Time for breakfast. Bacon, burned black. And beer. Baked bread with butter. Or, alternatively, beans.
Mord is a sadistic little cretin of a jailer who would probably be denied a job at Guantanamo Bay. Sky cells have three walls; the fourth is open air and a ginormous drop. Tyrion is a small man with a big mouth. I could probably run through this entire chapter just stating facts like this.
Tyrion reflects back to his pretrial hearing. He couldn't/wouldn't stop talking about how awesome his big brother Jaime is and how he's going to climb the Eyrie upside-down and backwards to slaughter all of them with one hand tied behind his back. I may be exaggerating, but only slightly. Not exactly the best idea. "Your honor, the defence moves for Random Useless Threats. Yes, I know that's not a thing, but you're a rheumy-eyed six-year-old being manipulated by a psychotic shrew. And also your mother. This is a mockery of justice."
Catelyn, evidently, thinks so too. I may have misjudged her, but please do remember that the show presents certain characters, most notably Jaime but also Catelyn, in a far more sympathetic light than their book counterparts. Anyway Catelyn tells Lysa to stop being a frightful caricature of Catelyn and instead actually acknowledge that Tyrion is Catelyn's prisoner. This brings my attention to two things: one, that Catelyn is being the voice of reason oh gods we are screwed, and two, that if Catelyn wanted control over "her" prisoner's fate, maybe she should have brought him to someone she'd communicated with in the last five years.
So, as other people have pointed out, the same characters just keep getting replicated over and over again. Robb and Joffrey are impulsive teenagers who both try to steal part of Stannis's kingdom, get a huge number of people killed because of their rash behavior, and die at weddings. Tywin and Roose are evil scheming patriarchs whose eyes never fail to get a mention and are disappointed with their spawn. Jaime and Loras are arrogant badass Kingsguard members with forbidden loves. Catelyn and Cersei catch utter hell because of their overworked Mama Bear qualities. Tyrion and Theon both want so badly to impress their fathers and end up getting screwed over by people they thought they could trust, including their ambitious sister. So... who wants to guess that another useless child utterly controlled by his mother will show up by the fourth book? (Or that Daenerys won't be the only hidden Targaryen in dire need of a leadership lesson hanging out at the ass end of the world with a magic pet?)
Tyrion contemplates that Jaime might be moving north against Winterfell. Ah, Tyrion, you overestimate your own value to House Lannister. Why would Tywin bother chasing you down when he could just besiege Riverrun and capture Catelyn's father and brother?
Tyrion decides he'd be perfectly willing to take his chances in a trial, assuming his sister has the sense to arrange one for him (oh, delicious, delicious irony, how yummy thou art). But he notes, as I have previously noted, that the Starks have no proof whatsoever. Then, because he is George's favorite character, Tyrion begins working out the plot.
Mord comes back, and Tyrion bribes him. I think. I shall now reproduce two consecutive sentences of Tyrion's dialogue completely without context.
"That was a stiff one, Mord. I could make use of a good strong man like you."
If you think that was puerile, well... yeah, you're right, the entire eel-flogging bit isn't in the book, so I got nothin'. Tyrion goes on a big rant about justice that still isn't as awesome as the one Apollo did in the Season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica, seriously, go watch it, sent me off to law school it did, bloody false pretenses. I jest, but not about the quality of that scene. Back to the novel.
Having given his big impassioned speech about justice, Tyrion demands trial by combat. Look, halfman, I get it and all, but you just ranted about how you got thrown in a sky cell because you didn't instantly confess to a crime; now you want them to let a suspected murderer go free just because his champion wins a fight? I like how Westerosi Civ Pro is so straightforward. And insane. Basically the only thing you can't do is stall for a few days for your champion to arrive, so Tyrion can't rely on Jaime and instead has to chance it on Bronn.
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