This makes up for any shortcomings this show might ever have. Ever.

(At this point, I have no idea if this post will contain spoilers.)

I’ve been kind of a douche about this show, and for that I apologize. See, I have been watching this show with rapt attention, but also with my ass puckered up over its various divergences from the books, as if I could somehow control a scripted television show’s faithfulness to its source material through the sheer power of my sphincter.

Since last April, I have felt a compulsive need to compare the two media, in a very hipsteresque effort to prove my bona fides as an early-adopting Game of Thrones fan. I have little doubt that I have annoyed some people. When someone asks me where they are taking Arya and Gendry, all they really want to know is that it’s called Harrenhal, and it’s a big castle people think is haunted. They do not necessarily need to know why people think it is haunted, or that Harren completed it right before the invasion of Aegon the Conqueror, or any of the other random bits of trivia I could pull from my puckered behind.

I can thank Christina H. at Cracked, whose article “6 Common Movie Arguments That Are Always Wrong” addresses the common trope among fanboys that “it all makes sense if you read the comics.” Substitute “series of books” for “comics” and “television show” for “movie” and her analysis is spot-on:

The thing is, you shouldn’t have to do homework or required reading before seeing a movie in order to understand it. Movies are a story in a roughly two-hour package, and they have to use those two hours to let you know who’s who, what’s going on and why you should care. Even James Bond movies usually spend the first sequence showing you how good he is at killing people and how he always gets a free woman to sleep with afterward, for the two audience members unfamiliar with how James Bond works.

You’re supposed to relax and let the movie take you on a ride into its world. Movies are sold as an escape, not as another source of obligation. Can you imagine being asked to go see the latest Harry Potter movie and having to tell your friends, “Oh, I can’t. I’ve been trying really hard to cram for it, but I’ve still got 10 chapters to read. I’ve just been so busy this week …” and them shaking their heads in disappointment at you? Or watching Star Wars Episode II knowing you’ve not only wasted the two and a half hours watching the actual movie but the two weeks of studying the comics in preparation for it?
I can understand wanting to get further into the universe of some movie if you really enjoyed it, or being able to get more tidbits about your favorite character from additional stories, but it should be optional. You shouldn’t have to stare bewildered at some character exploding for no apparent reason as a penalty for not doing your homework.

Several people asked me, during the lead-up to “Game of Thrones” season 1, if I thought they should read the books before trying to watch the show. Of course, I think everyone should read the books because they are awesome, but consider this: a television show that requires you to read a 700+ page book in order to understand its first season would be a fucking terrible television show. Continue reading →

(AGAIN WITH THE SPOILERS!)

I spun this off into a separate post, because it just seems that important, somehow.

People hate Sansa Stark. Lots and lots of hate going around. Yet a Google search of “Sansa Stark hate” yields quite a few good posts in her defense. Her scene with Shae this week, to me, goes to the heart of this show’s overall conflict: people trying desperately to be themselves against the pressures of their regressive society.

Sansa Stark began the show, last season, as an entitled little shit. But she’s 13 years old, and has lived her whole life as the daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, with dreams of knights and heroes and princesses. She gets pledged in marriage to the king’s eldest son, meaning she will one day be queen.

And the king she’s going to marry turns out to be Joffrey.

It is not fair to call what happens to Sansa a “rude awakening,” unless you consider waking someone up with a flamethrower to be “rude.”

Shae, in marked contrast to Sansa, is a whore. I don’t mean that as an insult–it’s her job. In a way, Shae comes into this story with more freedom than the “noble” characters. She’s a foreigner, and it is not at all clear how she first came to Westeros. She was a “camp follower,” but it appears as though she could have refused Tyrion’s original offer. Once she signs on with him, she is promised gold and the wonders of King’s Landing, and all she has to do in return is fuck the Imp now and then (okay, a lot).

Once in King’s Landing, her life is in danger, considering Tyrion’s father specifically told Tyrion not to take her. Cersei will look for any way to gain an advantage over Tyrion, which is the more pressing danger to Shae’s life. Presumably because it would be too complicated in the television medium to hide her across town at Chataya’s, Tyrion hides her in plain sight in the castle. She avoids kitchen work by becoming Sansa’s handmaiden, except she clearly has no idea what she is doing.

Sansa treats Shae like shit. For someone as skilled at seduction (and therefore acting) as Shae, she is remarkably clumsy at filling the handmaiden role, treating Sansa without even a modicum of the deference Sansa has come to expect from servants. That’s the moment where a theme comes through: Sansa is being a shit to Shae, not so much because she is a shit, but because for one, shining moment, she can be a shit. This is a brief glimpse of Sansa’s old life coming through. Even if it was a life of snobbery and shallowness, it was a child’s life, and that was ripped away from her (cf. flamethrower reference.)

It reminded me of last season’s scene with Septa Mordane. She was answering a question for Sansa, when Sansa interrupted her to say she didn’t care. It was a callous, privileged, entitled, shitty thing for Sansa to do, and she did it because she could. As we all know, Septa Mordane marched directly into Lannister swords to allow Sansa to escape, even if Sandor Clegane caught her later. Septa Mordane gave more to Sansa than Sansa ever would have given to her. Shae would never do anything like that for Sansa. Sansa probably thinks she is a spy for the Lannisters (which she sort of is).

Sansa was a shit to Septa Mordane because she could be. She was a shit to Shae because, in her own way, she had to be, in order to hold onto a little bit of who she was.

If you are a Sansa hater, all I will say is this: don’t count her out just yet. She may never stop being a shit, but she represent us, the viewers, in quite a few ways. Honestly, how do you think you would respond if everything that has happened to Sansa happened to you?

(WATCH FOR SPOILERS!)

Sorry I’m a bit late on this post. I’m sure folks have been waiting eagerly….

A few rhetorical housekeeping matters to get out of the way about Season 2, Episode 3:

Tyrion Lannister and Friends

I do love me some political intrigue. Playing Pycelle, Littlefinger, and Varys off of each other was handled brilliantly.

Theon Greyjoy

The slapping of Theon Greyjoy is a good thing. Not as good as the slapping of Joffrey Baratheon, but a good thing nonetheless. As much as we are supposed to hate Balon Greyjoy, it was pleasant to watch Theon get slapped by his father and smacked down by his sister.

That said, Balon Greyjoy is a dick for reasons extending beyond his demeanor, and Theon is absolutely right. The show has given Theon a depth of character that I feel was missing from the books. The conflict between his almost life-long wardship with House Stark truly conflicts with the primal desire for his father’s love, but his father has no right whatsoever to criticize what Theon has become. It was Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion that caused the deaths of his two other sons and Theon’s wardship with the Starks. Then again, it is asking quite a bit to expect that level of emotional introspection from any Greyjoy, let alone Balon. Continue reading →

(SPOILERS COMING AT YOU LIKE A GELATINOUS CUBE)

(SPOILERS ONLY APPLY TO THE TV SHOW. FOR THE BOOKS, WATCH OUT FOR TANTALIZING HINTS)

Sunday night’s episode, “The Night Lands,” felt like a very long set-up to…..something. I am coming to the realization that I do not know for certain what that something might be.

Before getting into the nuts & bolts of the episode, I feel a bit of a mea culpa coming on about the books. I’ve read the first four books, twice. I started reading the first book, A Game of Thrones, in the summer of 2007, and I finished my first reading of book 4, A Feast for Crows, in roughly December 2008. When discussing the TV show with others, I often feel a need to interject sentences beginning with “But in the book they…” When discussing the books, I tend to feel the need to point out that 2007 to 2008 time frame.

In short, I was into Game of Thrones before it was cool.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

Most of my thoughts on this week’s episode involve specific characters, and how they either met my expectations or made me stop and ponder.

Jaqen H’ghar: Remember the three guys locked in the cart in the group going to the Wall? Arya hit one of them with a stick after he demanded ale? Jaqen is the polite one who speaks entirely in the third person (“A girl has more courage than wits”). He did not look at all like how I pictured him, but his mannerisms are exactly what I imagined. I hope they do something cool with him.

Rakharo: So, I guess they’re not shipping Daenerys and Rakharo after all. Nice bait and switch. This one seriously threw me, because this does not happen in the books, and it actually throws off some of Daenerys’ story. The scuttlebutt is that the actor playing Rakharo got a movie role and had to leave the show, so they gave him a moment of tender screen time with his khaleesi.

Truth be told, Daenerys’ three bloodriders (Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo) aren’t exactly deeply-developed characters anyway. I was surprised last week that they went so far as to cast all three roles and make a point of teaching us their names, but now I think I know why. (They combined Drogo’s three bloodriders into one character last season.) Daenerys’ bloodriders are mostly just a sort of bad-ass Huey, Dewey, and Louie, so maybe the loss of one of them will lead to further development of the other two characters.

On an semi-related spoilery note, I really like the actress who plays Doreah.

Tyrion Lannister: Did anyone else notice that he moved up in the billing on the show? While Janos Slynt, captain of the City Watch, did not look at all like how I pictured him–he was described, as I recall, as being jowly, so I pictured someone like Maury Chaykin–the scene where Tyrion sends him to the Wall was still a thing of beauty. His interactions with Cersei and Varys were interesting to watch. The cat-and-mouse games depicted in the book must be hard to translate to a screenplay–I expect there to be more slapping, stomping, and slamming of doors in future episodes.

Continue reading →

I will endeavor to avoid spoilers, but I may engage in a bit of foreshadowing.

Season 2 is off to a pretty cracking start (it has me talking all British.)

King’s Landing: I support the show’s emphasis on people slapping Joffrey. I am hopeful that we will see much more Joffrey slapping throughout the season.

Perhaps the greatest joy in A Clash of Kings (the second book in the series, for those who haven’t read them) is the face off in King’s Landing between Tyrion and Cersei, and it looks like this season will not disappoint. I also like how they are establishing Cersei’s grand dilemma. She has near-absolute power over a clever man like Littlefinger, but she is utterly helpless before her idiot son Joffrey (who she made into a monster, incidentally.) Joffrey is too much of a mama’s boy to ever actually hurt Cersei, but it will be fun to see how the mother-son relationship develops now that they are Queen Regent and King.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but is the hardcore sex really necessary? It really adds nothing, and it’s a bit distracting. (My love for boobs notwithstanding.) Perhaps the sex lessons in Littlefinger’s brothel served to compensate us for the murder of Robert’s infant son. I think by now everyone knows to expect an atrocity around every corner, though.

Perhaps the strangest line of the whole episode: “You can smell come from the balcony?” Thanks, Tyrion. It is surprising that Tyrion has Shae staying with him in the Tower of the Hand. It has been clearly established that there is no privacy in the Red Keep, so it is a mystery to me how Tyrion expects to keep Shae there without his father finding out. I was bit worried that they are setting up Littlefinger’s brothel to serve the function of Chataya’s in the book. Given the need to condense characters and settings in the medium of television, I could see Chataya’s being one of the setting that doesn’t make the cut, but I hope they include it. Considering how lily-white the fantasy genre tends to be, Chataya and Alayaya are not only some of the very few people of color even mentioned in the books, and Alayaya is one of the few truly honorable characters in the whole series. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Beyond the Wall: Craster is as big an asshole as I imagined he would be.

Dragonstone: Stephen Dillane is freaking perfect as Stannis Baratheon.

I wasn’t sold on Carice van Houten as Melisandre at first. I don’t know exactly how I pictured her. I must say she captures the sheer weirdness, for lack of a better word, of Melisandre. She has some stuff comkng up that’s going to be very interesting to see.

Essos: I hope they don’t linger too much in the Red Waste, because (no spoilers) I’m excited to see where they’re going.

There was a brief hint, it seemed, of something between Daenerys and Rakharo. Where in the world could they be going with that?

The North: Bran’s “wolf dreams” were always the hardest part of the books for me to grasp. I like the way they are handling it so far. Also, I really like Osha. And I can’t wait for Hodor to get to just be Hodor for a while.

On the war front, I can do without many more extended scenes of various Starks taunting Jaime Lannister. I know Jaime spends the entire second book as the Starks’ captive, mostly in a dungeon, but I doubt they’ll stick to that in the show. For one thing, Jaime is a pretty major character and they need to keep him moving. For another, let’s face it, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau is too dang handsome for TV producers to leave him tied to a post for nine more episodes. I just don’t know if they’ll find something else for Jaime to do or if they’ll get him started early on Book 3.

A scene late in Season 1 made a point of Robb excitedly greeting his mother and then remembering that, as lord, he had to be a bit more dignified than that (especially in front of his bannermen). They did a very good job showing Robb’s growth as a leader and the changing power dynamic between him and Catelyn–she may still be his mother, but he’s the king now.

The Kingsroad: We need to see more Arya Stark. She can’t turn into an epic badass if she doesn’t get any screen time.