Be careful who you give the show to, HBO!

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Game of Thrones

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A review of “The wars to Come,” the first episode of the fifth season of “Game of Thrones”

by Miodrag Zarković

HBO seems to be making a habit out of placing “Game of Thrones” in the wrong hands.

This past weekend, the first four episodes of Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” were leaked on the internet, immediately reaffirming the epic fantasy as the most pirated television show in the world. HBO soon released a statement, confirming that “the leaked four episodes of the upcoming season of Game of Thrones originated from within a group approved by HBO to receive them.”

One might think they’re somewhat used to the situation by now. As in, this really shouldn’t be the first time they realized they trusted the wrong people about “Thrones.” And we’re definitely not talking about internet piracy.

In April 2011, when the debut season premiered, HBO wasn’t suspicious, but, after the second episode aired, many a fan expressed their concerns. The reason was a particular scene in which Cersei Lannister visits Bran Stark, who’s in a coma, and tries to comfort his mother Catelyn. And what a comforting it was! To the woman already half-mad because of the condition her son finds himself in, Cersei tells a story about the child she herself lost to a fever years ago.

That scene had absolutely no business being in a show based on the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R. R. Martin. And now, four years later, it’s pretty obvious why.

“How many children does Scarlett O’Hara have?” asked Martin recently, referring to the differences between the “Gone with the Wind” book and its film adaptation, and implying two canons for the same story is not something unheard of. Well, Mr. Martin, you were possibly addressing the wrong audience about the wrong mother. It’s not us you had to discuss Scarlett’s kids with, it was David Benioff and Dan Weiss you had to discuss Cersei Lannister’s posterity with. Because, as evidenced by the Season 5 premiere, Benioff and Weiss, the duo behind “Game of Thrones,” clearly needed some help in keeping track of their own imagination.

When asked how many children Cersei Lannister gave birth to, one isn’t necessarily to choose between the show and its source material but—between two different seasons of the same show! Back in 2011, as explained, Cersei bore at least four children: Joff, Myrcella, Tommen and a boy who died of fever. Come 2015, and Cersei Lannister mothered only three kids: that’s what she was foretold as a kid, and that’s what she obviously believes in. Yes, we’re talking about the flashback scene, the historical first in the “Game of Thrones” universe that opened the new season, titled “The Wars to Come”. In the scene, Cersei and her hysterical friend (a sidekick kid that continually and loudly advises the main kid against the thing they’re actually doing, is one of the oldest and most boring clichés in storytelling, by the way), visit a witch able to foresee the future. When young Cersei demands to know hers, the witch tells her she’ll have, pay attention, three children of her own!

The number is the same as in the books, but, alas, it doesn’t add up when you add the poor kid Cersei was talking about in Season 1. And the scene with Cat wasn’t the only one Cersei mentioned the dead boy in. She also brought up the kid while talking to Robert Baratheon, in Episode 5. It actually seals the deal that the unfortunate infant did exist in the show universe in 2011, because otherwise talking about him with the man who fathered him would make no sense at all.

That’s “Game of Thrones” for you. Go on, count Scarlett O’Hara’s children as many times as you like and draw any conclusion you find fit, just so long as you pay no attention to the kids actual characters in the show keep mentioning and then totally forgetting about a couple of seasons later. It’s not a big deal, after all. Who among us isn’t confused about the number of kids we produce? Nobody said parenting was easy, counting your children included.

But, truth be told, more serious issues than pure math are involved here. Back in 2011, fans of the books didn’t need a witch to realize how troubling the story about Cersei’s  dead boy truly was. The entire scene had a neon sign that telegraphed Benioff & Weiss’ intention to humanize the queen of Westeros. That wouldn’t be a problem had she not been humanized in the books, but she was. Which means Benioff & Weiss were repairing something that wasn’t broken. No good could come from that.

Besides the now-you-know-them-now-you-don’t kids, one more thing was notably absent from the TV prophecy: the valonqar, e.g. the younger brother destined to squeeze the life out of Cersei once all of her children are dead. It’s completely puzzling that Benioff & Weiss decided to remove the crucial part which made the prophecy what it is.

In “The Wars to Come,” there’s one more female character completely rid of any possible valonqar: Sansa Stark. Once, she had two younger brothers of her own, Bran and Rickon. The show, however, didn’t have Sansa even acknowledge their existence or their “deaths” ever since she left Winterfell early in Season 1. Instead, she was last seen preoccupied with her cousin Robert Arryn, the Lord of the Vale.

But it wasn’t for long. In the first scene of the new season they appear in, Littlefinger and Sansa leave Robert to be fostered at Yohn Royce’s household.

If you don’t recall instantly, Robert is the neurotic kid that was supposedly the centerpiece of the unrevealed but strongly hinted at scheme Littlefinger and Sansa planned last year. In the already infamous scene that ended her Season 4 arc, Sansa appears at the top of the stairs in an ominous dress (really ominous, not like the TV witch’s prophecy) of her own creation, and joins Littlefinger in manipulating the terrified Robert. “Shall we go?” she asked seductively, before the scene ended, along with her story for the season. Next time we saw her was this Sunday, and it looks like there really was no plan for Robert after all. A year ago, when she invited them to go somewhere, she was apparently talking about Yohn Royce’s household. Taking poor Robert out of the Eyrie, that was the task Sansa had to dress herself for so strangely! That’s why she had to become a seductress overnight. Of course, Robert would never follow her had she kept her hair red, her dress green, and her cleavage unexposed.

Seriously now, manipulating Robert Arryn seems like one more strange direction that Benioff & Weiss abruptly took, and then even more abruptly abandoned after realizing it led nowhere. It was a pure waste of everyone’s time, which is the one resource the show doesn’t have in abundance. Other things Sansa’s arc this season already managed to abandon, however, are even more troubling. Because, along with the time, logic suffered too.

There is no logic whatsoever in Littlefinger’s explanation on why they are leaving the Vale. “So, where are we going? To a land where you trust everyone?” asks Sansa once they’re in a carriage. “To a land so far from here that even Cersei Lannister can’t get her hands on you,” answers Lord Baelish, thus making the audience as puzzled as Sansa seems to be.

You see, thanks to the information from the production and images from the trailers and incidents mentioned at the beginning of this article, it’s not a secret he’s taking Sansa to Winterfell, which is ruled by the Boltons at the moment. And you have to be a moron to run from Cersei by hiding among the Boltons. So, either TV Littlefinger is the moron for trusting the Boltons on any level whatsoever, or TV Sansa is a moron who doesn’t realize Littlefinger is about to sell her to the worst possible bidders, or . . . you know . . . like, HBO should really be way more careful about who they’re sending “Game of Thrones” episodes to.

Sansa’s storyline this season is emblematic of the biggest problem the show continues to suffer from: the lack of any context whatsoever. And it’s not just about the faithfulness to the source material. Yes, Martin’s novels offer any number of contexts that could and should have been exploited on screen to no regret. Benioff & Weiss, however, ignored the majority and used only a handful of them, and added many contexts they invented, as lacking as the latter may be. But eventually it’s all for nothing, because Benioff & Weiss apparently didn’t meet a context they were careful not to violate in a blatant way.

Really, why would anyone, be it Littlefinger or someone else, go all those lengths to save Sansa from King’s Landing, only to hand her over to one of the rare families that is visibly more disturbing and depraved than the Lannisters? It makes no sense at all. Not to mention that Littlefinger has no reason to expect the Boltons wouldn’t turn Sansa over to the Iron Throne the first chance they get. Roose and Ramsay aren’t famous for their loyalty, after all. Why would anyone expect a better treatment from them than the one Robb Stark received?

But no, looks like Benioff & Weiss didn’t think Sansa’s TV arc through. No wonder it’s only becoming a bigger and bigger mess: at one point, Littlefinger was saving Sansa from the Lannisters; next moment, she was saving him from the Lords of the Vale and the accusation about the death of Lysa Arryn; then, in no time, the two of them seemingly agreed to control the Vale by manipulating Lysa’s challenged son; alas, no, Littlefinger actually had something entirely different in mind, and what he plans now is, by the way, far worse than anything he or Sansa or both possibly intended up to that point.

That’s what you get when you write ignoring the consequences your decisions may have.

“The Wars to Come” contains at least two more blunt examples of ignored contexts. Chronologically, the first is the scene with Cersei and Jaime in the sept. The disaster was a given. There’s Jaime, there’s Cersei, there’s a dead body right by them, they’re alone and at a holy place. The context of messing with such an opportunity in a very wrong way is not the one Benioff & Weiss could ever ignore. And they did mess with it, big time.

“Did you set him free?” asks Cersei to her twin brother, referring to Tyrion, of course. Jaime instantly forgets he has a tongue, which Cersei correctly understands as the confirmation that yes, he was the one who released the Imp. And she’s not about to let her twin brother go off the hook lightly: “Tyrion may be a monster, but at least he killed our father on purpose. You killed him by mistake. A stupidity.”

And that’s it. That is all the punishment Jaime will receive from Cersei for saving the person she hated all of her life. Just to sum things up: almost the entire Season 4, Cersei spent carefully arranging Tyrion’s death, and when she was finally about to get precisely what she wanted, her little brother somehow escaped from the dungeons and managed to murder their father and the family’s patriarch, and then she finds out it was her other brother that started this chain of events by breaking the law and releasing Tyrion on his own—and she does nothing but chastise Jaime? It all comes down to scolding him!

That kind of storytelling actually isn’t connectable to a competent writing. Cersei is either obsessed with bringing Tyrion to his death, or she isn’t. Tywin’s death is either a big deal, or not. And if the characters themselves don’t seem affected by the crucial events at all, why would the audience be? If incidents like Tyrion’s escape and Tywin’s death effectively have no meaning for Cersei or Jaime, why would they mean anything to the audience?

Similar questions may be asked in regards to the closing scene of the episode, in which Mance Rayder refuses Stannis’ offer and chooses to be burned alive. The scene is so shallow and self-serving it looks like the logic perished in flames long before the King Beyond the Wall. Really, why would Mance refuse Stannis? Is not bending the knee really that more important than saving lives? And if so, why did the Wildlings ever bother to flee south in the first place? What the hell did Mance expect: to enter the realm, but avoid becoming a subject to one king or another, and lose not a single man in the process?

A season or two ago, his plan looked very differently. A season or two ago, he wasn’t opposed to the very idea of Wildlings fighting their way into the Seven Kingdoms. But now, when one Stannis Baratheon effectively offers them the help of his troops, Mance refuses? Suddenly, he’s a conscientious objector who’d rather burn than pick a sword against another human being?

“You’re a good lad, truly you are, but if you can’t understand why I won’t enlist my people in a foreigner’s war, there’s no point explaining,” says Mance to Jon before their final goodbye to each other. But it’s all wrong. From the very beginning, the Wildlings had to count on the armed resistance their invasion on the Seven Kingdoms will be inevitably met with. Fighting the 7K armies is not a possibility Stannis introduced. If anything, Stannis recognizes the common cause and proposes to join forces, since they obviously face the same enemy. But Mance refuses. And instead chooses to be burned alive. The reason be damned.

The first episode of the new season ended right after Jon Snow put Mance out of his burning misery by killing him with an arrow through the heart. And the big question remained hanging in the air:

Really, HBO, why weren’t you much more careful with granting access to this material?

The Winds of Winter Sample Chapter Overview: Alayne I

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in PTP TWOW

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She was reading her little lord a tale of the Winged Knight . . .

The unexpectedly released new TWOW sample chapter opens with a line that calls back another scene in her last chapter in AFFC, where Sansa is also trying to get little Robert Arryn out of bed, promising to read him all the stories he wants and give him all the lemoncakes he wants if he’ll do so. The latter delicacy will come later, but here she’s making good of her word in what is essentially a scene meant to show that Alayne Stone is still exercising a beneficial influence on Sweetrobin, employing the trappings of the songs she’s left behind to embolden and hold control over a difficult child she takes care of. She is making use of method acting from the very beginning, appearing in full Alayne mode since the initial lines, from her first thoughts on the need to make Harry Hardyng accept and love her and her use of her bastardy to stop the insistent demands of a little boy with a huge crush on her that wants to marry her and expresses displeasure at the presence of the Heir, demonstrating a surprising awareness about people’s real impressions and ambitions concerning his seat we’d not heard of before:

I hate that Harry,” Sweetrobin said when she was gone. “He calls me cousin, but he’s just waiting for me to die so he can take the Eyrie. He thinks I don’t know, but I do.” . . . “He wants my father’s castle, that’s all, so he pretends.” The boy clutched the blanket to his pimply chest. “I don’t want you to marry him, Alayne. I am the Lord of the Eyrie, and I forbid it.” He sounded as if he were about to cry. “You should marry me instead. We could sleep in the same bed every night, and you could read me stories.

Internally, Alayne thinks like Sansa and expresses that she cannot be married so long as the Imp is alive, a significant line that does help properly frame her behaviour towards Harry, as well as reminiscing the time she was trueborn and noble and was meant for this boy, but outwardly she resorts to her status as a natural daughter of the Lord Protector, arguing that the bannermen won’t let such an union go unchallenged because of him, mixing her identities when she says any child of theirs would be baseborn. Similar to her exasperation in her last chapter when the boy-lord was particularly obstinate, she is harsh in her thoughts when Sweetrobin insists that he could have her despite marrying another, which prompts Alayne to retort with whether he’d want to dishonour her so and leave. On the whole, the scene does show three salient points: that she’s pretty much still the only one that can have Sweetrobin behave as best he can, that the boy is quite aware of his surroundings, and that Sansa is not aware that Sweetrobin is being poisoned; on the contrary, she tells the little boy that he’ll someday have someone appropriate for a consort, and in her internal thoughts, she wishes him to live long enough to have a wife that can appreciate something beautiful in him, like his hair.

Searching for her “father,” Alayne goes freely and confidently through the castle describing the scenery, alluding to a detail that can be of significance at a later date: the scattered papers on Baelish’s solar that look, and reveals the destination of the much speculated-about tapestries of the former king. Alongside her walk, she reflects on the upcoming tournament, which we get to know was her idea, with the purpose of empowering young Lord Arryn and give him security by reproducing his favourite story about Ser Artys Arryn.

 […] the eight victors would be expected to spend the next three years at Lord Robert’s side, as his own personal guard (Alayne had suggested seven, like the Kingsguard, but Sweetrobin had insisted that he must have more knights than King Tommen).

Baelish had found the idea “clever” and preparations were made for the youth of the Vale to attend a tourney where sixty-four knights would compete for one of the eight places and wings in the Winged Knights guard for Sweetrobin. Aside the positive impact on the little lord’s morale, this is also a political move that will render fruits to Baelish in terms of tightening his control of the Vale and keeping the nobles in check, which accounts for why he accepted it readily. Most contestants are in the castle for one month or so already, and some of the knights are in the yard, training some and courting Myranda Royce others. In the scene where she “rescues” Randa from her admirers, we get the first instance showing her new level of maturity, as Alayne has come far from the proper little lady that blushed at compliments and overtly sexual comments, due to her influence, as now she does reply with banter of her own to the knights, a flirtatiousness of which we’d gotten a glimpse before and that is amplified a lot in this chapter, and doesn’t react going beet-red at Randa’s racy remarks but instead does for the first time call the bedding act by its name, and later giggles at the older lady’s joke on Lyn Corbray’s inclinations. Showing quite a great deal of confidence, she dares to use her “father” as a means to boldly poke and prod Ser Lyn over the newly-married Lord Corbray’s impending fatherhood, coming from a marriage arranged by Baelish, which leads to the startling discovery that Lyn is definitely very infuriated at losing his place as heir and resentful of Littlefinger for this; resentment he doesn’t hide to the girl. Alayne concludes that the man could in reality be Baelish’s foe pretending to be his ally pretending to be his foe, a discovery that could have interesting and potentially negative consequences for the Lord Protector and his plans. No less interesting a discovery with potential for trouble is that the Mad Mouse, into whom she bumps right after leaving the yard, has definitely identified her as Sansa Stark.

“A good melee is all a hedge knight can hope for, unless he stumbles on a bag of dragons. And that’s not likely, is it?”

“I suppose not. But now you must excuse us, ser, we need to find my lord father. “

She has no clue about what he was really alluding to, though, and concentrates her efforts again on finding her Baelish to greet the upcoming last guests, wisely ignoring Randa’s pointed questions about her “father’s” little finger. She doesn’t find him before the Waynwood party arrive, so has to race to the gates with the Royce girl, reminiscing along the way of similar races she had in Winterfell with her sister and friend Jeyne, another example of Sansa is very much there despite the chapter never mentioning her real name even once in accordance with the needs of acting like she’s someone else. There, she greets Lady Anya Waynwood, who addressed Lady Royce and herself, introducing her grandson Roland, her younger son Wallace, and her ward Harrold, to whom Alayne has a nervous yet hopeful reaction, wishing him to like her as it’s crucial for her “father’s” plan:

My Harry.  My lord, my lover, my betrothed.

Ser Harrold Hardyng looked every inch a lord-in-waiting; clean-limbed and handsome, straight as a lance, hard with muscle. Men old enough to have known Jon Arryn in his youth said Ser Harrold had his look, she knew. He had a mop of sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Joffrey was comely too, though, she reminded herself.   A comely monster, that’s what he was.  Little Lord Tyrion was kinder, twisted though he was.

She admires his handsomeness, going through a mental list of the things he could be as she does so, but immediately compares him to Joffrey, who was her first and most lamented mistake of judgement as a young girl, a sign that this worldlier version of herself can no longer be seduced by looks alone, a hard lesson. She does understand the need to win him over, despite the lack of genuine sentiments towards him, so she behaves graciously and charmingly, but also notices that, unlike the gallant flirter Ser Roland and the eager Ser Wallace, he doesn’t look pleased to meet her. Indeed, he ends up insulting her rudely when she offers to escort him to his place in the castle, saying that there’s no reason as to why it’d please him to be escorted by “Littlefinger’s bastard,” which almost has Alayne in tears. Stone-faced, she begs her leave, wishing in her head for Hardyng to fall off his horse in the tilts and be humiliated as she goes to search for Baelish. On the path, she finds Lothor Brune, who bestows on the boy the epithet of Harry the Arse, for which Alayne is grateful.

Despite working for Baelish and taking part in some unsavoury activities, Martin seems to have pinpointed Brune as someone that Sansa can regard as a friend and potential ally, and the “quick hug” she gives him is another example of her ability to forge alliances in hostile settings. Finally locating her father in the vaults – the Lord Protector had been having a meeting on the Vale’s food stores—Alayne shares her distress over Harry’s ill-mannered words: “…He called me your bastard. Right in the yard, in front of everyone.” Although he is quick to reassure her by citing realistic reasons for Harry’s behaviour, Petyr’s callous self-interest is revealed when he shifts seamlessly into his Littlefinger persona:

Petyr put his arm around her … “Charm him. Entrance him. Bewitch him.”

“I don’t know how,” she said miserably.

“Oh, I think you do,” said Littlefinger, with one of those smiles that did not reach his eyes.

It’s easy to forget with the overwhelming carefree tone of this chapter, but the insidious coercion LF employs over Sansa is still in effect, and his only concern about any misgivings she might have is how soon she gets over them. Another significant detail in their conversation is that LF mentions her hair will be shining in the firelight at the feast, which suggests that Sansa’s natural hair colour is returning, an auburn shade that makes her resemblance to her mother even more striking. As LF predicts, Alayne rules the night with constant requests for dancing and knights vying for her attention. The highlight of the feasting comes when a massive lemon cake is wheeled out in the shape of the Giant’s Lance, with a sugary Eyrie on top. Sansa thinks that the cake was made especially for her as Robert only came to love the delicacy because it was her favourite. The phallic symbolism of the cake can be interpreted through the lens of sexuality and power, but it’s also a remarkable display of lavish extravagance that brings to mind the Purple Wedding—an event that ended in disaster. Alayne is rewarded when Harry comes to her table as the dancing is underway and pleads her forgiveness for his rude comments. She hesitates in accepting his apology, but grants his request for a dance. After struggling to think of what to say to capture his interest, she settles on an interesting choice to ask about his bastards, in order “to see if Ser Harrold would lie.” Why this focus on honesty, especially as Harry’s bastards are common knowledge and Alayne herself is participating in a deceit? The answer may be found in the fact that honesty is a particular quality that Sansa values when it comes to judging the merits of her suitors, as she once recalled with bitterness the “Lannister lies” fed to her by Tyrion in contrast to Sandor’s “a dog can smell a lie” brand of candour and trustworthiness.

While he doesn’t lie about his bastard children, Harry does show considerable insensitivity towards the girl who bore his first child, Cissy, commenting that she has grown as “fat as a cow.” It’s not a remark that would endear anyone to him, and it’s to Sansa’s credit that rather than find anything funny about Harry’s comments on Cissy, she goes for the harmless teasing about names when he mentions that “it is different with Saffron,” the girl he has left currently pregnant. It is this teasing manner and her sharp play of words that finally attracts Harry’s true interest in her as more than a pretty girl with a large dowry:

 I hope you joust better than you talk.”

For a moment he looked shocked. But as the song was ending, he burst into a laugh. “No one told me you were clever.

Having been successfully disarmed, Harry asks Sansa for her favor to wear in the tourney; Sansa is still following through with LF’s script, however, and withholds this token, telling Harry that it is “promised to another.” It’s an intriguing comment that further suggests the relative insignificance of Sansa’s relationship with Harry, and ushers in the prospect of unforeseen characters and events emerging ahead.