The guy talking to Varys that Arya overheard was Illyrio, the same guy that was housing Viserys and Dany in episode 1 and helped arrange her marriage to the Khal.
Great episode. So far I think every episode has been better than the last. Especially loved Tyrion and Arya in this one.
I knew Jory was going to bite it, but it still pissed me off.
It looked like Magister Illyrio.
And no, that’s not a book spoiler, it looked/sounded like the same actor to me. It would make sense too, if Jorah was feeding information to him, and he was delivering it to Varys.
Agreed. I recognized his costume and beard. And I haven’t read the book for what it’s worth. Mark me down as not having a lick of trouble with characters or allegiances, but then I’m a diehard Deadwood and The Wire fan.
This was such a rich episode. I kept checking the clock and couldn’t believe there was another twenty or thirty minutes left. I really hope they keep delivering these 55 minute episodes. Some HBO series in the past got sloppy, like Six Feet Under, and started clocking in 47 minute eps. But then, it’s not like GoT is running short on source material.
How’s this show faring ratings-wise? I’m hoping it more than justifies a long and full run of seasons.
I’m pleasantly surprised to find a show that *can *surprise me. The last thing I expected The Mountain to do was behead his own horse.
Poor Tyrion. Those cells, while kick ass, certainly aren’t fit for prisoners on suicide watch. Oh, and in the same way that a character kicking a dog is visual shorthand for villainy, age-inappropriate breastfeeding is to an unsound mind.
You two are quite mistaken, the swords used in the episode were neither exceptionally big nor were medieval twohanders (see here a replica of a Medieval Danish Two Handed War Sword) so heavy and cumbersome that they couldn’t be used with some sophistication (see the writings of Achille Marozzo or the Goliath manual among others); sure, it wasn’t possible to apply all the techniques developed for the long swords, like The Liechtenauer, (see one of Talhoffer’s famous manuals) but it wasn’t whack-whack-whack, oh my dear spindly arms, so used to only grab the remote, I’m winded. The difference between some actors and the real deal would have been as big as the one between some regular guys pretending to be basketball players and NBA all stars.
Besides, the truly heavy twohanders were usually just for show and ceremonial purposes.
Whenever you see clumsy sword fighting, just think that the knights of Westeros are simply not on a par with our medieval knights, so their fear of half-naked men on vulnerable horses is far more appropriate than it would have been for our ancestors.
They started really high and have gotten better every single episode. Ratings even went up the night we killed Osama when the president was on talking about it.
Not that I don’t agree with your approval of faceted characters but what is innovative about it? Celtic and Germanic myths and hero tales showed such behaviour among their protagonists hundreds and hundreds of years ago!
I should have written “the myths of every culture I know show complex and ambivalent characters”; you always find simpler tales too with easily distinguishable opponents but they were not necessarily the most popular ones.
Yeah, but we’re talking about modern fantasy, which is, nine times out of ten, pure cardboard.
So, the innovation is like the adaption of the wheel after it had been known to exist for more than a thousand years? 
Actually, you’re veering into discussion of The Forbidden Medium (per our Born Again Spoilerphobe’s OP).
GRRM’s characters are more complex than the ones parading through the endless fat volumes of Tolkien ripoffs written by his contemporaries. (Now I’m trying to remember the depths of character evidenced by Beowulf, Grendel or Grendel’s Mom; did she breastfeed him inappropriately?)
I have consistently not posted any spoilers and requested these threads be spoiler free. You’re aware of this. :rolleyes:
I’m not sure how pointing out that complex characters have been around in other genres is spoiling anything either.
Have you read “Das Lied der Nibelungen”? And while Wieland’s (or Wayland’s) story seems to be simple enough, it was varied and retold in Germanic mythology multiple times to discuss ethical dilemmas, the difficulty of truth when points of view are switched etc.
And if we start a discussion of the complexity of relationships and characters in the “Odyssey”, we’ll never come to an end, just like the corresponding academical secondary literature.
It was innovative for the modern fantasy genre, which had tended (before GRRM) to break down into simplistic “good vs evil” types of themes. Martin tried to make it more like real history, where issues and characters are more complex, and there aren’t necessarily identifiable moral sides.
So was the joust rigged or not? If so, how?
Who was Jory related to?
The joust wasn’t rigged, Loras is just really good. So is The Mountain, the deal being that The Mountain’s success at voilence is because he loves and it and because he’s so goddamned huge. I also think that some of the clumsiness in the fight between Gregor and Sandor is that they’re big men in thick armor. Plus, Sandor wasn’t trying to kill Gregor, he was just trying to keep him under control. From the look on Joffrey’s face, I really think that Joffrey had no idea that The Hound could stand up to The Mountain.
As for Jory, he was the son of Rodrick, the guy who has been accompanying Catelyn. He’s also known as the guy with the sweet tied-together beard.
-Joe
I’ll have to re-watch this episode because I thought it was pretty mediocre, and yet most everyone here seems to think it was great.
Yeah, I’ve read a bunch of that stuff. Of course, once the stories are written down (even if the authors are unknown to us), they stop being myth & legend and are on their way to becoming art.
But the main focus here is comparing GRRM to his contemporaries. Tolkien went back to Northern tales for inspiration; the hacks just went to Tolkien. GRRM’s sources seem to be more historical than mythic or legendary; he’s added his own story-telling talents to create the source material for this show. More of his readers know about The Wheel of Time than Gawaine’s adventure with The Green Knight.
If we put aside the fantasy elements, his approach is indeed much closer to the (pseudo)-historical novels written in the 19th and 20th century; it has often reminded of a book for boys, “A Struggle for Rome”, published in 1876: a story of intrigue, treachery and heroism in a not quite historical setting filled with characters who develop sometimes surprisingly and are rarely easily categorized as good or evil.
I find it hard to call something innovative if an approach just wasn’t done before in a sub-genre or was new to readers who simply didn’t know that it’s an old hat.