Game of Thrones: Season 7, Episode 1 – Dragonstone

“Shall we begin?”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

In these ratings-hungry times, most genre shows tend to open their new seasons with slam-bang episodes full of action. There’ll be lots of explosions, or a giant space battle, or hordes of marauding zombies. Game of Thrones, secure in its audience, doesn’t need to do that (well, maybe the zombies), and its season openers tend to be more sedate. With its multitude of major characters and intersecting, complex plotlines, showrunners Benioff and Weiss usually choose to catch us up on where they all are, what they’re doing, and what they’re planning to do next. It’s like the opening gambits in a game of chess. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 7, Episode 1 – Dragonstone”

Game of Thrones: Season 6, Episode 4 – Book of the Stranger

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“You’re not going to serve. You’re going to die.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Blimey, it’s all go this season isn’t it? Only four episodes in, and the plot of Game of Thrones continues to advance at a frenetic pace this week. Benioff and Weiss, who seem to be writing almost every ep this year, continued to knock characters down like ninepins while finally showing us some of the show’s long-running plans coming to fruition. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 6, Episode 4 – Book of the Stranger”

Game of Thrones: Season 3, Episode 8–Second Sons

“We do not choose our destiny. But we must do our duty now. Great or small, we must do our duty.”

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With dozens of intermingling plotlines and enough major characters to fill a small army, Game of Thrones rarely gets to linger on any one setting or group of characters in much detail. When it does, as with this week’s episode, it’s always a treat, allowing the treacherous characters and their Machiavellian schemes greater depth. And despite the fact that not a one of them can be trusted (except perhaps poor, naive Sansa Stark, who somehow still doesn’t get it) I can happily watch this lot showing us more of themselves.

Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 3, Episode 8–Second Sons”