I did not expect that. Wow.
Good episode. Even knowing it was coming, I dreaded Ned’s death.
I, too, am annoyed that they’re not actually showing the battles. At this point I’d even take a semi-crappy CGI one. I like the Lannisters’ red tents, though.
Shae isn’t at all as I’d visualized her - I was thinking of a younger Michelle Pfeiffer-type. But this actress does pretty well in the role.
Anyone notice the faint Wilhelm Scream just before Tyrion sat up on the casualty cart? Have a listen.
The odious Walder Frey was played by the same actor who plays Filch in the Harry Potter movies. He did well.
Loved the scene where Cat explains the deal she’s worked out. Esp. good were Robb’s shifting expressions as he realizes there’s more… and more… and more…
Maester Aemon’s scene with Jon Snow was also good - certainly foreshadowed Ned’s fateful choice between family and honor.
The Dothraki scenes were pretty good, although I thought Ser Jorah would’ve decapitated that guy, rather than just cutting his face and knocking him down. (If you like Iain Glen, who plays Jorah, BTW, check out the first season of Law & Order UK, in which he plays a sleek, cunning killer).
Who grabbed Arya and kept her from seeing Ned’s death? If he’s a Stark guy, why wouldn’t he have been arrested and/or killed by now?
Anyone else get a Jerry Springer/trailer park vibe from the scene at the Frey house? Nobody? All right then.
I didn’t recognize him either but someone at Giraffe’s board said that was Yoren, the guy from the Night’s Watch who had come to King’s Landing to ask for more men.
Yoren. The guy who was drinking with Tyrion at the wall, then traveled south with him and ran to inform Ned of what Cat had done as soon as he got there, he confuses Arya with a boy.
I don’t mind not showing the battles, but how hard can it possibly be to CGI people walking in a line?
Robb supposedly has 20,000 men. The Lannisters an equal amount. The Khal of Khals has about a billion riders. But every group scene where we’re supposed to envision an entire army marching or riding ends up being a tight shot of half a dozen people or a shot of maybe two dozen riders spread out across the screen to make you think “oh, hey, I’ll be the other 100,000 are just on that hill beyond our sight.”
But we lose out on a sheer sense of scale when we’re never shown just how huge these battles/clans/armies can get.
I’ve read the first three books and thus knew of Ned’s fate. I have to commend HBO for the scene of his death. It was very well done and was quite properly disturbing and unsettling. Perhaps knowing what was coming added gravity to what I was seeing.
How much does good CGI cost?
Wow. Incredible story. I love how this show doesn’t pull any punches, doesn’t weasel out of corners, but just charges forward to the logical conclusion. If Ned had been rescued or had gotten away somehow, this would just be another humdrum fantasy in which the heroes continually achieve impossible success.
This, on the other hand … this is epic. This is Agamemnon, Macbeth. Everyone seems to forget that one of the most important things about the King Arthur story is that Arthur fails … his wife and his best friend betray him … his son, borne of incest, defeats him … the Britons fall to the Saxons … the Romans fall to the barbarians … Brutus loses to Antony and Octavian.
I loved how Joffrey’s mother overreacts when Joffrey say’s to bring him Ned’s head. I’m pretty sure she was the one that told him that was how it was to to play out. The kid is her puppet. This way she can appeal to Sansa and have even more control over her.
On to some other elements… the producers succeed in bringing new characters in. I really like Tyrion’s new main squeeze, beautiful and smart and mysterious. The witch is pretty interesting – though I’m surprised she is still alive. If I were Danerys, the witch would be in deep shit for Khal getting infected from that tiny wound – my first thought would be she poisoned him and there’s no way I would let her get near him again.
And a couple of holdover thoughts from the last episode. I think Tyrion deserves a lot more respect. Didn’t this whole war basically start because Cate grabbed him? Then he frees himself (more or less) and strolls into camp, having even recruited allies along the way, and he gets… nothing. Actually, worse than nothing, because Dear old Dad puts him in the front lines for the next battle, which I can only interpret as an attempt to dispose of an unwanted son through an “honorable” battle death.
No way, Cersei knows how moronic killing Ned is. Letting him join the night watch after admitting Joffrey is the rightful king is a complete Lannister victory, Robb would be reduced to a common rebel if he continued the war and the seven kingdoms would unite against him the way they did against Balon Greyjoy.
Just one more reason to hate Tywin. And if Bronn actually told how Tyrion came by his headwound (I’m sure he wouldn’t), ol’ Papa would be further disappointed in his youngest son.
This is an angle I hadn’t thought of. I thought she was genuinely upset, and was realizing just what a monster she had produced, and also that she wouldn’t be able to control him.
But what is the point of controlling Sansa, who after all controls nothing, if she can’t control Joffrey?
Death Wish? Come on, a simple revenge fantasy is just about as shallow as you could get. Even stories of revenge can go much deeper. For example, The Searchers. By the end, we’re not really all that sure that revenge is what was good for everyone involved.
Depth doesn’t come from wish fulfillment. Showing good guys winning is not the sole way to bring meaning to a story. There are more subtle ways of making a story important, for example, by showing that the line between good and evil might not be so bright, that good and intelligent and successful and beautiful don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, that evil among the few might actually bring good to the many, that sometimes people have to make hard choices, and that such a choice might be only partially right and partially wrong.
“All you have left is gore and whores” is definitely not what you have left. What you have left are a series of complex, whole characters who are faced with making decisions based on their values and their circumstances with imperfect information and not knowing whether they will be able to achieve their goals. You have an illustration that a strict code of ethics is not necessarily good in many senses of the word good.
Now you might disagree with all this and you might not like it, but it is a lot deeper than simple triumph of good over evil. For someone to call it shallow is surprising.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Cersei didn’t know that Joffrey was going to pull that stunt. Soon she will bring in a new Hand to help her control Joffrey.
Killing Ned makes absolutely no tactical sense, it was just a childish gesture by Joffrey.
If true, that’s a spoiler. 
But it was a brilliant tactic to make us hate him even more than we already did. 
Not really. They just killed off the old hand; getting a new hand is pretty much standard procedure.
No, they already named the New Hand in the final scene. It was easy to miss.