The Small Council: What’s your favorite odd couple character pairing?

Game of Thrones is full of odd couples the producers love to throw together: Jaime and Brienne, Arya and the Hound, Tyrion and Bronn…Which pairing is your favorite? And for bonus point, what pairings would you like to see in the future?

DAN: Game of Thrones works on many, many different levels, but sometimes I think it’s best approached as a two-person show. When the writers are on top of their game, they can make those one-on-one scenes really sing. Think about the scene where Cersei and Robert pick over the bones of their ruined marriage in Season 1, or the Jaime-Brienne bathtub confessional in Season 3, or this past season’s series of tense conversations between Tyrion and Daenerys. When the writing is solid and the actors are in the zone, these scenes are a treat.

Of the extended pairings the show is so fond of, I think Jaime and Brienne is my favorite, in part because their relationship doesn’t conform to many of our expectations regarding male-female pairings. For example, there was never any romantic tension between them, only hate and contempt that slowly turned into respect and friendship. When men and women are paired up in movies and on TV, the overwhelming expectation is that they’ll eventually become romantically involved, but that didn’t happen with these two, and I applaud George R.R. Martin for side-stepping that plotline and the producers for adapting it faithfully.

I also enjoy seeing how much these two bring out in each other. They’re both stigmatized by the people around them, Jaime because his murder of the Mad King has branded him dishonorable in a culture where honor counts for a lot, and Brienne because she’s taken up a traditionally male role in a society that has very strict ideas about a woman’s proper place. They’ve both built very high emotional walls to protect themselves from that stigmatization, and their shared misfortune allows them to see over each other’s walls and maybe tear them down a bit. Jaime got back in touch with his honor because he met Brienne, and Brienne found direction in her life because she met Jaime. There’s a purity to their relationship that’s very compelling.

Not that they can’t share the occasional quip, although I wouldn’t nominate them for comedy MVP pairing. As for who I’d like to get paired up in the future, I’m curious to see what Daenerys and Melisandre would make of each other. They can both be terribly intense—I’m not sure if they would become natural allies or try to blow each other away right then and there.

RAZOR: For me it’s all about the odd couple that was Tyrion and Jorah. At first, things weren’t going so well for T-dog…I mean, Ser Friendzone nabbed him in midstream, the most un-bro move a bro can make. Then, once J-Bear bludgeoned a man for his boat (no wonder everyone thinks you’re a dick, Jorah), he tossed Tyrion into said boat like a sack of moldy potatoes. Of course, the situation didn’t get much better for Tee Tee from there, because after he sang The Rains of Castamere while gagged, Jorah the Explorah denied our favorite lil’ alcoholic even the briefest of tastes. He’s a drunk, Jorah, he needs his medicine, YOU MONSTER!

It wasn’t until the two skallywags sailed the U.S.S. Pleasetakemebackkhaleesi through the mysterious and smoking ruins of Valyria that they began to slowly bond. It started with a lingering look at J-Bear’s nipples…on his breastplate, and then it blossomed into a deep respect for poetry. Who knew that Jorah Mormont knew any poetry? You just know he was that one kid in school who held you down and hocked a loogie over your face, letting it dangle inches from your nose before sucking it back up, only to do it all over again. I’m pretty sure Jorah only knows “Roses are red violets are blue, your mom is so fat, and so are you.” He’s the guy who gave endless purple nurples, swirlies, and atomic wedgies…yeah, Jorah was that kid.

Still though, much like any good redemption story, J-Bear rescued tiny Tyrion from a watery grave, then got Westeraids for his troubles. And on top of it all, Tyrion dropped the biggest bomb of all, when he told his new BFF that his pops had kicked rocks. Oh man, that look on Ser Alwaysfinishessecond’s face was priceless. The only thing that would have made that scene better is if Tyrion would have told Jorah that his dad gave his family’s sword to the bastard son of the man that banished him from Westeros. Imagine that conversation:

Tyrion: “Yeah so, umm…the Old Bear was betrayed by his men.”

Jorah: “Ruh?”

Tyrion: “Shit, my bad, bro. Thought you knew.”

Jorah: “Do you know what they did with his sword?”

Tyrion: “Errmm uh, it…it was lost…in the Snow.” *wink

Anyway, the adventures of Jorah and Tyrion were my favorite pairing, and it’s a damn shame that Daario was a bully and didn’t take T-dog with him and Jorah, to go find Kelly-C.

KATIE: Seeing as I’ve pledged life and limb to my queen Sansa Stark, my favorite pairing just wouldn’t be complete without her, and I do admittedly love the dynamic between her and Petyr Baelish. Not the inappropriate, unrequited romantic dynamic because, sure, while I’m a sucker for a good May/December pairing, that’s only when the May is an adult, and Sansa is still a child. No, my interest in the Sansa/Littlefinger adventures is in their mentor/student vibe.

Time and again we’re told that Littlefinger isn’t to be trusted, and yet characters continue to trust him enough to give him control because they think he can be outsmarted, an assumption that is continually disproven. And so it goes for Sansa, who is even more underestimated than Littlefinger because she is quiet, seemingly timid, and every bit the lady her noble upbringing would suggest—these are unthreatening qualities when taken at face value, but when groomed by Littlefinger, they can be honed into weapons of manipulation and control. Presented as a well-mannered lady with a strong family name and a wealthy inheritance, Sansa would do well to marry every eligible bachelor she can get her hands on, Littlefinger could have them killed (under mysterious circumstances that he explains away), and Sansa would find herself on the Iron Throne through good old fashioned land acquirement.

Okay, so it’s a lofty aspiration but hey, I dream big.

My fanfiction-esque speculation aside, I’d be eager to see this relationship blossom, although it’s unlikely to happen immediately now, if we assume that Sansa and Theon are headed to the Wall and Jon. Should Littlefinger learn of Ramsay’s abuse of Sansa, he would undoubtedly have something to say about it; for as cringeworthy as it is to see Petyr mackin’ on Sansa, I do believe he has her best interests at heart, even if they do come second to his own. Or maybe at this point I’d pay to see literally anyone lob Ramsay’s smug head off. Regardless, Littlefinger won’t let Sansa slip from his grasp this easily, and he has at least one army at his command in the Vale, so he’s got a ready-made search party at his beck and call.

Sansa’s feelings toward Petyr are a little less clear. Before this season, I would have said that she trusts him and regards him as a sort of father figure, but it was made clear from her silent warning to Brienne in “The House of Black and White” that Sansa knows more about Littlefinger’s true nature than she lets on. Now that she knows her younger brothers are alive, her mission will be to reunite with them, but Littlefinger remains the key to her vengeance. Not to mention that Sansa has got to be that man’s downfall at some point or other, especially if she learns that he betrayed Ned. That alone would add another layer to the Sansa/Petyr cake, in which the man who has been teaching her to achieve justice for her family gets a taste of that justice himself. Now that is an encounter I’m looking forward to seeing, should it ever happen.

Maybe I’m just playing with more fanfiction prompts here, but if the writers don’t take these opportunities into their own hands by series’ end, you’d better believe I’ll use my AO3 account to do it myself.

CAMERON: Man, there’s nothing quite like the Arya/Hound dynamic. They’re almost as odd a couple as Jaime/Brienne, except the latter at least share the experience of having lived enough years to know what things like “honor” and “reason” are really about. Arya and Sandor do share one thing in common: an incredibly resolute desire to survive, no matter what. That survival instinct carried them all across Westeros, with the aftermath of the War of the Five Kings following in their wake. Also, they got to ask the really important questions, like “what the fuck’s a Lommy?” The world demands to know!

ANI: Game of Thrones takes place in a sprawling world. There are multiple continents, languages, belief systems, and a cast of thousands. In the books, that world is focused down through narrow lenses. We don’t get to experience it through everyone’s eyes, only a select few. And when those select few find themselves having to move from place to place in a world where the internal combustion engine, or even the steam engine, is still centuries away, those individual stories become road trips.

It is actually quite something when you break down the series, how much time we spend on the King’s Road (or off the King’s Road) with our characters. The show has a tendency to try to reduce those long trips down when they can. (See also, Littlefinger’s Magic Wormhole.) But sometiems there’s no help for it. These road trips have been memorialized by fans as possible show spinoffs, from Jaime & Brienne’s “Throne Together,” to Season 4’s “Arya and The Hound” and “Bri&Pod.” But for my money, the show has never done it better than the original Game of Thrones Season 1 spin off, “One and a Half Man.”

Tyrion is a loner when we meet him, an outcast with money but no respect. His unlikely rescue and then blossoming friendship with sellsword Bronn was the first of these “Stories within the larger whole” that helped audiences relate to the characters in the midst of the a plot that at times could feel confusing or overwhelming. That their road trip from the Eyrie back to the Lannister camp and then on to the semi-civilization of King’s Landing was filled with great one liners only made it all the better. Tyrion’s been on road trips since, and made one on one friendships with those slightly higher on the class scale. But their odd-couple relationship was a solid thread through to Season 4, when we were reminded that Bronn was only riding this friendship train until the money ran out.

Speaking of friendship that run out, there’s one pairing I’d love to see come back in upcoming seasons, though I know the chances of it are slim: Sansa and Tyrion. They were decent to each other, which is why their relationship was doomed from the start. Maybe one day, in a better world than Westeros, they could give it another go. Or at least survive the winter.

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