Monday, April 2, 2012

I'M GOING TO FIGHT THEM ALL -- A SEVEN-KINGDOM ARMY COULDN'T HOLD ME BACK: For many shows, the first episode coming off a long hiatus opens with fifteen or twenty minutes of checking in separately with each of the principal characters, reminding the audience who they are and what motivates them. Some shows -- The Wire, Mad Men -- either recognize that their sprawl precludes this or invent ways to put everybody together (say, a surprise 40th birthday party) to streamline and minimize the intrusion of the reintroduction process.

Not Game of Thrones. It's amusing to me that it takes an entire hour-long episode just to lay eyes on each major character once, with only a few prime movers (Tyrion and Cersei in the red corner; Robb and Bran in the grey corner; Dany in the thirsty corner; Stannis and Melisandre in the crazy pants) meriting a second scene. So there was less actually happening in this episode than there was updating us on status (Tyrion is acting hand, because Pa Lannister sees what a mess Cersei and Joffrey are making; Robb is winning the war; Stannis is a dick) or putting the wheels in motion on things that will pay off later, for better or for worse. Because of the structure, this episode felt like all prologue to me. About the only thing that really happened [MILD SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED OR READ] was that incompetent boob Janos Slynt proved what an even more incompetent larger boob Ned Stark was by locating all of Robert's children in about a thousandth of the time it took Ned last season.

It doesn't take a reader of the books to know that something's going to happen soon, though. And it's great to have this show back.

29 comments:

  1. To be fair, Slynt had the express backing/encouragement of the King and his Regent, while Ned was skulking around in the shadows, and it also appeared he took the blunt instrument route of "are they brown-haired and a bastard?  Kill them, just to be safe."  That said, at least one of Robert's bastards is headed for the Wall, alongside Arya, right?

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  2. The Pathetic Earthling11:20 AM

    If editing sessions in Big Law had been that interesting, I might have stuck it out longer.

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  3. The Pathetic Earthling11:23 AM

    Also, Cersei probably knew where most if not all of Robert's bastards were as she had 14+ years to track them down.  Ned hardly was in a position to ask Cersei where they were and had to do some digging on his own.

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  4. isaac_spaceman11:28 AM

    Ha.  Right now that dude is like, "fucking Stannis had me up all night with completely pointless edits, and then I had to o-mail the thing separately to a hundred different keeps.  Soon as I get my chance, I'm moving to the Arbor and going in-house with a start-up." 

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  5. Joseph J, Finn11:29 AM

    Yeah, I'm going with Janos has kept an eye on each and every bastard for the last 15 years or so.  He seems like exactly the kind of suspicious bastard (an anti-Sam Vimes if you will) who would.

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  6. isaac_spaceman11:31 AM

    She doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would have tracked them down ahead of time.  She would pretend not to care, and to the extent she cared, she would have taken it out on Robert rather than gathering information.  In the books, she bans bastards from court, but there's no indication that she went about cataloguing them. 

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  7. Andrew12:03 PM

    The city guard also had the benefit of tracking down the bastards in a montage. To show it all would take too long, so they put it in a montage. (backing vocals: montage!)

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  8. Jordan12:33 PM

    Tyrion may have just had the best introduction since the first time we met Jed Bartlett.  And Bronn might have the highest awesomeness:screen time ratio on tv.

    And as someone who hasn't read the books, so I don't know the locations, nothing gets me as excited as seeing a new location in the credits.

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  9. Abby G3:08 PM

    That may have been one of the worst (in its gruesomeness) montages I've ever seen, being kicked off with stabbing a baby.  I mean... anyone have any better ones?

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  10. Big Joe5:16 PM

    I suppose this is spoiler-y if you hadn't seen the ep...

    I don't recall that "Power is Power" scene from the books, but I liked the staging of it and how it fit against her look after the slap from Joffrey.  I read somewhere that the show might diverge from the books a little more going forward, so maybe this is a start.

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  11. Dan Suitor5:49 PM

    Weiss and Benioff have been pretty liberal from the start, creating scenes to better suit the needs of the television medium. I seem to a recall a few scenes from the pilot were called out as invented for the series (not that it's a bad thing, just that it's a thing).

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  12. Watts5:57 PM

    I was a tiny bit disappointed the babies didn't end up on spikes.

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  13. Joseph J, Finn6:30 PM

    I'm always up for more Tyrion & Bronn awesomeness, capped by the line from Tyrion about the hound not liking him and Bronn just laughing at "I can't imagine".<span> </span>

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  14. Alyssa6:48 PM

    I think it was an interesting addition, but not necessarily true to character for Littlefinger (from the books anyway).  He's too smart to open himself up like that to Cersei.

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  15. Alyssa6:49 PM

    Yes, Gendry - the blacksmith's apprentice that Ned interviewed last season.

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  16. Alyssa6:59 PM

    Might be my knowledge of the books mingling with the TV show, but in one or both instances, Varys straight up told Ned how many bastards the king had.  He is the Master of Whisperers - I would bet that he very easily produced a list for Slynt.

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  17. Me, too! I love seeing a new location. I've never read the books either, and I was really happy that I remembered what was going on from the first season and that I could follow along in the new locales. 

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  18. I haven't read the books, so I don't know what's in them and what's not. But I did read the feature a few weeks ago in Entertainment Weekly. In that article, Benioff and Weiss admitted that they added more of Jon Snow and Robb Stark in this season than in the books because they didn't want to lose any young, female viewers. 

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  19. isaac_spaceman8:45 PM

    There was plenty of Jon Snow and Robb Stark in the book, if I remember correctly.  As for Littlefinger, I'm with Alyssa.  Littlefinger likes to tell people things that they think he doesn't know, to imply that he knows more than he does.  And he likes to hint that he may have some knowledge that others don't have, to create a need for his favor.  But it's all very surgical -- he determines exactly what information would be valuable to whom and when and why, and zeroes in on exactly those circumstances.  He wouldn't just announce, apropos of nothing, that he is in the general knowledge business and business is good.  The generality of that statement isn't going to convince anybody, and even if it did, he wouldn't make the claim unless there were something specific that he was trying to get at that exact moment.  Put another way, Peter Baelish doesn't open his mouth unless he's trying to get something, and it's not clear what he supposedly was trying to accomplish in that scene.   

    But Cersei's part of the scene rang true, so it was okay with me. 

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  20. Watts9:14 PM

    Better link that starts at pertinent part of clip: http://youtu.be/xNJnFn1jQmw?t=42s

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  21. Anonymous12:02 AM

    Robb Stark is pretty much a non-entity in the books. He's not a point of view character and most of his achievements and explots aren't ever told except for someone else telling a pointof view character a story.He's off the canvas of the story for much of a Clash of Kings. IUt's one of those things that works to good effect in the books, because of the way they're structured, but definitely wouldn't work well for TV. There is definitely lots of Jon Snow in the book, however. 

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  22. Given that we couldn't get season 2 any other way, we finally succumbed and got HBO. It kicked in today, so we finally got to see the episode. Glad to have the show back, glad to have Isaac blogging on it, as well.

    The Peter scene struck me as all kinds of wrong, but some of the other new or altered scenes struck me much better. I especially liked Robb and his wolf menacing Jamie, but generally, getting more scenes with Robb has made me feel more invested in him than I did in the books, where I tended to think of him as son/brother, and less as a genuinely strong strategist. Of the current crop of king-wannabes, he seems like a candidate I can get behind.

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  23. Becca1:18 AM

    I haven't read the book in a REALLY long time, but I seem to recall Katelyn being heavily involved in strategizing, and Robb just following along. But, since Robb was younger in the books, that makes more sense. I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly, though. As poorly as I remembered the first book (major plot points only), I remember this one even less. 

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  24. Jordan10:35 AM

    Or as he was known in my house, "Hey, it's that guy from The Fades!"  Soon to be joined, according to the previews by "Hey, it's that woman from The Fades!"  I may be the only person in this country to have watched it, but it was a fantastic show.

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  25. Nigel from Cameroon11:28 AM

    Loved it. I found this season's premier to be approachable, easy to follow, etc. Not that season 1 was particulatly challenging, this just seemd more accessible, at least for someone who has not read the books.

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  26. I believe it was Jaime Lannister whose role they said was boosted.  (I haven't read the books.)<span> </span>

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  27. bella wilfer2:05 PM

    They mentioned Robb and Jaime in terms of the book 2 people who get more screentime than page-time... And I agree w/Guest above - Robb is fairly boring in the books b/c you never get his POV.  

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  28. bella wilfer2:07 PM

    Yes.  Catelyn is the real mastermind in the book re: the "King in the North" team, and even gets sort of annoyed when Robb tries to think for himself, but again - that could also be b/c we see things from Cat's POV and not ever from Robb's.  I'm not mad with more Robb in my life.  Apropos of nothing: I wish Theon were cuter.  

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  29. Andrew2:29 PM

    I was the Guest above (Robb Stark is a non-entity.) Too many computers, too few cookies. Mmmm, cookies. 

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