BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S2E5: Ghost Protocol

Watching the "previously on" for this episode, I realize I forgot two key-ish things from last time. Theon, now fully in the tank for his family and going to war AGAINST Robb Stark, gets a shitty assignment from his dad--basically to take a fishing boat out and fuck people up just sorta randomly. Man, with military strategy like that, it's hard to believe Papa Grejoy screwed up his first attempt at a rebellion! He's a little like Rick Santorum, where he comes miraculously back from defeat only to fucking lose again the same way and you're like "Oh, right." Guy is doomed, is what I am saying. (Rick Santorum probably also has a lousy relationship with his son, and Rick Santorum's son also probably fucks everything in sight.) (See also, the fascinating story of Narciso Lopez, twice-failed conquerer of Cuba. See also Rick Santorum's recent proclamation that "smart people will never be on [his] side." INDEED.) Secondtively, a few episodes back Arya met a dude who talked kind of funny who she later helped free from a burning cage. I don't know why that is important yet, but it was in the previously on! And you know that shit is always going to come back at you.

SO OKAY: This is some BULLSHIT. Last week, I totally called the Robb/Renly partnership that we now see in reaching the final stages of negotiation. Cat is ready to head out the door with Renly's offer, when the damned Baby Smoke Monster comes in and kills Renly! GHOST MURDER! AHHHHH! Smoke Baby evaporates, as Smoke Babies are wont to do, and suddenly Renly's Knight and head of LGBT outreach is standing over his dead body, sword in hand. Then she's killing the two guys who first pop into the tent and (understandably) accuse her.

Recovering her shit admirably fast (she just watched a damn ghost do a murder), Cat Stark urges the lady knight to flee with her rather than keep fighting, since she won't be able to get revenge if she dies in furious, misdirected outrage (like Mitt Romney, after the Libya thing). So they peace, hopefully to start an extended lesbians-on-the-run-from-the-law b-plot. The next day, in seemingly the same tent, Littlefinger gives Knight One Direction identical advice; dead men avenge no tales. The Wire used to do echoing lines a lot ("I'll take any motherfucker's money if he giving it away") to great effect, drawing parallels between drug dealers and policemen, corrupt politicians and children. What is being suggested here? That Cat and Littlefinger have similarly cunning minds? Or something more?

Renly's army flocks to Stannis, which seems to give him the upperhand over everybody. Tyrion is sweating the numbers, but Cersei argues their financial advantage will save them. Tyrion later discovers that Cersei's been developing chemical weapons, a kind of liquid fire once used by Danaerys's family. She plans to fire it at Stannis's men and ships, and Tyrion is disturbed by this prospect. Stannis has boots on the ground, and the Lannisters are concentrating on fire in the air. It's Organizing For America vs. American Crossroads, right? No?

There's more political allegory to parse at Stannis Meatsauce's HQ. His grizzled old friend, Ron Swanson's dad John Swanson, is concerned about Stannis diluting his own power and authority by over-employing religion. If Neko Case and her Smoke Baby come with them to battle, John Swanson argues, the victory will be hers. Stannis ends up agreeing, but in a way that makes me feel like John Swanson is totally doomed (I mean, he's right and he told the truth. Politically, he's screwed).

Back on Alcatraz, Arya is working for Tywin and they seem to be having fun vaguely threatening each other all day. She runs into the jazzy-talking guy she saved a few episodes ago, and he tells her that because she saved three lives that day, he and his friends owe her three lives back. He's a Murder Genie, essentially. Arya starts small--or maybe she's stilll saving the Lannisters for her own sword, but--she calls for the death of Alcatraz's resident prison torturer. And true to Murder Genie's word, motherfucker gets GOT. I love this guy already, and I want to watch a show where he travels around Westeros, committing benevolent murders.

And in the lovely city of Twin Peaks, Dany is having a grand old time. Parties are being thrown for her, her dragons are healthy, and like, everybody and his brother is proposing marriage to her. OK, well, General Tso from last time wants her to marry him, which will allow him to open a vault, which will allow her to take over Westeros, apparently. But Last Of The Mohicans has a different plan to help Dany conquer Westeros, and she seems to be going with him instead. Which hopefully will not cause General Tso to invoke Lunch Specials on them or some other terrible thing. Seriously, what the fuck is this Qarth place? Why doesn't anybody make any sense? Including Dany, who is suddenly all power hungry! Wasn't that Malfoy's trip, Dany? Why can't you just chill with your dragons and your sexy servants and be cool?

By the way. I'm reading the Game Of Thrones books, now. They're really good! You should read them!

BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S2E4: I'm Team Renly

There's a telling scene 2/3 of the way through episode four, the evocatively titled "Garden Of Bones." Stannis and Renly (and Cat Stark) meet in a big field (That's a very bizarre human quirk, by the way--the need to meet up in big, blank spaces when discussing important matters. Why do we do that? Conference rooms are the new big open fields. I'm not sure that's an improvement, but it's going to make my staff meeting tomorrow a lot more fun). The brothers bicker, Stannis's fire priestess talks some mystical shit, and Cat tells the brothers she wants to knock their heads together (luv u Cat). Stannis uses his "chosen by the gods, marinated in seven spices" argument to try to get Renly to fight alongside him, and Renly, scoffing at his brother's new religion, puts his faith in the men who fight for him: He asks Stannis if he sees all of his banners in the distance. Stannis asks if he should trust some bolts of cloth to win him power. Renly replies that no, he rather trusts the men who hold those bolts of cloth. And I kind of love that sentiment? Like a lot. It totally won me over to the forest hipster team. I want to watch Renly's convention speech now.

Robb Stark does some admirable shit, too, but he's settling into more of a Julian Castro role. See, at the start of the episode, we see him mount yet another successful attack on Lannister forces. As his men take prisoners, Robb overrules a general who insists on torturing the captured officers for information. Good! Way to be, Robb. Then he gives some tough love and comfort to a Lannister soldier getting his rotting leg sawed off. Yepp, you're a goodd mann indeedd, Robb! But then, while trying to flirt with the nurse who performed the amputation (yo it takes a special kind of dude to watch a girl sawing someone's leg off and then go "How YOU doin?") Robb admits that he has no desire for the Iron Throne and isn't really sure what will happen once he kills Joffrey. "You'd go to war to depose someone with no plan for what comes next?" the nurse asks, incredulous. "But, we'll be greeted as liberators!" Robb sputters.

But seriously, it seems like we're building toward a Robb/Renly partnership (no, not that kind, Renly!) which I think would be for the best. They're both hip, trendy dudes and they both seem to have decent intentions. I'm declaring myself Team Renly. Maybe I'll fly his banner at the top of my Tumblr or something. I'm not sure how well he's going to do against Baby Smoke Monster, but we'll get to that in a second.

In Winterfell, King Ladyboy is getting comfortable letting his freak flag fly around the capitol. Pointing his fucking crossbow at everything that moves, he sadistically and publicly abuses Sansa for her brother's actions. Luckily Tyrion is also now comfortable exercising his power, so he puts a stop to it and admonishes Joffrey in front of everybody. I worry a little about Tyrion, pushing back so hard against Cersei and her son. Stay safe, buddy!

Bro, ever the optimist, suggests that Joffrey simply needs to get laid. CLASSIC BRO MOVE. But when Tyrion sends some nice ladies to the King's chambers, Joffrey commands them to savagely beat each other. Cool sexual fantasy, Joff! It's hard to understand how this guy became such a twisted punk. His mom likes to get fucked by her relatives, but it she likes to get fucked in a relatively normal, emotionally healthy way. And King Meatsauce didn't seem like a terrible dad. He certainly treated HIS prostitutes kindly! He never had the paid birds and royal bees talk with Ladyboy?

Littlefinger shows up at Renly's camp and strikes out all over the place--first he tries to gossip a little with Forest Queen about Renly being on the down low but she knows enough not to tip her hand. Then a conversation with Cat Stark leads her to pull a knife on him. I thought this guy had game? He saves his ace move for the end though, bringing Cat Stark Ned's remains as a gift. I know that sounds really fucked up and morbid, but in Westeros that's a really nice thing to do. "Hey, I brought you a dead body in a trunk." "OH MY GOD THANK YOU!"

Arya and Gendry and their crew end up in some kind of prison town, where lots of Guantanamo Bay shit goes down while interrogators ask them about The Brotherhood, whatever the fuck that is. If you were freaked out by reading the rat/face-cage scene in 1984, you're going to FUCKING HATE this part. YIKES. The rad part comes when we watch Arya put herself to sleep at night my slowly, purposefully reciting her kill list. YEAH! I can't wait for Arya to avenge some motherfuckers (in probably like ten years). Gendry is about to get the ratbucket treatment himself when the most improbably of all rescuers arrives: Tywin Lannister. He identifies Gendry and Arya's gender and takes them both into his command. I mean, I know this is out of one oven and into another oven, but at least this one is still preheating.

The weirdest plotline in this episode concerns Dany's attempt to enter a mysterious city known as Qarth. She and her team show up, a bunch of cartoonish motherfuckers come out and greet them, and the conversation gets strange and tense and Lynchian like right away. Pretty soon a guy (who I SWEAR introduces himself as "[something something] Ducksauce" is cutting his hand and arguing with a guy who looks like a Simpsons caricature of Rush Limbaugh vacationing in Egypt. Rush doesn't want them in, Ducksauce does, and eventually they are granted entry. Last of The Mohicans is like "This feels tonally off from the rest of the show." And Dany is like "I don't know this could be interesting, give it a chance!"

Finally, Tyrion flips Queen Eyebrow's new lover, Cousin Eyebrow, blackmailing him into feeding him information about the Queen. So that's his counterbalance to showing his strength with King Ladyboy. Tyrion's got a lot of upper hands right now, right? Almost too many. It makes me wonder where his blind spot is, and how far he can take this ascension. (If the Romans are any possibly guide, we could be looking at an I, Claudius situation here, with Ladyboy as Caligula and Tyrion as Claudius. There are more than a few parallels!)  I mean, what could stop him now, other than a smoke monster born from Stannis's sperm from the Fire Priestess's belly? Yeah, that happens too.

BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES S2E3: The Bachelor And The Bride

I forgot to mention that at the end of the last episode, Jon Snow discovered that Daughter Fucker was discarding his sons in the woods, letting the Predator monster or whatever else is out there take them for a snack or maybe a fuel source. Which means that two episodes in a row now have ended with child murder! (“HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?”-George R.R. Martin, while crip-walking.) And yet the politics are maybe not as transgressive and fun as we (meaning “I”) might like. We see a post-partum Cassie from Skins walking around in this episode, unharmed and shucking corn, so clearly the Sanctity of Life was her primary concern when she appealed to Samwise Gangrene about her bouncing baby boy. Also, I mean: all of the baby-killing has been done so far by our villains. Maybe I’m being oversensitive, it being so close to an election and all, but just once I’d like to see a good guy terminate a pregnancy/infancy, just to even the playing field a little.

The only thing we get approaching that is the talk Jon Snow gets from his boss after the spy shit he pulled on Daughter Fucker gets The Night’s Watchmen ejected from their quarters (Christ, that sentence is probably pretty hard to follow if you’re not actually watching this show). See, Bossman knew about the child-sacrifice and allowed it to continue, because Daughter Fucker was an ally the Night’s Watch needed above the wall. Jon Snow apologizes, seeing the realpolitik big picture at once. IS THAT SO HARD, REPUBLICANS? I’m digging my own child-grave here, I know. Child Murder is not the same as Abortion, so I shouldn’t even engage with this as an allegory. But still!

Back in Winterfell, Bonus Jonas dreams of wandering around in the body of a dire wolf. He asks his old servant/pal (let’s call him Alfred) if there’s any way the dream could be indicating something true, but Alfred tells him that all the animorphs are dead now.  :( :( :(

Elsewhere, it turns out Renly has set up a nice little kingdom for the forest hipsters in his command. Westeros’s own Brooklyn! I mean, seriously y’all, in the space of ten minutes he makes a woman one of his knights and then almost has a threesome with a brother and sister! Very NYT style section. (He married One Direction’s sister, who is cool with all the gay stuff and just wants a potential King’s potential heir in her womb. Cool sister!) Then Cat Stark comes to visit, and Renly seems open to the prospect of teaming up. And yet, he turns down the brother/sister combo. Huh.

Theon Greyjoy is still visiting home, which is always a bad idea. You Can’t Go Home Again, Or Your Dad Will Pull Some Power Trip Shit On You And Your Sister Will Let You Finger Her is one of Thomas Wolfe’s best books for a reason, y’all. But anyway, it sounds like he is going rogue on Robb Stark. BOOOOO! What about all that stirring O Captain My Northern Captain shit? Don’t forget where you came from, Theon! I mean, not originally, but where you came from right after that!

In the Capitol, Tyrion—the best part about this show thirteen episodes running (I mean, the dragons were a potential challenger for a while there but now they’re all dead in the desert with Dany. Presumably, I mean—she doesn’t turn up in this episode at all)—executes a pretty hilarious plan to root out whoever is feeding the Queen information. He tells Little Finger, Baldy McNodick, and Weirdo Old Beardo about his plans to marry off Cersei’s youngest daughter. Thing is, he tells each of them a different prospective husband. So when Cersei busts down his door, livid that her daughter might be married off to some jabroni for political reasons, the same way she was as a young girl (in a bracingly brutal human moment. Cersei is terrified that her daughter would be consigned to her fate and puts aside all artifice to put a stop to it), Beardo is outed as the Queen's informant. So Tyrion cuts off his beard and ships him off to a dungeon. YOU GO TYRION. YOU GET YOURS, MAN. (This episode needs more Lisbeth and Bro, though.)

Okay, so the meme needs a little work

Somebody associated with Stannis’s camp gets himself baptized in the name of one of the competing sets of Gods currently waging a proxy war in Westeros. I don’t really know what the point of this scene or what the deal is with the gods in general  is, but can I gripe about something for a sec? Two times so far this summer, I have been swimming in a lake and looked over to see somebody getting baptized down the beach a ways. How fucking rude is that? I mean, give a guy the common courtesy--some of us don’t want to be getting that secondhand baptism, you know? At least I can take comfort in the fact that the double baptism probably cancelled itself out. Makes sense, right? I mean, makes about as much sense as baptism, right?

Finally, because it wouldn’t be an episode of Game Of Thrones without a kid getting murdered, the King’s Bastard Hunting Party returns to Lil’ Katniss (fine, Arya’s) chain gang. The guy who has been protecting her since Ned’s death dies fighting them off (but not before telling her a long story about the meaninglessness and attendant rage that comes with revenge—the most stirring and dark detail of which is that this guy couldn’t remember his brother’s face nearly so well as the face of the man who killed him) but thanks to a mix-up involving Gendry’s (Chris from Skins’s) horned-helmet, Arya manages to convince the attackers that they’ve already killed King Meatsauce’s bastard. Baller move, Arya!