TV Review – Angry Robot

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The Dragon and the Wolf

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 7

The season ends with an episode that contains tension, drama, great one-on-one character scenes, and a number of plot threads tied up or at least significantly advanced, yet feels somehow hollow. It had no major surprises and only one (long overdue) character death.

The summit of the various remaining forces occurs, in the dragonpits in King’s Landing. (If I were working for Danaerys I would have picked a more neutral spot.) A long trek to this location allows for a few great character interactions: Tyrion with Podrick and Bronn; The Hound with Brienne. Dany is not with them, but arrives via dragon-based transit. The Hound gets a scene with his zombie brother where he basically guarantees Cleganebowl will happen next season sometime(!). Team Dany releases their prize wight, and Cersei seems convinced and open to the proposed truce – until she insists that “the King in the North” stay in the north and not fight against her alongside Dany. To his allies’ dismay, Jon is unable to lie and says uh sorry, I already bent the knee, no can do. Cersei storms off, no truce.

Tyrion decides that only he can change her mind. Whatever the logic of that decision, it makes for a good scene. (The preceding sentence could be the tagline of this season.) Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage always have good scenes together, and it’s been a while, and a lot has happened. And a lot does happen in this scene. Among other things, Tyrion learns Cersei is in fact pregnant – and I didn’t believe it myself! There is a curious lacuna, after which Tyrion and his sister emerge in the dragonpit; she announces she will not only agree to the truce, she will march her forces north to help fight what is now being called “The Great War”. Hope it has 80% fewer trenches and despair than its real life namesake.

If Cersei doing what’s right seems like a stretch, good, because a couple scenes later, she’s calling Jaime an idiot for actually believing she’d go through with it. In fact, Euron, who pretended to run off to the Iron Islands earlier, is actually going to Essos to pick up The Golden Company and ferry them back with his fleet. Jaime doesn’t like the idea of Cersei and Euron scheming without him; things go south, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought Jaime was going to get cut down by the Mountain. But he finally leaves her side and heads north alone.

In Winterfell, we get some buildup between Sansa and Littlefinger in which it seems she is finally succumbing to his manipulations and preparing to kill her sister. Then, we get a fakeout: Sansa summons Arya to the hall and starts talking about murder and treason – BUT she accuses Littlefinger instead. Clearly Bran is good for something, as he’s used his near omniscience to fill his sisters in on the full extent of Petyr’s shenanigans. Now let me just point out that Littlefinger doesn’t get a fair trial here… in fact he gets his throat slit with his own fancy dagger, courtesy Arya. The sisters get a wonderful scene later in which they recall their father, and his lesson to them, which is something like: “when winter comes, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives”. Ned Stark glows Obi-Wan like in the background of many of the scenes in this episode, as his children and other characters deal with the challenges of doing what’s right in a world that too often rewards what’s wrong.

Speaking of which, back on Dragonstone, Theon more or less apologizes to Jon, who more or less forgives him. Theon sees that Jon finds it easy to do what’s right, whereas Theon never knew if he was a Stark or a Greyjoy. Jon responds with a line whose full significance will only be understood later: “you have to be both”. Fired up with righteous resolve, Theon murders his second in command so as to win back the allegiance of his men for a mission to save his sister Yara… or something? It was very rushed.

Jon and Dany sail for the North, and their story reaches its…. climax [puts on shades]. At the same time, Sam gets to Winterfell and has an info dump with Bran. By which I mean, while Jon and Dany are getting it on, Bran is narrating how Jon’s real name is Aegon Targaryen and he’s the true heir to the throne and yeah that means Dany is his aunt. Yuck! But not really a surprise: all these “revelations” have been in the works since last season.

The episode ends with a scene that is grand yet inevitable and predictable: the Army of the Dead shows up at Eastwatch and the Night King uses his un-dragon to blow a hole in the wall. They had to bust through at some point, or what a lame Great War this is, and once they picked up the dragon last ep it became clear how they’d do it. So that happened.

Despite the occasional glimpses of epic scale, this episode again relied on one-on-one scenes that were gripping, well-wrought and satisfying, and further explored themes that feel central to the show. If Game of Thrones often deals with models of leadership, it just came heavily down on the side of Ned Stark. We all know he was good and all – in fact he was the stereotypical fantasy hero knight – but his surprise death in the first season expressed the point that this is a world in which heroes die. We have had seven seasons of the biggest payouts going to the liars, cheats, backstabbers and schemers. And yet in one hour, one of the most successful at such dark arts, Petyr “Chaos is a Ladder” Baelish, gets killed. Another, Cersei “Fuck You, I’m Cersei Lannister” Lannister is abandoned by her only remaining family and also only remaining sane ally, Jaime. Meanwhile the good guys follow Ned’s wisdom, band together, and…. [shudders] I mean, what is next season, just one long battle scene? Surely there are some backs left to be stabbed, right? I mean, this is Game of Thrones.

The season’s rushed pace continued to strain credulity. Really? Tyrion had to walk in undefended to talk to the sister who wanted him dead? And did all those heroes of presumably average or better intelligence really think Cersei’s word could be trusted in any shape or fashion? At the same time, maybe I’m bloodthirsty, but I expected at least one major surprise death. Jaime was a likely candidate, but Beric and Tormund surviving the wall’s collapse doesn’t make sense to me. I’m going to try to do a post about the season as a whole if I get the time and explore some of this stuff in more detail. I still felt on balance this was a good episode, but not without substantial flaws that perhaps belong more to the season as a whole.

A collection of unrelated points, you say? That calls for Unordered Liiiist Maaaaannn! The least dangerous, least sexy superhero.

The Sansa/Arya conflict was a season-long fakeout to keep a couple beloved characters busy. I called it last time, and it’s one of the few things I’ve correctly predicted, but I get no joy in it, as I thought… I thought it would get more interesting. But it’s better than the sisters killing each other, I suppose.
I also predicted Jon would knock Dany up: still looking good! Sex would be necessary for that to happen, and Jon even questioned her barrenness himself. I think that was Jon’s way of flirting?
Speaking of: why was Tyrion skulking around Dany’s bedroom when she and Jon were sexifying?
How did Tyrion get Cersei to agree to the truce? We don’t see the whole action. Did he assent to her lie about sending her forces north? Did he promise her unborn child the crown, thinking Dany barren? Explaining the skulking? Or did he propose some sort of rotating rule, or a democracy? Or did they just play tiddlywinks with the wizard guy and the brainless zombie?
Speaking of the wizard guy (ok I know his name, he’s Qyburn, Necromancer to the Stars): loved his rapt fascination with the wight. Time for some more evil science? Upgrades for Mountain-bot?
“You have to be both.” Jon has to be both Stark and Targaryen, then. Aka both wolf and dragon of the episode’s title.
There are so many heroes heading up north for A Good Cause I’m hoping Bob Geldof shows up and they record a chart-topping charity single. “Sending My Love Past the Wall.” “(Starting to Feel a Lot Like) Winterfell.” “All the Wight Weasons.”

As they say: thanks for reading, see you next year, or the year after, it horribly seems.

Beyond the Wall

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 6

(Sorry this is so late: I’m at a cottage with no internet.)

So here’s the action extravaganza I was expecting last episode. The bulk of this one is the Strike Team on its mission to range “North of the Wall” and kidnap a wight, with a few flicks back to goings on south of the wall, at Winterfell and Dragonstone. If you can stop worrying about travel times and distances and such (how far are they from the wall? How long would it take a raven to get to Dragonstone? Etc.), and I think you should, you’ll find this to be among the top action episodes of the show. A lot of shit happens, that’s for sure.

Early on we get a few scenes of dialogue between different members of the Strike Team: Tormund and The Hound, Jon and Jorah, etc. Certainly the Hound and Tormund were on fire. Jon offers Longclaw to Jorah (it was originally the Mormont ancestral sword), but Jorah says it belongs with Jon.

In Winterfell, Arya tells her sister she has the scroll Sansa sent to Robb (that could potentially be interpreted as evidence of her collaborating with the Lannisters). Sansa is concerned and turns to Littlefinger for advice; he suggests getting Brienne involved, as she is sworn to protect both Arya and Sansa. Rather than use Brienne to protect herself from her sister, when Sansa gets a summons to King’s Landing to meet with Cersei, she sends Brienne. Confident! Slightly menacing!

There’s a curious scene with Dany and Tyrion where they also mention the meeting with Cersei. Dany notes that Cersei will be setting a trap for them, and asks what trap they are setting for her. Tyrion doesn’t go as far as to deny they have a trap lined up, but he does urge Dany to rule via other means than deceit and war. Open to suggestions here, buddy! He brings up the problem of succession. Dany is (believed to be) infertile, but Tyrion mentions the Night’s Watch and the Ironborn, groups that select leaders via democratic systems.

Back to the main plot. After an undead bear mauls Thoros, the group finds a scouting party of a dozen wights led by a White Walker, and attack them. When Jon shatters the Walker, all of the wights drop except one, and they succeed in bagging it – but its heavily sound designed cries alert the main Army of the Dead, which comes knockin’. Jon sends Gendry running back to Eastwatch to send a raven to Dany for help, triggering a last-minute-rescue storyline, but before you know it, Jon and the gang are stuck on a minuscule island, completely surrounded by thousands of wights, with only a rapidly freezing-over lake to keep them from danger.

Time passes. Dany gets the message and leaves. Thoros dies in the night. Finally the lake freezes over, the wights charge, and things look bad for Strike Team Wight until – you guessed it – Dany and her dragons come to the rescue. But the White Walkers are ready for them: the Night King lets a huge ice lance fly and downs Viserion, while all except Jon escape on Drogon. Jon falls through the ice fighting off wights, but manages to get out and escapes with the help of Benjen “Coldhands” Stark.

In the aftermath, Jon and Dany don’t quite french, but they do hold hands(!). Dany swears to help with the fight against the Night King, and Jon bends the knee (figuratively). The coda shows wights hauling Viserion out of the water – and the Night King walker-ifies him.

Heroes last-standing it against an army of zombies, last-minute rescues, dragons torching shit: yeah, this season is in full action movie mode. As I mentioned last week, these episodes are packed so densely that clearly Dan & Dan are choosing to drop some of the more prosaic scenes – with the downside that certain barely-set-up plot events can strain credulity just a touch. In this ep, one can’t help try to make sense of the geography involved. How long would it take for Gendry to run back to the wall, for a raven to fly to Dragonstone, and for dragons to fly back? It’s a moot point; we don’t know how long our heroes were out on that rock, any more than we know how fast dragons can fly. Also, it’s more fun enjoying the ride than it is playing amateur fantasy geographer. This show is like nothing else on TV right now, or ever, in terms of scale, spectacle and budget, and if it seems different from previous seasons, remember we’re at hour 66: certainly we are in the climax of the 73-hour story, so a faster pace is warranted. But I suppose it feels a bit weird nonetheless, as if the final season of I Claudius turned into Hard Target.

First world problems.

Strays:

I have this funny feeling that the battle of the ice lake is taken from the books. Or rather, from Martin’s notes.
So now we know how the Army of the Dead is getting over/through the wall, yeah? If that thing breathes fire, it can blow a hole in the wall. Or, the Night King could fly over it, and start a new army on the other side.
If Tyrion does have a plan other than “trust the sister he knows not to trust”, and I would hope he does: what is it? Did his conversation with Jaime have an off-screen component we have not yet been privy to?
That Winterfell storyline though. I think we all wanted Arya to be more hero and less anti-. Same goes for Sansa. My hunch is it doesn’t come to blows and this whole storyline has been a fake out, a way to keep a number of characters busy while more important plots were playing out, but I‘ve given up trying to guess how it gets to its end.
Dany & Jon are obvs gonna hook up… next ep perhaps? And she is so totally getting knocked up.

Eastwatch

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 5

There was a lot going on in “Eastwatch”, it just wasn’t what I expected at all. The title seemed to point to a big battle at the eponymous Wall fort, which did not happen. Rather, we got a combination of intrigue and setup as the show lines up the final two episodes of the season.

The first big confounded expectation is that Jaime and Bronn were not captured after the cliffhanger (watersinker?) ending of last week’s episode, but washed downstream to safety. Jaime returns to King’s Landing to tell Cersei, “this isn’t a war we can win”, and to pass on the message that Oleanna killed Joffrey and not Tyrion.

Dany makes an offer to her remaining prisoners: serve her or die. Randyll and Dickon Tarly choose death, and are torched by Drogon, which upsets Tyrion, who was also visibly upset by the ashy horror of the post-conflict battlefield. Later, he commiserates with Varys over a… flagon of wine. Dany’s actions are either sadistic and mad kingish or perfectly understandable, or a bit of both.

Up in the Winterfell godswood, Bran wargs some ravens and spies upon the Army of the Dead, which is marching toward Eastwatch. He dispatches ravens to Dragonstone and Oldtown, where Sam overhears the Archmaesters’ waffling on the issue and urges them to somehow support the effort to fight the Night King. When their response is further waffling, he rage quits the Citadel, after raiding the library for some “forbidden” tomes, and narrowly missing a huge revelation: that Rhaegar annulled his marriage to Elia Martell before marrying Lyanna Stark, making Jon the true Targaryen heir.

When Jon gets Bran’s message, he wants to head north and fight. Dany won’t help because she can’t be sure Cersei won’t attack if she leaves. The Dragonstone war council (feat. Davos, Tyrion, Varys) arrives at an odd plan: if they can grab a wight and show Cersei that the threat in the north is real, perhaps they can cease hostilities for a spell and focus on the northern front.

To further this wacky scheme, Davos smuggles Tyrion into King’s Landing, where Davos recruits long lost rowing champ Gendry, and Bronn tricks Jaime into meeting his father-killing brother. Jaime brings the plan to Cersei, who seems surprisingly amenable. Also: she’s pregnant! So she says, anyway.

In Winterfell, it seems Littlefinger has found a Stark he can trick. Arya snoops on his apparently treacherous antics, culminating in her breaking into his room and stealing a scroll he had requested. But we see Littlefinger look on, stopping just short of twirling his moustache. The scroll contains the message Sansa sent ages ago, to brother Robb on Cersei’s behest claiming Ned betrayed Joffrey, and urging Robb to bend the knee. So Littlefinger’s plan is to turn Arya against Sansa, which is handy because Arya has already of her own accord accused Sansa of trying to usurp control of the north from Jon.

Phew!

The final scenes of the episode see Team Wight Extraction (Jon, Davos, Jorah, and Gendry) travel to Eastwatch, explain the plan to Tormund, and meet up with his new prisoners Beric, Thoros, and the Hound. They all have various reasons to hate each other, but they decide they’re all on the same side because, as Jon says, “we’re all breathing.” So Strike Team Wight adds four members, and all but Davos head through the gate into the snowy hell beyond the wall.

This episode strained credulity in some ways. The way the previous episode ended, it didn’t seem possible that Jaime would escape capture. Furthermore the plan to steal a wight and bring it to Cersei is outlandish at best. After all, is Cersei really in a position to attack Dany, with her army having been just destroyed? Thrones does this from time to time, though, and I’ve learned to just grin and bear it, as what is really happening is the show is moving so quickly it’s not spending the time to lay plot infrastructure, as that can eat up screen time with less interesting scenes. We could have had more scenes of Jaime and Bronn evading the dothraki, stripping off armour, etc, until But they chose to skip ahead, possibly for good reasons? Who knows, yet.

Initiate random point-form note mode!

Is Cersei really pregnant? Or perhaps just worried Jaime will switch allegiance from her to Tyrion. Having an heir certainly helps her cause seem, oh, 20% less lost.
the Jon & Drogon scene. Seems he has some dragonriding in his future. Ghost will be jealous – although Ghost’s been absent all season, getting a passing mention from Sansa that he’s still patiently waiting for Jon.
Despite the bizarre objectives, you have got to love Strike Team Wight. Some of the shows baddest asses are all about to fight together. Unfortunately, some of them are going to die. And “die” almost certainly means “come back as an ice zombie”. Start placing your bets, I guess.

The Spoils of War

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4

The literal spoils of war in this episode are the treasure and food supplies that Jaime is bringing from the just-defeated Highgarden to King’s Landing. But the episode spends much more time on things spoiled by war, like the Stark children and perhaps even Danaerys Targaryen’s soul. It ends with the biggest battle of the season so far: a Team Targ rout of the Lannisters so violent and furious that no character seemed safe.

The episode opens to some stage-setting: Jaime, Bronn and the Tarlys are supervising the transfer of Tyrell wealth from Highgarden to King’s Landing. Cersei has promised the Iron Bank payment in full of the Lannister debt with these spoils, and Iron Banker Tycho Nestoris is basically salivating at the prospect. He offers help, which may take the form of mercenary army The Golden Company. (Will they be deployed to the North?)

We decamp to Winterfell for a series of portentous scenes. Littlefinger offers his help, and a certain dagger, to Bran. By quoting Petyr’s signature line “chaos is a ladder” back to him, Bran puts Littlefinger on high alert. Arya returns, and outmaneuvers some Winterfell guards of below average intelligence and peripheral vision. She and Sansa have a rather morose reunion in the crypts, where both reflect on how their lives have been… Spoiled by War™. Arya meets Bran, who gives her the dagger. Sansa realizes that Arya’s “list” of people to kill is in fact real, which dismays her. And in a fabulous training scene between Arya and Brienne, Arya displays to the observing Littlefinger and Sansa that she’s now one of the deadliest people in Westeros. And she has an awesome cocky smirk the whole time.

Back on Dragonstone, Jon shows Danaerys the obsidian mines, in which children of the forest have carved a little pictorial about how the Children and First Men banded together to fight the White Walkers. This gives Jon – who like an earnest undergrad who’s Really Into The Environment Now, can’t stop going on about The Real Threat – an opportunity to go on about The Real Threat. Dany will help him, if he bends the knee; he doesn’t think northerners will accept a southern ruler. Dany asks: if he wants to save them, is his pride such a high price? (Guys, I have a solution to this problem that involves some knee bending and teaming up without any loss of face: ask me about Marriage!)

When Dany gets the bad news about how the war is going, she gets pissed at Tyrion and wants action. Jon gives lyrical advice about how the dragons are an inspiring symbol, of how she makes impossible things happen, but if she uses them to incinerate cities she’s just more of the same cruel rulers the people have always known. Offscreen, we can conclude, Dany arrives at a sort of compromise solution: inspire people by incinerating Lannister soldiers!

The episode closes with a 13 minute battle scene of epic scale. We learn from Randyll “Exposition” Tarly that the gold has made it through to King’s Landing but the army and the grain wagons are stretched thin. After a little scene about Dickon Tarly’s first impressions of war (back-stabby and stinky), a strange rumbling sound is sensed… the Dothraki horde. We get the build-up, the terrified anticipation, and then the horrifically violent clash. Dany and Drogon turn lines of soldiers to ash and obliterate the sitting duck supply train; the Dothraki whoop, leap and slash their way to a bloody victory. Bronn manages to get to the “scorpion” ballista and land a shot on Drogon, but it only wounds him. When Danaerys tries to take the bolt out, Jaime charges at her, but survives only when Bronn tackles him and the two plunge into the depths of the Blackwater.

It’s exciting, and it’s hard to know who to cheer for, and I thought first Bronn, then Drogon was for sure a goner – but perhaps most importantly the scene drives home the point of the episode. We had been seeing the damage war does in dialogue; now we see it in flame, ash and blood, seen through the eyes of Jaime, perhaps recalling the flame games of the Mad King he served; Bronn, running for his life yet more or less in his element, and Tyrion, watching from a safe distance but looking like he may regret the decision to turn on his family. Meanwhile Danaerys seems enraptured by fiery rage. Not a good look for her.

Bran. I said last time he went full wizard – perhaps it’s more like “on the spectrum”? I guess the idea is that Bran took over the Three Eyed Raven’s position and powers too early. It gave him theoretical omniscience, but also may have fried his brain a touch so that he says he’s not Bran, not anymore, fails to give the departing Meera an adequate goodbye, and fails to tell Arya to stab the scheming Littlefinger with the dagger he gives her.
Speaking of that dagger. When Bran asks Littlefinger if he knew whose it was, one possible answer could be Anton Checkov. I sense great things for you, little dagger, even if I don’t know what they are. Killing Littlefinger? Killing the Night King…?
Speaking of Littlefinger. He’s been trying to manipulate the Stark children, and failing. He hasn’t tried with Arya yet, but the look he gives her after seeing her fight means he surely will, and he may have more success.
After that royal torching, can we assume that all the Reach grain stores are now destroyed? What does that mean plot-wise? Certainly we would expect King’s Landing to be much less capable of withstanding a siege now. But will it have repercussions elsewhere? After seemingly-throwaway lines about food supply from Sansa (x2) and even Danaerys, my foreshadowing sense is tingling. Guess who had the foresight in the books (or rather, sample chapters) to buy up grain supply? Littlefinger.
I’m sure no one’s convinced by the cliffhanger ending that Jaime’s done for. But perhaps he will wind up a captive. It seems like a good opportunity for a Jaime/Tyrion scene.
Tealeaf-reading: next episode is titled “Eastwatch”. So the Army of the Dead will breach, or more likely bypass, the Wall next week. Dress warm!
Even more convoluted tealeaf-reading: from the preview for Eastwatch, Jon is back at Dragonstone. Yet recall that the second season 7 trailer, had scenes of Jon fighting White Walkers this season. So if he’s not fighting them at Eastwatch, my money’s on Winterfell at the end of the season, only three episodes away at this point. The only dramatic outcome of such a battle would be Winterfell… falling.

The Queen’s Justice

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 3

We start with Jonny Snow and Davos arriving at Dragonstone to meet Danaerys Targaryen, the first of our three queens in this episode. The big meet with Dany doesn’t go smoothly. Jon refuses to submit to her rule, Dany doesn’t believe about the White Walkers and it seems Jon will wind up a prisoner in the castle until Tyrion brokers a deal of sorts. Jon is allowed to mine Dragonstone and to leave freely, and Dany is allowed to catch a fleeting glance back at him as he leaves… looks like a Dany/Jon romance is officially in the cards, which would certainly be one way for Jon to submit to her without losing face. He’d wind up King of Westeros, not just the north!

In Greyjoy news, Theon gets taken aboard an anonymous Kraken ship. Euron parades the captive Yara, Ellaria and Tyene through the streets of King’s Landing to the delight of manifold background performers, and drops them off in the throne room, but Cersei won’t marry him until the war is over. Euron taunts Jaime some more in delightful fashion, and Cersei comes up with a suitably horrible punishment for Ellaria, who poisoned Cersei’s daughter Myrcella: she poisons Ellaria’s daughter Tyene with the same poison, leaving her to die in a cell with her mother, who will be kept alive – and so she gets to watch her child rot for the rest of her life. Lovely. So that’s Cersei’s form of justice.

Sam’s storyline advances promptly and predictably: Jorah is cured of his grayscale, and departs to rejoin his queen. Sam is neither punished nor rewarded for his efforts, but is assigned to transcribe a tableful of rotting scrolls and books. I’m guessing there are some juicy secrets up in them scrolls though to keep this plot going?

Up in Winterfell, Sansa is queening it up proper-style, preparing for a long winter. “Command suits you,” oozes Littlefinger, before he gets all metaphysical on her – “fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend, every possible series of events is happening all at once.” Such a worldview would predispose one to a mistrustful nature.

But Littlefinger’s musings are interrupted by the arrival of Bran, who has gone full wizard. He has trouble explaining his powers to Sansa, but his ability to see “everything that’s ever happened, to everyone, everything that’s happening right now” sounds a lot like someone else: Littlefinger.

We get the Unsullied assault on Casterly Rock and as expected, they exploit Tyrion’s knowledge of the sewer system to sneak in and take the castle from the inside. Surprise! Most of the Lannister forces are missing, and Euron shows up conveniently and trashes their fleet.

The Lannister forces show up outside Highgarden, allied with the Tarlys and led by Jaime. The battle takes place offscreen, but goes well for Jaime. He gets a poignant scene with Oleanna, in which she unsuccessfully attempts to convince him that Cersei is “a disease”. Before she dies from poisoned wine, she tells Jaime that she’s the one who poisoned Joffrey. This is significant because Jaime and Cersei blame Tyrion for this. Cersei may not believe Oleanna, but Jaime does and this could ultimately bring him closer to Tyrion.

Overall this was an impressive episode. It hurtled forward at alarming pace when it wanted to (Casterly Rock, Highgarden), and took its time elsewhere, namely on powerful, one-on-one scenes between most of the show’s key remaining players. The character count went down by two. Cersei is definitely the success story here: she’s gone from a terrible position at the start of the season to near dominance in a mere three hours of screen time. This will drive Dany to forego her cautious approach and get her hands dirty, making her less likely to help the northerners any time soon.

Various loose plot droppings, nuggets of interest, and questions:

Interesting scene with Varys and Melisandre, where we learn she is checking out and heading to Volantis, but will return to Westeros at some point because “I have to die in this strange country, just like you.” I’m surprised to see her go already; I thought she had a chance to convert Dany to her fire god. Dany likes fire, after all.
Jon stops Davos from mentioning his murder and resurrection, and Dany notices. What will come of this? Surely there is some significance to Jon’s undead status, or was it just a fakeout cliffhanger for the end of a season and/or book?
We have a super-expository scene between Cersei and a representative of the Iron Bank, in which she vows to pay her debt in full within a fortnight. Why have this scene? Perhaps if she secures fresh funds from the bank, she will seem all the more impossible to defeat.
What exactly is Littlefinger’s plan? Waiting around for Sansa to listen to him doesn’t seem good enough. Moreover, if Bran can get his wizard shit together he could expose Littlefinger’s shenanigans fairly quickly. My guess is that LF is still in communication with Cersei. He may have betrayed her by siding with Sansa against the Boltons, but he’s the most likely to help her in the north at this point. If I were Bran, I would be worried about Littlefinger.
things that are being telegraphed by repeated mention: dragons have weaknesses, the battle for King’s Landing will be bloody, the northerners should look out for Cersei
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the next episode or two we see the White Walkers attack Eastwatch and either breach or bypass the wall. Probably the latter, by going in the water. This could leave Winterfell as the climactic battle scene of the season. By that point the Lannisters could be marching north…

Stormborn

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 2

In episode two of the shortest season of Game of Thrones to date, things are moving along at a fair clip. The plans of Teams Lannister and Targaryen are elaborated and set in motion; the north squabbles some more, and the “X Episodes Without a Character Death” sign gets reset to zero again. It’s a lot more drama than a typical Thrones Episode 2, but then that makes sense.

Danaerys is getting stir-crazy in Dragonstone, and who can blame her with all the crappy weather. Her Hand Tyrion wants to take the seven kingdoms “without turning it into a slaughterhouse”. He wants to avoid using the Unsullied, Dothraki or the dragons to take the capitol, for fear of bad optics and/or fiery massacres. The plan is for Yara Greyjoy’s fleet to take the Dornish down to Dornville Central and pick up their army, and then bring them back to lay siege to King’s Landing along with the army of the Reach. Meanwhile the Unsullied will take Lannister HQ Casterly Rock. The other allies are less cautious, and Lady Oleanna counsels Dany, “you’re a dragon – BE a dragon.”

The Lannisters are still amassing allies. To a roomful of Tyrell bannermen, Cersei paints Danaerys as a crazy, cruel invader at the head of a bloodthirsty foreign army (do I detect some echoes of Trump-era nationalism?), and asks for them to betray their liege lords to serve the crown directly. Jamie makes a private plea to Randyll Tarly, offering him the Wardenship of the South, but Sam’s nasty dad doesn’t make a decision. Meanwhile, Cersei’s creepy maester Qyburn has a plan to take down dragons, and it involves a rather large ballista. Not very imaginative, really. Was hoping for a paper maché fake sexy dragon full of wildfire barrels, or something.

In the north, Jon gets ravens! Sam’s message about the supplies of obsidian on Dragonstone arrives, as does a message from Tyrion, asking Jon to head down to meet Dany, to strike up an alliance and/or “bend the knee”, as they say. Jon tells his unruly war council that he and Davos are going to accept the invitation, which is another unpopular choice, but everyone seems okay with it when he leaves Sansa in charge. Also, Littlefinger tries to befriend Jon but Jon throttles him.

In Oldtown, Archmaester Ebrose declares Jorah’s greyscale incurable, and shoots down Sam’s ideas from the texts his been digging up in the library. Sam, out of apparent loyalty to Jeor Mormont, Jorah’s late father and Sam’s old commander at the Night’s Watch, disobeys orders and attempts a rather painful treatment that involves tearing off all the stone skin piece by piece.

Arya meets some old friends. She finds Hot Pie at the inn we last saw him at, serving pie, as one does. He tells her that Jon is now King in the North. She decides to go north instead of south and on the way encounters Nymeria, her direwolf, who is leading a pack of wolves. But Nymeria no longer wants to be a pet, it seems.

We get a fiery nautical action scene to close out the episode. Euron intercepts Yara’s fleet, kills two of the Sand Snakes (no, I can’t remember their names) and takes Yara and Ellaria captive. Theon reverts to Reek-era wussiness (ok, PTSD) and escapes overboard.

I’m pretty sure this episode contains everything we have come to want from Game of Thrones: Sex! War! Scheming! Backstabbing! Character Deaths! Yet it’s hard to be too satisfied what this episode is giving us when it is clearly setting us up for even more dramatic payoff further into the season. We get the satisfaction of seeing characters like Varys and Dany, or Arya and Hot Pie meet up, but soon it will be Jon and Danaerys, or Cersei and her daughter’s killer Ellaria. We see the battle lines drawn, but not that much actual battle just yet. Nonetheless, these early-season episodes aren’t usually this compelling. The amped-up budget and shorter season are helping things along.

Random things:

I didn’t mention the Missandei / Grey Worm sex scene, but yeah, it was there. A little surprised they didn’t go full frontal with our eunuch friend? Too Much 4 Thronez?
In other eunuch news, Varys gets a grilling from Dany. A lot of exposition gets laid down. They are throwing down some plot tickets, but for what? Easy guess is that Dany will go a bit nuts, and Varys will say something to her.
Similarly, Jon assaulting Littlefinger seems designed to give Petyr more motivation to betray Jon.
Theon: my take was he was reverting to Reek mode, but my wife thought he was actually making a pretty good move. In fact upon reflection it does seem like the smartest possible play. I’m curious to see where his story goes; certainly Theon solo is a lot more interesting than Theon as Yara & Ellaria’s butler.
I never mentioned Ed Sheeran last episode, but it’s an interesting issue. In brief: there’s a tradition of pop music interacting with the show, and it’s usually done in a clever fashion. I found this instance no exception. I felt a cute, popular singer was helping the scene demonstrate to Arya that perhaps some of the people she considered enemies were not deserving of death by vengeance. But I can see that for others, perhaps he’s just too well known a pop star and he takes them out of the scene. These are people who clearly did not recognize Sigur Ros during the Purple Wedding.

“Dragonstone”

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 1

The way to a Thrones’ episode’s heart is through its title. The episode titles point directly to the themes being explored in that hour: most often, they mark a thread that weaves through the show’s various disparate plot lines, trying its best to make the ep seem less like a collection of unrelated scenes, and more like a standalone piece of storytelling that actually means something on its own. But, for the first episode in a season, this can be a challenge. The canonical unit of this sort of television is really the season, not the episode, and as such the first few episodes tend to function as the first act, setting up the board and moving pieces around in ways that, while they don’t seem that exciting right now, will be setting up for big moves later on. Fitting that the episode actually features two scenes with maps of the game board, the continent of Westeros, with the characters only getting started.

“Dragonstone” is the episode title and it represents the most significant dramatic action that occurs in this hour, right at the end: Danaerys Targaryen and her army finally land in Westeros. To her it represents her home, and the culmination of six seasons dicking around in the east. In King’s Landing, to Mad Queen Cersei and Ser Jaime the Exasperated, it signifies a huge new threat from the east, joining the others that surround them: Dorne and the Reach to the South and West, respectively, and the newly resurgent Starks in the North. Euron and his magnificent fleet arrive; he’s a potential, much-needed ally, but he wants to marry Cersei! The feeling is not mutual, so Euron leaves to bring her a “prize” of some sort (start your theories).

Down in Oldtown, we are treated to a surprise shit-and-gruel montage featuring Samwell Tarly and the restricted area in the library, which he finally breaks into and reads about…. Dragonstone. Which is indeed a repository of obsidian, one of the two things that can kill the White Walkers.

Up in Winterfell, Jon knows about obsidian but not Dragonstone, and orders a search for the rare material, before Sansa publicly and vociferously disagrees with the new King in the North about how best to use the castles of the Karstarks and Umbers, the Northern houses who sided with the Boltons against the Starks. Sansa thinks the castles (and titles) should be given to lords who didn’t betray them, while Jon points out the traitorous lords have already died on the battlefield, and he does not wish to punish the sons for the sins of their fathers. Jon gets his way, but the simmering Jon vs. Sansa feud bubbles on, starting to embody a particular thematic obsession of the show: different models of leadership. Jon is the noble hero who rules justly but is statistically a great deal likelier to lose his head; Sansa is the cold-hearted player of the game who “learned a great deal” from Cersei, the most cold-hearted of them all.

We also get two storylines that have not much to do with Dragonstone but do say something about those who pay the highest price for the games the nobles play. The Hound is now traveling with the Brotherhood without Banners, and they run across the property – and the long-dead corpses – of a farming family he last met when he was traveling with Arya. Then, he took their silver and left them for dead; now, he struggles with the results of that decision. He’s a rich character, well on his way toward the back half of the patented Thrones Villain-to-Hero Redemption Arc™, and the Brotherhood is helping him along. When Thoros gets him to gaze at the flames in the fireplace, The Hound sees the Army of the Dead passing through Eastwatch. Beric asks, “Do you believe me now, Clegane? Do you believe we’re here for a reason?”

The other storyline is Arya, and she provides a rare cold open. Wearing the face and voice of the always charming Walder Frey, she encourages his entire family to drink a toast… of poisoned wine. Boom. Later in the episode, she’s traveling to King’s Landing to continue her revenge quest when she runs into a small group of Lannister soldiers who have been sent to keep the peace in the Riverlands. Initially she wants to kill them, but they’re such friendly and kind-hearted lads she gives them a pass. From the cold open we’d deduce she’s of the Sansa/Cersei school of cold-hearted score-settling throne-gaming – literally killing the sons for the sins of the father – but from the other scene? It’s not so clear. She may have a heart left.

If I can sum up, which I can, it was an above average episode of graceful board-setting.

Loose ends:

Look at that, I fucking forgot about the Bran scene. He arrives at the wall – that’s it. You know what, Bran? Get off your ass a little and maybe I’ll remember your scenes next time.
The costuming is excellent as usual. Euron looked like a Biker Lord.
That was maybe the most artful “previously on” recap I’ve ever seen. Did they do an original score for it?
The dagger that was used in the attempted murder of Bran Stark back in the first season shows up as an illustration in one of the restricted books Sam and Gilly look through. Interesting! I didn’t remember it, but here’s some stuff about it: it’s Valyrian steel, it was owned by Littlefinger, I can’t tell if it’s the same one he uses to betray Ned Stark in the first season, but it’s supposed to be in the book. I wonder what its future holds!
Sure enough, as I predicted in my preview, Jorah Mormont is in Oldtown and he’s already met Sam. Although Jorah is NOT looking good.
Eastwatch. Sounds like that’s where it’s going down. It’s the fort on the wall where the wildlings will be posted, plus one can surmise the Brotherhood will head there.

Hannibal

Season Episode

There is a Patton Oswalt joke about the Star Wars prequels – go ahead, give it a listen – in which Oswalt berates Lucas for making the dull origin stories of exciting characters. “Hey, do you like ice cream? Well here’s a big bag of rock salt.” It concludes with Oswalt ranting “I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHERE THE STUFF I LOVE COMES FROM, I JUST LOVE THE STUFF I LOVE.”

That attitude doesn’t apply to Hannibal.

It’s not that the new NBC show, which recently concluded its first season, is better than Manhunter, Silence of The Lambs, Hannibal (The Movie), or Red Dragon, although it may indeed be better than some of those. It’s that show runner Bryan Fuller realized that a three-page bit of back story from the Thomas Harris novels was actually more dramatic than the front story. Hannibal was, at one time, a psychiatrist consulting for the FBI with his arch-nemesis Will Graham. He was also an active cannibal. It’s almost funny to realize that before this show, the character had spent most of his fictional time in jail.

Hannibal in this series is a different creature from the increasingly hammy Anthony Hopkins. At first, I found Mads Mikkelsen wooden. Gradually, I realized he was actually extremely subtle. The moments that Hannibal expresses emotion are notable for their extreme rarity and telling context.

Hannibal isn’t the main character, though. That honour goes to Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who is as I mentioned a consultant; in the pilot, he’s lured from his teaching job by Larry Fishburne because he has an uncanny ability to empathize with serial killers. Hannibal becomes his analyst. Those two points – Graham’s empathy and his psychopathic shrink – become this series’ greatest strengths. When he struts onto a crime scene, Graham enters a kind of Empathy Mode where he gets into the killer’s mind. This allows the show some great liberties with visualization that it exploits adroitly. Furthermore, Graham’s empathy with horrible minds makes him increasingly fragile as the show goes on, an arc that propels a lot of drama, and keeps visual interest even away from the crime scenes.

But if Graham’s visions lend the show its visual flair, it is grounded in riveting dialogue, thanks to the emphasis on talk therapy. The Graham-Lecter discussions are captivating, but many other shrinks are in play: Graham has a crush on a co-worker who is also a shrink (Caroline Dhavernas), and many amazing scenes are of Lecter visiting his own therapist, played by Gillian Anderson. The dialogue is generally very strong; it reminded me of the late, great In Treatment.

I suppose I shouldn’t conclude without mentioning dramatic irony. It’s interesting to see a whole show powered by it. We know going in, by the name, that this show features one of fiction’s most renowned killers. How frustrating, then, to see so many lawmen completely unaware of it. It makes you want to yell at the screen at times.

You might assume, like I had, that a show with this name on NBC had to be a G-rated candy-ass cynical cash-in. It is not. It will surprise you. Watch it.