T w e n t y S i d e d

I’ve finished moving! Our long national nightmare is over. This episode picks up right after the last one left off, with Jaime and Bronn somewhere outside King’s Landing.

It’s the aftermath of the battle between the Lannister and Targaryen/Dothraki armies. Jaime and Bronn have managed to swim downstreamApparently they can both hold their breath longer than Guybrush Threepwood. and escape. Jaime is, understandably, a little pessimistic at this point about the chances of a Lannister victory in this war. But hey, at least he’s alive. Now it’s time for the big-ticket Dragon scene, where we can ask an important question about Queen Daenerys:

Is Daenerys Targaryen Still Meant to be a Sympathetic Character?

Because if you showed someone this episode as their first ever exposure to Game of Thrones, that person would probably assume that Dany is meant to be the villain of the show. And even those of us who have been watching since the beginning could be forgiven a bit of confusion. Because the show takes every opportunity to sing her praises – Missandei gushes about how Daenerys is the “Queen we chose,” Jon tells Davos that she has a “good heart,” and Varys monologues at length about how she’s best choice for Westeros.

But her actions so far have been the actions of a tyrant. When justifying her own right to rule, she’s referenced her birthright and nothing else. Neither she nor any of her advisers have even briefly mentioned any concrete way in which she’d be an improvement for the common people of Westeros. And upon meeting another Westerosi ruler (Jon), she wasted no time in making a captive of him and demanding he bend the knee.

Her speech to the defeated Lannister troops sums this problem up nicely. First, she says “All I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over rich and poor to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world.” Aha! A reference to her “break the wheel” speech. A populist angle, a reformist angle. Perhaps she can offer something that other monarchs haven’t? A more egalitarian approach, maybe? But no, the very next thing she says is “I offer you a choice: bend the knee and join me – together, we will leave the world a better place than we found it. Or refuse, and die.”

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Timely Game of Thrones Griping 5: An Analysis of the Daily Caloric Requirements of Dothraki Cavalry”

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.

I’m still moving, and won’t have internet until Wednesday, so this week’s griping is brought to you by that greatest of all public works projects: Starbucks free wifi. For that reason, it might be a bit on the short side again.

Team Cersei Update

We start with Ser Jaime, Bronn, and company on their way back from Highgarden. They have wagons piled high with gold and grain (or some kind of food). Highgarden appears to have had a great deal of gold squirreled away – we later learn it’s enough to repay the throne’s debt to the Iron Bank. That debt was last important all the way back in season five, when Mace Tyrell got the guy who plays Mycroft Holmes to give them a reprieve through a singing-based charm offensive.I just want to say here that I actually liked Mace Tyrell. I’ll miss him.

It seems a little strange to me that House Tyrell had this huge amount of money and no one had ever mentioned it before, but on this show things that “seem a little strange” barely register anymore. Bronn and Jaime exchange a bit of banter, where Bronn refers to Highgarden as “the biggest prize in the world.”

“The biggest prize in the world.” What? Look, I know this is a small thing, but every so often this show throws a line in that makes me wonder if they’re even trying, or if they even have an editing process at all. A line like that shouldn’t make it through editing. If nothing else, it should be changed to something like “you’ve just won a great prize,” or maybe “you’ve just won the biggest prize in the Reach,” or something like that. Don’t call Highgarden “the biggest prize in the world” when it’s clearly not. It’s just sloppy. It speaks to a lack of care.

Next Jaime has Bronn and the Tarlys collect the Reach’s last harvest. That’s presumably the last harvest before a winter that will last several years. So… did Jaime just condemn an entire region of Westeros to starvation? I’m not sure. I guess we’ll find out.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Timely Game of Thrones Griping 4: The One With the Giant Honking Battle”

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.