GAME OF THRONES 5.10 - "MOTHER'S MERCY"

Man, five years in and I still really, really suck at predicting where Game Of Thrones is going.  And I continually underestimate its ruthlessness, as “Mother’s Mercy” featured fuck all of its eponymous virtue, with the deaths of at least a half dozen named characters, depending on how big an optimist/skeptic you happen to be.  I don’t think anyone is expecting Myrcella, Selyse, Myranda, or Meryn Trant to make a comeback, and Jaqen still seems to exist in some fashion (though the show is likely done with him), but other fates are apparently more ambiguous.  I’m actually kind of perplexed that so many people think Brienne might have pulled her killing stroke, as the shot makes it clear that she did not, everything we know about her indicates that she has neither the motivation nor inclination to do so, and Stannis’s story reaching a definitive and appropriate end.  On the flip side, there’s no way Sansa and Theon offed themselves in such an offhand fashion so early in the episode.  That was an escape, and I’m quite satisfied with how it played out, with Sansa’s determination to die “while there is still some of me left” being what jars Theon out of his Reekness (and his turn inspiring her to take the arm she refused on her wedding night) rather than Brienne swooping in to save the day.  But in any case, I’m sure we’ll be seeing them next year, searching the North for her brothers.

“I would totally do a flip if you weren’t so chicken, just by the way.”

That leaves one other death, but we’ll get back to that.  First I want to figure out how after writing 29 of these recaps, wherein I’ve examined at length the tactics the show uses to deliver its shocks and twists, I can still be as consistently surprised by it as I was by “Mother’s Mercy”.  And perhaps the best place to start is with the fact that it was a finale.  For its first three seasons, GOT’s final episodes were unusual beasts.  In years past, several of its HBO forebearers (The Wire most consistently, but The Sopranos more prominently) had developed a structure of placing the most violent climaxes in their penultimate episodes, while the finales examined the fallout from those big twists.  Those shows, however, still functioned on something more like a traditional broadcast production model, with harder breaks between seasons, which were not guaranteed to be coming when the prior season was in production.  So when one of their finales was devoted to falling action, it would be leading into a large gap (in real and story time) between the finale and subsequent premiere, which would then whip up a bunch of new threads more or less from scratch.

Game Of Thrones, on the other hand, was born with the full might of the HBO machine that those shows built behind it, which could reup even such a mammoth production for multiple years at a time.  And it had source material as a story blueprint right from the start.  On top of which, that source material has such a vast web of rather distinct storylines running concurrently that it would require forcing things rather inelegantly to bring them all to a proper stopping point simultaneously.  The result is that with a clearer eye for both its immediate and long-term future, GOT’s finales tended to be more like a traditional premiere, establishing new status quos and reshuffling characters to place them on new paths in the wake of the beheading/siege/wedding massacre du jour.

Sorry, you don’t even rate on this scale

This was true until last year, when “The Children” included such bombshells as the deaths of Tywin and the Hound, Stannis breaking the Wildling army and Bran meeting his…erm, geriatric raventreewizard? I must be misremembering that, right?

Nope?  Huh.

This meant that this year had the most distinct storylines to drum up “from scratch,” like the Dorne misadventure, Arya’s time in Braavos, Tyrion in Essos, and the Sparrow drama.  But it also continued to eschew the “9th episode” trend, as the finale is even more packed with incident than its predecessors, even if it lacks the elaborate setpieces that the last two episodes delivered in Mereen and Hardhome.  And I give the showrunners all the credit in the world for this, as it seems like one of the sharper bits of adapting the spirit, rather than the text, of the source that they’ve pulled off.  Martin’s work is about, in large part, undermining our expectations for how a “fantasy epic” is supposed to play out, and using those expectations (which stubbornly persist even how many years into the narrative) against us.  It feels as though Benioff and Weiss have also figured out what is expected of their show as an HBO prestige drama, and tweaked the format to keep us viewers similarly off balance.
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One result of all this is that, as I mentioned, the show is light on storylines that start at the beginning of a season and conclude definitively at its end.  Which means that I have a hard time judging one season or episode as being significantly better or worse than another.  I bring this up because on the boards there has been a decided feeling that this season has been the weakest of the series, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, it’s because I can really only judge the show against itself on a more granular basis.  While on most shows you can describe a season by identifying its major antagonist (or Big Bad, in fan lingo), or an episode as “the one where so and so does…”, GOT has too many moving parts for that to tell you what’s going on in the rest of the episode, even in hindsight.  For instance, you probably remember “The Mountain And The Viper” as a standout, but do you remember any developments as particular to that episode, beyond the titular sequence?  If I told you Jorah was exiled an episode earlier or later, would it raise an eyebrow?  Would you be able to tell me what Bran did in his scenes in the Purple Wedding episode without consulting a wiki, or stellar publication like Schwartzblog?

Did you remember that that was the episode where Oberyn 

was put on the Small Council?  Maybe.  

I mean, I’m not going to look it up.

So the best I can do is say that certain seasons were best for certain storylines and worse for others.  Like the first season was definitely the best for Dany, who has languished since she marched the Unsullied out of Astapor.  Season 3 was best for Jaime and Brienne, but worst for Stannis and Theon, whose highs came in season 2 along with Tyrion.  The Wall material only really started to pick up in the 3rd season, and managed to maintain its peak the last two.  And Arya’s been pretty darn consistent from the start.

So with that in mind, with a gun to my head, I think I’d say the best season for my money was the second.  While the Essos material was a step down from what preceded, I liked Westeros best with the War of Five Kings in full swing and Tyrion as Hand trying to help his family maintain power in spite of itself.  And Blackwater was one hell of a climax that the show has topped in presentation, but not impact, as they’ve never packed as many vital characters into another setting as they have with King’s Landing pre-the mass exodus of Lannisters.  But for this season?  I guess it could be the worst, or maybe the first season, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re less than excellent. I’d say that season 5 gave us the best of Cersei and Jon Snow, a slight upswing in Dany material, and a change of pace for Tyrion that was if not an definite improvement, very necessary at this point.  Conversely, it gave us the worst of Jaime (though it was the unripe plotline more than the character or performance) and it did further the show’s one true, unadulterated failure in its increased, intense focus on Ramsay.
I’ve griped about this in previous recaps, and you might have to reach to even remember whether he showed up in this episode at all, but that’s my whole point and beef.  Ramsay has very little story and no arc whatsoever this season, and yet we still spend almost a full minute of screentime in a (gloriously) overstuffed finale on an utterly superfluous scene of him stabbing a wounded enemy for kicks.  It’s the 46th least striking example of his beyond-established sadism, it serves no plot function at all, and there is no even slightly inventive or amusing twist to the dialogue or situation.

Pictured: the height of Ramsay’s wit.

I know that runtime is not really a concern here, and if it were, then Cersei’s interminable walk also could’ve been shaved down, but that sequence did need to be drawn out to make its point.  Ramsay’s scene just sits there, between two hugely important ones, adding absolutely nothing.  Which is why, more than the cartoonish supersadism, I’ve come to hate Ramsay not just on the “love to hate” level that is proper for hissable villains.  Joffrey was every bit the monster that he is, but at least I never rolled my eyes when he showed up on screen.  And while it’s nothing unusual for even truly great shows to have characters and storylines that are less compelling than others, on a show so overcrowded with compelling characters and plot, it stands out more than when a slower paced show like The Sopranos took a side trip to New Hampshire, or Breaking Bad focused an episode on a side character’s compulsive shoplifting.

Even he’d rather watch what’s going on in Jersey

Gonestly, what is it that Iwan Rheon has on Benioff and Weiss?  Not that it’s the actor’s fault, but Ramsay is an utterly one note character, who only ever interacts with the same handful of others, and for some reason they seem to find every single breath he takes utterly fascinating.  Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not, and it’s certainly not because he’s just too hardcore for me.  I can handle murder, rape, child sacrifice and genital mutilation.  What I cannot abide is dead air.

Speaking of dead air, I’ve been hard on Dany’s end of things in the past for being the one part of the show where it really felt like wheel-spinning. Her steady rise has felt like the show’s most foregone conclusion (outside of Jon Snow’s success on the Wall, which…), but the main problem has been the underpopulation of her storylines. Mereen has just as many extras to fill the background of scenes, but in the two seasons we’ve spent there, they added only one recurring character to represent the entire local political scene.  And Dany’s entire crew kicked him around without much concern until his unceremonious offing last week.  Westeros feels so vast and developed that it is bigger than any one storyline that plays out there, which infuses those storylines with their delicious unpredictability, but after 5 years in Essos, that setting still feels smaller than Dany’s storyline.

“….just as long as they don’t deserve a speaking part.”

But there is hope! The scene in the throne room, with Jorah, Tyrion, Daario, Missandei and Grey Worm finally started to deliver on the promise of a Targaryen Small Council that is livelier than the smattering of Yes Men she’s previously surrounded herself with (special props to Dinklage’s annoyed insistence that he mostly talks and drinks, but “I’ve survived this far!” after all), and Varys finally catching up only sweetens the pot.  Plus Dany herself finally has a problem!  For the first time since she lost her shit in Qarth, it’s one that she couldn’t just walk away from or dragon her way out of, were she inclined.  A khalessar riding into Mereen feels like an actual obstacle, as the one season we spent with the Dothraki 5 years ago still served to make them more vivid and formidable than the Mereenese have been in the last 2 seasons.  We know they don’t give a shit about birthrights or titles, and their culture is such that they may relish the chance to hunt a mighty dragon, even if Drogon recuperates enough to come bail mom out again. In any case, anything that gets Dany out of that pyramid is a positive step.

“So…you guys want to play Apples To Apples, or…”

Also positive is Arya’s expulsion from the House Of Black And White.  This is the one sequence that went pretty much as I predicted last week, but her dispatch of Trant is even more vicious than anticipated, and worth the wait.  Plus it packs in some twists at the end with the wtf-ness of Jaqen’s suicide and apparent Borgness of the Faceless Men, and Arya’s blindness.  The former manages a neat trick of restoring/maintaining the mystique and otherworldliness of this fanatical order of magical assassins, after an entire season of a POV character being taken behind the scenes of their operations.  The latter may be great or terrible for the character, but was genuinely shocking to me and fits with the series’ ethos that nothing, particularly justice and particularly not for those named Stark, comes easy or without a steep price.

Speaking of justice, Brienne continues to fail in the most awesome ways, as she proves Oathkeeper to be aptly named by killing Stannis, and even procures the confession that Oberyn failed to get from the Mountain, but unwittingly loses Sansa in the process.  Stannis, for his part, learns about steep prices.  He got the immediate results he wanted from Shireen’s sacrifice in the form a supernatural thaw, but his complete unwillingness to even countenance that his people might react like, well, people, to the horrific spectacle he put on dooms him and his campaign.

Perhaps I am just as guilty of putting too much faith in the Red Woman’s prophecy as he is, because I really thought that Stannis would make it on to the Iron Throne, however briefly, at some point.  But it also makes sense that his utter lack of pragmatism would walk him off a cliff at some point.  This is not a world that reward principled stands, and principle was all he had in the end.  Blood magic and a greater level of cruelty towards his enemies might have taken him further than some Starks, but even dumb old Ned would’ve rolled his eyes at the idea of attacking a fortified castle with a smaller army and no cavalry, food, or siege weaponry.  In fact, Stannis’s plan seemed to be less of a siege than a highly belligerent form of camping.

“If I’d only sustained a couple…fewer stab wounds, this totally would’ve worked.”

But while it may have been dumber than a sack of marmots, it did look cool as the Bolton army swooped down upon them, and Stephen Dillane acted the hell out of it.  His death scene may be the best in a series known for them, and in almost any circumstance, his look when he realizes there isn’t going to be a siege and draws his sword would be the best bit of acting in the episode.

But unfortunately for him, Lena Headey is still knocking around, and she has a tour de force in the form of a tour de shame (SHAME! SHAME!) of King’s Landing. Headey has been an All Star since the beginning, and I’ve sung her particular praises as recently as two weeks ago, but there’s just no way that this isn’t her Emmy submission, and it’s no doubt deserving of a nomination.  Heck, just the scenes of her confession and the nuns hacking her hair off may have been enough for that.  I’ve always been more sympathetic to Cersei than the most, but even if you started that sequence reveling in the character’s comeuppance, you have to feel some sympathy for her by the end of that long, looooong walk.  I’ve heard some complaints about the digital modeling putting Headey’s, um, head on a non-pregnant body double, but I didn’t notice any obvious seams.

If anything, I was a bit distracted by everyone’s first response

 being to wave their own junk at her. People are weird.

What I saw was the cracks in the character’s armor growing steadily wider, to the point that I can’t have been the only one to do a little fist pump at the end when the FrankenMountain showed up, all armored up and ready to eliminate all of the king’s enemies.  And between the Sparrows, Martells, Tyrells, Littlefinger, and Boltons, he shouldn’t lack for work.

Oh, and Jon got stabbed a bit at the end.

You guys think he’ll be okay?

And is it 2016 yet?

GAME OF THRONES 5.09 - "THE DANCE OF DRAGONS"

Tonight’s Game Of Thrones contains one of the most difficult to stomach deaths in the history of a series known for particularly brutal demises. A character that we did not know all that well, but everyone had to like, an innocent who did nothing to deserve their horrific fate.

Save Tonight, Sweet Prince

I’m actually speaking of the princess Shireen of the House Baratheon, of course, who is horribly and publicly burned at the stake by her own parents, for reasons that no one, least of all her, will understand.  Davos certainly won’t, and while I don’t see him throwing in with the despicable Boltons (sidebar: I’m half convinced Ramsay is as magical as Melisandre at this point, with his ability to teleport in and out unseen while setting 2 dozen perfectly timed fires in freezing, wet and windy conditions), I could see him despairing over it to the point that he would start wearing black. Furthermore, it seems that it may have been too much for Stannis’s wife, of all people, whose faith seems to have reached a breaking point that not even she knew it had.  What remains to be seen is whether watching their “king” act so monstrously will have a significant effect on his bannermen.  By which I mean both his soldiers on the show and those in our world that identify(ied) as Team Stannis.  I’ve never been on board that train, but I admit that even I doubted he would stoop so low.
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To that end, I wonder if this will drive some viewers away from sheer brutality fatigue.  On the one hand, I’d kind of think that by its fifth year the show would’ve shed most anyone who wasn’t pretty hard-hearted about such things, but on the other this has to be particularly traumatic for any parents in the audience.  I suppose it has a silver lining in that the Red Woman should have a full store of mana for raining terror down on the Boltons, but even though I half-jokingly said otherwise last week, I’m no longer sure that giving Ramsay the same treatment would make up for having to hear the girl’s screams as she burned.

Look, I don’t have a joke ready, and I think we all deserve something like this.

What makes this arguably bleaker than even the Red Wedding is that despite our not being as attached to Shireen, this is not a “twist” in a plotting sense, and thus lacks any charge of roller-coaster excitement that those tragedies carried.  Where those deaths dropped your jaw, here your stomach just sinks.  Because this is not set to have the same immediate, seismic narrative consequences that offing the nominal hero(s) carries; there is no violation of storytelling rules at work here, only of human decency at its basest level.  After all, even Cersei loves her children, as even her enemies acknowledge.  Hell, the Boltons suddenly seem a reasonable alternative in light of this;they at least stick mostly to “throwing stones at cripples”, rather than killing those devoted to them (not that Ramsay is above offing a servant or two for his amusement).

As if I could forget, show

 That arena scene just keeps ramping up the action, giving us the most intensive dragon work of the entire series, and the biggest spectacle since…well, last week.  And kudos to HBO for not blowing their spectacle load for these sequences in their season promos, but this is nowhere near as exciting as Hardhome, for a few reasons.  A minor one is that Emilia Clarke is misdirected in the flying sequence at the end.  It seems like she should be either exuberant or terrified climbing on to the dragon, but apparently they were going for serene (maybe?) and ended up on….just kind of there. More significantly, the Sons of the Harpy are so clearly placeholder antagonists, compared to the Walkers’ Final Boss status, so I didn’t buy for a second that either Dany or Tyrion would die at their hands.  Plus I’d spent the whole sequence thinking about how they wouldn’t have bothered to set up Jorah getting greyscale only to have him fall in battle before anyone finds out.  Since I’ve never given a shit for Daario, the worst possible casualty left was Missandei.  And as pleasant a presence as Nathalie Emmanuel is, I’d just listened to a young girl scream as she was roasted alive by her parents.  I had just about no shit left to lose at that point.

I find this one especially soothing because neither of them are burning alive

 And I do think the triumphant ending was intentionally placed there to counteract that giant downer, but for me and quite a few others it was nearly completely overpowered by it.  And so I think it might’ve been better if the finales of the last two episodes were swapped.  Hardhome is even less of a victory than the dragon flight, but that means the tonal shift might not clash quite as hard, and besides that it would’ve kept the focus in the North and served as a timely reminder that Melisandre’s horrors are in service of more than Stannis’s personal vindication.  Or maybe it would just cater to my personal preference for the Wall storyline getting more prominence than the Essos one.
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Or maybe it would’ve soured one of my favorite sequences in the show’s history by proximity to such a nauseating development.  Because I can’t even muster any real attention for the Dorne, Braavos or Castle Black scenes from this week.  So I’ll throw out a few predictions for the finale before check out:
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Arya steals a face to take out Meryn and is tossed out of the House Of Black And White.  Nothing much happens in Mereen.  The FrankenMountain tears through the Faith Militant to free the captives, which leaves Cersei free but completely on the outs from the regime.  Ellaria sends a Sand Snake back in the Prince’s entourage to kill Cersei.  Olly does something terrible to sabotage the Wildling alliance, and I’m going to say it’s Sam that takes the loss.

So is it Sunday yet?

GAME OF THRONES 5.08 - "HARDHOME"

“Hardhome” seems for its first half like it’s going to be an hour of solidly written, very well acted wheel-spinning.  Arya performs half an assignment to kill some Robert Durst-looking asshole, which is stylishly put together, but changes nothing about anything.  Sansa finds out her brothers are alive, and Ramsay plans a guerilla strike on Stannis’s forces, but nothing actually gets in motion at Winterfell.  No sign at all of the Baratheons, or the Dorne storyline.  Cersei’s scenes give Lena Headey a welcome chance to show some different aspects of Cersei in her mounting desperation (while also affording us some classic deathstares), but overall she’s stewing in her juices.

It seems like the scenes between Dany and Tyrion would be the main event here. This is the show’s two breakout characters, finally coming face to face after 5 years.  But even that only establishes the foregone conclusion that she would accept Tyrion as her advisor (as unpredictable as the show can be, there’s no way a summary execution would be the end of his arc on the series). When the two meet over drinks, they reiterate a lot of history that we technically already know, but it is good to remind us that the links and blood between their families, while ancient (i.e. pre-show) history to us, are rather more direct for them. Tyrion’s brother did murder Dany’s father, after all.  It also is good to see her finally interact with someone who is neither entirely deferential nor a cartoonish asshole to her.  I look forward to seeing how Daario reacts to the Imp.  He has styled himself as the one person who will shoot her straight, but as much fun as the two could have as drinking buddies, I could see easily see the Halfman puncturing some of his more self-serving flattery with the true don’t-give-a-fuckery of suicidal drunk.

But as well acted as it is, it doesn’t present any development that we didn’t know was coming from the first promo of the preseason, and it’s a bit of a shame to see Jorah’s return result in immediate re-exile. He did bring Tyrion in, so it’s not as though it was a complete waste of time, but it dumps him back into banishment and the fighting pits with no change in his relationship to anyone.  Dany may talk of breaking the Game’s wheel, but it seems to be spinning as idly as it ever has.

But that’s the first half.  Then we go over to Hardhome, north of the Wall, and watch Jon and Tormund perform the negotiations we saw them plan previously, and give or take the sudden bludgeoning death of a minor character, it goes about as expected.  Again with an entertaining smattering of personality, particularly from the newly introduced Wildling chieftainness (acknowledging her ancestors’ shame at what they’re considering, she shrugs “…but fuck ‘em, they’re dead.”), but nothing too jaw-dropping.

“Well, I didn’t see it coming..”

But then with almost no warning, shit gets realer than all fucking hell, and my jaw didn’t close for fifteen minutes straight.   This is not the zombie action I expected to see this week (though Qyburn mentions that “the work continues”, so the Mountainbomb is still awaiting deployment), but holy shit. This doesn’t quite match the scale of “The Watchers On The Wall”, but it remains beyond impressive for a TV show, and it is terrifying and awesome in the most literal sense of the word.  Even beyond the top notch effects and clear, brutal choreography, there are an entire season’s worth of striking images to savor in this sequence alone.

The giant bursting out of the cabin, covered in wights. The chilling sight of the shadowy Walkers ringing the cliff, mounted like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or the even more chilling sight of zombie children freezing the chieftainess in her tracks. The wights going full Lemmings on the cliff (and subsequent realization of how the avalanches that kicked off the sequence started). Jon Snow and the Walker’s mutual shock at Longclaw’s survival (plus the great bit of sound design that accompanies it – also the eerie cue for the zombie kids, come to think of it). The rising of the dead at the end. Amazing, nightmarish stuff, all of it. Any one or two of those moments would’ve been enough to end this episode on a strong note, and earn a more than passing grade. All together, it puts this in the running for best of the entire series.

And it’s worth the all the effort, because the sequence does more than look cool, or provide that occasional kick of high fantasy epic action mixed with the horror-movie ruthlessness that gets my blood pumping like nothing else on TV. It solidifies the Wildling alliance, and its importance. It established that Valyrian steel can kill Walkers in addition to dragonglass. It gives us a proper evil overlord in the Night King, and puts he and Jon Snow on each other’s radars. It takes the army of the dead, introduced in the cold open of the very first episode and mostly sitting the ensuing four seasons out, from offscreen, shambling hypothreaticals, to an actual army of ripping, feral monsters that have done some real damage and promise to do more.

It gave us a shot of a giant swinging a flaming 

trunk through a crowd of zombies. Respek.

But what it does more than anything is reestablish the show’s ability to surprise us at any moment.  We had reached a point this season where we kind of knew what was next in the major storylines.  The Snakes were going to thwart Jaime’s attempted rescue.  Cersei’s machinations with the Sparrows were going to alienate the Tyrells and eventually blow up in her face.  Stannis was going to march on Winterfell to oust the Boltons.  Arya was going to gradually learn to assassinate people from the Faceless Men.  Tyrion was going to worm his way into Dany’s inner circle.

Though I suppose how was an open question

Now this really only means that the show properly set up these conflicts, and after 5 years, we who spend inordinate amounts of time picking apart and arguing and speculating about it should be getting pretty good at predicting how it will move.  But even at its most linear, the show is still only half predictable. What’s more, it’s the opposite half than most shows at this point in their lifespans.  Other shows I love, which managed to consistently surprise me, tend to become predictable in their outcomes, with the joy coming from the twisty paths they would take to get there. On Breaking Bad, Walter White’s rise was a foregone conclusion, but seeing just how tight a spot he could get himself into, what devious plan he would concoct to get out of it, and who exactly would become collateral damage to it was a constant guessing game. Or on Justified, I never doubted that Raylan Givens would get his man in the end, but how he did it, and how Boyd would slither his way out of everyone’s sights, was a continual, delightful surprise.

Here, when I can see what conflicts are brewing, and even predict a specific move like Qyburn dropping the Mountainbomb, the show’s kaleidoscopic perspective means I’m still not sure who will come out on top.  The Starks were the obvious heroes from the start, but they have taken more grievous losses than I thought possible early in the story.  The Lannisters almost took over the role of protagonists at a certain point, but they are about to find themselves nearly as depleted as their former rivals despite technically still controlling the Iron Throne.  The Tyrells and Martells are latter additions to the show’s conflicts, but this series won’t simply let them be antagonists to be triumphed over in their own turns.  It’s not surprising because it’s arbitrary, it’s unpredictable because it’s thorough enough to muddy the waters between not just “hero” and “villain” but “protagonist” and “antagonist” to the point that no conclusion is foregone.

With a few notable caveats

I mean, I’ve got my predictions.  Dany won’t decide to want something besides the Iron Throne, and there’s no way the series ends with the Night King ruling the frozen ruins of the Seven Kingdoms.  In the shorter term, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the Braavos storyline won’t end with Meryn Trant murdering Arya.  But I don’t know who the Mountain will free or get killed in the process, what Ramsay plans to do with his 20 good men, or how the situation in Dorne will resolve itself.  And I certainly didn’t expect a zombie siege sequence that puts most action and horror movies to shame to break out at the end of this episode.

And we still have episode 9 to look forward to!  For reference, episode 9 of season one brought us Ned’s execution, season two gave us Blackwater, three the Red Wedding and four the hourlong battle of Castle Black.  The most predictable structure the show has been willing to stick to has been that the penultimate episode contains the season’s largest fireworks, either in terms of spectacle or gutpunching deaths.

By the Old Gods and the New, is it Sunday yet??

GAME OF THRONES 5.07 - "THE GIFT"

“We march to victory, or we march to defeat. But we go forward. Only forward.”

Stannis is nobody’s poet, but he lays out the storytelling ethos of the series quite succinctly, one that serves to differentiate it from other TV shows, which are descended more directly from the old network model that designed shows to run indefinitely, pumping out episodes that are interchangeable enough that they could be run out of order and the audience could tune out and back in without worrying about losing important threads.  But the advantage of having such weighty tomes for source material is that there is enough plot that the series can enjoy a full and lengthy run without ever letting up on the forward momentum.

Shhh, quiet you

Don’t get me wrong, the story is such a multi-headed beast that certain storylines will sometimes move forward slower than others, so on the one hand, you could say that winter has been coming for a loooong time now, or that Dany has been coming to Westeros while only getting physically further from it.  But there’s never an entire episode that just serves to spin the wheels, and does not contain several developments of lasting significance.  The world and characters have seen a lot of changes since the premiere, and these changes tend to be permanent, just ask Viserys, or Drogo, or Robert or Ned or Renly or Robb or Cat or Tywin or Joffrey or Mormont or the Hound or Mance or Oberyn.  While character deaths are not the only metric by which to measure change in a series, they are a handy one, and none of those deaths was without major consequences that are still playing out in one form or another.

“Well if you ask me, change is overrated.”

The consequences right now seem to be that everyone everywhere is imprisoned.  We may see Tormund freed from his bonds in the opening scene, but everywhere else we turn, in Winterfell, in King’s Landing, in Slaver’s Bay, in Dorne, we find major characters residing in cells and chains.  Of all the captives, Jaime and Bronn probably have it best.  Prince Doran doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to execute them, and Jaime is held in comfort, even if the “hostage” he came to free has no interest in rescue.  And Bronn may be poisoned for a hot second, but at least he’s enjoying the scenery.

Which is, um, okay. You know, if you’re into that sort thing.  It’s fine. Don’t come over here.

Sansa, as is customary, has it the worst of all, as her valiant appeal to Theon’s lost self is not enough to overcome his horrible conditioning.  And of course Ramsay reveals this in the most sadistic way possible, but he should heed his own words when he muses that Northerners “are used to fighting in the frost.”  Sansa may be as hemmed in and brutalized as ever, and she may not be ready to use that corkscrew, but she comes from a line that thrives in winter.  So far she’s just stoking Ramsay’s resentments about his position as a bastard as much as she dares, but she’s running out of shit to lose, and Ramsay can’t resort to flaying her.  She’s more dangerous than he credits her for.

Plus Stannis is still coming.  Melisandre finally broaches the topic of sacrificing Shireen to ensure Stannis’s victory, and although circumstances are conspiring to sap his strength and momentum, he has enough decency to reject the idea outright.   For now.  I still have no doubt that he will eventually make it through to the Iron Throne, but fear for what will transpire in the next couple weeks, what the Boltons may have up their sleeves that will drive him to sufficient depths of desperation for this plot thread to pay off.  And I now ask myself whether I’m willing to accept something terrible happening to Shireen if it means finally getting to see Ramsay horribly (I can’t stress that enough) killed.  And I think yep, I am.  Not that I’d endorse it in a real world scenario, but as a viewer I am so much more invested in seeing Ramsay get his comeuppance that I can stomach quite a lot to get there.

Oh, don’t look at me like that.  You don’t understand how much I need this.

In lighter news, up at the Wall Gilly finally deflowers Sam, and is much more gentlemanly about it than Ramsay.  Her gingerly asking if she is hurting him and his demur “oh my!” are about as sweet as love and sex can get in Westeros, and of course it does still carry the possibility of ending up with him being hanged for breaking his vows and consorting with the enemy.  But for now we get the lovebirds at their most heroic, and that despite what Thorne tells him, Sam still has a friend at Castle Black in the form of Ghost. And…oh god damn it, nothing better happen to Ghost this year.  You motherfuckers, I’ve defended a lot of the horrible shit the series has put us through, just leave the dog alone for awhile.

Anyhow, back to imprisonment.  Even kings and queens are feeling trapped and hemmed in this week.  Daario tells Dany that if she can’t marry him she is “the only one in Mereen that is not free,” which is patently self-serving and hopefully too dumb for her to really consider.  I think she already set her sights too low by marrying to secure a single city when she’s eventually going to have seven whole kingdoms to lock up, besides which I just don’t find Daario’s smarminess very appealing.  I mean, he’s perfect for a sport fuck, but I think for a permanent match my girl could do a lot better, if not politically then intellectually/emotionally.  When it comes down to it, Targaryeans don’t really need more people constantly telling them how special they are and encouraging them to slaughter anyone who looks at them funny.

Though I suppose she could do worse

But the literal captives in Essos are in the fighting pits, as Jorah and Tyrion reveal themselves to the queen after Tyrion lays a not-so-convincing beating on his fit, full-sized captor and Jorah takes a not-so-convincing waltz through the fighting pit melee, easily besting everyone practically with his bare hands.  But some dodgy choreography is worth getting to the point where it all ends up.  I had thought it might take until the finale to get here, but with a few episodes to go, I’m stoked that we are sure to get some interactions of substance with these guys and Dany this year, even if the plotline were to skip next week entirely, as they are wont to do.

The biggest changes of all are afoot in King’s Landing, where young Tommen feels impotent and trapped by the imprisonment of his wife (and by the end of the episode, also mother), shouting “I am the king. The queen is in prison, and there is nothing I can do!”  Oh, but there is, little king.  Even if your mother, in a fit of profound dumbassery, convinced you that you can’t rub out the Faith with the Kingsguard without the prisoners becoming casualties, I think that if you visit her she’ll tell you about a certain tarp with 7 feet of possibly-undead monster under it.  A monster that could be unleashed to tear into the Faith with enough plausible deniability that the crown wouldn’t be declaring open war on the dominant religion of the continent.  Okay, maybe that is a stretch, but it just occurred to me that there is a circumstance where I might actually cheer on the reappearance of the Mountain, which I never expected, and now I’m all excited at the prospect.

You killed her, you raped her, you murdered her children, welcome back!!!

It’s hard to give out top acting honors this week, as Diane Rigg and Jonathan Pryce are even more absolutely on point than usual, and Natalie Dormer gets play sides of Margaery we’ve never seen before, “stripped of finery.”  But I’d probably give the edge to Lena Headey.  Cersei puts on a slightly different mask for her interactions with Tommen, Marge and the High Sparrow, but in each case you can see just enough of a shift in her eyes to track her reactions as her expression remains unchanged.  Cersei is an incredibly tough role in general, but Headey gives subtle life and depth to a character that is neither particularly sympathetic nor expressive on paper.  Well, she gets more expressive when threatening her hulking captor at the end, but obviously she nails that too.  I believe her when she says that she will make the Sparrows pay.  And with Olenna and Littlefinger also putting their heads together to strike back at the fanatics, I don’t think all of these prisoners are going to remain locked up for long, and there’s going to be no shortage of hell to pay as they get once they’re out and about. In fact, is it next Sunday yet?

GAME OF THRONES 5.06 - "UNBOWED, UNBENT, UNBROKEN"

The words of House Martell, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” refer to Dorne’s status as the only of the 7 Kingdoms that the Targaryeans did not conquer by force.  But while the episode that takes it for its title does feature the Martell’s simultaneously repelling two kidnapping attempts, it primarily showcases characters bowing, bending and breaking the truth to different ends and effectiveness.
Arya can’t slip even slight alterations of detail past Jaqen, but she is able to fabricate a backstory convincing enough to convince a sick girl to quietly euthanize herself.  This only makes her ready to become “Someone Else”, rather than “No One”, but then I don’t think Jaqen or anyone has made a very good case for embracing full Facelessness.  Arya’s grudges, and our sympathy with them, run a bit too deep to cast aside for.  Sure, the training will make you supremely competent, which is cool and all, but if you can’t put it to use to pursue any of your personal goals, what is the point exactly?

Also, am I the only one distracted by how out of 

control the House of Black and White’s candle budget must be?

Over in Essos, Jorah also tries to talk his way into a warrior caste of sorts, but it’s the bald truth of his duel with a Dothraki bloodrider that seals the deal rather than Tyrion’s exaggerations about his deeds in far off Westeros.  Jorah and Tyrion are not quite as entertaining an odd couple as Jaime and Brienne, but Peter Dinklage and Ian Glenn have great chemistry, whether bickering about food, debating the finer points of Targaryean rule, or sharing a tender moment of remembrance for the Andal’s father. They make those moments sing, and they get to have them with some of the show’s most beautiful scenery as a backdrop.

Also, if this isn’t the title of a GWAR song, they’re really slipping

Just as beautiful is the water gardens of Dorne (actually The Alcázar of Seville), where Myrcella, who seems to have aged about 7 years since being sent away prior to the battle of Blackwater, spends her days snogging her young beau. The competing stealth missions of Jaime and the Sand Snakes run afoul of each other, and we get a fun little fight scene where their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-like signature weapons bring some nice variety to the choreography. But it’s not as exciting as the fights generally are, since they make the small misstep of telegraphing that the guards know shit’s up and will be putting the kibosh on things before anyone gets offed.  The boards seem convinced that Bronn’s cut means he’s a goner, since Oberyn was established as poisoning his blade, but it didn’t really occur to me and I don’t know that they’d gear up for maximum lethality when their goal was to spirit a live hostage away from their own kinsmen. Plus, her furious reaction when he taunt/complimented (tauntplimented? Tauntplimented) her technique afterward doesn’t seem quite right if she knows she already dealt him a death blow.

Back in King’s Landing, Littlefinger’s lies become even more layered and complex, as he secures Cersei’s approval to march an army on Winterfell.  It’s hard to say what he really intends, but my take is that he doesn’t really know for sure.  If he gets there and Boltons are still in power, he could either remove them himself or continue to exploit the alliance he made through Sansa, depending on how weak they look.  But of course, they won’t still be in charge, as Stannis is foretold to sit on the Iron Throne.  So I imagine that he’ll present his army to Stannis and offer himself up as a potential suitor for a newly-widowed Sansa, and possibly warden of the North.

The one option I don’t think he could seriously be considering is sticking with the Lannisters. On top of the significant risk he took plotting regicide, Cersei’s foolishness with the Faith Militant has turned the capital in a place that is decidedly unfriendly for a man like him. Her maneuvers against the Tyrells are undeniably effective, but still remarkably stupid considering that she knows Stannis is coming, the Boltons have abandoned their alliance with the Lannisters, and Jamie’s mission was apt to start a war with the Martells regardless of whether he succeeded or failed.

“Yeah, it’s not like I wasn’t gonna find an excuse to use this thing no matter what.”

So she better enjoy her victory over Margaery and Olenna (who recognizes Tywin’s “make them sit while you write” trick when she sees it) while she can, because no matter how much she might hate her son’s wife, allowing a bunch of religious fanatics to haul her off while he gapes ineffectually is only weakening her own position, to say nothing of what those nuts are going to have to say about her own common-knowledge perversions once they run out of gays to bash.  Seriously, I know she’s desperate, but she should be smart enough to see that these moves are devastating her prospects in the medium term, never mind the long.

By contrast, Sansa’s long term prospects are as good as they’ve been since her father’s death, while her short term couldn’t be worse.  She is married, again to a hated enemy, and this time he’s not as secretly chivalrous as Tyrion.  Immediate reactions to the closing rape scene seemed to be largely negative, although there doesn’t seem to be much agreement on what exactly the problem with it is.  We’ve known the marriage was coming, and what it would entail, and for a while now.  That doesn’t make it better, necessarily, but then it is supposed to be an upsetting sequence and it’s not as though marital rape wasn’t a constant reality in medieval times and beyond (fun fact! it didn’t even start to get recognized as a crime in the US until the 1970s, and what Ramsay did would still be legal in South Carolina).  I’ve seen the focus on Theon’s reaction criticized as making it all about him, but I think that was actually an effective way to highlight the grossness of the scene without getting overly graphic. It was about the most tasteful option, if we’re operating on the assumption that a “tasteful” rape scene is the proper goal. Personally, I think overly sanitizing such a repellant act creates its own host of issues.

Which just means twice the opportunities for sanctimonious grandstanding!

But a consistent point in these reviews has been that what note you end on is extremely important, and I think the ending on the rape left an overly-bad taste in many people’s mouths.  Not that it should’ve been an uplifting installment, but I think if they had shuffled things around to close on Arya in the face-basement it might have played better.  Not only would it have allowed the episode to end on its most striking imagery (which is always a good idea), but it would serve as a subtle suggestion that this horror was not the end of Sansa’s story, and the Starks retain the potential to come back from even the worst of circumstances.  And I do not doubt that she will; the big question is to what extent she blames Littlefinger for having to endure this indignity.  I take it as a foregone conclusion that Ramsay will get his, and whether it comes from Sansa, Theon, Stannis, or some combination thereof, it can’t come soon enough.  In fact, is it next Sunday yet?

GAME OF THRONES 5.05 - "KILL THE BOY"

Credits Tangent!  I understand that the capitol, along with Winterfell, the Wall, and wherever Dany is chilling at the moment, have permanent spots in the rotation, but why did we get Dorne in there this week?  It also bothers me that the castle of Sunspear just has the kingdom’s name to label it – not like it makes that big a difference, but the specificity of the thing is kind of the whole point. And no Valyria?  Come on, I know it’s time-consuming to make a new little sequence for a place we may not see again, but its actual appearance in the episode is so striking,and  you could give us 2 seconds less of the dragons chewing on a random noble to pay for it.

So anyway, this episode set itself up to disappoint me with the credits’ DAMNABLE LIES. No Dorne. No Braavos. No Kings Landing, which I believe is the only time that’s happened outside of the major “event” episodes around the Red Wedding and Battle Of Castle Black (if I’m wrong about that, the comments await below).  And in the place of those intriguing locations full of characters I like scheming and infiltrating and assassin training and Frankenstein-ing, we get what feels like a solid half hour of Ramsay Bolton.  So let’s talk about Ramsay a bit.

I don’t like Ramsay.  I’m not supposed to, obviously, but it’s not because I have a weak stomach so much as because I don’t think he’s nearly as compelling as the showrunners seem to believe.  Ever since he was introduced interminably torturing Theon for an entire season, it’s felt like his scenes routinely run twice as long as those with more important characters and more story information to impart.  Take the scene where Theon tells him that Sansa saw him – that’s about 2 minutes of screen time (which doesn’t sound like a lot, but really, really is) that tells us nothing new about the characters or their relationship, and serves only to recount what happened in the prior scene. Then it leads directly into the even more drawn out dinner scene, that again presents nothing new beyond announcing Lady Bolton’s pregnancy.  Though the long walk there is almost worth it just for Sansa’s infinitesimal smirk after the announcement.

“Seriously, son, this is 4 scenes in a row with us. Aren’t you more 

curious to see what’s going on with Arya at this point?”

You would think that all these scenes of him fucking around repeating things we’ve seen before, and having naked playtime with his psycho girlfriend, and eating (I feel like the only actor I’ve watched cut and chew more than Iwan Rheon at this point is James Gandolfini) would have the effect of making Ramsay less 2-dimensional than characters that have enjoyed ¼ of his screentime, but nope.  Joffrey was similarly hateful, but at least he brought an unpredictability to his scenes, by virtue of his position of power that forced a wide variety of characters to dance around his psychotic proclivities.  Whereas Ramsay really only ever poses an immediate threat to Theon, and the viewer’s delicate sensibilities.

As such, Ramsay’s utility as a villain is diminished by the very limited reach of his tyranny, but he’s too reprehensible to give any sort of damn when Roose gives him his version of Stannis’s speech to his daughter from last week.  There is some small entertainment value to the was that Roose regards his boy’s gleeful sadism like a traditional sitcom dad would his weirdo son’s amateur ventriloquism; sort of a resigned sigh that no, this is not going to get him anywhere in life, but it’s his thing and we don’t want to discourage him from expressing himself.

No one likes a prop comic, kid.  Their dads least of all.

 So anyway, Ramsay is no doubt planning to give Theon’s head to Sansa as a wedding present, which is one more reason to hope those nuptials never come to pass.  Not that putting him out of his misery would even be the worst thing at this point, but after 3 seasons of torment, I really hope it’s building to something more than Ramsay finally finishing the job.  If not for Theon’s sake, then for my own.  I need the hours I’ve spent watching the endless parade of degradation that is this storyline lead somewhere. And if it allows Sansa to snag a victory in the process, that’d be pretty good too.  This episode reminded me that from her perspective, it’s not just her father, mother and older brother that have been betrayed and brutally murdered, but also her little brothers and sister, in separate incidents.  Five years in, her go of it stands out as particularly rough even in a show with more than its share of genital mutilation.

But if everything in Winterfell drags this week, things are a bit better in Mereen, where Dany struggles to put together a coherent countermove to last week’s attack.  She defaults to frying a noble picked at random and feeding him to the dragons, because she is her father’s girl, after all.  This is cruel and not entirely fair, but at least somewhat savvy as a way to make it the noble families’ problem to deal with the insurgency, whether they personally fomented it or not.  Where I think she screws up is her follow up move of deciding to marry Eagle Eye Cherry.  It’s a good move for the immediate purpose of pacifying the city, but Mereen is not her ultimate goal, and playing this card now means it won’t be available at a time when it could potentially bring one of the Seven Kingdoms into her fold.

Unless she decides to just murder Eagle Eye as soon as another match proves more useful. That feels less out of character as season 5 rolls on.

Insert your favorite lyric from “Save Tonight” here. 

And don’t pretend you don’t have one. Not with me.

Like the khaleesi, Jon Snow opts to attempt an alliance with a potential enemy rather than executing or imprisoning him.  But in his case, this decision is made with his eye firmly on the big picture, and has the immediate effect of riling up his subjects rather than pacifying them.  No one on either side is happy with the idea, which the American political process has taught me means it’s probably the right thing in the long run.  I’ve enjoyed the scenes at Castle Black this year, which have gotten their charge from Jon Snow 2.0 interacting with Stannis’s cohort, but I’m happy to see them heading in opposite directions now.  They couldn’t have them waiting around for the Walkers to show up forever, and putting Jon back in the field with the Wildlings sounds like a plan.  And Stannis can’t march south fast enough, as in case I didn’t make it clear, I could do with less scenes of the Boltons interacting with themselves.

“Fewer.”

But if half of this episode is a drag, it at least has the sense to end on the strongest material, which goes a long way to redeeming things.   Tyrion and Jorah visiting the ruins of Valyria, the fallen Pompeii/Atlantis analogue of this world, is a simply gorgeous sequence.  And if the effects on Drogon flying through the mists are not as intricate as those of his sisters going nuts in the crypts of Mereen, it’s a lesson that a shot of an actor like Peter Dinklage reacting is worth a few tens of millions of pixels when it comes to producing awe.  This would be the highlight of the episode even it wasn’t perfectly setting up the tremendous “oh shit!” shot of the stone man coming to life and dropping into the water that leads to the episode’s big gutpunch.  Because even if semi-mythical Doom of Valyria is a thousand years in the past, a doom lingers there in the form of greyscale, this world’s leprosy/rabies hybrid.  Jorah contracting it puts a sort of zombie-movie spin on his journey with Tyrion, and can that possibly be a bad thing?

Of course it can. Things only ever get worse on this show, after all. And I can’t wait.  Is it next Sunday yet? Oh, come on!!

GAME OF THRONES 5.04 - "SONS OF THE HARPY"

I think it’s time we had a thoughtful, frank and substantive discussion about Carice Van Houten’s breasts.

HYUUUUNAGHHHHHHH

I think that regardless of of our respective ages, affiliations and orientations we can agree on this much.

Moving along.

The season’s debuted with the aptly-named episode “The Wars To Come”, and subsequent titles have now shuffled through several factions that seem poised to shape those wars, even if they aren’t themselves the headliners.  The House Of Black And White will influence things through Arya, who you couldn’t keep out of the mix even if Lord Tyrell was not bringing her Meryn (Fucking!) Trant on a platter.  The Sparrows are undermining the Tyrell/Lannister alliance, and Tommen’s young regime in the process.  And in Mereen, the Sons Of The Harpy have struck a vicious blow to Dany’s inner circle.

I’ve often given short shrift to Dany’s end of the story in these recaps, and that’s mostly due to how I haven’t felt that she’s faced a real challenge or setback since I started writing them way back in the mists of the third season premiere.  It’s tough to see the generally likable Selmy and possibly Grey Worm taken out in a single stroke, but it’s also exciting.  After the takings of Mereen, and Yunkai and Astapor went off without any significant losses for Team Targaryean (the dragons are not really full characters, not to mention their exit is non-fatal and at least partially self-inflicted), we’re at a place where I celebrate the khaleesi getting legitimately bad news.

“Eagle Eye Cherry wants to talk to you” doesn’t count

That’s because it’s a fact that angry khaleesi is the best khaleesi, and I’m way more into seeing Tyrion interact with that one than another vignette of imperious khaleesi trying to go smug for smug with her mercenary boytoy.  On that front, it does feel kind of quick that the very first glimpse we get of Jorah post-banishment has him turning right back around for Mereen, particularly given the languid pace at which the Essos material has moved the past few years.  But it should be able to avoid feeling like take-backsies, so long as he returns to a place that has changed significantly and a queen that is both feeling vengeful and in greater need of him than she has been in years.  I’m not even that desperate to see Dany take off for Westeros, though I understand why many are; I just want her to meet some challenges that feel genuine, and getting her in contact with more of the established cast seems like the best way to do that.

The Sons of the Harpy might be the namesake of the episode, but they are not the only archconservative social movement spilling blood on the queen’s streets.  In King’s Landing, Cersei is playing a dangerous, self-defeating game as she torpedoes her family’s alliance with the wealthy and popular (well, Margaery at least) Tyrells and empowers the Westerboros Baptist Church to stomp around and lock up her fiancee on the grounds that The Gods Hates F***s.

Though statistically, one of the 7 is at least bi-curious. I’m not looking
at you, The Smith, but I’m not not looking at The Smith either.

This seems monumentally short-sighted on Cersei’s part, as even though it succeeds in driving a wedge between her son and ol’ Marge, it also makes Tommen and the Lannisters look weak in the process, something that they really, really do not need with Tywin dead, the Iron Bank calling in their debts, Stannis looming in the north, and war with Dorne becoming increasingly inevitable as Oberyn’s mistress and daughters, the Sand Snakes, plot to force their passive prince’s hand by hurting Myrcella.

The Snakes’ introduction scene doesn’t end on its strongest note (the one girl’s whip-coil move was more badass than the other’s whole monologue/execution), but it is effective nonetheless at setting them up as a formidable opposition for our “protagonists” – which I’d say Jaime and Bronn are by dint of familiarity, if not because their motivations are that much more righetous.  It accomplishes this by having them suss out our guys plan from the jump, putting them immediately ahead of the game.  This is a stark contrast to the type of opposition Dany usually to face in Essos, where new schmucks keep underestimating her years after we have learned not to.

Australia’s National Pastime (crate of Fosters not pictured)

I’m unsure, in that great GOT way, how I really want this Dornish adventure to play out.  I’m not eager to see an innocent girl get hurt, but I am DEFINITELY eager to see the Martells go to war.  And I do want someone to pay for Oberyn’s death, but I don’t feel like it should be Jaime or Bronn.  Particularly after this week lived up to the promise of their buddy road trip so perfectly, with swordplay and derring do and gruff heart-to-hearts over roasted poison vipers.

Craft Services provided by the National Tourism Board of Australia

Things are simpler in the North, though, where I know exactly what I want.  Sansa is left by Littlefinger to fend for herself, albeit with ideas for how to play either of the likely winners of the coming fracas.  She probably should be old hat at this by now, as she is by my count the veteran of 5 potential/aborted marriages (to Joffrey, Loras, Tyrion, Robin, and Ramsay).  But we will see how she manages with a new intended that is secretly more twisted than even Joffrey and no one actively coaching her through the intrigues.  It’s not hard to root against the Boltons in this case, obviously, but I’m holding out a rather specific hope that a desperate Ramsay will be threatening Sansa to try to hold off a victorious Stannis, only for lowly Reek to pull a Wormtongue and stab him in the back, delivering the North back to the Starks.  Things rarely work out that neatly on this show, I know, and I’m probably setting myself up for heartbreak by hoping for the Starks to get such a clear victory with so much story left to play out.  But Sansa’s restoration has been taking on a real feeling of inevitability, and….

Wait a minute. Each odd numbered season has ended with the heads of the Stark household getting abruptly decapitated by some total shitheel, and the most evil characters on the show basking in victory. And this is season 5, and the Starks seem like they just might be getting a foot under them…Nah, even GRRM wouldn’t be such a shitheel to go to that well a third…would…?

Is it episode 9 yet? Oh…shit.