Game of Thrones 7.02 "Stormborn" 7/23/17

Cafe Society
41

“It’s not her” makes perfect sense. She’s communing with the Direwolf, and she realizes the Wolf in front of her is different now - and the Wolf is seeing the same thing. The Direwolves were almost mystically bonded to the Stark children. They were protectors. Arya isn’t the little girl who needs protection any longer, and the bond between them is broken. And Arya sees that Nymeria is no longer her childhood companion, but a grown direwolf with its own pack to protect now. They’ve basically grown apart, and they both knew it.

That’s a little bit trite if that’s what they were shooting for. A little too much like something you’d see in a Disney fairy tale.

I also didn’t buy Theon’s sudden return to Reekdom. He was just fighting bravely and well in a giant deadly melee. Having him bail like that just destroyed whatever twisted character arc he was going through. It just didn’t seem like the right thing for the character at that moment. It would have been far more satisfying to see him attack his uncle and immediately get swatted down and killed, just because it would have been more true to the character at that point.

The writing does seem to have taken a turn for the worse, and slightly more towards melodrama instead of drama. All of the plot lines were overwritten. The Sand Snakes were still just as annoyingly over the top, and good riddance to them. Jon’s reaction to Littlefinger was out of character, especially since he knew Littlefinger was responsible for all of them being alive and unflayed. He owes him a lot, even if he is a scheming rat. And he for sure needs the Knights of the Vale. So it was stupid.

There were some good moments, though. I liked the verbal tug of war between Varys and Daeneris. They both legitimately came off as formidable verbal sparring partners. It was a fun scene. And I do like that both Tyrion and Jon Snow were supporting each other so strongly. It made their earlier meeting scenes even better.

I even liked the Lannister scenes. I thought Cersei did the best with the cards she had, and the people she was trying to convince were rightfully skeptical.

I wonder if the rise of Lord Tarley is going to result as some point with he and his son meeting on opposite sides of a war.

42

Okay, I watched “Behind the Episode,” or whatever it’s called, and D&D explicitly say this.
Here’s the full S1 clip. The part with the specific quote and Ned’s statement that prompts it is around 1:03.

Sansa has some very valid points, but unless she’s completely duped as Littlefinger’s instrument of dissent she needs to express them behind closed doors. It’s King in the North, not Democracy in the North.

Jon Snow needs a shotgun to clean when teenage Littlefinger picks up Sansa for a date.

Presumably it’s like pseudoephedrine today. Asking [del]Portions Master Slughorn[/del] Archmaester Whatever creates a paper trail, and he’s trying to do surgery on the downlow.

43

But then we wouldn’t get next week’s scene of Gendry rowing up and pulling him out of the water.

Actually, I was expecting Hot Pie to mention Gendry, either because he knows where he is or to ask Arya what happened to him. I liked that she found out about Winterfell from him even though I think it would have come up when she spent two weeks as Walder.

So far the characters seem to be reasonable about sharing information this season at least for exposition purposes.

44

My FB feed is full of people wondering how they managed to get a real life Eunuch to play Grey Worm.:rolleyes:

I need to do an audit of who I friend.
I feel for the Sand ladies, since Cercei (and Jamie) will be worse than Ramsey to Theon to them.

So, Night’s King for the Iron Throne?

Maybe the last episode can end will all the dead character reunited and reanimated as Wights.

45

The battle at the end (and Nathalie Emmanuel’s perfect body) redeemed what would have otherwise been a mediocre episode.

This is the second week in a row we’ve had an overly long scene with Sam. This time it was scraping diseased flesh off Jorah Mormont. Time that could have been devoted to character development or dialogue went to yellowish pus.

Theon’s dive into the Narrow Sea makes sense in a way. He is unstable. He was always impulsive to begin with - witness that he attacked Winterfell on his own back in season one or two. The torment he endured later just made him more off balance.

Have we decided who was hanging off the ships? I thought one of them looked like Yara, but we didn’t see her death. unlike with the Dornish ladies.

46

The one who used the whip was hanging. The spear girl was impaled. Not sure if knife girl was killed or taken prisoner.

47

Speaking of which, it doesn’t seem like Randyll Tarly has even noticed that his priceless Valyrian steel sword has gone missing?

48

It was the smart thing to do though. If he charged Euron he would have cut Yara’s throat as move one, I don’t care how good he is he couldn’t fight and hold her hostage at the same time. Theon saw the battle was lost and did the only thing he could have done, that they played it more as a “return to reekdom” is actually disappointing.

49

Taken prisoner. She was protecting Ellaria below deck but they were overwhelmed by Euron’s soldiers. Ellaria said, “Kill us” but the Greyjoy commander just smiled and shook his head no. Myrcella’s murderers will make a lovely engagement gift for Cersei.

50

Alive. Whatshername poisoned Cersei’s daughter. Just torturing her to death or something won’t do. For revenge, Cersei will do something horrific to Whatshername’s daughter.

51

Re Samwell. I think many posters are missing the point. Like PappyTarly. Sam is one of the most effective of operators. The work he does is boring, repetitive and at times disgusting. Too much for the glamourous high born. Yet it is he who figured out how to kill White Walkers and where to get the materials. And now how to fix Jorah.

52

I’m assuming Arya and Bran are gonna arrive at Winterfell at roughly the same time. A tearful family reunion should lighten Sansa’s mood and lift the morale at Winterfell. Bran’s presence will help Jon stressing the urgency of uniting against the dead. Arya might just stop in and say hi. I’m hoping Nymeria will still play a part.

53

It is a little bizarre that no one brings up Cersei’s recent murder of the Pope, her uncle, her daughter-in-law and maybe thousands of other people though. I would think she would have her hands full with rioters at the moment.

54

I feel that Jon Snow did the right thing with his lot of complaining nobles: buggering off to somewhere to get what he needs done.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY believes him when he says there’s an unkillable army of the dead a few hundred miles north heading their way. He got stabbed for his trouble last time as well, by people who’s whole belief system was supposed to be… to man a wall built to stop… The unkillable armies of the dead.

And now the North finally remembers. Yeah. But not about the bloody dead walking, eh?

It’s the standard repeating drama trope (not sure what its called) of nobody ever believing you. I’m not all the way through Fargo, but there’s been three seasons where the authority (police chief etc) is just incapable of believing what they are being told. I suppose I’m getting sick of seeing it.

It seems “someone does believe you” is probably Tyrion Lannister. Looked that way.

55

They’re going positively old school: live by the sword, die by the sword:

But, given that this is GOT, I can’t help wondering: isn’t knife girl the one who did the (semi-) nude scene with Bronn? The actress’s willingness to strip down might have played a role in choosing which one gets to live for another episode.

56

It was character development. The scene showed that Sam was willing to defy the archmaester to attempt to cure Jorah, as did the scene last week when he stole keys to gain access to the restricted stacks.

57

In the throne room, to her face, with the Queen’s Guard standing on all sides? It doesn’t surprise me at all that anyone savvy enough to be running a Great House would hold their tongues in that situation.

58

With Theon, I’m willing to believe that when the ship was rammed and boarded, he just started swinging his sword. He has been in battle before, and even if he’s not the most fearsome warrior in the world, he was trained to fight. I can go along with the idea that the battle itself was fought on instinct and muscle memory. Once things had slowed down and it was a bit more one-on-one (and personal), and Theon was being asked to be heroic, I can see where maybe his head went to a different place and started taking in what was going on around him. The atrocities being committed around him “triggered” his Reekdom and he just couldn’t take it any more.

I also am not crazy about Chekov’s Ballista, unless it does prove to be a false hope on Cersei’s part. I would love to see it rolled out as this big giant dragon-killer, only to fail miserably in some way.

I freely admit that I did tear up a little at the Arya/Nymeria scene. I was…well, I suppose “shipping” Arya and Nymeria for the duration of the series, but I think the scene as done was a little more true to each character.

Yeah, I know it’s superficial, but Nathalie Emmanuel is a STUNNINGLY beautiful woman.

If Jon had not previously thanked Littlefinger for the cavalry support, then that was bad politics. Aside from that, I can understand Jon wanting to choke the man to death. He was intruding into a family space, telling Jon, “well, I couldn’t have your dad’s wife, so I’ve settled on her daughter/your half-sister because that’s not creepy at all,” and he’s just really sleazy.

I’m interested in Littlefinger’s plays in the future. The altercation in the crypt felt like something Littlefinger would engineer, although I don’t know to what end. OTOH, Sansa doesn’t really trust him anymore (although she hasn’t pushed him as far away as I’d like), I doubt any of the Northerners trust him, and his sole power over the Knights of the Vale is his influence over Robin (from whom he’s separated by a great distance at the moment). His power base is shrinking. But, he’s still smirking, so that suggests he’s got contingencies…

59

I expect Bran to turn up at Winterfell, with no raven sent, about the final scene of this season. All comms seem to fail when there’s vital information to be passed in this show. Imagine if Jon Snow had quite simply had a little talk with Brann about three or four seasons ago…

But that’s the way it goes. The characters seem thick. Right, so Rickons alive, so they weren’t really killed, so why hasn’t Snowtarg asked about his other brother?

Maybe I should just be happy someone told Arya that Jon is King North and all that.

60

A sudden weird thought: What if the Others are marching south to save their baby brother, who was kidnapped by Sam and Gilly? (By their reckoning, anyway.)