What’s the best way to get what you want in Westeros? Well, by taking out your enemies, naturally. Well, how do you identify your enemies when they’re hidden amongst the rubes and foils, the robes of the aristocratic, and the smirks and winks of the cunning? There’s no better way than to set a trap. Tyrion understands that if you want to find a backstabber, you better give them a pretty sharp knife.
In episode three titled “What Is Dead May Never Die,” we quickly begin to understand that the one who can adapt the fastest and the surest is the one who will survive.
We open back north of the wall where Jon Snow is getting his face bashed in for finding out about Craster’s dirty little habit of taking his son-grandsons and leaving them out for the White Walkers as sacrifice or appetizers, however you want to look at it. Not liking the fact that Jon has stumbled upon his deeds, Craster takes the matter up with the Lord Commander, basically saying, “Hey, if you don’t like the way I sacrifice my babies or the way I get down in my nutbust ramshack, then you better be on your way. Get out all you people who don’t bed your offspring and then murder the offspring of your offspring which is still your offspring! How dare you judge me and my putrid, molestation factory of warm crazy! Be gone with you!”
Lord Commander takes Jon to task for costing them a warm bed and the need for therapy for the next ten years. Jon attempts to prove that his following Craster was the right thing and explains what he saw Craster do out in the forest, but Lord Commander already knew about Craster’s predilections, and thought it was acceptable to look the other way since his hospitality is used for many a Nights Watch brigade, and they wanted to keep it that way. It’s kind of like saying, “We don’t judge the oddball, crazytown stuff these people do, because they serve a bigger purpose.” Jon is a bit mortified, but accepts that this is the way north of the wall. It’s sort of like Deliverance but with more snow, more women, but equal the hygiene. In attempting to make up for leaving Craster daughter-wife, Gilly, with her rapist, Samwise Gamgeecloak gives her a thimble that says, “Sam + Gilly = Forevah”, and we want to tell Sam to “Save it” since there’s nothing that can or will be done about Craster’s Little Shop of Horrors. Time to roll the dice once again with OK Cupid.
Finally, after stomping around with Stannis and the red witch of the beach, Milesandre, for the last two episodes we get to see what his brother Renly’s been up to. And hoo-boy is he putting on a little show of his own. He sits on a thrown wearing a crown of deer antlers, because, sure, why not, with his new wife, Margaery Tyrell, played by heaving boobicles, Natalie Dormer of Showtime’s The Tudors fame. He watches a knight’s fighting competition as if he were Joffrey The Little Shit, and rules over some sort of fishing village, or seaside town in Nantucket. It seems the best game in all of Westeros Nantucket is to watch the kingsguard put on their best Renaissance Fair action and go for it. In this round there’s Loras, Margery’s brother and super, secret sex companion for Renly, and an unknown competitor which turns out to be Brienne of Tarth, some sort of seven foot tall warrior-woman who makes Loras look like a newborn fawn wielding a sword. She defeats him and is granted a position with the kingsguard which is so shocking because ladies don’t do the killin. They make heirs, they marry well, and maybe they have crazy sons who breastfeed until their late teens — but fight in the guard? Bah, no, never.
Later we’ll find that this makes Loras very upset. Very upset indeed.
Catelyn Stark has been sent by son Robb to forge an allegiance with Renly. She basically strolls in, rolls her eyes at Renly’s little fishing village Olympics, calls him out for playing while her son is out there fighting, and basically scoffs at Renly’s pledge of killing Idiot King Joffrey Little Shit. We get the notion she’s kind of like, “If you’re sitting here playing king, how will I trust that you will actually slay the fraud-king down in King’s Landing.” Remember, Renly took off right after Robert died and when word came that Ned would be killed, not wanting to raise a sword. Before Catelyn can really plead her case, Renly, probably in a fit of embarrassment sends her to a tent to be dealt with later.
As night falls in Renly’s camp, Loras didn’t take kindly to Renly’s granting Brienne a member of the kingsguard and tells Renly so in an intimate moment wherein the two share a bed. Like any rebuffed lover, Loras won’t let Renly off the hook so easily. He decides to end their night of passion, and sends in his sister to Renly’s unease. She comes in, ready to please, but yeah, Renly isn’t really interested in her, er, gifts. Without missing a beat Margery asks if he’d like her brother to come back in to get him started, or if she should just “back that thing up” as if she were Loras. Cunning and wily, that one. Renly attempts to be shocked that she would insinuate such a thing, and Margery pish-poshes his mock outrage, and says, “Whatever you need to do buddy to get an heir going in my lady-womb.”
Meanwhile Catelyn’s other son, Brann, is having visions. We kind of knew this from the raven with the third eye, but now it seems he can see through the eyes of his direwolf, maybe? His keeper, Maester Luwin, doesn’t believe it’s real. You see, he once thought he would be a great wizard, but once realizing he was destined to be a geriatric babysitter in a bathrobe, well, he got rid of that notion pretty quick. “The dragons are gone. The giants are dead,” Luwin says. Yeah, whatever, Mr. Pajamas in the daytime.
Now that the Starks of Winterfell are making such a mark, we’re back visiting with Theon Greyjoy, and his father, Ebenezer Scrooge, ye of the grey castle in Pyke. The elder Greyjoy is thrilled that Robb Stark is fighting the Lannisters, because this means he’s left Winterfell and the rest of the North unattended. He plans on going up there with the help of daughter, and Theon tease, Yara, who he’ll give thirty ships to Theon’s just one called “The Sea Bitch” of all things comical. We knew that Theon would need to make a decision. Would that decision be to align with Robb and the Stark family who’ve treated him well, a cousin even, or will he fall prey to wanting to appease the father who gave him away as a boy, and has since shunned him for having survived, and well, thrived amongst the Starks? Theon is weak. He always has been. He’s also an insecure boy. He’ll fall whichever way the authority figure in his life tells him, therefore it should come as no shock that he burns his letter to Robb telling him of his father’s plans, and solidifies the betrayal by pledging his allegiance to his namesake by joining his father’s cause amid a ceremony wherein Theon is showered with salt water and slapped by some breaded cod fresh from the Gorton’s Fisherman’s box.
At King’s Landing things aren’t so peachy for the women who dwell there. Shae, Tyrion’s concubine, or girlfriend, or fish-pie waitress, is tired of being locked in his chambers. Well, two weeks ago, Shae, you liked the smell of excrement and man-berry juice in the streets, today you’re “over it” and want to go the mall? Well, okay. She doesn’t want to be a kitchen wench as Tyrion suggests, and well, we just don’t get the impression she can type worth a damn, so what is Tyrion to do? Aha. Sansa. Poor, betrothed, irritable Sansa. Well, she needs a handmaiden, we suppose. So, this is where Tyrion sends Shae. Sansa who found out earlier in a nice little, uncomfortable conversation with her captor’s mother that even if Joffrey grew the testicles to kill Robb, she’d still have to go forward and marry Joffrey. RIGHT, SANSA? RIGHT?! Sansa while looking like she swallowed a nest of stinkbugs confirms that is exactly what she’ll do. However, she doesn’t know what to do with Shae. She flips out when Shae approaches handmaidenery wrong. We’re sure this is just the stress talking. Regardless, Sansa, we like the strong formidable young lady, don’t get all petulant little girl on us.
Tyrion, who is still on a quest to find all backstabbers, betrayers, and those in the queen’s pocket, sets out to clean house once again. He tells Grand Maester Pycelle AKA Marley’s Ghost, Varys, AKA Perez Hilton of Westeros, and Littlefinger AKA That Name Speaks for Itself, three versions of the same plan: To marry off Myrcella, the queen’s other incestuous offspring, to strengthen their relationships with one of the Great Houses. He warns each of them “the queen must not know.” Tyrion sets the trap, and when Cersei goes off on him, he knows it has been sprung. Cersei relays one of the stories Tyrion told and ding, ding, it was Pycelle. Cersei, strangely has a tantrum about the possibility of Myrcella being wedded in a loveless marriage, like she and Robert, (Or Joffrey and Sansa) despite this is exactly what you do to form alliances, and what she was hoping to do with her own son. What did she think would happen, Myrcella would find love on her own, oh, because she’s been shown such a healthy example of what love is, yes?
Tyrion confronts Pycelle, who at the time was being pleasured by one of Littlefinger’s girls, yuck. He tries to act as if he wasn’t the culprit, then cops to it, then sputters into some random talk about doing the best for the kingdom. Ultimately he’s clipped of his goatee and thrown in the black cells. Tyrion also tips his prostitute double for what we can assume is the Pycelle yuck factor.
Lastly in this section we get the Varys and Tyrion discussion about the goings on in the castle and the roles that are adopted out of necessity. This is where Varys confirms that the small council is getting smaller, and that Tyrion has more power than was first acknowledged.
Before the episode ends, we meet up with Arya and Gendry traveling with Yoren of the Nights Watch. She can’t sleep as visions of witnessing her father’s death, and those who betrayed him, keep her awake. Yoren tells her of a story of getting revenge as the remedy for such concerns. Then suddenly an alarm sounds, Joffrey’s Kingsguard returns looking of Gendry. Yoren doesn’t go down without a fight and ends up cleaved while the rest of his charges are either killed or rounded up. “Needle” is taken from Arya who had no time to use it, and the guardsman who stole it kills a kid who was injured in the scuffle. He does so with sick satisfaction. After all are captured they are asked which of them is Gendry. Arya speaks up and points to the boy who was just killed and says that he’s the one. Gendry’s signature helmet is nearby so maybe they believe her.
What did you think? Is Tyrion getting in too deep? Was the answer Arya gave too convenient?
Here is a preview of next week’s episode.
As I’ve said in the past, this is a book-free space for Game of Thrones. We’re just talking about the television series, so please try and avoid book spoilers. Thanks!
Here’s a more detailed infographic of the houses.
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The Game of Thrones airs Sunday nights at 9pm on HBO.
