Eastwatch

After watching a new Game of Thrones episode, I don't usually seek out comments from friends or critics before writing up my own thoughts. This time, though, I happened to catch what a few people were saying. It seems that this was the episode that finally just broke everyone with all the "video game fast travel."

While the show (like the books) has always played fast and loose with exact chronology and the passage of time, this was extreme. Just a few weeks ago, we didn't see Arya for an entire episode because she was walking north to Winterfell. This week, Davos went all the way from Dragonstone to King's Landing and back, then headed up to the Wall. (And all that after Daenerys return from the field of battle to Dragonstone... though, admittedly, dragon has got to be the fastest means of travel there is in Westeros.)

Either because of all the whiplashing about, or coinciding with it, the series served up one of its more uneven episodes that somehow simultaneously felt overcrammed with plot and left you feeling that not much happened. I trust that if anything interesting had happened to the Hound on his way to the Wall, or to Jorah on his way to Dragonstone, or to Theon as he wandered the halls of Dragonstone for... what... probably months?... then we would have seen it dramatized on screen. But this sort of missing material is exactly the sort of thing it feels like we would have gotten back in, say, season two. And it's not unfair to ask, "Really? You only had 13 episodes' worth of stuff left to do going into this season? Are you sure?"

Anyway, enough about what wasn't here this week. Let's talk about what was. First, the aftermath of last week's epic battle. Bronn's heroics (and dry humor) continued as he pulled Jaime to safety. Then Daenerys embraced her Targaryen side, specifically the part about burning enemies alive. That's the end of Randall Tarly and his son Dickon. It was an odd character arc for Randall, who through the way he'd raised Sam showed that he lived his entire life a stern and intractable man. He finally bent just once to support Cersei over the Tyrells, and then utterly recoiled from it. Once was enough; never again. I suppose his narrative purpose overall was to show that Cersei has many ways of getting what she wants, of getting people to do things they otherwise would not. (In this case, I believe it was Jaime that did the convincing.)

Jaime returned to King's Landing with news of both the Lannister army's utter defeat and of the true culprit behind the death of Joffrey. As expected, Cersei didn't want to believe Tyrion's innocence in that murder.

At Dragonstone, Jon Snow revealed his inner dragon whisperer, and Daenerys seemed insufficiently thrown by the ability of someone else to tame one of her "children." The "no, seriously, how in the actual hell did you do that?" scene it feels like we should have gotten was instead interrupted by the return of Jorah Mormont.

Bran did some Three-Eyed Raven-style spying beyond the Wall to remind us that yes, the army of the dead is still coming, and are apparently the only beings in Westeros actually constrained by travel time. And though he had fresh warnings sent out by ravens (the two-eyed kind), nobody wanted to hear of it, including the maesters of Oldtown, who slapped down Samwell with a fresh mountain of books to copy as punishment for talking out of turn. Later in the episode, this would lead to a moment of everyone watching the show screaming at their TV's as Sam and Gilly casually stumble upon evidence of Rheagar actually marrying Lyanna Stark, and dismissing it as irrelevant.

Varys and Tyrion had a heart-to-heart about where the line is crossed when serving tyranny and doing nothing to stop it. In a crowded episode, this would be an easy scene to overlook, and yet it feels like the sort of thing that could end up being a major nod to some event yet to come. It's not like we needed any particular reminder of Varys' past at this stage of the story, making one start to wonder if Tyrion is going to have to turn on Daenerys at some point.

Next, the Craziest Plan in Westeros was hatched, to head north of the wall, capture a wight, and bring it back to show off P.T. Barnum-style to Cersei. The sheer craziness of this plan didn't stop there, as its intermediate steps involved sailing to King's Landing in secret and delivering Tyrion to a clandestine meeting with Jaime. It felt like we didn't get to see nearly enough of that reunion, that just when Tyrion really opened the door on what an ass their father Tywin was, we cut away.

Specifically, we cut away to bring another long-missing face back into the story: Gendry. Davos swung by the smith shop to scoop up Robert Baratheon's bastard son for fresh adventure. I do wonder how important it really is in the grand scheme of things to tie up the Gendry plot thread, but hey, why not? He sure can swing a hammer, which ought to come in handy north of the Wall.

Winterfell hosted a round of Spy vs. Spy, in which Littlefinger showed he didn't need the ability to change his face to come out on top. First, we saw fractures between Arya and Sansa of their own making, with Arya seemingly both frustrated that her sister was hungry for power and yet not claiming it strongly enough. This set the stage for Littlefinger, knowing he was being watched, to forge a note from Sansa to be found by the snooping Arya. I'm sure someone out there has freeze-framed that note, that a transcription is waiting on line somewhere. But I don't need to have the specifics to guess the general shape of it: it's tailored to drive a wedge between the Stark sisters.

Next Jaime and Cersei swapped roles a bit, and it was Cersei's turn to be the one with big news to share. First, she knows all about Jaime's secret meeting with Tyrion, and is warning against further "betrayal." But more significantly, she's pregnant with a fourth child of incest. And this time, she doesn't see any reason to hide that information from anyone. How people (or "the people") are going to react to the news might be up for grabs, but I'll lay odds that we're never actually going to see that baby born before this tale is over.

Our final moments of the episode were up at Eastwatch, as a truly eclectic band of men (no tall woman, sorry Tormund) came together to go White Walker hunting. Not everyone is coming back from this quest, I guarantee. Maybe we should start a pool on who lives and who dies.

So yes, plenty happened this week... even though it feels like this was a rather forgettable episode overall between last week's epic installment and what feels like other mammoth developments teed up for the next two. That rocky pacing of the narrative does make me feel like this was the weakest episode of the season. Not too bad, probably about a B in my book, but a bit of a letdown after the standard that's been set recently.