Blood of My Blood

Season 6, Episode 6

[Sorry this is late, I had a return of some connectivity problems so I'm just posting a short reflection.]

Is Game of Thrones leaving the development of its endgame too late?

That was one of my thoughts after episode 6. It juggled the three main branches of the tv version of the 'song of ice fire' well: Westeros remains a 'game of thrones' with second guessing, double crossing and savvy manipulation galore; the epic statement-drama (with some added scheming) continued in Essos; the north continues to seem like the place where all the really important stuff is happening - the portentous events are accruing and one day Everywhere-not-North will realise that their battles are but petty scwables in the scheme of the song of ice and fire.

But that's been the case since season one, episode one, scene one.

We're now at season 6, reportedly the last full 10 episode season, with only two shortened seasons left. As my blog title suggests, it's often the quieter moments of discussion that I enjoy most about Thrones, so I'm a bit worried at this stage that the series will need to accelerate to the point where it becomes little more than a series of action scenes and pay-off set pieces.

The Door

Season 6, episode 5

[Be warned: here there be spoilers, including for the movie '12 Monkeys'.]

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Well we're half way through the season already. I forgot to mention in my introductory posts that my reviews will have spoilers, although that's probably pretty obvious.

Spoiler one: the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers. Not much detail given, but okay, a sort of Frankenstein's monster scenario on a wider scale.

Sansa meets Balish for the first time since he gave her to the Boltons. He seems genuinely bothered by what happened to her, and certainly it was never established that he knew what an evil sadistic shit Ramsey was. Still, I just think he will keep betraying people and they'll never learn.

I previously had a suspicion, based partly on rumours I've read for season 6, that Sansa will fall back into the hands of Ramsey, who will murder her before he eventually gets killed. I won't go into the details yet as I currently doubt this will be the case, but if things go too far south for Sansa - literally and figuratively - I'll be worried.

I think it would be a huge mistake in storytelling as Sansa's character development has been one of the most interesting and the most organic of the show. To waste that on a 'shock death that reminds us that on this show anyone can die at any moment didn't you know?' with the only relevance being how it further motivates a male character (Jon), would be a shame. Winter is coming, but that doesn't mean they should start putting women in refrigerators.

In Meereen, it was oddly disturbing to see Varys completely thrown by the local Lord of Light High Priestess's response to his cross-examination.

Meanwhile, in the Iron Sands poor Theon still can't catch a break. He did the right thing and supported his sister and it almost worked, but then Euron just turns up and takes the title. I thought the writing here wasn't great: his argument that got (almost) everyone at on his side was pretty weak and relied on many claims that the no one had any reason to believe from a person they wouldn't have any reason to give the benefit of the doubt. I guess it could be argued that this demonstrates just how difficult it is to get a patriarchal society to choose a Queen when they can have a King. She has to achieve twice as much and only gets half the credit.

The other major revelation: oh no Hodor's dead! My guess is that the moment Hodor in the past went from saying 'hold the door' to clearly saying 'Hodor', was the 'moment' that his future self died. Possibly the most heartbreaking death of the series after Shireen's* and the Red Wedding.

[*Although I also thought Shireen's death was excessive. Another example where the show runners got carried away with their 'we will shock you you with what cruel things people are willing to do'.]

I wonder if George R R Martin watched the film 12 Monkeys, and thought he could top it with an even more tragic, elaborate version. In that film Cole as a child witnesses his future death (also obviously involving time travel but achieved in a different way than the The Door). Both cases of men spending most of their lives haunted by seeing their own death. Except in Cole's case he didn't realise it, he just had unexplained visions of a death. Hodor, on the other hand, was left to some degree aware of the sacrifice he would be called on to make.

Elegant rooms

Obviously this blog is primarily about Game of Thrones, starting with season 6, but fair warning: I may occasionally post about some other tv show, a movie, or politics etc as I please.

The reason for the name should be obvious to thrones fans or regular watchers: it's a quote from Tyrion Lanister in season 6 episode 3, where he tries to engage Missandei and Grey Worm in conversation.

"A wise man once said the true history of the world is the history of great conversations in elegant rooms."

The wise man being himself, but it leads nicely into some of the things I like about Game of Thrones. So let's go!

What I love about Game of Thrones:

• Tyrone Lanister. Actually, he's just my favourite out of  bunch of compelling characters. That's the real point: compelling characters. Even characters who have done some seriously nasty shit, like Melisandre, have interesting character development. (Of course, there are some characters who I just want to see die a horrible death asap, like Ramsey.)
• The conversations, in elegant rooms or otherwise. The backbone of Game of Thrones are the conversations between the various compelling characters, in elegant and not so elegant rooms or in 'walk with me' situations. For example, I loved the season two interactions between Arya and Tywin - could have done with more. When well established characters meet each other for the first time, or characters long parted are reunited, it has the same kind of epic moment feel as Marvel tries to achieve when bringing its characters together for the first time. 
• Humour. Obviously the example I led in with, and any number of other Tyrion quotes. There's any number of one liners and character exchanges. They even do goofy situation humour, such as the when the Hound reveals to Thoros who Arya actually is, and the camera changes focus to the 'oh fuck' look on her face
• Production values. The quality of the production is excellent. The locations especially add a sense of epic sense that you can't get from pure CGI (I'm looking at you Star Wars prequels). The production design, cinematography and special effects are high quality
• The theme music. I mean come on... it's awesome
• The names! Missandei, Oona, Daenerys, Thoros, Oberon, Melisandre, Kevan... okay, not Kevan
• Story. Yes of course the twisty-turny storytelling is great. I'm not putting it last because it's the least important factor, so much as it's all those other things that make the story work, and make some of the shocking twists worth it.

What I don't like:

• the trite nature with which they sometimes treat sexual violence
• specifically, the way they take specific scenes from the books that are scenes of consensual sex, and for no reason change them to instances of rape. In particular, the weird scene in season 4 where Jaime rapes Cersi has absolutely no narrative value
• the defensiveness of some fans. Can a person not both like the show, but also criticise some aspects of it? I criticised Emergency Awesome's Charlie Schneider for his glib waiver of the murder of Shireen, arranged by Melisandre. He literally said "we" [meaning us, the audience of Game of Thrones] forgive the brutal killing of a child because the person who arranged it later brought back a cool character. It was a dopey thing to say on a number of levels, and he should have been called out on it.

Anyway, despite my reservations, Game of Thrones has proven to be one of the best shows on tv, and I look forward to the rest of season 6.

A blog of thrones

Welcome to my Game of Thrones blog, wherein I prattle on about anything I feel like about the television show, and occasionally other matters. Some initial points:

• I have not read the books; this blog is about the TV series version of the story
• I will post my reaction to each new episode of season 6 from episode 5 onwards just after it's broadcast on Monday evening, New Zealand time, i.e. first up will be episode 5 tomorrow night about 10.30 pm NZT
• I intend to review the next two seasons as well (as it stands there are only two left), and will fill in between seasons with various other prattle about Game of Thrones, generally on a Monday evening too, including some reviews of past seasons
• Yes, it's a bit random to jump on this bandwagon now - talk about late to a party - but that's the way it is. I've binge-watched the series to catch-up and now I get what all the fuss is about, as they say. In my next post (in about an hour or so) I'll explain what I like about the show, and what I don't, and what I don't like about some fans.