Goddamn “Game of Thrones.” Watching this show is sometimes like being in an abusive relationship. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss subject us to horrible, soul-crushing events time and time again, but then by the end of the episode, someone’s riding a dragon and we’re sucked back into the magic once again. But are those triumphant moments truly worth the horrors that we have to slog through to get there? This has been called into question way too often this season, and episode nine, “The Dance With Dragons,” just might be the tipping point for some.
Obviously, the world of Westeros is not a safe place for little girls (or anyone, but especially girls). But as the showrunners push their agenda over the storyline from the book, that element of danger is a crutch that they rely on far too frequently, and in a way that is gratuitous and often feels unearned. This episode took the theme to new and darker places, when we’ve already been in very dark places this season. As viewers, there’s a hope that these bleak depictions will lead to some kind of glorious vengeance, but it’s just not clear if we can trust Benioff and Weiss with that hope. We’ve been burned too many times before. Quite literally this time around.
READ MORE: Recap: ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 5 Episode 8
Castle Black
Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and the small number of survivors of the White Walker attack show up at Castle Black, bedraggled and downtrodden. Alliser Thorne (Owen Teale) hesitates before opening up the gates to this sorry bunch, but eventually relents. He tells Jon upon their return, “you have a good heart, Jon Snow, it’ll get us all killed.” He might not be wrong about that, but Thorne’s always been an eternal pessimist. On the other side of the spectrum, eternal optimist Sam (John Bradley) assures Jon that the mission was not a failure, pointing out that he didn’t fail those individuals who are solemnly filing into the yard, including the giant, whose presence causes everyone to fall silent in awe.
Dorne
Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), supposedly the most hated man in Dorne, has been treated pretty damn well on his kidnapping trip, put up in a posh room in the Water Gardens, even after he tried to kidnap his daughter/niece. Maybe he should just stay there, since King’s Landing is a terrible place filled with class inequality, and run by militant fundamentalists. He’s even invited to a very hip and groovy dinner with the Martell family, who do some light interrogating about his mission, which he says was spurred by the threatening message, of the necklace in the viper’s mouth. It soon becomes clear this was the doing of meddler Ellaria (Indira Varma), and Doran (Alexander Siddig) is none too pleased with her war-mongering. She even pours out their toast to King Tommen. In a peace offering, Doran suggests that Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) and Trystane (Toby Sebastian) go back to Westeros with Jaime, and that Trystane will take Oberyn’s place on the small council. Cool, so basically Westeros will be ruled by horny teen boys.
Jaime, who is laying on the smarm thick, requests Bronn (Jerome Flynn) be released from the sexy women’s prison where they are holding him with the Sand Snakes, who are playing hand slapping games, and once again, do nothing of consequence. When Bronn is brought up to the groovy dinner party, he receives a wallop across the face in retaliation for smacking Trystane. Everything that happens in Dorne is just nonsensical and silly right now.
But, Ellaria is being made to pay for her mouthing off to Doran, having to kneel and kiss his ring. She seeks out an alliance with Jaime, telling him that she has no problem with his incestuous ways (oh that sexually liberated Dorne), and that in fact, she doesn’t even hold him or Myrcella accountable for the Oberyn’s death. She’s gunning for one person, and that person happens to be in the dungeon of King’s Landing. Also, apparently Jaime is the Most Popular Guy in Dorne, and not the other way around.
Braavos
Arya (Maisie Williams) is still on her undercover mission, to murder the gambling insurance man via tainted oyster. However, she gets distracted by the arrival of the jolly, singing Mace Tyrell (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) and evil knight Meryn Trant (Ian Beattie). Because Trant is on The To-Murder List, Arya stalks her new prey, even going so far as to bring her oyster trade into the brothel where Trant goes to fulfill his dark and horrid fantasies. Because the only way to show that someone is horrible on “Game of Thrones” is through rape. So Trant turns up his nose at every prostitute in a ruffled vest, declaring them all “too old,” and accepting only the bewildered pre-teen scullery maid on whom they hastily slapped some rouge, dragging her off to a back room and demanding a “fresh one” for the next day. Ew, “Game of Thrones,” just ew. That wasn’t necessary, and was truly awful to witness. But perhaps, the House of Black and White will take on the case of Trant the Pedo, since he poses a threat to the community and all.
North of Winterfell
Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) isn’t having the best of luck with his planned siege of Winterfell, as Ramsay Snow has snuck in with 20 men and set everything on fire. Now as much as Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) enjoys a bonfire, this one happened to destroy their food and supplies. Davos (Liam Cunningham) wants to turn back, but Stannis won’t have it. He sends Davos to go request supplies and men from Castle Black (they have a giant now!), but Davos is highly, highly suspicious of the cozy relationship between Melisandre and Selyse (Tara Fitzgerald), Stannis’ increasingly haggard desperation, and their belief in king’s blood. He even goes so far as to try and get Shireen (Kerry Ingram) to go along with him to Castle Black, but Stannis won’t allow it. He has other plans…
And what horrid other plans they are. Stannis has another father-daughter chat with Shireen, telling her that “sometimes a man has to choose… he has to fulfill his destiny and become who he has to be. Shireen, as trusting, noble and honorable as she is, offers to help her daddy, and sadly, he accepts, saying “forgive me.” At this point, we know where things are going.
Shireen is led out to a stake in the middle of the snowy field, surrounded by dead-eyed Baratheon soldiers. She wants to know where she’s going and where her father is, and sharp as a tack, she knows almost instantly where this is leading, and she is dragged, kicking and screaming to the stake. Melisandre lights the pyre as Selyse and Stannis, out of sight, talk about the importance of sacrifice. And yet, as soon as Shireen starts screaming for her father and then for her mother, Selyse breaks free and runs to her, but of course it is too late. As her screams heighten and then stop, the parents have given up the last thing that made them who they were aside from power-hungry warlords. Stannis continues to fight on, but now, what is he even fighting for?
Watching this moment was truly terrible, truly one of the darkest moments to occur in this series full of dark moments. There’s something about the cruel and cold murder of an innocent, in a world where almost no one is, that just feels especially black-hearted. It’s the kind of moment that will make one want to break up with the show, even in light of its glorious moments, such as…
Meereen
The fighting pits have graduated to the huge arena coliseum, where Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), Hizdahr (Joel Fry), Daario (Michiel Huisman) and new advisor Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) preside over the events. Dany’s in a piece from her Dragon Mom QVC accessory collection, but she’s not pleased about the copious bloodshed in front of her. The group debates the morality of cruelty in relationship to power, and whether the small can ever truly best the large, all against a backdrop of arterial spray on sand.
Dany’s spurned, grey-scale infected Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) turns up to fight for the queen, and it’s like “dude, STOP texting.” It appears as though all he wants is to die by many knife wounds in front of his silver-haired lady, which is probably the best bet for him, tbqh, though he does take out two comers fairly handily. He’d be great as a Stone Man. He suddenly fires a spear into the royal box, nearly beheading Hizdarh and Daario, and taking out a Son of the Harpy creeping up on Dany. Daario Naharis, you are FIRED from security. All hell breaks loose. There are Harpies everywhere in the crowd, slitting throats and stabbing away, pouring in from all sides. This is confusing, because I thought these dudes were pro-fighting pits?
Dany allows Jorah to help her escape the bloodbath, and soon, she, Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel), Tyrion, Daario, and Mormont find themselves surrounded in the middle of the fighting pit, understanding all too well what it’s like to be on the wrong end of a spear. It’s not looking great, until Dany possibly summons Drogon with her mind? Or maybe he was just in the area, but, at any rate, her favorite pet swoops in for a quick Harpy BBQ and snack. Mother of Dragons in the house!
The Harpies fire a bunch of spears into Drogon, which inspires Mama Dany to tend to her offspring, pulling out a spear and nuzzling her boy, who kindly does not breathe fire directly into her face, so you know he likes her. Then, the incredible happens. The thing we have been waiting for since Old Valyrian times. Dany climbs atop Drogon and he flies her right out of there. She’s all “peace out, advisors and friends,” and the two go for a ride to the tune of the Dany Dragon score. That’s great, now can you steer that thing up North, cause there are these really scary zombie guys up there.
This episode, once again, is conflicting. The Shireen scene had me willing to give up the show for good, while Dany’s triumph had me sucked in for at least another week. Still, I’m not quite sure that I think it’s worth the other storylines that are being pushed to the forefront, particularly since there is so much reliance on the abjection and abuse of teenage and pre-teen girls. Certainly men and boys are also subject to horrors in this world, but it seems almost an obsession at this point in time to exploit young girls for facile storytelling, and that’s not okay. You can do better, “Game of Thrones.”
"Certainly men and boys are also subject to horrors in this world, but it seems almost an obsession at this point in time to exploit young girls for facile storytelling, and that’s not okay."
Certainly. You just don\’t care when it happens to boys and men.
I\’m pretty sure this article is complaining about the lack of utilizing a double standard, which is just a TAD bit ridiculous and unfeminist. Not a lot, just a tad. I think the article was great in humorously talking about what a rollercoaster it can be, but I don\’t think it was accurate in its critique.
I mean, why the focus on the innocent, teenage/pre-teen girls? I get that GOTs is totally brutal but it\’s prettttyyyyyy equally brutal to everyone across both genders and all ages… which is how life actually is and why I actually like GOTs more than other shows–it\’s real. Like that\’s how death actually works? Death can be unpredictable, it can be swift, sometimes it\’s the good guy, sometimes it\’s the bad. Sometimes it\’s slow and gratifying, there\’s closure and everything, and other times it\’s fast and unfair with important people dying suddenly without so much as a proper last word.
GOTs\’ unpredictability is (IMO) it\’s saving grace. Nothing is worse than predictability. I HATE stories where all the good guys are obviously going to live and ultimately all the bad guys die without exception with only the middling companions you don\’t care about really at any risk. GOTs turns that model on its head, killing all the people at the extremes and leaving you with a super complex middle which is usually how life actually works and why real life isn\’t as simple as what\’s on TV.
Tropes can only go so far when one removes an active sense of danger and unpredictability. If you did that, GOTs would basically just be LOTRs. While LOTRs was great, it was more like an epic ballad and so you still suspend your disbelief even though the ONLY main good guy to actually die was Boramir (personally I wished Gandalf had stayed dead for realism\’s sake). Like how you gonna fight not one but THREE EPIC WARS and lose only ONE important dude? But GOTs is trying something different, it\’s trying to be that medieval show that keeps it real. If it knitpicked who should suffer and die, there would be no excitement, no rollercoaster of ACTUAL emotion. I feel like your review is asking for GOTs to be more like LOTRs which it isn\’t… at all… and if it was you\’d be complaining about how it\’s basically just LOTRs.
When you actually see brave innocence (Shireen)… develop complex likability over time (Hound)… visualize inner conflict (Jaime)… experience personal and heartbreaking loss (the Starks)… root for underdogs (Pod and Brienne)… or build towards the satisfaction of ultimate revenge (Arya and Sansa)… ask yourself if you could have forged any of these bonds without a liberal and brutal usage of genuine suffering and loss.
I didn\’t see complaints about the old woman in the North getting skinned alive by Ramsey… or Mormont getting grey scale… or Theon/the Spider getting castrated… in episode 1, the only real person who suffers is a young boy (Bran). When Arya stabs the young farmboy through the belly no one even flinched and the same when the Hound killed the young ginger boy by running him over with a horse. So these didn\’t touch you at all and they were all perfectly acceptable means to an end because they\’re not young girls?
I know including young girls and women in these brutal acts is hard to watch but it\’d definitely be more unrealistic and predictable if they, for some random reason, had everyone suffer BUT young girls and women. Like if this was the case, what would it look like? So only young boys, young men, old men, and older women are expendable? Honestly, that\’s just as insulting to women (particularly older women). I would see your point if they ONLY made young girls and women suffer but I think if you actually kept count of on-screen deaths, it\’s like 20:1 in favor of killing, skinning, castrating, de-handing, and burning-alive dudes. They even put in some rape for Theon in that one scene.
I\’m not keeping count, I personally find ALL of the suffering equally hard to watch, and honestly, I didn\’t even think about it til I read your article. Then again, one of my favorite authors during childhood (David Gemmell) was WAY more brutal than Martin when it came to killing, sometimes ALL of, his main characters. He was no Hemingway, but still his books would actually get me to genuinely cry because he showed how cruel, sudden, unceremonious, and unfair death can be. You ACTUALLY had NO IDEA who was going to live or die and EVERY CHARACTER no matter how good or bad was up for grabs. Even with subpar plots, that makes for a crazy page turner. Believe.
The feminism of the matter is understandably hard to balance because to fully employ it, one must not only fight to gain rights (say like equal pay) but at the same time must also fight to give some up (cultural expectation of men to pay for dinner as one monetary parallel). But almost always, if you take a step back, it\’s a pretty small price to pay for something that\’s totally worth it. I\’m sure women worldwide would agree it\’d be a verrryyyy small price to pay and would GLADLY split every bill with every man on every date EVER to suddenly achieve equal pay.
People don\’t make progress by demanding double standards… particularly for themselves and their own interests/demographic. You can\’t ask for awesome feminist heroes but then demand that one never show a young woman suffering something real. Think about how impossible that would be to do realistically and how trite the results would be even if you managed to make it work.
If I were to have a complaint about GOTs it\’s still predictable once you figure out the formula. The more disgusting a character is suddenly set up to be (Ramsey, Trant), you know they\’re gonna suffer/die. The more heartfelt innocence and beauty you see suddenly crammed down your throat (Shireen, the Starks), you know they\’re gonna suffer/die.
Again GOTs turns the traditional model of good guys live and bad guys die by flipping it on its head and bringing the focus of the story to the middle. The only characters who seem to survive are those whose stories revolve around struggling between the two extremes versus representing them (Tyrion, Jaime, Brienne) with all those who have more 1-dimensional storylines at either end of the spectrum (Cersei, Trant, Hound, Ned Stark, Shireen) suffering or getting killed off to make the struggle of those who are left more complex.
I think the technique of killing off the extremes to drive up the complexity of the remaining middle is worth it. It\’s hard, I agree, but what do you want? A show that\’s predictable and easy to watch? I honestly believe this article would be far more harsh/critical if GOTs went that route and you may have "quit" it 3 seasons ago instead of straddling that threshold all the way up to the end of season 5.
How does Stannis killing his daughter benefit anyone, though? The showrunners know how the show is going to end already, so unless Stannis becomes a king that has a huge impact on saving humanity there was no reason to kill the girl. As of now, Stannis has never even seen a walker and he doesn\’t know about the attack on the Wildlings. He\’s in no more informed than anyone else – people in King\’s Landing knew about the walker attack like 2 seasons ago and Tyrion was even at the wall and heard all about it. Stannis doesn\’t seem to be bringing any potential to the table.
It\’s one thing to support freedom of storytelling, but it\’s another thing to try to justify the act. There is literally nothing that Stannis can do to save himself in people\’s eyes. And if the show\’s creators are planning to redeem him in some way down the line, then they set themselves for a tough road considering how sweet they made the girl, setting her up over many scenes and making us listen to her plead for her life and scream as she died.
Loved the Shireen scene. Very well played from the creators, it really shows how honorable and selfless Stannis can be. It was hard to watch but nothing will show how principled he is more than sacrificing what he loves the most personally for what he sees as the greater good.
For all the "honor" Ned was supposed to have, he would never have been able to do something like that (he risked a war just to protect it\’s nephew), and a ruler who won\’t make sacrifices so that its people don\’t have to, doesn\’t deserve to rule in a period so difficult.
Another "crossing the line" post? Did a terrifying thing terrify you? Did you feel the tragedy of a tragic death? Good. Then you\’ve been watching a good story. If you didn\’t care about the characters then you wouldn\’t feel emotional when bad things happen to them, and if that\’s what you want, then go watch Disney movies for the rest of your life. Oh, wait, Dumbo\’s mom was whipped and locked in solitary confinement. And Bambi\’s mom was a victim of gun violence. I guess Walt crossed the line a lot too.
Game of Thrones is just us – you and me, America. Always engaged in a war. Lol.
The show is called
"GAME of thrones".
Maybe the point is
to know who wins.
Burning a little girl
just seems wrong…
What about
all the other
horrible things
in the show?
what about the news?
people are messed up.
That sort of thing
really happened
in history.
Innocent people
have died and
die every day.
Not every T.V show
is meant to give you
what you want.
There are plenty
of \’happily ever after\’
shows out there.
d
" But as the showrunners push their agenda over the storyline from the book"
False. If you had bothered to watch this week\’s "Inside the Episode" you would know that the Shireen scene is something that GRRM has been planning in the books for a while now. It is not an independent choice by the showrunners to "push" some non-existent agenda.
Deadwood, i believe Shakespeare and Ibsen would like to have a word with you.
i\’ve always found it odd that people won\’t cringe watching fictional beheadings, multiple murders, hangings, limbs chopped off, etc., but then cry fowl when the same fiction depicts rape and violence toward children. this is the same show whose first episode had a child defenestrated and crippled. what show have certain people convinced themselves they\’ve been watching?
If you think this show has a happy ending. You haven\’t been paying attention. Seriously why even watch it if you just gonna birch every time something happens that you don\’t like. This isn\’t a show where only bad guys die in horrible ways so stop expecting it to be. And there was a great causality for this to happen. Stannis has come full circle and he\’s not just gonna burn people you don\’t care about.
Wait, do you mean that the world will have to deal without a consistently late recap that is less thoughtful than similar pieces published by Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and, especially, the Washington Post? What\’s the point of a recapper who won\’t even attempt to explore theme or causality and is more interested in generating faux outrage? Last year, I argued that there was no point in these articles, and that Ms. Walsh should probably stop wasting her and our time. In response, Ms. Walsh suggested the next week that she wasn\’t going anywhere. Well, I am glad that she\’s twigged that I\’m right (12 months later, though). You\’re welcome.