YOU SHOULD GET SOME SLEEP. IT'S GOING TO BE A LONG WAR: A long war, maybe, but a short episode of Game of Thrones. I did the math after last week, and thought, wow, there's a lot of ground to cover this week. I'd guess that the formula was 75% of the book in the first nine episodes. So if this episode seemed a little rushed, I suppose they can't all be "Baelor." A large spoilery thought after the jump:
The one plot thing that I think this season didn't do effectively was set up the importance of the dragons. In the books, you get a fair bit of history making it clear that the dragons weren't just powerful as symbols of the Targaryen dynasty (and dwindling in size as the Targaryens descended into despotism), but also as the tools that brought the Targaryens to power. There were long explanations of how huge armies marched against Aegon (the first Targaryen king) and were just burned to a crisp by his dragons. The proper analogy would be if the Lannisters and the Starks went to war, but the Lannisters had three fully-equipped F-16s to fly close air support.
So the scene when Khal Drogo's funeral pyre burned itself out, leaving Dany with three newly-hatched dragons -- I'm not sure there was enough background in the series to make it clear how shocking that would be. There are a couple dozen remaining from Drogo's retinue, all but Jorah Mormont getting ready to strike out on their own the moment they're finished burying their former boss, because the custom is either to be, or to hitch yourself to, the most powerful warlord. And then crazy Mrs. Boss quietly walks into the fire (in her wedding gown), lets it burn to the ground, and suddenly she's sitting there, unharmed, on top of three fully-equipped F-16s. You could sack a lot of towns with three F-16s. And that's how Viserys's meek little teenaged sister becomes a warlord. I'm just not sure the show caught the holy-shitness of that moment.
Anyway, I fear that the episode was a little flat, and mostly transitional, setting things up for next season. Arya and Gendry (King Robert's bastard from earlier in the season) are headed for the wall, Jon and the Night's Watch are headed for the wildling army and the White Walkers, the Lannisters are headed to war with Robb and his Northmen on one side and Renly Baratheon and his Southerners on the other, Tyrion is headed to King's Landing to take the reins from Cersei and Joffrey, Dany is headed somewhere with her tiny F-16s, and the only person who's not going anywhere is poor red-eyed Sansa, truly her father's daughter in her misreading of every strategic cue, whose bedroom window now has the worst view of all time. To be continued in nine and a half months.
