Game of Thrones, episode five:
May. 16th, 2011 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessYay! Despite the excitement of international conference calls, we did get through this episode!
Warning: mildly spoilery for all of the books, plus a very small spoiler for Dance of Dragons that already appeared on GRRM's blog, plus spoilers for all the episodes so far and sniffly comments about horsies. (SNIFFLE!)
Not following things as they happened in the episode, but just as things hit me:
1.Finally! A mention of Stannis Baratheon! I was beginning to wonder if the show had forgotten about him. And yes, I'm aware that Stannis isn't actually appearing in this season and that we already have a lot of characters to keep track of (on a related note, thanks, HBO, for killing off a couple of them tonight, cause, you know, that does make things a bit easier to follow) but still, given his later role, he really, seriously needed a mention or two so that the audience isn't shocked when he makes his appearance in Season Two.
2. Just love that Cersei asks about Lyanna and completely forgets to mention her own little – admittedly smaller – crush on Rhaegar. Oh, Cersei. Although to be fair Cersei never started a war over her crush.
3. Nice of HBO to take Renly and Loras from implied to outright naked, and further kudos for making that, hands down, the only sex scene that could be remotely qualified as family friendly in the episode. (I suppose Theon and Ros come in a nice second, but, you know, Theon had to pay for that and they were talking about Tyrion's skills, so, hmm.) Speaking of which, I am pretty sure that between that, the horsie (sniffle) and the abundant other films several teenagers who might have been able to see the series based on earlier episodes just lost that privilege this time.
Also, nice to have my suspicions confirmed (unless HBO just made this up for the show) that Renly was getting a certain type of encouragement, shall we call it.
Also, had to laugh at Renly's pretty, pretty armor.
4. Speaking of confirmations, nice to just go ahead and show us Varys and Illyrio chatting away rather than forcing us to spend years speculating and then finally dragging the truth out of GRRM at a conference. I'M JUST SAYING.
5. Which leads me to my favorite scene of the episode: that lovely little interaction between Varys and Littlefinger, complete with the necrophilia (not entirely sure that we needed to go there, show, but, er, I guess a nice warning for a few upcoming events) and Littlefinger going, er, WHAT international event?
Sidenote: I'm fascinated that the HBO producers have decided that Littlefinger does want the throne, fascinated because I've always wondered what Littlefinger's game is: does he want the throne, or just the power behind the throne, especially given the disadvantages of his birth?
GRRM has said that we will never get viewpoint chapters from Littlefinger, Varys and Howland Reed (if you haven't read the books and are going, uh, wait, is that someone ELSE I have to remember, no – not important in this season or in fact particularly important in any season so far) because they all know too much, so I suppose we'll never know. Still.
6. And speaking of horsies...HE KILLED THE HORSIE!!!! THE HORSIE THAT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT WANT TO GET LAID VERY VERY BADLY! Poor horsie. We were all sad. And now we want the little baby dragons to come and eat Ser Gregor, killer of innocent horsies. Sniffle.
(I...hadn't actually expected HBO to show that, even if it was HBO, so that was one of two bits of the show that I was seriously unprepared for.)
7. Nice added scene between Cersei and Robert, nice for explaining how a debt laden kingdom staggering from two recent wars has more or less managed to stay apart, and nice for noting more or less how their own marriage works. Doesn't...quite match up to later things in the books, but, it worked.
8. Scene from the books that I really could have done without: the breastfeeding scene. Yes, I know that was a fake breast. But thanks to film editing and not watching it on a huge screen, it didn't look that fake – and given some iffy film editing in previous scenes with clear jumps from one take to another take, it really didn't look like film editing, either. Disturbing enough in the books and just godawful on screen; my main thought, honestly, was, what was the mother of the child actor thinking?
9. GREAT reaction scenes from Tyrion and Catelyn (I cracked up), though, and doing some nice setup for later events in book two.
10. We are still unhappy with the music, but learning to live with it.
11. Did anyone else think that the dragon skulls should be bigger? Or was that just me?
12. Sansa's gaydar: as missing here as her common sense was in the book. (I'll just add that the Renly/Loras relationship is not nearly as apparent there, but, still. Gaydar, girl. Work on it.)
13. Nice conversation with Barristan and Ned. (And here's your Dance of Dragons spoiler: Barristan will have at least one viewpoint chapter in that book.) Which made it all the sadder that Barristan wasn't at the King's Council to add another voice against killing Daenerys, pointing out how dishonorable that was.
14. I was also sorry to lose Littlefinger's acid observation that by just quietly going along with Robert, he actually did Daenerys more good than all of Ned's protests, since the angrier Robert was – and Ned was certainly making Robert angry – the more likely he was to send a Faceless Man or something equally deadly against Daenerys.
ETA: And of course Varys is either using the same logic, or, assuming that the one thing that will get Drogo to get a move on and start invading before the country falls to pieces is an assassination attempt, which was clearer in this episode than in a first reading of the book.
15. Thank you, Bran, for taking a moment from your angstful life to explain that all of the great houses have sigils and words and you find every one of them boring. Also, thank you for correctly pointing out that Catelyn needs to take another look at those Tully words.
16. Arya...does not look that much like a boy. This...could be a problem.
17. And you go, Ros, whore of whores! Sidenote: Ros is not in the books, and is here mostly as a convenient info dump because if you have to brag about your family and your background, you might as well do it to a pair of excellent breasts. But, apparently, GRRM has been impressed enough with the actress and her character (or her breasts, you be the judge) that she will be appearing in later books. Yay Ros!
18. And speaking of which, yeah, hi, Theon's whiny arrogant side. I don't want to be rude, but we were better off before your appearance.
(Full disclosure: Theon is, hands down, my least favorite character from the book, even in a villain you love to hate sort of way. I mean, I love almost all of the bad guys [my love for Gregor has just gotten badly tested by the horsie bit, which, again, SNIFFLE, and, look, if that bit didn't tell you that Gregor is a seriously bad and evil guy, I don't know what else HBO can do for you] and almost all of the good guys and most of the somewhere in the middle guys (most of the cast). But not Theon, who just grates me the wrong way and did right from his first scene of kicking innocent heads around after they'd been chopped off and is not improving in this show.)
So, YAY show! That is, yay if you stop killing horsies and start showing a little less Theon, and never mind if Theon is like, you know, important to the plot. Although you could add a scene showing Ros stomping on Theon and beating him up. I'd like that. Then again...Theon probably would too. What a dilemma.
Warning: mildly spoilery for all of the books, plus a very small spoiler for Dance of Dragons that already appeared on GRRM's blog, plus spoilers for all the episodes so far and sniffly comments about horsies. (SNIFFLE!)
Not following things as they happened in the episode, but just as things hit me:
1.Finally! A mention of Stannis Baratheon! I was beginning to wonder if the show had forgotten about him. And yes, I'm aware that Stannis isn't actually appearing in this season and that we already have a lot of characters to keep track of (on a related note, thanks, HBO, for killing off a couple of them tonight, cause, you know, that does make things a bit easier to follow) but still, given his later role, he really, seriously needed a mention or two so that the audience isn't shocked when he makes his appearance in Season Two.
2. Just love that Cersei asks about Lyanna and completely forgets to mention her own little – admittedly smaller – crush on Rhaegar. Oh, Cersei. Although to be fair Cersei never started a war over her crush.
3. Nice of HBO to take Renly and Loras from implied to outright naked, and further kudos for making that, hands down, the only sex scene that could be remotely qualified as family friendly in the episode. (I suppose Theon and Ros come in a nice second, but, you know, Theon had to pay for that and they were talking about Tyrion's skills, so, hmm.) Speaking of which, I am pretty sure that between that, the horsie (sniffle) and the abundant other films several teenagers who might have been able to see the series based on earlier episodes just lost that privilege this time.
Also, nice to have my suspicions confirmed (unless HBO just made this up for the show) that Renly was getting a certain type of encouragement, shall we call it.
Also, had to laugh at Renly's pretty, pretty armor.
4. Speaking of confirmations, nice to just go ahead and show us Varys and Illyrio chatting away rather than forcing us to spend years speculating and then finally dragging the truth out of GRRM at a conference. I'M JUST SAYING.
5. Which leads me to my favorite scene of the episode: that lovely little interaction between Varys and Littlefinger, complete with the necrophilia (not entirely sure that we needed to go there, show, but, er, I guess a nice warning for a few upcoming events) and Littlefinger going, er, WHAT international event?
Sidenote: I'm fascinated that the HBO producers have decided that Littlefinger does want the throne, fascinated because I've always wondered what Littlefinger's game is: does he want the throne, or just the power behind the throne, especially given the disadvantages of his birth?
GRRM has said that we will never get viewpoint chapters from Littlefinger, Varys and Howland Reed (if you haven't read the books and are going, uh, wait, is that someone ELSE I have to remember, no – not important in this season or in fact particularly important in any season so far) because they all know too much, so I suppose we'll never know. Still.
6. And speaking of horsies...HE KILLED THE HORSIE!!!! THE HORSIE THAT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT WANT TO GET LAID VERY VERY BADLY! Poor horsie. We were all sad. And now we want the little baby dragons to come and eat Ser Gregor, killer of innocent horsies. Sniffle.
(I...hadn't actually expected HBO to show that, even if it was HBO, so that was one of two bits of the show that I was seriously unprepared for.)
7. Nice added scene between Cersei and Robert, nice for explaining how a debt laden kingdom staggering from two recent wars has more or less managed to stay apart, and nice for noting more or less how their own marriage works. Doesn't...quite match up to later things in the books, but, it worked.
8. Scene from the books that I really could have done without: the breastfeeding scene. Yes, I know that was a fake breast. But thanks to film editing and not watching it on a huge screen, it didn't look that fake – and given some iffy film editing in previous scenes with clear jumps from one take to another take, it really didn't look like film editing, either. Disturbing enough in the books and just godawful on screen; my main thought, honestly, was, what was the mother of the child actor thinking?
9. GREAT reaction scenes from Tyrion and Catelyn (I cracked up), though, and doing some nice setup for later events in book two.
10. We are still unhappy with the music, but learning to live with it.
11. Did anyone else think that the dragon skulls should be bigger? Or was that just me?
12. Sansa's gaydar: as missing here as her common sense was in the book. (I'll just add that the Renly/Loras relationship is not nearly as apparent there, but, still. Gaydar, girl. Work on it.)
13. Nice conversation with Barristan and Ned. (And here's your Dance of Dragons spoiler: Barristan will have at least one viewpoint chapter in that book.) Which made it all the sadder that Barristan wasn't at the King's Council to add another voice against killing Daenerys, pointing out how dishonorable that was.
14. I was also sorry to lose Littlefinger's acid observation that by just quietly going along with Robert, he actually did Daenerys more good than all of Ned's protests, since the angrier Robert was – and Ned was certainly making Robert angry – the more likely he was to send a Faceless Man or something equally deadly against Daenerys.
ETA: And of course Varys is either using the same logic, or, assuming that the one thing that will get Drogo to get a move on and start invading before the country falls to pieces is an assassination attempt, which was clearer in this episode than in a first reading of the book.
15. Thank you, Bran, for taking a moment from your angstful life to explain that all of the great houses have sigils and words and you find every one of them boring. Also, thank you for correctly pointing out that Catelyn needs to take another look at those Tully words.
16. Arya...does not look that much like a boy. This...could be a problem.
17. And you go, Ros, whore of whores! Sidenote: Ros is not in the books, and is here mostly as a convenient info dump because if you have to brag about your family and your background, you might as well do it to a pair of excellent breasts. But, apparently, GRRM has been impressed enough with the actress and her character (or her breasts, you be the judge) that she will be appearing in later books. Yay Ros!
18. And speaking of which, yeah, hi, Theon's whiny arrogant side. I don't want to be rude, but we were better off before your appearance.
(Full disclosure: Theon is, hands down, my least favorite character from the book, even in a villain you love to hate sort of way. I mean, I love almost all of the bad guys [my love for Gregor has just gotten badly tested by the horsie bit, which, again, SNIFFLE, and, look, if that bit didn't tell you that Gregor is a seriously bad and evil guy, I don't know what else HBO can do for you] and almost all of the good guys and most of the somewhere in the middle guys (most of the cast). But not Theon, who just grates me the wrong way and did right from his first scene of kicking innocent heads around after they'd been chopped off and is not improving in this show.)
So, YAY show! That is, yay if you stop killing horsies and start showing a little less Theon, and never mind if Theon is like, you know, important to the plot. Although you could add a scene showing Ros stomping on Theon and beating him up. I'd like that. Then again...Theon probably would too. What a dilemma.