You've got to "hand" it to the writers of this episode. With a single climatic point at the end, they managed to make a rather uneventful episode almost as good as the previous two. To be completely honest, I expected this week to be a bit slow because of how much had occurred already. After two fat episodes, a slower weak was welcome as it gives all of us some time to recover. Well, until the end of course.
"Walk of Punishment" opens with the emotional warrior funeral of Hoster Tully, Catelyn's father. This would of been an emotional scene at least, if the Tullys had be introduced to us in earlier. I already spoke of how ineffective this entire subplot last week, so I will not continue to beat a dead horse. At least David Benioff (the director of this episode) realized this and made Catelyn break down over the apparent deaths of Bran and Rickon back at Winterfall, so they caught their mistake. Aside from this, the plus side we are introduced to Brynden "Blackfish" Tully, Catelyn's uncle and new head of House Tully, and Edmure Tully, Catelyn's brother. These characters have a presence in the first two books and play a relatively big role in Robb's war. The episode does a good job of establishing Brynden's knowledge of war and Edmure's relative incompetence, so it will be interesting to see how these characters mix in with Robb's growing desperation to beat the Lannisters (though Edmure is relatively competent in the book, if I remember correctly). Robb hasn't caught a break since the season started, and I don't think its going to change. Riverrun was also added to the title sequence. Welcome to the club. You are now an important location.
About time we meet these guys.
Back at King's Landing, we get a rather big development: Littlefinger is marrying Lisa Arryn and become Lord of the Eyrie and the Vale. The new Warden of the East has to therefore has to abandon his post as the Head of Coin. Tywin wastes no time in naming Tyrion Lannister as Head of Coin. An interesting development, but one you could predict if you recall Tywin saying he was going to grant Tyrion a position more suited to his skills. This begs the question of how Tyrion is going to adapt as Master of Coin, being that Tyrion is good at "spending money" not necessarily "managing" it. He continues to prove to be the among the smartest men in the Seven Kingdoms by looking at Littlefinger's records and realizing that he is not a magician and has been taking out expensive loans from Braavos. Isn't Tywin ridiculously rich? Paying them back shouldn't be a problem. Well, we'll see what happens. The more important question to me is this: Who is going to manage Littlefinger's brothel? At least we got a bit of comic relief in revealing that Podrick is a pimp, satisfying women so well that they don't even accept payment. Tyrion, Bronn and Podrick are an excellent combination of characters, producing some genuine comedy. I suppose we needed that considering the rest of this episode.
After this we got a bunch of little scenes, that provide slow progress for the other plot lines. Mance Rayder is beginning his attack on the south by ordering his men to scale the Wall, Sam is the victim of circumstance being ridiculed about being so fat and then witnessing a childbirth, Stannis shows himself to be desperate to reclaim some lost glory by wanting to produce another son with Melisandre, Hot Pie leaves Arya and Gendry when the "Brotherhood without Banners" leave a small inn, and Theon escapes his torture and saved by a single man. Many of these are one note scenes and ask more questions than answers. How the Wildlings going to scale the Wall? Where is Melisandre going and why? Where are Arya and Gendry going? Who is Theon's new best friend? Why is everyone making fat jokes? All this does set up more things to happen in the next few episodes. And it shows how the storytelling will be run for this season: short scenes that advance the story at a meager, but bearable pace and no one will be left out significantly (this week we skipped Sansa, the Tyrells and Bran).
Back at Astapor, we see Daenerys (I'm going to call her Dany because her name is annoying to spell at that is how Martin himself writes her name in the books) make the single biggest move of her reign as "Queen" since marrying Khal Drogo. She agrees to buy all 8,000 Unsullied (the slave soldiers) and the translator for one of her dragons. The biggest one, too. Wait, what? Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah advice her on their own respective ways in handling the retaking Westeros. They disagree, engage in a brief power struggle, but they agree on one thing: Dragons are how she will reclaim her throne. SO WHY WOULD YOU TRADE A DRAGON FOR AN ARMY AND A TRANSLATOR? You see I sympathize with Jorah and Barristan for a different reason. After all the drama in season 2 concerning her dragons, her trading her strongest one for an army (and all the boys training to become a solider) not only does not makes sense, but irritates me. You can't have an entire arc dedicated to her obsessing over her baby dragons and then trade one away. At least Dany is taking control. But trading away a dragon, especially to a total jerk will bite her in the ass.
After all of this last season, I can't forgive Dany giving up a dragon for anything.
The most memorable moment of this episode, without an doubt was the events surrounding Jaime. Jaime is slowly turning over a new leaf, redeeming himself more and more in each episode. Here we experienced the breakthrough for Jaime as he protected Brienne and her "honor" from the Northmen. This moment was rather uncharacteristic for Jaime, being that he was just about detestable in Season 1, only to slightly evolve into an arrogant wise cracking jerk (who had his reasons for being so). But now we are seeing that Jaime has a heart, showing a desire to express some kindness. He does not do this without also reminding us that Jaime is intelligent and clever in his own way. But also, he reminds that us that he is reliant on his name (to the point of being naive). The cost for this arrogance was his sword hand. And what a powerful and shocking this scene was. Will Jaime's redemption continue? Or will he take a step back because the cost of such a change has become too great?
+ Jaime's Redemption and the fallout
+ Dany is taking charge
+ The Tullys finally arrive
+ Podrick the Pimp
+ Tyrion was actually funny this week.
- Relatively uneventful.
- Jumping around from tiny scene to scene
Overall: 8.2
You think she's actually giving up a dragon?
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