Game of Thrones - "Dark Wings, Dark Words" - Review

 "Themes are for eighth-grade book reports," Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff recently said about the overall intentionality he and D.B. Weiss provide to the show. That's a frustrating notion not only because it's unavoidable for themes to exist in a work whether you try for them or not, but because it also makes you wonder just how the hell the show we're watching is structured if not around theme. I bring this up because though I enjoy Game of Thrones, it's a show that often feel like every sequence was filmed great and then the editors were forced to parse out all these various elements together. The result is a soap opera-ish level of disassociated scenes that lead to episodes ending wherever (any old place that is) rather than in a place that appears to have been built towards knowingly for maximum impact.

Now I'm not someone who's huge on distilling out themes. When I pick up on them I feel all savvy and sophisticated, but I don't go out of my way to try to figure out what they might be. In fact, I tend to watch shows for characters more than for themes, and this is especially the case with Game of Thrones. I watch for what's Arya up to this week and what the story is trying to say about her, or Tyrion or Bran or Jaimie, and so on. This is what I suspect a lot of us do because mainly why we're told to be invested in any one of the many stories being shown is that there are one or two characters central to that story who are worth following. I could care less about Gendry and Hotpie, but I care deeply about Arya. I don't mind stopping in with most of these characters and finding where their story is at, but it does sometimes make what we're watching come off as arbitrarily strung together. Why do Jaimie and Brienne get less screen time than Bran or Arya? They could have had more scenes and I'd still have been very amused by their mismatched team-up.

The problem isn't just Benioff and Weiss though. The problem also comes from the series being an adaptation. I always found the weaker entries in the Harry Potter film franchise to be more about fan service than about actually creating a fully formed story that worked within the film medium. Similarly, adapting the show just to adapt it and adapt indvidual elements as well as possible leads to a consistently fragmented quality to the show.

The greatest asset for Game of Thrones is simultaneously often its biggest hindrance: its source material. George RR Martin’s book series has a vast world and great characters to draw upon, and part of the success of the series comes from relying on these aspects of the book. But by the same token, A Song of Fire and Ice is an increasingly sprawling series. There are characters in far flung locations that often seem to have nothing in common other than that they exist within this same world. Each book in the series provides MORE. More characters! More locations! More conflicts! And the series on occasion feels like it’s sometimes just trying to keep up with all these new developments, adapting them but not necessarily making them work nicely as an hour of television. Sometimes it’s easy to watch an episode of Game of Thrones and largely enjoy it, but if I were to say “Hey, remember that one scene with Sam?” You might scratch your head and go, “Oh yea. I totally forgot about that”.

Which sometimes means you may not even notice that certain characters are completely absent. Until I thought about it, I didn’t realize Dany was missing, nor Davos. It’s likely best they didn’t appear though because this episode couldn’t help but feel like it was less of an episode of television and just a lot of mostly really cool things that just happened to all have been mashed together with some semblance of relationship.

Sometimes the episode nailed creating the necessary connections to make these disparate events have cohesion. Watch Catelynn sadly mourn her treatment of Jon only for a perfectly chosen cut to Jon being schooled by Mance Rayder about the nature of the wildling army. Then watch as warg Orell (Mackenzie Crook) describes the destruction at the Fist of the First Man and then how we pop in on an exhausted Sam collapsing. These connections worked so well that these series of scenes flow one into the next despite their large distances from eachother. Elsewhere though this doesn’t occur and it begins to weigh on the episode.   

   

“Dark Wings, Dark Words” largely functions as Season Premiere Part Two: Revenge of the Missing Characters. There are so many major characters by this point in the series that the show is forced to spend much of this episode reintroducing us to a number of characters we still had yet to see until now.  Many of them are very welcome sights to see, but because it’s so many characters previously without storylines developed, the episode feels like it’s backtracking to catch us up on the situations of these previously absent characters. It ultimately gives the episode a feeling of being stuck in second gear, even if things do feel like they move forward as a whole much more. The series tends to be a slow build that doesn’t truly kick into high gear until halfway in a season so it's easy to forgive this slow going. But even by standards of moving pieces around, this feels like a fair amount of tablesetting. 

The episode mainly has two problems. It’s, like I said before, an episode that’s partially reintroducing characters, but it’s also an episode that’s reminding us of certain characters’ existences. The latter storylines really do come off as merely reminders. For instance, Sam and Jon get only one scene each. And while I like Tyrion and his relationship with Shae, this can't help but seem like the writers trying to shoehorn a popular character in when he really doesn't have much to do this episode. Other returning stories do, however, get pushed forward though, such as Margaery and Sansa (more on that later). Meanwhile, some of the choices for the characters who we didn’t see last episode feel somewhat arbitrary; we probably could have seen Arya, Bran or Jaime and Brienne last episode if it weren’t for time constraints. 

And some of these stories just have elements that are awkwardly handled. We have even more new characters! It’s a buy one character get another free sale here on Game of Thrones. Those two youngins who’ve joined up with Bran are the Reeds. They should have been introduced last season but the writers chose to push back their appearance until this season. In some ways, that wasn’t a half-bad decision. Season two already was feeling overstuffed and the Reeds don’t start to play a really significant role until events that will soon be taking place, and it’s nice to finally have somebody explain these dreams Bran is having rather than it being vaguely answered away as magic! But damn if Jojen and Meera don’t seem to come out of nowhere. I enjoyed the performances of Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Ellie Kendrick, and they immediately inhabit these roles in a way where they quickly feel as if they’ve always been there. But overall it’s another example of the show stuck with a character or plot occurrence and the writers finding it difficult to translate it to the new medium.  

The show always feels strongest when it’s at King’s Landing. This is the core of the show and it’s where the political machinations at the heart of the series reside. Characters don’t come off as if they’re just moving from point A to point B on the map.  Being stuck in one location actually proves to be fruitful. These characters can’t exactly run from their problems and so they’re forced to confront them. They’re goal isn’t getting to the Wall or to Riverrun; instead, they’re forced to deal with whatever inescapable human drama is currently taking place in the capitol. 

Which leads me to my next point: can we stop and admire the Tyrells? Because, man, oh man, are they ever the group of badasses. We already had hints of Margaery’s skill at manipulating circumstances to her benefit, and she continues to excel at this; after a bit of useful information is extracted from Sansa (more on that in a second), she plays Joffrey to a tee. Joffrey is a boy pretending to be a man; yes, he’s an awful, awful person, but he’s one easily duped by sweetly cooing Margaery who is a clever, clever girl and feigns praise and plays into Joffrey’s weird sadistic tendencies. I’m assuming she learned this cleverness from her grandmother because Olenna (played exceedingly well by Diana Rigg) is wonderful; she’s, for one thing, damn funny. But she also cuts through the bullshit and sees things exactly as they are. Olenna coaxes a fearful Sansa (Sophie Turner makes this fear palpable) for the true nature of Joffrey (“He’s a monster”). 

It’s not as if all the elements outside of King’s landing are without merit. Jaimie and Brienne are a winning pair and their odd couple relationship is very fun to watch. Maisie Williams is just Maisie Williams and so she’s so damn enthusiastic and passionate about playing Arya that it’s hard not to be pleased she’s back even if this isn’t the strongest bit of story the series has given her to date (although, the Hound crosses paths with her in problematic fashion so that’s a plus!). But the Robb-Catelynn material is skipping a few steps in storytelling as it tries too quickly to get these characters where they need to be. Similarly, I like Mance’s explanation of the precariousness of the wildling militia and their motivations (the whites, of course), but it feels like just an excuse to stop in with Jon. 

My review could without question go on much, much longer, but I’m already way past a thousand words and I promised to cut these down. This is a step down from last week’s episode; there are too many stories for this episode to function as a standalone effort. For instance, not enough has been done with Brienne and Jaimie to justify the ending (as solid of an ending as it may be). I wish we could have gotten a few more scenes there. But I wish that of a lot of these stories, and there are still characters missing because it’s jam packed in the first place. These stories all are mostly very disconnected, despite being mostly good in and of themselves. 

Stray Observations:

-Isaac Hempstead-Wright (aka Bran) is starting to hit puberty from the looks of it.

-HODOR! I don’t have anything to add except Hodor.

-Cersei’s control issues continue in abundance. She can’t win over Joffrey, no matter how hard she tries. It’s rather fun to watch Cersei lose control. Lena Headly plays this side of the character really well. It helps that we get such terribly offensive lines from Joffrey as: “Intelligent women do what they’re told”. Cersei’s story is one of a woman trying to be something that the medieval world of Westeros just isn’t accepting of. Like Arya and Brienne, she’s a female trying to do “mannish” things and getting backlash for it.  

-Sansa and Shae’s relationship felt forced in the second season (like simply something for the characters to do), but it’s quickly become a relationship that works really well. These are two women in very tricky positions that could turn bad quick if they’re not careful.

-Worst Introduced Character of the Week: Lord Karstark. Perhaps he was introduced last episode, but heck, I didn’t pick up on it if that was the case. All you need to know is that he isn’t all that pleased with Robb’s marriage. Also, Robb left Roose Bolton at Harenhal and Bolton's men were the people who ran into Jaimie and Brienne at episode's end.

-If you’re not quite sure what’s going on with Sam, don’t worry, he’s being taken in the direction he needs to be taken in. Same goes for Jon. (At least: fingers crossed)

-Brienne and Jaimie’s swordfight was really well done. Nice to see two of the series best fighters come to blows.

-Riverrun, for those unclear, is the Riverlands equivalent of Winterfell and the birthplace of Catelynn. They’re going there because her father died, but also because they no longer have Winterfell to go to and they need more troops.

-“Men only want one thing from a pretty girl” – Shae’s got the right of this. Littlefinger doesn’t do things willy-nilly.

-Catelynn learning of the “death” of Bran and Rickon is chilling. The series is very good at making little pieces of unknown information lead to devastating consequences.
-Where in Seven Hells is Varys?
-Arya's efforts to leave the Brotherhood Without Banners are thwarted by the Hound recognizing her.
-Ser Barristan Selmy's reveal last week can't help but feel slightly pointless since there's no Dany in this episode.
-If Theon's story is confusing that largely stems from the fact that (minor spoilers) he doesn't have chapters in the book being adapted and so the writers are fabricating events. They're also withholding certain information and skipping a few story beats, but we'll see where they take this.

Grade: B