As the show with the reddest weddings on television continues, Nelson Mail reporters and bloggers Sarah Dunn and Adam Roberts continue their discussions about the land of Westeros.
Dear Sarah,
Jeez. And I thought last week’s Lannister wedding was awful. So, we’ve come to the traditional “most intense episode of the season” and boy these producers do not disappoint.
Before I get into this, I should say that in the intervening fortnight since the last episode aired, I managed to gorge on another show featuring a large cast of hateful characters, often related, doing horrible things to each other.
It was Arrested Development. Watching it made me wonder how GoT would look if it adopted the same strategy as AD’s latest season, dedicating a single episode to each character’s adventures. Of course, you’d probably need a narrator to keep everything straight (Ron Howard, preferably), and one whole episode would be devoted to Theon’s torture. Anyway, something to think about.
I think it’s probably good to quickly recap the whole episode to see how cleverly the producers lulled viewers into a sense of complacency before unleashing the pain on us.
So the episode starts off fairly innocuously, with a cool little intro scene of Robb mucking around with his chess pieces, which look pretty similar to the opening credits graphics – very cool.
But it’s wedding time, again, with Robb’s mate marrying into the family Robb screwed over. The evil old dude, Walder, introduces his daughters and granddaughters, forgetting a few names (understandably, given the size of the roster), and Robb has to apologise for bailing on marrying the girl he said he’d marry. Walder is incredibly rude and horrible, talking smack about Robb’s wife etc.
Then over to Daenerys, who’s putting her plan to overthrow the slave city into action. Sexy longhaired man wants to sneak in, then let the army in. Jorah’s going too, so I’m guessing/hoping he’ll come to a sticky end.
Then Arya and the Hound mug a pig farmer farmer, but don’t kill him. Kind people.
Back to the psychic kiddies, who are cowering are in a stormy, abandoned farm. Is it just me, or are we one small child up Who’s the kid talking about drinking blood out of skulls I’ve lost track, I really need a narrator to help with this stuff. Anyway, the Storm is Coming, so they hang out in the Founders Park windmill for a while.
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Meanwhile, Wildings gon’ wild. They begin their assault on the Crows by driving an old man off his land, stealing his horses, then chasing him down the road.
Back to Arya, and we’re like a third of the way through the episode with nothing cool happening (suspiciously boring, so far, eh). The Hound is eating trotters, pretending to be a hog farmer, and talking about seeing people afraid – pretty sure that could apply to anyone in this scary world. Arya reckons he’s scared of fire – a pretty reasonable fear, as it happens.
Back to the psychic kids, who are about to run into the Wildlings storyline (Ron Howard would be furiously narrating at this point if it were Arrested Development). Hodor starts Hodoring (what), and then Bran uses his unfocused-eye powers on him, and calms him down nice and quick.
Assistant to the Regional Manager Gareth the Warg hears Hodor Hodoring, and tells his boys there’s someone up there. “Must be ghosts,” the fellow Wildling reckons. I would’ve thought the sneak-attack portion of the “kill all the Crows” plan would be a good time to start being a bit more careful, and not just assuming everything is fine.
Jon Snow has to kill the old man who was trying to escape to prove he’s all Wildling, but the dire wolves are waiting in the wings. He doesn’t go through with it, there’s a fight, and Bran possesses/directs the wolves to jump in and savage the bad guys. Gareth is killed, which is a shame because I had been enjoying making that Office joke, but not before he summons his eagle (should’ve chosen a dire wolf or a bear as a spirit animal, dude) to peck ineffectually at Snow’s face. Jon legs it (four legs: he’s on a horse) and so Ygritte’s left looking like quite a silly billy indeed for trusting such a scumbag.
Over to the flaming city in the desert, and another fight. A very fighty episode this week.
Daenerys’ dream team infiltrate the city, but are ambushed and proceed to have the loudest fight in the world. Seriously guys, keep it down, you’re supposed to be sneaking. It’s a cool scene, nice to watch the different fighting styles – our former slave is all about that pike, for example. Anyway, more identical slaves pour in, and our dream team is pretty much screwed, or so it appears.
Back to the wedding, where the guy forced into the marriage finds out his wife is actually a bit of a babe. Not that that matters, or anything. This wedding is just going so well!
Then more from Daenerys, who is slightly worried the plan didn’t work, but then immediately reassured when her gang returns in one piece. The city is hers! That was easy! Kind of unimpressive! The producers obviously blew their budget elsewhere! Oh well!
Back to the bleak wedding, and cruel Lord Bolton’s in the house, but isn’t much of a party animal. Then the horrible father talks of bedding the bride. They bed the bride, and everything’s looking suspiciously fine. Arya arrives, runs away from the Hound…
Then all hell breaks loose and holy hell it’s rough. I stopped taking notes here. I couldn’t quite keep track because I kept yelping, but I’m pretty sure everyone died. Like, Robb, his wife, their unborn baby, Lady Stark, the evil guy’s wife, I’m assuming the bride and groom, THE DIREWOLF, just everyone. Walder has them all killed, and that’s the end of that chapter for the Stark family.
I had to check this episode wasn’t directed by Quentin Tarantino, or King Joffrey.
So overall, a super intense and depressing episode, which I’m still not sure I enjoyed. It has cut down (literally) one of my least favourite storylines, but I have always been secretly rooting for the Starks to come out on top.
It also gave those who read the books one more chance to be smug about their prior knowledge.
I guess I’ll have to hope the remaining Starks manage to do better than their predecessors.
– Adam
—
Dear Adam,
Pretty much everything else that happened in this episode is next to nothing compared with that slaughter at Chez Frey. In the books it’s called the Red Wedding, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing everyone’s reaction to it for some time.
As always, Twitter did a great job of allowing audiences to air their perfectly proportionate and not at all hysterical reactions:
@SleepintheGarden: “My outlook on life is bleak. But I’ve never been this low. Thanks #GOT for making me love things and then slaughtering them before my eyes.”
@BrockAK77: “George RR Martin likes to give kids lollipops and take them away just to make them cry. Then for good measure he beheads their parents #got”
@NugeTestament: “Terrified, furious, sad, and shocked.. I cant stop thinking about #got Dont care what anyone says, the show is real. People actually died.”
As a culture, it looks like we have a new benchmark for television-related traumatic experiences. The Eddard Stark beheading was starting to get a little old after all.
For sheer shock factor, I think the beheading might have been worse than the Red Wedding just because it set the tone for what our friend Martin was capable of. However, the wedding was certainly more of a drawn-out extravaganza.
Talisa was stabbed in the womb. Fricking heck. The worst bit was right there at the start. To follow, Robb Stark was shot through with crossbow bolts, most of Robb’s army were killed and Catelyn Stark was shot and also had her throat slit. Her last stand with Walder Frey’s hapless wife was like a scene from King Lear or Macbeth, with each death prompting another one.
I thought the direwolf murder was awful, too. Isn’t it funny how we usually have such blas
