Game of Thrones Forum

"WOW..." That was my initial, stunned, reaction to this, the ninth episode of Game of Thrones. As with all of these About Last Night pieces, you shouldn't read on unless you've actually seen the episode, or are prepared for spoilers galore. But, if you're like me and did see last night's episode, "Baelor", you're going to want to discuss what the hell just happened.

Before we get to the big headline grabber, let's not forget all the other stuff that happened this week. This being a fantasy series, I was wondering how much longer we were going to make it until a character receives a sword with its own name and lore. I'm happy that it's Jon Snow who received the badass wolf-headed Longclaw as reward for saving the Lord Commander from the zombie dude in last week's episode. Snow's storyline has been one of the most engaging of the series, ever-wrought with tons of conflict, both internal and external. Also, Ghost is the best.

I also have to say, it's sort of hard to feel like the Lannisters are completely villainous when Tyrion (played by The Dink) continues to be such an enjoyable character. Sure, the rest of their clan are totally miserable and loathsome, but when Tyrion marches off to war with them, its conflicting. I want their army to be wiped out by the Starks, but I also want him to be OK. After this episode, of course, I've given up assuming any character will be around forever, and took extra joy in the backstory we got from Tyrion, regarding his first love. This one scene further humanized Tyrion and shed an important light on how awful his father has always been to him.

The storyline with Khal Drogo's injury seems to have gotten the least amount of care and attention from the show's writers. From the initial cut, through this episode's happenings, it's felt very rushed. Here's a guy who is the toughest of the tough, presumably having much worse cuts and injuries befall him in his years of battling, but for some reason this one is different. In spite of last week's scene where Daenerys has to fight tooth and nail just to get the witch lady to treat it, that all seems for naught, as it's done Drogo no good. Did I just miss something explaining why her cure last week didn't take?

I thought the show handled the battle business really cleverly this week. Whether it was simply due to budget constraints or an artistic choice, not showing the action of the two big battles was a bold move. We've all seen epic scenes of battle many times before, and I imagine the book dealt with these in great detail, but I welcome the extra time skipping these afforded the writers to deal with the many complex plots twisting through Game of Thrones. It was both economic and efficient to learn of Rob Stark's cunning strategy in dealing with the two armies by way of Tyrion's post-battle debriefing.

Ok, this all brings us to the conclusion of "Baelor". I was as shocked as poor Ned seemed to be by Joffrey's decision to execute him. I'd totally bought into the idea that Rob's army would come and save him, so I have to give major props to Game of Thrones for throwing what felt like the biggest curveball ever. But upon reflection (and watching this episode a second time), I suppose it's only fitting and even a bit obvious that this had to be Ned's end. From the beginning he's been the even keel, the level head always striving for peace and reason to prevail. He never learned to deal with the backstabbing politics of King's Landing or work within the slimy paradigm of the city, so there's no other end he could have met that would have been more fitting, really. That said, I'm going to miss Ned, as he was the character I was most easily able to hang my hat upon.

I wonder how the show will fill the hole Ned's death leaves in the narrative. Who will be the character the story centers around now? Perhaps just "The Starks" at large will take that position, as they sort of have for this whole season, but I hope we get a single character who steps up in place of Ned. Rob Stark seems obvious, but despite his leading the army of the north, he actually hasn't received very much character development as yet. Perhaps Jon Snow could be the one? What do you think?

JOOOOOOFFFFREEEEEYYYYYY!!!!!!!

This show has some guts and I salute it for it.

I don't want to spoil anything but yes you are correct that Drago's sudden illness does seem odd. 
 
As to the two battles in this episode, I haven't finished rereading the book for the release of #5 this summer, but if I remember correctly neither is actually talked much of since they were mostly written from Tyrion's perspective who did get knocked out and from Catelyn waiting for Robb to return.  There was a bit more but it was set up the way it was to build more suspense.  Maybe I'm completely misremembering them, but I don't think they were among the big set piece battles shown elsewhere in the series. 
 
EDIT:For those who haven't read the books, each chapter is told in third person but from the perspective of one of the characters.  So a chapter will be titled "Jon" and it will follow Jon Snow and tell the story from his perspective only containing the information that he is aware of.  So it will be about the Night's Watch and we won't have anything about Arya in that chapter for example.

Brutal ending and man am I glad there is 1 more show this season. Most series would have ended the season on that note and I could never wait months to see at least some of the fall out of Ned's execution.

There's no one main character, if Ned's death didn't make it obivous. I've felt there's about 5 or so. Tyrion is his own protagonist, as is Jon Snow, and Dany... And there will be others ;)

@endaround: Yup you're right. With the exception of a few battles a lot are done off screen. There are a few battles coming up in the second book that are described thoroughly as the POV characters are involved in them. I'm curious to see how that ends up.

I can understand the frustration over not being able to watch the battle scenes unfold, but viewers should be aware that this isn't entirely a production/budgetary decision (although that probably does factor towards it).

In the books, George RR Martin goes out of his way to not dwell on the large battles, often simply having them referenced to via a carrier pigeon or through a witness on the sidelines (aside from one major sea battle which I won't go into).

As someone who doesn't read or really enjoy fantasy, I've always enjoyed his decision to treat battles as a means to an end rather than use them as a crutch to keep readers interested. I get the impression that his commitment is to his characters alone and that the fantasy setting was just incidental.

Yeah people worried that battles will always be skipped like this, its probably not the case. They weren't really covered in depth in the books. The flashback battle with the mad king, which the series skipped completely, was covered much more than these. And later battles are covered better because they're from the perspective of active participants. HBO can't blow their load on a comparative skirmish, they need to save the big stuff for later when shit gets real. There are budget concerns so I can overlook it, since this isn't the finale. But next episode, if they pull another stunt that'll be a copout.
And I wonder if Joffrey casting was based on finding a kid with a face you wanted to punch. Cus if so, bravo. Mission accomplished.

The Robb battle scene skip was kinda similar to the books and passable, but the Tyrion one was a cop-out. He got knocked over by someone on his side before the battle even begins so they could just skip it :/

@Zaph said:

I can understand the frustration over not being able to watch the battle scenes unfold, but viewers should be aware that this isn't entirely a production/budgetary decision (although that probably does factor towards it).

In the books, George RR Martin goes out of his way to not dwell on the large battles, often simply having them referenced to via a carrier pigeon or through a witness on the sidelines (aside from one major sea battle which I won't go into).

As someone who doesn't read or really enjoy fantasy, I've always enjoyed his decision to treat battles as a means to an end rather than use them as a crutch to keep readers interested. I get the impression that his commitment is to his characters alone and that the fantasy setting was just incidental.

There is a certain catharsis in those big battles, though, especially if they're preceded with 9 episodes of building up causes for the battle and heroes and villains. A random big battle just for the sake of it, I agree, does nothing for me. LOTR has more than a few empty giant battles. But certainly if you've built up your hero's cause and adequate formed the depths of your villain, you need that payoff battle to play out in realtime. I could understand someone being pissed that they didn't get to watch Jamie get taken down, considering the shitty things we've witnessed him doing so far.

I don't trust the witch. Last thing we see is her treating the wound in The Pointy End, and the first thing we see here is Drogo keel over from his infection. Then she gets all blood mage? If Dragon Age has taught me anything.
 
Also, I haven't heard many people talk about Maester Aemon's reveal of being the uncle to the Mad King. I suppose Dany and him are the last two Targaryens. From the preview of episode 10 I have a feeling that Dany's going to try and hatch a dragon egg, if so I wonder if Aemon also has any 'dragon' in him that maybe gives him some sort of control over them? i dunno, I've tried to not dig too deep into wikis explaining this stuff for fear of spoilers.
 
But damn man, I can't wait to see the wrath of the Starks. And Jon Snow's going to lose his shit not just because his father's dead but because that conversation about his mother Eddard promised him died with him.
 
Also, Jorah's pretty fucking badass. Dude's the son of the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but having money troubles sells slaves bringing dishonor to his house. Rather than lose his top he exiles himself and then starts looking out for Dany, actually spying on them, but after receiving his pardon stays. A lot of the characters, maybe all of them in fact, are pretty difficult to read. That's maybe the best part about the hard swings in the show: they never seem ridiculous.

I was pretty good. I have a question though... 10 episode = a novel. Does this mean that every season will be 10-13 episodes? Is this Doctor Who? Also I've heard that the 4th book is not that good...

So ya thought that the witch of the sheep folk would actually work to properly heal the baddest-ass leader of the Dothraki, whose people have been taking her people as slaves and for rape fodder for centuries? Hmmm...

@phrosnite said:

Also I've heard that the 4th book is not that good...

Well then you should try reading it instead, because you heard wrong.

@cosmicqueso said:

@phrosnite said:

Also I've heard that the 4th book is not that good...

Well then you should try reading it instead, because you heard wrong.

Well I thought about buying the novels but I have plenty of unread warhammer 40k novels to go through...

@phrosnite said: 

Also I've heard that the 4th book is not that good...

I've read the 4th book, and I can tell you that it's certainly less good than the previous ones. However, that's because it only focuses on half the characters (telling you who would be spoilerish if you don't know anything about the series past this point, but it's also fairly obvious that most of them are the lame characters), while the 5th book will focus on the other half as it takes place at the exact same time (and hopefully be better. It's only taken him 5 or 6 years to put this one out)
 
In any case, the death of Ned Stark in this first book is only the first of many extremely ballsy moves on the part of Martin in the series. It wouldn't be much of a spoiler to say that yes, the story will be continued to be conveyed by everyone important who hasn't been killed off, but the second book also brings a few new perspectives to the fold.

Yeah there is definitely something odd about Drogo's illness but don't worry you'll never guess what is coming next :D

Also yeah I'm a little disappointed that Tyrion got knocked out by his own men instead of fighting.

I've been waiting for Ned's death to come for ages 'cos I know a bunch of people watching it who have never read the books and that's kinda the first point in the series when you realise none of the characters are safe from Martin's pen of death.

@ryanwho: I agree - big, vicious battles are a great way for the viewer to release some of the tension that has been building in the episodes preceding it - I just personally feel that if you've seen one claymore swing into a man's neck, you've seen them all. It also probably doesn't help that Martin loves making his fans squirm by rarely giving them the obvious satisfaction.

But I think another way to look at this is HBO 'training' their viewers. By the sounds of it you've read the books, so you'll know that soon fantasy will start playing a much bigger part in regards to some of the creatures and battles that happen. Like it or not, unless HBO changes major parts of the story or doubles/triples the budget, they just cannot afford to create these scenes. Plus, seeing as they've stated numerous times that they would rather completely cut a CGI sequence (like the shot of the Khal's massive army they removed) rather than present a poor one *cough*SyFy*cough*, I think this is something we're unfortunately going to have to get use to.

My 3 fav characters

Stark/Drago/Tyrion

One dead, one about to die and one that is wanted dead by basically everyone.

FUUUUUUUUUUU