BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES, S3E2: Love And Warg

Game Of Thrones gets topical! As if there weren't enough reasons to hate King Ladyboy--this week we learn he also wants to ban homosexual acts like some kind of two bit South Dakota state legislator. Of course, he's talking about it while stroking his crossbow and talking to Marge, she of the freaky-deaky incest threeway floated last season, so take that whole scene however you will. Gay rights come up again later, when Jamie tells Brienne he knew about Renly's DL situation and was cool with it. Hey, well, hands off to you, Jamie. You're a stand-up guy. On this one issue, anyway. 

Anyway last time I peacefully accepted that we'd have to endure a bit of shifting around before the parts really got moving--such is life in Westeros. But I didn't think we'd have to deal with a whole 'nother HOUR of shufflin' this week! Will somebody just get to killing somebody else already? I mean, SHIT. Even god damned Theon is still alive, so technically we're at -2 for this season. There wasn't even any nudity in this episode. WHAT GIVES? Can we get some (lack of a) civilization, here?

Dany and her slaves and Jon Swanson and his morals are all absent from this episode, but at least we check in with Bran, Arya, and the armformentioned Jamie. All of them are still wandering the woods with their respective friends/guards from last season, and this week all of them are captured or otherwise overtaken by people we've never seen before. Poor Lil' Katniss--out of the frying pan and into the oven and out of the oven and into the blender and out of the blender and onto the hotplate, am I right? She's really getting Drunk Kitchened something fierce. This new batch of people she'll escape from sooner or later are the Brotherhood--the ones O'Brien was so desperately seeking by way of rat-bucket torture back in Harrenhall (a few dozen Arya-captors ago). They actually seem like OK dudes, especially the Jeff Daniels-looking motherfucker, Thoros of Myr. But when one of them captures The Hound and he informs them she's Arya Stark, well, that's a game changer, ladies!

Meanwhile Bran et al. are set upon in the woods by Shane Bogwin and his sister, a couple of mystical weirdos who apparently have the power to incept Bran and who want to help him realize the extent of his powers (his "dark magic dreams," as Osha calls them). Yep, Bran is changing, and I'm not just referring to the fact that AWWWW SOMEBODY'S VOICE DROPPED! Welcome to manhood, Bonus Jonas! Getting the birds and bees talk from Hodor is gonna be pretty rough, huh?

Jamie and Brienne also get captured, by that weasel-looking British character actor, you know the one. No, not that one. Not that one. Not that one, but he's in this episode too. Not that one. Yeah, that guy! He captures them, but I'm sure he'll unhand them sooner or later. 

What else? Tyrion and Lisbeth Salander bicker cutely. Somebody's kidnapped Theon and are torturing him, and somebody else says he'll save him (his whole story is so hopelessly vague that I don't even care). Cat Stark's father dies, and she and Robb set out for his funeral. Cat tells Robb's wife a story about the time she wished Jon Snow would die and he almost did and she felt really shitty about it, but then went back on her promise to the gods that if they spared him, she'd treat him like a son. Yikes. Up north of the wall, Jon Snow and Mance Rayder have a conversation to remind viewers that his name is Mance Rayder and that they are north of the wall.

The key scene of this episode is a conversation that takes place between Sansa and Lady Olenna, the truth-spittin' matriarch of the Loras family. She and Marge get Sansa to give them the dirt about what a sadistic fuck Joffrey is, but hearing it seems to upset neither of them. Sansa is bewildered, Zac is intrigued. (I will say though--this scene in the book had me cackling with joy at Lady Olenna's crotchety truth bombs, and here I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe it's because I was picturing Lady Olenna as this lady.)