Game of Thrones “The Climb”

This season of Game of Thrones has been epic.  The third book is my favorite so far, as with many people I talk to on the issue, and the show is standing up to the material.  While the season has been epic I don’t expect every episode will be epic, some will obviously fall to being a set-up for the better episodes. This week’s episode falls into the latter category, a space filler.  That’s not to say it was a bad episode.  With Game of Thrones even the weak episodes are good, but compared to its predecessors, and what I know is coming, nothing really happened this week.

Two scenes made this episode in my mind, the wildlings climbing the wall and the torture of Theon Greyjoy. 

I’m finding Theon’s story especially interesting because I haven’t gotten that far in the books yet.  I think this is something that happens in the fifth book, I’m not sure, but I’m experiencing one of these stories for the first time since the sixth episode of season one and it’s exhilarating.  The climbing of The Wall is an interesting case because if I remember correctly from the books it was told almost in passing, but they played the scene up in the show which I think was really effective.

But, that’s pretty much all that happened.  The drama of who is marrying who is carried on although no further information is given, just discussed.  We learn that the Tyrell’s really don’t agree with it, but Tywin is forcing their hand, which is no surprise really.  Cercei and Tyrion discuss their displeasure with their marriage assignments.  The only new information revealed in that scene was that Jofferey ordered the murder of Tyrion during the battle, no Cercei.  This could come as a surprise, I guess.

The end of the episode was mildly interesting.  Petyr and Varys discuss the reality of the realm.  Petyr argues that the realm is a lie, just as religion or love, all illusions made to protect us from chaos, but chaos is a ladder and all that matters is the climb.  It’s a beautiful speech.  Maybe a little melo-dramatic and a little hard to follow on the first listen, I personally had to rewind and have a second go to pick up on what he was saying, but Petyr does use chaos to his advantage and I believe he could be one of the most dangerous players in the Game of Thrones, even though he hasn’t shown his hand…yet.