The Story Thus Far
Blah blah blah, Arya—blah blah blah blah: Dragon-Tits. Blah; blah. Hahaha! Blah and blah…blah blah. And then the dragon burned everyone alive.
The Gist
Chinstrap emerges from the murky waters of the post-dragon-battle lake of wherever the effing eff and Jamie, whose magical armor is clearly imbued with the ability to not sink (ugh) is with him. They whine and conveniently gloss over how weird it is that the battle is, like, seemingly over.
“We can’t fight dragons, bro,” Chinstrap says. “They can breathe fire!”
“Totally,” Jamie replies. “Let’s go fuck—I mean, tell my sister about this!”
Tyrion, meanwhile, walks through the ashes with a new idea of just what dragons can really do. The Dothraki enslave the survivors. A debriefing goes down in a nearby grassy field where Daenerys lays down the law about what she hopes to accomplish with dragon-propelled fury.
“I’m not here to murder,” she says, which is weird since she just straight murdered about a bazillion dudes. “Bent the knee.” She’s obsessed with knee-bendings, this one. Many of the soldiers do it, others hesitate until the Dragon (whose name, I think, is Dragon) screeches. Dickon and his dad, Dickon Sr., step forward to defend Cersei. Tyrion traps him with fierce logic and rhetoric; Dickon Sr. is like, “You’re wack, son.” This guy’s itching for a burning and so is his son.—which Daenerys provides gleefully, much to Tyrion’s chagrin. It’s a really intense burning, too. Like, nothing is left, you know? I mean, I’m not a doctor, but that’s gotta be hot. Seems a little brutal, but whatever.
Elsewhere, Jamie returns to King's Landing and Cersei, who's already fully full-on fucking pissed and recklessly thinking about hiring mercenaries. Jamie knows the Dothrakis are so for real, though, and advises her to just chill the heck out already. Pride, though, makes people do weird things, like this one time I was too proud to admit that these cool shoes I had didn't' fit well right up until I fell over in front of a bunch of girls who laughed and laughed. Anyway, Cersei is pretty pissed about Olenna's non-brutal killing and Jamie still wants her to give it up for eff's sake.
Daenerys and her dragon, whose name is Dragon, return to Dragonopolis where Snow was mean mugging on a seaside hill waiting for them. Dragon says hi in a dog-like fashion and Snow pets the medieval dinosaur, relazing for the first time ever that he thinks lizards are cool.
“Lizards are cool, don’t you think?” Daenerys asks.
“Oh weird,” Snow replies, “I was just thinking that. How was the battle?”
“Pretty messed up, bro,” Daenerys explains, “We burned a lot of people alive.”
“Oh, word,” Snow says. “Can we get at that dragonglass yet? The only things I’ve ever cared about are nugs, chilling, grindage and dragonglass.”
And then Jorah returns, free of disease and ready to bro down and work for the cause. I’ts hugs for everyone and sideways glances akimbo.
Over in the north, Oat-Bran is doing his creepy seeing through time and space thing that he learned from Max von Tree-Dow. He sees through ravens, The Wall (y’know, THE Wall) and over the snowy mountains to an army of ice zombies so goddamn huge that he basically shits himself. The main ice zombie, as we learned last year, can sense this and freaks out his time-birds indeed.
Back at Pudgy Junior's house, Jim Broadbent is still handing out the tough love, but we totally get that he's cool with Samwise Gamgee (or is it Samwell Tarly and—ohmygod! That's Dick-One's last name! Or was!). Anyway, Sam is like, "Let's read books together, you guys!" And Jim Broadbent is all, "Alright, I guess we can do that." Still, he doesn't tell homie that his dad and brother were straight just killed.
We rejoin Tyrion and Varys (of the Westeros Pinfields) who discuss the finer points of hands, heads, burnings and information exchange. Varys wants Daenerys to listen better, he also holds a letter for Snow. Tyrion drinks wine. The letter teaches Snow that Arya, Oat-Bran, Potise, Fonzie and Ralph Malph are all still alive and well in Winterfell. A plan is hatched to capture an ice zombie, take it to Cersei's house and prove once and for all the shit is real and everyone should be working together. But how do they get one? And how do they take it to town? Jorah's ready to get that sucker, an interesting choice considering his recent new lease on life. Alsom I just noticed that Daenerys has lapel pins shaped like dragons. Gimme a break.
Over in Winterfell, they're still arguing about Snow's whereabouts and trashing on Sansa. Arya doesn't like it one bit—she really prefers slashing throats to painfully long town hall meetings. The Stark sisters kick it in their dead parents' room, which makes Arya feel werid and Sansa feel smug. Sibling rivalry, blah blah blah. Sansa ridicules Arya's love of decapitating fools, Arya gives her the crazy eyes. No resolution is reached.
Back in King's Landing, Chinstrap and Jamie hang out in the basement and the person writing this very recap takes a moment to apologize for confusing the ballista with the trebuchet in recent pieces. Sawwy. Anyway, Tyrion is in the basement, too, and Jamie's bummed. He doesn't quite realize that homeboy is trying to help him, but they finally chat about how Tyrion killed their dad (played in past seasons by Charles Dance, a wildly underrated actor from the wildly underrated film The Last Action Hero). They eventually get into the idea of coming together, but it cuts away at a really irritating moment and we have to watch Davos checking out a blacksmith's forge instead. Oh wait, he's actually there for someone he knows. His son? I zoned out for a few minutes, honestly, but when I looked up again, Davos and his maybe-son had hit the beach with Tyrion and smashed the faces of some nosy guards. Tocuhe. Up in the castle, meanwhile, Cersei and Jamie are chatting boringly for the bazillionth time in this episode, but at least it's about Tyrion and the possibility of the Daenerys meeting. Cersei of course, is stubborn and whiny, but that doesn't stop either of them from making out like a couple of creepy monsters. "Never betray me again," Cersei tells Jamie.
Cut back to Dragonville and Davos' maybe-son is actually the bastard son of Robert Baratheon (I have no clue who that is even at all) and is named Gendry and he meets Snow who, since he's also a bastard, says something like, "We can be bastards together!"
On the beach just outside, Jorah and Snow set off to catch an ice zombie and everyone waves to them like they totally aren't about to die in just a minute. Although, I guess Snow died once before and Jorah was cured of the incurable, so it's probably fine.
At the Citadel, Samwise Gam-Tar works on his novel while his girlfriend won’t shut up about dumb Citadel facts like number of steps or whatever. He was mad already, but now he’s double-mad because he can’t just spend his days cooking up ways to kill the king of the ice jerks. Their kid, whose name is probably L’il Fuck-Face or something, sits on the floor, ignored. Smash cut to Sam-a-lam-a-ding-dong ripping off tihe library of the real good stuff, staring into the night’s sky and finally doing something worthwhile for once in his damn life. They’ve gotta leave if they’re gonna help because he’s tired of reading about the achievements of better men. I guess there was no discussion about leaving or a new chapter of their lives, she just goes where he says. Puke.
As the episode continues seemingly forever, we pop over to Winterfell where Arya follows Baelish around, watching him be creepy and stuff. He's clearly up to no good because the music is sinister, but Arya doesn't quite know what he's planning yet. So she breaks into his room, because she's skilled, y'know? She finds an apparently damning letter from her sister crammed under his bed, but it's hard to tell because the handwriting is weird and they don't hold the shot long enough and I don't have time for this shit! I mean, I paused it, y'know? I paused it and I tried to read it and I couldn't understand. Jeeze. So she leaves and unpicks the lock somehow—BUT HOLY SHIT, BAELISH WAS FOLLOWING HER RIGHT BACK! RUH-ROH!
Snow returns to the wall with Jorah and Gendry and Daos to parley with Braveheart Junior who’s now running things. “Come check out our jail, bros,” Braveheart Junior says. And wouldn’t you know it? Clegane is all up in there with his posse, and everyone wants to get to the other side of the wall. Wow, I wonder if it’ll turn into some thing where renegades and the lawful join forces for an easy alliance of ass-kickery. By which I mean, that’s exactly what’s happening. The door to the other side of the wall (the one no one ever uses) opens, the newly-formed squadron of good guys and maybe-not-quite-as-good guys sets out into the snowy territory of ice zombies…..they maybe don’t know there’s so many of them. They should've talked to Bran and his magical effing ravens. Ugh.
The Good
I kinda like crazy-eyed, clown-burning Daenerys, and I must admit the idea of a ragtag posse of fighters heading into uncharted territory sounds cool.
The Bad
I dunno, it just seemed kind of slow and maybe if I honestly cared about this show I'd have been a little more excited? I basically want more Arya all the time and it rarely works out that way. Also, Jamie should have sunk with his totally heavy armor, but whatever.
The Grade: B-
It can be gleaned that all the serious shit's about to go down and that's great, but the trailer for next week's episode looks far cooler than this one was.
