Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: A | 113 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Baby Dragons!
By Monty Ashley | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 06.19.2011
om Pycelle, Littlefinger, Varys, and that whole crowd. And he's encouraged to put a few heads up on pikes if he finds any traitors. Also, Tywin gives him strict instruction not to bring "that whore" to court. There are plenty of whores already in King's Landing, aren't there? Littlefinger's seen to that.Dany wakes up. Jorah, who has been watching over her, sheathes his sword. She immediately asks where her son is. Oh, right, because she was going into labor. Sure. I remember that! Jorah takes awhile to spit it out, but apparently the boy was stillborn. And the witch shows up to announce that he was both monstrous and twisted. He was scaled like a lizard and had bat wings! And the witch isn't particularly sympathetic, reminding Dany that she warned her that only death can pay for life. Okay, so Dany quite reasonably wants to see Drogo. "Show me what I bought with my son's life," she says. Now.
Outside, most of the khalasar is gone. That means that the army that was following Khal Drogo has given up and left, although there are still a handful of tents and a few followers there. Although I suspect they're motivated as much by morbid curiosity as by any sense of duty toward Drogo or Daenerys. Dany is led away from the remaining tents toward the cliff. Did we know they were on top of a cliff? Well, they are. And near the edge, Drogo is lying, immobile. Sort of staring into nothingness. Dany would like to know why Drogo was left out here, lying motionless in the brush, by himself. Apparently they decided he likes the warmth. So I guess he's technically alive. But he's completely unresponsive, so I'm not sure how they determined his alleged warmth-liking.
Anyway, the witch says that he'll be like this forever. Although she does it with a lot of flowery language along the lines of "When the sun sets in the east and rises in the west blah blah blah." Dany stands and tells Jorah to shove off and leave her with the witch so she can complain about her dead baby and comatose husband. The witch is surprisingly unsympathetic. She's still holding a grudge about the Dothraki burning her temple and angering the Great Shepherd. And she doesn't have a problem with Dany's son not growing up to be the Stallion Who Mounts the World, because that means he won't be the Stallion Who Burns Down the Temples. Dany is appalled at this lack of gratitude and reminds the witch that she saved her from being raped. But apparently she'd already been raped three times at that point, and that mound of heads was made up of all the people from her village. Also, she keeps bringing up her burnt temple. She's really got a thing about that. So even though Dany saved her life, Coma Drogo demonstrates that life alone is meaningless.
Jon Snow opens the doors at the Wall. But not the doors to the tunnel; these are the doors to the rest of the kingdom. He's had it with this place and is leaving. Sam warns him that they'll send ravens after him. Well, that doesn't sound that scary. Sure, they're smart, but I have to think Jon could fight off a raven or two. Oh, wait. They're going to send ravens to local cities and tell them to watch for him. And then, if I remember the first episode clearly, they'll chop his head off. Snow doesn't care, because he's got a plan. Step One, find Robb. Step Two, kill Joffrey. Sam refuses to move from in front of Snow's horse, so he gets knocked down when Snow rides out anyway. His dire wolf Ghost follows.
Tyrion is packing for his move to King's Landing. It's taking a surprisingly long time when you consider that he didn't have anything in the way of possessions when he came out of the Vale. I'm kind of surprised they had armor that fitted him. But be that as it may, he's got a lot of stuff now, which provides plenty of time for Shae to complain about not getting to go to King's Landing with him. She takes offense at being told that Tywin called her "that whore," but I can't imagine Tywin has the time to learn the names of all the whores around here. She kind of goes into a Joe Pesci thing: "I'm funny now. I'm Shae the funny whore." Tyrion whines a bit about his father, then he asks Shae to come with him and be the Hand's lady. "Because the king needs a hand and the hand..." "I know what the hand needs." More sex!
Snow rides through the woods, pursued by riders. They're right behind him! His sneaky midnight desertion is not going well so far, in my opinion. He ducks under a chest-high branch and one of the pursuers falls off his horse when he rides into it. It's Sam! And that means the other pursuers have to stop and help him up. You'd think that would stop the pursuit, but Snow rides back to help out. He's terrible at this. His desertion plan should have started with Step One-Half: Get away from the people trying to chase you. Snow hops down off his horse and tells the other men of the Night's Watch that he belongs with his brother. He means Robb, but Sam points out that they're his brothers now. He took an oath, and he can't leave. They surround him and say the vow at him. Public shaming is the answer to everything! It ends with "For this night and all nights to come." Sam picks up that fancy sword and hands it to Snow. He considers it.
Daenerys gives Drogo a sponge bath while she talks to him about their first ride. I'm going to be charitable and assume she's talking about actual horse-riding, not that time he raped her while she sobbed on their wedding night. She asks for a sign that he's still in there, but answer comes there none. ("But answer came there none" - The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll.) She tells him that he's a fighter and should fight now. You never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight! Fight! (Ed Harris in The Abyss, although to be honest, I'm quoting Mystery Science Theater 3000.) She begs him to come back to her. He doesn't appear to be doing so.
Later, I guess, she's near tears as she repeats the witch's words about the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, "Then you shall return to me, my sun and stars." She kisses his face. Then she slowly reaches over for a pillow and holds it down over his face. She sobs as she smothers him. The camera pulls out from the door of the tent.
Then the camera zooms into a door. We see an old, white-bearded man who says that the thing we need to know about kings is that in the past 67 years, he's known more kings than anyone. Oh, so this is what Grand Maester Pycelle looks like when he doesn't have his ceremonial robes and chain on. As he talks, there appears to be a naked lady in the bed next to him. Pycelle proceeds to deliver more backstory about how Aerys Targaryen was a good man and a charmer before he went crazy. Meanwhile, the naked lady turns out to be Ros, who's trying to add some visual flair to the scene by facing away from the camera and washing her nether regions. It has become increasingly clear that Ros's job on this show is to stand around and be attractively naked while people do exposition around her. Anyway, Pycelle says that Joffrey has a good military mind, and that sternness in the defense of the realm is no vice. She asks if he was going to get to something relevant about kings, but he seems to have forgotten what he was talking about. She lets herself out and Pycelle does some distressingly backlit squats. Then he puts his cloak and chain back on and totters out of the room. So that scene established, I guess, that Pycelle actually supports Joffrey. And that he's not quite as decrepit as he normally appears. And this is probably a suggestion about how Littlefinger gathers information, right?
Littlefinger and Varys have one of their discussions in front of the Iron Throne. Varys asks, when Littlefinger imagines being king, if the crown fits. And do people bow and simper? Apparently they do not, because Imaginary King Littlefinger has cut off everyone's heads. For his part, Varys denies wanting to be king. So Littlefinger returns to his favorite topic, which is needling Varys about being a eunuch. He asks if Varys has a gash where his testicles used to be. Then he goes on and on about the castration until Varys asks if he lies awake fearing his gash. He characterizes Littlefinger as a "grasper from a minor house with a major talent for befriending powerful men. And women." They'd probably spar like this all night, and be very entertaining while they did so, but Joff