If there were ever a time when I would quit Game of Thrones, it would be after last night’s fifth season episode, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.” Because seriously, the only thing I thought after last night’s episode was, “Christ, fuck this show.” And I’m standing by that.
Because, holy hell, so many things to take issue with last night, so much clunky storytelling, so many irritating choices made to short-shrift characters. Oh, and let me be clear: female and homosexual characters especially. As in, Sansa and Loras especially. As in, “Why does Game of Thrones suck so much, God? It’s me, Rocky.”
Maybe for non-book readers, last night’s episode wasn’t so jarringly irritating and infuriating. Maybe you thought the Dorne fight with the Sand Snakes didn’t look like hot choreographed garbage. Maybe you thought that the questioning of Loras by the High Sparrow and the reveal of Olyvar as an informant made total sense, and wasn’t telegraphed at all. And maybe you thought that Sansa getting raped wasn’t a big deal — and if you thought that, get the fuck out of my life, we can’t be friends anymore. Get. Out.
Let me be clear and spoiler-y: Sansa does not get raped in G.R.R.M.’s books. Sansa does not marry Ramsay in G.R.R.M.’s books. That was a choice that showrunners Benioff and Weiss and episode writer and producer Bryan Cogman made months ago, and discussed with Entertainment Weekly months ago, during which Cogman said:
“You have this storyline with Ramsay. Do you have one of your leading ladies—who is an incredibly talented actor who we’ve followed for five years and viewers love and adore—do it? Or do you bring in a new character to do it? To me, the question answers itself: You use the character the audience is invested in.”
And to me, that’s the most bullshit excuse of them all, and yet one that the showrunners have used time and time again with female characters: All women’s bodies are the same. Another character gets raped, but let’s just give that rape and trauma to Sansa, because people will care more about it. And this subplot, which happens to another character in the books — in which that character is raped by Ramsay, who forces Theon to sexually assault her, too, and after which she’s forced to have sex with dogs and gets bitten and ravaged by Ramsay night after night — Benioff told Entertainment Weekly that that “was a subplot we loved from the books.” They loved it so much that they just transferred it over to Sansa, ignoring all female and character agency in the process. Great!
But then last night to Entertainment Weekly, they all made sure to say that the book scene was “extreme torture and humiliation,” but having Sansa gets raped on the show isn’t nearly as bad. That’s the implication, right? That what happened in the books is awful, but what happened in the show is fine — because rape happens all the time. Because all female character trauma is the same. Because Sansa needs to be in pain for us to care about her. Got it, guys. Fucking got it. And I hate it so goddamn much.
I have a lot of other issues with “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” so let’s get to them, I guess. I just … ugh. And to ruin the Martell house words with this bullshit of an episode! Slap in the face.
+ “You’ve known Sansa since she was a girl. Now watch her become a woman.” Let’s start with Winterfell first, because I’m still salty, and I want to get this out of the way. So yes, Ramsay rapes Sansa on their wedding night, and for everyone saying, “Well, it’s not like they would have had great sex anyway,” that’s not the point, and neither is, “Well, Ramsay’s a villain, what did you expect him to do?” I expected the showrunners not to treat rape like a cliffhanger. I expected the showrunners not to treat rape like just another thing that happens to someone. I expected the showrunners to give a fuck about women in Westeros. MY BAD.
So yes, Ramsay rapes Sansa and forces Theon/Reek to watch, after earlier forcing Theon/Reek to give her away during the wedding ceremony (which, admittedly, was beautifully shot in the Winterfell Godswood, and I totally expect lots of similarly themed copycat weddings from GoT superfans this winter; I’m looking forward to the inevitable Pinterest boards). This trauma will of course bind Sansa and Theon together (confirmed in the clips for next week’s episode, with Sansa telling Theon that her family still has friends in the North), and is also probably a setup for Brienne to come and rescue them both. Because the showrunners will probably think that’s empowering or female unity or some shit, because they are idiots.
Other things that happen in Winterfell: Myranda tries to play a mind game with Sansa before the wedding (“Have you seen a body after the dogs have been at it? Not so pretty”), leading to Sansa’s solid intuition that she’s in love with Ramsay and her bold “I’m Sansa Stark of Winterfell. This is my home, and you can’t frighten me.” How rapidly that confidence was stripped away from her. And then there’s also Theon/Reek, who gave me major tears when he gave Sansa away, because I am a sucker for Greyjoy. He breaks my heart more often than anyone else on this show. And although I, obviously, hate the Sansa rape subplot, I think focusing on Theon’s tears during the act were a good visual move … although if I want to continue along this sexual-politics vein, you could say that focusing on Theon’s reaction again denies Sansa of her own reaction, limiting her as a character even while she’s getting sexually abused. So, there’s that.
+ “A girl is not ready to become no one. But she’s ready to become someone else.” Step two in Arya’s assassination training begins in Braavos this week as Jaqen finally shows her how the Faceless Men get their faces, which is by harvesting them from the people who come to die in their temple (which I alluded to a few episodes ago, but whatever, deal with it). All the bodies Arya has been meticulously cleaning end up in these columns and columns of faces, ready for the Faceless Men to use in their work as they become no one — which Jaqen correctly realizes Arya is not ready for yet.
“The Game of Faces” was an effective way to convey everything Arya is dealing with, I think: the constant lying from the Waif as a way to judge her instincts and later the truths/lies she’s forced to tell Jaqen are both tests for her, both ways to see if Arya is ever going to let go of her House Stark identity. And it was a smart move to have Jaqen call her on her lies, even ones she’s telling herself (like when he calls bullshit on Arya’s insistence that she wanted the Hound to suffer and that she hated him), and to remind her that in this world, if she really wants to be no one, she can “never stop playing.”
So now Arya has given someone the gift of death and seen the mechanics of what the Faceless Men do. What “someone else” will she become? And to what end? I guess we’ll see over the next four weeks.
+ “We shall never see his like again.” Daddy issues abound during Jorah and Tyrion’s time together this week, as they continue their journey toward Dany in Meereen but end up captured by slavers led by Malko/Mr. Eko from Lost/actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who I almost forgot was cast on this show. Yes, it’s kind of great irony to have Jorah, who helped Dany free the slaves of Meereen, become enslaved himself, but if he ends up in the fighting pits near his queen, that’s one step closer to her, I guess. Silver linings?
Before that, though, Tyrion spills to Jorah that he’s on the run for having killed his own father, and also divulges that Jorah’s father, the Old Bear Jeor Mormont, was killed at the Wall by his own Night’s Watch members (if you recall, that was the mutiny at Craster’s Keep last season, creating the opening of leadership that led to Jon Snow becoming the new Lord Commander). As Tyrion points out, the Old Bear actually cared about the men under his watch — but why does Jorah care about Dany so much? He’s buying into her myth and believing that she’s Westeros’s destiny, for sure (“I was a cynic, just like you. Then I saw a girl step into a great fire with three stone eggs … alive and unhurt, holding her baby dragons”), but as Tyrion rightly points out, she’s never lived in Westeros. She’s not used to their customs or their people. Having dragons is great — as we saw last week, particularly awe-inspiring for Tyrion — but is it enough?
Also, that “cock merchant” conversation: Stupid and silly but at least I laughed. “You can’t just hand a dry cock to a merchant and expect him to pay for it!” was exceptionally dumb, but the right kind of dumb for this episode. Not the kind of dumb like the Sand Snakes, which …
+ “I fight for Dorne. Who do you fight for?” Holy shit, this show has made the Sand Snakes a joke. Such a fucking joke. That fight scene was one of the worst-choreographed, least-exciting things I’ve seen on this show, and yes, the Sand Snakes worked together, and yes, they are women taking it to men, and yes, they looked utterly and fully ridiculous. I mean, ludicrous, from their accents (DO THEY GET WORSE EVERY EPISODE? HONESTLY) to the stupidity of their plan, which was … what, snatch Myrcella in broad daylight in the Water Gardens, which are full of Doran Martell’s men? Shut up. So stupid. (And, because you know I’ll say this, this plot was a far-more streamlined and stupidly simplified version of the actual scheme from the books.)
So yeah, Jaime and Bronn finally reach Myrcella, who is legitimately in love with Trystane and doesn’t want to go home when Jaime commands her, for no reason, to come with him. Jaime and Bronn fight the Sand Snakes, with Bronn getting sliced by a dagger (I would wager that thing is poisoned, and our favorite mercenary isn’t long for this world). And Doran Martell (who again only has like one line this whole episode, because this show is wasting Alexander Siddig entirely) and his bodyguard Areo Hotah very easily break the whole thing up, saving Myrcella and arresting the Sand Snakes and Ellaria Sand.
What’s going to happen to Jaime and Bronn? Eh. I don’t really care. And although I laughed at Bronn’s “You fight pretty good for a little girl,” I immediately regretted it. The Sand Snakes shouldn’t be so easily foiled that Bronn can literally smugly joke about them to their faces. The Sand Snakes should be better than that. And yet here we are, with a whole bunch of female characters again being stifled from their full potential or narrative arcs. Yay! Thanks, Benioff and Weiss!
+ “I have no love for these fanatics. But what can a Queen Mother do?” Cersei’s attempt to undermine House Tyrell continues this week, as Queen of Thorns Olenna Tyrell returns to King’s Landing to defend her grandchildren Margaery and Loras, only to see both of them interrogated by the High Sparrow and arrested by the Faith Militant. I mentioned last week in my recap my resentment of how the show has limited Loras to “token gay dude,” and these pieces by WinterIsComing and Salon further that idea, which we see again this week. The High Sparrow questions Loras about Renly, to which Loras lies a bunch, and then questions Margaery about Loras, to which Margaery lies a bunch, and then they bring in Olyvar, that prostitute employed by Littlefinger to spy on the Tyrells, and he basically comes clean about everything he and Loras have been doing, with Margaery’s knowledge. So based on that one testimony alone, the High Sparrow swoops up both the Tyrell children, in a move that shocks Tommen and delights Cersei.
But we all know Olenna isn’t going to stand for this, and we all know that Lancel Lannister, member of the Faith Militant, knows practically everything there is to know about Cersei. So I can only guess that the Queen of Thorns will somehow engineer something with Lancel, and given how heavily Olenna hints at knowing about Cersei’s infidelity to Robert (“the famous tart, Queen Cersei” was a good dig), it will probably all come together somehow.
What I wonder, though, is how far the show will go with this — will only Cersei’s infidelity with Lancel be revealed, or will her relationship with Jaime come out in the open, too? That would delegitimize her children and strip Tommen of his kinghood, which would also discredit Margaery as queen, so it’s possible the Queen of Thorns won’t get that far. But when you’re digging up shit, the Lannisters offer up a goldmine.
Finally, some odds and ends:
+ “My father says you’re still a virgin.” Ugh. Gross. Pass.
+ What’s the deal with Littlefinger right now? His scheme is so goddamn confusing in the show, and I don’t understand any of it. So he marries Sansa off to Ramsay, theoretically with no real knowledge of his viciousness (which, I still doubt), and claims to Roose Bolton that they’re working to discredit the Lannisters. Then he tells Sansa that he’s also working to discredit both the Boltons and the Lannisters. Then he tells Cersei about Sansa, confirming that she’s at Winterfell and about to marry Ramsay (leaving himself out of those plans, of course), and says that he’ll take care of both the Boltons and Stannis in one fell swoop if Cersei names him Warden of the North. And then he would what, marry Sansa? I don’t get it. THIS IS UNNECESSARILY COMPLEX, GUYS, AND THAT IS COMING FROM A BOOK READER.
+ I spent a long time this morning trying to remember the Bolton house words, and they’re “Our knives are sharp.” There is always a lot of talk about the Boltons’ flayed-man sigil, but I think the house words are just as terrifying.
+ “Have you heard baby dragons singing? It’s hard to be a cynic after that.” Oh, Jorah. You lovesick fool.
+ Also about Jorah: So when Tyrion is telling the slavers about Jorah unseating Jaime Lannister at a tourney at Lannisport, he’s not wrong! That Tourney at Lannisport was when Jorah crowned his first wife, Lynesse Hightower, who was such a superficial gold-digger that Jorah had to eventually get into slaving to sustain their lifestyle, leading Ned Stark to exile him. And yes, Lynesse looked JUST LIKE Dany, of course.
+ “The Targaryens are famously insane!” I wish the show could do more with Dany’s inner, fearful monologues about going insane like her father. It’s a plot element in the books that becomes more prevalent as she becomes more isolated, especially when she marries Hizdahr, and it’s a good method of understanding everything Dany is feeling. Bummer that we don’t get any of that in the TV format.
+ Love Bronn’s reaction to Myrcella and Trystane’s public makeout session: “Well, she’s made herself at home.”
+ “If they arrested all the pillow-biters in King’s Landing, there would be no room left in the dungeons for anyone else!” We’ve all missed the Queen of Thorns, haven’t we? Also for her dismissal of Margaery: “Get some rest, dear, you look appalling.”
+ So what do the Faith Militant want? The show is posing them basically as religious fanatics from the conservative right, as we see Lancel and the Faith Militant being particularly anti-homosexuality (note how the High Sparrow lists “fornication, buggery, and blasphemy”) and also bragging about how “We flooded the gutters with wine. Smashed the false idols. Sent the godless on the run.” In the books, the sparrow religious movement and the Faith Militant are far more complex, and don’t want to create violence so much as they want better care for the citizens of the Seven Kingdoms, who have been abused and disenfranchised by the constant wars. I again refer to the Salon piece for more about this, which also parses out why the treatment of Loras and the show’s emphasis on homosexuality is different than the books, which make the behavior of women a major concern for the Faith Militant.
+ Next week: Sansa crying to Theon about still having friends in the North, Olenna facing off against the High Sparrow, a feral-looking Margaery entrapped by the Faith Militant, Jon and Tormund leaving for Hardhome, Alliser Thorne threatening Sam. Until then, friends.
