*Or, alternatively, until the series undertakes an exercise in world-building that is probably unfilmable.
Spoilers through the end of ASOS below.
So a couple of days after the episode aired, I posted this reaction, and while everything in there still holds (aside from me being wrong about Balon Greyjoy biting it this season), the bad parts have stuck with me more than the good.
So let's talk about why "The Rains of Castamere" failed.
1) The song itself
The title track to "Game of Thrones" is awesome. Stannis's theme is creepy. The stuff in Essos has its own nice flavor. And that's about all the good things I have to say about the music on the show. The Stark theme is a knockoff of Laura Roslin's theme on Battlestar Galactica, Littlefinger's theme is basically the intro to "Stairway to Heaven," and "The Rains of Castamere" itself is a knockoff of the locket theme from For a Few Dollars More. (I looked up the composer on IMDB, and apparently he also did the soundtrack to Iron Man. I don't remember there being a soundtrack aside from AC/DC and a few other songs.)
I already discussed how "Rains" hadn't been spammed nearly enough at us over the course of the show leading up to this event - I contrasted it to the way the Imperial March is spammed every single time a Star Destroyer or Darth Vader shows up in The Empire Strikes Back - but my other problem is that on the rare occasions when it is used, it's always the chorus. The song doesn't start "And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that lord of Castamere," which is usually all the tune we hear. So even if an audience the showrunners didn't trust to be able to tell the difference between Asha and Osha noticed that the band was suddenly playing "the Lannister theme," they'd likely only notice 30 seconds into the song.
But let's go back to Star Destroyers for a moment. We hear a tiny snippet of the Imperial March at the very beginning of Empire, as the Star Destroyer launches its probes. But it's buried in a larger tune. Fast-forward a bit. Han kills the probe droid and says "It's a good bet the Empire knows we're here," and then bum bum bururubumbum bunanan and we're off, with the complete theme in all its majestic glory as Star Destroyers and TIE fighters float beneath an utterly massive flagship. Okay, it tells the audience, this is the bad guy theme.
Now in contrast, throughout Season 2, we have Tyrion whistling what turns out to be the "and so he spoke" part from time to time as he walks into a scene. Not always. And - look, Peter Dinklage is a fantastic actor, so in pains me to say this - he's pretty far off-key at least twice. We hear the theme I believe once in Harrenhal, when Tywin's having people hanged after the assassination of Amory Lorch. And then we get to 2.09 "Blackwater," where we hear the "And so he spoke" part sung aloud. Remember: this is not the beginning of the song, the first part that will play at the Red Wedding when Catelyn realizes what's about to go down.
Now I can only speculate as to why it was done this way - by which I mean, having it on in the background as opposed to slamming it in your face, Imperial March style and saying "this is the bad guy theme" - but I think it was done so that the fanboys could say "omg that thing Tyrion's been whistling all season is The Rains of Castamere." Like a rewatch bonus. Well here's the thing. Rewatch bonuses are for Christopher Nolan* films and audiences with IQs above 110. When you've resorted to changing the names of your characters so that audiences don't get confused between two different characters who never meet, you are not pandering to the 110+ IQ crowd.
*I picked Nolan's name out of a hat, mainly because Inception is chock-full of these. The Prestige probably is to, but because of its scrambled chronology it tends to fall more under Foreshadowing than Rewatch Bonus.
2) The Foreshadowing
In the books there's a woods witch who tells Arya, "I [dreamt of] a woman who was a fish. Dead she drifted..." And there's about eighty billion other bits of foreshadowing. Roose Bolton is obviously an evil evil tit (who got half of Robb's army slaughtered at Duskendale for nothing). Walder Frey grants the guest right, but only while shoving a "mayhaps" in there (this was the moment I decided Catelyn was literally too dumb to live, and lo and behold, she dies two chapters later).
None of that is present in the show. Because... they showrunners want to punch us in the gut? Wasn't the Red Wedding a fantastic gut-punch in the book even though you knew it was coming? And then you go back on the re-read and, if you missed the foreshadowing you say, "Oh, how did I miss that? I was being a sweet summer child! Now I know I can never trust anyone ever again and I know that the last book will really just be a thousand-page description of snow settling on graves while Nymeria's wolfpack battles the suspiciously intelligent ravens."
Re-watching Season Three, it's just, "oh, they're cruel dicks for leading us on like this. Speaking of dicks, let's cut some foreshadowing out in order to show Theon losing Little Theon."
3) The Execution
See what I did there? Heh. Anyway, this is a proper depiction of the Red Wedding. It's crowded. It's chaotic. There's blood everywhere. You know what it's not? It's not ten guys getting their throats slit in a dimly-lit cellar.
Seriously. You guys went and blew all your Extras budget on Dany's crowd-surfing scene? No no no, don't rant at me about the battle in the camp, that doesn't count. I know you've got a big enough set to do the Red Wedding justice, and I know from the Season 2 finale that you're not afraid to re-dress it.
It's the throne room.
Hell, Winterfell's feast hall was bigger than that barn you filmed the Red Wedding in, and you don't need that set anymore!
Where's the part where Bolton's company comes in clad in mail and Catelyn thinks for one moment that they've been rescued? And then Bolton takes the head off a c-list character that we actually kinda know and like?
It's been said that George has killed off more well-developed characters than most other stories have. In this case, "most other stories" includes Game of Thrones.
Allow me to complain for a moment about one way the novels limit themselves. They're all told in the third-person-limited style, with each chapter told from the POV of the character whose name is the chapter title. So throughout the Red Wedding, we're in Catelyn's head, and then Arya's after Cat bites it.
Now, what is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history? Where a powerful mastermind has his rival(s) eliminated in one fell swoop?
This is about eighty gazillion times more powerful than what HBO gave us. True story: Immediately after I read the Red Wedding for the first time, I texted my friend (who had already read it): "Tywin Lannister versus Michael Corleone. Go."
With that in mind, I most certainly would have done the Red Wedding as an homage to the Baptism Scene. At least in the sense that I'd cut back and forth between multiple different locations. (And I wouldn't have Dany in the episode at all; we know she's waaaaaaay too far away for the Rains of Castamere to have anything to do with her.) Start with Tywin off in his office, writing a letter. Cut to the wedding ceremony. Cut to unidentified man putting on armor. Wedding. Margaery Tyrell (a lot of Unsullied thought the Tyrells would be getting theirs this episode). Slow motion. Walking along a corridor somewhere in the Red Keep. Tywin dips his quill. The wedding reception, Robb laughing. Slow motion. "Rains" starts to play. Tywin pauses. A cloak is pulled back, revealing a sword. Tywin writes another word. A crossbow at someone's foot. Talisa and Robb kiss. Margaery, looking nervous. Someone's called her name. Walder Frey, grinning. Ink on quill: "royal pardon." Catelyn looking nervous. A crossbow comes up. Close-up on a widened eye.
Slaughter.
Tywin finishes writing Roose Bolton's pardon. Joffrey tells Margaery that the northern rebellion is... gone.
And just stick with Rains for the music. Don't use the overly-trite "TV action music" the soundtrack resorted to for the slaughter.
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