#also jaime the style rocks i really like how efficient and effective it is

[loavesofoaves]

Game of Thrones Episode 7.01 Review

Cut for Spoilers

Shall we begin?

This is the single line of dialogue Daenerys utters after an entire scene where nothing really happens except pretty music, breathtaking backgrounds, and setup to her return to her family home, Dragonstone. It also sums up an episode that on the surface has some promising stuff going in but is mostly filler.

Arya’s Revenge

Whelp, the leaks were real. After slitting Walder Frey’s throat at the end of season 6, Arya is still thirsty for blood and decides to poison the entire Frey clan (save presumably the women and children) at a feast while wearing Walder’s face. While it is exciting to see those responsible for the Red Wedding get what’s coming to them from the last Stark they expected, the scene feels unearned. First, Arya’s vendettas have always been against individuals and having her mass murder with poison (especially when “Weasel Soup” was omitted from Season 2) just doesn’t seem her style. Two, because Arya’s Braavos arc was clumsily handled in the show, we never saw her learn how to wear others’ faces, so to have her imitate Walder Frey so flawlessly requires suspension of disbelief.  Third, while we know Arya has the motive for this murder, we have not seen the setup other than a quick scene at the end of the previous season. How long has she planned this out? Why did she take this detour when she stated to Jaqen in season 6 that she was a Stark and was going home? When did she find out offscreen that Robb’s wife had been pregnant? How long has she been masquerading as Walder? The whole thing just feels rushed, fanservice-y, and the classic D & D “creatively it made sense so we wanted it to happen.”

To top things off, we also get a scene of Arya running into a group of Lannister soldiers who offer her some rabbit and are shown to be presumably decent human beings. I could make some bullshit excuse and say the scene exists to create sympathy in Arya and question her judgments toward her enemies (especially with her fresh from murdering all the Freys, mirroring Sansa’s attitude that the children should be punished for the crimes of the whole family), but we have proof that this scene was added to give an Ed Sheeran cameo as a surprise for Maisie Williams, who is a known fan.

Da fuq.

This is a whole new level of pandering to actors low, even for D & D. I have nothing against Sheeran, or even the scene itself—it’s an OK scene—but my concern is that because this season has been condensed, this is not the most efficient use of screentime. Maybe the scene will have payoff in the future, but I just can’t help but feel like it was shoehorned in as an afterthought, especially with the thoughtless use of a song that is supposed to be about Tyrion and Shae.

Bran Arrives at the Wall

That’s it. That’s really all there is to say. Which is all well and good—I’d rather have the episode skimp on parts that don’t need to be fleshed out rather than add in unnecessary filler (which is why Bran’s storyline in the show is one of the least offensive. Less is sometimes more). We do get a nice long creepy vision of the Night’s Army, so that’s cool. I don’t really get why Bran’s psychic prowess and snooping on Edd’s life proves his identity, but there are better things to get annoyed about.

Jon Is That Kind of Feminist that Will Mansplain the Second You Disagree with Him

We see Jon, Sansa, and Davos addressing a crowd of Northern Lords at Winterfell.  Jon declares that both boys and girls must train for the upcoming war, and when one of the lords disagrees, Lyanna Mormont shuts him down by saying that she isn’t going to sit around knitting socks while there’s a war going on.

Well, excussssse me, princess, but you need warm fucking clothes to survive a winter war, so someone has to knit the fucking socks. Say it with me kids: FEMINISM DOES NOT MEAN DISSING TRADITIONALLY FEMININE ACTIVITIES.

But Jon does have a point: This is the war to end all wars and half the population should be able to defend themselves. And we do get a nice moment with Brienne feeling validated, so I’m totally here for that.

Next, there is a debate on what should be done to the Umber’s and Karstark’s lands. Sansa wants to give them away to more loyal houses, but Jon insists that the surviving children of the traitor lords who perished in the battle with the Boltons should not be punished for their fathers’ crimes. They argue as sketchy Littlefinger smirks and grinds up against a wall like he’s taking a really satisfying shit. Ew. Seriously, like, could you be any less subtle?

Book! Littlefinger is such a good villain because he’s charming and charismatic and he makes people want to believe him. But Show! Littlefinger continues to be a mustache-twirling charlatan whose time is clearly running out. Even Sansa is shooting him down and insulting him with witty zingers at this point. He will never be able to recover from D & D’s poor writing choices from Season 5, but hey, he’s supposed to be one of the final villains soooooooo…

Anyways, the Jon-Sansa argument feels manufactured, as it’s out-of-character for Sansa to speak up in a public setting like that (but then again, when has show! Sansa had consistent characterization?). We get a scene afterwards of Jon scolding Sansa for criticizing him in public (where’s your “I’m With Her” shirt now, Jon?), but she reassures him that she is just trying to look out for him so he doesn’t make the same mistakes as Ned or Robb. She also warns Jon that Cersei is just as big of a threat as the White Walkers, and interestingly, Jon says, “It sounds like you almost admire her.” While I don’t buy this “Is Sansa power-hungry?” subplot, I am all for a Sansa-Cersei showdown in the near future.

Speaking of…

Pirates of the Caribbean 6: Why Is Jaime Still Here?

Seriously. I’m not amused anymore. Even if you throw the books out the window, how does it make any narrative sense for Jaime to still be standing by Cersei? She did exactly the thing Jaime feared the Mad King would do—a man he killed knowing his reputation would forever be tarnished because of it. And last season’s finale seemed to suggest he was finally done, with his look of disapproval at Cersei when she ascended the throne.

But nope. Jaime is still here because D & D fucked up his character arc by sending him to Dorne and now they don’t know what to do with him after half-assing his Riverlands plotline. Sure, he’s a little ticked off that Cersei’s irresponsibility led to Tommen’s death, but that’s not a dealbreaker. He wants to talk about his feelings, but Cersei—who the show has repeatedly emphasized as loving her children—no longer gives any fucks. THIS is finally book! Cersei. A delusional woman who has no regard for loyalty or logic and only loves her children and Jaime as extensions of herself, she ignores basically everything Jaime has to say, furthering my query as to why the fuck he just doesn’t up and leave.

Well, I can foresee what might cause this eventual rift: a certain swaggy pirate. Frankly, show! Euron with his new wardrobe looks like my headcanon of Daario Naharis (sans the blue beard). But whatever, let’s roll with it. He has changed his tune and now wants to marry Cersei, not Daenerys, in order to get revenge on his niece and nephew. He offers her his fleet in exchange for her hand (while also making a joke about Jaime’s lack of two hands), but Cersei declines. Eurio Greyjaris, however, promises to come back with a gift to persuade her.

Now I am OK with Cersei and Euron becoming the big bad power couple, but this would be, ahem, more dramatically satisfying if D & D had actually bothered to develop Euron instead of, you know, DORNE.

Welcome to the Shitadel

In probably the most uncomfortable training montage ever, we see Samwell at his glorious unpaid internship at the Citadel cleaning up shit and serving bowls of something that looks like shit in rapid succession and retching—ugh, just thinking about it makes me want to barf. But hey, I’ll give credit where credit is due: This was an effective way to convey the passage of time and show, not tell, Sam’s hardships. Especially when Sam’s storyline has been skimped on and was in desperate need of some catching up.

The Citadel is also Hogwarts, because first-years are not allowed into the restricted section in the library and Slughorn is there (although I totally did not recognize him). Samwell asks Professor Slughorn if he can have permission to go to the restricted section because the world is basically going to end if no one reads up on those white walkers, and Slughorn promptly tells him that Climate Change is a hoax invented by Dorne. Thus, Sam steals the books and looks over them with Gilly and toddler Sam, who has finally aged accordingly.

Oh, and Sam realizes he should tell Jon about all the dragonglass at Dragonstone even though Stannis already did several seasons ago?

Oh, and also Jorah is there dramatically thrusting his rock arm out and rotting away in a cell.

And Finally Some Progress: The Gravedigger

So I am biased because I am a Sandor Clegane stans, but damn it, it is nice to see him get the screentime he deserves for once. We find the Hound traveling north (although this is in the Riverlands, and it wasn’t snowing at the Twins where Arya was but fuck geography!) with Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr. They stumble upon the house he robbed in Season 4, and just as he predicted, the kind father and daughter he screwed over have died. Finally coming to terms with his actions, Sandor shows remorse and buries their bodies, noting that they deserved better.

There’s also a fair amount of banter with Beric and Thoros here, which is good, because it looks like we’re going to be seeing more of them. After dissing Thoros’s man bun, he asks him why he’s so grumpy and the Hound responds, “Experience.”

Same.

Sandor asks Beric why he’s still alive when there’s nothing special about him (because there’s no Lady Stoneheart for him to die for) and then Thoros has the Hound look into the flames and instead of coming back with a zinger, Sandor does indeed see what looks to be the vision of the walkers we saw earlier in the episode and…a mountain…

~airhorn sounds in the distance~

CALM DOWN IT’S NOT TIME FOR CLEGANEBOWL YET.

They do seem to be headed for Eastwatch by the Sea, which is also where Tormund is going…hmmmmm…

What’s the deal with Dragonstone?

And finally, we get Team Targaryen landing at Dragonstone, which has conveniently been deserted by Team Stannis after being so disappointed by how he was handled in Season 5 that they couldn’t even anymore.

And….that’s the end of the episode. I wouldn’t mind, as the music and visuals for the scene almost make up for the lack of dialogue, but god damn deadpan Daenerys just isn’t showing the emotion this scene deserves. I just don’t feel the significance of Dragonstone here, so perhaps maybe this scene could’ve benefited from some dialogue.

And hell, I just realized Ed Sheeran had more lines than Peter Dinklage in this episode. Let that sink in.

Overall

This episode was OK. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. I thought we got some much-needed coverage of the Hound’s and Sam’s plotlines while also covering the usual bases. Barring the cold open massacre (which as I said before, was purely fanservice), it was a very standard first episode of the season, and a yearlong+ hiatus was not going to change that. But the problem with that is that this is a shorter season than usual, so we shall see if things from here on out have problems with pacing, which, based on past experience, they probably will be.

5/10

And a confession: This Tormund hitting on Brienne thing is getting old. It was funny the first few times, but now it just makes him look like a creep who won’t take “no” for an answer. We haven’t seen any real character development for this guy in a while; I’m hoping his detour to Eastwatch will give him something to do.