Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: A- | 9 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT You Need Me on That Wall!
By Monty Ashley | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 05.01.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Lord Stark arrives at King's Landing and immediately starts hating his job. Things look up a bit when he finds out that Lady Stark followed him, then they look down again when it turns out that the dagger held by Bran's attempted assassin was last owned by Tyrion Lannister. So she has to leave again. That leaves him to deal with Arya, who has decided she hates everyone, especially her sister Sansa. So he naturally sets her up with a fencing class, because if she's going to have daydreams about stabbing everyone, she might as well be good at it. He might be planning on having her stab some of the people he has to work with now.
Up at the Wall, Jon Snow doesn't like any of his new coworkers either, since they're all terrible at fighting and seem resentful when he breaks their noses while training. Tyrion, who already holds everyone in contempt anyway, breaks it to Snow that not everyone gets to grow up in a big castle with a personal combat instructor. So Snow starts getting along with people and even seems to like Tyrion now. Tyrion achieves his goals of urinating off the edge of the Wall and getting under everyone's skin, so he heads back south.
Out east, Daenerys has started to realize that she's the queen of a giant horde of bad-ass killers and her brother is just some dude with a bad temper. So she takes a little less guff from him. Also, she's pregnant, which means she wants to eat goat, not horse.
There's also a dollop of backstory about exactly how Jaime Lannister killed the last king. Answer: he stabbed him in the back. Heroic!
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!This week, according to the credits, we will be visiting King's Landing, Winterfell, the Wall, and Vaes Dothrak. Just like last week. I was imagining a lot more travel, so that the map would constantly be showing different locations. Maybe it's a slow build-up. Incidentally, some people have asked why each location is built up via some sort of clockwork apparatus, so here's my theory: the clockwork represents determinism. I'd elaborate on that, but it's not going to start making more sense if I explain my thought process. So let's just get through these credits together and get on with some Throne-Gaming.
The royal procession arrives at a place that I can only assume is King's Landing. I mean, that's where it was going, so it's not a huge stretch. Plus, it's not any of those other places from the credits. Now that we get some exteriors, it has kind of a Middle Eastern feel to it, if that makes sense. Lord Stark dismounts from his horse and is immediately told that someone named Pycelle has called a meeting. For the record, Pycelle's full title is "Grand Maester Pycelle," which suggests that he has a side project as frontman of an old-school rap group. Jory is told to go with the girls. This confused me for a second, because I was thinking of a character named "Ser Jory" from the video game Dragon Age. This Jory is probably also a "Ser," come to think of it. That's completely different from "Sir," because it means that this is a different world. Lord Stark has the opportunity to change into something more appropriate for a council meeting, but he doesn't understand the concept. Because he's a dusty, battle-hardened man of action. He's also someone who can ride all day for months and get right to work, I guess.
Ned walks into an enormous throne room, which I can identify by the big throne up there. It's just that kind of insight that brings you here, right? Show me a room with a throne, and BAM! The computer that lives in my brain just spits the name "throne room" out. It's a gift. The throne, in case you haven't seen it in all the advertising, is made of a lot of swords welded together. It doesn't look comfortable. Or even safe. I wonder when they decided to build it? I mean, you can't just stick two swords together and call it a throne, so they must have had a pretty big pile somewhere. Then the old throne collapses, and they're looking around for something to make an impressive chair out of, and the blacksmith says that he's applied for a public art grant, and then you get a throne? And then when new swords show up, someone just sticks them onto the back or something. That's my theory.