Game of Thrones “Kissed by Fire”

I’ve been waiting for this day all week.  Game of Thrones is my favorite show on television, with Walking Dead at a close second, and is the only reason I will agree to pay for HBO.  This week’s episode wasn’t as amazing as last week, but comparing yourself to Daenerys’ destruction of Astapor is always going to be tough.

The third of George R.R. Martin’s book is fantastic.  “A Storm of Swords” is filled to the brim with awe inspiring moments so I was excited to delve into this season and see how my imagination compares to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’.  I’m going to warn you now that I’ve worked all day and am very tired with a long day ahead of me tomorrow so I’m going to jump right into SPOILERS.  Without warning.  Because I’m unpredictable…and tired.

One of the most shocking moments of the book was the trial by battle between Beric Dondarrion and Sandor Clegane.   I mean seriously, who saw Beric coming back from the dead?  Nobody, that’s who.  I was reading along and all of a sudden he gets a sword slicing through his shoulder, arterial spray everywhere.  He’s a goner.  Then, he’s alive.  When I was reading the book I had to go back a few paragraphs to make sure I’d read everything correctly.  The guy gets a mortal wound and just comes back and it is awesome.  Last week they left this story before the fight which drove me crazy, but I was excited for this episode to roll around so I could finally see this battle come to life.  The best part of the fight is Beric lighting his sword on fire, which is visually really F-ing cool, just so you know.  The choreography was fantastic and the battle got even more epic than it was in the book.  The only problem I had with this scene was the directing.  The fight was almost incomprehensible.  Maybe he was trying to convey the chaos of battle, but it doesn’t apply in this fight.  These are seasoned warriors, I want to be in their shoes while they fight, which means there isn’t chaos, but strategy.  There were some really cool moments in the fight, like when Beric Dondarrion lifts the fire sword up in a striking position during a respite in battle.  That was a visual feast, but then they start fighting and you don’t know exactly what’s happening again. 

A weak scene for me was the bath scene between Jaime and Brienne.  Well, I guess I can’t say that exactly.  Jaime’s monologue was fantastic.  I’m pretty sure the camera didn’t cut away for a good two minutes, but he was so captivating in his telling of the slaying of King Aeris that I didn’t even notice.  What happened next might be described as the worst faint ever, and that kind of ruined it for me, but the scene as a whole was good.

The best scene in the episode was the meeting between Tyrion, Tywin, and Cersei.  The camera work was phenomenal, which one would think would be easy in a dialogue scene, but I thought the decision to slowly dolly in during certain parts of the scene was very effective.  Plus, Charles Dance’s performance was superb. 

Is this the best episode in the season?  No, but in this episode’s defense what has happened and what is about to happen are too great.  This episode is setting up what is to come and cannot possibly be as good as the last episode will be.  I can’t wait.