Game of Thrones - 'The Red Woman'

"Prepare yourselves, everypony. Winter is coming."*

Oh yes, everybody's favourite cavalcade of oversexed, blood-soaked, baby-murdering, head-popping, wedding massacring, dubiously consenting fantasy politics is back, for the first season that moves the plot ahead of the books (which would of course mean more to me if I had read them**.)

Jon Snow was dead, to begin with, and despite pathological fan speculation looks set to remain so, with the lovely Kit Harrington apparently retaining his mop just to play a great looking corpse. Well, actually he looks like death, which is apt. Stabbed up by the officers of the Night's Watch, the late Lord Commander is found by his remaining particular buddies and Ser Davos Seaworth, who retreat with Ghost the direwolf into a small room, surrounded by the treacherous officers, their only hopes a message sent to someone else who owes Jon Snow their lives (I'm guessing the Wildlings, but they're keeping us in suspense) and the titular Red Woman.

"Well, this is an improvement."

Ever so slightly further south, Roose Bolton's plans are unraveling, the death of Stannis Baratheon as nothing compared to the loss of Sansa, which threatens their control of the North and so leaves them vulnerable to the wrath of the Lannisters over the very wedding that Ramsey has so royally bollocksed with his rapiness. It's almost as if pointless cruelty weren't an effective motivator, but if that were the case surely fewer people in Westeros would use it?

"Well, look at this. Appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does
that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, m'lady!"
"Ain't we just."

Sansa and Theon flee through the snows and are almost caught by Ramsey's hounds, but Brienne and Pod arrive to violently save the day, and for the former to swear in as Sansa's first knight.

That's the first blood for the episode; it's not the last by a very long stretch.

Jaime Lannister returns home with his daughter's body, scotching my last hope that someone involved in the whole Dorne business wasn't a complete idiot. Seriously, it was so bloody obvious and yet... But perhaps that's my father/daughter issues talking again.

The Sand Snakes: Still looking like refugees from an even more exploitative
series.

Jaime and Cersei reaffirm their 'fuck the world' policy. Meanwhile, the High Sparrow moves into the 'good septon' phase of Queen Margaery's interrogation and the Sand Snakes launch a coup with their patented blend of violence and fanservice, murdering the Prince and his son in order to take control of Dorne in the name of the people, who are apparently hacked off with the lack of bloody revenge being pointed Lannisterward.

"I'm going to walk the earth, like Kane in Kung Fu."

Tyrion and Varys take an incognito tour of Mereen and learn that things are getting bad. The Sons of the Harpy are organised, and the Red Priests are whipping up the faithful to fight in the name of the Lord of Light and the Mother of Dragons. Honestly, I think this scene is really just there to keep Tyrion in the episode.

Jorah and Daario track Daenerys to the site where she was captured by the dothraaki and discuss unrequited love. We then cut to Daenerys being taken to the Khal and threatened with all kinds of sexual violence (yay) before establishing her status as a Khal's widow and thus untouchable, but destined to a life in the Vaes Dothrak home for widowed Khaleesi.

"I'm going to walk the earth, like Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury."

In Braavos, Arya Stark is out on the streets, blind and begging. The waif from the temple rocks up, gives her a stick and tells her to fight. Arya gets her arse kicked and the Waif swaggers off with jaunty promise to return tomorrow.

So, what does 'The Red Woman' bring to the table? The Dornish coup was kind of inevitable given the inability of anyone involved to recognise that a group of passionate, highly-motivated psychopaths wouldn't just roll over and play nice. I wish I could be interested, but the gratuitous sexy-sadism of the Sand Snakes just smacks of trying too hard. Vaes Dothrak is kind of new and Maisie Williams and Peter Dinklage are always worth the price of admission.

Just to prove that we don't always fall back on sexy.

In fairness, the cast is generally excellent. There are a few wobbles in the cast members who don't have English as a first language, and most of them are probably great in Spanish or Dutch, as it goes. The problems of the series, such as they are, are in its increasing dependence on sensation. The Sand Snakes are a low point, with their combination of gratuitous fanservice and giggling psychopathic bloodlust, but the dothraaki idiom of continual sexualisation and objectification is frankly a grind. I think it's telling that many of my favourite characters are the least sexualised: Arya, Brienne, Davos, Tyrion (yes, Tyrion has sex, but isn't sexualised.)

* Actual line from My Little Pony.
** Normally I read a lot, but there's only so many times people can tell you what an awesome turn around the Red Wedding is before it robs you of all desire to read it.