Game of Thrones S01 E09 – Training

Previously: Shit gets real for the whole Stark family. Ned learns he’s secured himself a death sentence, Sansa womans up on behalf of her father, Robb goes to war with the Lannisters, and Jon Snow faces zombies.
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Baelor

Sweeney: This episode begins in the dungeon in King’s Landing. Varys goes to visit Ned again to tell him that Sansa begged for his life. Varys then goes into story-time from his days of having balls, in which he was an actor. He apparently retained that skill after the balls left. He can’t free Ned, but he’s trying to talk to him to help secure peace. Varys tells Ned about Robb’s latest adventure — you know, charging into war and all that.

Ned reiterates the whole Stannis-is-the-true-heir thing and Varys comments that Sansa pleaded so sweetly for his life that it would be a shame to see him waste it. Varys is trying to get Ned to agree to declare Joffrey the true heir and tell Robb to stand down, so that he can be allowed to take the black and live out his days with his brother and bastard son. A shitty fate for the Lord of Winterfell, but a less shitty fate for a dude in a dungeon awaiting his death sentence.

However, Ned isn’t just a dude in a dungeon. He is Lord of Winterfell and his honor means more to him than a few more years. He didn’t grow up with actors like Varys; he grew up with soldiers and death is NBD to him.

 

Realizing that he’s all but lost this plea, Varys switches tactics and asks, “What of your daughter’s life? Is that a precious thing to you?” Well played, Varys.

Lor: I think if you are going to live in Westeros, they should teach you how to die pretty immediately. Though, on second thought, being taught how to act seems to be working out better for Varys, on account of he’s not about to die.

Sweeney: Both excellent points.

Farther north, Robb is trying to figure out how to make a crossing that requires the help of a Lord Frey, whom they do not entirely trust. Robb’s mini council is going back-and-forth about whether this guy will kill Robb and whether they should send someone else to negotiate. Robb isn’t having that because he’s got to prove he’s a man and that means that other men can’t bargain for him. Right you are, says Cat, but he can have his mama do it! Robb doesn’t like that either, but Cat has known Lord Frey since they were kiddos and also has a vagina which is suddenly a kind of good thing because she knows she’s not going to get hurt. Something like that.

She goes inside and Lord Frey is generally crotchety and yelling at his sons. He’s also super greasy and stroking a young girl’s ass. After Cat gets him to shoo everyone out of the room, he smarms about how great it is that she’s only 15. Ew.

Lor: He’s another one of those, “YOU! IT’S YOU!” actors. Who is he, exactly? Argus Filch from the Harry Potter movies. This guy plays old and crotchety very well. 

Sweeney: Filch/Frey is not a fan of the Stark house or the Tully house because nobody likes him, due to him being gross. Nobody in their fine houses would marry one of his millionty kids. Cat finally gives up on the niceties and explains why she’s there: Frey swore an oath to her father. But Frey doesn’t give a fuck, because all these hoity toity families (including the Lannisters and Baratheons) give no fucks about him. Fair point.

Back at the wall, Jon Snow is receiving a totally amazeballs sword from Lord Commander Mormont, which kind of backs up Sam’s whole theory that Jon is being groomed. Lord Commander Mormont also confirms his relation to our dear speaker-of-English across the narrow sea: the sword was meant for his son Jorah, but, as we learned, he brought dishonor on his house and had to GTFO.

Lord Commander Mormont also tells Snow that it’s a man’s sword and he needs to be a man to wield it, which includes ending his feud with Captain Douche/Spencer Pratt’s Medieval Father, Thorne. Jon offers to go apologize to him, but he can’t because SPMF has been sent to bring the severed hand to Joffrey, to call attention to the fact that srsbsns is happening at the wall. Also, it means that there is a massive distance between Jon Snow and SPMF, so that’s a win.

Lor: As far as calling attention to the Wall problems, I’m not sure a severed hand is really going to cut it…

Sweeney: Seems like they are understating the situation just a tad.

 

Jon Snow goes to fetch Mormont’s dinner and everyone congratulates him on acquiring this fancypants sword. The boys all run off to play with the sword but Sam stays  at his table to mope so Jon joins him. SAM’S GOT A SECRET. He can’t tell Jon but he’s totes gonna anyway. Sam read a raven to someone else about how Robb is heading south to war. Obviously Jon Snow wants to go join the fight now, even though he did that whole oath thing.

Cat returns to Robb to tell him that Lord Frey has agreed to allow Robb’s passing but for a heavy price: Filch/Frey wants to secure places for his millionty kids. One is to be a squire and both Arya (when she comes of age) and Robb (when the fighting is done) are to marry Frey kids. Robb will get to choose which one, but when he asks Cat if she got a look at any of his daughters, she can’t muster any more than a half-hearted “MEH.” Rough. And LOLFOREVER. Robb will just have to be pretty enough for the both of them.

Lor: And Arya! Being married off. I rather think she’ll go kicking and screaming.

Sweeney: Obviously Robb isn’t a huge fan of this plan (and neither would Arya be if she knew), but he doesn’t really have a choice (Arya will do some direboss kicking and screaming, I’m sure), so he has to consent. Theon finds all of this hilarious.

Back at the wall, Jon Snow has to go assist the old blind dude who is in charge of the stewards. He called Jon to give him a speech about why none of the men at the wall are allowed to have families. They all need to have their loyalties in order. Honor is easy for the men there without families; maintaining that loyalty and honor is way harder for Jon Snow than anyone else. Jon Snow tries to tell this dude that nobody understands what he is going through, because that’s kind of Jon Snow’s thing: MY PROBLEMS > YOUR PROBLEMS. ALWAYS.

Blind Guy laughs and tells a gruesome story about the murder of his family, which he could do nothing about. This is build up to a big reveal: HE IS A TARGARYEN — and apparently he was ahead of the Mad King in the line for the throne, but turned it down. I wonder how that could have changed things?

Anyway, he tells Jon that when the day comes to make his choice (by which he means now) he will have to make a choice and live with it for the rest of his life.

Lor: I like Jon, obvs, and I think it’s really cute when he mopes, but his whole NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MY PROBLEMS spiel needs to stop. How many sad-panda-Wall-stories does he need to hear before he realizes that against all his prior held beliefs, other people in the world not named Jon Snow have problems?

Sweeney: He is annoyingly slow to internalize that.

Across the narrow sea, Drogo is leading the line of horses and he is not well. He falls off his horse and the guy behind him, who I believe was the second spitting bodyguard from the last episode, immediately says, “He fell from his horse. A Khal who cannot ride is no Khal.”

Daenerys starts barking orders, which isn’t really wise when Drogo isn’t well enough to have her back. She wants the witch lady brought to heal her husband.

Back in his red tent city, Tywin Lannister is having a big council meeting of sorts about the battle ahead. All the men that Tyrion rolled up with are now part of the Lannister army. Tywin tells Tyrion that he and his raggamuffin team will be at the very front. Tyrion goes on about how ragtag they all are and adds, “Surely there are ways to have me killed that will be less detrimental to the war effort.” Seeing Tyrion with his dad gives me so many feels for him.

Lor: I’ve had feels for anyone I’ve seen with Tywin. Dude, even the stag being skinned got some feels from me. Freakin’ Tywin.

Sweeney: Tyrion storms off to his tent, and his pal Bronn has brought him a prostitute. Thanks, pal! Tyrion informs Bronn that they’re all probably going to die soon, so Bronn runs off to do whatever people do when they think they’re gonna die. (Sidebar: Everyone on this show should assume they are always about to die and live accordingly.) Tyrion and the prostitute have a little chat that takes them from 0 to 60 rather quickly. It’s a weird little exchange, because he basically tells her that she’ll be mega rich if she becomes his girlfriend, but I approve all the same, because they’re cute. Also, imminent death, so, you know, there’s that.

Back across the narrow sea, Drogo is totes dying, but Daenerys is not having that. She insists that people just don’t understand how strong Drogo is. She refuses to let him die. Ser Jorah Mormont wants her to run, but she doesn’t do running because of the whole queen/dragon business. Jorah tells her that this isn’t Westeros and the Dothraki give zero shits about blood lines.

Lor: I would only further add that even in Westeros where they give shits about blood lines, it’s only like half shits. The other half of what they give is credit to whoever has the biggest sword.

Sweeney: The witch is brought in by Spitting Bodyguard and he’s way pissed that the witch is even there because he blames her for what happened to Drogo. (L: Uh, I hate to agree with the spitter, but me too.) He also adds that she’s only Khaleesi while Drogo lives and after that she’ll be nothing. She gives another very-reminiscent-of-Viserys speech about how she has never been nothing because BLOOD OF DRAGONS! This dude’s all, “LOL dragons,” and walks off. She tells Ser Jorah that wearing his armor tonight would probably be a good idea. He agrees.

Jorah leaves and the witch says that Daenerys has saved her again. Daenerys says that this means the Witch owes her and has to save Drogo. Witch says that all she can do is ease his path. She does know a spell, but some say that death is cleaner and there will be a blood price for this black magic. Daenerys is willing to do whatever it takes. They fetch Drogo’s horse. Always with the animals!

Random Dothraki who at least likes Daenerys tries to talk her out of it, but she’s not having it. The witch orders everyone out of the tent and adds that nobody can enter once she starts because the dead will dance there. They slit the horse’s throat and blood splatters all over Daenerys’s face. The witch starts chanting as Daenerys leaves.

Lor: Dude, she couldn’t have waited until people actually left the tent before splattering all the horse blood? Rude.

Sweeney: Right? We were just leaving, girl, calm down!

Outside, Dothraki are gathered around as scary ass noises come from the tent. Dude who hates Daenerys emerges and tosses her to the ground. She lands on her belly and there is a sound that makes me want to wretch more than any awful thing I have seen or heard on this show.

Spitting Bodyguard tries to go into the tent, but Jorah stops him. They fight and SB dies. Daenerys is gasping in pain because the baby is coming but none of the midwives will come near her, since everyone thinks she is cursed.

Lor: I find it funny that the people who told Dany to eat a horse heart for fertility would be all BLOOD MAGIC, EWIES.

Sweeney: The witch could deliver the baby, though, so Jorah scoops her up and carries her in the tent. DID NOBODY LISTEN TO THE WARNING ABOUT GOING IN THE FUCKING TENT?

Lor: About as well as Ned Stark listened.

Sweeney: Back in the Lannister Red Tent City, Tyrion is in his tent with Bronn and his prostitute girlfriend, Shae. They are playing old-timey drinking games. Tyrion isn’t doing so well, so he switches it up to a game that he can win. This game is not so fun for people with complicated pasts like the foreign prostitute and the guy who offered up his life for a rich dwarf he didn’t know. The game is that Tyrion has to guess things about them and if he’s right, they drink; if he’s wrong, he drinks.

Tyrion starts with Bronn, and the secrets are heavy, but mostly involve murder and abuse, which were easy guesses. His last guess is about loving a woman and having it end badly, causing him to never love again. When Bronn doesn’t drink he says, “Oh wait, that’s me.” Tyrion moves to Shae, who doesn’t like this game. He tries to go the same route with her — prostitute mother and daddy issues being the stereotype of a prostitute — but his guesses are wrong. She finally shuts him up and tells him that she’ll carve his eyes out of his head if he ever talks about her parents again.

Shae tries to get Tyrion to elaborate on the aforementioned romance that ended badly. Bronn adds that Tyrion was married once, which he heard hanging around Red Tent City. Tyrion doesn’t want to tell, but eventually relents. When he was 16 he was out and about with Jaime and they saved a girl from rapists. She was so overcome with gratitude that they went to bed together and by morning he was so in love that they married. When Tywin found out he made Jaime confess: it was a setup and the girl was a prostitute. Adding ferocious insult to this injury, Tywin paid the girl handsomely to bed a whole bunch of men AND MADE TYRION WATCH. By the end she had more silver than she could hold.

Lor: Well, damn. Maybe she had incredibly small hands, but that’s probably not right.

Sweeney: Shae points out that he should have known because a girl who was almost raped wouldn’t invite another man into her bed two hours later. However, even Shae can’t resist the serious sad panda feels of that awful story, so they start going at it and Bronn awkwardly sees himself out.

The next morning, they wake up naked to Bronn throwing a helmet at Tyrion because Robb got the nighttime jump on them. He makes Shae promise to weep for him if he dies. Outside, all suited up, Bronn tells Tyrion to stay low so that no one will notice him. Tyrion gives a really awesome speech to his motley band of men who are probably about to die and gets them all chanting. He’s a really good pre-war speech-giver if nothing else. Not much of a soldier, though, because he is promptly knocked over and trampled.

After the battle, it looks like his head is floating, but they pan out and we see that he’s on a cart and Bronn is there. Apparently Tyrion’s bros did well. There were only 2,000 Stark men, not 20,000 as expected, so it wasn’t much of a battle.

As Tyrion asks where Robb and his other 18,000 men are, we segue magic to Cat waiting anxiously. After a long pause, she smiles because she sees Robb riding out of the woods. Robb, we soon learn, has captured Jaime Lannister, which proves what a beast he is. Jaime tries to make Robb settle it with a duel, but Robb is obviously not that foolish.

 

Lor: Robb has been seriously impressing me with his mixture of honor AND smarts. He has unusually straight and square teeth, but that’s neither here nor there. It just had to be said.

Sweeney: I’m glad you were able to get that off your chest.

After Jaime is carted away to his prison cell, Robb broods to Theon about sending 2,000 men to their graves that day. Theon tries to comfort him by promising that there will be songs of their sacrifice, but it’s little consolation because the dead won’t hear them. This is the second time this episode that we are reminded of the lack of sensory capacity of dead people. I guess they don’t know about Night Walker victims.

Lor: Or all those dead dancing up in Drogo’s tent.

Sweeney: Robb channels his feels into another awesome speech, because apparently being the son of a lord means that you have to be trained in speech-making. (L: And dying!) (S: And acting, ideally!) Robb tells his men that one victory doesn’t make them conquerors, particularly since they still haven’t saved his father or his sisters. Still, you know, they have to keep fighting the good fight and all that. Sorry, I didn’t get war speech training as a child.

Back in King’s Landing, Arya catches a pigeon and snaps its neck. Girl’s a beast. She tries to get a baker to give her stale/burnt stuff, but he tells her to piss off. Then bells ring and everyone is running. Some kids tell her that the hand of the king is being taken to his punishment, so Arya joins the running.

She climbs onto a podium at the feet of some statues, which apparently no other small people thought to do, and it makes her conveniently visible to Ned as he comes out. He shouts at a guy named Yoren, who we haven’t named here on the blog yet, but he’s a member of the Night’s Watch. Ned nods his head Arya’s way, indicating that somebody needs to look out for her because while she’s a BAMF, she’s also young and her last name gives her an enormous target on her back.

 

He stands up on his stage and announces who he is and then pauses. Sansa nods at him, in her very southern updo (thanks to that old lady, I’m now hyper aware of Sansa’s hair and I’m pretty sure it’s top-of-the-head poofiness that denotes it as a hairstyle of the south).

 

Finally, he hangs his head and begins to “confess his crimes” and my stomach turns because UGH. He doesn’t just say, “I lied,” but rather gives a lengthy speech about plotting to seize the throne for himself and even this bullshit speech is quite eloquent, due to the probable speech lessons. He says that Joffrey is the one true heir and Joffrey gets a big smug grin and smiles to his wretched mother.

Pycelle asks Joffrey to issue this traitor’s sentence. People are chanting like crazy because these people are FOOLS. I HATE THESE PEOPLE. HAVEN’T THEY BEEN WATCHING THE SHOW? Oh, you mean they’ve been poor people just trying to get by and also they don’t want anyone questioning their loyalty and punishing them? Oh. Fine. EXCEPT NOT. NOT FINE. I HATE YOU ALL. STOP BOOING LORD EDDARD STARK OF WINTERFELL. TEAM FEELS WILL COME AT YOU. You know, with our feels.

 

Joffrey silences the crowd and says that his mother wishes to have Ned stripped of all titles and sent off to join the Night’s Watch. His Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father, and Sansa smiles at him. Then Joffrey continues that they have the soft hearts of women and King Joffrey won’t allow treason to go unpunished, so he asks for Stark’s head, AND MY HEART EXPLODES.

Arya climbs down from her podium and Ned’s aforementioned friend, grabs her and tells her not to look. Sansa is screaming for this to stop and then everything gets very quiet and dulled and we only hear Ned’s breathing and we’re thinking obviously he is going to get out of this AND THEN WE HEAR A SLICING NOISE. We see Arya and the protector friend and we roll credits.

Lor: So many things. I admittedly saw this and came back to comment this post a full 24 hours later because of all the feels. Maybe a list will help:

1.) I hate Joffrey. (S: “+1,” said everyone.)

2.) It’s interesting to consider a Joffrey outside the influence of his mother. He’s such an immature little twit that, actually, I amend my “interesting” to “terrifying.”

3.) Earlier, at the wall when the blind steward was asking Jon about honor and duty, he asked what Ned Stark would do if faced with a choice between honor and his family. Jon said he would “do the right thing.” At first I thought he meant Ned would pick honor, but that wouldn’t really make sense with Jon’s situation and his desire to rejoin his family. Anyways, the point is that Ned chose his family. Maybe for the first time in a long time, he put aside his honor. AND THEN HE DIED.

That’s what gets me the most. I knew Ned was as good as dead, but I always thought he would go out fighting or at least sticking to the stupid guns that landed him imprisoned in the first place. Nope.

Sweeney: The fact that he declared Joffrey the true king first just added so much to the trauma of this moment. I can’t even handle this right now, you guys. BRB, crawling into bed for the rest of forever.

 

Next on Game of Thrones: Things are grim for the Starks right now, but they’ll bring winter to everyone soon enough. Find out how on  S01 E10 – Fire and Blood.