Have we all recovered from the shock of last week's turn of events? Have you been put off red wine and pie forever? As a fun curio, here's Jack Gleeson lecturing on celebrity culture at Oxford, dropping Baudrillard and Weber like nothing. Turns out Joffrey doesn't hate reading after all. I enjoyed all of the heated speculation in the comments last week, but, like I said, if you've read the books, don't spoil the fun! Tonight we find out what happened to Joffrey... Or do we? I honestly feel more confused than I did last week, but that's just the game, right? This episode, ' Breaker of Chains,' is directed once again by Alex Graves, and it picks up right where the last one left off...
King's Landing... on Joffrey's (Jack Gleeson) dead face. Savor it, Joffrey haters! (Now that Joffrey is gone, the most hated character on TV has got to be Fitz on 'Scandal,' right?) Cersei ( Lena Headey) stops screaming for Tyrion ( Peter Dinklage) to be taken to the gallows and starts screaming for Sansa ( Sophie Turner). But Sansa's been spirited away by Ser Dontos ( Tony Way) and now the city's on lockdown.
Dontos brings Sansa through the narrow streets to a rowboat and promises to bring her 'somewhere safe,' that somewhere being a ghost ship and right into the arms of Lord Baelish, aka Littlefinger, aka Mayor Carcetti ( Aiden Gillen). The King of Chaos is back, and of course he was behind this murder plot. He comforts Sansa, tells her to rest easy, that the worst is past. He offers Ser Dontos his compensation of ten thousand, which he pays in arrows directly to the poor fool's face.
Littlefinger very quickly communicates to Sansa a few things: 1. She looks totally suspicious having fled, and that was by his design, 2. He doesn't like drunk fools, sorry Dontos, and 3. The necklace was a RED HERRING. He crushes one of the stones of the precious Hollard necklace and says he had it made a few weeks ago. I think the necklace was a device to draw Sansa in and trust Dontos and make us all think there was poison in it. Crafty bastards. Baelish tells Sansa they are headed 'home,' and who even knows what that means.
Margaery ( Natalie Dormer) is moping in King's Landing with her grandmother Olenna ( Diana Rigg) lamenting her horrible luck with marrying kings. Olenna tells her to lay back on the issue of her queenly standing and also lets her know that husbands dying can be a good thing, mentioning her own dearly departed and remarks that 'your circumstances have improved markedly.' Yup, no doubt Margaery will hope that the third time's the charm, and will have to preserve the Lannister-Tyrell alliance with a 12 year old boy.
Yup, Joffrey's little bro Tommen ( Dean-Charles Chapman) has now been thrust into the spotlight as the next king in line. Here Tommen, look at your brother's dead body! Here Tommen, it's time for a pop quiz on being kingly from your grandpa Tywin ( Charles Dance). Tywin makes no bones about it, he tells Tommen straight off, in front of Cersei, while mourning over Joffrey's corpse, that Joffrey was a dumb and terrible king. Everyone seems stoked on the prospect of young, pliable, impressionable Tommen. Maybe Tywin orchestrated this whole thing! He does love to prank weddings.
While Tywin teaches Tommen about the birds and the bees, Jaime ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei have a moment along with their dead son. She beseeches him to avenge Joffrey's death by killing Tyrion, while Jaime claims he's their brother and they should just go through with the trial. They share a moment of grief for their dead boy and kiss passionately, but Cersei backs away (was it the cold, gold brush of his hand?). Jaime flies into a rage, angry at the gods for making him love a 'hateful woman,' and against her protestations, he shoves her on the ground and rapes her. Nothing like some incest rape during a wake, right, 'GoT'? God, this episode is dark.
Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) and Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) are up to their usual: group sex at Littlefinger's, where Oberyn canoodles with his blond man and tells him that not being bi means missing out on half the world's pleasure. And Oberyn will not miss out on any of it! Tywin barges in (can a man have some group sex without a Lannister barging in? I mean...) to talk about Joffrey's death and Tyrion's trial.
Turns out, Mr. Martell himself happens to be an expert in poisoning (that's not a real college major, bro), and with his professed desire to kill all Lannisters, Oberyn is looking like a prime suspect. But Tywin, brutal pragmatist that he is, isn't interested in justice, he's interested in alliances. He does not give a rat's ass if Oberyn poisoned his worthless grandson, he just wants Oberyn to be the third judge at Tyrion's trial. Tywin has thought about his circumstances: dead boy king, Greyjoys in revolt, army of Wildlings and dragons on either horizon. Tywin needs Dorne, badly, and he's willing to hand over The Mountain so that Oberyn can avenge his sister Elia's death. Tywin is pure evil, but he's practical evil.
Meanwhile, Podrick ( Daniel Portman) visits Tyrion in prison, smuggling in some snacks and writing implements. Tyrion asks about Shae (Sebil Kekilli) but we haven't heard anything about her. Podrick delivers him the deets on his trial and needs to get a list of names to be Tyrion's witnesses. Varys ( Conleth Hill) has been snatched up by Cersei, and Bronn ( Jerome Flynn) is banned from seeing Tyrion and under investigation, so Tyrion's only option is his brother Jaime. Podrick also tells Tyrion that Sansa has vanished into thin air. Tyrion's surprisingly clear-headed about the sitch. He rules out Sansa (doesn't have the will) and Cersei (wouldn't kill her son) as possible murderers and also makes the good point that if he murdered a king, he wouldn't be caught standing there holding the murder weapon. It also turns out that Podrick has also been approached and bribed with knighthood to say that Tyrion bought a poison. Tyrion knows that the other option for Pod is something very, very bad and he tells him to leave King's Landing. The two share a farewell that might be the saddest moment ever on this show for me. Best duo ever?
Another strong duo, Arya ( Near Fairmarket, I thinkMaisie Williams) and the Hound ( Rory McCann) are watering their horses in a random field on the road to Eyrie, where the Hound plans to sell Arya to her creepy aunt Lysa Arryn (the one who is probably STILL breastfeeding her kid). The Hound wants to go across the Narrow Sea to ply his trade, aka be a mercenary, and he needs that money, honey. But before Arya can convince him to take her with him, a farmer/master of the land comes upon them. Quick thinking Arya swiftly tells the farmer that her 'father' fought for the Tully family, and instantly they've got a dinner invite and a barn to sleep in. Hound seems skeptical, but DAT RABBIT STEW THO.
At dinner, the two chug hot stew while the Hound complains about the lack of ale. The farmer, a staunch Tully supporter, bemoans the Frey rule and the Red Wedding, and offers the Hound 'fair wages' to stay on and protect himself and his daughter and help around the farm. Arya seems shocked the Hound accepts the offer. Well of course, in the morning, she wakes to a scream: the Hound has bopped the farmer on the head and taken his silver. He knows the farmer is going to get raided soon and 'dead men don't need silver.' Arya, believer in justice, is horrified, but the Hound is another one of those brutal pragmatists who subscribes to the belief of The Way Things Are. She has no real choice but to run after him.
The WallThose brothers of the Night's Watch really need to get their shit together this week. Goddamn, dudes, make a decision. First of all, we have Samwell Tarly ( John Bradley-West) who is so worried that one of those women-starved Night's Watchmen will lay a finger on his precious Gilly ( Hannah Murray) that he ships the poor gal off to the closest tavern/brothel, a place that looks 20 times more terrifying and dangerous than the dank frat house that is The Wall. Gilly is pissed and calls out Sam, saying he's doing what's best for him, not her.
Just beyond the wall, a bucolic village is filled with happy, frolicking families. No good can come of this. And yup, down goes dad with an arrow to the throat courtesy of Ygritte ( Rose Leslie). The Wildlings and the scarred cannibal tribe of Thenn go to town on this poor village, axes and blood and ginger tresses flying like mad. Thenn leader Styr (Yuri Kolokolnikov) drags a boy out of hiding and wants him to do something: first he wants to show him his parents being hacked up, and then he wants him to go tell the Crows at Castle Black that he's going to eat them. What a terrible party invite.
At Castle Black, the dummies keep arguing about what to do, and Jon Snow ( Kit Harington) advises they stay and shore up The Wall instead of saving any bucolic villages because that's what they're supposed to do. Plans get messed up though when some buds come back to the fort after having been held hostage at Craster's. Whoops! Jon Snow told Mance Rayder ( Ciaran Hinds) that there's a thousand dudes at Castle Black, but once he tortures some people and finds out there's only a hundred, they are EFFED.
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