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Had a feeling when Cersei told Tywin the truth about her and Jaime, and stood up to him against her marriage to the Rose Prince. Whether she will admit it or not, I'm sure she got her resolve from watching Tyrion stand up against his father at the trial.
Tywin's days were numbered when his fearful children started to not fear him any more. Dying at the hands of Tyrion was just desserts. The father who resented him, who took part in framing him for a murder he did not commit, would be murdered by his very son. The ultimate act of usurping his power. Killing him at his most undignified.
What bugged me: WHY couldn't Brienne give Arya the breaded wolf? They were this close. Augh!!
Random thoughts: Ned Stark's brother from the Night Watch, he's still out there? Unaccounted for, right?
I ship Brienne and Jaime so hard. I hope they happen.
Wow. Some things were predictable, some things were just pretty crazy.
- Brienne and the Hound. OMFG. And I actually was scared to see either die. I don't know if the Hound is gonna survive, but boy that was one nutty cage match.
- Arya is going to Bravos as I suspected, and she never did find Sansa.
- Stannis looks a bit more regal with a real army. And that brief skirmish was much more impressive than blackwater. Will I actually have to be impressed with this guy, after four seasons of him being a whiny loser?
- Cersei, sweet Cersie. Finally. You still frustrate me, but ... finally I cared about you and was proud of you. This was one of your shining moments. And finally we see what a dumbstruck Tywin looks like; the cognitive dissonance left him stuck in a timeless loop, his brain actually stopped functioning because he was in denial.
- Did Jaime kiss Tyrion when they were hugging? I teared up.
- Jon Snow, still noble. And he cried when he committed Ygritte to the flames. He loved her. But what happened to Thorne?
- Bran -- you finally made it to the tree. And this time you and Hodor felt like a team, rather than you just grabbing him. But it's a shame about Jojen; at least he knew it was coming and had made peace with it. Great TV effects with the skeletons.
- Dani... your idealism has led you this far, and now you're realizing all the practical issues of what it means to liberate a people. And .... those dragons you are so proud of as momma? How do you ground a dragon for being bad? The Breaker of Chains now finds a use for them. Life is so much more complex than it was just a year ago, and every day is an education.
- The Mountain. Die already, okay? No electrodes in the neck from Dr. Frankenstein here.
- And Tyrion. WTF. Every time you've been hurt, you still manage to get hurt worse the next time. When will the pain end? That final shot of you and Shae was almost unbearable to look at.
- Tywin. Is he finished? But how deserving. It was worth it to hear him say that he admired Tyrion for managing to escape death, over and over -- that his son is a survivor, worthy of being a Lannister, and how it almost made him proud...until his stupid arrogant fool mouth kept running. And I love Tyrion anchoring things when Tywin tried to disown him -- no, he is still Tywin's son, for every and all ways... but yet he's still going to kill him for everything he's done. If he couldn't kill everyone he yelled at during his trial, at least he prioritized well. And oh, does everyone realize this episode aired on Father's Day, and that it's every son's job to vex (or, on occasion, kill and supplant) his father? What a Father's Day for Lord Tywin Lannister: All *three* of his children finally defy him openly, and the one who inadvertently caused the death of his wife finally kills him on the shitter.... adding insult to injury. I'll miss Charles Dance, though; he was SO good in this role.
- I am guessing that Varys heard the bells toll, realized that Tywin was dead, and also realized that his time in the capital now was over and it was best he got out of Dodge? Tyrion and Arya are not the only survivors out there; Varys is another.
From the interview with the showrunners:
'...Tywin isn’t torturing prostitutes for pleasure. He’s not a sadist. He’s ruthless, for sure. But there’s an argument to be made that Westeros needs ruthlessness. You look at Daenerys across the sea — she’s crucifying 163 masters; she’s pretty ruthless, too. So you love Daenerys even when she’s killing people and condemn Tywin. I think somebody asked Charles about that in an interview and he was quite resistant to the idea of Tywin as a villain. I think Dan’s right. I don’t think of him as evil.
Weiss: I would call him Lawful Neutral.
Benioff: You had to get one good D&D joke in there…"
To be honest, my mind was more blown by the Mountain/Viper fight.
Here, pretty much all of it (except for maybe the scene with everyone's favorite ... lady of the night) was kinda predictable or at least made sense even if not specifically anticipated.
I find Tywin's power of denial amazing... to the degree he couldn't even really realize -- after all of Tyrion's responses -- what things he should and should not say and what would truly set Tyrion off.
I would also call Tywin a dick for sleeping with Shae.... except I honestly believe Tywin didn't do it to hurt Tyrion per se, he really just saw Shae as a whore and so if he saw her as a whore, Tyrion should as well. He is the ultimate schemer and organizer, in terms of expecting the world to fall into line with his own perceptions; anyone with a bit of empathy/openness to ultimate views would have realized that Tyrion really loved Shae and how devastating it would have been not to just have turned Shae against him but also to be fucking her in his own bed. Wasn't that the same room Tyrion was in, as Hand? That he and Shae had slept in? Tywin essentially defiled that relationship about as much as humanly possible.
I also didn't buy that bullshit line where Tywin said he never planned to actually execute Tyrion. I guess if he found it more convenient to not execute him, he wouldn't have; but Tyrion himself meant nothing to him.
I like how they take moments where we might be tempted to relish (like Tyrion and Arya getting revenge) and make it so bitter sweet. The undermining of audience (emotional and narrative) expectation over and over again in this series is so brilliant. I read an observation that the show (and the books) basically subverts traditional fairy tales and even storytelling in general by killing off hero archetypes and the related sentimental and moralistic tropes. Good people die for nothing. True love ends in misery. Revenge is dissatisfying. Evil goes unpunished. Righteousness is elusive. Life is brutal. And yet it never feels like they're being deliberately contrary to mess with us. It feels like a harsh dose of reality and complexity, which elevates the story and makes it much more engaging.
Did anyone else watch the fight between The Hound and Brienne and feel rather conflicted about who you wanted to win?
Did you guys like the look on Arya's face when the Hound was talking to her there, and trying to goad her to do something for him? (and boy, he pulled out the stops, even making stuff up.)
Reading online to the barest degree possible, I see that the book community apparently is arguing about whether Benjen is alive, dead, living dead, or some other permutation.
I wonder what happened to the guy that's walking around with Ned Stark's bones. Nobody knows what he's up to.
That fight didn't happen in the books. It was smart for the show to use it to succinctly wrap up some loose ends, but if that fight had happened in the books, I think the Hound wins 7 out of 10 times.
A well choreographed fight though. The second half of this season has done much better with the one on one fight choreography that I was bitching about earlier in this thread.
The show is kind of on a girl power kick, so I can see why they threw that fight in there and had it play out the way it did.
The whole time I was thinking "please let this be a draw that ends with them having begrudging respect for each other." It was a pipe dream and I knew it at the time but I didn't want either one of them to die.
The whole time I was thinking "please let this be a draw that ends with them having begrudging respect for each other." It was a pipe dream and I knew it at the time but I didn't want either one of them to die.
Mmhm. I like the Hound, and I love Brienne. Her and Pod are awesome together!
I refuse to believe that the Hound is dead. If the Moutain is being turned into Frankenstein's monster in the Maester's laboratory, then the Hound cannot be dead. The Mountain is Hound's kill. The Hound will die, but not before taking out the Mountain.
Did you guys like the look on Arya's face when the Hound was talking to her there, and trying to goad her to do something for him? (and boy, he pulled out the stops, even making stuff up.)
That fight didn't happen in the books. It was smart for the show to use it to succinctly wrap up some loose ends, but if that fight had happened in the books, I think the Hound wins 7 out of 10 times.
That was more my expectation.
And that is not knocking on Brienne at all.
There are small things that would simply give the Hound an edge in a true free-for-all.
It looked to me like this fight could have gone either way.
In the end, it was decided by geography IMO.
So it wasn't decisive.
Another match-up could bring (easily) different results.
Mmhm. I like the Hound, and I love Brienne. Her and Pod are awesome together!
I refuse to believe that the Hound is dead. If the Moutain is being turned into Frankenstein's monster in the Maester's laboratory, then the Hound cannot be dead. The Mountain is Hound's kill. The Hound will die, but not before taking out the Mountain.
The whole time I was thinking "please let this be a draw that ends with them having begrudging respect for each other." It was a pipe dream and I knew it at the time but I didn't want either one of them to die.
That was more my expectation.
And that is not knocking on Brienne at all.
There are small things that would simply give the Hound an edge in a true free-for-all.
It looked to me like this fight could have gone either way.
In the end, it was decided by geography IMO.
So it wasn't decisive.
Another match-up could bring (easily) different results.
Does it say that in the book?
In the show they kept it ambiguous, which I liked.
Oh yea, that's not to take anything away from Brienne, she's probably in the top 1% of fighters in the realm. And she was able to beat (a substantially weakened and chained) Jaime, but the Hound is on another level and is a massive human. Now I would put a healthy two handed Jaime against the Hound and call it a coin flip because Jaime's faster and has better technique (and is widely regarded as one of the best swordsmen currently living), but the Hound is still one of the stoutest opponents in the realm. He took on five guys single handedly in the bar fight earlier in the season if you remember.
In this case, the hounds size would neutralize Brienne's size advantage she holds over many men. But either way the fight was convincingly shot and I don't really have any complaints.
In this case, the hounds size would neutralize Brienne's size advantage she holds over many men. But either way the fight was convincingly shot and I don't really have any complaints.
As a side note, that "Foreshadowing Season 4" vid I posted a few days ago, at the marker I noted where I thought Gwendoline Christie as really funny -- turns out it was referring to this fight!
If you haven't watched her interview snippet, she was so excited that she could barely contain herself.
Did you guys like the look on Arya's face when the Hound was talking to her there, and trying to goad her to do something for him? (and boy, he pulled out the stops, even making stuff up.)
I loved their interaction. It was so poignant. The reluctant teacher and the reluctant student finally comes to a head, where the teacher becomes the student, and the student delivers the hard-learned lessons.
Arya taking the Hound's silver coins, as he took from that poor father who wanted the Hound's protection, and the Hound "teaching" Arya, the hard-knocks of life, "Dead men don't need silver." Brilliant! Arya is great at delivering the "just desserts", like she did with the Kingsmen she killed, where she repeated to him to words he said to her friend when he killed him. In order for him to recognize who she is, and that he's at HER mercy, like he had her friend. And she gave him, what he gave her friend. Death without mercy.
Arya walking away: (1) He is not her kill anymore, and she begrudgingly likes him, a little bit, (2) She will kill on her own terms, not because someone wants it/begging for it. Control. The Hound is finally left powerless, and Arya gains that power.
Yeah, I can't really see how the Hound could be dead either. If you don't see a clearly dead body it didn't happen. Even then sometimes it didn't happen (I thought Mountain was dead but apparently "they can rebuild him.")
Not to the best of my recollection. But the circumstances are different in the book so its kind of a mute point. It's just an educated guess of mine, but Arya grew attached to him in the time they spent together.