Part 2. Part 1 is here.
Okay, let's go back and run down all the stupid, breaking it down geographically because why the hell not, it's not as if any damn scene in that entire episode needed to be placed where it was.
SPOILERS
Daenerys chained her dragons. Umhey do you remember the plotline you invented in Season 2? WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS etc etc. Dragons breath fire. They apparently, at the age of 1, produce enough body heat to MELT CHAINS.
So, hrm, I'm shocked that Daenerys thinks that chaining the dragons will work. (Actually no I'm not, because Danerys has the political acumen of Ned Stark, and was handed dragon eggs on a silver platter and amassed the rest through mad balls and dumb luck than through anything resembling forethought.) And I get that there's supposed to be things like "symbolism" and "irony" in the Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons chaining her dragons, but the only "iron" I could concentrate on was the meltable stuff with which she chained them.
Also: old mentor dude wanted to sell himself back into slavery. Hey genius, here's an idea: take some funds from Meereen's treasury and OPEN A SCHOOL. A what? A SCHOOL. YOU KNOW, LIKE THE CITADEL. Yes I know that doesn't happen IN THE BOOKS but Book!Jaime doesn't screw his sister inside the White Tower, for frick's sake. Book!Loras has two older brothers. Book!Pyp and Green and Jojen and "it is known" girls are all still alive, but Book!Balon is not. We are only tangentially following along with THE BOOKS by this point.
Oop North. Bran Stark. I will never like Bran Stark. He's boring, he kills the pacing of both book and show whenever he shows up, he can pout but he sure can't act, and I'm very convinced that (in THE BOOKS at least) he's turning evil. Yes, make him crawl on the skulls. Make him CRAWL. Make him wallow in corpses. Then stick some wood in him (er) and turn him into a tree and be done with it. On second thought don't; he's wooden enough already.
In an attempt to remedy this they have Bran get attacked by CGI skeletons and they KILL OFF JOJEN REED OMGWTFBBQ WINDS OF WINTER SPOILERS.
Thanks for showing up on time, Child of the Forest, servant of the guy who can SEE TIME. That's the Gold Medal for Most Pointless Death In The Entire Series right there.
At the wall: John Snuh is on his halfassed mission to assassinate Mance Rayder. Unlike Bran, at least Jon isn't being outacted by CGI skeletons, but he is still - par for the course - the weakest thing in the scene. (Not that Alex Graves is apparently much of an actor's director. It's good that Kit has re-learned how to act, more or less.) Ah well.
Ciarin Hinds. Good of them to get an actor with a lot of screen presence, although when they say it's good for Our Hero to be badly outmatched, they probably don't mean like this. One eensy complaint about the King Beyond The Wall: he seems to think he can achieve peace if only Jon will let the wildlings through the Wall so they can settle in the (admittedly unsettled) Gift; did he forget about the cannibal people?
If you're asking what the Gift is, read the books. It's that uninhabited landscape south of the Wall Jon and Ygritte were touring last time 'round before he cut and ran.
Anyway he does a nice job standing-around-looking-bewildered as the giant army from nowhere that we've known was coming for an entire season showed up, although one wonders a) how they got ALL those horses and b) why they didn't bother dressing the part. Also, did the Iron Bank know that Stannis was going to go get himself embroiled in a secretarian conflict in the middle of nowhere (insert Iraq parallel here)? How long until they demand a return on their investment? "Um, I've secured this gigantic wall with the castles on the wrong side of it for my purposes. Also I need to defend it from ice zombies."
So Stannis shows up - nice pincer movement there, where'dja learn that? Jon rather successfully begs for Mance's life, somehow knows that Ned died for Stannis - and here I thought Ned publicly confessed otherwise, and that if any word of the reason for Ned's execution reached the wall it would come from Janos Slynt, who, though he may hate Tyrion, can't have much love for the Starks...
He tells Stannis to burn the bodies. Haven't you heard ANYTHING about the man your "father" died "for," Jon? Burning people is kind of Stannis's thing. I swear you can see Stannis smirk a bit, but at this point, I'm probably reading more into their performances than I "have" to. It's going to be so weird having a protagonist up here who can actually act.
I'm being a little mean to Kit, but the official excuse for what he done graced us with last year and had the temerity to call it a performance was that he was stuck out on location with a broken ankle and had a no good day. Now for some faint praise: the scene with Mance in his tent is great. "Grenn came from a farm." This sort of snarky one-upmanship is something Kit's good at. Anguished emoting, not so much.
Stannis burns the bodies and Mels gets a look at Jon Snow and it's Important and Ominous and so on. There wasn't any Sam or Gilly in this episode, and thank R'hllor for that.
He talks to Tormund - cuz that's more important than TYSHA SAY HER NAME FATHER I KNOW YOU REMEMBER IT - and then burns Ygritte's body, and they got an amazing number of people to stick around for an extra week to play dead this season, didn't they? (Are they going to get Charles Dance back for Tywin's funeral? Big risk: he'll still out-act everyone, though I admit that kind of the point of Feast is how thoroughly everyone and everything was buried under his shadow.) Nice closure to the Ygritte thing, but 'ang on, don't you have to choose a new Lord Commander? CAN WE PLEASE FINISH UP WITH THIS F*CKING BOOK ALREADY? WHY IS BALON GREYJOY STILL ALIVE?
I don't know who to blame for the less-than-inspired performances in here. Week after week of Pity Me Bran and I'm Conflicted Jon Snow tends to grate, and they have multiple directors. Besides, back to the Bond films for a second: John Glen? Hardly an actor's director, based on some of the performances in his five, and yet Julian Glover, Steven Berkoff, Christopher Walken, Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi - they all give great performances (bloody hell, Charles Dance has a grand total of one line in For Your Eyes Only (and gets skewered, amusingly), and he out-acts that film's Bond Girls). Perhaps they could benefit from the director's hands-off approach and do their own thing. Still I expect directors to know who needs coaching and who can safely be left alone.
I will single out Alex Graves, though, for this inane quote defending the showrunners' not putting Lady Stoneheart in: "And finally one reason, in case you didn’t notice, a lot happens this season." No, Alex, you condescending cretin. Buggerall happened this season. Episode 2: Joffrey dies. Episode 8: trial by combat. Episode 9: battle for the Wall. Somewhere in between, Daenerys takes Meeeeeeeeeeeeereeeeeeeeeeeeen and utterly fails to rule, Sansa gets to the Vale and gets hit on increasingly overtly by Creepy McEvilface, and... um... Jaime's character went nowhere (except backwards) and... um... Arya and the Hound and Brienne and Pod marched around and accomplished sodall (at least book-faithful, if not visually entertaining) until fanfic happened. Speaking of:
Somewhere in the Vale: Brienne runs into Arya. Fanfic ensues. Brienne "mortally" wounds the Hound (in one of the most poorly-shot fights I've ever seen, and I've seen Quantum of Solace), because someone must - hey, technically they do run into each other in the books, but not this early. There's a very nice Spaghetti Western-esque shot of Arya leaving the Hound to bleed out. Alex Graves should direct Westerns, not Westeros. Not action sequences and not actors who need coaching. Maisie Williams is one of the better members of the younger cast - low bar, medal, now - and even she looks a bit stilted as Arya stares at the dying Hound. What thoughts are going through her mind? Does she ever contemplate killing the Hound? Is she perhaps trying to decide whether the loss of an ear made him more or less ugly? Or perhaps she's wondering if he'd taste good with fish. I really can't tell. Unless Arya's SUPPOSED to be completely dead inside at this point, which would make her outburst at the bloody gate a tad odd.
I will say that I prefer her exit in the show to her exit in the books. If memory serves, Arya quits Westeros before ever reaching the Vale and in so doing abandons the hope of getting to her aunt Lysa. In the show, she already knows Lysa's dead and there's REALLY no point in hiking all the way up to the Wall - they don't take women there and Jon's kinda still in hot water (although she doesn't know that).
In King's Landing: They're tending to the Mountain's wounds. Not one mention is made of the fact that the second-most-powerful man in Dorne is now dead, and that his killer confessed to murdering Elia - not sure why that matters, because Ser Gregor's role and the whole Lannister/Martell feud has been rather glossed over.
Cersei and Tywin have a scene about how she's not going to marry Loras. So apparently this is getting pushed back far enough so that Cersei can antagonize the Tyrells by putting Loras on the Kingsguard. I AM STILL WAITING FOR THE SCENE WHERE JAIME AND LORAS MEET AND JAIME REALIZES THAT LORAS IS BASICALLY JAIME PRE-KINGSLAYING AND IF THEY DON'T DO THIS SCENE JUSTICE I AM DONE WITH THIS SHOW.
On a more positive side, the series is getting Cersei right (that's, what, one in... 20? JOKE). She's not a crazed power-hungry bitch because she's a woman; she's a crazed power-hungry bitch because she only has one child left and she's deathly terrified of losing him, either to an assassin or to political machinations. Vanity and paranoia do ugly things to a person, and watching them take their toll on Cersei is, basically, THE reason to keep watching this show next year. (No pressure, Lena. I'm sure you can handle it and for once that's not sarcasm.)
Tywin is so blinded by THE FAMILY that he fails to realize what THE FAMILY is - nice Father's Day message, folks. It's a great scene - Tywin's my favorite character on the show and it's funny to see him undermined in both his scenes this episode, because he's been THE BAD GUY for so long it's great to see that he's just a man after all. Seriously, this is probably the last season I'm getting on DVD (no, not switching to Blu-Ray, still can't see past the bush so there's no point THAT'S A JOKE), as he's consistently been the best thing, or at least the only thing that never let my expectations down, in it.
The fact that Tywin uses whores like any other man is a nice touch, but what's undeniably Tywin-y about it is the fact that it is, in direct contrast to Renly and Tyrion's, erm, appetites, the best-kept secret in all of Westeros.
Jaime screws his sister - pushes away the White Book, nice touch, BETTER PAY IT OFF NEXT YEAR - but then releases Tyrion anyway. Book!Jaime is, I maintain, the greatest literary character of my lifetime. I don't recognize his show counterpart at all. His motivations make no sense to me. I'm going to call him Jimbo Lancaster. Jaime Lannister rejects his father and his sister and accepts his duty as Kingsguard and contemplates the White Book and THEN releases Tyrion. Jimbo Lancaster rejects his father but bangs his sister and rejects the White Book but releases Tyrion, the reasons why are not adequately explained. Varys is helping Jimbo, the reason why is not adequately explained. Tyrion has the chance to make a clean getaway but RANDOMLY GOES UP AND KILLS OFF TYWIN for reasons most definitely not adequately explained. WHY NO, FATHER, I DO BELIEVE I'M YOU WRIT LARGE. SAY IT! SAAAAAAAAAAAAY IT!
As always, Charles Dance is utterly ace, and the average actor quality on this show has just dropped sharply. Yes, Shae got offed as well, but she's nowhere near as bad as Dance is good (and she has a good death scene, does she not?). As for the other people involved in this stuff, Peter Dinklage and Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau both great, but they're getting undermined considerably by the damage the writers have wrought on their characters. Ball's in your court, Lena. I have faith in you. I saw 300 and I'm waiting for another scene like that. Don't be merciful, indeed.
And finally, goodbye to the only true magnificent bastard on the show. Steer your dysfunctional family through a massive civil war, and for your trouble you'll get murdered on the potty by your own unloved demonspawn. Sevenspeed, my liege, and farewell. Wouldn't want you for a father, but by the old gods and the new there's no-one I'd rather have as a Hand.
Overall: kind of ridiculous that in a twenty-episode adaptation of The Book Where The Most Stuff Happened, most of The Most Stuff happened in the span of the last three episodes, and a plurality of it happened in the very last one.
The showrunners have to walk a tight line between keeping this stuff accessible to an audience they don't think can tell the difference between Asha and Osha, and maintaining fidelity to the books lest the risk the wrath of, um, this guy. Have they done a good job of this? Um, well, they've killed off my favorite Show Character and RUINED my favorite Book Character. Did Unsullied actually like this season? Joffrey and Tywin died, yeah, but... the motives and emotional impact etc. etc. aren't there and they feel, excellent acting aside, a bit hollow.
I personally think that they should have fewer plot threads per episode, in order to actually attempt to preserve any semblance of emotional impact as the characters go through their journeys. The problem is a) not all characters have an equal following (but then, how much screentime did Tyrion actually get this time?) and b) naming no names, but certain important cast members can't actually carry an episode. And it's a bit late for that now: Ashayara goes back home and then back to the North wait what really hrm. Arya hangs out at Murder HQ and goes blind. Tyrion gets drunk on a boat. Yawn. Two. Whole. Books. Of that.
I didn't get to touch on it above, becaue it wasn't done in this episode, but, creepy paedo undertones aside (go ahead, look up the difference in age between James Bond and his leading ladies, I dare you), I really like the changes in Sansa's story. Sansa has three chapters of Vale political intrigue, and that's it for the next three books. Bran has one or two chapters left (can't be bothered; hate the character). Not saying these characters die, just that they have outrageously few POV chapters in the coming books. Hell, a character who hasn't been introduced yet who DOES die has more chapters than they do. Anyway: I do like the changes they made to Sansa's story. I'm intrigued to see where it goes. Don't know that they can keep working their magic on the others, and given the extant evidence (Sinbad's skeletons, bad Arya/Brienne fanfic) the answer is a resounding NO.
To tie back into the OHMSS thing I insisted on dragging out at the beginning... there are about to be massive changes, yeah? We're not doing anything as dramatic as recasting Tyrion, but there's going to be such a massive paradigm shift it's barely going to be recognizable as the same show (QUICK EVERYONE INCREASE THE TITTY APPROPRIATIONS, THEY'LL RECOGNIZE IT AS GAME OF THRONES IF WE VISIT A BROTHEL AGAIN) and anybody on the production team with half a brain knows that interest is going to drop sharply over the next two seasons of political mismanagement. Feast is interesting thanks to Cersei going absolutely nuts, but Dance is dull, dreary and deathdripped. The burden of keeping things interesting is going to fall almost entirely on the shoulders of Lena Heady and Nikolai Coster-Waldeau, and mostly Lena (Daenerys's story is officially ground to a halt, and Jon is about to get stupid/boring), and while I'm sure they're up for it, and their characters in the books are compelling enough, this show's made enough missteps that I could see them screwing up/continuing to screw up in the years to come. You've essentially had a major paradigm shift that you knew was coming, and you've done an awful job laying the groundwork for it.
May the seven have mercy on your soul. OHMSS (watch it: you've sat through 40 hours of Kit Harrington, you officially have no excuse not to sit through 2 1/3 hours of George Lazenby) turned out great but it took about 30 years to realize it. TV shows do not have all the time in the world.
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