TV REVIEW: Game of Thrones - Episodes 7 & 8

We're edging closer and closer to the end of the season now and the stakes are getting increasingly higher for our beloved characters, especially Theon who is singlehandedly proving just how stupid one person can be when given even the tiniest bit of power. What this season has specialised in is pushing the characters to their limits and seeing how far they would go to get just what they want and these two episodes are no different. Spoilers inevitably follow.

Episode 7: A Man Without Honour


While the standard is always far higher than other shows on television at the moment, this episode for me stands as an example of why Game of Thrones is just the best there is. So many great scenes to choose from this time round and it's probably my favourite so far but I shall try and keep the enthusiastic praising to an acceptable level and objectively look at the episode.

I know I often mention her in these reviews but I really can't sing Maisie Williams' praises enough. Arya is one of my favourite characters in the books and Williams has brought her to life so well that it really is as if she just stepped out of the book. The genius pairing of her and Charles Dance's Tywin Lannister has been real highlight of the second season and we got treated to their best moment yet in this episode. Always laced with dramatic irony, this scene showed us that Arya is fantastic at thinking on her feet and that Tywin has never been entirely fooled by her act though obviously doesn't know exactly which highborn girl she is. There's a begrudging respect between the two characters and it's played wonderfully.

Maybe it's because I always look at things from a feminist bent, but the female characters are really quite compelling, having just as much, if not more, at stake as their male counterparts. The most traumatic and moving scenes of the whole episode belonged to Arya's elder sister, Sansa. Right from the first episode, a certain focus has been on Sansa's moonblood, the Westerosi term for getting her period because, as soon she does, she gets to marry Joffrey. And that's never going to be a good thing. The moment when she wakes up and sees the blood and it slowly dawns on her what this means was one of the most heartwrenching scenes that any of the characters have had and the following scene in which Cersei reveals just what got her through being married to a man she hated was equally moving.

With so much going on in Westeros, the momentum has been lost a little elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms. The conversations between Jon and Ygritte offered some nice light relief as she continued to make him uncomfortable through the simple act of flirting and it was interesting to see Jon's loyalties to the Night's Watch being questioned by an outsider. Though considerably darker in tone, we also got to see Dany's ongoing struggle in Qarth as she battles against the Thirteen to get her ships. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of her dragons is solved pretty quickly but it felt like these excursions were just an excuse to pause for breath in between everything else that was going on.

That being said, there's never really a bad moment in the series, just slightly slower ones. It's a testament to the writers that, despite having to cram in so many things per episode, we still get cracking scenes like the one with Arya and Tywin or Tyrion and Cersei. I don't know if I've mentioned it all ready but if the third season maintains the quality of its predecessors, we're in for such a treat.


Episode 8: The Prince of Winterfell

This had a job to do in order to successfully follow the previous episode but it dis succeed in one respect; if there's some kind of award for the amount of C-bombs dropped in one episode, then this one must surely be a frontrunner. I was surprised it was repeated once but five times later it was still just as shocking. Then again, it fit with the episode because not one character acted honourably in the entire run-time which, considering the last episode's title, was a little surprising.

Robb Stark and his relationship with Talisa is perhaps the best example of this; Robb's betrothed to one of the many daughters of Walder Frey after securing passage across the Trident last season but his big crush on Talisa will definitely threaten this and it's most likely going to come back to haunt him in a big way. His half-brother Jon also displayed some incredibly naivety after discovering that his actions in being able to kill Ygritte had led to the death of several of his Night's Watch brothers.

Then again, Catelyn really isn't the brightest button in the box and I continually find it difficult to sympathise with her, despite a great performance from Michelle Fairley, but she did start it all in the first place with her kidnap of Tyrion. Displaying all the tactical sense of a lemming, releasing the Kingslayer really wasn't the best plan and one which may not help her a great deal. She should learn a lesson or two from her youngest daughter. Maisie Williams was again on fine form as Arya, easily manipulating Jaqen to get what she needs in one of my favourite scenes from the entire series.

While the episode did a good job of setting up the board for next week's big battle, it did feel a lot like filler and spent most of the time catching up with everyone to make sure we all still knew who they were. With a big cast, it must be difficult to do this because momentum is lost in the process. This is certainly the case for Dany's storyline who only had one scene this week which was essentially just flagging up that her dragons were still stolen and she had to go to the House of the Undying next week to get them back. Likewise, Joffrey and Theon's respective appearances were basically just there to remind us all that one's a maniac and the other's an idiot.

The standard of the show is consistently high but I'm wondering if it would benefit from being able to view the episodes one after the other making the various threads much more easy to follow. I'm fairly sure a Game of Thrones marathon would go down extremely well with viewers. Sky, sort it out please.

Next week's episode, Blackwater, is easily the most anticipated of the entire series; directed by Neil Marshall, we'll hopefully, finally get to see one of the biggest battles in the Song of Ice and Fire. And I am more than a little excited...

- Becky