In honor of the faith of the Seven, and
to pass the interminable wait for the conclusive episodes of Game Of Thrones, and not at all to scratch a compulsive itch that wouldn't go away once the idea occurred to me, I have decided to list my seven favorite moments from each of
the first seven seasons. Videos will be embedded in the headings. Anyway, without further ado...
The show introduces what will be two of its primary heroes in
the pilot episode, and it uses the opportunity to deliver some rather bald
exposition about their background and the insecurities that drive them. But while the rest of the premiere
can be a bit clunky in how it sets the board for the series (a result of the enormously intricate board as well as, no doubt, being shot, partially recast and reshot and edited together independently of
the rest of the production), it is already so dialed in on Tyrion’s character
that he is able to look Jon in the eye and say “look, here’s the thing that
makes you tick, and here’s how it relates to the thing that makes me tick.” And it somehow doesn’t feel like it is being done for the audience’s benefit.
It’s not a lengthy exchange, but it imparts an important
lesson to Jon: know your own deficiencies, because if you deny the obvious it
will only make it that much clearer to your enemies. But if you own them, they
will not be such soft targets. Not a
complicated concept, but Dinklage sells the basics of self-deprecation as the
hard-bitten wisdom of a survivor.
This is also the show playing a very, very long game. It is about to set these characters on
extremely divergent paths for a full 6 years, but the rapport between them will
be vital when they do finally reconnect.
And the show does not tip its hand in that regard; while they develop a
cordial respect over the next few episodes, you do not get the sense that it is
setting them up as best buds. Especially
in this first interaction, they make no real attempt to be nice to each other,
and when their families go to war, there’s nothing like an assumption that their bond will
transcend that conflict.
Sean Bean was the heart of the first season and granted the
series its initial credibility. Nicolaj Coster-Waldau was an unknown at the time (at least to American audiences), but
Jaime Lannister would gradually be revealed to be the much darker, more damaged
heart of the show it would become. He started out as a “pure” villain, and this confrontation promised a more
simplistic clash between good
guys and bad guys. Which was still plenty compelling in its own right; show me great actors facing off in grand, intricate settings and
costumes, gravely intoning about bloody conflicts, and I'm a happy camper. And
the show would deliver that, but also so much more, and it's the layering that becomes
evident upon a rewatch. The dialogue is
great, not showy but effective in delivering both backstory and character, and
the disparity between Jaime’s pragmatism and Ned’s unflinching principles is
evident even the first time through.
We have of course been primed to hate Jaime by his
attempt on Bran’s life, but what is striking on a return visit, when we have become privy to his secrets and regrets, is that he does genuinely admire
Ned. He both envies and scorns the ideals of simple, unyielding honesty and honor that Ned embodies, precisely because he makes them look so natural while Jaime's experience has proven them to be anything but easy or simple to hold to. If he could somehow win the respect (if not friendship) of this rival who has exactly the
reputation he craves, it would mean the world to him. And so antagonistic as it may be, this exchange is actually Jaime reaching out in his own guarded way. But Ned has nothing to
give him in response except for a burn that is even more solid because it is
also, even when we know more about the Kingslayer's complicated history, still fundamentally true.
Robert Baratheon’s role in the first season was basically to
die suddenly, setting off the wars of succession that would fuel the story of
the next several years/books/seasons. We
could have learned everything we needed to about him for the plot to function
(that he is Ned’s BFF and an inattentive husband/king) in the span of a single
dialogue scene. So this scene serves no lode-bearing plot function. That is a real rarity* for a show whose
primary draw is its plot, which is as dynamic and byzantine and truly epic, but
also as truly overstuffed, as any series I can think of. And since HBO is not, for example, FX, where you are
apt to find midseason episodes of Sons
Of Anarchy running 96 minutes long for no discernible reason the
non-finale episodes tend to stick pretty close to 55 tightly-packed
minutes. There just isn’t a ton of space
for scenes of characters sitting around and shooting the shit if it isn't setting up something specific down the line.
But this is one of the
best scenes of the series. It starts
with some discussion of the need for a king’s steward,
and shifts to how even medieval warfare was as much a battle for hearts and
minds as for castles and crowns.
Already this demonstrates the attention to realpoltitik concerns that
separates Game Of Thrones from
conventional fantasy narratives, and I’m always rapt with geeky attention
whenever people with beards and/or vaguely British accents are gravely discussing military strategy. The more elaborately rendered the maps they
are hunched over, and intricately carved the little troop markers, the further
I’m leaning in. But again, none of this
is strictly necessary for the plot. We
already know that he loves and trust Ned and despises Jaime, and vice versa for her. And the invasion they
are anticipating won’t actually come to pass.
Which is also part of the series’ knack for misdirection. It’s willingness to devote time to living with
the characters’ concerns in the moment, even when it “knows” that those
characters won’t be seeing those plans or fears realized, means
that it doesn’t tip its hand about the outcome of a particular conflict or
storyline.
But all that is preamble to when the king and queen discuss
their stillborn marriage with weary candor.
The writers and actors bring such resigned and authentic emotion to the
scene that these characters feel real
in a way that transcends their positions as pieces to move the plot
forward. The stakes of the titular game are
elevated by the feeling that there are actual people caught up in it, and this
scene (one of the few in the first season that was wholly invented for TV)
makes sure we know that even the Wicked Queen and King Inciting Incident The
First are actual people. It’s the best
work Mark Addy did on the show, but the real revelation is Lena Headey showing a
bit – just a bit – of the brittle, wounded heart beneath the cold exterior that
the other characters see. Cersei is the
wicked queen in most respects, but this scene allows us to glimpse the
foundations of what led her to embrace that role. She long ago gave up on being
loved or accepted for who she is, and decided that to be hated was preferable
to being ignored. Cersei is not just the
show’s longest-serving antagonist, she is its richest, and this scene (and
Headey) is a big reason why.
*or at least it would be until the writers introduced Ramsay
Bolton and decided they needed to devote 12 minutes every week to reiterating
that he was a wily sadist and also a
wily sadist
This may seem like an odd choice as the only major
death from the season, while leaving bigger fish like Ned and Khal Drogo on the board. But I will always recall this as the moment
when Game Of Thrones really, truly grabbed me. It was the first big surprise of
series for me, not because it was hard to see what in general was coming for Dany’s
shitheel brother, but because it happened so much faster than I thought it
would. I watch a lot of TV, and like to
think I’ve cultivated a knack for identifying the contours of a plot as it
develops. After getting my bearings in
Westeros, I had started assuming that I had a pretty good sketch of where the storylines were heading. I didn’t
have all the particulars sussed out, but I had a good idea that the season
would end with the Starks and Lannisters going to war in the west, and Dany
stepping out of her useless, jealous brother’s shadow in the east, probably
with him dying horribly. I had been mildly
surprised to see Ned and Jaime already fighting in the streets at the end of
episode 5, but the “convenient” way that duel ended non-fatally felt
familiar from any number of shows that want to have their protagonist and
antagonist clash frequently, but not commit to the consequences of a real fight
to the death. When episode 6 opened with King Robert restoring Ned to his
position as Hand and all but telling him “damn it, keep it in your pants until
the season finale” it lulled me back into a sense of complacency. This was, at its base, a TV show. And the most natural thing in the world is for a
TV show to have a safe, familiar status quo that it wants to revert to after teasing major,
lasting changes.
So when we returned to Essos, I knew that Dany’s story was
destined to be much larger than her brother’s frustrated ambitions. But I was fairly content to settle in and
watch the plotline tread water for a few more weeks until their rift came to a
head in the finale. In the broad
strokes, my instincts about where the Targaryen arcs were heading were correct;
indeed, Dany won’t be showing up much on these lists because her story has had
by far the heaviest sense of inevitability hanging over it and it’s only the
relatively minor details that can surprise you.
But when this plotline jumped forward to what I’d marked out as the
climax of the season just as it passed the halfway point, I stood up and took
notice. It was made all the more
satisfying because Viserys was a sniveling jerkass, and the show had yet to provide us with a proper murdering for any
of its plentiful jerkasses. The details were
inventively brutal, with Drogo showing a surprisingly droll streak in how he
concedes to Viserys’s titular request.
And it made the entire Essos storyline feel, at least briefly, as
exciting and unpredictable as what was going on in Westeros.
The best part is actually what came after, though, as over
the next few weeks I continued to recalibrate where I thought the season would
end, and the show continued to blow right past that point in each new episode. The first handful of episodes
were intriguing, but this was the point where it first proved itself to be
several steps ahead of my expectations, and that’s what made it properly addicting.
So much of this series hinges on the character of Tywin
Lannister. His children need
to be simultaneously formidable antagonists for the Starks in their own right, but
it’s also crucial that we understand how they are collectively cowed by their
father, in order to sympathize with them in the quasi-protagonist capacities
they will take on in later seasons.
Luckily, Charles Dance is on hand to immediately establish Tywin as
exactly the sort of immovable object that he needs to be.
There is a dumbed down version of this scene that would be
simpler but still effective in getting the point across. One where Jaime immediately reverts to being
a frightened little boy in his father’s presence. What we get is richer and
more truthful, as Jaime is a grown man and accomplished warrior, who has enough
self-respect to go in with a gameplan for not giving his father the
satisfaction. But Tywin doesn’t simply bark
down his son. He heads off Jaime’s
practiced indifference at every turn, grinding it away as methodically and
efficiently as he dresses the dead stag (which just so happens to be the sigil of the dead ruler whose kingdom he
is plotting to carve up).
We have heard about what a fearsome force Tywin Lannister
is for 6 hours before this scene. In the
span of a few short minutes, Dance cuts a figure that lives up to the hype, but
is also instantly believable as an actual man, and a father to the characters
we have already come to know.
The twist that closed out “You Win Or You Die” upped the
stakes as it kicked off the season’s third act, but the real punch didn’t land
until the opening of “The Pointy End”. Syrio Forell did not have much screentime, but
in the course of 3 scenes he secured a spot as one of the most memorable bit
parts in a series packed to the gills with colorful supporting roles. Most of that is down to his dramatic exit
scene, as a group of armored soldiers interrupt Arya’s lesson with her “dancing
master”. But the two of them smell a
rat, and the First Blade Of Braavos does not run, even when outnumbered 5 to 1. But while his balls may be brass, his sword
is a wooden practice stick. Thanks to his l33t skillz, Arya escapes with a
mantra for the god of Death and the first name on her list of people to
kill. It would be several seasons before
she could belatedly, gruesomely cross it off, but this scene was
memorable enough that we didn’t need much of a reminder of just who and what
she was avenging four years later, on the other side of the world.
Ned Stark’s execution is the most well-remembered part of the
first book/season, if not the entire series. It would probably make more sense
for me to pick that scene, but especially upon revisiting, it’s the talkier,
character-driven stuff that remains more compelling. In particular, this scene gives us get Sean Bean at his
most Sean Bean – beat down, resigned but retaining an edge of steely nobility
even in defeat. There is no actor on earth better suited to tell us “I learned how to die a long time ago.”
I don’t even cite that meme to be facetious. Ned Stark could
be a frustrating character in his refusal to accept what kind of show he was
on, and I did feel some of the impatience with his decisions the first time
around. This was because I felt that some of those decisions were being made to justify an otherwise-unlikely plot twist rather than flowing from an authentic character trait. But an actor of Bean’s pedigree only needs a
single line to sell even stretches like that, and when he asks “You think my life is
some precious thing to me? That I would trade my honor for it?” with just the
right amount of genuine scorn, I bought in retroactively.
This also gives us our first real glimpse of the depths of
Varys, the Spider. Conleth Hill is also
great in the role, but until now we have seen him as only one of the many
schemers in King’s Landing. The most
shifty of them all, since his motives and background had been kept opaque as we
got to know a little more about the Littlefingers and Renlys and Cerseis. When he proclaims that he seeks to serve the
Realm, it creates a layer of intrigue on top of the pathos and despair of
lovable Ned’s predicament. And later
on, when you know that he actually means it, it adds poignancy to the exchange
even when the shock of Ned’s death has long since worn off.
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