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Game of Thrones 1.7 - "You Win or You Die" - Rate and discuss

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Canadave said:
FreezeC77 said:
watermelony2k said:
He's not too good at listening.
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Instead of Winter is Coming I think the Stark's should adopt a "We don't listen" motto. Seems to be their family trait.
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I think Ned Stark listens, but he's too stubbornly honourable to actually take anyone's advice. He's a northern man who can't bring himself to play the same game as the southerners, and it's his downfall.
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True, but I think to everyone else looking at the way he acts it's easier and more of a 'dig' to say he doesn't listen and that's the Stark problem ;)

I think honestly you can look at geography as to why the Starks are able to be so 'honorable' and why the other houses don't seem to be. Is it just that somehow the Stark bloodline is the only 'honorable' ones in the Kingdom? I don't think so. What I think is that because they're so far North and because even while it's 'summer' for the rest of the country it's still cold up there (even ignoring the frigidness once winter does comes) nobody else really *wants* to be up there.

Getting control of Winterfell and conquering it isn't really that much of an interest for the Lords of the South. Conversely they have to be trickier and use whatever means (no matter how 'dishonorable' they are) in order to secure and keep their kingdoms because they *DO* have desirable lands.

I think all of them have had to play the 'Game of Thrones' for centuries upon centuries where as the Starks have been pretty secure and only have deal with the game occasionally.
 
I hope thre will be a funny scene of the Dothraki attempting to ride the boats in the next episode.

Damm those people are stupid.
 
Now this series has hit its stride. I thought last week was the best of the season, but this episode topped it, and Tyrion wasn't even in it. There were so many surprises last night, twists, and reversals. It was great. Now I really get the name of the show.
 
Oh, and in case anyone's wondering what happens next for Jon, they follow Ghost to where he found the severed hand and find an old VW van filled with beer out in the woods.
 
Evil Twin said:
Oh, and in case anyone's wondering what happens next for Jon, they follow Ghost to where he found the severed hand and find an old VW van filled with beer out in the woods.
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And then they get thrown back in time 8000 years and turn out to be the focal point in the Event--er, the last war with the Others.
 
The Littlefinger scene felt a little on the nose, and that wasn't because it was played over lesbian practice sex. It was kind of 'Hey, I'm here, I'm Littlefinger, and by the way, here's both my life story and how I win at things, TRY TO REMEMBER THAT.'

It was pretty much just spelling out more bluntly what I thought the series had done a good job developing in the previous episodes. And the shot of him with the knife by Stark's neck... kind of sudden, and looking at it it does make me think why Littlefinger would bother being so close to Ned at that moment - kinda risky.

But I disgress, and these are quibbles, really. The series is strong on all fronts. I think this episode has done better than any other in giving Drogo real character - and with Viserys gone, getting a sense of how Drogo thinks is kind of important to give the Essos* material dramatic weight. I'm more thinking of the scene where Dany and Drogo talk about her son's need for an iron chair, not his later speech - though that was also good.

Evil Twin said:
Great to finally see Tywin. Never really took him for the deer skinning type,
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I liked to think that was a stag, but that would be lathering the symbolism on a little thick, no?

Tywin's introduction was great. For many reasons, not least of which it wasn't even an introduction.

What do I mean by that? Nobody says his name, Jaime never calls him father, this easily could have been a scene after the character was introduced. And his little speech about how you do everything not for yourself, but for the family - well, that's typical of the series in being able to come up with new dialogue that summarizes the viewpoint of a character.

*Essos is the continent that Daenerys is on, as opposed to Westeros where everybody else is kicking it up.
 
Another excellent episode. Tywin's introduction was spot on, with Charles Dance perfectly cast. It seemed like a good bit of symbolism to me that he was skinning a stag. It was in keeping with the type of symbolism George R.R. Martin is wont to use. The establishing shot of the Lannister camp was nicely done, too.

This was a very good episode for Khal Drogo, both in his quiet moment with Dany early on and especially in his rage-fueled oath to invade Westeros. Emilia Clarke was also very good in this episode, especially in how she played the mixture of emotions at Drogo's speech. As an aside: Emilia Clarke has beautiful eyes. I'm glad they didn't cover them up with violet contacts (they tried them, but both she and Harry Lloyd found them too painful to wear).

Jon and Sam taking the oath to join the Night's Watch was another highlight - the weirwood looked great and it was nice to see Ghost again (and to have him named finally) - as was the scene where Ned confronts Cersei.

The sex in the brothel scene can be seen as a metaphor for Littlefinger's approach to politics - seducing someone into believing you really care, even though they really should know better, so you can flip things on them and be the fucker rather than the fuckee - but the whole thing was a bit too on the nose and went on too long. I'm not usually one to find sex and nudity gratuitous in HBO shows, but this was a bit too much sexy time even for me (although Esme Bianco is all kinds of hot, so I'm not really complaining).
 
Kegg said:
Nobody says his name, Jaime never calls him father, this easily could have been a scene after the character was introduced.
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Yeah, I was kind of surprised they didn't have a guard outside the tent saying "Lord Tywin, your son is here to see you" or something like that.
 
I wonder if some folks are actually confused as to who he was and didn't realize he was the "Bloody Father" mentioned several times in earlier episodes.
 
That doesn't make them stupid, just not aware of things they've never seen before. The ancient Romans weren't stupid just because they'd never seen a computer.
 
Dothraki just don't have a word for ships, it's not that they don't understand it.

The big issue for them is that the sea is 'poison water' - their horses can't drink it. So they have a pretty strong aversion to crossing it.
 
What kind of land is Essos like? Isn't it where the Targaryeans came from to begin with? You'd think Viserys might've been eager to re-conquer Essos and then attack Westeros so he'd have both or something.
 
Essos is sort of Eurasia to Westeros' Britain.

A large chunk of Essos - including I think all of it we've seen so far - was once ruled by the Valyrians. They were the first dragon riders, and basically the series' equivalent of Ancient Rome. The Targaryens were Valyrians, and ruled the island of Dragonstone, which is off the coast of Westeros. At the time that was basically the westernmost reach of Valyria.

Then the Doom came to Valyria. It's not yet clear what the Doom was, but it destroyed Valyria and the Targaryens only escaped this fall because they were at the edges of Valyrian power. After that the Targaryens continued to rule Dragonstone until Aegon the Conqueror brought his dragons over to Westeros and, well, conquered.

Essos today, well. There's the Nine Free Cities, which are on the coast of the Narrow Sea - we've already seen Pentos, which is one of these. They're also remnants of Valyria. There's the 'Dothraki Sea' with the horsemen we've become well acquainted with, and other locations more distant than that like Qarth and Yi Ti.

So the Targaryens have no family claim to Essos, but Valyria once did.
 
Anwar said:
What kind of land is Essos like? Isn't it where the Targaryeans came from to begin with? You'd think Viserys might've been eager to re-conquer Essos and then attack Westeros so he'd have both or something.
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The Targaryens were originally from Essos, but they never ruled it. They were part of the freehold of Valyria. Before Valyria fell the Targs relocated to Dragonstone, off the coast of Westeros. That relocation occurred some 500 years before the current point in the story, so their roots are very much in Westeros at this point.

And conquering Essos really isn't a possiblity for Viserys. The Dothraki aren't going to subject themselves to him and any mercenary army he raised would have to face the Dothraki on their home turf, a losing proposition.
 
Yevetha said:
Is it really that hard to explain what a ship is?

Just show them something floating on water.
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If you didn't grow up near a large body of water and don't understand buoyancy then a boat is about as intuitive as an airplane. In other words not at all.
 
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