Monday, May 2, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 2


JON SNOW WATCH: He's ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

That’s right, kids: Jon Snow is back in play, quashing the futile insistence by the entire GoT cast that he was simply dead. Of course he isn’t dead! Just in the way nobody believed Gandalf was gone forever, neither could JS be: there’s too much riding on his character! I have high hopes that we’re going to confirm the long standing fan theory this season that Jon is in fact the true heir to the Seven Kingdoms as the progeny of Rheagar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark: not of Ned Stark and some random woman (which would actually make him Ned’s nephew, Arya/Sansa/Bran/Rickon’s cousin, and Dany’s nephew – as if things weren’t messy and complicated enough), as well as possibly being the prophesized Azor Ahai (who Melisandre had thought had been reborn as Stannis Baratheon because of her visions).

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start back at the beginning of this episode where we were given our first glimpse of Bran since Season 4. Bran is looking well, having been holed up with the 3-Eyed Raven (in what strongly resembles Carcosa from True Detective Season 1) and the Children of the Forest for the past year. Bran and 3ER are viewing an event from the past at Winterfell: a scene were we see Bran’s dad Ned, uncle Benjen, and long dead aunt Lyanna as children. We also see young Hodor, or Wylis, as was his name as a normal functioning stable boy. In the books, Hodor’s birth name is Walder: a moniker he shares with the devious Walder Frey. I’m wondering if they chose to alter Hodor’s name on the show to avoid name confusion with this other character, or if Benioff and Weiss are trolling us with this “Wylis” thing because if you have any familiarity with 80’s pop culture you’ll recognize the oft quoted “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” from Diff’rent Strokes. The irony is palpable, no? Anyway, as we can see Bran’s greenseeing abilities allows him to tap into history as viewed through weirwood trees. The theory is that greenseers can see anything that the trees would have witnessed (it’s not clear what the distance range is, but this is fictional magic so clearly there’s a lot of leeway) throughout its entire life – even events that haven’t actually happened yet for humans. Harking again back to True Detective: I guess for weirwood trees, time is also a flat circle.

Bran is clearly energized to have new insight into his abilities and his past, and excitedly asks Hodor to bring him to Meera Reed so he can share, only to find her mopey and uninterested outside in the snow. She’s clearly bored, not sharing her brother or Bran’s magic powers, so I have sympathy, but as the Child of the Forest clarifies: Bran and Meera won’t be stuck under the Weirwood Tree forever, so just suck it up and enjoy the calm before the storm.

Back at Castle Black, good ol’ Davos and company were prepared to do battle against the rest of the traitorous Nights Watch to protect Jon’s corpse, luckily to be spared the effort thanks to the Wildings, who barge in to save the day. I’m sure you could compare Sir Alliser to any xenophobic demagogue, but his anti-Wildling mutiny bullshit feels like a clear take on what’s going on currently in America with Trump and all his bigoted followers. Obviously the books were written prior to this election cycle, but it’s pretty creepy how relevant this plotline is. Anyone else hoping the giant would stomp on Ollie? I was pissed that he lived, TBH.


Speaking of smashing people, the Kingsguard-formerly-known-as-The-Mountain isn’t too high and mighty to head-crush small potatoes, as we saw in that alley. I don’t know why that whole sequence was necessary; it was a waste of 3 minutes, IMO. Jaime has gained back a small iota of my respect for his parenting skills at Myrcella’s funeral and for threatening the High Sparrow in the Sept. I feel like if Jaime still had his good hand all those fuckers would have been dead meat. Alas, we still have to contend with the Faith Militant. As an aside, I despise the High Sparrow but respect the conflict that his character represents on a larger scale: he isn’t wrong that the royal family is corrupt and the state of affairs in the Westeros is shit. There is plenty of room for improvement. However: his homophobic persecution and terrorism is an evil way to go about purifying the kingdom of its grime. It’s because of zealots like him that religion is ultimately something I can never get behind. Anyway: no sooner than Tommen recovered his nerve, he is back to being his mother’s pawn: I’m interested to see what Cersei’s first move is going forward.

In Meereen, Tyrion utters what will probably be the best quip of this season: “I drink, and I know things” – which kind of makes Tyrion the Descartes of Westeros. In an act of sheer madness, our favorite Imp decides to unshackle Dany’s other dragons who have been depressed in the basement. He knows from history that dragons shouldn’t be kept captive and that they aren’t dumb like domesticated beasts – he goes himself and talks to them and comes out miraculously unscathed. I’m sorry - but for a dude that used to be something of a coward, this was a bold move. Your response to “oh the dragons haven’t eaten anything in a few days” is “ok, Ima go downstairs looking hirsute and meal-sized and unchain those guys!?” Talk about badass!

I’m going to gloss over much of what went down at Winterfell with the Boltons. At this point, Ramsey’s murder of his father, step-mother, and infant brother, is neither surprising nor unexpected. It still was rough to watch and it put me in a despairing mood. Roose Bolton got what he deserved, punkass bitch. But Lady Walda and the baby? It’s like, we know Ramsey is a homicidal sadistic maniac: did we need the terrorizing build up to the mother and child being ravaged by hungry dogs?! It felt like violence just for the sake of violence, which is what Ramsey does, but as an audience did we really need to be subjected to the fact that there was no way he was going to let that child survive? Ug.

I was surprised that Jaqen himself came to test Arya – I was glad that she passed the “a girl has no name” exam and will at least be housed and fed until she can regain her sight. I don’t know if Arya really has it in her to abandon herself, I guess time will tell though.

I couldn’t give less of a shit about the Iron Islands/Greyjoys when I read the books and I give even less of a shit about them on the show. The Kingsmoot – the traditional process by which the successor to the High King of the Iron Islands is chosen – must somehow effect the bastardized version of the story that Benioff and Weiss have put on screen so I guess we’re just going to have to suffer through it. LAME.

And finally: Jon Snow Rises! Davos manages to pep-talk Melisandre, who is rightfully downtrodden because of her epic fail with the Baratheon uprising, into attempting to Beric Dondarrion Jon back to life. I don’t know about you, but I feel like given their history Davos was especially kind to the Red Woman, in a way I could never be. Maybe he sensed that abusing her into helping their cause wasn’t a great way to go about working a miracle. If I were him I would have attempted to cut off her head by now, but again: Davos has more class than I do. Despite her belief that the resurrection shouldn’t and wouldn’t work, we end on Jon Snow gasping back to life, mostly naked on a table.

Even though we all suspected this was ultimately going to happen, I thought they would drag this out some more given the pathetic “Jon Snow is DEAD” propaganda we had to put up with for a whole year. I hope this is also the case in the upcoming book but since we’ve deviated so far from the source material, who knows. For an episode that was only exhilarating for about 30 seconds, I really can’t complain about this one too much.

Hopefully next week we get more Arya and Bran, I suspect we’ll deal mostly with Dany in episode 3.

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