“Game of Thrones” Season 4, Episode 2: The Lion and the Rose

You would think that at some point, these people would stop throwing
elaborate wedding ceremonies/receptions and just settle for an intimate civil
service and an after-party at Shoney’s. Think of all the money that would be
saved, and the number of dead Westerosi kings that
would still be around.

Yes, folks — Joffrey is dead. Last
night I got a text from my best friend expressing disbelief. But he’s dead. Dead dead deadski.
Afterlife kids. The victim of what is referred to by fans of the books as “The
Purple Wedding.” That is one of the events — but only one — that happen toward
the end of Book 3 that help to balance the scales of justice a bit after the
seemingly endless campaign of terror that has consumed the Starks since the
beginning of the story. So the Lannisters were dealt
a massive blow this week, but brace yourselves: it is only the first of many to
come.

Here’s what else went down this episode, along with some
thoughts on how things are differing from the book. Spoilers ON!

-Bran Stark still exists! I had completely forgotten about
him last week, I will be honest. Bran, the Reeds, and Hodor
continued their trip north of the Wall, in an attempt to seek out the
mysterious three-eyed crow from Bran’s dreams. They are cold and starving and
miserable, and worse, Bran keeps shifting his mind into Summer,
his direwolf. His companions warned Bran that wargs can get lost in that kind of mindplay,
and cautioned him to stay rooted in reality.

However, Summer led Bran to a weirwood tree. When he touched it, he experienced an
intense vision with flashes of the past, present, and future. Someone is going
to have to Zapruder that footage, but I saw a few
interesting things — Ned Stark, the Iron Throne covered in either snow or ash
(I believe Dany had a similar vision in S2), and a
monstrous dragon shadow flying over what looked like King’s Landing (I hasten
to point out that it looked like only ONE dragon, not three). Bran also heard a
voice telling him to find him beneath a tree.

Bran’s storyline is about to pick up significantly. Although
I believe at this point in the books, that party had another member who joined
them right on the other side of the Wall and who has yet to appear in the show.
He would be difficult to execute on TV, he’s mysterious as all hell (even in
the books we don’t know who/what it is — but there are plenty of theories), and
I desperately hope he pops up soon.

-Over at the Dreadfort, Reek — nee
Theon Greyjoy — continued
his new life as a human dog serving the thoroughly deranged Ramsay Snow. Ramsay
and his equally sadistic galpal went on a little
hunt, stalking and then murdering a poor girl in the woods. Reek joined them.
Then Ramsay’s dad, Roose Bolton, came back from the
Red Wedding at the Twins and gave us a crash course on why Ramsay is so deeply
fucked up: Roose is cold, calculating, and vicious to
his son.

These scenes basically served to show us how broken Theon is, to establish that Roose
knows that the youngest Starks are still alive, and to put Ramsay to work
taking back Moat Cailin from the Iron Borne. None of
this stuff happened in the books. Theon is gone for
the entirety of Book 3, and when he returns in Book 4 he has been turned into
even more of a shell physically and mentally — his torture in the books is
excruciating to read. The Moat Cailin plotpoint is brought up in the books, but I don’t believe
Ramsay had anything to do with it. My fear is that they’re going to move Yara to that plotline and jettison her story arc, which is
totally separate from everything else but really cool in a lot of ways. But I
truthfully expect the show to ignore most of the more far-flung arcs in Book 4.

-On Dragonstone, Stannis Baratheon and the Red
Priestess threw a barbecue — specifically they burned heathens at the stake.
Among the victims was Stannis’s own brother-in-law,
who refused to turn his back on the Seven in favor of the Lord of Light. Stannis’s wife, Selyse, showed
just how full-blown nutty she is (the theme of this episode was “Extremely
Crazy People”) by watching her own brother go up in flames with a kind of
relief. She also told Stannis that she wanted to
start beating their daughter, Shireen, but Stannis is having none of that. Instead he sent the Red
Priestess to talk to her.

Again, none of this happened in the books (well, the Red
Priestess burning people happens — quite a lot, actually). Stannis
and his crew are almost totally out of the picture until the end of Book 3. What
particularly interests me is that the writers seem to be focusing Melisandre’s attention on Shireen’s
grayscale, the disease that has left parts of her skin like rock. Grayscale is
repeatedly brought up in the book, and it clearly has some larger context — I
believe it’s going to be associated to either the Lord of Light or the Drowned
God in the end. I wonder if we’ll find out its larger implications on the show
before we ever see them in the books. Because Mel sure seems interested in Shireen’s affliction…

-As usual, the major action of the episode happened in
King’s Landing, with Joffrey marrying Margaery. I was honestly stunned that the wedding went down
this episode. I thought for sure they’d stretch that out a little longer. But
after a brief ceremony, a lavishly filmed reception saw Joffrey
repeatedly acting like a sadistic bastard (which he literally is), Cersei picking fights with both Pycelle
and Margaery, Oberyn
essentially putting the Lannisters on notice, Jaime
making it clear to Loras that he will not marry Cersei, and the Queen of Thorns having an intimate chat
with Sansa.

That last part is on what people should focus. In
last week’s recap I mentioned that the show changed some elements of the Dontos/Sansa scene. Specifically, Dontos
gave her a necklace instead of a hairnet, as he did in the books. Regardless, Sansa wore that gift to the wedding — and the Queen of
Thorns fussed with Sansa’s hair shortly before Joffrey drank the poisoned wine. In the books, Sansa later notices that one of the purple jewels in her
hairnet is missing, and the reader at least (possibly Sansa)
realizes that she was basically the vector for the
poison that killed Joffrey. In the show, I watched Sansa’s necklace like a hawk, and I never saw any of the
jewels on it go missing. They all seemed to be there, even after the Queen of
Thorns walked away. So I’m not sure if they’re going a different direction with
Joffrey’s poisoner or what.
But Cersei accused Tyrion
of the crime in what is essentially her first step to full-blown lunacy. Yes,
if you thought Cersei was nuts before, just you wait.
She is about to become unhinged and it is going to get CRAZY.

Remember last week, how I said that the Jaime/Cersei scenes made no sense? This is why they made no
sense. In the books, Jaime and Brienne arrive at
King’s Landing after Joffrey’s wedding; Joffrey was already dead. A grieving, bonkers Cersei rejects Jaime because he was not there to protect
their son. That is the wedge that drives the two of them apart, and it makes
more sense than, “You took too long to come back from being held hostage.”
Similarly, last week it was weird that Brienne didn’t
even speak to Sansa even though she had been sworn to
find her for Catelyn Stark. But again, Sansa was out of King’s Landing
before Brienne ever arrived — Brienne
never interacts with Sansa. (Speaking of, the
exchanges between Brienne and Margaery
suggest to me that Brienne will be grafted on to the Marg plotline on the show, instead of Brienne’s
own story as she has in the books. I’m OK with that, mostly because the Brienne storyline has a very upsetting ending.)

That is a bit of a spoiler to say that Dontos
is indeed taking advantage of the post-wedding chaos to spirit Sansa out of King’s Landing. But
why he’s doing it, and who he’s working for, I will
leave to next week’s episode to reveal. Some other thoughts:

-The Bronn/Tyrion/Shay scene was
difficult to watch, but also very interesting because at this point in the
books I am fairly sure that Bronn is no longer in
King’s Landing. He gets married off, has his own land holdings, and more or
less retires with what passes for a happy ending in Westeros.
Bronn still being in the capitol while Tyrion is imprisoned somewhat complicates that plotline. I’ll
be curious to see how they address that.

-Last season I expressed surprise at how the show was
portraying Shay, given that she has some really complicated material coming up
in the next chunk of story. I feel like the show has done a fairly good job setting
all of that up at this point. If you think she really got on
that boat, you’re nuts.

-The discussion between Queen of Thorns and Tywin about the Iron Bank wanting its due was a smooth way
of introducing a subplot that will apparently be far more important in the show
than it was in the books, based on the well-known actor cast for the part.

-This episode was written by George R. R.
Martin himself, the author of the “Song of Ice and Fire” novel series.
So all of those little things that seemed so little — like the grayscale thing
I mentioned — are maybe not so little after all. Martin is a master of seeding
small details that grow into huge plot points. That said,
I wish he would stop writing episodes of this show and FINISH THE GOD DAMNED
BOOKS, GEORGE. Seriously!

This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2014.