Game of Thrones, Season 7 Episode 1

3/5

It started off poorly but gradually got better until I stopped criticizing and just started enjoying it. The last half was excellent. Each scene of the last 30 minutes was a gem, and well-written too. I also loved the cinematography and pictures, the overall look. I am a bit weirded out about how everyone is wearing black: is that to underscore the difference between humanity and the White Walkers? It’s very un-GRRM like, but god knows everybody looks better in black.

Overall, I liked it. The scene with Arya and the Lannister soldiers and the Thoros/Clegane/Dondarrion threesome were the best written original scenes the show has written in years.

But overall, I feel a little less enthusiastic and excited about this season. It just feels like work. I feel like the show’s hip-factor is in decline, and while that shouldn’t affect me — it sure didn’t affect me when I got into this series — maybe it is. Perhaps I need to do another reread in order to fire up my passion.

Anyway, there was a lot of “getting up to speed”in this episode, which I guess is necessary for new audience members or for audience members who don’t have good memories. I tend to be bored by that, truth be told, though GRRM does that in the books a lot too, in different ways.

• First scene, worst scene. I will say Arya Stark gives one HELL of a performance as Walder Frey. Not only did she look like him, she even sounded like him! I had no idea that they taught accents at the House of Black and White!!
  
   I nominate Maisie Williams for an Emmy for her perfromance as Arya Stark-as-Walder Frey.
  
  But it was so cheesy. So, so cheesy. The speech that Arya-as-Walder gave was just awful. The drinking poison; the spitting blood; Jesus. It just stank. To the high heavens. And then the horror film music again. Jesus. God. I hated it.
• Credits. AT this point my son came behind me and demanded to see “Despicable Me 2” so I had to pause it. I was distracted. No comment.
• Cut to smoke. And then Ice Zombies.
• Basically we’re just getting us all up to speed here. It has been a year so we have to remember what is going on.
  Jon in command. Check.
  Sanser at his side, but some hint of conflict, check.
   Lyanner Mormont being sassy. Check.
  Northern lords being completely useless. Check.
   Davos being — wait where was Davos?? If anything that is the biggest mystery of the show.
  
  I found Jon’s speech unimpressive and cliched. . Jon’s all like “we gotta find obsidian somewhere, it is more precious than gold and the girls are going to fight.” Idiot. Stannis told you that Dragonstone had a bunch of it.
  But perhaps it is necessary. They should probably subtitle this season: The Quest for Dragonglass.
  
   I thought that Sanser and Jon really should consult with each other before they have the big meeting, but then Jon pretty much tells her that afterwards.
  
  I see Sansers point vis-a-vis punishing and rewarding but then you see Alys Karstark (rather un-Arya-like) and some kid and you are all like, “Damn, Sanser, they didn’t deserve punishing. You are one cold bitch.” So it is pretty much confirmed: Derufin and Duilin are going to go down a dark road with Sanser. Now they have got her admiring Cersei? What?
  
   I wonder if she will start sic-ing dogs on people regularly? Because that would be pretty bad ass. But I doubt it.
• OK, the map on the floor is cool but why the hell would you put it in a room that doesn’t have a roof? I didn’t realize that it didn’t have a roof in the trailers. I mean, the first time it rains your pretty map is going to be ruined.
  
  The scene itself checks off things: oh yeah remember how your son killed himself? Remember how we have enemies all over the place? Remember the Sand-bitches? Remember the Wicket Cunt of the West? Remember the Snarks and the Dothraki/Unsullied? Remember how we are the only Lannisters left? check, check, check, check.
• Urine Greyjoy really just as annoying and ineffectual as last year. But he managed to come up with a thousand ships very quickly!!! Color me impressed.. That must have had the Ironborn working 24–7! Think, you would have to pretty much create a sophiticated logging industry from scratch and then a sophisticated ship-building industry!
  
   Why oh why did the writers write such an implausible and silly situation? Why couldn’t Yara and Theon have taken just half the fleet?
  
   He is practically fawning all over Cersei. They have done to him what they have done to Tyrion. Things being relative.
  
  He better do some truly evil shit this season or I will throw my copy of the Forsaken (which is actually on my computer) at the screen.
• Sam has work study. Between emptying bowls of shit, serving soup to Maesters, shelving library books, stealing keys and books and studying into the night — I mean he’s so busy, Gilly hardly has the time to bitch at him! I can relate.
  
  I like how she wants to put Sam to bed before she even puts Little Sam to bed. Gilly is tired of Sam.
  
  But did anybody notice that everybody at the Citadel has diarrhoea? Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because the guy who handles your shit also handles your food!!! And this is the intellectual cream of the crop of Westeros: letting a fat guy handle their shit and their food as part of his daily chores. And you just know he is grazing. Because he is not losing any weight, no matter how hard he works. It’s disgraceful.
  
  So…get this. Sam steals keys. Steals books. Just so he can find out the same thing that Stannis told them in Season 5. “Oh, I’ve got to tell Jon!” Jon already knows, you dipshit!!!! I’m beginning to think that the Citadel makes people stupider.
  
  I really liked the bit where they are dissecting the corpse. That was when the show started to get good. Jim Broadbent, good. Actor playing the corpse highly believable.
• OK, then we have that pop star scene. "He assured him that either his signature or his brains would be on this contract.” They made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Tune in next week as Madonna plays Lady Stoneheart.
  
   But…I was thrilled to hear ‘hands of gold” set to melody. I liked it, my own melody was similar but this one is better.
  
  Now, this is when the show started to get better for me. That scene almost brought tears to my eyes: it was really well-written. It managed to hit their themes with real humanity; it was believably acted: it really managed to say a whole lot, much like that Septon’s monologue to Brienne in A Feast For Crows. It touched me.
  
  I even liked the way Arya admitted that she was going to “kill the queen” and they all laughed. Well done. And I don’t say that lightly. They are not just checking off points here. They are actually moving on with the story: Arya is heading south.
• I also liked the Hound’s etc scene a lot. They really know how to write the Hound, if nobody else. Banter is enjoyable. Scene with the dead family is hauting. We see Houndie as a gravedigger.
  
  Again, they are not checking off points; there is foreshadowing of something happening at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea (which is right next to Castle Black!!!)
• Dragonstone looked great. Much better than when Stannis was King. It was pretty grim and unimpressive then, now it is grim and impressive.
  
   Why the hell do people always stand up in boats on TV or famous paintings. Is this Dany’s “Crossing the Delaware” moment? It’s so unrealistic and impractical. Have you ever tried standing on a boat like that?
  
  But then I laughed out loud when Dany finally opened her mouth with “shall we begin?” I expected bowm-chicka-chicka bow-wow music to start up.
  
  Instead we got what we got: and the choir…I can’t be sure..but are they chanting: Fire! Fire! Daughter! Daughter! Evil! Evil! Because that is what I heard on headphones.

Overall I really enjoyed the episode; particularly the second half of it as brilliant as the show gets. Looking forward to future episodes.

Later this week I am heading for the non-EU wilds of Serbia and Montenegro until the 31st so I probably won’t be posting my own thoughts again until Episode 4, though I will look forward to reading others’ while abroad.