BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES S2E8: Throw Momma From The Train

So have I mentioned yet that you should totally read the Song Of Ice And Fire books? You should. I only just finished book 1, because I'm always screencapping TV shows instead of reading books or participating in culture in any meaningful way, but I very much enjoyed it and am very much looking forward to the next however-many. Even though it unfolds in almost exactly the same way as the show, jumping from character to character at usually the exact same moments (you'd think the show would be inclined to cut around more). There's more Ned and Jon and less Rob and Theon, that's about the biggest difference. And Dany's motivations are clearer, sort of (she has some important dreams).

Anyway I meant to fold episode 8 into my recap of 7, but I forgot. Which is too bad, because basically nothing happens in this one. And now I don't want to attach it to episode 9, because that one is AWESOME and I don't want to drag the recap down with the repetitive dead weight of this one. I mean, I know you need a little calm before the storm, but this episode for real felt like "We only have nine episodes of story and HBO wants ten in the can." FOR INSTANCE: Last time, Dany was invited to The House Of The Undying. In this episode: she tries to decide if she should go to The House Of The Undying. That's it! The same thing happens with Tyrion, who is still fretting about Stannis's approaching army, and Jon Snow, who is still captive among the Wildlings. They've got his former commander too, who starts whispering to Jon to be the Leo to his Martin Sheen in The Departed. Emphasis back there on "starts" talking about it, because the idea doesn't come to fruition until episode ten, when this dude and Jon go full-on Dumbledore/Snape. And just generally, characters all over the map seem to be repeating sentiments they've been making clear all season long--you could almost start watching the show here and be able to keep up.

Treading water is one thing, but going backwards is even more frustrating. And in this episode Cercei is immediately returned her evil self, attempting to kidnap Tyrion's lady to hold as ransom (because Tyrion refuses to talk Joffrey out of fighting in the battle). It's got a kind of funny twist though: Cercei captured the wrong ho (it's kind of a funny joke about Cercei's inability to relate to other women. They all look the same to her)! Tyrion manages not to show his hand and rushes back to Lisbeth Salander in his chambers. They have a very touching moment together--and I don't even mean a sex scene, for once! It's totally sweet. Those two are doomed.

The biggest and best step forward in this episode involves Arya and (who else?) Murder Genie. Tywin hits the road, so Arya starts looking for an exit. When Murder Genie asks for a name, she gives him his own. Bound by his own very strange moral system, Murder Genie begs her to unname him. She does, in exchange for a promise to help her and Gendry escape Alcatraz. True to his word, Murder Genie kills all the guards and leaves them propped up by their posts (your basic Weekend At Bernie's), and Arya, Gendry and their friend Augustus Gloop walk right out the front gate.

The second biggest move in this episode comes when Robb finds out Cat released Jamie Lannister. Furious with her, he puts her under tent arrest and promptly fucks the shit out of the slutty nurse, seemingly dismissing the arranged marriage his mother signed him up for last season. That seems entirely reasonable, and I'll kind of be pissed if it comes back to bite Robb. When Filch hears he'll just be like, "Yeah, four arranged marriages was probably an extravagant toll." But seeing the nurses's butt is pretty small reward for the extravagant toll that is this episode. Even the final twist, that Bran et al. are still alive, is too obvious to be particularly cathartic. I can't believe this took an hour! Nothing happened! But all will be forgiven next week.

BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S2E7: Your Honor, You're On Her

Episode 7 is called "A Man Without Honor," and while Game Of Thrones has plenty of those, today we're chiefly concerned with Theon Greyjoy and Jamie Lannister, two dudes majorly lacking in that department. So, OK, let's consider for a sec the kind of Shakespearean balancing act this series pulls off when it comes to the merits of honor: Being an honorable man is obviously an objective good like, always. But Ned Stark was an honorable man, and look where that shit got him. Killed! And yet, other, less honorable, folk have been able to effect a lot more positive change since his death. (When they weigh Tyrion Lannister in the balance, he won't be found wanting, you know? And that's not a joke about his size.)

This week we have Theon and Jamie both pulling some major dick moves. But oddly, while Theon's lack of honor distances us from him, Jamie's dick moves are so clever and compelling (and ballsy) that I find myself endeared to him. Dude brutally kills one of his cousins, and yet I was somehow rooting for him. How'd he do that?

It might be because his chief antagonist is Cat Stark, and reading the original book A Game Of Thrones, as I am doing right now, has completely turned me against her. When you have a little more insight into her motivations and thoughts, she comes across as totally self-centered and weirdly unloving, right (or am I the only one this happened to)? Seeing Tyrion and Jon where they are now in the show and reading her shitty treatment of them earlier in the book especially stacks the deck against her. Reading the books and catching up with what you've already seen on the show while still FINISHING the show is kind of problematic, but what can you do? We're here now. This is happening. Winter is coming.

It might also just be that the show seems to be softening toward the non-Tyrion Lannisters anyway. We see a different side of Queen Eyebrow this week, after Sansa has her period for the first time (and after she and Lisbeth Salander fail to hide it from her handlers--she can theoretically bear Ladyboy's children/hooved beasts now, after all). Cercei levels with Sansa: everything about being married off and being forced to have children sucks, except for the children. You will love your kids, and you can try to love your husband, she says. Sansa is either too dumb or too scared to engage with Cercei on a human level, which feels like a smart move right now. But it won't later. Sansa has another weird scene with The Hound, who rather stiffly articulates his raison d'etre. I can't figure out if it's the writing or the acting that is bad here, but it is at least one of them. "Killing is real good," The Hound says, (basically). "I like killing and I don't like things that are not killing." Sansa is like, cool story bro, and we're like NEXT SCENE PLEASE BRO.

Over the wall and through the woods, Jon is still hanging out with the Wildling, and she basically talks about his dick for an entire episode. I'm not even kidding. She notices his erection while they're sleeping (totally natural, Jon! Don't beat yourself off about it!) and proceeds to make an in-depth inquiry into Jon Snow's jerk off schedule (my new band name). And I think maybe loudly talking about dicks is how the Snow Hoboes communicate, because after a while they're set upon by a troop of her compatriots. It makes perfect sense to me that in Game Of Thrones town, you get punished for being a prude. I sort of feel like Jon will figure his way out of being captured, though. His wolf will just show up and eat someone's face and we'll be good.

In fact, it's hard to feel like anybody is particularly threatened at this point in the series. At the end of this episode, something shocking and horrible happens, but I when I watched it I was 90% sure it was a fake-out and I was right. The only thing I'm stressed about is the same thing Tyrion is stressed about: Stannis's forthcoming invasion of King's Landing. (Of course, Tyrion is worried about The Realm, and I'm only worried about Tyrion.) Several times in this episode we see him trying to formulate a plan, but his brain trust only consists of Baldy McNodick and Bro(nn). How fucked is King's Landing that these three dudes seem to be the only ones who care? It's fun to be a fly on the wall of their war room, though, except for a weird beat where Tyrion seems to rather happily endorse the use of the artificial fire that so appalled him a few episodes ago. In later episodes, we'll see him treating the weapons with more gravity again, which makes his temporary giddiness feel all the more like a strange lapse in writing consistency.

SPEAKING OF STRANGE LAPSES IN WRITING CONSISTENCY: DANY. Still in Qarth, the Mother of Dragons is suddenly back to doubting her claim to the throne and all that jazz. I mean, sure, sister was just dealt a pretty major blow to her self esteem when her dragons got kidnapped, but now her obsession with birthright seems even more like a 24 hour flu.* She joins Ducksauce Warbucks at a meeting of The Thirteen, who are essentially the Qarth city council. Or, they were. Because Ducksauce and his bald sorcerer friend Cancer Moby kill all of them and take over. For some reason! Ducksauce was in cahoots with Cancer Moby all along, see, and it turns out they're holding Dany's dragons in some kind of haunted house. SURE, OK! I'm just going to warn you right now: this is going to resolve in a satisfying way, but not one that makes any sense at all. Be ready to be cool with that.

(*Dany seems to literally repeat lines from episodes just after Draco was killed, which is the beginning of a larger, unfortunate trend in the last few episodes: irritatingly repetitive dialog. Characters re-articulate the themes of their respective arcs multiple times, like just in case you missed them the first time around. It's very weird for a show that normally extends A TON of credit to its audience.)

But for all the stuff the writers seem to be doing wrong lately, they're getting one thing right, and that is the evolution of Cercei as something more than a super-evil cunt. In the second-most compelling scene of this episode, she finally expresses doubt about her incestual activities and about her crazy-ass son the King. Shockingly, she spills her guts to Tyrion, who seems as surprised as we are. He tries, and fails, to comfort her while she cries by noting that two out of three of her incest babies don't seem insane at all. "You beat the odds," he says. Yeah, but, like, you really didn't have to buy that scratch ticket, girl.

Finally: the aforementioned dick moves (and no, I'm not talking about Jon Snow's twitchy boner). Jamie Lannister (this is the first most compelling scene, by the way) murders his cellmate and then a guard who checks on him, which ignites a wave of rage among the men in the Stark camp. Cat can't control it, and Robb is away negotiating a treaty with some dude. It becomes clear that Jamie Lannister is gambling his own life against Cat Stark's mercy (and nagging worry that, if Jamie dies, one of her kids will get got in retaliation). And it works: rather than see him killed by her own men, Cat sets Jamie free. Wow, this woman is REALLY TERRIBLE at keeping Lannisters captive! 0-2, Cat! Back up north, Theon calls the townspeople of Winterfell together to show them what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps: he's got two charred bodies that he claims are Bonus Jonas and Rickon the friendly ghost baby. For a moment, it is horrifying. And Maester Luwin's anguished cry when he sees the bodies cut through me like Valyrian steel. But wait: where are My Fair Lady and Hodor? Clearly this is a ruse, and Theon simply murdered some other kids. Move along, people. Nothing to see here. I mean, except for the murder of innocent children, but that's pretty par for the course at this point.

BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S2E6: The Muppet Takes Manhattan

Theon Greyjoy calls an audible and marches on Winterfell instead of following his father's orders to, like, just sail around and punch a few people. And he succeeds, in what has to be the most mumblecore takeover ever recorded in (ok, fake) history. Like, he shows up at Bran's bedside and just says, "Hey, can you like, um, yield Winterfell to me?" And Bran is like "Nah." Theon is like, "Man, c'mon, like, don't you see that this is important, and maybe even significant for me?" And Bran is just like, "Whatever." It's straight Duplass brothers--except for the part where Theon (reluctantly) chops off a dude's head.

On Alcatraz, Arya gives us not one but TWO nervewracking set pieces (Girl really carries her weight in an otherwise kind of uneventful episode). 1. Littlefinger visits Tywin Lannister, and thus Arya has to shuck and jive around the shadows so Littlefinger won't ID her while she pours the drinks. It's so tense that I literally couldn't pay attention to anything the two guys were discussing, so I hope it wasn't important. I also can't even remember if Littlefinger saw her, in the end. Shit was THAT stressful! But motherfucker's going to play it so close to the vest anyway that it doesn't even matter if he saw her or not. 2. Later, or maybe it was before, Arya gets caught by some jabroni with a piece of paper she stole from Tywin's room (presumably to covertly send to Robb). She runs desperately for Murder Genie, who shrugs and pulls off another murder in like 30 seconds, just before Tywin's man gets a chance to tattle. It's one of the best, biggest laughs of the series so far. WHOA, IS MURDER GENIE EDGING OUT TYRION AS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER?

No, probably not. In King's Landing, there's word of food shortages. Cercei is all "let them eat cake" and Tyrion is like "seriously, bitch, this is legit." Like a lot of rich folks, Cercei Lannister is only good at shit on her level--see also Mitt Romney's Ohio woes. Then a a funny thing happens on the way to the forum: the cityfolk rise up against King Ladyboy in the streets. He screams for them to be killed, some random priest gets ripped up zombie-movie style, and Sansa nearly ends up gang-raped. Tyrion erupts at Joffrey in righteous fury, slapping him and screaming for him to see JUST how much of a fuckwad he is. It's very baller (even though it probably won't work).

You know what isn't baller, though? What ever is happening to Dany. We saw just a hint of it last time, but today homegirl is POWERMAD like whoa. She's looking for ships and talking about her birthright just like Draco used to do. What happened to just being happy to be a chill Khaleesi and Dragondoula, Dany? It's such a sharp change for her that even other characters seem taken aback. Plus, it ends up feeling like just a cheap way to make Dany deserve some kind of comeuppance, because guess what happens at the end of the episode? Somebody steals her dragons! Oh shit! See what sudden-onset hubris will get you, girl?

Jon and Robb, meanwhile, are having lady troubles. Robb tracks down the slutty nurse from a few episodes ago and is making his move when Cat Stark returns to camp and reminds him that he is betrothed. (Remember how she sold away his hand in marriage to use a bridge?) COCKBLOCKED!

Way up north, the Night's Watch: Special Task Force comes upon a party of Wildlings and kills them. Except one, who turns out to be a cute girl. Jon tells his boss that he'll do the deed, and the rest of them are like, "OK, we're going to hike ahead of you, catch you in a bit?" Dudes, why do that? Unless they think he's going to fuck her before (or maybe after?) decapitation and they want to give him some privacy. Whatever the reason, she gets away. ICEBLOCKED!

Jon chases her and apparently the rest of the NW: STF doesn't think it is important to stop and wait for him or check and see how things are going when he doesn't return for HOURS, so when Jon finally snags her they end up cuddling for warmth as night falls. And even though she's tied up and probably going to die by his hand, girl dry humps him a few times just for kicks. Wildling is right. Get it, girl.

Finally, My Fair Lady shows up to seduce Lord Theon. She's like, "I do what I have to do to get by in the world," and Theon is like "SCHWING!!!" But once she's fucked him into unconsciousness she, Hodor, Bran, and Creepy Ghost Brother escape Winterfell. Boom!

Saddle up for the next few episodes guys, because I'm watching them now and shouting and yelling and generally upsetting my wife while she draws. Shit gets hardcore.