Timing is everything. It’s what turns a joke from a groan to a grin. It’s what makes drama … dramatic. Tension lives in the moment that’s held out just long enough, and dies when it’s held a moment too long. It’s sort of important.
Handling a multi-viewpoint storyline adds an extra twist to the problem of time. If you leave one character literally danging over a pit, can you pull the camera away to another storyline and still return to that moment without deflating the sense of urgency you worked to build? What to do when you have a dozen stories all twined together, but some of them are just not moving as quickly as others?
Viewers have become adept at handling shifts in location, enough so that editors no longer feel compelled to pop that little two-second view of the exterior of the 12th Precinct before we get together with Barney or give a little pan across San Francisco before we cut to Sally McMillan relaxing in her football jersey. The camera goes places. We get it.
Time, though … it’s tougher. When the book series on which A Game of Thrones is based got in trouble with too many balls in the air, Saint George could just declare that the next volume would deal only with half of the characters, freezing the rest in place until we could rejoin them roughly 800 pages lager. For the show … that’s a bit tougher. They’ve got to keep everyone roughly in the same moment, though that sometimes means giving someone a passing nod just to acknowledge they’re still breathing.
Plus there’s that other kind of time thing. The one that the show got tangled up in this week.
But for that, you’re going to have to wait.
Castle Black (with bonus Mole’s Town)
Last week we saw saw Littlefinger manipulate Robyn Arryn and the Lords of the Vale into coming to help Sansa. Sorry, make that “help” Sansa. In truth, we don’t know what the hell Littlefinger is up to. We never do.
This week, Sansa gets a note and goes to meet her erstwhile matchmaker in Mole’s Town, the little settlement near Castle Black. That Littlefinger has come so far so quickly is the first of several indicators that Time Has Passed since we joined our intrepid characters last week. A whole lot of stuff will work better if you just keep mentally inserting the term “one month later” at critical points in this episode.
Sansa—very sensibly—takes Brienne along. She also gets the second biggest line of the night award when she asks Littlefinger if he was aware that Ramsay is so sadistic even other sadists turn away.
"If you didn't know, you're an idiot; if you did know, you're my enemy."
Littlefinger seems genuinely shaken, both by Sansa’s statements and by her new found intensity. Still, I couldn’t help but softly repeat “kill him” several times during this scene. Littlefinger claims to have the Lords of the Vale waiting for Sansa’s call down at Moat Calin. Which is about as far south of Winterfell as Castle Black is North, and a pretty good distance from being immediately useful. Sansa allows Littlefinger to return to them. For reasons. It’s clear that at one point, back when they were both busy killing off crazy Aunt Lysa, Sansa thought of Littlefinger as something of a mentor. And her feelings toward him may have been … more complicated. Still, letting Lord Baelish slip away when Brienne was there with a perfectly good chopping sword seems like a big tactical mistake. Sansa could have always quartered the mockingbird and still sent a note for the folks down at Moat Calin to come on up. Maybe she didn’t get enough mentoring.
Later, in a scene that would do any World War II movie proud, Prime Minister Sansa and General Jon are contemplating their northern campaign by sitting around a huge map table, weighting the relative strength of the various houses. Sansa gets high marks for determination, but the depressing part of this scene is the news that even the Castle Black crew thinks that not only the Karstarks but the Umbers are actually in with the Boltons. I was hoping that one of them might have inside information that (Ackbar voice) It’s A Trap. But no. That would make turning over Rickon an act of bastardry big enough to put the Umbers on the list right behind the Freys and Boltons. Worse, it would make Osha’s death essentially meaningless. And I liked Osha.
Deprived of the top two, Sansa and Jon head out to collect enough players from the minor leagues to make up the difference. Sansa quite pointedly doesn’t inform Jon of the Littlefinger factor (which is a bad thing, no matter how you measure) and she also loses her primary protector by sending Brienne off to contact her uncle, The Blackfish.
How does Sansa know that the Blackfish is back in action with a reformed army? Eh … Littlefinger told her. Which way does Brienne have to ride in order to get down to Riverrun where Uncle and new army are supposedly waiting? Right past Moat Calin.
Sansa definitely did not get enough mentoring.
However, all that needlework Sansa was doing back in season one did pay off, as she has made Jon a brand new Ned Starkish coat (ahem, she had time to do this because it’s one month later). That at least partially makes up for Sansa still playing the not-a-true-Stark card back at the battle table.
As Team Stark leaves Castle Black, Dolorous Ed suddenly realizes that he is in charge. He also realizes what he’s in charge of—a bare handful of untrained boys, wounded men, and in general tag-ends that would be hard pressed to hold a castle against a strong sneeze. The doors close on a severely depleted, shaky Night’s Watch.
Braavos
Little sister Arya is getting pretty capable with that bo staff (because, you know, it’s been a month) but the other girl (who I will insist on calling Shona) is still giving her a solid licking. Mostly I’m just happy to see Shona, because I thought the plot had done with her last week. But Arya does manage a couple of wicked moves, in between getting beaten black and blue, and A Man Has No Name (except that his name is Jaqen H'ghar) gives Arya a new murder-death-kill target in the form of an actress to slay.
Arya watches a three-minute play covering season one, with King Robert comically farting as his guts are comically ripped from his body and people comically wrinkle their noses at the smell. At first Arya is fairly amused, until it’s clear that the character of Ned Stark is being played as a lecherous dunce, and Joffrey is acted as a caring ruler betrayed by the villainous dwarf, Tyrion. It’s a horrid reversal of the true nature of every character (except Robert, whose drunken foolishness translates just fine), and leaves Arya fairly peeved by the time she goes to find her target.
We then get a backstage scene. This scene exists for two reasons. One, we get to see that the actress who played Cersei actually seems like the only moderately decent person in the whole troop. Two, we haven’t had any nudity since all the way at the end of the last episode. So we get probably the least appealing moments of both male and female nudity the show has ever delivered (look, warts!). Maybe there’s a deep meta-comment here on the illusion of acting and the producers are delivering something deep and significant. Except … I don’t think so. Boobies and a pee pee. That’s it.
Arya returns to Mr. Faceless to inform him that the person she’s been hired to kill is probably the only person on the stage who doesn’t deserve some killing. Arya gets reminded that she’s trying out for mercenary assassin, not agent of justice.
A girl may have no name, or desires, but she does seem to have an idea about how to poison the actress… in a way that doesn’t quite seem so clean as she indicates. I’d feel better about Arya not being perfectly straight with the Faceless Folk if she was getting in a few more whacks on Shona.
Pyke
Out in the Iron Islands (a month later) it’s time for the Kingsmoot and the dozen or so people who live on the islands have all come together for a caucus. On a rock. Because being indoors somewhere would be too soft for them.
When the call goes out for who wants to be king, Yara is the first to answer. She does pretty good at the Go Team speech. Someone is foolish enough to recommend Theon, but Theon throws his reedy weight behind Yara, and she looks like a shoo-in for Queen.
Then Uncle Euron Greyjoy shows up to declare that yep, he killed the old king, yes, he wants to be king, golly will he seduce Dany and haul her horde to Westeros, and man is he ever going to kill things for them. He wins.
At this point, Yara and Theon have the sense to skedaddle, and we also get a demonstration of why, of all the bad religions in Game of Thrones, the Drowned God is the suckiest of all.
Non-book readers may be disappointed to learn that there are 200 pages and at at least two brothers of Euron excised in the plot during this five-minute segment. You shouldn’t be.
Let’s hope like heck that this is going somewhere. After dropping the Iron Island plot for so long, it seems badly out of sequence with the rest of what’s happening. Perhaps doing that massive editorial chop was the price of getting it back into sync with the rest of the story. If so, and if this story line is actually going to intersect with the rest of the world at some point … then good trade.
This segment ends with Euron sending the dozen or so inhabitants of Pyke off to build ships, promising them a 1,000 ship-Navy (that would be two Reagans’ worth). Which will be a helluva trick considering that nothing bigger than a lichen grows on their worthless rock. It’s amazing they even have canoes. So good luck with that.
Meereen
Tyrion and Varys, in their search for allies, send for help in the form of a priestess of R'hllor who Tyrion last saw many, many miles away. She’s now in Meereen (because it’s a month later) where the B-team gives her an uncomfortable sales pitch for Dany. Then Varys, no fan of religions, he, drops his usual obsequious but actually knowledgeable demeanor for snooty and ignorant and gets up in her face. Whereupon Red Priestess (are they all related, or are they all using a similar pattern on their “I am not ancient” suits?) tells Varys a lot more than he wants to hear about his own past. A lot more.
Once again, we’re reminded that while the rest of the religions in Game of Thrones have produced exactly diddly plus a side of squat to show for their mystical abilities, the R'hllorians are carrying some serious connections.
Sea of Grassish
Daenerys, having gathered every Dorthaki in the known world into her giant khaleesisar is extremely grateful to both Daario and Jorah. Though … why? Dany seems to act as if Jorah just saved her life, but she saved her own life. With the fire. And the killing. It seems like a set up to make it feel a bit more painful when Jorah gets sent away again. Because Jorah’s best expression is unrequited yes-my-khaleesi eyes. Then he leaves. And so do we.
The Very Special Tree
Back on the other side of the Wall, Brandon Stark and the crow guy are still off having mystical visions. This week those visions skip back a lot further than the Tower of Joy. In our first stop, we go all the way back to the War between the First Men and the Children of the Forest. This was about 12,000 years BB (before Bran), so we’re talking time travel even H. G. Wells would have to respect.
In the distant past, Bran witnesses the Children of the Forest (i.e. elves) inserting a dragonglass blade into the chest of a man. We can lay pretty decent odds that this guy is a proto-Stark. But after the blade is inserted, he gets a bad case of blue eye and turns into the first of the White Walkers.
As it turns out, the White Walkers were a desperation move on the part of the Children. After a few centuries of losing out to the invading Firsters (despite being armed with magic hand grenades), the Children created the Walkers as a biological weapon. Which seems like something that deserved a little more thought and maybe a test run or two, because it really didn’t work out so good. The men? Still there. White walkers? Yes, Children of the Forest? Um, down to a quartet.
Unsatisfied with his first visit into the past, Bran grabs a magic tree root on his own, taking a ride into (past? present?) without the guidance of tree beard. He walks through a series of oblivious wights (Uncle Benjen? No. Uncle Benjen? No. Uncle ...) before coming to a small group of walkers. Unfortunately for Bran, his astral projected self is all too visible to the walkers. The Night King reaches out and touches Bran, and when he awakes there’s still a burn on his wrist.
The three-eyed crow declares that it’s time for Bran to become him, even though he said last week that Bran wasn’t going to be like him. So we’re really not to sure what this means. The immediate meaning is that Bran goes into another trance, this time visiting Winterfell during the time of Young Ned, and seeing Young Hodor back in his pre-Hodor days.
Meanwhile, the Children and Meera Reed notice that the jig is up. The Night King, other White Walkers, and every wight from Hardhome has come calling. Apparently, getting a psychic touch on Bran has broken the magical protection around the tree. The Children let fly with the magic hand grenades ("First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count”), but there is one metric $#^@ ton of wights and they’re quickly overrun.
Meera tries hard to wake Bran, but he’s down deep, looking at old Winterfell. Meera is forced to do some wight hand-to-hand and even do in a White Walker (is she the first since Sam?) before she finally gets through to Bran enough to have him warg into Hodor and start dragging his own senseless body toward the rear exit.
This whole segment, including the hurried fight under the tree, has all the signs of a scene that’s been compressed from the book and lost something in translation. Bran’s direwolf, Summer, gets swarmed without any of the build up such a moment should receive, and the last of the Children of the Forest makes a perfectly pointless sacrifice, holding onto a magic hand grenade when she could have thrown it to the same effect. Even the way that the whole fight starts, with Bran being tagged by the Night King, seems rushed and poorly thought through.
But it doesn’t matter so much, because A Moment is coming.
Still unable to break his connection to the past, but simultaneously warged into Hodor as they shoulder their way out of the tunnels just ahead of the swarming wights (nice ceiling crawl, guys), Meera shouts at Hodor to “Hold the door” against the monsters on their heels.
We’ve already seen that Bran’s visits to the past can occasionally be detected by those he’s there to see. It happens again. As the adult Hodor strains to carry out Meera’s order, with the door splintering at his back and wights and walkers clawing at his shoulders, young Hodor falls to the ground in a seizure. As the grandmother rushes to him, Wylis, the boy who will be Hodor, begins to scream “Hold the door! Hold the door!” over and over again. Cross-wired to his future self, both we and Bran are forced to watch and listen as this command is twisted and shortened. Until the cry “Hodor” is all that remains.
It’s amazingly painful, and it’s the whole series in a nutshell. Intricately thought out five thousand moves in advance, just so that when the knife goes in, it’ll hurt.
Assuming that Bran and Meera make it away from the tree, where will they go? Might they be the next visitors at Dolorous Edd’s door? Maybe they’ll detour to the Glovers or one of the other Northern houses and catch Sansa and Jon on their recruiting drive. Or just maybe, they’ll go farther south. Because there’s one place we didn’t go in our travels through time this week. We didn’t return to the Tower of Joy and watch Ned Stark climb that hill. So the truth about Lyanna (and Jon?) is still a mystery.
How will that be solved? Well, the crow did say Bran would become him, so maybe Bran can go time-tripping on his own. On the other hand, we were quite deliberately told that the man with Ned on that crucial day was Meera’s father, Howland Reed. And where does Howland Reed live? Moat Calin.
Now where have we heard that name recently?