game of thrones finale: well, that was a little… anticlimactic

After last week's brutal red wedding, I guess the creators of Game of Thrones wanted to breathe a sigh of relief and let the audience do that as well. But sometimes you can go a little too far in the other direction. There were definitely some great scenes in Sunday night's third season finale episode, "Mhysa," but the overall feeling that viewers were left with at the end of the program was, "Is that it?" Ending the season with Daenerys and her dragons may have seemed smart from a special effects and "We're spending all this money" point of view, but it was a little dull and anticlimactic. No white walkers? No Mance Rader?

"Mhysa" means "mother," so Dany is now not just the mother of dragons, but a whole lot more

Without being a spoiler-sport, as a reader of the books I was hoping to maybe see a few of the more memorable events that I know are yet to come. I think it might have been wiser if the action in "Mhysa" had stayed in King's Landing. Instead we got to touch base with all the major (and minor) players of the season, as the roundelay script tried to tie up everyone's loose ends. The scene with the perpetually tortured Theon and the corresponding scene in the Iron Islands with his father and sister were very good ones, but were they crucial to this episode, to wrapping up this season? They could have been better placed at the beginning of next season. Alternating between the Lannisters in the south and what was happening with what was left of the Starks in the north would have been the way to go. And ending with the scene with Arya and The Hound would have been a much more slam-bang finish. The CGI dragons must be costing them a fortune to create, but ... yawn.

Tyrion and Sansa bond over their outcast status

What was good in the south:

Everything with Peter Dinklage. His portrayal of Tyrion Lannister just continues to deepen. And Charles Dance constantly amazes as paterfamilias Tywin Lannister. Tywin put the horrible king-in-name-only Joffrey yet again in his place. I was so hoping for a little bit more Joffrey ... Next season.  In another one of his gut-wrenching discussions with Tyrion, Tywin tried to reduce the red wedding massacre as just an efficient way to end the war, "Explain to me why it is more noble to kill 10,000 men in battle than a dozen at dinner." Tyrion keeps hoping for a different sort of response from his father. Did this last father-son talk cure him of that? The scene between Varys and Shae added dimension to both characters and their positions in the Lannister household, as that is what King's Landing is at the moment. Varys offered Shae diamonds and told her to skedaddle, "Tyrion Lannister is one of the few people who can make this country a better place... you are a complication ... your presence endangers him." But Shae wasn't biting. Jamie came home, but we didn't really get to see him reunite with Cersei or anyone else.

What was good in the north:

John telling Ygritte he loved her and getting shot full of arrows. A woman scorned ... Bran met Sam, and Sam and Gilly returned to the precarious safety of the Wall and the Nights Watch. Ser Davos helping Gendry escape Dragonstone and convinced Stannis to help the Nights Watch battle what's coming from beyond the Wall (and not execute him for his saving Gendry). The Red Woman Melisandre uncharacteristically agreed with Davos, "The true war lies to the North." But the most powerful scene of the episode featured Arya and The Hound on the road.

They are a team, for now (image from popjunk).

As much as this finale may have been a bit of a letdown, I of course can't wait until next season. There's still so much more to come. The acting on Game of Thrones is always stellar, and this season the show has looked better than ever. The lighting and the set design continues to blow me away — it's downright painterly, with many scenes seemingly lit with candlelight, creating chiaroscuro shadows. Game of Thrones just keeps getting better and better. I just wish they didn't feel they had to check in with everybody in town to tell a story to finish the season. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "Mhysa" ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Oh well, summer is coming.

game of thrones: the quality of mercy

Beware of spoilers if you haven't seen the latest episode, “The Rains of Castamere,” or read A Storm of Swords ...


As I watched last night's penultimate episode of Game of Thrones I couldn't help thinking of this snippet from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

Portia:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;

There were so many opportunities last night for characters to show (or not show) mercy to their fellow man. Arya, who was still on the road with The Hound, asked him to show mercy to a hog vendor after they hijacked his cart. The Hound's first instinct was to kill the man, but he let Arya talk him out of it. She may have saved the man's life, but she is also capable of being ruthless, reminding her captor/delivery man later that she still planned, on her first opportunity, to kill him. She will never forgive him for killing her young friend Mycah at Joffrey's behest. The Hound later showed mercy to Arya by getting her safely away from dangerous and deadly situation.

In a similar scene, Jon Snow tried to convince the wildlings he has been traveling with to show mercy to a horse tender for the Night's Watch. Like the Hound, they don't believe in leaving witnesses to their crimes. Ygritte and her traveling companions thought he was being weak, or "being a crow," but it was also because he is a good man. Ygritte killed the man with an arrow and Jon killed Orell, who is a Warg, a person with the ability to enter the mind of an animal and control its actions. Orell was able to transform into an eagle as he died, and attacked Jon before he took flight.

Bran is showing mercy to his younger brother Rickon, and to the wildling Osha as well, as he sends them to a safer place while he continues his journey with the Reeds beyond the Wall. Bran is also a Warg, and was able, through his direwolf, to see that Jon was alive and headed back towards Castle Black.

In Yunkai Daenerys's crew attacked the city. Although Ser Jorah, Daario Naharis, and Grey Worm showed no mercy to the city's protectors, they do to the rest of the inhabitants — slaves who knew that she would show mercy to them and free them from slavery.

It's a nice day for a red wedding ...


Unfortunately for Robb Stark and his followers there was no mercy to be had at The Twins. Lord Walder Frey neither forgives nor forgets, and he teamed up with Roose Bolton and (in the book) Tywin Lannister. The Freys were out for revenge, and the King of the North was caught neatly in a trap. The Freys and Co. killed every last one of them, including Robb's direwolf. It was incredibly brutal to watch, and all the more poignant as we watched Catelyn try to bargain in vain for her son's life and then watch him die.

Although I never particularly liked the character of Cat — in either the books or the television series — I shed a tear for her both times at the red wedding. Michelle Fairley brilliantly captured her stubborn, sometimes bone-headed decision making, as well as her fierce protective mothering instincts. Cat is such a frustrating character, as she is truly a loving mother, who nonetheless left her two youngest children in the care of servants to go on a political/revenge mission.

With only one episode left to go, Game of Thrones is certainly upping the ante. I'm not sure who had it harder last night watching the red wedding. Readers of the books who knew what was coming, or watchers of the show who were blindsided by the slaughter. Book purists may quibble that some events and characters have been changed, but there's no denying the fact that the show's creators have taken George R. R. Martin's saga and created a hold-your-breath kind of show to watch. Can't wait until next week.

shades of grey — a storm of swords

I am continuing to enjoy George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. A Storm of Swords is the third book, and as brilliant as the first two were, this one is even better. Martin manages to foreshadow without being obvious, so even if you guess an upcoming plot twist correctly, you don't feel superior or bored, but just caught up in the overwhelming inevitability of how his characters' lives and fates are intertwined. Throughout the book Martin has readers on their toes. Not knowing what is coming on the next page, he is daring you to turn it, even if you are afraid that a favorite character might do something stupid or die. But the story and the compelling characters are irresistible, even when you know that in Westeros and in Martin's books no one is safe.

"You know nothing Jon Snow" (from Jon Snow Caps)

The main action centers around the forces that are marshaling in the seven kingdoms of Westeros. War, the War of the Five Kings, came to the land in the last book, A Clash of Kings, when young and horrible King Joffrey Baratheon took the throne in King's Landing. In A Storm of Swords Joffrey's grandfather Tywin Lannister is the real power behind the throne and doesn't trust that the war is over. Young Robb Stark is still King in the North. Joffrey's uncle, Stannis Baratheon, backed by a powerful sorceress, Melisandre, suffered a major defeat, but his belief that he should rule is as strong as ever. Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands holds Winterfell and much of the North. In the East, Daenerys Targaryen is slowly making her way west, to reclaim Westeros for her family, which was deposed and annihilated by King Robert Baratheon and the Lannisters years ago.

Tywin Lannister and his son Jaime don't see eye-to-eye on Jaime's future (from  The Inner Bean)

While all the political wrangling continues, a more dangerous foe gathers its strength in the North. Wildlings, or the free folk, as they call themselves, are about to attack the Wall, led by Night's Watch deserter Mance Rayder. The motto of the Starks', Martin's epic's family of focus, is "Winter is Coming," and no one has had closer evidence of that than Eddard "Ned" Stark's bastard son Jon Snow and his friend Samwell Tarley, who are among the few left to guard the North at the Wall. Wildlings of all shapes and sizes — men, giants, mammoths — join forces to take down the Wall and invade the kingdom. But are they on a path of conquest or are they fleeing something too terrible to face — wights (zombies who rise as the temperature drops) and the Others, extremely lethal creatures, thought to be the stuff of legend, but proving themselves to be real and on the move.

Life in Westeros and its surrounding lands is bloody and brutal and oh-so-entertaining to read. Martin's characters are well-drawn. In A Storm of Swords previously "bad" characters like Jaime Lannister, whose nickname, aptly earned, "Kingslayer," and Sandor Clegane, or "The Hound," as he is more commonly known, become sympathetic, as the world they live in is composed of myriad shades of grey. Favorite "good" characters like Tyrion Lannister, a clever dwarf who has never been appreciated by his family, and Arya Stark, a young girl who has had to see her father die and is shuttled from one group of brutes to another as a hostage to ransom, see the world in black and white, which may not be the wisest of courses. Arya has been through so much that it is easy to forget that she is still a child, and children do not see in shades of grey. Tyrion has been so abused by his family and everyone around him that he is soon unable to see anything but revenge. Still, it is troubling to see favorite characters head down dangerous paths.

Sansa is just a kid, a pawn being buffeted and manipulated from one house to another (from gameofthronescaptures)

As much as there are swords and duels and men fighting aplenty in A Storm of Swords, the female characters are as interesting and complex and certainly as ruthless (Queen Cersei) as many of the males. Sansa Stark is a character that many readers have trouble with, considering her weak or uninteresting. She can certainly be spoiled and silly and meek and whiny. It is easy to forget that she is just a girl of twelve and has been trained from birth to mind her elders and behave like a young Lady. Not everyone can be a surperhero, but that doesn't make Sansa a negative character. She had to watch her dreams of handsome knights be crushed in the person of Joffrey and stand and watch her father die. Part of Sansa's inherent weakness is that she lost her direwolf, Lady (in the first book, A Game of Thrones). Her brothers and sisters have at times been separated from their wolves, but are still inexorably connected. But not Sansa, who must make do with trying to commune with a tired old dog one evening.

Some of my favorite aspects of the book, while not giving away any major plot points, are still a bit SPOILERY, so be warned. New and interesting alliances are formed in A Storm of Swords, between characters, mostly unwillingly, but creating great tension and even at times, teamwork:

Jon Snow and the wildling girl Ygritte

Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth

Arya Stark and The Hound

Sansa Stark and Littlefinger

Sansa Stark and Tyrion (if she had given him a chance to even be just her friend or protector)

Tyrion Lannister and Oberyn Martell

There were also some vividly rendered scenes, featuring the Moon Door at the Eyrie, the Brotherhood Without Banners utilizing the power of R'hllor, Jon and his fellow Night's Watch brothers and their defense of the Wall, Bran Stark the warg (shapeshifter) seeing the world through his direwolf Summer.

Martin has drawn his characters and their countryside so well that like Sansa and Jon and Arya I wanted to go back to their childhood home of Winterfell, too. Hopefully they will get their chance. The passage where Sansa built a snow castle of Winterfell was beautiful and sad. Less convincing or sympathetic in this book was Daenerys Targaryen, who seems to be developing quite a bloodlust. But her wondering who to trust and her handling of advisors Arstan Whitebeard and Ser Jorah Mormont was realistic for a teenage Queen, a bit out of her league.

But the most impressive and shattering chapter in the book was the Red Wedding. According to an interview, Martin put off "writing the Red Wedding until the very last," which I was interested to read, because it was truly one of the most unforgettable, disturbing scenes I've ever read, in any book. It was also hold-your-breath-as-you're-reading-it brilliant, as if it occurred in slow motion. It occurs about halfway through the book, and haunts the rest of it, with the repercussions echoing.

A Storm of Swords is a wonderful read and Martin a wonderful storyteller. There are truly haunting passages that may give the reader nightmares, but they will still be glad they have continued on this journey. Everyone in the book is in motion, although not necessarily bound for the destination they originally intended. Will all roads lead to the Wall, or King's Landing, or an early death? As we learn from the wights, death is not necessarily the end. We can only wait and see, and thankfully, it's possible to grab the next book in the series, A Feast of Crows and get reading.