Game of Thrones, “First of His Name”
We are now halfway through another season of Game of Thrones, and the action has been going almost non-stop so far. Though there are a lot of plotlines in this season, this week’s episode can be boiled into three major plotlines: Cersei, Sansa and Bran.
In case you haven’t had enough with royal festivities this season, this episode started with a surprisingly bloodless coronation ceremony. The episode was not to stay bloodless, but the scenes set in King’s Landing managed to be very straightforward: Maegary’s pretending like she wasn’t totally still trying to be queen, Cersei is being sentimental about her children, and Tyrion’s trial is still on the horizon.
Cersei spends most of the episode demonstrating the fact that she does have emotions despite being a major ice queen. Though she does some royal business, the episode is mostly focused on her talking about her children. She may be mad at Jaime, but she still has a heart.
Sansa and Petyr Baelish arrive at the Erie, where they encounter Lysa and her creepy son, who if you’ll remember was eight years old still breastfeeding last time we saw him. Sansa meets her aunt for the first time, and we actually get to see Littlefinger interacting with Lysa after hear about their relationship for a while.
Their creepy reunion is interrupted as the scene drops a major bombshell; Petyr Baelish provided poison for Lysa Arryn to kill her husband. He also convinced Lysa to send a letter to Catelyn pinning the murder on the Lannisters.
Think about that for a second: everything we were taught to believe in the first season was yet another machination by Littlefinger. What a twist!
Things get more complicated when Lysa stars viciously interrogating Sansa about the nature of her relationship with Petyr and hinting that Sansa would soon be married to creepy Robin. This plotline is going to take a while to come to fruition, but this is the first major thing to happen to Sansa since marrying Tyrion.
I have to say, though, this is the funniest this show has been in a while. Lysa’s weirdness coupled with Petyr’s awkward resignation to this marriage looks like it was ripped right out of Arrested Development. Petyr even nailed the Gob Bluth “I made a huge mistake” face.
Back up North, we revisit Craster’s Keep, and we learn more about Jojen Reed and Bran’s powers. I’m still confused by the weird mysticism-supernatural stuff that they are drawing out of this plotline, but we do see that Jojen can, in fact, see the future, (and he does do in time to stop his sister’s rape, thankfully) and Bran can control Hodor. That new ability will definitely open Bran up to some unique opportunities.
The interesting thing is that, yet again, Jon and Bran failed to reconnect, but now Bran is actively seeking the weirwood that he doesn’t WANT to encounter his brother. Knowing this show, that kind of decision never bodes well. But Jon was reunited with Ghost, so that turned out well.
The recapture of Craster’s Keep is one of the few truly bloody scenes of this season. The crazy fight choreography and the gratuitous blood shots heighten the contrast between these scarce fight scenes are the weighty political drama that has dominated this season.
I’m certainly not complaining. I watch Game of Thrones for the drama, anyway.
Across the board, the other characters have slow-moving plotlines.
Arya has made it clear to the Hound that she’s sick of his behavior, and tried to practice her sword fighting. The Hound shows her she still has a lot to learn to be the budding assassin she longs to be.
In the east, Danaerys’s attempts to move her army to Westeros have been moving along well. However, it turns out that despite her conquering, Dany’s attempts to upset the slave-owning status quo have begun to fall apart, and the wealthy slave-owning masters she has left behind have overturned the governments she has set up.
I would feel bad for her, but she totally messed with the wrong people, so she had this coming.
Finally, there’s Brienne and Pod. They’re headed to Castle Black to find Sansa.
Brienne can’t stand Pod. That’s really it to their plot.
