts an arrow through the giant's eye, then reconsiders Jon's offer of single combat. Lord Snow beats Lord Bolton into unconsciousness with his bare hands, and only stops pounding his face when he sees his sister watching. The Bolton banners are thrown down, Stark banners go up, and Ramsay is tied to a chair in the kennel, where Sansa has a small chat with him before his hungry dogs tear him to pieces.


What I Liked
-Lyanna Mormont's death stare. The bear people are fucking hardcore.
-Wun Wun rips a guy in half. I do love some giant-based violence.
-Tormund kills Smalljon Umber by biting his neck and stabbing him with a tooth. That guy needed to die a violent, painful death.
-Tyrion chastises Theon for making the same short jokes that everyone else makes. It was a nice callback to the first season.

What I Hated
-Tyrion tells Daenerys about the wildfire under King's Landing for the sole purpose of reminding the audience that it's there. It's some of the most blatant re-exposition I've ever seen.
-The masters demand the return of the Unsullied. While that would've made sense immediately after Daenerys stole them, they're free men now, and won't just blindly follow orders anymore.
-I understand that he's just a child, but was a little zig-zagging too much for Rickon to figure out? I was literally yelling "Serpentine" at my TV.
-Sansa complains that Jon didn't ask for her input at the strategy meeting, then she doesn't have anything useful to say, anyway. I suppose it's nice to be asked, but why be such a whiner? She also neglects to tell Jon about her letter to Littlefinger. Now, she didn't know if the letter made it or if the Vale knights were coming, but considering when they arrived, there was plenty of time for Jon to send a scout.
-Davos finds the little stag he made for Shireen. Bull-fucking-shit. The pyre was a short walk from where the army was camped, which was clearly close enough to attack the Bolton forces at Winterfell. The whole reason Stannis burned his daughter was that he needed the snow to melt so he could move his army within striking distance. Based on how far Davos had to walk, that was apparently an additional 200m or so.
-The giant pile of corpses. It made for a fine visual and an interesting set piece, but its existence made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
-The gate at Winterfell breaks way too easily. Even without a giant, Jon's army would've been able to break through without much difficulty. Plus the walls of the castle must be U-shaped or something, since they seem to range in height from 5-15m.
-Yet another battle won thanks to the last-second arrival of allied forces. That's at least the third time that's happened, and it's getting a little predictable.

Final Thoughts
Who the hell is even left alive in the North at this point? As far as I can tell they're down to a few hundred members of Jon's army, the wildlings who were too old or too young to fight, and whatever houses refused to participate in the battle. Damn near everyone else must be dead at this point, so I have no idea how they're going to hold the North against any kind of army, let alone an army of undead.

Littlefinger had exactly as many lines in this episode as Rickon: 0. Should've taught the kid some Maze Running skills.

While he definitely needed to be a shitlord right to the end, and killing a badly wounded enemy is certainly shitlordy, if Ramsay was able to put an arrow right through Wun Wun's eye, he could have easily shot Jon in the head, since he was right there. The remnants of the army still would have killed him, but at least he would've taken his rival down with him. But why even stick around at Winterfell when it became obvious that the battle was lost? He was still Lord of the Dreadfort, and he could've retreated there to plan and rebuild his forces over the winter.

Speaking of Wun Wun, why didn't he have armour or at least a club of some kind? A couple layers of leather and a fallen tree would've made him into an unstoppable force.

There's absolutely no doubt that Jon is protected by the Lord of Light at this point. A rain of arrows fell all around him and left a little Jon-shaped outline on the ground.

Where the hell was Ghost? I guess they spent all the cgi money on dragons this week.

I really expected someone to turn on Ramsay in the middle of the battle, particularly since he had his archers kill a substantial portion of his own men. But, I guess the North doesn't remember diddly shit.

The dragons could apparently burst out of their prison any time they wanted. I guess they stayed down there because they liked it.

The battle in Meereen ended far too quickly and easily. Even if the dragons were eventually going to sink their fleet, it's not like the masters couldn't have done serious damage to the city and maybe even killed Rhaegal and Viserion with some lucky shots. Also, from a show standpoint, it was completely unnecessary to have the battle at all. They could have just as easily had the masters accept Tyrion's deal, then completely ignored them. We didn't learn anything new about any of the characters, so it was basically an excuse to finally show the dragons doing something and to get Daenerys some more ships after her original fleet was inexplicably burned.

While the dragons torching the warship was fun, and a lot of the battle of the bastards was well-shot, this episode just had too many flaws for me to thoroughly enjoy it.

Game of Thrones 6x07: The Broken Man

Guest stars! Returning characters! Tiny bear ladies! All that and more on this week's episode of Game of Thrones.

Montage Assassin
Arya, who has changed her hairstyle a bit, but is not even remotely in disguise, brazenly walks through Braavos and books passage on a ship back to Westeros with a couple sacks of cash. Moments later, a girl shows up wearing the face of an old lady and stabs her in the gut. Arya does a flip off a bridge into the water, then stays under long enough for her would-be assassin to wander away. But she's not quite dead, so she climbs out of the water and stumbles through the streets, looking for help.

The Wacky Adventures of the Lannister Family
The High Sparrow has a creepy conversation with Margaery, in which he encourages her to perform her wifely duties so that the King might have an heir. Additionally, he hopes that he might bring Lady Olenna into the fold, so that she might atone for her many, many sins. Instead, granny calls bullshit on the whole thing and threatens to have the ass-beating septa beaten up until Margaery surreptitiously gives her a drawing of a flower, which convinces her to return to Highgarden. Before she leaves, Cersei visits Olenna in an attempt to get her to stay. The old lady's not interested, though, and she reminds Cersei that everything bad that's happening is entirely her fault.

Old Man River
Bronn and Jaime arrive at Riverrun, where the Freys are ineptly laying siege to the castle. They threaten to hang Edmure, then threaten to slit his throat, but his uncle is all out of fucks and tells them to just get on with it. With their bluff successfully called, the Freys don't know what to do, so Jaime takes command. He parleys with the Blackfish, who tells him that he was born in the castle and he's willing to die there. The Tullys have enough supplies to last two years, so it could be a long siege.

Lady Stark-Lannister-Bolton and Her Merry Band
Tormund convinces the wildlings to follow Jon into battle, but there aren't nearly enough of them, so they must continue to gather men from the Houses of the North. Davos convinces young Lady Mormont to come on board, but she only has 62 men to offer, and other Houses cannot be persuaded to offer any support at all. In the end, they have a force of around 2500. Jon wants to fight right away before they get snowed in, so they plan to march on Winterfell. Sansa realizes that they don't have enough men, though, and writes to Littlefinger to ask him to bring the knights of the Vale.

Hey, remember the Ironborn?
After hightailing it out of Pyke, the Ironborn are hanging out at a brothel. Theon still has no dick, so he's a little depressed, but Yara gets him to have a drink and convinces him that life is still worth living. She explains her plan to take their ships to Meereen to forge an alliance with Daenerys. Then she goes to fuck the tits off a wench.

Only Mostly Dead
Sandor Clegane is, in fact, not dead, having been found and healed by a septon who happened to wander by. Now he hangs out with a group of hippies who are building a chapel. Three brigands from the Brotherhood Without Banners ride up one day, but leave when the septon seemingly convinces them that they don't have any money. Later, while Sandor is off gathering kindling, he hears a scream, and returns to the building site to find that everyone has been murdered and the septon has been hanged. He picks up an axe, and charges off to fuck some dudes up.

What I Liked
-Cold open. They haven't done one of those in a while.
-Jaime smacks one of the Freys with his fake hand when he won't shut up. What's the point of having a gold pimp hand if you don't get to slap someone every once in a while.
-Lady Olenna dishes out the burn sauce. I feel like the show would be a lot less interesting if Cersei realized how inept she truly is, but it's still fun to watch Diana Rigg call someone an idiot.
-Wun Wun says "Snuh". I guess Ygritte taught him how to pronounce Jon's name.

What I Hated
-Jon wants to immediately go to war with the inferior army he already has. That decision makes absolutely no sense unless he came back from the dead as some kind of moron. The Bolton army alone outnumbered them 2:1, and they've since been reinforced by the Karstarks and the Umbers.
-Exposition from Ian McShane. He tells the story of how he found Sandor to Sandor.

Final Thoughts
Was it really Arya who got stabbed, or was it someone else? It's difficult to tell when you're dealing with a group who can change their faces at will. She had a bunch of money that came out of nowhere, and she didn't have Needle, so it's quite possible that it wasn't her. Of course, it could totally be her, and she just didn't realize that the assassins would come for her so quickly.

What the hell happened to all the wildlings? Mance's army was ridiculously huge, and they didn't all die at the Wall or at Hardhome. There should be a good 20,000 of them left, not the piddling 2000 they supposedly have.

Where's Melisandre? Just hanging around somewhere, teaching the wildlings about the Lord of Light?

If you don't die on screen, you're not dead on this show. Everyone who watched this episode with me shouted with glee when they panned up to Sandor's face. And they certainly didn't waste much time showing that it was him. I was sure that there'd be an extended shot of the back of his head before they finally revealed his face.

I guess Yara likes the ladies. I can't blame her for that, they had some nice wenches in that brothel. But, I don't know if she's going to be able to fuck Daenerys into allying with her like her uncle Euron apparently intends to.

There were a lot of nice moments in this episode, and I can say that it's the first one this season that I thoroughly enjoyed.