Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Game of Thrones: Penultimate Episode Which Was Very Hard to Watch

Spoilers!!! Don't read this unless you already saw this week's episode.

Oh my.
So this week's "Game of Thrones" focused on the Wildling siege of Castle Black and Jon Snow taking charge as a leader. Tarly kissed Gilly for the first time, and the little boy from a couple of episodes ago wasted Igritte. The bald cannibal guy got a hammer to his head and lots of sympathetic minor characters from the Wall were killed in the battle. Even Ghost, Jon's dire wolf, joined the action. Honestly it was hard for me to watch, not so much because of the violence, a lot of which was shadowed and dark, but because it just seemed so dreadfully hopeless.

I don't always do well with suspense coupled with lots of gore, and The Wildlings had giants and wooly mammoths for Pete's sake. I kept waiting for Ents to emerge from the forest and stamp on the Wildlings but it didn't happen. Never mind that the Nights Watch guys seemed hopelessly incompetent. When they dropped that anchor though- yowza. That hurt. But it is also probably going to be the defining moment of the season for me.

And that's really all that happened. So it was a pretty good episode, I thought, with lots of action and forward motion, and no rape scenes. Lots of people getting arrows through their heads though, so just so you know "Game of Thrones" isn't getting soft on us. What's up next? Well, Jon decided to go out and take on Mance by himself, and I suppose the action will return to King's Landing next week. I have to say I liked having a whole episode in one locale, where we get some extended time with a single set of characters. This episode did not have the choppy feel that so many do, shuffling between so many sets of characters and situations, showing maybe five minutes of action for each. I'd like to see more of these longer stretches of narrative. And I can't wait for the finale next week!

1 comment:

Sandy Nawrot said...

My son and I liked the episode (even though we really wanted some follow-up on that last episode). My husband and daughter not so much. Lots of action, loved that pendulum thing that scraped Wildlings off the wall. It did seem hopeless, and the Night's Watch IS fairly incompetent, but they held on. But there are like 99,000 more Wildlings out there that are coming. I sense that Jon Snow is going to pull a rabbit out of his butt. So did you think Igritte would have killed Jon? I think so. She is one of those scary bitches who seem hot until you sleep with them...then they get all controlling. I hope Ghost is OK.