And Now His Watch Has Ended

I was 24 hours late to the Game of Thrones party this week, and it seems that the one time I missed the episode on the night it aired, everybody wanted to talk about it. Apparently, people really dig dragons. That really shouldn't catch me by surprise. But while most viewers seemed excited by the Daenerys scenes that concluded the episode, I once again was enthralled with the new material added that did not appear in the book.

Lady Olenna continues to be a wonderful character on the show, getting one marvelous line after another. Her conversation with Lord Varys was a wildly entertaining game of brinksmanship. In a world where people who speak their minds are often much worse off for it, these two have managed to thrive in spite of their acid tongues. Varys told Tyrion what he thinks the secret is: patience. (In another great scene.)

Just as wonderful was the conversation between Tywin and Cersei. Tywin has a slightly different kind of acid tongue; he's civil enough not to insult someone... until they prod him to say what he really thinks. At that point, he will let you have it with every weapon in his arsenal. Of course, as harsh as he was being to his daughter, he was right on the mark: her flaw is that she thinks she's far more clever than she is... though she wasn't wrong about the craftiness of the Tyrells. (Yet another great scene showed us Margaery's continued manipulation of Joffrey.)

But yes, that dragon scene with Daenerys. I have to talk about that, don't I? I must confess that, reading the books, Dany was never a favorite of mine. For whatever reason, her story never clicked for me in the way that so many of those featuring the other characters did. And, perhaps unfairly, this particular development is now colored for me by what followed.

I'll keep it vague for those who haven't read the books, but if you want to be 100% spoiler free, you may want to skip this paragraph. I really do think this moment where Dany double-crossed the slavers was the reason why, more than a decade after A Storm of Swords was published, we're only two books further in the series and without sign of when the final two books will ever arrive. During the many years George R.R. Martin worked on A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons, he seemed to spend more time complaining on his blog about how hard it is to write than actually trying to write. And more than anything else, he complained about what a difficult time he was having with the Daenerys chapters of his story. I hate to say it, but what we saw this week on the show was the high point of her story, period. And it came too early to sync up with events in the rest of Westeros. Suddenly, Martin had to tread water with Dany and stall her while the other characters caught up to her in plot development. So as great a moment as it was, I can't help but feel like it's ultimately responsible for the delays in books and why the next two books couldn't be as good as book three.

That said, there are plenty more great developments to come this season, and I'm looking forward to them!