Game of Thrones – Review: I Now Pronounce You Drunk and Sansa via Rickey.org Review of Game of Thrones – Season 3 Episode 8 – Second Sons:
Game of Thrones is picking up the pace by adopting a more fleet approach to its ...
Game of Thrones – Review: I Now Pronounce You Drunk and Sansa via Rickey.org Review of Game of Thrones – Season 3 Episode 8 – Second Sons:
Game of Thrones is picking up the pace by adopting a more fleet approach to its storylines. In past weeks, we’ve gotten single check-ins with various storylines across Westeros, Beyond the Wall, and Across the Narrow Sea. Yet “Second Sons” gets a bit more in-depth, as we stop in for multiple scenes with Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), and even Melisandre (Carice Van Houten). Meanwhile, a significant chunk of this season’s narrative sits this one out (No Jon, Robb, Jaime, Brienne, Littlefinger, Varys, Theon or Bran this week). However, the narrative is improved by the omission, simply by virtue of the fact that the stories in question are allowed room to breathe. For instance, we really haven’t gotten much from Stannis (Stephen Dillane) this season, outside of a brief handful of scenes here and there in which we see how desperately he clings to Melisandre, despite the presence of a wife (Selyse) and daughter (Shireen) who carry a healthy respect and admiration for him (Selyse more than Shireen, it would seem). Here, we get to see the toll his defeat last season has taken, as he embraces Melisandre’s Lord of Light more fervently, resorting to magic to turn the tide of the war, even if the price of that magic is the blood of his own innocent kin. It’s powerful stuff, and is merely one facet of a larger narrative about the cost of power in war. By any measure, “Second Sons” is well-paced television that takes a broad story and boils it down to compelling specifics.
Credit: HBO
The North: After having been captured last week by The Hound (Rory McCann) while fleeing from the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya (Maisie Williams) has naturally assumed that he’s taking her back to King’s Landing. To avoid this fate, she attempts to murder The Hound in his sleep with a rock the size of her own head. However, he awakes just before the potentially fatal blow. He invites her to take her best shot, but warns her that she’d better succeed in killing him, or he’ll cut off both her hands the moment he’s recovered. Arya opts not to take the risk, a choice that proves to be wise on her part, in the sense that The Hound actually wants to take her where she wants to go. He reveals to Arya that they’re headed for The Twins, stronghold of House Frey, where Robb (Richard Madden) and the rest of her family are gathered for the wedding of her uncle Edmure (Tobias Menzies) to one of the Frey girls. The Hound rationalizes that the Starks will pay a veritable king’s ransom for Arya, which is worth far more to him than the indignity of attempting to win back his old position under King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson). Arya is ambivalent about The Hound, recognizing that he’s a means to an end, but hating him nonetheless (though The Hound recalls having rescues Sansa from rape in King’s Landing last season, as a means of explaining that there are people far worse than himself in this world. Yet Arya remains disbelieving). And so the Travelogue of Thrones continues.
Credit: HBO
Meanwhile, Melisandre has brought Gendry (Joe Dempsie) back to Dragonstone to sacrifice him to the Lord of Light, so that Stannis might finally be rid of the usurpers to his rightful place on the throne. To this end, Melisandre decides to wine and dine Gendry, to let him get a taste of the kingly life. Her rationale is that fear “poisons the meat,” so to speak, and so she wants Gendry to feel comfortable, so that he doesn’t “see the knife coming.” Of course, Melisandre takes it a step further by actually seducing the guy, giving him a little thrill before tying him to the bedpost and subjecting him to leeches. The entire scene is among the best of the episode, for
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