Game of Thrones, Season 3, Episode 5

[mariness]

1. My brother would like to object to the "weird music" that comes on during the closing credits, and I'm going to cosign on this one. I know HBO wants to sell an all new album for this season and given the repetition of most of the themes of the show (the opening credits bit, the NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRORS theme and so on) I don't know how much new music they have to sell, but the musical choices usually have absolutely no thematic connection to whatever was just shown.

This last episode, for instance, ended on a nicely dramatic/cliffhanging note with Charles Dance ordering his screw-up children to accept reality and get their lives together by going into absolutely dreadful marriages. And then immediately followed this brutally realistic moment with a spooky weird song about things under the sea that belonged to another scene. Whiplash.

2. Also, Joffrey isn't dead yet. I realize that's about as repetitive as the theme for the opening credits, but it's still true.

3. My father, meanwhile, had a host of other complaints, including, why aren't we seeing more of Julius Caesar? And what is Julius Caesar doing in the north with a bunch of crazy people?

4. Unhealed stumps of hands, dead babies in jars, the thought of poor Loras having to share a bed with Cersei – yes, I think we can easily list this as one of the most horrifying episodes of the show yet.

5. Nice introduction of greyscale in the show, though I think some explanations will be needed; most of the people who haven't read the books seem to be assuming that Shireen is part dragon. Or burned by dragons.

6. And now let's talk about the show's major deviation from the plot of the books. No, not Cersei married off to Loras instead of Willas Tyrell; given the huge number of characters on the show I'm just as happy to eliminate one who still hasn't appeared in the books.

I'm talking about the whole "I'm going to go recruit Walder Frey so I can go attack Casterly Rock!"

Ok, I admit, as plans go, attacking Casterly Rock is not a bad one, exactly, except for the small problem that to do this, they all have to march UP to the Twins and then march back DOWN and then over to Casterly Rock and I think Robb's belief that Casterly Rock will be mostly unguarded is just a shade unrealistic. Just because you marched off and left Winterfell mostly unguarded and in the control of a maester doesn't mean that Tywin would.

However, that's a quibble. The main problem with this plot line, and it's been coming ever since they switched the motivation for Robb's marriage, is that it ignores exactly why the Red Wedding happened:

Honor.

Specifically, Robb's mistaken sense of honor that he had to marry Jeyne, followed by everyone's mistaken sense of honor that the Freys had to be placated with a high member of the nobility.

If the overall series has a theme so far, it's this: honor can get you into serious trouble. (Is anyone surprised that this is coming from a former Hollywood screenwriter with bitter experience with the U.S. publishing industry? I didn't think so. Moving on.) This episode even made the same point: Jaime Lannister's honorable decision to destroy the mad king before thousands of people were burned alive ended up destroying his reputation and earning him a lifetime of contemptuous glances. Robb's somewhat less honorable but at least legal decision to put Lord Karstark to death for murdering two boys cost him a significant part of his army.

And it's honor that led Robb to the Red Wedding and to death.

That's been changed now, completely. Now, rather than trying to make up for insulting the Freys, Robb and Edmure are trying to get an army to march on Casterly Rock? Leaving aside the whole insult thing, why on EARTH would Walder Frey agree to this? The Lannisters are winning.

The show also massively weakened the "Robb's only choice is to humble himself in front of Lord Frey" by having Talisa point out his other choices – including the most obvious one: go home to Winterfell. Incidentally, given that supposedly she was all anti-war, why isn't she responding to Robb's "My bannermen won't follow me again if we go home" with a resounding "GOOD!"

I still think that the Red Wedding will be shocking and gory and emotional and all that; I just think it will have lost much of its thematic resonance.

7. I know I already said this, but...dead babies in jars?