A Game of Thrones - Season 1, Episode 8

"Tell Lord Tywin winter is coming for him. Twenty thousand northerners marching south to find out if he really does sh*t gold."

"The Pointy End"
spoilers under the cut

It's pretty striking at this point, given how the show has spoiled us with powerful endings, that we have one that ends on the very benign note of Sansa promising her father to confess, especially since this was one of the more eventful episodes of the series so far. Whereas in the novels I found Sansa annoyingly stupid and couldn't wait for her chapters to end (unless the Hound was lingering; I liked the Hound), I'm actually feeling slightly sympathetic towards her on the screen.

Back in the North, Robb finally gets some screen time! Granted he really hasn't had much to do up until this point. And they finally show Rickon Stark... I'm pretty sure this is the first time the character has been on screen. Even further North, the Jon Snow finally gets interesting. Ned getting captured has really woken up the entire Stark family, and I hadn't even gotten to Arya.

Although when you think of Arya in this episode, in this case you end up going back to Syrio, the first painful-to-the-viewer death in the series. Syrio was not at all what I would have pictured... I think he was probably cast for his charm; I think he was successful in making you instantly like and trust the character, and that's important when you only have a few minutes of screentime before a death that you want to mean something.

I believe the award for best character of the episode goes to Tyrion again this week. It seemed like after escaping certain death at the hands of the crazed Lysa Arryn, Tyrion was in even less control here than before. In front of the court at the Eyrie, he was in complete control... but trying to talk to the savages, his desperation showed through. And when he thinks he finally made it to safety, he's informed he's leading an army into war. Best line of the episode goes to Tyrion as well, in response to how he'd like to die, but as I try to keep this blog relatively clean, I think I'll pass on reposting it. :)

The character of Khal Drogo has become more and more relateable with each episode. It occurred to me that they've succeeded in making me, the viewer, relate to Drogo much in the same way Dany did... kind of strange and scary at first, but becoming more and more comfortable with him as time goes on.

Two episodes left!