Game of Thrones 1x04 - Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

Daenerys: I am a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. I am the wife of the great Kahl and I carry his son inside me. The next time you raise a hand to me will be the last time you have hands.

Four weeks in, and I've missed two episodes. 50/50 isn't nearly as bad as it could be, right?

Spoilers for the latest "Game of Thrones" after the cut...


Two week breaks from reviewing a show in a ten episode season is probably a bad idea in general, but I'm actually fairly pleased at my timing here. Like "The Wire" before it, "Game of Thrones" seems to be simmering to a boil, rather than throwing everything in a bowl and screaming "dinner!" Keeping that happy thought in mind (yumm... dinner), this is the first week where I felt that the show was truly picking up the pace, getting started on the action instead of simply setting the scene.

Not that we didn't need this time to get accustomed to Westeros and the world of "Game of Thrones." As I said after my earlier review, one episode was not enough to get us properly acquainted to this landscape, history, and back story in this series, and even while I longed for the ball to get rolling sooner, the time was definitely necessary. Even now, when it finally feels as if we're getting somewhere, we still had four scenes that were there purely to get the audience up to speed. After three weeks of hanging around with the Stark kids without a surname to call his own, Theon Greyjoy is finally outed for who he is by Tyrion - a hostage and prisoner of war far from home, held in the north as a punishment for his family's rebellion against the crown.

Meanwhile, two other exiles are across the Narrow Sea setting the record straight, Viserys explaining dragon mythology to his 'pleasure slave' (which makes me feel dirty just typing) while Ser Jorah reveals why he became a slaver and how he longs for his home. And let's not forget the origin story of the Hound, a man brutal enough to run down a child in cold blood. Makes a bit more sense, knowing that he himself was scarred by his own brother as a child, held into the fire and left to burn until his face was half melted off.

All good stuff (cherry too!), and while the viewer in me is irritated by writers forcing me to be patient, I have to admire Benioff and Weiss for not only telling the audience what we need to know as we need to know it, but also for being willing to let viewers walk into some situations blind. In their position, I would be so concerned about setting the scene properly that I'd never get around to telling the story, which would lead to a waste of time and a terrible TV show.

And despite all that back story, there was a ton of plot progression this episode, so much that I only have the space to remark upon a few points...

First, the introduction of Sam Tarly. Last week we got a brief impression of life on The Wall, and the most apparent item was that it wasn't a nice sort of existence. Happily, we get to follow Jon Snow to the wonderful piece of scenery, and as an audience we get fairly coddled by being invested in the scrappiest bastard alive. His biggest problems once he arrived were that he was too skilled, too rich, and too noble to make life among thugs easy without first winning them over through comradeship, something that he's managed fairly well through generosity and charisma. Really, when following around a guy like Jon, The Wall could be a lot worse.

Which is why we need Sam. Sam is a pathetic wreck of a boy and truly the worst possible person to end up defending the nation from the horrors beyond The Wall. He has been sent away from his home out of shame, makes it clear that he will never be able to get better or improve with time, and doesn't have nearly enough pluckiness to pick himself up and make his own way in this brutal landscape. We get that The Wall is a place for people to go when there's no other choice, but it's only with Sam around that we realize what that choice can mean for a character who has no ability to make the best of it for himself. Which, of course, reflects back on Jon, who immediately takes this hapless fool under his wing as his brother in arms.

Brilliant stuff, but it pales in comparison to my favorite part of the episode. When "Game of Thrones" was still a twinkle in HBO's eye, I heard a rumor that the brilliant Aidan Gillen was probably going to be cast in a role. Knowing Gillen as Tommy Carcetti from "The Wire," there was only one role they could possibly be considering him for, a prospect that I was both delighted by (cause come on. Aidan Gillen. Yes please!) and frightened of (please don't play him like you played Carcetti, please o please...).

Littlefinger, ladies and gentleman. The slimey, crafty politician who may not be pulling all of the strings, but is making fine music with his set, and can see the other players far more clearly than a man like Ned could ever hope to. Yes, we had met Petyr Baelish an episode ago, but it's only now that Littlefinger gets to properly 'school' Ned and frighten a girl with a story too horrific to be anything but true. It's not the most impressive bit of screen time we'll likely see this season, but damn if it doesn't make an impression. Now that Ned knows that he needs his wife's former beau and we have a better notion of the type of power this character holds, Littlefinger all but swans around from scene to scene and Gillen gets to have some fun being manipulative and smug, which I just love. Littlefinger is a great character, and Gillen is having such a fun time playing him that I can't wait to see what he does next. While not quite as spot-on as Dinklage's portrayal of Tyrion, now that I've seen Gillen's performance I couldn't imagine the character being done by anyone else.  

Other thoughts...

• I always get sad when I get so little of my favorite characters while going through a chunk of Martin's books, so I suppose its only right that we didn't get much of Dany or Tyrion in this episode, just so I feel like the writers are recreating the experience properly. At least their few moments were well spent. Dany's clearly not the meek thing she was a few episodes back, and her slapping Visery's around a bit was just the sort of form I would have hoped her empowerment to take. Meanwhile, Tyrion does a good deed for a boy and then gets accused of hiring a hit man to kill that same boy. Talk about rotten luck. 
• Poor Sean Bean. It's not the Ned isn't a good character, but his primary role is to look put-upon and try the keep the kingdom running, no easy task to manage while hunting down books of linage and blacksmiths and avoiding tournaments. Alas, the tireless life of a surely Hand...*
• Side note, fans of "Skins" should be able to recognize Gendry, the blacksmith boy, as Joseph Dempsie, Chris from the first generation. A few years did that boy good, am I right?
• The direwolves continue to be bad ass. 
• Cat has always been one of the least compelling characters in the books for me, but I must say that Michelle Fairley is doing a great job of making me see Cat as the hard core mofo she's always been. She only got one scene this episode, but she owned it.
• Four episodes in and the exposition isn't bothering me at all. Again, I might be alone, but I quite enjoy letting the actors work their way through the emotions. Mark Addy did a particularly good job at this last week, I thought, when going through King Robert's first kill. A reenactment would be cool, but there's something really worthwhile about seeing how satisfied Robert is with that kill even now that's truly chilling, and makes you wonder what kind of king this man makes.

 How about you guys? What did you think?


* I honestly don't know why I like making fun of Sean Bean/Sean Bean's characters so much. I do it a lot, and for no good reason. I love you, Sean Bean! I really do! *shifty eyes* (One last one that makes fun of Leo DiCaprio too.)