For those watching this season, last week may have been one of the best of the entire series. Wow, after 7 years, Dany's dragon finally went full dragon.
Cliffhanger, Jaime sinking to the bottom of the lake. Who will rescue/capture him?
In the same episode where Davos Seaworth, one of those common sense/ "voice of wisdom" characters, asks if he can join Daenerys' side, because Missandei attributes attitudes or projects behavior to her, that we the audience have never ever seen from her, at all, we get a battle scene, where she violates just about every law of decency by pre-industrial standards, and her enemies, the heretofore despicable Jaime & Bronn, demonstrate ALL the courage. And Dany is a petulant bully, but that's just one of those things that only happens whenever it is a day that ends in "Y".
Remember back in the early seasons, when Daenerys was all about recognizable virtues, even to the point of imprudence, with anachronistic egalitarianism and decent treatment for prisoners, and Ned Stark's first dialogue on the show was about the importance of owning your kills, and doing it with your own hands if you had the temerity to take a life?
And now, in recent years, we see Sansa torturing a guy to death under Ned's roof, and Daenerys demanding "convert or die". The only sign of growth or maturity among our "strong" women protagonists was Brienne, for once, semi-graciously accepting a compliment and a courtesy.
The show's writers mostly seem to be pandering to the pettiest and nastiest satisfactions, by doing horrible things to bad characters, and thinking there is something satisfying about watching the "good" guys win on god mode and kill people just because they can. And, yeah, the practical and self-preservation-oriented part of me would much rather be on Daenerys' side on the new Field of Fire, but the part that appreciates why Henry V's St Crispin's Day speech has stood the test of time so well, would hold my manhood cheap that I was not standing alongside Bronn on the scorpion or riding with Jaime in his last charge, or having the courage to defy a foreign daughter of an insane tyrant when she demands I kneel or die. But Randyll Tarly was MEAN to fat, lovable Sam, and we're not allowed to hate on fat people, and never mind that if Sam were head of the House, its enemies wouldn't need dragons to wipe it off the rolls of the nobility, maybe just a particularly fierce gecko. It's amazing how many works of genre fiction expect their noble characters to be tough and stoic and forgo the luxuries of their station if they want the reader's respect...but readers embrace Sam as a victim for being the very opposite of that standard, and believe that it is his absolute right to sit on his ass reading books and stuffing his face all day, rather than doing absolutely ANYTHING a born leader and provider of protection and security is supposed to. Fortunately the show clarifies why we are supposed to like Sam by having him make fart jokes, and leer when sex is discussed.
I really would have liked to have a little more dialogue in Daenerys & Jorah's reunion scene: "How did you get cured anyway?"
"Oh, a guy named TARLY cured me, in defiance of his superior's orders. Isn't a good thing when guys named Tarly are stubborn?"
"I served alongside your father. Didn't MY father sentence you to death for enslaving people? And isn't your niece as emblematic as anyone of northern defiance against rulers from Dragonstone who kill people with fire?"
The reassuring thing is that at least Varys & Tyrion seem somewhat troubled by their queen's pyrophiliac psychosis, but their conversation ends on a happy note, only for their next scene together having Daenerys still harping on her prerogatives and deference. Jon Snow might know nothing, but thanks to Dany, he's never the dumbest person in the room.
Sansa's comments to Arya, on the other hand, completely flip her relative merits with Dany in the early seasons. The contrast between her insistence that Winterfell did not fall into their hands, and that chopping off heads might be satisfying but bad policy. Daenerys' affinity for executions, and the fact that the dragons DID fall into her hands, make an amusing contrast.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*