Poor Little Rich Man, Telling Jokes and Paying Them to Laugh

[netgirl_y2k]

Well, that was underwhelming. I mean, coming after Blackwater it was always going to be. But that was Let's Kill Hitler, the end of Mockingjay, and every time the producers of Merlin say that it's going to get darker and more complex next series, honest, levels of underwhelming.


-I have been giving the Robb/Talisa storyline the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it was going somewhere, that the changes were for a reason. Apparently, not so much. First thing, Talisa doesn't even make sense as a character in this world. This is meant to be a world where the patriarchy is all consuming. Where you can become queen, the most powerful woman in the country, and still have no bodily autonomy or control over your own life, which is how you end up with a character as fascinatingly bitter and twisted as Cersei Lannister. Where you can escape the trappings of traditional femininity, but only at the cost of becoming a traumatised child soldier like Arya, or a laughing stock who is afraid to go to sleep for fear of being raped like Brienne. Then Talisa turns up and says that she didn't want to waste her life reciting poetry and playing the harp in favour of being a battlefield surgeon, oh, and she's decided to leave her family and entire prior life in a slave city for reasons of morality. Now this could have been an interesting story if there had been any sense that these decisions had cost her or were putting her in danger as would be true of, oh, any other women in that universe.

As it is it looks like the changes were only made to give Robb a more suitably plucky love interest than Jeyne Westerling or the nameless, blameless Frey girl. Which is where I have a problem because I don't want him to have a plucky love interest, I don't want him to have any nice things. I want him to sit in a dark room and think about his choices.

I don't have any great love of book!Robb but I can sympathise with him. This young boy, under an outrageous amount of pressure, grieving for his brothers, trying to live up to an unrealistic standard of honour, decides to marry a girl he believes he's taken advantage of, sacrificing his own honour to save hers.

Show!Robb marries Talisa because, well, he's a git. He's not a boy, he's a grown adult who has sat down with another grown adult and had enumerated for him all the reasons why this is a bad idea that may have dire consequences for them all. This is maybe because I have no romance in my soul (seriously, none; as girls I've been involved with in the past have cheerlessly informed me) and a never-ending hatred for this trope that seems to be everywhere in pop-culture that says that everything can and should be sacrificed on the altar of romantic love. But, for fuck's sake! I'm not saying that Robb doesn't love Talisa, I'm just saying that at least 50% of that wedding is him having a giant fit of pique at his mum. It ties in with this thing - which the books are guilty of too - where we're forever told that Robb is this brilliant strategic thinker rather than being shown. And I'm no great lover of Lord Tywin, but seriously, if Tywin Lannister has lost so much as a game of tiddliwinks to this idiot of the highest order then it's sign of a world gone mad.

-Also, House of the Undying, wtf? Okay, it was never going to be - and shouldn't have been - like it was in the book. Too many of Dany's visions were book specific or were never going to translate that well to screen. And there were some really gorgeous visuals - Dany walking through the gate at the Wall, Dany in the burned and snow (or possibly ash?) filled throne room. But, mostly, it felt like they'd filmed it with what spare change they had kicking about after Blackwater.

The scene with Drogo and Rhaego in the tent fell a bit flat for me, possibly because I'd never seen the Dany/Drogo relationship as anything other than a textbook example of what untreated stockholm syndrome looks like.

The whole thing just felt like it should have been longer and the sorcerer harder to defeat seeing as it was the culmination of Dany's S2 arc.

Doreah, curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal! I sort of knew it was coming because the show has been on a streak this season of ruthlessly stripping Dany of her support network - even though I notice that a large number of her khalasar miraculously came back to life in time for the looting - still it bugged me. Partly because I'd really liked their friendship (shipped them, even) but mostly because there was no lead up to it. And Dany's whole thing is that she has no army, no kingdom, no particular evidence that she'd be a good queen, but what she does have are three dragons and a massive massive cult of personality.

Also, locking them in that vault to suffocate. Sometimes the only difference between Viserys and Dany is the resources to carry out their threats, yes? It should be noted that this is no way diminishes my desire for her to win in the end.

-Still, here are some things I did like:

Ice zombies!

Revenge of the Theon feels!

Ygritte bopping Jon Snow on the head with his own sword!

The look of distaste on Loras' face when he's proposing the match between Margaery and Joffrey, the little glance between Sansa and Margaery, and the fact that Sansa couldn't even make it to the door before she starts grinning.

The Arya & Jaqen scene. I have to find my sister, her too. All the Stark girls feels!

Jaime and Brienne, and when he sees her killing those northmen being the point when Jaime starts subconsciously drawing hearts around the words Brienne of Tarth in his head. If I were being a book purist here I could complain about how easily she took to killing, but I actually liked the two quick deaths and a slow one in revenger of/mirroring what happened to the tavern girls. Even Brienne's younger and more naive book counterpart was most frequently moved to violence by rapers/men who hurt women, presumably because she could so easily imagine it being her.

Comments

[karatam]

*cries over Doreah's character assassination*

BUT SANSA'S HAPPY FACE AS SHE WALKED AWAY

LEGIT THE FIRST TIME WE'VE SEEN HER ACTUALLY HAPPY SINCE MAYBE MID SEASON 1

And her scenes with Margaery next season are going to be amazing.

[fly_to_dawn]

...even though I notice that a large number of her khalasar miraculously came back to life in time for the looting

Ha! I lol-ed. And I really needed that after this episode...I think the Robb and Cat (and Jeyne, I guess) storyline has been the most disappointing thing for me about this season, Robb stop being an idiot this instant. I kind of wish GRRM had a chance to write for Cat as well as Cersei and Sansa in Blackwater.

Ah well, I console myself with Ygritte/Theon/Margaery & the Tyrells (good band name)/the last shot of Winterfell which made me remember I'm not dead either and gave me too many Stark feelings.

[doyle]

So agree about Robb and Cat - I don't see the logic at all in having them not know about Bran and Rickon's supposed deaths. Apart from changing Robb from a tragic honour-before-reason figure and his father's son to a chump throwing away his oaths even while people warn him what a spectacularly bad idea it is, it must be confusing as hell to non-book readers: they don't know about Bolton's betrayal so they must be wondering why Winterfell's been sacked and why there aren't Northmen in the castle looking for the boys.

[fyrdrakken]

I continue to cling to the hope that Talisa really is Jeyne Westerling, lying about her name to Robb because of that whole thing where her family is fighting for the Lannisters and if he knew who she really was she'd make a great hostage. I have perhaps placed too much significance on the scene where she felt entitled to the maester's stores of healing herbs at the Crag -- but got this really worried look when Robb announced she was coming along with him to get them herself. Though that's been enough episodes ago that maybe the visit to the Crag came and went and nothing came of it -- but I'm still hoping that this is just an interesting variation of the Jeyne storyline rather than a replacement. (I'm too attached to the scene where Jaime pays off Jeyne's mother for the service done to the Lannisters in breaking Robb's alliance with the Freys -- though it's too late for her mother to be involved in demanding a shotgun wedding, since the wedding's happened and he never met her parents. An unrealistic hope of mine. Also I'm ignoring Talisa's foreignness because I seem to recall Jeyne's mother was not Westerosi born, though maybe it's her grandmother I'm thinking of.)

The one problem I have with the scene with Catelyn telling Robb what a bad idea this is has to do with the show having not built her up as having much political wisdom the way the books had -- we haven't seen her being proved right that much, her good ideas were given to other characters, all she gets to be is nagging mother, and then there's the trade of Jaime for the girls that comes across as typical for TV!Cat rather than a departure from pattern out of maternal desperation. Though I'm pretty comfortable with the way the show is letting the non-book-reading viewers float along with Robb's assumption that the Freys will be reasonable about this disappointment and allow him to make it up to them in some other way. Fit of pique with his mother or youthful hormones and an overdeveloped sense of personal honor, I'm okay with Robb having a splendid sense of battlefield tactics and strategy (that the show didn't have the budget to show us) but drastically misinterpreting Walder Frey here because he assumes his allies have honor of their own. (Same mistake he makes with the Boltons, after all. Also, IIRC he didn't actually go to the meeting Catelyn had with Frey, did he -- he's never actually met Walder Frey...)

Agreed that Dany's scene in the House of the Undying was stripped down, but they did a good job of being eerie on a budget, and I liked what they were doing: Tempting her with the Iron Throne, and then with her husband and son back alive and whole, and both times the dragons called to her more than the things she thought she wanted the most. She's earned the Mother of Dragons label here. And they did a really impressive job of flaming the fuck out of that chamber.

I was delighted that Olenna Tyrell is one of the characters mentioned as being cast for the third season -- I'm really looking forward to seeing her onscreen.

And, yes, that scene where Jaime is standing there boggling at how Brienne just casually kills three men single-handedly. Respect, she has begun earning it in his eyes.

I'm also charmed that the show let the non-book-reading viewer quite probably assume Theon's own men torched Winterfell on their way out, so there can be a nasty surprise next season when Ramsay Bolton reveals his true colors.

[miarrow]

I don't have any great love of book!Robb but I can sympathise with him. This young boy, under an outrageous amount of pressure, grieving for his brothers, trying to live up to an unrealistic standard of honour, decides to marry a girl he believes he's taken advantage of, sacrificing his own honour to save hers.

I can't quote everything or I'd be just highlighting all your paragraphs, but yes, this is everything I felt with all my feelings about book Robb and I was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt, because the ages had changed, but they completely murdered his character. He was basically this great version of all the best and worst things about Cat and Ned, which is why the Jeyne situation happened and why he reacted so well to Cat's mistake, because he had enough self awareness to know he'd made one of his own.

And the show murdered it. Murdered all my love for Robb and made Jenye into an exotic girl who is "not like the other girls" who could lure him away from his duty. AADFSLKFJD Plus I think it's a POINT that they didn't get married in the light of the seven (plus doesn't Robb honor the Northern gods?)

but mostly because there was no lead up to it

Yes, exactly. Also she has no more handmaidens which means Emilia is never going to talk to women again in this show and it makes me furious. It was lazy. LAZY.

Also, agreed on the things you enjoyed. This episode was much like this season, moments of OMGWTF GLEE (like with Shae especially) and moments of just plain I want to punch them in the face.