Knee-jerk reaction to “The Broken Man:” Best and Worst Moments
VALYRIAN STEEL (BEST) MOMENTS
VALYRIAN STEEL NINE: stop and take in the view. The scenery wins a Valyrian Steel this week. I can’t remember a Game of Thrones episode bedecked with so many beautiful cinematic landscapes and castle shots. Blood still flowed and horrors still arrived, but the vistas wowed me.
VALYRIAN STEEL EIGHT: return of a badass good guy. It was nice to see the Blackfish and his grumpy scowl. It looks like the Lannisters and Freys are going to be paying for the Red Wedding well into the foreseeable future.
VALYRIAN STEEL SEVEN: The Jaime and Bronn bromance returns. With Bronn now in the thick of it with Jaime and the Lannister army, we got some of that well-seasoned verbal interplay between the two characters. It was nice to see Jaime dress down the miserable Frey boys as well.
VALYRIAN STEEL SIX: Come join the traveling Stark/Snow/Onion Knight alliance show. We get to see this trio play their winning cards in two different environments (Jon with the Wildlings, Ser Davos with the Mormonts) and Sansa fail to play the Stark card with the reasonably angry Glovers. Ser Davos of the silver tongue worked diplomatic miracles for Stannis, and he has some of the best trailer-worthy lines of the season thus far.
VALYRIAN STEEL FIVE: a lady loves whom a lady loves. Yara is gay and she doesn’t care who knows it. It obviously doesn’t bother her Ironborn sailors, who surely put their stock in good commanders and don’t care who those commanders might bed. It didn’t seem to phase Theon either, although he was somewhat preoccupied with his own problems. Nice to see that homosexuality doesn’t have to hide itself in every house in Westeros.
VALYRIAN STEEL FOUR: Remember the dogs of war. The Hound is back, and it looks like there’s not enough misguided peace-loving folk left to convert him from his violent ways. The conversations between him and Ian McShane’s septon character were intense and set up a conclusion we may well have predicted but was nonetheless powerful. Yeah, he’s one of those gray characters we have mixed feelings about, but dammit, I cheered when he picked up that axe.
VALYRIAN STEEL THREE: Never underestimate this girl. We were all fairly sure that Margaery was playing the High Sparrow and everybody else, and the wonderful scene where she passes the note (the picture of the Tyrell sigil rose) to Lady Olenna was classic. Margaery may not make it out alive, but the girl is going to beat everybody else at their own game before it’s all over.
VALYRIAN STEEL TWO: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Arya gets smug, books passage out of Braavos (with stolen coins, I’m sure), and then gets skewered by the Waif wearing an old lady face. Letting anybody approach her at all was a mistake, but her fall into the canal and subsequent walk of bloody doom down the street was gripping, a long-awaited surge of drama in this story line. I might have preferred not seeing Arya after she vanished in the bloody water, just to keep up the suspense, but we have plenty of that all over the place in this show.
VALYRIAN STEEL ONE: No bond is stronger than Ironborn. The intimate moment between Yara and Theon, nicely set in the Volantean brothel/tavern, was magnificent. Yara’s mix of vulnerability and strength as she called on her brother’s help, because she needs him, was great, and Theon’s decision to leave Reek behind (whether he will be successful or not) tugged at the heart strings. After what I thought was a somewhat tepid showing at the Kingsmoot, this brother-sister team just ignited the emotional afterburners.