Game of Thrones Episode 4 Recap: When It's Lit, It's Lit

Charlie5/16/2016 4:00 PM

Before going over the events of last night’s episode, I think we need to all take a minute and acknowledge that right now we’re in the middle of Game of Thrones pulling off something truly special. After last season’s comparative weakness to the blow-your-hair-back awesomeness of the four seasons before it, a lot of fans wondered out loud if Game of Thrones had peaked: “Without the source materiel to guide them, DB Weiss and David Benioff have lost the plot”, “the show has become predictable in it’s grim cynicism”, “the characters can’t surprise us anymore”, “no one cares about the current storylines”, the criticism mounted and mounted. Whether Thrones would continue to survive on reputation and production value while never cracking into the ranks of elite television series with Breaking Bad, Sopranos, The Wire, ect. was a legitimate question.

But then this year happened. There’s no other way to put it than to say that almost halfway done, this season of Thrones so far has been fucking incredible. It’s extraordinary how consistently good it is. I think there have been maybe 12 total bad minutes of the show. Of course some episodes have been better than others (2 being clearly the best) but every single episode has been pointed, engaging, and meaningful. We are witnessing one of the greatest shows of all-time unfold in front of us, and if it keeps it up and delivers on the crescendo it’s building up to, it will start to enter people’s minds that maybe this is THE greatest show to ever grace the small screen. And I feel lucky (#blessed) to be able to experience it in real time.

Last night’s episode featured the return of everyone’s favorite wriggling serpent of a person, Petyr Baelish. Baelish returned to Robin Arryn (such a perfect “Robin” by the way. No one has ever fit their name better than Robin Arryn) exactly as he left him: a sniveling weakling who is perfect to be used as a proxy for power to lord over The Vale. Baelish is about to return to the fold in a big way, sending military aid to the subject of his creepy reverse-pseudo-Oedipus complex, Sansa. As with everything dear Uncle Petyr does, you have to guess his angle in doing so, because he isn’t one to do things out of the kindness of his heart. Luckily it isn’t hard to figure out; despite his mysteriousness earlier in the show, it’s pretty obvious what Baelish wants is to combine his forces with the Stark loyalists and push to be ruler of the North. Combined with the might of the Vale, which is pretty much impregnable if you don’t have dragons, the Stark name (keep in mind how much Northmen love the Starks and despise the Boltons for the most part) and maybe some outside help funded by Petyr’s financial connections, this auxiliary force could have a legitimate chance to topple the Fightin’ Flayers currently occupying Winterfell and establish new Wardens of the North. At first glance, it’s a solid plan.

But there’s one little wrench in it, and she has red hair and is very, very pissed off right now. I think Sansa is done being kicked around and told what to do, and her willingness to fight for her birthright even without Jon’s support is evidence of that. Sansa arriving at the Wall to be reunited with Jon instead of jusssst missing him and finding herself in a worse situation (I would’ve bet thousands that’s what was going to happen and going to the local deli is a major expense for me) was like the 2004 ALCS of Game of Thrones; a seminal shift in fortunes you feel is going to change everything forever. NO ONE has had it consistently worse from start to finish than Sansa. For six seasons, the showrunners have been kicking this girl around, putting her from bad to worse to worser to having to listen to Petyr bang Lysa. I think it’s time for Sansa to start kicking a little ass of her own, and with Jon Snow’s 2000 wildlings, the en route Knights of the Vale, anyone who would still rally under a Stark banner (I predict a significant force), she’s going to have the muscle to do it. Ramsay wants to pick a fight, and I think he’s about to get his wish in a big way.

There’s another war brewing on the Westeros continent, except it’s looking to merely tear apart a capital city rather than an entire region. The Faith Militant grow stronger as the Sparrow works to mentally break the Tyrell kids (one down, one to go!) and the Lannisters wisely plead for unity amongst the nobles to deal with the growing threat. Although a lot of their power died with Tywin, no one has had more experience playing the game of thrones in the capital than Cercei and Jaime as of right now, and the Small Council would realize that if they were smart. There’s a coming war between the high-born and the zealots, with plenty of collateral damage along the way. It’s going to be close, but I think Cercei has already made three critical mistakes that could work against her at any moment:

She wants Tommen to be strong and is convinced she can forge him into such. I think Tommen is a lost cause. He’s too sweet to go toe-to-toe with someone in a fight. He is who he is, he’s a gentle soul not built for war. Tywin basically ignored Joeffrey’s presence when he was running things, Cercei should basically forget Tommen exists and focus on the Sparrow herself.
Cercei sees the Sparrow as an anarchist who wants to replace the established order with nothing. I think she’s wrong. I believe the Sparrow is a shrewd political operator who wants to install a theocracy over Kings Landing with himself firmly at the top. When guessing character motivations in Game of Thrones, the most sinister answer is almost always the correct one.
Cercei’s biggest weakness is her lack of respect for people who she perceives as beneath her, which is basically everybody. This can make her blind to when there’s a threat under her, AND makes her awful at smiling and playing nice when she needs to suck up. One of those situations is arising right now with Pycelle. Pycelle has felt alienated from Cercei ever since she brought Qyburn into the fold, and his shifting away from her is a sign of her slipping power (Pycelle always aligns himself with the winning side. He just bought a Chicago Cubs jersey to go with his Golden State Warriors, Alabama Football, and New England Patriots ones). Cercei and Pycelle openly despise each other now, but the former Queen is forgetting something about that little bearded snake; in his role as Lannister lapdog for the past decade or so, he’s done some shit for them. He’s seen some shit. He knows where the bodies and buried and the skeletons in the closet are. He can hurt them, and they need to realize that, because right now, I don’t think they do.

The third Lannister is also in a tricky political situation, but his last name instead of helping him, brands him with an outsider status that is pissing off everybody he runs into. Tyrion’s attempts to mend the situation in Mereen is going about as well as it can go, which still is pretty poorly. The relationship between the slavers and the slaves is an impossibly difficult Gordian knot to cut with countless generations of hatred behind it. Budge an inch in any direction in negotiations, and you piss off an entirely new group of people and inspire anger and protest from at least one side. Any concession makes you a traitor. Any demand makes you an invading dictator. It’s a no-win situation for Tyrion, real Israel-Palestine type shit, and it seems like there’s no right answer. But politicking is what Tyrion does best, and he has absolute faith in his instincts in it. As he should, as Hand of the King and aide de camp to his Father he shot damn near 100% from three point range, he should be confident. But that was in a land he was intimately familiar with, and knew everything about everybody in it. He’s repeatedly being warned he doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with now, a criticism he mostly shrugging off as words from people not as experienced in diplomacy as he is. But he has to watch out, the mortal sin of Game of Thrones is people not knowing what they don’t know. A lack of self-awareness is often a death sentence, and Tyrion has to know that.

But maybe it won’t matter, because it’s a lot harder to argue against hundreds of thousands of screaming Dorthraki than an alcoholic dwarf, and that’s exactly what Daenerys has at her back now. Khaleesi should be a closer for the Yankees, she knows the guiding principle for their bullpen for the past two decades: throw your best pitch until the other team proves they can hit it. And the whole “emerge from flames that consume your screaming enemies and seize control over the Dorthraki horde who looks in awe” move has worked for her before, so hell why not try it again? Game of Thrones’ capacity for surprise is incredible; I spend an amount of time watching, rewatching, and thinking about the show that would make any Father absolutely hate their son, and I STILL did not see that coming until her second long stare at the torches. Incredible writing and storytelling to pull that card again. And how about Emilia Clarke willingly breaking her famous “No Nudity’ clause of her contract? A goddamn American television hero! She pulled the long con on us for five seasons thinking we’d only have fond memories of her Season One “N For Nudity” pre-episode disclaimers, only to hit us with a Mike Tyson right hook after lulling us to sleep! What a move by her. But now Daenery’s arsenal includes an army of highly trained Unsullied, at least two dragons (possibly three soon), a Dorthraki horde numbering the size of a large Westeros city, whatever mercenaries she has picked up along the way, and the entire spy network of Varys. I don’t think she’s going to be boarding ships anytime soon because the Game of Thrones showrunners are like dickhead parents who only let us play video games one hour a week and don’t want to see us happy, but when she hops on those ships? It’s starting to look like the Daenerys v. Westeros rumble for the Iron Thrones is turning from USC v. Texas 2006 Rose Bowl to the 1985 Chicago Bears v. Greenwich Country Day High School JV team. Unless of course there’s some sort of surprise coming where she doesn’t fight for the Iron Throne at all, but a kind of larger, more mysterious force that would be the Icy Ying to her Firey Yang in a predestined epic battle over the future of the human race. You know, something weird like that, not saying anything, I’m no writer, just spitballing ideas here. Well that’s it for me, but before you’re entirely done with my ass, I recommend/request/beg you check out the following:

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Listen to the Postgame of Thrones podcast hosted by myself and Clem aka Clemzingis aka The Many Snacks God aka The Iron Bank Shot of Braavos aka The Blogger of the Morning aka The House of Black and White Cookies. This week we were joined by Coley Mick, who runs the Barstool Sports Twitter handle, is the guy behind the “viral” posts and is the fucking man: