Knee-jerk reaction to “The Door:” five best and worst moments
Here are my highly subjective, personal thoughts and feelings, delivered lightning-quick, after viewing tonight’s Game of Thrones episode: “The Door.” First thought: INTENSE. I’m going to have to watch it again because it confused me in a place or two at the end. But WOW.
I offer five Valyrian Steel (Best) Moments and five Flea Bottom Brown (Worst) moments. To be honest this episode was so good I’m going to have to scrape to come up with five Worsts, but I’ll give it my best shot. I’ll hang around the comments section for a while so please feel free to chime in and discuss.
VALYRIAN STEEL (BEST) MOMENTS
VALYRIAN STEEL FIVE: There were some great moment in the play within the play, as poor Arya watched the production swing from a goofy take on the death of Robert Baratheon to a suddenly painful reenactment of her father’s execution.
VALYRIAN STEEL FOUR: Sansa tells off Lord Numbnuts. It was great to see Sansa rub Littlefinger’s face in the unexpected (we hope) consequences of his political machinations, which resulted in him handing her over to Ramsay Bolton. Littlefinger squirmed as much as a man made of whispers and shadows might squirm. In the cold face of her pain, his apologies were useless. However, this scene also lands Sansa in the Worst moments as well.
VALYRIAN STEEL THREE: The Children of the Forest did WHAT? Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven walking in on the Children of The Forest ritually turning a man into a White Walker was mind-blowing, and the colossal mistake that idea turned out to be set up their motivation to give their lives to try and protect Bran.
VALYRIAN STEEL TWO: The Night’s King faces off with the Three-Eyed Raven, sort of. What an ending! In the thick of it all, I had trouble keeping track of exactly how Bran was greenseeing or warging and in what time frame, but it didn’t matter, because it was all so awesomely overpowering in the moment. The Night’s King arriving before the Three-Eyed Raven had something of that last Darth Vader vs. Obi Wan Kenobi lightsaber battle feel to it, and the vanishing of the old sage was a bit similar as well. Is that the last we’ve seen of the Three-Eyed Raven? I’d wager not.
VALYRIAN STEEL ONE: Weep for “Hold the Door.” The moment where Bran warged into Hodor in both the present and the past will make more sense when I watch it again, I’m sure, but the result was a masterpiece of action loaded to the core with raw emotion. I was so worried about Meera sacrificing herself to save Bran that I didn’t see the Hodor thing coming, and the resulting mix of moments in time, as Bran watched Hodor die for him was, with the collapse of Wyllis’ last sentence, a superb mix of action, desperation, and pathos.
This episode was so freaking good I could do five more Bests and hardly one Worst, but I am committed, so here we go: