By Zane Bixby
Overall Score: B-
After last week’s episode was so great it became the question of whether the follow up would be able to come close to that level or not. While we all would love for every episode to be jaw dropping and memorable, it’s a near impossibility that would actually ruin the truly great episodes. It’s a sad fact that some of the episodes have to drift behind the others in order to elevate the great episodes into a more epic status. But at the same time the episode shouldn’t feel phoned in either and that’s honestly the only feeling I got watching “Blood of my Blood.” It wasn’t quite as bad as the season premiere “The Red Woman” was but it left so much to be desired that it barely earns the grade I gave it here.
I’m going to stick with the change I made last week and do this from worst to best, even though these positions don’t really mean much this week.
Daenerys:
Why did we need to check in with Daenerys this week? There was no meat to add to her story. No striking revelations. Last week it was understandable to give her a much smaller role after emerging from the fire but I almost feel as if she should have been left out of “Blood of my Blood” entirely. Her scene was incredibly forced and for the first time this season made the anchor scene of the episode the worst part of the episode.
We already knew that the Dothraki were following her, that they were sworn to her at the point, because they were ALREADY following her away from Vaes Dothrak. The only new thing we got out of Dany riding in on Drogon was seeing her dragon again (speaking of which how did she even know it was there, we weren’t given any hints like the shadows or a slight roar that he was nearby) and then reaffirming that the Dothraki Khalasar would follow her to Westeros. I couldn’t even appreciate how awesome Drogon looked because of how weak the scene was in it’s entirety.
The Twins:
I almost forgot this scene was in the episode until I sat down to write this review. We get our first appearance at the twins since the end of Season 3 ( or maybe the beginning of Season 4) and surprise surprise Lord Walder Frey is still alive and still a total dick. While it shouldn’t be any shock that he is upset that the Blackfish took back Riverrun I will admit to being lightly surprised by the reappearance to Edmure. It’s understandable that with the Blackfish still at large, Lord Frey would keep Edmure in the dungeons as a means to negotiate. But the entirety of the scene felt nearly as weak as Daenerys’ scene, which is all the more annoying because this scene was actually providing new details to the story.
The way the entire scene was set up I actually felt like Lord Frey was about to be killed by one of his sons ready to take the “Ruler of the Twins” title from him but that never came to fruition and instead we were given a stale scene that felt like it ran on just a little bit too long.
Arya:
As I’ve said week after week I would love to be loving Arya’s storyline. But there has been little to absorb the audience into the story. To feel the pressure and weight of the decisions of the characters like some other storylines have managed to do. And then everything happens so quickly here it becomes hard to really delve into the character and navigate her decisions. Over the course of what is about maybe 10 minutes of in universe time we see Arya poison Lady Crane’s rum, talk with Lady Crane (and rewatching this scene I’m still unconvinced chatting with Lady Crane gave Arya a different perspective on her life and who she is) and then stopping her from drinking the rum that would have killed her.
Once again, as has been happening with Arya all season, we are given a rushed and almost foregone conclusion and are left to assume many of the details. Now most of us could have already assumed that Arya was never going to become a Faceless man. As long as Needle was still there and hidden we knew that Arya still lived on in many ways. And even though we are 6 episodes into the season it still feels like they are rushing her story along to get her out of Braavos and heading back to Westeros (albeit now with a tail that clearly wants her dead.) I’m still holding out hope for this story line to get better but that hope is starting to diminish greatly.
King’s Landing:
Now while Arya’s story felt rushed, King’s Landing felt like we were on the bus from Speed. Everything moved at a breakneck speed and a lot of it contradicted much of what we have seen all season. I have a LOT of gripes with this set of scenes but I will try to keep my thoughts as concise as possible.
First let’s start with Margaery. Apparently Stockholm’s Syndrome took hold since we last saw her because she’s entirely on the High Sparrow’s side now, which is a HUGE step away from us last seeing her and her telling Loras that they had to stay strong. We were given no hint of this coming and suddenly she’s ready to convince Tommen (who is very easily manipulated if you hadn’t noticed) into making an alliance between the crown and the faith. And while the words she’s saying make sense logically, the entire scene (much like most of this episode) felt rush and forced. Maybe there were some deleted scenes that were omitted assuming the audience would just accept Margaery’s new association with the faith but it was a poor choice.
But that’s not even quite the worst part. Watching Lord Tyrell march into King’s Landing with some of his army felt so underwhelming and honestly like a poor joke. Maybe it’s the actor himself, or maybe that’s what they were going for, but his ‘speech’ to his men just left me shaking my head in disappointment. And yet that STILL isn’t the worst part about that. If you recall when this idea was first brought up it was intended that the Lannisters would stay out of it and just let the Tyrell’s march their army into King’s Landing so that they had plausible deniability. So why was Jaime with them to march onto the sept? Well that reason is easy enough knowing what comes next, knowing that Margaery already had Tommen convinced and the alliance made (a reveal hidden behind the doors of the sept while this all went on mind you) it was meant to distance Jaime from Tommen.
It’s easy to think that the High Sparrow and Margaery would want to separate Jaime from Cersei as he acts as a personal defender of her, but if that was always the plan than why even bring up the fact that the Lannisters were going to stay out of the encounter completely? All it did was leave a rather glaring plot hole just to send Jaime away from King’s Landing (again) and push the fact that Tommen was just a puppet on strings for whoever to play with.
Sam and Hornhill:
There is really no reason for this scene to be so high on the list in terms of quality. It was an incredibly boring set of (once again) rushed scenes that pushed one idea at the beginning of the scene to completely flip flopping at the end of the scene.
I wondered the other week why I had forgotten that Sam and Gilly has a scene of their own and I think I figured it out. I don’t really care for the performance of Gilly. I understand that her character is supposed to be brave but simple, but I don’t think that the portrayal should come off like a bag of rocks was told to act. I will admit that she did pull off looking uncomfortable in that dress but I think that was partially because of costume design. It looked like an incredibly uncomfortable dress to be squeezed into. But other than that there isn’t much to speak of with Gilly.
Where the scene does have at least a little bit of meat is at the dinner table (pun not intended but I’m leaving it in there so deal with it.) This is our first time actually seeing Lord Tarly, and he is every bit of a dick as Samwell had made him out to be in earlier seasons. So it comes as no shock that he is still disappointed in the fact that his firstborn son is still fat and what he assumes is basically a nerd. But as Sam’s mother points out being a Maester for the Night’s Watch should be assumed is a great honor. So we are left with an overly dickish father that is actually somewhat believable. We do need to face facts that in Westeros and in life for that matter there are people so set in their old ways that ‘being a man’ is only defined by doing manly things like hunting and fighting. But his belief that Gilly’s son is his grandson at least spurs the little bit of honor that he does have (mostly to please his wife) that he will let them live at Hornhill.
But once again the set of scenes is spurred on by whatever force wanted this entire episode to move faster than it was moving. We get what could have been a touching good bye scene between Sam and Gilly just to have it, not even 20 seconds later, reverted and Sam telling them they had to go. While I can understand Sam’s immediate change of mind it STILL felt so rushed that it was hard to actually feel anything for the characters. Let alone why Sam though taking Heartsbane was a good idea. They could have just ran off and his father probably would have been happy with that. But stealing the sword is just forcing the conclusion that now he will be on the run from his father.
Bran:
After last week’s emotionally devastating anchor scene we were left wondering how far Bran and Meera would get before the wights caught up to them. Meera is no Hodor so it was a bit of an easy conclusion to make that she wouldn’t be able to drag Bran forever. And the late introduction of Cold Hands is actually okay in this setting. I watched this episode with a few people who had never read the books so the first thing they asked was “who is this guy” once the scene settled down and he was done setting fire to all (what 10? Maybe 15 wights that were behind them from that massive horde?) he grabbed Bran and Meera and rode them to safety.
Those of us who have read the books already had jumped to the conclusion that Cold Hands was Benjen Stark. And his appearance as a kid in an earlier episode planted the seed that he would be returning to the show soon. But just because book readers were able to jump to that conclusion doesn’t mean that the show watchers would be able to as well. And for a character that was in all of 3 episodes in Season 1 I doubt many people would have remembered who he was without at least a little bit of information. Thankfully this is the one scene of the episode that they slow down a bit to let Benjen explain what happened to him. Apparently he was about to be turned into a White Walker when the Children of the Forest saved him by doing the exact same thing that made the White Walkers in the first place (that part IS a bit confusing) so he now has a shard of Dragon Glass in his heart that kept him from transforming, but does that mean he is undead as well now? Or somewhere in between the two? I doubt we are going to get a definitive answer to that. I also wonder how he has so much knowledge of the Three-Eyed Ravens works as he had never mentioned Benjen or an acolyte (because that is very much how Benjen came off in this scene.) I’m sure many are thankful that another Stark is still alive but his cryptic announcement that Bran will be there when the Night King marches south still leaves much to be desired.
That’s not even going into the visions Bran had while still using his greensear ability. We actually got our first glimpse of the Mad King and his cryptic “Burn them all” chant through this and it is starting to add weight to the theory that Bran is the cause of the Mad King going…… erm……. Mad. But we will really just have to wait to see.
About Last Week…..
- I’m still rather broken up by Hodor’s death last week. And the never ending set of ‘Hold The Door’ memes popping up on all the social media doesn’t help that.
- Oh look, last week Euron Greyjoy said that he wanted a thousand ships built, oh look that’s the exact number of ships Dany was told she would need to bring her horde across the Narrow Seas. COINCIDENCE!?!?! I think not.
- Part of me was actually hoping we would see more of the actors in the play Arya watched last week this week and thankfully that did deliver. Their satirical recreation of the first few seasons is actually enjoyable instead of annoying in my opinion.
