The House of Black and White

As promised by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Game of Thrones this week continued to depart from the book source material -- and continued to entertain by doing so.

Actually, it was one of the smaller changes that marked the only place where I thought something got lost in translation somewhere. The election of Jon Snow to Watch Commander played out over several chapters of the book. (That book being A Storm of Swords; we're backtracking to finally grab this important development.) Multiple votes were taken over multiple nights, which obviously had to be compressed for dramatic effect on the show. But book Sam made much shrewder political maneuvers to position Jon as a sort of alternative "consensus candidate" to everyone else. I had a harder time believing that one rousing speech would get the job done -- particularly when Thorne made an equally convincing (to your average rube, I thought) counterspeech.

On the other end of the spectrum, Brienne's story this week effectively allowed her to skip an entire book's worth of Martin's material -- material that was far from compelling to begin with. Sure, you have to allow that Brienne and Podrick just happen to grab food in the same place as Littlefinger and Sansa, but it's a coincidence I welcome as an alternative to weeks of fruitless searching. Instead, we got a powerful moment for Sansa, who may not have made the right choice in sticking with Littlefinger, but who at least make a choice (more than I can say for her book counterpart). Then we were treated to a wild action sequence through the forest that delivered plenty of thrills. I look forward to Brienne's continued tracking of Sansa (to where, we still don't know).

Somewhere in the middle were the changes to the Dorne storyline. Having Jamie decide to go there seems like a big improvement. Book Cersei sent him off on a menial clean-up mission to deal with the Red Wedding aftermath, which, being deliberately menial, was generally not exciting to read. It did serve to bring about Jamie's slow disillusionment with his sister over several chapters, but I have faith a more efficient way can be found to do that on the show. Instead, we now send a major character into the heart of action that sorely needed a familiar character in the books.

The secondary characters are switched around too. Bronn popped as a character far more on the show than he ever did in the books, where he was just one of three or four named fighters working for Tyrion. His wry humor will be a welcome return. Also changed are things in Dorne itself. In the books, Prince Doran had a daughter, Arianne, with an elaborate plot surrounding Myrcella -- one that did not involve killing her. It's a simplification to turn that into a desire to start carving Myrcella up for revenge, but that is at least a viewpoint that some characters had in the book. Combining Arianne and Ellaria into a single character is likely a change that will work, particularly in the name of preserving further use of an actress who was solid last season.

So far, the show's answer to the boring Meereen chapters of the book seems to be sinking Dany in the quagmire more quickly. I don't remember this decision for a public execution in the book at all -- or perhaps all that changed was her decision to be there in person for it? Either way, it made for a much stronger "what are you doing?!" moment that highlighted the core issue of the book, distilled down: Dany's attempts to do the right or just thing are rarely rewarded. The show's added visit from Drogon was a nice punctuation mark on it too; even Dany's dragon doesn't want to hang around with her much.

Tyrion's tedious travels through the east continue, largely unaltered by the presence of Varys and absence of Illyrio. I don't mind the show keeping things slow for him for the moment as they focus on other stories.

Which just leaves the story we didn't get to see last week, Arya's arrival at the House of Black and White. I loved her little showdown in the street (even if we were denied the chance to see her make good on her threat). The major change here is the return of Jaqen H'ghar! In a place where people can change their faces at will, it's still possible that it isn't him, of course. Still, the show has again put a familiar character into a storyline that lacked for that in the books. And again, it feels like a good change.

I'm excited about the directions things are going this season. This newest episode, I give an A-.