The Climb

Last night's Game of Thrones featured a sequence that probably, until just a few years ago, would have been completely unfilmable on a television budget -- the wildlings' scaling of The Wall. There were a few moments here and there where the green screening wasn't completely credible, but overall, the harrowing nature of the climb certainly came through. It was a real triumph for the production, for me a true "if they can do that, they can do anything Martin throws at them in the rest of the books" moment.

But there was plenty else to love in the episode. Tyrion's role this season is certainly reduced from last season, but the scenes he does have are always gems. His commiserating with Cersei over their arranged marriages was brilliantly punctuated by the question, which of the four of us has it the worst? Tough question, but as Tyrion hinted, it's probably neither of the Lannisters.

The ongoing torture of Theon continued to be difficult to watch. As I've mentioned before, this is all material from book five, but it packs a much stronger punch here. Compared to what we're seeing on the screen, the book is twice removed -- once by being described rather than shown, and once by us getting it all in a few brief and scattered paragraphs of Theon's memories rather than moment by moment as it happens. In any case, my whole viewing party was cringing as it played out.

Several of the running plots got single, brief scenes to push them along: Bran, Robb, Jaime, and Sansa. The Jaime scene was my favorite of the lot, in large part for Brienne's role in the scene. You could feel her seethe at the indignity of being dressed in a gown, and while she could not save herself from that, she could help Jaime with his indignity of trying to carve his food one handed. A small detail that played very well.

There were some interesting added scenes this week. I could gush again for a while about how wonderful every scene with Tywin Lannister and Lady Olenna is; seeing them together in the same scene was a real treat. But nearly as potent was Littlefinger's monologue to Varys about chaos, a very chilling look at just how cruel that character is. It says a lot about Littlefinger to see how Roz ended up; true, she wasn't a book character, but she didn't even get the dignity of dying on screen. (That also gave us a moment to see how sadistic Joffrey is... but we all knew that.)

Another added detail was Melisandre visiting the Brotherhood. This was an interesting addition in that it provided information even book readers don't have. First, it showed us that as terrible as some of the things are that Melisandre is able to do with her strange powers, there are things that she regards as too horrible. To know that there are things that essentially scare her, like the many resurrections of Beric, says quite a lot about those things. Second, there was her brief confrontation with Arya. Some of the prophecy-like pronouncements Melisandre made do seem to track with events from later in the books, but there was more there too that hasn't happened yet -- the promise that they'll meet again being of particular interest.

Perhaps a slower burn overall than many Game of Thrones episodes, but still a winner.