Game of Thrones: Season 4, Episode 3

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GAME OF THRONES

Season 4, Episode 3

"Breaker of Chains"

  

There are always spoilers.

So, Joffrey died.  Which we all know and no one, anywhere, is sad about.  Moving on.

This week, people are recovering from the shock of Joffrey dying.  Namely, Cersei is convinced that Tyrion is responsible.  If you've read the books, you know who is responsible and, frankly, I'm not entirely sure why that wasn't revealed when Sansa left with Littlefinger, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We begin with Cersei flipping her actual shit first that Tyrion apparently murdered her son and second that Sansa has gone missing in the turmoil.  Being that Cersei is consistently looking for a reason to imprison her brother and/or just generally make his life miserable, she immediately demands that he be locked in the Black Cells, to the objection of literally no one.

Jaime seems generally unfazed by these developments, at least in comparison to Cersei, and Tywin is just pragmatic and Tywin-y, as usual.  Sansa is being led through the streets of King's Landing with Ser Dontos, who takes her to a little boat and tells her to get in.  They arrive at a ship upon which just so happens to be Petyr Baelish, who is made about a thousand times creeper than he should be by Aiden Gillan's portrayal.  Seriously, he makes Littlefinger seems like so much more of a weirdo that I got the impression he was in the books.  I mean, he's creepy, but Aiden Gillan makes him seem serial killer creepy.

Anyway, Sansa gets onto the ship and Littlefinger predictably murders Ser Dontos because witnesses and, besides, he was just doing it for the gold and who gives a fuck about Ser Dontos?  No one, obviously.  After minimal persuading, Sansa pretty much forgets about Ser Dontos' brutal killing and immerses herself in a conversation along the lines of what the fuck is going on here?  Littlefinger is unsurprisingly vague, so the audience has no idea what is up or where he's taking her.

I'll give you a hint.  It's to The Eyrie.

Margaery is super pissed that Joffrey was inconsiderate enough to die before consummating their marriage, because now she isn't the queen and that stupid, stupid Cersei is the queen regeant again because Tommen is now the king.  She and Olenna have another of their delightful political intrigue conversations in which Olenna points out that Margaery is in a much better situation than she was when she was married to Renly Baratheon.  Margaery assumes she's just cursed because all of her husbands have been murdered.  She might be on to something.

And now, on to the single most disturbing and gratuitous portion of the show:  The Incestuous Rape of Cersei Lannister.

Seriously, what in the fuck?  That scene technically sort of takes place in the book.  They do have sex in the sept, but it isn't rapey.  Like... at all.  Cersei is sort of meekly protesting, not because they're fucking six inches away from the corpse of their psychopathic son, but because they are in the sept and it's a holy place and blah blah the gods.  Although, I'm pretty sure Joffrey is lying in state in the book.  Still, the sex is consensual, although Cersei is sort of halfheartedly saying, "Jaime, we really shouldn't do this here... oh fuck it, nevermind, YES YES YES!"  Jaime isn't present in King's Landing when Joffrey dies (he isn't at the wedding) and so Cersei sees him for the first time, I believe, when he comes to her in the sept.  There hadn't been weeks of angry, sexual tension building up to a rape scene tied up with a bow.

Aside from the totally unnecessary rape, this also irritated me because of what it does to Jaime's character.  I think I saw someone elsewhere pointing out the fact (which I agree with) that Jaime is the same man who murdered the Targaryen king because he was, among many other nefarious things, a rapist and murderer and it had to stop.  Jaime knowingly broke his vows and killed the king to save the lives of thousands upon thousands, knowing that it would disgrace him and follow him for the rest of his life.  Jaime is not a rapist and certainly isn't going to rape his own sister.

I've read a few responses to the scene from the folks at HBO and was less than impressed, frankly.  I think one of them actually said something along the lines of, "It becomes consensual by the end..."  Did it?  Because I was under the assumption that a women struggling and saying, "Stop it," were the opposite of consent.  GRRM made a comment about the dynamic between Jaime and Cersei being different because of the fact that, on the show, Jaime has been in King's Landing for weeks and lots of weird, sexual tension, and just regular tension, has built up with Cersei rebuffing his advances, etc.  However, I'm still not really sure what, if anything, was necessary about the rape aspect of that scene and it didn't sit well with me, frankly.

Anyway, after Jaime rapes his sister next to their son's dead body, the entire episode had basically hit rock bottom.  Up near the Wall, Sam is concerned that Gilly is going to be mistreated by the dudes at Castle Black, so he decides that taking her to live in a brothel is preferable.  Let me stop here to interject that this never happened in the book and I have no idea why HBO felt the need to put it into the show.  Sam and Gilly eventually leave Castle Black, but that isn't until A Feast for Crows, when Sam (along with Gilly and Mance Rayder's baby - long story) is sent to Oldtown.  Maester Aemon accompanies him and ends up dying on the boat at some point, if I remember correctly.

In the show, however, for some weird reason, Sam decides to send Gilly and her baby to a house of ill repute so he can go back to Castle Black and not worry about her being raped.  I have no idea where they are going with this story line.  Literally, none.

The Thenns and the Wildings are out murdering innocent people because these people obviously had everything to do with "their land" being stolen.  Amidst the fray, Mr. Thenn murders some poor child's parents in front of him, then tells the child he's going to eat his dead parents and instructs him to go to Castle Black to tell everyone they're coming.  Jon realizes that he might have made a major tactical error in telling Mance's people that there were 1,000 men at the Wall (although, none of the Wildings really seemed to believe that) when there are just under 100, and that includes all the menial labor fuck ups.  So, basically, Castle Black is seriously boned.

Arya's still with The Hound and some poor, hapless farmer takes them in because Arya tells him The Hound is her father and that he fought for House Tully.  The Hound acts like a dick, because that's really all he knows how to do, and after the guy sets them up for the night and The Hound agrees to work for him (I'm still a little confused by why he did that) he cracks him over the head and makes off with his money.  He very pragmatically, if impatiently, explains to Arya that the man and his daughter will be dead come winter, which is probably true, and that money does no good to dead men.

Arya proclaims him the biggest shit anywhere ever.

Somewhere in there, Stannis is pissed because Ser Davos let Gendry go and obviously the Red God's blood magic is a powerful thing that works, because both Robb Stark and Joffrey are now dead, which is what Stannis wished for with his wish leeches.  Stannis rambles on in a threatening manner for a second when Davos tells him he's rallied three shitty houses to his cause and then that scene ends because even HBO knows that everyone hates Davos Seaworth.

Across the way in Essos, Daenerys Targaryen, First of Her Name, is majorly pissed off at the people of Meereen.  Not only did they string up a bunch of dead people on the way to their city, but they basically tell Daenerys to fuck off when she shows up at the gates, as if no one has any knowledge of what happened to Astapor and Yunkai.  Daenerys decides, wisely, that inciting a slave rebellion will seriously help her cause, so she makes a moving speech and then catapults a bunch of barrels full of slave collars and heavy metal manacles at the city.  These barrels burst and spill slave paraphernalia all over the streets, which miraculously injure no one, planting the seed in the heads of the slaves that they can just kill all their masters, because they outnumber them, and because they're asshole slave drivers.

The End.