The North Remembers
Can't say there was much I liked about this episode. I am generally worried about the season as a whole. Especially since it seems they plan to enhance the romance-parts. When I here that is all about drawing in the female audience, well that just makes me angry!! This is not a series to watch if you want romance, and it's female audience probably knows that already.
I fully realize they will have to make things simpler for a tv-audience, but that does not mean they have to dumb it down. At the moment, that is just something that worries me, though. I should probably give Weiss and Benioff a chance to make it right. So let's just see what this season brings.
Let me start with the good: I liked the Night's Watch-scenes. I like Jon's defiance and badly hidden disgust and I did like the Old Bear reminding him of his place. I have heard people saying Craster's a bit too well-groomed. But why not? He had many wives to look after him and his home as well, and he obviously does well trading with the Night's Watch.
Daenarys scene of walking through the Red Waste also gave a distinct sense of peril and loss. I liked the scene, and also Emilia Clarke - she is always excellent.
Then there is the bad: This section will be very long as there were lots of bad things to say about this episode!
First of all there's the title. The North Remembers are such ominous words and they had such an impact when they were spoken in book 5. Using them here only cheapens them into sounding like one of Robbs boasts. The North hasn't really suffered all the horrible events of books 2-4 yet, and hasn't really earned the saying.
There is also the extremely long recap they use for an intro. Was that really necessary? If people haven't watched it by now they will hardly jump in here.. I think I might just leave the whole thing if it were me.
The book starts up in Dragonstone, while this starts off with Sansa/Tyrion . Think I might have liked it more to see the Dragonstone-scene to begin with but I can see why the producers might chose to return to a known location when starting up. Cressen was the one prologue-character that I really loved. A bit sorry to see so little of him, but then again I can see why it would be difficult to really fill out his character. Also I'm getting a bit worried that Patchface won't be there. I'd like to see him..
To delve a little bit more into the episode; I thought the Dragonstone-scenes were quite underwhelming. Seeing as Stannis and the people surrounding him have only ever been mentioned a few times before, they should have done a much better job of cementing how Stannis was the Baratheon-brother that Ned wrote to. He was said to have and unfit personality to be king. Here it was really was hard to tell the difference between Stannis and Davos, and there was just too little to present the audience to the character. Burning the gods also fell flat to me, because the series has focused so little on the gods before - therefore we don't see the impact as viewers.
Can't say I much liked the scenes from Robb's camp either. Is this the Robb and Jaime-show? What the hell is the scene between Robb and Jaime doing there? Oh - I think I know! They are trying to show us just how badass Robb is. Well - I'm sure Ned would not be proud.. I have difficulty seeing how Robbs cause is just - even though Richard Madden is a wonderful actor. Don't really like how they shift the focus from Catelyn to Robb - I would have liked to see him there in the background but not as a main-character. Same goes for Jaime. Oh well - guess I'll just have to make the best of it, and enjoy watching Richard Madden and Nicolai Coster Waldau as an unexpected bonus.
Can someone please remove Shae the Funny Whore? Sorry - I'm just not amused. She is in no way at all charming, pretty or anything resembling attractive. I think my main problem with series-Shae is that I don't really see why Tyrion would fall for her. There was always this idea in the book that Tyrion fell for her because she reminded him of Tysha a little. This Shae just seems stupid and arrogant, though.
Speaking of whores there is of course also Ros. Is she managing the brothel now? Working her way up in the world it seems. Gunning for Hand maybe? How she echoed Littlefingers words from season 1 seemed to fall flat. Were they trying to redeem that scene from the last season? Seems like she's meant to take on the role of Chataya/Alayaya, so why couldn't they just call her Chataya in the first place?
Finally I have some thoughts, comments and predictions. Let's just call them the unknown for now:
The first major diversion from the book otherwise comes with the death of Silver. An odd choice I think - seeing as she does use it on later occasions. Also it had no more impact then had they killed some person in the Khalasaar or something.
When it comes to King's Landing there's a couple of things that have changed there as well. Most notable is the relationship between Cersei and Joffrey. While he is childish and has little real influence in the books, this version of Joffrey seems to constantly challenge his mother. I really got the impression he was responsible for the killing of the bastards. In the book that was Cersei's doing. Really hope they don't seek to make Cersei as tired and challenged as they did season 1.
In the scenes where they killed all the bastards it did seem a bit like Joffrey commanded this and not Cersei. Will have to wait for the next episode to comment on this further. Finally got to see Gendry and Arya too there at the end. Nice to see them again!
I fully realize they will have to make things simpler for a tv-audience, but that does not mean they have to dumb it down. At the moment, that is just something that worries me, though. I should probably give Weiss and Benioff a chance to make it right. So let's just see what this season brings.
Let me start with the good: I liked the Night's Watch-scenes. I like Jon's defiance and badly hidden disgust and I did like the Old Bear reminding him of his place. I have heard people saying Craster's a bit too well-groomed. But why not? He had many wives to look after him and his home as well, and he obviously does well trading with the Night's Watch.
Daenarys scene of walking through the Red Waste also gave a distinct sense of peril and loss. I liked the scene, and also Emilia Clarke - she is always excellent.
Then there is the bad: This section will be very long as there were lots of bad things to say about this episode!
First of all there's the title. The North Remembers are such ominous words and they had such an impact when they were spoken in book 5. Using them here only cheapens them into sounding like one of Robbs boasts. The North hasn't really suffered all the horrible events of books 2-4 yet, and hasn't really earned the saying.
There is also the extremely long recap they use for an intro. Was that really necessary? If people haven't watched it by now they will hardly jump in here.. I think I might just leave the whole thing if it were me.
The book starts up in Dragonstone, while this starts off with Sansa/Tyrion . Think I might have liked it more to see the Dragonstone-scene to begin with but I can see why the producers might chose to return to a known location when starting up. Cressen was the one prologue-character that I really loved. A bit sorry to see so little of him, but then again I can see why it would be difficult to really fill out his character. Also I'm getting a bit worried that Patchface won't be there. I'd like to see him..
To delve a little bit more into the episode; I thought the Dragonstone-scenes were quite underwhelming. Seeing as Stannis and the people surrounding him have only ever been mentioned a few times before, they should have done a much better job of cementing how Stannis was the Baratheon-brother that Ned wrote to. He was said to have and unfit personality to be king. Here it was really was hard to tell the difference between Stannis and Davos, and there was just too little to present the audience to the character. Burning the gods also fell flat to me, because the series has focused so little on the gods before - therefore we don't see the impact as viewers.
Can't say I much liked the scenes from Robb's camp either. Is this the Robb and Jaime-show? What the hell is the scene between Robb and Jaime doing there? Oh - I think I know! They are trying to show us just how badass Robb is. Well - I'm sure Ned would not be proud.. I have difficulty seeing how Robbs cause is just - even though Richard Madden is a wonderful actor. Don't really like how they shift the focus from Catelyn to Robb - I would have liked to see him there in the background but not as a main-character. Same goes for Jaime. Oh well - guess I'll just have to make the best of it, and enjoy watching Richard Madden and Nicolai Coster Waldau as an unexpected bonus.
Can someone please remove Shae the Funny Whore? Sorry - I'm just not amused. She is in no way at all charming, pretty or anything resembling attractive. I think my main problem with series-Shae is that I don't really see why Tyrion would fall for her. There was always this idea in the book that Tyrion fell for her because she reminded him of Tysha a little. This Shae just seems stupid and arrogant, though.
Speaking of whores there is of course also Ros. Is she managing the brothel now? Working her way up in the world it seems. Gunning for Hand maybe? How she echoed Littlefingers words from season 1 seemed to fall flat. Were they trying to redeem that scene from the last season? Seems like she's meant to take on the role of Chataya/Alayaya, so why couldn't they just call her Chataya in the first place?
Finally I have some thoughts, comments and predictions. Let's just call them the unknown for now:
The first major diversion from the book otherwise comes with the death of Silver. An odd choice I think - seeing as she does use it on later occasions. Also it had no more impact then had they killed some person in the Khalasaar or something.
When it comes to King's Landing there's a couple of things that have changed there as well. Most notable is the relationship between Cersei and Joffrey. While he is childish and has little real influence in the books, this version of Joffrey seems to constantly challenge his mother. I really got the impression he was responsible for the killing of the bastards. In the book that was Cersei's doing. Really hope they don't seek to make Cersei as tired and challenged as they did season 1.
In the scenes where they killed all the bastards it did seem a bit like Joffrey commanded this and not Cersei. Will have to wait for the next episode to comment on this further. Finally got to see Gendry and Arya too there at the end. Nice to see them again!
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