Game of Thrones for Noobs XII |

The Story Thus Far (Heavy Spoilers!)
In last week’s episode, we learned that everyone either needed to die or had already died last season. Even worse, we came super-close to having an entire Game of Thrones without boobs. Considering that’s just about the only thing that makes this show truly worth watching, you’d think the show-runners would be more careful. There were face stabbings and Jon Snow corpse sightings along with witches who aren’t actually young, blind Starks, more weak-willed women (so sick of this shit) and a lot of jumping around to different parts of the land to see what everyone was up to. Brienne finally caught up with Sansa and swore fealty, Tyrion learned that he was gonna be stuck in Meereen whether he liked it or not, Daenerys told the Dothraki to watch the fuck out—in their native tongue, no less—and Jamie/Cersei reunited presumably to bang one another into the annals of fucking disgusting history.

The Gist
Exterior, night, a swamp. We pan over a couple of jackasses who lack pupils in their eyes because that young male Stark kid is getting a Christmas Carol-esque look into his family’s past, courtesy of Max von Sydow. In this vision, that dude Hodor speaks with actual words while everyone is all like, “Wow, this dude is huge!” Who the hell is this guy? We smash-cut back to the swamp while von Sydow is like, “I’m more tree than man now!” and Hodor just keeps saying his name like some kind of bullshit second-string Pokemon. Ugh. How are new people supposed to get psyched on this? Anyway, the Stark boy suddenly appears in the snow to tell some girl I’ve never seen that Hodor was actually called Wylis. Some wood nymph appears to tell the girl that she’s gotta do more than stare over icy precipices at sunsets, and the girl’s like, “Yeah, maybe.”

Over on the Wall, Jon Snow’s friends still don’t believe the Night’s Watch is just gonna let them walk away alive, because these Watch jerks really hate Snow big time, so everyone starts drawing swords while Snow's killers begin smashing down the door like a bunch of idiots. Don’t they know Snow’s pals have that albino wolf on their side?

Nothing much comes of it, though, because that giant from before busts all up in there with those Braveheart-looking motherfuckers themselves, the Wildlings. Can anyone around here ever get two goddamn seconds to chill out and maybe have a snack? The Wildlings don’t really kill anyone, but they do put these two guys I don’t recognize into jail, and we slowly pan over Snow’s totally brutal sword wounds. Kit Harington at this point knows exactly what it must be like to play one of those soap opera coma victims.

Back in, uh, that one town where Cersei and Jamie live, some homeless dude joins me in being grossed out by the Lannister incest thing. This was a bad idea, though, because some massive knight gives him a good old-fashioned head-smash-into-a-wall-so-hard-his-brains-come-out-ing. Oh! This is that guy from last season who was told to watch out for Cersei. Whoever assigned this guy to Cersei should have told him to pick his battles cause, like, if he’s smashing the heads of everyone who thinks she’s gross, he’s not gonna have time for much else.

Cersei tries to go to her incest monster of a daughter’s funeral, but her son (who is also the king now, don’t forget) sends the cops to her house to tell her she can’t come. Meanwhile in the funeral home, Jamie “God of Egypt” Lannister asks the kid why he wouldn’t let Cersei come to see her daughter’s corpse, and he’s like, “Because I’m weak, man! Shit!”

The leader of homeless guys, who you may recall imprisoned Cersei and Margaery and who wears a nightshirt at all times, shows up and starts yapping about his list of fears. Jamie kind of threatens him, but the guy has his goons swarm in and makes a speech about how if poor people rise up they can really mess up peoples’ lives. While this goes down, Cersei just sulks on some balcony overlooking the city, and her kid is like, “A-boo-hoo-hoo! Help me be strong!”

Back in Meereen, Tyrion tells some poor castrati that dudes without dicks oughtta drink all the time and learns that dragons won’t really eat anything when their mom isn't home. He tells Dragon Tits’ servants that they should still feed those fools or they’re gonna have a bunch of cat-sized dragons hangin’ around. As such, he decides he’s gonna force-feed them lizards himself. And so, in the basement of the castle, he goes to meet the dragons, which seems dumb to me since he knows they’re hungry.

Anyway, he tells one of them all about his birthday party when he was a kid, and this does seem to calm the winged beast. They hug for a sec, and he sets it free while the other dragon sneaks its way up like some kind of clever raptor. He frees that one, too, and then gets the hell out. Now, you might think this means we get to see a bunch of people getting melted by dragons, but we sure don't.

Instead, we jump over to see what’s up with blind-ass Arya Stark. Boo! Arya is still getting beaten up by that jerk-ass girl from the House of Black and White almost daily, while I’m just wondering why Denzel could do it blind in Book of Eli and Arya can’t even avoid getting her face beaten in. But wait! Oh shit! It’s that faceless wizard guy from last season, and he’s not dead at all, and he’s just been testing her this whole time! Zam! He kind of alludes to maybe giving her the gift of sight back, but like almost every scene ever, it cuts away after about three seconds.

Back at Ramsay Bolton’s house, plans are being made to do something that isn’t clear. I think they want to fight the Watch or something. Ramsay’s mom gives birth off screen while this happens, and Daddy is like, “You’ll always be my firstborn.” And Ramsay is like, “Yeah, no shit—that’s how chronological order works!” as he stabs his dad in the gut like some kind of maniac.

Yeah, this role is probably super-fun for the actor (who was in the excellent Hulu show Misfits), but it’s actually growing a little tedious to wonder what bonkers shit he’s gonna do next. I mean, shit, what's even left? Fuck Ramsay Bolton, actually. He’s a dick. Well, but I guess he's still a dick in charge of Winterfell. He takes a post-Oedipal-murder stroll through the snow to meet up with the Bolton family doula, who's got his new baby brother, and it’s pretty tense because this dude is nuts! But he wouldn’t kill a baby, right? Oh God, get that fucking baby away from this dude!

Thankfully, he gives the baby back and is like, "Come check out the dogs with me in the scary dog kennels." They do, and right away he lets a bunch of the dogs out while the girl is, like, freaking out and—holy shit! He killed that girl and that baby! Dude, enough now, show-runners! You've seriously just about desensitized us to the concept of baby murder.

Meanwhile, in the snowy woods nearby, Sansa and Brienne are hanging around with that young squire guy and Theon/Reek. These suckers think Snow is still alive, but they’re in for some serious bummer-ass news, huh? Reek whines about making up for his past transgressions and cries for some reason. Sansa is also sad, which does make one wonder who the hell’s side is any person on at any point, and why we’re supposed to care about Theon. Or anyone. But mostly Theon.

While that weird discussion plays out, we join an already-in-progress convo between some long-haired dude I’ve never seen and his daughter. He jibber-jabbers about what it means to be awesome at naval combat but still wants to own land, but he should probably read Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need (we all should) because it’s much better than Game of Thrones and far less absurd. He winds up on some rickety-ass rope bridge with some guy he used to know, the practicality of which—especially in a windswept seaside zone where it rains all the time—is not even really up for debate because it’s just that stupid. They blah blah blah on the bridge awhile, and the long-haired hippie is thrown off the thing. Seriously, they never should have built that stupid bridge. It’s cute, however, that these seaside people have all kinds of ocean-based rituals and religious ideologies. One does have to wonder why they think that leaving a maritime-themed coffin in the sea well before the breakers will end up with anything other than the damn thing coming back.

Across the land, that one witch who’s actually old is asked by Snow’s buddy about Snow coming back to life. I knew it! I knew they were gonna bring this turkey back to life. She’s hesitant, though, and explains how no man should have domain over whatever exists beyond the veil of death. She ain't wrong, but all the same, it’s a good thing it’s so cold on the Wall, because Snow’s body has not yet begun to rot. Huzzah! The ritual involves a haircut and beard trim and the burning of the clippings. Despite how this would surely smell, she just keeps on a-cutting and giving him a nice shampoo and speaking in foreign tongues. Everyone stands around watching and feeling hopeful, but it doesn’t seem to pan out.

And then, of course, it fucking does. Snow is alive again, surprising exactly no one. Smash-cut to credits.

The Pros:
Snow came back to life. End of list.

The Cons:
Oh. My. God! Seriously, it’s impossible to care about any of these people. Except for Snow, of course.

The Grade: D
Season 6 keeps on being boring as hell and cutting all over the place too much. The slow rate at which we’re given answers is infuriating, especially for a show with 10-episode seasons. As in, couldn’t they let more things happen? Are they just running on fumes because they’re out of Martin material? There’s also that ultimate issue that there is zero accessibility for newcomers. I watched all of last season and still don’t know what the fuck. Throw in gratuitous baby murders that seem to exist simply for shock value, which is growing all the more tedious in how one-note they're makin' this guy, and pretty much all that can be said is, “Why is everyone so whiny around here?”

There’s a fine line between drama and melodrama, and Game of Thrones seems to be coming ever closer to blurring that line in ridiculous ways. Plus, there was almost no dragon action, no nudity and only a few non-babies wound up dead. Lame.

Santa Fe Reporter

Game of Thrones for Noobs XII

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