T w e n t y S i d e d

Picking up where we left off, the Great Sept of Baelor is now a pile of scorched rubble. The Queen, Margaery Tyrell, and her brother, Loras Tyrell, are both dead. So are Kevan Lannister (head of House Lannister) and Mace Tyrell (head of House Tyrell). So are Kevan’s son Lancel, small council member Grand Maester Pycelle, head of the Faith the High Sparrow, at least seven Septons and Septas who were to judge the trial, and dozens of nobles and other spectators. Oh, and then King Tommen jumps out of a window.

So that’s the King, the Queen, the heads of the two most powerful houses currently remaining in Westeros, both of their respective firstborn sons, the head of the continent’s dominant religion, and presumably a big chunk of both the religious and political leadership of King’s Landing, and, by extension, all of Westeros. All dead. Even by this show’s standards, that’s quite a butcher’s bill for one episode.

The most obvious suspect by far is Cersei Lannister, who was conspicuously not at her own trial shortly before it burst into flames, and whose son, the King, died in a highly suspicious way, with her giant murder-zombie as the only possible witness.

So the people of King’s Landing do the obvious thing and crown her queen.

The most common and plausible explanation for this turn of events I’ve seen given is that there’s no one left to challenge her. In a sense, that’s true – virtually every other named character in King’s Landing is now dead. But I’d always flattered the show’s world-building chops to assume that there are other non-named characters who, even if they’re not given specific personalities, would react to the destruction of almost the entire government with dismay.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game of Thrones Griping 14: Am I Watching This Show Wrong?”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

With the clock rapidly winding down to the start of the new season, I think it’s now time to cover the episode where Cersei blows up pretty much the entire government of Westeros.

When one approaches this show with my impressively high levels of grumpiness, one experiences scenes differently than the audience as a whole. The general opinion of the whole “wildfire blows up the Sept of Baelor” sequence is very high. I’ve seen terms like “poetic” and “masterfully crafted” thrown around.

I won’t deny that it’s professionally done. But look, there’s no delicate way to say this: when I first saw this scene, I was holding back laughter by the end. It’s so freaking long, for one thing. The cello theme keeps coming back over and over again, swelling louder each time, to the point where it takes on the character of a shaggy dog joke.There’s a British comedian called Stewart Lee who specializes in shaggy dog jokes. If you’re familiar with his work, then maybe you’ll understand when I say that if Stewart Lee directed an episode of Game of Thrones, it would probably look something like this.

The sequence’s length isn’t helped by the fact that I’m pretty sure everyone, or nearly everyone, who watched it saw the wildfire reveal coming a mile away. There had been several highly conspicuous references to wildfire in the episodes leading up to this one, so the foreshadowing wasn’t exactly subtle.And I wasn’t cheating by using book knowledge, either. This doesn’t happen in the books, or at least it hasn’t happened yet. When you use very slow, deliberate pacing to reveal something that I already know about, the reaction produced – in me, at least – isn’t suspense. It’s impatience.

But I could forgive all of this if the events depicted weren’t so ridiculous in so many different ways. Let’s cover as many of them as we can.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game of Thrones Griping 13: The Kangaroo Trial of the Century”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.