Game of Thrones, Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things, 5/8/11

Cafe Society
1

Again and always, this is the spoiler free thread. If you want spoilers, head over there.

Last week Jon made it to the Wall and found out that people like his uncle are few and far between; the Wall is not a glorious place. Ned and his daughters make it to King’s Landing and we’re introduced to a bunch of new characters. On Robert’s Small Council we have Varys, the master of whisperers, Renly, Roberts younger brother, Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish, the master of coin and Catelyn’s childhood friend, and Grand Maester Pycelle. The crown is heavily in debt, to the Lannisters, but Robert still wants to throw an expensive tourney to honor Ned. Arya and Sansa fight, but Arya gets something she’s wanted for a while, a dancing master.

Have at it.

2

I love Tyrion so much.

3

They’re going too fast. There better be more from the Hand’s tourney than a single joust. And why would Littlefinger know the Clegane backstory?

These episodes need 75 minutes and they’re only getting 60.

4

So many new characters…Samwell, Hodor, Theon getting his introduction at last, Gregor Clegane…and this episode ended exactly where I’d guessed it would.

I’ll have trouble rewatching this one–that joust scene is so awful I had to turn away.

5

Yeah, that was a really long death shot, wasn’t it?

6

Me too, easily my favorite character.

My somewhat amusing Peter Dinklage story: I was walking a mall a while back around christmas and I saw a little person walking the other direction. I recognized him straight off as he is one of my favorite actors (I had seen the station agent literally hours before). The lady I was with started giving me shit for staring at a little person so I had to clear up the fact that I was staring because it was Peter Dinklage, not because it was a little person.

7

I liked Sam. Almost all his dialog was new, and it still worked. Didn’t get the impression he was particularly smart, though. But it requires a certain level of maturity to sound smart when you’re talking about breasts. Or that he was a noble, though he does have a nice doublet.

Jamie and Viseres are still awesome. The latter is way ahead in the race for ‘most improved on the book version.’ I actually found myself LIKING him for the first half of the bathtub scene.

Ahh, he’s not such a bad guy, look at him. Having fun, chatting with the sex-slave girl, he’s just had a rough–What?! Dammit, why do you have to be such a fucking prick?

The actress playing Dany did a good job with her ‘standing up’ scene. Though really, standing up to someone when they have no power and you can order them tortured to death on a whim is, ah, less of a victory than it could be. That’s was a problem with the book.

This was the first episode that felt like it was jumping around.

–
And I’ll second ‘that better not be it for the tourney!’ THAT’S our big, expensive, action piece for the season?! Lets just say I’m not yelling “Thirteen!”

8

“It is a bit nippy”

Fucking loved Sam.

9

I’ll have to watch it again, but the joust scene looked kinda weird. Now I realize that the mountain was probably under orders to kill that knight, but where the lance head was sticking out, was the weird part, it almost looked like he was nailed from behind, instead of some piece of wood sticking out of his neck and broken.

It looked too pointy.

Good on Dany for realizing that her bro wont be able to lead an army, let alone take the seven kingdoms.

Declan

10

I assume we’ll see more of the tourney.

This was an exposition-heavy episode, and I thought they did a good job of making it seem natural most of the time (particularly the discussion between Theon and Tyrion). But why would Littlefinger tell Sansa the story of the Cleganes in that context? That was a bit forced. Where does that occur in the books, does anyone remember?
Still definitely enjoyed it, overall.

11

It might have been because she was naive in some ways, expecting tournaments to be some sort of hollywood thing, for want of a better term. Just his way of telling her that not all knights are paragons of virtue that she may have read about in their versions of harlequin romances.

As well, I get the impression that this guy is a spy master with a hard on for her mom, after all this time, turning her into an asset might be worthwhile in its own right.

Declan

12

In the book, Sandor Clegane told Sansa the story while he was drunk. It was rather touching, actually, that he would open up to her. Unfortunately, I assume things got shuffled around for the sake of time.

13

I give up.

14

That’s a bit cryptic. Are you giving up on the series or what?

15

People. Any post that mentions the books should be made in the spoiler omnibus thread. No matter how minor it seems, if your sentence begins with “in the book” you shouldn’t be posting it. Please let’s save any discussion that touches on the book for PMs and the spoiler thread.

16

I reluctantly agree. They could easily make full episodes about any one of the story lines. I just don’t see how anyone who hasn’t read the book has a chance of keeping things straight.

17

All over the internet, I’ve been reading comments by people who haven’t read the books but are managing to keep up with the show. There’s plenty of explanatory material available–& the stuff at HBO is pretty non-spoilery.

18

But that’s okay. Someone who hasn’t read the books is going to go with the flow and not be concerned about stuff that’s left out or added. You don’t miss what you never had (or something like that).

There’s not a lot to keep straight, for someone who isn’t thinking about how they’ll fit This or That into the story.

19

Another good episode, I thought. The actor playing Sam was well-cast. Good to finally see Jon Snow’s direwolf. Impressive jousting scene. The scene at the end, as Cat reminds each of those knights of the fealty they owe her, and then calls for them to seize Tyrion, was very well done, I thought (but what about Tyrion’s four guards who we saw riding in with him, and were left standing by the door? You’d think they’d have said or done something.)

(Also posted this in the spoiler thread).

20

I think that something they’re going for here, probably intentionally, is the idea what Littlefinger has a great intelligence network and knows so much about everyone.

Like what? They’re outnumbered probably two-to-one, the guy they’re supposed to be protecting is surrounded by swords.

I’m really hoping we see some smarts out of Sam, even if it’s just a simple line like “No, the food supplies should be loaded onto the cart this way. In the event of an attack all our ammo won’t be loaded at the front of the wagon, forcing us to unload the whores, soap, whores, spam, whores, and cigarettes before we can get to them.”

I always imagined Sam being clean-shaven. Other than that, I liked him.

People who say that non-book readers can’t follow the story, I just don’t get it. Some things seem to come out of nowhere (Theon, for example), but anyone who has ever watched a TV show of any kind should understand just fine that just means that whatever element (Theon, for example!) will become significant from this point on.

I mean, really. The Dothraki plotline couldn’t possibly be more straightforward. No need to worry about that.

The whole Stark/Lannister thing shouldn’t be all that hard either - two families who obviously don’t like each other are both trying to pull the reins of power in different directions.

Robert is a shitty king. Doesn’t take much more than what we’ve seen to know that.

What, really, would be so hard for non-book people to work out?

-Joe