So, now we're arcing toward annoying

I've run into a few people over the years who felt that Breaking Bad started slowly. My typical response has been: "Are you kidding me? It opens with a guy in a gas mask and his tighty-whities, driving an RV at high speed across the New Mexico desert, with two corpses sliding around in the back. How can you open much faster than that?" But what they're usually referring to is the few episodes after that where we find out about Walt's dead end career as a chemistry teacher and his cancer and his somewhat shrewish wife and all the other dolorous things that make his escape from that life into the role of Heisenberg so obviously enticing. There was a change of pace, but I was so interested in the performances of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul at that point that I didn't really care. This was a story and I wanted to know more about it. But that story was about Walt and there was enough depth there to build on, even if most people think it took a few episodes to really get up and moving. Preacher is supposed to be the story of Jesse and The Word. However, there are a number of other stories happening at the same time (Tulip, Cassidy, Arseface) and it looks like the showrunners are having a hard time figuring out how to introduce all of it in some kind of sequential fashion, so we're getting a sine wave of pacing that makes all of it seem somewhat irrelevant.

Let's take Tulip's encounter with the cop. It lasted a few minutes and told us... what? That Tulip's a veteran? Maybe. The ring could just be a highway dodge. That she's really interested in "saving her man"? Maybe. That's a nice story to tell someone when you've been hauled down for doing 60 over the limit. That she's convincing enough to sell a state trooper a line of bullshit? Yeah. I think we know that already, so why are we visiting it again in episode 3? What purpose does it serve in the long-term, either for Tulip's character or the story as a whole? What purpose does it serve for the story you're telling in this episode tonight? (I'm reminded again of Jim Shooter's famous dictum: Every comic is someone's first. They all have to have a beginning, middle, and end in each issue.) There just doesn't seem to be much there.

Similarly, Sheriff Root suddenly becoming Sheriff Ed Tom Bell doesn't do a whole lot for me. Root was one of the more detestable characters of the comic series, not a guy you'd sympathize with because the world had gotten too crazy. He provided a focus for the animus of the readers toward the situations that were afflicting Jesse and Co. (not least to his son, Arseface.) In other words, he made a solid bad guy. And perhaps that's the real problem here to begin with.

We seemed to have a bad guy in Sheriff Root, but now he's just lost control of his world and seems more plaintive than like someone trying to reassert control. We seemed to have bad guys in the two hunters from heaven but they had a nice sitdown with the sheriff and now we know they're basically just trying to do the right thing (as they describe it, anyway.) There's still the lurking presence of a bad guy in the still-unnamed Odin Quincannon, but the audience hasn't been shown enough of him to really make that determination, especially since he's had all of a half-dozen total lines in three episodes. What we have is a bunch of people who are some shade of gray, rather than black or white, and I normally love that. I'm perfectly fine with the characters not being divided into white hats and black hats. Honestly, I prefer it. The problem here is that they're all the same shade of gray, which makes it hard to determine why any of them are interesting at all, since everyone seems to be just one big, confused but happy family at this point. Perhaps once they finish stumbling into each other and apologizing, we'll finally get someone who becomes annoyed and picks a fight; conflict being kind of essential to any decent story.

One would think that the showrunners are aware of the massive potential for conflict inherent to Cassidy. But so far, the latter has been reduced to comic relief (I did appreciate the appearance of the sun-blocking paddy hat, since that was a hallmark of the character in the comics. The production's eye for detail is definitely apparent.) and little else. There isn't even really a foundation for the level of affection that exists between him and Jesse, since all we've really had on camera is a couple minutes of them drinking and Jesse trying to get Cassidy to go all "exposition dump" on us. Why would Jesse have taken in this strange guy, other than being a preacher and trying to accept everyone as a child of the Lord, yadda yadda yadda? I guess that's a foundation, but Jesse doesn't strike me as mentally strong enough to take that position just yet, especially since he's wandering around as confused as the rest of the cast, if not moreso because he's still doesn't understand the presence of The Word.

I'm not burying it yet. I liked some of the technique employed by director, Scott Winant. Quincannon walking from the theater into the light was a very comic-like splash page effect. And the flashback scenes to Tulip, Jesse, and the now-absent Carlos were well done, giving both a dramatic turn to an episode that lacked it and a nice flash of the roots of their relationship. But I'm not watching Preacher for directorial technique and I'll go ahead and assume that over 99% of the rest of the audience isn't, either. There has to be something for me to want to come back to and Jesse using The Word to make Cassidy dance and throw himself into walls really isn't it. Tellingly, while watching the latest episode, I was actually dozing off, which was unusual not just because it was the middle of the afternoon, but also because, as most people will tell you, I don't sleep that much. There has to be something soon that makes me sit up and take interest, because The Word clearly isn't getting through to me.

You can't escape who you are

We've known for a while now that Arya would never be able to become one of the Faceless Men. Her identity as a Stark is too much a part of who she is as a person. The fact that she's even in Braavos and the House of Black and White in the first place is because of her identity as a Stark, since she asked for Jaqen's help in order to continue her mission of taking vengeance on everyone she blames for the death of her family. And family and identity are what this episode ("No one") is about, from Arya's assertion of herself to Jaime's confrontation with the truth about himself that he's tried to avoid to Tirion's attempt to get those around him to see life the way he does (consisting mostly of booze and bad jokes.) These are all expressions of who these people are, even if they're not what they'd like to be.

The example that's been driving this point home is the theater company that's been performing in Braavos since the beginning of the season. This is the framing element that D&D have been using to drive the point home that the great game of thrones is, in the end, largely about family/clan loyalty, just like the historical model that Martin originally based it upon: the Wars of the Roses and the clan wars among the Italian city-states. This is what Jaime cites in his confrontation with Edmure over Riverrun. Edmure can't abandon his son and wife to the depredations of the Freys and Jaime can't change the fact that he's a Lannister and he'll do anything to get back to his sister and lover. It pains him to admit that he's subject to the whims of another, even if those whims defy the notion of the man that he'd like to be and which Brienne attempted to remind him of. But, in the end, he's a Lannister and Cersei is Cersei. He can't escape it.

In some respects, the meta question created by the play is whether many of the main characters are acting of their own free will. I think that question is answered for Jaime and Arya (one is not, the other clearly is) but it remains to be seen how many others are merely actors in the play that makes up their lives and whether they would be someone else if given the opportunity. I think Tyrion is the best example, as he wistfully imagines owning a vineyard and making (and drinking) his own wine. But when pressed at various times in the books, he's still stated that he's a Lannister. The clan loyalty is still there. But it's obvious that, at various times, Daenerys has clearly imagined being someone different and not being saddled with the responsibility thrust upon her. Only in recent times has she finally fully embraced the idea of claiming all that she sees as her rightful heritage. And why? Because she's a Targaryen and her family once ruled all of Westeros, so she must do so, as well.

We can carry that meta idea even a step further and question the basic way in which the story is told. There's a debate among fiction writers about whether stories are plot-driven or character-driven. In the simplest and most biased interpretation, the former are about action and the latter are about feelings. But my estimation of the concept is a little different. Character-driven stories are centered around the actions and experiences of one (or perhaps two or three) characters. Without them, the story doesn't exist. Most superhero comics are character-driven. Captain America, the comic, doesn't exist without Captain America. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, is plot-driven: the story of what happens is going to proceed without or without any particular character. As we've seen so often, the deaths of what seem to be major players are just steps in the painting of the final picture. This is a story about events and those events are often driven by the actions of the main characters, but it's not reliant upon their actions to propel it forward. The snowball is already rolling downhill and everyone just better be able to keep up. In that respect, they're acting out their roles as surely as anyone who's ever stepped on a stage and performed. That's also what the play in Braavos is saying.

The interesting thing about the intersection of the play with the other identity story in Braavos is that the House of Black and White is essentially a cult of assassins. Those assassins are frequently hired by the wealthy to remove each other. It plays a role in the game of thrones. But it's accepted and even welcomed among the common people of Braavos for the service it provides to those in need. The life of the common person is often hard and the House of Black and White provides the release they seek at the end. In a city founded by ex-slaves, it's understandable that the regular person would be fine with the masters continuing to fight and kill each other, as long as the ones doing the killing did so at least partially amidst the ideal that, in the end, one dead person is the same as any other. Whether you're killed in the game as part of a noble family or released from disease on the streets of Braavos, the House brings everyone to the same level, where identity is irrelevant. In short, all of life is explained by Sandor Clegane.

Side notes:

This is the eighth episode and we're clearly in the home stretch. Given that, it was no surprise to see that Benioff and Weiss had returned to being the lead writers on this one. As you'd expect, it was well done. However, there were a couple down notes. While I understand the usefulness of the "drink with me and tell jokes" scene, the whole thing kind of fell flat. We get that Tyrion isn't particularly thrilled with the role that he has to play. That was never more obvious than when he was bidding farewell to Varys, knowing that they might never see each other again. I was still waiting for the punch line to the whole "drink and joke" scene when Grey Worm went running out of the room. I have a feeling that the editor had to be used on that one. Similarly, was there some point to the shot of the Hound pissing into the river? I mean, we knew what was happening. I'm not sure why we needed the view of the ripples on the water. If he'd been pissing on a corpse he'd just made, that would have been something worth taking the extra moment for.

In contrast, the showdown between the Mountain and the Faith Militant was really well done. Cersei's smirk at the beheading could not have told a more detailed story about her as a person and the shot of the blood running into the drain was a perfect example of the methods that she's always employed to get her way. Similarly, the chemistry between Gwendolyne Christie and Nikolai Coster-Waldau has not faded one bit in the last couple years. Their meeting in the tent had all the elements of what remains perhaps my favorite scene of the entire series: the moment in the baths ("Jaime. My name's Jaime.") While they both feel duty-bound to their roles for very different reasons, it remains fascinating to watch them deny what's in front of them, especially in Jaime's case, since the obligation to duty he feels is comprised mostly of his desire to return to another woman. It was great to get a dose of that again.

Was it only me or did The Waif tracking Arya through the city feel like The Terminator? They even used the comic-like impact shots that James Cameron loves so much, when The Waif would step into the shot again and the flicker of emotion would go across her supposedly robot-like face. If she'd started speaking in Austrian-inflected English, I'd have probably been OK with it. Also, it was interesting to see the end result of the widespread speculation on the Web last week about Arya leading her into a trap. While I was a little put off about how easy it seemed for Arya to ignore her fairly dire injuries after rolling down a few dozen stone steps (especially when confronting Jaqen H'ghar in the last scene), the salute with the sword and the return of the water dancer let me gloss over that a bit. Also, the little wry smile by H'ghar at the end was perhaps confirmation that even he doesn't know all the desires of the Many-faced God and perhaps here was the one person who went through all of the trials presented and rejected what she's been given. This was perhaps the truth revealed in another manner.

Finally, it was nice of them to acknowledge (by Varys, of course) the fact that Tirion had essentially made the same mistake as Cersei in giving in to the wishes of fanatics in order to accomplish what seems to be a greater goal. Having the catechism of Daenerys Stormborn spread by the priests of the Lord of Light will almost certainly involve larger complications in the future. With only two half-seasons to go, is there time for a holy war between the Red God and the Seven?

Lines of the week:

"Essos is east and Westeros is west, but what's west of Westeros? That's where all the maps stop."
What happens when you choose your own path?

"Those are your last words? 'Fuck you'? Come on, you can do better than that."
"Cunt!"
"You're shit at dying, you know that?"
The Hound is still good at the killing, brohim.

"She'll come back. She has to. My heart's been broken too many times already."
Varys with the reality of being the Master of Whispers.

"Podrick fucking Payne. I thought you'd be dead by now."
and
"The way all women look at him is frankly irritating. Preferred working with the little brother on that count."
and
"Lesson #1: Assume everyone wants to hit ya. Because they do, Pod. Everyone wants to hit a fuckin' squire."
Seriously. This is why Jerome Flynn is still in the show and why we're all thrilled that he is.

"This is my home. And if Jaime Lannister wants it, he can bloody well take it the way everyone else does."
Siege or go home, no exceptions for prissy Lannisters!

"Your place is in the gallery with the other 'ladies' of the court."
Kevan Lannister with the slight.

"Why don't you drink? Why don't either of you ever drink?"
I need this, so you need this!

"You imagine yourself a decent person? Is that it?"
Edmure with the smackdown, even if he couldn't keep it going.

"We all bloody die! Except this one here."
Beric Dondarrion defying the good sense of the Hound once again.

The almost-winner:

"I choose violence."
No quote better embodies Cersei's preferred approach and Lena Headey delivered it perfectly. That was excellent.

Because the Hound's always the winner

And the winner:

"There was a time I would have killed all seven of you just to gut these three."
"You're getting old, Clegane."
Because the Hound's always the winner, even if Thoros is right.

Spiritual slump

Today's musical interlude is descriptive, but not determinative. In other words, despite what follows, don't lose all hope yet.

Ongoing series will often run into the problem of the sophomore slump, in that their second season will often be much less interesting than their first, either because their writers have gone down too many bad trails or because they blew their wad in the first season and weren't quite ready for the follow-up. Of course, normally that takes an entire season. After having seen the second episode of Preacher, I'm mildly concerned that writer Sam Catlin and directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are having premature... troubles.

Two weeks ago when I wrote about the pilot, I mentioned that I thought the elements of the story that more closely resembled something like Carnivale were the ones that I could really see working for the series. Part of that is the willingness for the writer and director(s) to say: "This is our world and welcome to it." In other words, you can't play up the fact that weirdness is happening. It simply is what happens, similar to a Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That involves all elements of the production, from sets to score. Too much of this second episode spent time emphasizing just how "weird" these events were supposed to be. The most obvious point was when Jesse stops in the road to investigate the baby seat before Tulip effectively kidnaps him. At that point, the screeching violins were telling you that "THIS WAS A MOMENT OF CRISIS AND YOU SHOULD FEEL CRISIS"/Zoidberg. Why? Do we need to be told that this is a tense moment? The lack of lighting and the fact that a baby seat is in the road should tell us that (although it was kind of tough to tell what it was; a direct shot with the camera might have been better than having Jesse and Tulip tell us later.) That was a director saying: "This isn't WEIRD enough. Hit the strings!" That's not someone who's sure of his story or his setting.

Similarly, we spent a lot of time doing obvious establishment shots like the one of the bounty hunters up there (I'm trying so hard to not spoil stuff...) Even more prominent was Jesse meeting Cassidy back at the church before the whole "origin story" drinking session. That was basically the director(s) saying: "Here's the home turf of our hero, where he feels most comfortable, and where you should feel at home while we take another long look at the run down building that represents the complicated faith of our hero and his flock." But we get that already. We don't need to keep being reminded of it. And, also, what gives with the whole "So, what's your story, Cassidy?" That's a direct quote. Two guys are drinking and you can't come up with a subtler way of getting into Cassidy's past than simply asking for it. You're not telling a story there. You're reading from a pitch. Give me a story.

I still like some of the details. The hunters using dark steampunk tech is good; very Gilliam-esque. Cassidy slurping blood off the floor is a measure of what he is in more ways than one (vampire and addict.) But, by the same token, I'm also a little distressed at the lack of some detail. This is out in the sticks of west Texas (which is pretty much all of west Texas...), right? Then why is it that the outside of the church looks like a meticulously groomed movie set? There's no dirt other than what's been perfectly raked and smoothed. There's no debris, natural or otherwise. There's nothing that indicates that people actually, y'know, live here. This is a problem (among many) that the Constantine TV series had. John Constantine is supposed to be someone from the underbelly of society, but every time he appeared on camera, his clothes looked like he'd just walked out of a dry cleaner. Similarly, Jesse and Cassidy are supposed to be fairly lowdown guys, but you can't convince me that these guys are salt-of-the-earth if there ain't no earth.

Once again, the person that seems to have most embraced his or her role is the her. Despite Tulip being given the fairly boilerplate tough girl activities (beating the guys at poker, etc.), there's enough mystery in what she's doing for us to at least be willing to follow her around. She also seems to have the most complex motivations, which means that she's interesting to think about between episodes. Think about Don Draper and you'll know what kind of character I'm speaking of. I would have gladly spent more time watching Tulip do her thing than seeing them build up to the second use of The Word. Yes, we realize that Linus has issues at the baptism. Yes, we get the symbolism of the bus driving by. So we're getting to the payoff and his first line is: "You can't just walk into my house and turn the tub on!" Wut? OK, fine. Maybe it was ad-libbed. Maybe they really didn't think there was a better line that, you know, could involve the fact that they both knew why Jesse was there and how they both knew that they'd been together at another, more conventional, baptism.

Alright, fine. Never mind. I'm quibbling about details, right? In fact, I liked some of the details; like the large CD collection in the front room. If this is taking place in the 90s when Preacher was originally written and published, that would've been normal. But if it's in the present day, maybe it's just an indication of the "other side of the tracks" nature of the whole town. Great. That works. And then he uses The Word...

So, when Jesse uses The Word, it's usually a crisis moment. I've written about the problem with abilities that only appear when the story needs them before and Preacher, the comic, avoided that snafu to a certain degree. It is, of course, way too early in the story to be overly concerned about the problem of trivializing the greatest manifestation of what makes Jesse "the Preacher", but it's also too early to have it easily explained by those it affects, too. When he uses the power, instead of Linus being utterly disoriented, he recovers in seconds and begins asking plot questions: "What'd you do to my brain?" How is it that obvious? This guy's face is burning, he's soaking wet, he's lost a chunk of his memory, and he's immediately aware of what happened to him? Hm. Yeah. I don't buy it. It sounds too much like the directors trying to spoon feed the story (in episode 2), rather than letting it develop.

OTOH, they introduce Odin Quincannon (yes, that's who the old guy (Jackie Earl Haley) is; no, that shouldn't be a spoiler) and spend exactly zero time giving any detail on just who he is and what he means to the local community. We get to see Donny break a guy's nose on the car horn, but don't know why we've had this little interlude and aren't given anything particularly strange to make us remember it. Why not? They came in, got a deed, and demolished a house. I mean, I guess that's weird but there didn't seem to be any follow-up to it that made it particularly memorable. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because of the lack of substance, not because it was particularly interesting.

So, yeah. A lot of problems. I'm far less enthused about this week's production than I was about the pilot and I wasn't head-over-heels about the latter in the first place. I actually looked at the clock while I was watching this one, if that gives you any indication of just how enthralled I was. I'm not bailing yet. It's not Constantine-level of god-awful. But I have a far more jaundiced eye for what's coming.

Stuff you don't like to do

You're telling me I gotta do what?

At many points in life, you're stuck doing things that you'd rather not be. Most people don't like their jobs. I don't like mine. I'd rather be writing for a living (such as being a TV and movie critic...) But you do what you gotta in order to get by and most of the scenes in this episode (titled "The Broken Man") are about that approach to life. Last week was when circumstances turn against you. This week was about the distasteful things you often have to do in order to get out of them. In many cases, it was a question of self-interest (the Hound not really caring about anyone, Theon wanting to crawl into a hole and die, Jon just wanting to get away from war) versus the supposed higher calling that should be motivating people to press on. Said higher calling is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Jaime was actually pursuing a path that involved both self-interest (getting back to his sister) and the greater interests of House Lannister (recapturing Riverrun for erstwhile ally, Walder Frey), but it didn't make it any more enjoyable, even if it was a nice opportunity for writer Bryan Cogman to reintroduce Bronn for the first time this season.

[Tangent: Bronn is, without question, the most changed character from books to show. In the books, he was a secondary character of interest solely to Tirion and, once his bit was done in the latter half of A Storm of Swords, he disappeared. But Jerome Flynn turned him into such a fan favorite that not only did he wander off into storylines that didn't occur in the books (Dorne; not Sunspear, just Dorne (no, I'll never forget.)) but now he's being introduced into those that did (the siege of Riverrun.) It remains to be seen whether GRRM will return him to relevance in the same way that he promised to have more for Osha to do because of Natalia Tena's superlative performance, but it wouldn't surprise me. /tangent]

I'd really rather be with my dead girlfriend and, yet, here I am pleading with you on behalf of another ginger.

Most of that distasteful activity centered around activities in the ongoing "squabbling between houses" as Ser Davos put it, so it's not difficult to see how a lot of our cast isn't really interested in pursuing glory on the behalf of people that don't really like them (Jon, Theon, Sandor Clegane) or for goals that all of them find to be contrary to their own principles. This continues to highlight the contrast between the nobility and the commoners that the High Sparrow brings into focus with every episode: the war among the nobles hurt everyone but those people conducting the war until the Sparrow turned it on them. Even the "protectors of the people" known as the Brotherhood Without Banners (a specific denial of the nobility's tendency to identify themselves as elevated above regular folk because of the colors and bloodlines that they carry) has sunk to brigandage in the midst of the ongoing chaos.  This is what drives people to religion. Or alcohol. Or murder. In this episode, we got examples of all three (Margaery, Theon, The Waif (kinda.))

Septa Aella, the Implacable

The one that stands out among that pack is, of course, Margaery, who's engaging in her adopted role with a great deal more enthusiasm than the rest. You have to be a fanatic in order to fool fanatics. There was some question in the last episode as to whether Margaery had really been put under the sway of the Sparrow and the faith, but this episode dispelled all of that. Margaery is a canny operator and she knows that doing the Sparrow's bidding in order to get her grandmother out of the city (removing the presence of the Tyrells for his purposes) also saves Olenna's life. The note of the rose (There's a short story title; too generic for a band name) reveals her true devotion to house and family. Her claiming that she no longer likes sex is probably just a way of (ahem) sticking it to the Sparrow by suggesting that the faith extends too far to serve what are his own political purposes, as he's no slouch when it comes to playing the game despite all claims to the contrary ("We're just here to serve the common people", etc.) He knows that the death of Baelor the Blessed without an heir led indirectly to the Dance of the Dragons that burned the seven kingdoms from one end to the other. If crown and faith are united, there has to be a continuing crown. So, you do what everyone else did this episode and grudgingly encourage the woman you've been scolding as a harlot to get back into bed and, really, no one likes to do that...

On the other hand, this episode was also an opportunity for a lot of characters to revel in some blunt talk that said some things that most people (fans and characters alike) have been thinking for quite some time, so life isn't always a trial. Olenna dressing down Cersei for her rash and stupid decisions involving the faith was about the most richly deserved moment in the history of the show, to date. Plus, one gets to read about all kinds of historical parallels involving current events, if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, Brynden Tully's obvious disdain for both those he considers beneath him (the Freys) and simply beneath contempt (Jaime) was a great reintroduction of the Blackfish. Furthermore, the scene between Asha and Theon was a genuinely great moment for the two actors. Alfie Allen has continued to do yeoman's work as Theon, but Gemma Whelan really hit every note on key as she berated her brother to stand up for himself while showing real emotion and concern on her face for his well-being. It's a fine line to tread without appearing either "weak" to the Ironborn or too harsh for Theon's fragile condition. Speaking of appearing weak, I guess it's kind of appropriate in Iron Islands culture for a female captain to enjoy screwing women like the rest of her crew, but it strikes me as D&D/Cogman being a bit obvious in terms of bending to expected sexual perceptions in which the woman plays the nominally weaker role (the one imposed upon instead of doing the imposing.) In the books, GRRM avoided that since Asha is quite the sexual being, but does so with men and leaves no question as to who is fucking whom. I think I would have been more comfortable with her showing that her role reversal (a woman in charge of Ironborn) is complete in all facets of her life.

Yeah, that look of consternation was on my face, too.

Similarly, the "big shocker" moment of the episode, the attempt on Arya's life by the Waif, was a bit off. While the moments with the Westerosi captain were entertaining and showed an Arya fully in command of her world and finally sure of her path, it seemed a bit too obvious to be approached by a random woman on the street. Having been training to be a Faceless Man for this long and knowing that they wouldn't let her go that easily, it seems unlikely that she wouldn't have been ready to vivisect anyone that stepped that close to her at just about any moment. Yes, she was cocky and paid the price for it, but she's also now the equivalent of a trained assassin and that just seemed too easy. I suppose that the Waif was our one character that was actually engaging in something that she really enjoyed, as opposed to most of the rest of our cast. One wonders just how many Braavosi understand when someone has been marked by the Many-faced God and chose to not got involved as the mortally-wounded Arya staggered through the streets. Gotta push on through.

Side notes:

While I understand the technique, I have to say that the alternate cuts between scenes are getting kind of annoying. It used to be that an extended scene would be cut into parts and the episode would move around between three or four storylines before returning to the second or third part of the long bit. In recent seasons, we've seen a lot more direct swapping and tonight's episode did a lot of that, in which we switched back and forth between, say, Riverrun and the Hound multiple times, while events progressed in each. While that does allow for easy transitions between events of actual significance, it starts to feel like a cheat. They didn't have to show (or pay for) the church community getting slaughtered by the Brotherhood because they switched to Braavos for the shocker moment and then back to Clegane to just show the aftermath. It's not like we need to see more people getting cut to pieces (and, as noted, it costs a lot of money to shoot those battle scenes, pay for FX, pay for extras and stuntmen in action, etc.), but it does tend to set up stereotypical moments like the end of this episode, where we see Clegane grabbing his axe before storming off camera. We could have gotten the same effect if he'd seen the carnage happen or, honestly, if he'd walked in and we closed out with him looking at the hanged priest. But we needed a moment of IMPACT after the cut to Braavos and so we get the obvious churning jaw of impending vengeance. It could be writer, director, editor or any combination of the three but, as I said, it's been happening more frequently in the last couple seasons and it's starting to feel cheap.

"Lemme tellya about that cocksu-!"

In all honesty, nothing in this episode, as good as it was, was as thrilling as seeing Ian McShane return to HBO. The opening on the construction project reminded me of the barn-raising scene in Witness and here was Al Swearengen, noted Amishman, leading the effort. (The language in that second link is very NSFW.) This is why McShane would have taken this bit role. It gives him the opportunity to berate people for both blindly and poorly following religion while he gets to play the most profane priest in Westeros. What made that scene even more poignant was the return of my oft-noted, all-time favorite character in A Song of Ice and Fire, Sandor Clegane. While I was perfectly happy with his death scene in the books and found it even more poetic when we read about the rumors drifting around the Crownlands that indicated that he might be alive and had reoriented his life to working at a small monastery, I'm fine with him being back in action, as well. On the technical side, it was kind of weird to find this whole odd and rather slow tangent in the midst of a season that has moved at breakneck speed and with so many balls being juggled.  This felt like something that should have shown up in episode 2, rather than episode 7.

"Go on. Try and tell me about what I don't know."

The most interesting and amusing change was the introduction of Maege Mormont's youngest daughter, Lyanna, as the new lady of the manor. In the books, Maege is still alive, having been sent by Robb to Seagard prior to the Red Wedding. She also has several other daughters older than Lyanna. But this was a great scene and kind of highlighted Robb's part in the overall theme, as dealing with an impertinent 10-year-old for the addition of her 62 men was probably the last thing he wanted to be doing. Given that said impertinent child had a better grasp of the political situation than anyone but Davos only made it better. Bella Ramsey was excellent.

Just as a minor technical note, where exactly did Sansa come up with a Stark stamp for her letter to a benefactor that Jon doesn't know about? Has she been carrying it with her all the way from Winterfell?

Lines of the week:

"I think some of them are a bit afraid of you."
"I'm used to it."

and

"There's a reason you're still here."
"There's a reason: I'm a big fucker and I'm tough to kill."
There's nothing like the Hound to cut things down to their very essence. (Pun alert.)

"Congress does not require desire on the woman's part. Only patience."
So, uh, yeah... Here's the thing about that... The Sparrow later suggesting that "Sometimes the true path is hard to find" was a softball just waiting to be put over the fence.

"We're not clever like you southerners. We say we'll do something, we do it."
Tormund with the guilt trip and jab.

The smackdown.

"I wonder if you're the worst person I've ever met. At this age, it's honestly hard to recall. But the truly vile person does tend to stand out."

and

"You've lost, Cersei. It's the only joy I can find in all this misery."
I am so going to miss Dianna Rigg when her role is finally wrapped up. I hope this wasn't it.

"You have better instincts than anyone in the Lannister army."
"That's like saying I got the biggest cock in the Unsullied army."

and

"Good thing we're friends or we'd be fucking you in the ass right now."
This is why you keep Jerome Flynn around.

"Your 'honor'... Bargaining with oathbreakers is like building on quicksand."
A little over the top. He's right, though: Sieges are dull. In medieval times, you had about as much chance of dying of disease (or boredom) as the besiegers as anyone inside did of starvation.

"Nothing on the Iron Islands has an ass like that."
That's why everyone's looking for saltwives, presumably...

"We'll get you justice!"
"If I got justice, my burnt body would hang over the gates of Winterfell."
Seriously, Alfie Allen is still great.

"We weren't animals. Animals are true to their nature... and we'd betrayed ours."
Al pontificating on the idea that humans aren't inherently savage. That's a loaded question.

and the winner:

Because the Hound's always the winner.

"Violence is a disease. You don't cure disease by spreading it to more people."
"You don't cure it by dying, either."

Sometimes it's just out of your (cold)hands.

There comes a time when you realize that things are just going to be different, no matter what you try to do. Circumstances, people, the weather; sometimes they all conspire against you and you just have to either go with the flow or stand there like an idiot and try to keep the tide from coming in. Good luck with that. That was the prevailing theme of this bridge episode that is setting up the remainder of the season and, indeed, the remainder of the story: the world is going to change and you'd better be ready for it. Resistance is futile. This was highlighted in the earliest moments by Bran flashing back to the Mad King Aerys and his command to "Burn them all!" as the Lannisters entered the city in the last stages of Robert's Rebellion and Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, the Oathbreaker, ended the reign of the Targaryens. The world was changing and Aerys wasn't keeping up. Of course, some of us have been waiting for said changes since the story began 20 years ago, so I continue to have the feeling about this season that so much of it has been predicted for so long that it often feels anti-climactic.

For example, although they didn't name him as such, it's obvious that Benjen Stark was actually Coldhands, the being that guided Bran and the Jojens north to the greenseer in the books and then couldn't enter because of his nature. That nature is now confirmed as something halfway between a wight and a human. His true identity and his nature have been speculated upon by book readers since he first appeared in a Storm of Swords (16 years ago, if you're counting.) I understand them leaving the character out of the show to this point because of the constraints of budget and time and because Coldhands in the books is kinda more fantastical than most others, since he rides a giant elk and has a flock of ravens under his command. But I can't help but feel that not only was his appearance and explanation obvious to book readers (yes, even if GRRM refuted said speculation when his editor asked), but it probably feels like a "Who?" moment to show watchers, since he hasn't been seen since season 1 and was a bit player then.

On the other hand, when we consider events that haven't occurred in the books, the fact that the common people were asserting control throughout the Seven Kingdoms has become more and more evident as time passed. With the Faith Militant now backing them up and most of them realizing that "they got the guns, but we got the numbers", this episode just highlighted that fact as the full force of the Tyrells was faced down in the streets by the Faith and the surrounding crowd, who were clearly on the side of the church (and, probably, the side about to put one of the most attractive women in the land on a nude stroll through the streets. Priorities, yo.) This turn of events wasn't as predictable as Benjen's reappearance/confession, but it's clearly been building since the Brotherhood Without Banners first appeared and was solidifying by the end of Dance of Dragons when the Faith had taken control of the city from Cersei and Kevan Lannister. This was evident on a very personal level, as well, when Tommen speaks to the High Sparrow and it's very clear who is granting favor to whom. A few minutes later, Tommen finally reunites with his queen and, again, the one in control of the situation is very clearly Margaery. Welcome to the dichotomy of the absolute dictator that is led around by the nose by whoever can speak most convincingly. It's tough to be the (boy) king.

Now that King Tommen has joined Crown with Faith (something probably not even approachable in the books, where Tommen is only nine years old), it makes the eventual dispersal of control of the kingdoms to a more widespread hand almost inevitable. At the very least, it confirms the bloody war between nobility and commoners at the behest of the church... which creates a very interesting question for when another noble presence, one Daenerys Targaryen, a noble but still champion of the little people, returns to Westeros. Do the people regard her as yet another highborn tyrant come to put them under her thumb or accept that her idea is to throw down the great houses... so that they all serve her? Wait, wut? Yeah. That's going to be an interesting writers' quandary (as have been so many other things about Dany.) Throw in the church that never liked the Targaryens and their incestuous and sorcerous ways in the first place and it will be hard to find allies for the incoming queen.

Meanwhile, in matters of slightly less broad import, we finally meet Sam's father, Randyll Tarly, who's every bit as grim and ferocious as I'd hoped for. James Faulkner was excellent in this role. His Wikipedia entry says he's best known for playing Randyll Tarly, but because I'm a geek, I remember him as Herod Agrippa in the I, Claudius TV series from the 70s. He spends his time similarly to his brethren in the Lannister and Tyrell families, railing against the events that have landed his unloved eldest son and his Wildling common law wife and bastard son on the noble Tarly doorstep. That dinner scene was the best of the episode, because you can see Sam bearing up under the weight of his father's scorn and you can even expect that one of those scowls is going to finally trigger the eruptive response. But, as always, Gilly arrives to speak the truth and try to lay the smackdown on the lord of the manor. In the end, we see those events pass by Horn Hill, anyway, when Sam survives the barrage of criticism and leaves with his wife and son. Oh, and the family sword.

Similarly, Arya's version of pushing against the tide has finally come to rest. She will never be a Faceless Man. She lives by her emotions. They're what drive her and make her. The realization that there are consequences on the other end of the assassin's blade (or poison) is one of those things that does indeed take some time to digest for someone that young, even as driven by rage and hatred as she is. She will always be Arya Stark and the hiding (and now retrieval) of Needle is the confirmation of that. I guess we could have hoped for a slightly more visceral event to have pushed her over the edge, such as actually committing the murder of an innocent actress, but that may have been just more time and money spent on another scene that wasn't necessary. It does add a bit of a "redemption" aura to Arya's whole storyline, which I don't think is quite the right angle to take with the character. No one should think of Arya as a "hero", per se, as she's mostly just been trying to survive and adapting nicely to whichever conditions have come along. For a long time, I've been looking forward to the idea of how the writers (both Martin and D&D) were going to work out her status as a Faceless Man with her obvious inclination to both help and rejoin the remainder of her family. That option is now closed to the show, but perhaps it's something that GRRM is still interested in tackling.

And no review of this episode would be complete without mentioning the ultimate complainer of how the whole world is against him (often with good reason):  Walder Frey. For those of you that understand college football, Walder Frey is the Michigan State of Westeros. It was great to see David Bradley in the role again, even if solely as a setup (Disrespekt!) for next week's events in Riverrun. I know that most fans are just waiting for the Late Lord Frey to get what's coming to him from the Red Wedding (Disrespekt!), but I really enjoy seeing him ranting about how everyone around him is an idiot who doesn't listen (Disrespekt!) and I hope we get something more substantial (Disrespekt!) before the hammer finally drops.

Finally, the one character genuinely making the tide as opposed to having to swim against it was, as usual, Daenerys and it was appropriate to have that kind of counterbalance occur at the end of the episode. On the other hand, the whole scene was kind of superfluous. We already know that the Dothraki are completely devoted to her service, since they saw her walk unscathed from an inferno where she'd just slaughtered all the other khals a couple episodes ago. Did we really need another oath of service because she was asking for one from Drogon's back? This seemed like more of an excuse to end the episode with a pseudo-uplifting moment and spend a little of the CGI budget at the same time. This has been one of the lurking problems with Dany's storyline for years now: it involves a lot of waiting while more pertinent stuff happens elsewhere. But just like everyone else mentioned here, the fans will have no more luck trying to change things than Jaime, Arya, or Randyll Tarly. The only person with that power may be Bran.

Side notes:

I mean, really, how many Dany-standing-before-a-crowd-and-proclaiming-herself-the-promised-one moments can we have? We get it. Also, the most important question of that whole scene was: Did she feed the horse to Drogon before she mounted him?

It's mildly interesting to note that the show is now swerving back to the books in terms of Jaime's story, since he's apparently going to be leading the siege at Riverrun as he did in Dance with Dragons. The whole Dorne misadventure never happened in the books, just as it shouldn't have in the show. Someday, perhaps, we'll learn the point of that whole production.

The strange weapon that Benjen is wielding when he saves Bran and Meera resembles a kusari-gama but, like, with fire, man. I can't say that I was thrilled with the direction of that scene, since it was kind of heavy on the modern trend toward doing everything in real speed so that you're not quite sure what's happening until it's over and/or someone has to stop to deliver a cool piece of dialogue. Considering the number of undead that were chasing the two of them through the no-longer-held door, my first impression was there was no way one guy with a flaming flail was going to make a difference. Also, using fire in the furthest wilderness of Westeros is kind of like a signal flare to everything within 20 miles, right? I know. I'm being picky. That scene just didn't sit well with me.

Despite all the complaints, all credit is due to D&D for exploiting the fanatics "who yearn for death in the service of the gods" angle without coming down so hard that comparison to modern parallels like ISIS is irresistible.

Richard E. Grant, the lead actor of the troupe in Braavos who complains about how he's a master of his art and doesn't get noticed for it (Disrespekt!), looks remarkably like Christopher Walken. When I saw him again this week, I was totally hoping for the bigger cameo.

Lines of the week:

"You're nervous. You're a nervous talker."
" ... "
"Well, that's not any better, being a nervous mute!"
Gilly with the truth, as always.

"Told me to leave. Promised to kill me if I didn't. Well, a person starts to not feel welcome at that point."
And Sam, likewise.

"The Faith Militant are very stern with those who overstep their bounds."
Subtle.

"You lost it? It's a castle, not a sheep!"
Seriously. More Walder Frey, please.

"It will be a trial by combat. I have the Mountain."
Read: I won already. Unless the Church has a really big fanatic.

And the winner:

"My final speech is shit. But to be fair to myself, which I always like to be, the writing's no good."
Ego is a necessary thing for an actor. And writers, too.

From the pulpit

Last week, one of the guys on the board asked me if I'd be interested in doing some reviews/critiques of Preacher, since it's based on the comic of the same name by Garth Ennis.and Steve Dillon. I said that I was a little reluctant, since the series, while good, had failed to really reach "classic" status with me because the story ended up being less about the high concepts that initiated it and more about "being cool" and/or shocking. The story began with Jesse Custer, the preacher in question, asking essential questions about human nature and its relationship to the unknowable and how that combination generated things as disparate as kindness and savagery, righteousness and hypocrisy. But what it ended up veering into was more like a parade of shocking moments, handled with blasé aplomb by most of the main cast, that didn't really invest in any of those high-minded concepts.

If you've ever seen Ocean's Eleven (either version), you'll know what I'm talking about. The film(s), while entertaining, are basically just an excuse for a dozen A-listers to get together and hand scenes off to each other and have a good time. Their entire reason for being on screen is to "be cool." That might be fun to watch, but it's also not much of a story. Preacher, the comic, ended up being a lot like that. I read the whole series, but I can't tell you anything about the last year of it because it really didn't matter by then. So when I saw the trailers and ads begin appearing for AMC's Preacher adaptation, I kind of cringed at the thought of what they could and couldn't do. AMC has been pretty reliable in developing intelligent shows that stick to their overarching themes (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.) and in keeping the writing and story pretty intelligent. Would they be able to do that with what I considered an entertaining but essentially flawed product?

Right off the bat, I was a little cagey about Dominic Cooper as Jesse. When the show opens, the impression I got wasn't that he was questioning himself and his place in the world but more that he was... weak. This wasn't the supremely self-assured Jesse Custer that I remembered, who used that confidence to mask so many stories about his past and his family that he'd rather forget. This was someone who was on shaky ground, period. But by the time he was beating the shit out of Donny (Shut the fuck up, Donny!; What happens when the Confederate Army is beaten by a Texan?), I was more comfortable with him. I still think he lacks a bit of the gravitas necessary to really pull off the moments when he uses The Word, but we'll see how he does. As much as Tulip and Cassidy play major roles in the story, it revolves around Jesse and the entity inside him, which makes for a big role to carry. Nothing that he's done before will compare to this.

Similarly, Ruth Negga as Tulip struck me as an odd choice. The key to Tulip was that, although she was hard as nails, the way that Dillon drew her in the comic simply screamed "femininity". The two aren't completely exclusive but, again, it would be a difficult role to pull off for a TV audience. I actually like that writers/directors Seth Rogen (yes, that Seth Rogen) and Evan Goldberg used what may be interpreted as a gratuitous shot of Negga's shapely ass in a shadowed window to express some of that femininity, since the rest of her appearance was nothing but hardcore, including her opening as she struggled with and murdered two men in a speeding car over a meth deal. I think that display of the feminine arcs more toward "sexuality", but there's nothing wrong with that, especially since her relationship with Jesse in the earlier part of the story is fairly combative and creates dramatic tension between the two that will only become more obvious if she's presented as a woman, rather than the boy her father raised. It just so happens that this woman can beat you in a fistfight, if she doesn't decide to kill you first.

And Cassidy, well... I think Joe Gilgun actually hit the mark right away. It takes a while for Cassidy as a character to become something other than a stereotype, as weighted down as he is by so many things (vampire, drunk Irishman, parasitic addict) that we've seen time and again. In that respect, yes, Gilgun was those things. Does that make him more or less appealing for future episodes? I guess that depends on just how interested the showrunners are in retaining the tragedy of the storyline that he embodied in the comic (Can you tell I'm dancing around spoilers here? Yes, I am.) Believe me when I say that there's a lot more to Cassidy than his panoply of stereotypes, but it will heavily depend on AMC and the writers' willingness to engage.

The rest of the cast was decent for the limited time they had and, yes, it was thrilling to see W. Earl Brown (Dan Dority from the long-lamented Deadwood) make his return to a role (Sheriff Hugo Root) that might actually have some meat on it, as opposed to the boilerplate he was given in the utterly forgettable True Detective, season 2. The most interesting development may have been the introduction of Emily Woodrow (Lucy Griffiths) as the apparent lone "straight" among the crowd of the disjointed. There is a fair amount of story that can be mined from having a character who reacts to things with some degree of shock/fear/disdain so that we can be introduced to the world of the disjointed along with her. But that also removes the show from the realm of things like Carnivale (to name another long-missed HBO production), where everyone was weird and you were just invited to look in to their world. Perhaps Emily is the showrunners' way of keeping to the themes that I felt that Ennis lost in the comic? That's feasible, since she does seem to be intended as a grounding element for Jesse. I just hope it doesn't descend to something pedantic.

In the end, my only real complaint was about Arseface, which seems appropriate for the guy who's suffered the most among the cast. The actor (Ian Colletti) was fine, but I think the production kind of dropped the ball on the prosthetics. What we got wasn't nearly as interesting as what we'd seen before although, admittedly, trying to translate Dillon's artwork to "reality"

is going to be a difficult task for just about anyone and would involve a much larger time investment on the part of both makeup and the actor (and a lot more money) to pull off in a way that would be fitting. "Don't mind losing a section of your jawline for this role? Great! You'll be famous!"

So, yeah, overall not a bad start. It's definitely worth watching a second episode, unlike, say, Constantine. Or TD season 2.

Paradox

There's a favorite Orwell quote of mine from his novel 1984 that represents the political ideology of Oceania, known as Ingsoc: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." It's meant to represent the idea that people will usually hew to tradition if faced with a problem that they can't solve and that "tradition" will typically be defined by whoever can declare what "tradition" has always been. If historical revisionism is the order of the day (witness the current image of Ronald Reagan as basically nothing close to who he was and what he actually did while in office), then you can dictate how things will evolve based on myths and legend. I give you Brandon Stark and his trusted compatriot, Willas Hold the Door.

Now, that's one small event that Bran altered and which led to the current future. Obviously, Hodor has been key to Bran's survival and his reaching the last Greenseer, Bloodraven, in order to learn how to slip back in time in order to create Hodor from Willas (Walder in the books) so there's a certain element of time looping taking place here in that one respect, but that seems to revolve solely around Bran himself and we've yet to see him impact any other major events. It's been suggested around the Web that Bran could have influenced some of the key elements of the story, such as driving Aerys Targaryen mad, but I don't think that either D&D or GRRM will go quite that far or we'll end up in Matrix-land and no one really wants to go all the way to the Land of Allegory (hopefully.) There's a limit to how much symmetry can be applied before everyone assumes that everything is simply one more trope.

For example, the revelation that the Others were created by the Children of the Forest as a way to defend themselves against the First Men is an element of storytelling that has been seen before, assuming that they were created as a weapon that the Children later lost control over. OTOH, they could have been created as a tool of Armageddon that the creators had no interest in controlling, deciding that the future world was simply one that nothing should be living in. The fact that the locale shown where the first of the Others was created is the same one that the Night King uses to create new members of the tribe from the babies that Craster was giving to them might mean that there's some element of power in the locale and not just the ceremony that the Children initiated. But if the root of the Others lies with the Children, why is their leader, Night's King, a former member of the Night's Watch that was created to man the Wall, which was raised to resist the Others in the first place? He was the 13th commander of the Night's Watch, which means he was there long after the Others had first appeared and the Wall was even built. Why is he the leader now? Somewhere along the way, the myth, the "tradition", has been either misunderstood or perhaps intentionally altered by those who wished it to be seen in a particular way.

That perspective informs much of the rest of the episode, as Sansa and Jon (a female heir in the land of primogeniture and a bastard oathbreaker who's been raised from the dead) try to stake a claim to the North; as Tirion and Varys make reluctant alliance with a religion that neither believes in nor trusts but which also seeks to stamp a new outlook on the ancient Ghiscari culture and the world; as Asha and Theon try to assert control, again in the land of primogeniture, in the name of finally making the Ironmen something other than simply reavers clinging to the rocks with what they've been able to loot from wealthier peoples; as Arya tries to follow a path that she knows she cannot walk, as she'll never be able to leave behind her personal traditions that define her as a Stark and, in fact, as Arya, the strongest personality amongst all her siblings.

Indeed, those searching for greater symmetry in the story may not even have the animal totems of the two central houses, Targaryen and Stark, to look to. There are only two direwolves left from the five introduced at the beginning. While Grey Wind and Robb were doomed from the outset and it seems somehow appropriate that Summer died defending Bran who has now become the last Greenseer, if untimely (ahem), Ghost and Nymeria survive; the former still being the rogue element that his master, Jon, represents as the male Targaryen heir, and the latter being the living tie that embodies Arya's inability to ever leave herself behind, as the wolf that was sent away in the Riverlands but can never truly abandon who and what she is. But Sansa endures while Lady, her wolf, was the first one to die. Lady's death was symbolic of the death of a dream, while Sansa continuing is testament to the endurance of the real world and her role in it. Bran is outside of it, Robb is past it, Jon and Arya are skirting the edges of it, but Sansa persists. Is that still symmetry? It's hard to say. All we know is that what seemed to be uncharted waters, post-books, for the first 4 episodes of the season have now firmly become a path of their own. We're on the back 9 of the season and while some roads still seems fairly clear, others have become that much more difficult to predict. That's a good thing.

And, in some sense, the time paradox that represents everything simply happening again (Those who do not learn from history...) was thematically present from the opening moments, when we see Sansa sewing again, just as in her childhood, and eventually making a garment for her brother that she remembered her father wearing. Kinvara wears a necklace just like Melisandre's. Another illusion about defying time? Or an acknowledgment of the unified vision for what's to come? The past is the present is the future. Is this what Benioff and Weiss were trying to say? That we can't escape the past even as we change the future? Maybe. But I'm still hoping that there's something more to it and that Bran's personal adventure isn't the defining element of the entire story, but continues to be just another part of the whole. Similarly, while I certainly appreciate the somewhat faster pace of this season in comparison to the semi-torpor of some storylines that was pulled from similar circumstances in Feast and Dance, I admit to feeling a little rushed. The culmination of some of these stories has been a long time in coming and I really hope that Bran's adventures up and down the timeline aren't used as a shortcut around any of them.

Side notes:

It was interesting to see Littlefinger under real pressure again for the first time since Cersei instructed him on what she felt was the real definition of power. It was also inevitable that he'd be able to play mindgames with Sansa by mentioning the Blackfish, even as she was as determined as anyone has been to kill him. One questions why Sansa was willing to lie effectively on Littlefinger's behalf (Brienne's pointed question being the same as mine), but the appeal to family may have been what Baelish was counting on to spin her head around and make he still a useful asset at some point. I still almost guarantee that Littlefinger will escape with his life when this is all over, even if it means going back to being just the lord of one of the smallest of the Fingers. On a technical note, they sure like to play fast and loose with the massive distances in the North. Baelish casually mentioning that he left the knights of the Vale in Moat Cailin while he strolled up to Mole's Town means that he left them WEEKS ago.

I wonder, perhaps, if they're overdoing it a bit with Arya. Her unceasing anger in her training with the other girl is making it more obvious than ever that she'll never become a Faceless Man because she simply can't abandon who she is. The overly lengthy scene of her observing the play (although I did appreciate the parallels to Hamlet: the play within a play) and having an emotional reaction to the representations of Eddard and Sansa drove that point home a bit too much. I mean, we get it. She's Arya. She'll always be Arya. As much as she's becoming an assassin, she'll never be able to make the commitment to the religion of the Many-Faced God anymore than Tirion will become a devotee of R'hllor. Having a good chunk of season one acted out in parody took up a lot of the episode to little real end, other than to give the audience the first real gratuitous shot of full frontal, male.

The Kingsmoot scene unfortunately fell completely flat to me. It would have been much more dramatic and interesting had it taken place inside the castle on Pyke. There was some good tension in Theon's moment of truth, but Pilou Asbæk was completely uninspiring as Euron, either in the moot or as he recovered from the drowning ritual. The actor simply lacks the air of menace combined with gravitas that the character carries in the books. People want to follow this guy, why? Also, no eyepatch! WTF? Finally, with Theon and Asha having stolen what looks to be the bulk of the fleet, Euron's inspiring plan is to build a whole new one? That's going to take months, at least. And who's going to man this new fleet? Furthermore, how are there enough trees left on the islands to make it? The reavers have been operating for centuries. The books mention that the islands are largely denuded as a consequence of the shipbuilding that's been a habit for those centuries. This just seems like a really ill-considered tangent, especially since Euron of the show isn't half as interesting as Euron of the books.

I'm not sure what happened to Emilia Clarke but she looked the most assured and imperious that she ever has on this show. Change of makeup and/or hair? It was something. Up to this point, even in the scenes where she had complete control of the situation, as when she became queen of Meereen amidst the screams of the crucified, she'd still looked somewhat uncertain. Her scene with Jorah tonight was the first time I can remember thinking that her gaze had real impact. She looked like a queen.

Lines of the night (not many, as the events were more important):

"Did you know about Ramsay? If you didn't, you're an idiot. If you did, you're my enemy."
Get some!

"Does death only come for the wicked and leave the decent behind?"
We should be so lucky.

"I may not know the North, but I know men. They're the same in pretty much any corner of the world. None of them want to see their wives and children skinned for a lost cause."
There is that...

And the winner:

"You want your queen to be worshiped and obeyed. And while she's gone you want her advisers to be worshiped and obeyed."
"I'd settle for obeyed."
Me, too. Most of the time.

And, of course, it's hard to leave without including:
"Hodor."