Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: B+ | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Hodor!
By Monty Ashley | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 05.08.2011
Snow and Samwell clean the tables. Sam mopes about how the lords are going down to the whorehouse while they have to be celibate. Snow seems to find it surprising that a nerd like Sam would care about the ladies, but Sam answers, "Why not? Because I'm fat? I like girls just as much as you do! They might not like me as much." Snow, like Sam, has not had a woman. He came close once. Red hair. I wonder if it was Rose from the whorehouse. Sam asks why he's never had a woman. Jon explains that his surname is "Snow" because he's a Bastard from the north. Sam already understood that, but some of this is for the audience. His father never told him his mother's name, whether she's a noblewoman or a fisherman's wife or a whore. "So I sat there in the brothel while Rose took off her clothes." But he was worried about Rose becoming pregnant. Sam's interpretation of that is, "So...you didn't know where to put it!" They tussle and Thorne comes in to keep them from having any fun, ever. He's got a story about the winter, which was ten years ago or so. And it's even colder north of the wall, where wildlings hide in caves and you get frostbite if you take your gloves off for a second. It's a lot like that old lady's story to Bran, actually, although he leaves out the giant spiders. He segues into a specific story in which his party had to eat their horses, then each other. "We should have had a couple of boys like you along, shouldn't we? Soft, fat boys like you. We'd have lasted a fortnight on you and still had bones left over for soup." The training period is almost over, and everyone's going to get their assignments for the rest of their lives. "And he will call you Men of the Night's Watch. But you'd be fools to believe it. You're boys still. And come the winter, you will die. Like flies." This guy's a real ray of sunshine, isn't he?
Daenerys freaks out at Jorah about having finally stood up to Viserys: "I hit him. I hit the dragon." Jorah is unimpressed with that and says, "Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon." One thing this show requires is the ability to believe people when they describe the previous generation. Like, Rhaegar Targaryen is constantly being described as a mighty warrior, but the only Targaryens we know are these two skinny pale weirdoes. I don't think Viserys could even pick up that giant sword that Lord Stark used in the first episode. Jorah appears to agree with me, asking Daenerys, "Do you want to see your brother sitting on the Iron Throne?" Daenerys points out that she's been told the common people have been praying for his return, but Jorah thinks that's silly: "The common people pray for rain, health, and summer that never ends." Daenerys admits, "My brother will never take back the seven kingdoms. He couldn't lead an army even if my husband gave him one. He'll never take us home." I agree. That's too bad, because I think it would be fun to see Viserys actually try to command a tribe of mighty warriors.