Game of Thrones for Noobs X

Season 5 Finale: "Mother's Mercy"

The Story Thus Far
It all comes down to this, nerds! Arya Stark is up to some shit of some kind with that House of Black and White guy and his bitchy stepdaughter and may or may not poison some taxman sonofabitch. Sansa is still stuck in an abusive marriage with the craziest of crazy-eyes, Ramsay Bolton (who, by the way, is a fucking rapist monster) at the behest of the whore-mongering Peter Baelish, for some reason. Jamie and Baron Chinstrap sailed to Dorne just to get arrested and be told they suck and stuff by Jamie’s niece/daughter, Cersei was placed in prison by some evangelical homeless dick, Tyrion made it to Mereen just in time to see Dragon Tits fly off into the sunset on her poorly named Dragon and Stannis “Motherfucking” Baratheon burned his fucking snake-faced daughter alive, like some kind of goddamn maniac. Jon Snow learned he could kill the ice zombies but, despite a totally shaken alliance formed with some Vikings, got his ass kicked all the same. Gay people were imprisoned, big mouths were shut, old ladies were skinned and pre-teen ice zombies ate fools—will everyone achieve the goals they’ve set out to accomplish, or will they be killed and forgotten like yesterday’s garbage?

The Gist
The icicles of war baffle Stannis’ bitchy witch, who fully spearheaded the burning alive of his daughter, but she’s still all like, “You’re doin’ great, guy!” She doesn’t have time to wear a bra or even put on a fucking shirt while the war camp hangs around the icy foothills near Winterfell. Anyway, Stannis learns that a bunch of his men seemed to be weirded out by how he so readily murdered his own daughter and ditched her carcass in the woods (probably). Even worse is that he learns his wife hanged herself before he’s even had a cup of fucking coffee. Does this, like, actually matter to him? And if he does rise to power, what’s the point of doing it alone? It’s like that Tom Petty song “It’s Good to Be King” never even happened! Still, with his eyes on the prize, Stannis and his half-an-army kick bricks on foot and begin the treacherous journey to Winterfell proper.

Meanwhile, Jon Snow and his friend Pudgy are day-drinking and chatting about how it would be wack if the ice zombies learned to climb the Wall. As it is made of ice, surely they could use an ax or something. Or maybe they have rope? Y’know, from an anthropological standpoint, these bastards don’t seem to know a whole lot about their enemy. Jon Snow tells Pudgy that he will fill the role of the Night’s Watch class president should anything untoward happen, and Pudgy is still psyched from banging that one girl and/or too busy cultivating his totally wispy and gross facial hair. They smile knowingly at one another and think back to that one beautiful night when they shared a sleeping bag to stay warm. Pudgy brags about how he finally lost his virginity, and Snow is like, “Aww yeah, homie! Way to get that D wet!” Apparently bothered by this, Pudgy takes his sexual conquest and hits the road, presumably to bang his way up and down the coast of Westeros.

Within the walls of Winterfell, Lady Brienne and her buddy the squire realize that Stannis has arrived to start some serious shit, and we watch in suspense as Sansa paces around in a totally dramatically flowing hood. Hood or not, Stannis is prepared to take this town, or so he thinks, because the next thing you know, a bazillion dudes on horseback meet him in the icy field to talk shit while Sansa makes “Oh, fuck!” faces from a lonely parapet.

And just like that, the battle is on. Of course, we don’t get to see any of the cool parts of the war, outside of dudes who were just cut in half dragging themselves through the sharp and sappy pine needles and Stannis slashing a couple throats and then bleeding all over the damn place. Clearly this is a budget issue, but seeing the actual battle happen would have been great. Brienne shows up to call a badly bleeding Stannis a dork and to avenge the death of some guy in a super-traditional fashion. Nice of her to wait until this jerk was practically dead before popping out like a complete wuss to finish the job with a totally fucked-up stabbing (which we don’t even get to see). Here’s a piece of advice, GoT: show us the awesome ultra-violence.

Ramsay, meanwhile, is outside the Wall and making it a point to stab dying kids who look like Rory Culkin and Daniel Radcliffe ran into each other really fast and melded into one horrendously British-looking monstrosity. Boy, he sure is evil, huh? Nice of the show-runners to bang that into our heads again and again and again. And then again. It’s like saying, “Don’t forget he’s evil!” every fucking two seconds. Inside the town, Ramsay’s bitchy girlfriend threatens Sansa with an arrow to the face just in time for Theon/Reek to throw her off a wall and somehow redeem himself for murder, with another murder. It’s that great film and TV trope about how killing a jerk is just and true. Anyway, Sansa and Theon/Reek jump off a different part of the wall, and the fucking show cuts away.

Back in the ocean-y town where Arya now lives, we learn a little more about what the assholes writing this show think of women, as the golden knight from last week beats the fuck out of some 12-year-old girls, and we feel super sick about it. But oh shit—what’s this? One of the girls he’s beating up is Arya, using her new faceless skills to leap into his fucking face and stab out his eyes and put a gross old sock in his mouth and say a bunch of smarmy things while slowly stabbing him to death! It’s brutal as fuck but also pretty satisfying. She is, like, stabbing him in the gut and calling him a jerk, and he’s just sort of crying. And then boom…next thing you know, she’s back in the face library, learning a harsh lesson about what it means to follow the rules. Her boss poisons himself to stick it to her and then pops up behind her like, “Psych! Now you’re blind!”

Over in Dorne, Jamie and his kid finally get the fuck out of there, though didn’t the people who run that town kind of hate Jamie, and why are they leaving so easily? Everyone is friends now, somehow, and Chinstrap learns that it’s true what they say: Westeros guys are from King’s Landing, Dorne gals are from Crazy-Ass City. The king’s sister-in-law kisses Marcella in what is an obvious poisoning that was foreshadowed a few episodes ago when they taught us about how Dorne poison works. On the ship back home, Jamie tries to have a father-daughter moment with his niece/daughter and, in doing so, freaks her out miserably by letting her know that he’s not her uncle after all! Gross! Turns out she already knew and says something shitty about how “a part of me always knew.” She says she’s glad, but if I were her, I’d be counting my fucking lucky stars that the language center of my brain worked properly or that I’d met a dude who loved me. Ruh-roh, though, because the leader of Dorne’s sister-in-law poisoned her in what has to be the biggest DUH! moment in the history of this dumb show.

In Mereen, Tyrion and Daenerys’ hipster boyfriend hang around with that one kidnapper asshole and whine about how she flew off on a fucking dragon. They hatch plans and argue about who likes Dragon Tits the most and threaten to murder each other and talk shit about Tyrion’s height. They install a puppet regime with some dude as the speaker and Tyrion as the actual leader. It’s mostly pretty boring and nobody likes it, but goddamn if Dinklage’s beard doesn’t look amazing. He sulks and watches them ride off into the valley as Varys pops up again, somehow. They have an irritating conversation that is maybe supposed to be funny but mainly makes them both look like dicks, and they make googly eyes at one another.

We finally find Khaleesi, who speaks English to her dragon while he just lies around all lazy on a pile of sun-bleached bones. He’s not about to let her ride him again and cannot convey the importance of naptime strongly enough. And so she wanders off into the grassy moor, only to be surrounded by a gaggle of equine aficionados who ride around her in circles, making whooping noises like a bunch of jerks. This seems to last for, like, 20 minutes and is apparently bad. Who knows?

In the King’s Landing prison, Cersei is pretty close to having her spirit broken and is probably pretty hungry and cold, even though her makeup looks good still. She finally admits to the High Sparrow that she banged her cousin once. She doesn’t tell him about Jamie, though, because of course she doesn’t—it’s gross. Still, one does kind of get the feeling that the High Sparrow knows her deal. She learns she’ll have a trial, which seems pretty bad, but not as bad as her “atonement,” which comes in the form of a totally uncomfortable scrub-down at the hands of the bitchy nuns and the cutting off of her totally bodacious locks with dull and rusty straight razors. Apparently, this is shameful, but really, she totally winds up with a kicky new summer ’do a la Anne Hathaway in Les Miz. Get it, girl!

The High Sparrow then airs her dirty laundry all over town and forces her to walk naked through the town while a nun repeatedly shouts, “Shame!” at her. What the fucking fuck? Seems more perverse than religiously just, but what do I know? Well, outside of I think Game of Thrones just ruined sex for me forever, and that’s a huge drag. Everyone nearby says super shitty stuff to her and throws old cabbage in her general direction, and once again, we are all left wondering who cooked this shit up and why nobody who exists within this world can express any kind of empathy. She makes it home, though, even if she does have poo on her shoulders and bits of cereal stuck to her feet. It’s good to be home for ol’ Cersei, even if her newest employee is a mute Frankenstein who carries her around angrily.

Back at the Wall, Stannis’ buddy, the Hand, tries to convince Jon Snow to get the Wildlings to help out, but Snow is a little too busy looking at old scrolls and excitedly preparing for the return of his uncle Benji. Or is he? It was a trap! And now everybody takes turns stabbing him over and over again. I’d like to say I didn’t see it coming, but isn’t the trademark of this show that characters who are super important get killed? It’s a little tense that Snow’s 13-year-old pal stabs him, too. So long, handsomest dude on the show. Guess that’s what happens when you fail huge. And all we can do is watch as his blood pools black on the snow.

Basically, everyone's reaction:

Pros: Quite a bit of resolution to be had. Everybody loves some good old-fashioned ultra-violence. It actually is kind of cool that this show isn’t afraid to kill off beloved characters.

Cons: That whole Cersei-walking-through-town-naked thing was kind of ridiculous. There are still so many damn questions. For example, when are they gonna get to the big old ice zombie battle? While it seemed like a lot happened, it ultimately fell prey to the series’ biggest shortcoming—too many plot threads explored with not enough time.

The Grade: B+
Some good shit happened, and perhaps my innate curiosity has actually caused some legitimate emotional investment, despite my better judgment. Plus, Jon Snow was starting to be a little too fucking whiny.
 

The Overall Grade: B-
It’s incredibly hard to jump into a show so irritatingly complex with almost zero prior knowledge, and if there is one ultimate issue to the whole Game of Thrones deal, it’s in how short the seasons are. With a mere ten episodes, it’s almost like the showrunners have no choice but to cram a million different things into not enough time, and I’m still not entirely clear on how they decide what is going to happen in a series of books that has not yet been completed. Yes, cliffhangers are kind of a must when it comes to serial/episodic storytelling, but getting 25-second snippets of everyone’s plot points is frustrating. And yet as time went by, certain events became too engrossing to ignore. Jon Snow’s series of failures and missteps and subsequent descent and death due to his insistence on always doing what he considered right was at least a little fascinating.

Seeing Arya Stark go from whiny little weirdo to eyeball-stabbin’ maniac was also super cool, and that one ice zombie battle was just straight badass. Cersei got hers big time, the dragons ate some jerks and there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned fighting pit. And yet, scenes with Lady Brienne were pretty worthless. Why on earth would they feature stone monsters for two seconds and then not provide any sort of payoff whatsoever? Why would they keep dragons locked up for the majority of a season and only burn a few dudes alive? The Ramsay Bolton stuff became just plain disgusting after a while, and it is so hard to care about pretty much anyone…they’re mostly jerks! If nothing else, however, Game of Thrones addresses and captures our basest psycho-sexual desires. Or maybe it’s just gross, who knows?

The bottom line? There are some really stupid fucking shows out there, and I guess you could do a lot worse than one that seems to openly celebrate incest. Or could you?


GIFs via Uproxx and giphy.com

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