Game of Thrones, Baelor, 6/12/11

HBO series thread only please.

Spoiler thread
Background thread

Recap of last week:

After Ned was captured in the throne room, the Lannisters carried out their purging of the Starks from King’s Landing, slaughtering their men and taking Sansa captive. Arya escaped due to the heroics of Syrio. Tyrion and Bronn meet some new friends in the mountains of the Vale before finding Tywin’s camp and preparing for war. Sansa wrote Robb a letter, urging him to swear fealty to Joffrey. Robb promised to go to King’s Landing, but with his bannermen, leading an army. Jon attacked Ser Alister after a jape about Ned being a traitor and is confined to his room for it. Ghost made a ruckus and lead Jon to find the corpse of Othor, reanimated. Jon killed it with fire and the rest of the Nights Watch contemplated the future. Drogo pillaged a village to get money for ships to invade Westeros. Dany didn’t like the rape and commanded that it be stopped. Mago took exception to this and called Dany a foreign whore to Drogo’s face. Big mistake (I’ve watched this fight like 8 times on youtube, awesome). The Great Jon didn’t like his position in Robb’s army and threatened to go home. Robb and Grey Wind reminded him that the Starks rule in the north. In King’s Landing Barristan the Bold was dismissed as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and Jaimed named as his replacement. Tywin was named as Hand of the King. The episode ended with Sansa begging Joffrey for Ned’s life and getting a promise that mercy will be shown if Ned acknowledges Joffrey as the rightful king.

Second to last episode here folks. HBO submitted this episode for consideration for the best writing Emmy. I expect it to be a fun episode for old and new alike.

Wait, what? I remember Ghost running out, and I remember them finding a body (the one the hand went to, right?), and I remember them burning the corpse. I missed that it was reanimated. What, was it trying to eat brains?

How could you have missed the zombie fight? Limbs were severed, blood was spurting. . … It was right after Ghost ran out. Jon ran after him and then-- BAM-- zombie in the commander’s sleeping quarters!

Oh, yeah, there was a fight. Didn’t know it was a zombie. (I get distracted by the computer.)

Question about HBO: We’ve had HBO for years, never changed our subscription, and I’ve been utilizing the On Demand <for the first time ever!> to watch the previous week’s episode as a run-up to the latest. I tried that today, and now it says it’s only available with a special package?! WTH. I see no reason not to just cancel and download it elsewhere if HBO is going to be that stingy about their bandwidth. If this is new, I’ve had it with HBO, seriously.

I can’t say I was entirely surprised at Tyrion involving candles into his entertainments with Shae, but exactly what he was doing with it was…

I have to admit that I didn’t expect that ending. I figured that Sean Bean was the best-known actor in the show, and so he’d survive.

Everytime this show ends I’m like, “It’s over? That was an hour?”

I kinda half expected what happened to happen-- although not at all how it played out. I didn’t think he’d confess and when he did, I thought he was saved. But it was still a shock.

Good show.

Obviously one of the budget savings is by not showing huge battles.

The little prick threw a wrench in everyone’s machinery there at the end, didn’t he?

That was hard to watch.

New level of respect for this TV show.

Ned Stark loses his life and his honor. That was a sadder end to his life than I could have imagined.

It’s the second to last (third to last? I lost count…second, I think) episode. Perfect time for that.

Joffery is a little douchebag.

Loved the snickering between Robb and Theon, regarding the marriage promise and Cat giving them both the mom look.

Declan

Anybody watch Larry Williams’ reviews? Apparently he dig a live webcast. I caught a bit of the after show. He’s… not taking it well.

Do you have a link?

He just stopped. Going out to “have a smoke and break things” before he does his review. His youtube channel is here.

I’d forgotten that this was the penultimate episode. I expected the double-cross, but I didn’t expect it to be completely successful. For a moment I thought Arya was going to kill the Douchebag.

I can’t believe they completely cut out both battles. That was pretty disappointing. Other than that, great episode.

Even knowing it was coming, I still had a tear. Or two.
Fucking Ned. Damnit.

For non book readers that are regular internet users: if you managed to make it this long without being spoilered about Ned, Congratulations.