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!
