The Screaming Viking

Game of Thrones episode 6 I found to be kind of…blah.  I found it to be by far the least interesting episode of the lot.  The crowning was interesting…but other than that I just didn’t find it all that good.  I don’t have much to say really…eh, maybe I wasn’t all that in to the show last night.

Caught episode 4 of thrones last night and as per the HBO original series formula it is hitting it’s stride.  Over the last 3 episodes though I have noticed that they get a little slow around the 20min mark.  It seems like each one I’ve contemplated turning off at that point and going to bed.  maybe it’s a function of me watching them a little later in the evening than I’d like or maybe they are dragging a bit at that point…either way if I push through that little dull spot it seems like they pick up quite nicely.

I like how they are starting to show some of the abuse of Dany and how they are showing her stand up for herself, “Next time you raise a hand to me you won’t have hands to raise” was a pretty classic line, and her whoopin up on him a little was good too.  It still lacks a bit of foundation, but by this time I’m sure the viewer is drawn in to it and gets the idea.  What I don’t get is how Drogo is going to see the bruise on her face and not go nuts.  It’s not like this is any regular woman in the tribe, this is their queen and he’s going to allow someone to hit her?  Maybe they will play off of that a little bit and the crowning will work itself out….we’ll see I guess.  I will say though I am interested in seeing how this plays out.  I’d like to see Drogo take a little more prominent role, so far he’s been just some guy and everyone talks about how tuff he is.  The end isn’t going to mean a whole lot if he doesn’t become more prominent.  I pictured their party to be bigger as well, but I guess you can’t reasonably show 40k people.

There was some good action at the wall this episode.  Jon is showing how he’s becoming a leader and we finally got some interaction with a wolf!  They have been far too absent, but maybe it was just too hard to show.  Who knows…either way, I’d like to see more of them.

Does the viewer know what Eddard has stumbled on yet…or the significance of it?  I pictured the little bull much larger.  I expected bowling balls for biceps…it’s how I picture every black smith in all the books I read, this mountain of a man bending and shaping iron…

This is probably the first episode where I wasn’t pissed the show differed from the book.  I’m trying to take them as two separate things and it’s pretty hard.  I’m trying to carve out more time to read so I can get through the rest of the books and be ready for #5…but I don’t think I’ll make it by July.

In episode 3 we finally see some conflict between dany and her brother…but it seems a little forced and pops up out of nowhere basically.  There wasn’t the foundation laid for it that we saw in the text.  Overall though, I’d say this episode was pretty good.  We saw her get closer to Drogo.  I focus a lot on dany because in thrones that was the most interesting dynamic to me (up to the end).  How this (what I pictured) fragile little girl began to embrace life with these savages.  I pictured these people much more ruthless and savage, but the limitations of tv, even hbo, would prevent the pictures I had formed in my head.

I’m diggin on the dwarf.  I think he was cast well and is playing out the character much how I imagined him to be.

Still no wolves…it’s becoming almost a problem at this point.  Where’s ghost?  Jon’s been on the wall for an episode now and we don’t see his wolf with him at all.

I also dig on the guy they’ve got playing the “old bear”…wasn’t he in brave heart?

****spoilers****

If you’ve read the book you know what happens at about the 3/4 point (maybe it was a little later, but not much).  Tell me they are not building that tension well.  If you didn’t know he was going to die, the look between eddard and kat when she left town…the way he setup defense training for his daughter and how he watched her from the doorway…it’s all very ominous.  HBO has done quite a good job building that up.  Maybe virgins to the story don’t see that, but it really seems to me that if you didn’t know it was coming…you should feel like -something- is coming.

It was clear by 1/2 way through episode 2 that I am not able to sit back and just enjoy this series for what it is.  I am constantly comparing it to the book, and in doing so I can’t understand how a virgin to the story could possibly be enjoying it.  If you have seen the first couple of episodes and you are enjoying it or if your a little bit lost and still remotely interested…go read the book.  The book adds so much more detail and richness to the overall story.  This show is giving you the cliff notes of the cliff notes version at best.  I’m hopeful that I can stop comparing the two and just enjoy the show for what it is.  As I said originally, the quality of acting is good, set design is good…etc.

The rest of this might contain some spoilers, read at your own risk.

I’ve been so terribly disappointed so far about how they have told the story of Dany.  In the book her story read (so far, I’m 1/4 into the 2nd book) as a woman who came from a position of being abused with no power, being tossed into a marriage with customs she thought barbaric and would never understand…to a woman whom claimed equal footing (in the marriage relationship) with her husband and over comes the abuse of her brother by standing up to him at certain points.  She gained that status with her husband via sex and her taking control of their encounters…embracing them and on some level seemed to find a certain level of happiness with her husband.  A huge step in the process of her embracing their culture was her first “dominate” sexual encounter with Drogo.

Did you see the scene when they helped her off the horse in episode 2?  How stiff and sore she was…how she could barley walk?  While the show doesn’t actually say anything about it, the book lets you know that her soreness is not solely caused by riding the horse.  Some might dismiss that as a little bathroom humor that didn’t need to be included, but it did show how she was being treated in the sack by Drogo, and that the experiences were not pleasant for her during or after.  At one point she asks another chic what she should do for him…that was covered in the show.  When she started in on Drogo though she took him outside, it was important to the story that she took him outside.  ”everything important in a man’s life should be done under the open sky”, is something the Dothraki believed, and it was key that she was the one to take him outside.  She understood this and was on the journey to embrace their culture as her own.

Also, there has been virtually no friction show between her and her brother.  Who she was before and how this guy treated her is going to have an affect on who she becomes in life and it’s being pretty much written out.  I assume at some point they will show some abuse, but without the ground work laid before hand it will look like an isolated incident, not the ongoing series of events that it was.  When the brother gets crowned it’s going to not be near as sweet as it was in the book because there is no foundation laid for it.

Where are the wolves?  They are pretty much side characters that you don’t really get attached to.  Why did I care that “lady” got killed?  Why would I care that bran’s wolf (can’t remember his name) came to his aid…what foundation has been laid for me to understand that the wolf would come to his aid…that it would be expected.  These wolves became very important to the children as both protectors and companions.  While we can watch on the screen that the children are upset Lady had to be killed, we don’t feel that attachment between them.  It’s not as powerful to the viewer because there is no connection formed in our eyes.  Also, at the end when the butcher’s boy was killed…I thought there was more discussion about “how” they killed him.  Maybe that’s later in the book, but I seem to remember a discussion that set a particularly brutal scene.

Also, when the prince and Sansa went on their walk and they encountered her sister and the boy…the conflict happens and Sansa says a couple of times “You’re ruining it!”…ruining what exactly?  If you read the book you know exactly what she is talking about and how it is important to her that things go a certain way…but watching you have no feeling of that.  To her character the idea of a lavish life fulfilling all her hopes of being a queen is very important and shapes how she acts.  It also heavily influences some of the decisions she makes later in an effort to reach that ideal life.  The show gives no sense of that though.

Maybe later in the show these “feelings” (for lack of a better word) will establish themselves in other ways.  Right now, all we have to go on is the point the show is, the corresponding point in the book and compare how the characters are established.  It is following standard HBO first run show themes though, throw a bit of sex in the first couple episodes, a bit of action…then follow through with character development.