{"id":39590,"date":"2017-07-07T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39590"},"modified":"2017-09-08T13:17:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T17:17:28","slug":"game-of-thrones-griping-13-the-kangaroo-trial-of-the-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39590","title":{"rendered":"Game of Thrones Griping 13: The Kangaroo Trial of the Century"},"content":{"rendered":"
This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both.<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Geez. I hope that wasn't a load-bearing wall.<\/div>
Geez. I hope that wasn't a load-bearing wall.<\/div><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, 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<\/em>, it would probably look something like this.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Kangaroo Trial of the Century<\/h3>\n

We start with Ser Loras’ confession. This part actually piqued my interest, because I thought we were finally going to find out what the deal was with Margaery Tyrell.<\/p>\n

The interactions between Margaery and the High Sparrow were one of the season’s high points for me. Jonathan Pryce and Natalie Dormer are both pros, and they managed to put some real tension into these scenes. We can obviously tell that Margaery is up to something, but what? And to what extent is the High Sparrow fooled? Could he know that her newfound piety is an act, and perhaps he’s springing a new trap? Who’s playing straight, who’s bluffing, who’s double-bluffing? For a second there it threatened to turn interesting.<\/p>\n

But they both get exploded to death before we get any answers. We’ll never know what exactly Margaery’s plan was, or if she even had one. “You gave me your word!” she protests as the Faith’s thugs carve a star into Ser Loras’ forehead, suggesting that they’d made some kind of deal. But we never saw them make this deal, so we don’t know what it was, which kind of takes the drama away when he breaks it. (If he did break it.)<\/p>\n

What could the deal have been? It seemed to involve her convincing the King to side with the Faith earlier in the season. But what practical effect that had on the balance of power in King’s Landing is never really explained. Later, the High Sparrow threatens Olenna Tyrell, and seems to want her to leave the city. So Margaery convinces her to do just that, which is presented like it’s some kind of clever move on her part. But I don’t understand what either of them is up to. What are their respective endgames, and how does any of this stuff advance them?<\/p>\n

Of course, in the end it doesn’t matter. They’ll all soon be dead in a haze of wildfire smoke anyway. For me, this was frustrating. It’s something like watching a version of The Godfather<\/em>, where just before the baptism scene starts, an asteroid hits the earth, everyone dies, and the credits roll.<\/p>\n

In the meantime it’s time for the main event: Cersei’s trial. There’s just one hiccup. She’s not there.<\/p>\n

This is where things start to get farcical. I can only speak for myself, but if I were setting up a high-profile trial, “make sure the defendant is actually there” would be at or near the top of my to-do list. But the High Sparrow seems to have left it for last, and is on the verge of gaveling the proceedings into order before noticing that the accused isn’t even in the building.<\/p>\n

And for that matter, neither is the King. Which is unusual, considering that two of his family members are on trial. By this point, I’ve accepted that the Faith Militant’s organizational skills could use some work, but Margaery generally keeps her eye on the ball better than the rest of these chuckleheads. You’d think she’d say something like “wait a minute, where’s my husband, the King of Westeros? His brother-in-law is being publiclyThis is apparently the correct spelling. I checked. I don’t get why it isn’t “publically,” like “basic” turns into “basically.” English is weird.<\/span> mutilated as we speak. Isn’t it kind of weird that he’s not here?”<\/p>\n

But don’t worry, the High Sparrow is on the case. He sends Lancel Lannister off to collect the Queen Mother. This is dumb for three reasons: one small, one large, and one we won’t see until later.<\/p>\n

First, the small one: Lancel is a key witness against Cersei. Near as I can tell, he was her original accuser, in fact. He should probably be protected. This is even more evident when you consider the second, bigger reason: the last time Lancel was sent to collect Cersei from the Red Keep, she refused to go, said “I choose violence,” and had her giant murder-zombie literally rip one of the Sparrows’ heads off.<\/p>\n

Oh, by the way, Cersei has a giant murder-zombie. It’s the reanimated corpse of Gregor Clegane. It follows her around all season and occasionally kills people for her. And no one seems to care.<\/p>\n

He's a sweetheart once you get to know him, though.<\/div>
He's a sweetheart once you get to know him, though.<\/div><\/p>\n

Pycelle, to his credit, does notice that this whole arrangement seems suspicious. But he’s the only one I remember raising a real objection. Remember that Westeros is a place where, for the most part, educated people do not believe in magic, resurrection, or zombies. And presumably the characters on the show can see through the eye holes of Gregor’s helmet as well as we can, and notice that there’s clearly something wrong with the face underneath it.<\/p>\n

Even if no one objects to the murder-zombie itself, you’d think someone – the High Sparrow, for example – would object to it killing one of his men. But I’m not sure he even realizes that it happened. Did anyone tell him? And if so, why is he sending Lancel and his men off to execute the exact same mission that, last time, resulted in one of them being minus a head and the rest of them running away?<\/p>\n

Whatever. As it happens, neither of the first two reasons this is dumb will matter in the end, because of the third reason: as we’ll soon discover, Lancel Lannister is the most easily distracted person in all of Westeros. He doesn’t even make it down the front steps before he sees a small child and chases him through a maze of alleyways, and then underground, forgetting about the whole Cersei thing entirely.<\/p>\n

SQUIRREL!<\/div>
SQUIRREL!<\/div><\/p>\n

The kid is one of Varys’ little birds, now employed by Qyburn. He pays them in candy, and in return they bring him secrets and sometimes stab people for him.I tried to think of a way to describe this story element that makes it sound better than it is. I tried and I failed.<\/span> One of those people is Pycelle, who a little bird lures to Qyburn’s lair so she and her friends can stab him. Before that, he was presumably on his way to the trial like everyone else. If Qyburn wanted him dead, he could have just let him be blown up like the rest. But I guess he wanted to make a speech first.<\/p>\n

If this speech seemed strange to you, there’s a reason. It’s been repurposed from a vaguely similar scene in the books. And when I say vaguely, I mean vaguely. Much like last week’s Frey Pie, in the books this dialogue was said by someone else, to someone else, in completely different circumstances. Near as I can tell, these are supposed to be sops to book readers. As a book reader, I’d rather they just left them out. These were things that were cool in their original context<\/em>. Remove the context and they’re just disorienting.<\/p>\n

So now the cello music is swelling for the 143rd time, and Lancel has been lured towards one of the caches of wildfire beneath the sept. The fact that the kid he was chasing knew where it was is a little alarming. Are we to understand that Qyburn’s little birds placed the stuff? Because in both the books and the show, wildfire is the Westerosi equivalent of sweaty dynamite. You really shouldn’t trust the handling of enough of it to blow up a city block to a bunch of sugar-addled children. But apparently that’s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

There’s a candle – rapidly burning down to the nubI think that’s what the last part of a candle is called.<\/span> – that will ignite the wildfire, and Lancel crawls towards it. Very slowly. The cello music swells some more. Lancel crawls even more slowly.<\/p>\n

And then everything blows up. I admit, the explosion itself is pretty impressive. There’s one particularly cool shot where the Sept’s bell tumbles down the street, gonging as it goes. CGI is best when technical aptitude is married to imagination.<\/p>\n

We’ll cover the post-explosion fallout, and wrap up season six, next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This series analyzes the show, but sometimes references the books as well. If you read it, expect spoilers for both. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-of-thrones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}