Game of Thrones: Season Four, Episode 1

GAME OF THRONES

Season Four, Episode 1

"Two Swords"

Note:  As usual, very little, if anything, is in chronological order.

I’m going to start posting here, again, because Game of Thrones is back on and Once Upon a Time is back on and Outlander starts soon, etc.  So, this post will be about Sunday night’s Game of Thrones and none of it is in any kind of order because it's all from memory.  

It’s both a blessing and a curse that it’s been long enough since I read the books that I can’t remember, with perfect clarity, everything that differs on the show.  It also helps that I’m not much of a stickler for detail, so even though I read the details when I’m reading the book, I tend to forget them in favor of the big stuff.  So, this season, we’ve so far encountered Daenerys, Jon Snow, Ygritte and the Wildings, the Lannister Clan plus one Stark, Arya Stark, Sandor Clegane and Needle and, last but certainly not least, Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand.  We’re going to start there because I fucking love the Martells.

First of all, shout out to HBO for finding a way to let me look at Indira Varma’s beautiful face again without watching reruns of ROME, which ultimately culminate with her throwing herself off a balcony because her husband is kind of a psychopath.  I had completely forgotten that she had been cast as Ellaria, so I got to be delighted all over again when she came on screen.  Oberyn is a bad ass, as well he should be, and is stalking around King’s Landing all, “Tell your dad that the Lannisters aren’t the only ones who pay their debts, bitch.  Imma kill me some lions.”  Oberyn is pissed off because Gregor Clegane raped and killed his sister, which seems like a pretty legit reason to be pissed off.  In the book, Oberyn is there primarily because Tyrion has agreed to secure the Martells a seat on the small council.

They may allude to that at some point later on in the season, but maybe not.  Tyrion (if I remember correctly) brokered a deal with the Martells for a seat on the small council while he was still Hand of the King.  Of course now, as we all know, he’s been replaced by his scary dad, Tywin, and Tywin isn’t too keen on honoring Tyrion’s promises because fuck everybody else.  That hasn’t been revealed in the show, and may not be.  It seems like it’d be just as easy to say Oberyn Martell is there for revenge under the pretense of attending the royal wedding.  Tyrion’s obvious confusion about why he is really there leads me to believe that the producers decided to scrap the whole “small council” thing and just make it a revenge thing.  Simple enough, and it will still work to bring Oberyn to be the plot point he’s meant to be.  So, we can basically assume that, whatever his reasons, Oberyn is there to fuck some shit up.

Jump to Arya.  Arya becomes such a little badass in the books, and her story line gets so fucking weird later on, but we’ve got a little while until that point.  She’s kicking around with Sandor Clegane, The Hound, who plans to ransom her off to her Aunt Lysa who is holed up in the Vale letting her thirty year old son suck on her boobs, or something.  It may be prudent to mention here that Lysa Arryn is batshit crazy and would probably throw Arya out of her sky death window before paying The Hound anything for her.  Of course, I guess Arya can’t know that, so that’s bad luck for her.  

What the fuck's a Lommy?

Arya is pissed off, and with good reason.  Her mother and brother were just brutally murdered and betrayed by that rat bastard Walder Fray and she’s being held (sort of) hostage by some big, smelly, scarred dude from King’s Landing.  I haven’t mentioned, yet, that I love The Hound, so I will. I love The Hound.  He's awful, but I love him.  While traveling, Arya sees the asshole who killed her friend, Plot Point, and stole her sword in the process.  She wants it back and maybe some revenge along with it, and Sandor just wants some chicken, goddamnit.  Cue shabby tavern brawl, in which The Hound beats and stabs everyone into submission and Arya gets to quote last season back to the Sword Stealing Dude and remind him of how mercilessly he killed Plot Point, then stabs him through the throat. Which we can’t really feel all that bad about because he murders children, rapes women and steals people's swords.

 This is for Plot Point, you chode.

So, Arya gets her sword back and gets a horse to boot, and The Hound gets his goddamn chicken.  Mission accomplished.

At some point, we join Daenerys as she begins to confront the fact that her dragons are dragons, not basset hounds, and she is going to have to accept that if she doesn’t want to get her face melted off.  Daario Naharis shows up, gambling with Gray Worm, and accepts Daenerys' sass by giving her random flowers (where the hell did he even get a rose?) under the pretense of impressing upon her the importance of knowing the land she wants to rule, but we all know he just wants to get in her pants and bitches love flowers.  Daario has been recast, which I’m a little annoyed with, because I liked Daario Fabio.  Daenerys and her Big Ass Slave Army are on the way to Meereen, where her story line is going to stall and drag and make you want to strangle her and JUST GO TO WESTEROS ALREADY, JESUS.  Along their way, they find some poor slaves strung up and rotting, pointing the way to Meereen.  They are apparently stationed at each mile marker between where they happen to be and the city, which is 163 miles, so we’ve got 163 dead folks pointing the way as the city of Meereen welcomes their dragon wielding overlords.

 Do you guys think there's a Denny's between here and there?

As usual, Ser Jorah forgets that Daenerys is a bad ass and insists that she wait while some poor bastard begins the arduous process of taking down all the dead people so she doesn’t have to see them.  Of course, Daenerys tells him to go sit down somewhere with a coloring book while she does adult things like stare into the faces of dead, rotting slaves.  I want to pause a moment to ask - who, exactly, was going to get the job of taking down all the dead, stinky slaves?  Because, that is a shit job.  Not to mention that it would probably take hours and the caravan would either have to sit and wait for them to finish, or they’d get stopped several times when the caught up with the dude who was put in charge of that.  

Thanks for overruling that brilliant Ser Jorah idea, Daenerys.  Some low ranking army guy appreciates it.

Back in King’s Landing, Sansa is having a crisis in which basically her whole family has been murdered and she’s having to sit around and drink tea with the assholes responsible for it.  Oh, and she’s married to Tyrion, who is a pimp, but she’s too distracted by all that silly family murdering stuff to notice.  Tyrion clearly loves Shae and is terrified Tywin is going to have her murdered for that reason alone (or Cersei, or anyone, really) so he's trying to keep her at arm's length a it.  Shae is a little slow on the uptake and just thinks he wants a piece of Sansa, so she's getting all jealous.  I see what they’re doing with this.  

Without giving too much away, Tyrion is going to be confronted (this season, should be) with a betrayal of epic, massive proportions and Shae is pretty directly involved.  I don’t recall Martin really playing up any sort of jealousy over Sansa on Shae’s behalf in the books.  After all, Sansa is repulsed by Tyrion and he’s less than interested in her, other than to try and help her recover from his asshole family killing hers, so there’s really nothing for Shae to be jealous of.  In the show, however, it looks like they’re setting up Shae’s jealousy over Sansa in order to have that provide sufficient motivation for what she does, because in the book, it was kind of like, “Damn, woman.  That was cold.  What did Tyion ever do to you besides love you and stuff?”  Apparently, HBO wants to make it a bit easier to see what Shae’s motivation was.  In the books, Shae’s motivation was later revealed as greed, basically, which really kind of made you not be so sad about what happened to her.

Tywin makes it pretty clear that he has no use for men without right hands and tells Jaime he can basically fuck off to Casterly Rock, because no one likes a cripple.  Cersei gives Jaime a commissioned hand made of gold, because that wouldn't be cumbersome and difficult to maneuver at all.  Jaime tries to get his thing on with Cersei who, to Jaime’s confused frustration, rebuffs his advances and then proceeds to tell him that he took too long being held prisoner and getting his hand cut off and left her all alone.  So, he isn’t getting any.  Jaime’s incredulous protests are interrupted by That Girl Who Saw Shae Coming Out Of Tyrion’s Room and this will, presumably, lead to Cersei causing some mischief that will destroy someone or another’s life, as usual.

Brienne shows up while Margaery and her grandmother are discarding precious jewels into the shrubbery and requests to speak with Margaery, whom she tells that Renly Baratheon was murdered by a ghost with Stannis’ face, like Margaery or anyone else really gives a shit about who killed Renly Baratheon, at this point.  She then moves on to trying to convince Jaime to smuggle Sansa out of King’s Landing, somehow.  He calls her difficult and I wait impatiently for the day that they make out and love each other, BECAUSE THEY DO.  Ser Drunk shows up while Sansa is sitting in the Godswood where no one will bother her except drunk dudes who used to be knights.  He gives her a pretty necklace and a remarkably coherent speech for someone who is supposed to be shitfaced, about how his family was toppled from the inside out because of fat alcoholics and he wants his family name to have one more day in the sun.  He thanks her for saving him again and that’s the end of that.  Except that, that scene took place in Clash of Kings and was supposed to be when Ser Drunk promises Sansa that he's going to help her get out of King's Landing, somehow.  The whole relationship with Sansa and Ser Drunk is weird (in the books) and a little on the creepy side.

 What are these made out of?  Robert's gall stones?

Jon Snow is back at The Wall and people are a little pissed off that he killed Qhorin Halfhand.  Telling people that Qhorin told him to do it didn’t really help, much.  I can’t imagine why.  He tells Sam about how Robb was always better at everything than him and how jealous he was of Robb, blah blah.  Sam points out that Jon is better at everything than he is, except reading, and Jon is kind enough to just let that one lie.   He goes to his Night’s Watch hearing, or whatever, and gets sassy with one of the council dudes, who doesn’t believe his totally believable story about Qhorin Halfhand telling Jon to kill him, then proceeds to detail Mance Rayder’s plans to destroy The Wall.  Aemon Targaryen tells Jon to go about his business and hobbles down from his chair.

Somewhere in a Wilding camp, Ygritte is fletching arrows moodily when Tormund sidles up and starts accusing her of letting Jon Snow go, which is a perfectly obvious thing that she did and there’s really no reason to suspect that it happened.  Just assume that it happened and move on.  The Thenns arrive, bag of rotting human flesh in tow, and Xerxes beings an uncomfortable verbal spar with Tormund, culminating with the revelation that the Thenns are cannibals, which wouldn’t be a revelation unless you hadn't read the books.

 

Any of you fucksticks have some barbeque sauce?

The End.