Game of Thrones Recap: “Kissed by Fire”

What do men of honor do?

They get in the hot tub.

Last week: Jamie began to come to grips (hehehehe) with the loss of his hand, with the encouragement of Brienne. Theon is like, totally fucked, as he is being tortured daily. Varys and Lady Olenna arranged a new marriage for Sansa, much to her relief. Tyrion found out he will just have to wait to derail Cersei’s plans to kill or otherwise remove him. Joffrey and Cersei are both not in control of things, though only one knows it. Lord Tywin intends to lay down the law. The Night’s Watch appeared scattered after a fight with Craster that left both the old wilding and the Lord Commander dead or dying, with Sam on the run with Gilly. Sandor Clegane was sentenced to a trial by combat with Beric Dondarrion, and Arya will be there to watch it. Bran failed to improve his supernatural skills. Fucking Badass Daenerys Targaryen took down a city with three small dragons and 8000 eunuchs.

This week: In the Bat FireGodcave, Beric Dondarrion and Sandor Clegane battle with each other to determine if the Hound is in fact guilty of murder. After a scene in which pretty much everything in the freaking cave is lit on fire, including Dondarrion’s sword (kind of a dick move, IMHO), it turns out the Hound is innocent. The god says so! By allowing Sandor to cut Dondarrion nearly in half for saying otherwise. Arya is understandably upset about this, but is prevented from stabbing the Hound in the face while he’s down. And then, a miracle. Thoros mumbles something over the body of Beric Dondarrion, and he rises! Westerosi Jesus walks again.

Arya gets another hit; Gendry is staying with the Brotherhood as their smith. It’s hard out there for a dude who has no position, no power, and no protection. Arya at least has the first, and that is enough to set them apart. The friendship they have forged was not enough—for Gendry. My heart broke at the look on her face. After the Hound has been led away, Arya learns from Thoros of Myr that they intend to ransom her at Riverrun. Beric has been killed and revived six times, and has the scars to show it.

Oh, Jon. After saving him from getting stabbed or worse by his new wilding family while giving up the patrol and staffing information of the Night’s Watchmen that remain at the Wall, Ygritte finally makes him break his vow of abstinence. It’s as easy as peeling off 15 layers of fur and showing him her tatas. She tells him he knows nothing, but apparently he knows how to use that tongue. There is some hot tubbing hotter than any hot tubbing this site has seen or discussed before. Now that Ygritte has gotten some good bastard loving’, she doesn’t ever want to leave.

Delivered to Lord Bolton, Jamie and Brienne (who is crazy cute when she’s clean) are at least going to be treated like noble prisoners and not commoner prisoners. Jamie needs more of his arm cut away. Rather than have the rest of his arm taken to ensure that the necrosis doesn’t spread, he instead opts to have the rotten flesh cut away without any pain relievers by the de-chained maester, Qyburn. Manly. When he goes to the baths to soak off 15 layers of dirt, Brienne is already there taking off 15 layers of skin with a scrub brush. Jamie, being Jamie, ignores her desire for privacy while bathing and hops in the same pool. She quickly gets over her reluctance to show him everything when he insults her ability to keep Renly safe, standing up in the tub and giving him a good view. More importantly, Jamie actually gives her a sincere apology. It is then that Brienne learns why he failed to keep his oath. Given a choice between keeping his vows and watched a totally fucking gone monarch burn King’s Landing and the people who inhabited it to the ground with wildfire and breaking his vows by stabbing the Mad King in the back, he chose the latter. Nobody bothered to ask him why he did it. And after all that, Brienne still calls him “Kingslayer” when he collapses and she needs help.

Tyrion asks Lady Olenna to consider the cost of the royal wedding and tone it down a little. Lady Olenna is like, haha, like we haven’t contributed a whole long list of shit, including soldiers and food, for your war. But we’ll pay for half of it anyway because I’m super rich and I do what I want. BTW, figs help you go poop. Cersei asks Littlefinger to look into the Tyrells. So Littlefinger gets a gayly inclined squire to woo Loras into bed, and after waving his penis around in the bedroom for a few minutes he finds out that Loras is in fact betrothed to Sansa.

Littlefinger tells Cersei, but also lays on the charm thickly with Sansa, who is no longer so eager to leave King’s Landing. But Cersei tells Papa Lannister, who decides that Tyrion will be wed to Sansa before the Tyrells before they can announce the secret betrothal. Tyrion is horrified and Cersei is delighted, until Tywin wipes that fucking smirk off her face by telling her that she has to re-marry as well. Haha. You still don’t have a penis Cersei, which makes you as much as a disappointment to Tywin as Tyrion is.

Robb still struggles to be a king worthy of the respect of his bannermen. Lord Karstark and some men murder the two young Lannister captives being held at Riverrun. So Robb kills them back. After all his assistants were hanged by their necks until they were dead, Lord Karstark is beheaded by Robb, against the advice of like, everyone. And sure enough, all the Karstark men are gone the next day. But did he have a choice? Lord Karstark called him “the King Who Lost the North.” I mighta done some chopping myself. But Robb is now short half an army and without any potential allies, since everyone has already picked their side. But wait! Except for Lord Walder Frey, the prolific breeder and perverted old man with whom Robb had made a marriage pact in order to use his bridges to move his army. And then broken said marriage pact when he married Talisa.

The wife of Stannis Baratheon finally makes an appearance, and boy is she crazy. Selyse Baratheon seems to stay alone in a cave with her collection of preserved fetal pigs sons. Like really, there’s a bunch of fetuses in there. And she coos at them. Stannis tries to confess his infidelity to her, but oh, she’s best friends with Lady Melisandre, who has already told her. What’s more, she is alright with this because she is also a religious fanatic for the Red God, and “no act done in service of the Lord of Light can be a sin.” Cool.

It seems Stannis, like a good father, sees his disfigured daughter Shireen about once a year, which is how his wife wants it. Children are such pesky distractions. This time he stays for about two minutes, during which time he tells Shireen that her good friend Ser Davos is, quote, “rotting in a dungeon cell,” unquote, because he’s a traitor. On the one hand it’s obvious that he loves his daughter and just doesn’t know how to interact with her, but on the other hand, dude, it’s not that hard to know that that’s probably not the way to go about it. But this sends Shireen to the dungeons to talk to Davos. She brings him a book, which forces him to admit to her that he cannot read. She promises to teach him, over his protests. The worst they can do is put them in a dungeon. As Shireen starts telling him about Aegon [Targaryen] and his conquest of Westeros, we cut to Dany. Subtle.

Barristan and Jorah are trading war stories and discussing honor. “A man of honor keeps his vows,” even if he’s serving someone who is drunk or completely off their rocker. Poor Jamie. When the subject of their current boss comes up, Jorah gets territorial when Barristan says that his advice and support is more valuable than Jorah’s, because of the whole selling people into slavery thing. Barristan has been there all of like three days, but still, it’s a point.

Meanwhile, Daenerys tells her new officers that they should throw off their slave names, as the names they were given by the Masters were to remind them that they were vermin. New Unsullied leader Grey Worm (who could get it, from me, repeatedly), tells her that he’d prefer the name he had when he was freed by Dany to the one he had when he was enslaved. And that’s how you do it.

Please hold on to your book discussions until they can be hidden in replies. If those of you who haven’t read the book have questions, please do feel free to ask for clarifications on the show, or visit this GoT wiki, which is based on the show and not the books.

All screen captures taken by the author.