Arya's scenes were among the strongest this week, and young Maisie Williams really carried the moments well. The rage with which she threw herself at The Hound after he won the combat was truly visceral. And her last scene was also very telling, in which she ruefully wished for her father to be brought back to life. You realize just how many wondrous things Arya has seen now that the sight of a man coming back from the dead doesn't really shock her; she instead thinks of how she could use such power.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was exceptional in the scene where Jaime explained to Brienne his dilemma in killing the mad king Aerys. It's a really pivotal moment in the book, and is as much a part of coming to understand Jaime and being sympathetic toward him as the loss of his hand. If anything, this scene played on the show even more powerfully than the loss of the hand.
The strange relationship between young Shireen and Davos was an interesting one. Davos is another character I didn't find especially compelling in the books, but the burned Shireen was very well introduced, and that strong introduction made me invest more in her quest to teach Davos to read. (Also, the sequence was preceded by a gruesome little detail we didn't see in the book: Queen Selyse's creepy gallery of stillborn boys.
And the final scene was wonderful, in which you get to see Cersei in a nutshell: she can dish it out, but she can't take it. She's all smiles, playing with Tyrion like she's a cat with a mouse, when Tywin is informing him that he must marry Sansa Stark. But she is utterly deflated when she's told that she too must be married, and to Ser Loras. One of the thrills of the books is watching Cersei take the punches (some on behalf of other unlikeable people in her family), and Lena Headey makes those moments everything they need to be.
Another wonderful episode.
2 comments:
It was strange to see Brienne so, well, womanly. And clean.
It made her look very vulnerable, without her armor and without dirt smeared across her face.
And I honestly don't remember Stannis' daughter from the book. Didn't Davos learn to read from a Maester?
FKL
You've read the book far more recently than I have. I convinced myself that I remembered a little burned girl, but if you don't... then it must have been change in the show.
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