‘Game of Thrones’ S8E5 : ‘The Bells’ (Analysis).

This week on the shitstorm currently masquerading as Game of Thrones Season 8, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decide to pay tribute to the scene in Interview with the Vampire in which Louis burns the house down because he feels sad. Enter Lestat with frilly cuffs, screaming:

Political status quo.

King’s Landing.

The soldiers trained by Tywin Lannister conduct themselves with great dignity and good sense by deciding to surrender rather than continue a fight they cannot win. Daenerys responds by throwing away ten years of character development and burning shit down anyway, turning the victory that she wanted and deserved into the slaughterhouse that she didn’t. That’s about as dignified as my analysis of this episode is gonna get.

Best scene.

I’d be writing War and Peace this week if I had a Worst Scene section, but I will grudgingly admit that there were one or two moments of clarity in this episode’s general mayhem.

Arya and the White Horse.

A majestic moment of peace that falls like a drop of rain in a wasteland of carnage, this encounter is the symbolic manifestation of the last stage of Arya’s character development. She has let revenge go in the hopes of something better, even if it’s merely herself. She has decided not to die chasing Cersei, but to die, if she must die, while trying to save others.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the scene is quite fantastic even before Arya’s sighting of the horse. Especially moving are the hugging, charred corpses of the mother and child that Arya had earlier attempted to save; a dreadful reminder of the ordinary people that are routinely massacred by the powerful.

Best scene: Honourable Mentions.

Cleganebowl.

Not the entire fight, which had more in common with the absurd final scene of Victor Frankenstein than anything else. There is, however, something infinitely poetic and just about the moment when Sandor throws both himself and his brother from the walls of King’s Landing into the fire below. Sandor cannot kill Ser Gregor by force of arms: that would be too easy. He can only kill him by falling headlong into the fear that has poisoned his entire life. It’s an incredible moment of catharsis, and one that Sandor himself would appreciate.

Tyrion realises what Daenerys is about to do.

I’ve always hated the bells. They ring for horror.

It’s only about a second long, but Peter Dinklage’s acting here rivals Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s in episode 1 at the moment that Jaime sees Bran. What makes Tyrion so extraordinary in this moment is that in spite of what he sees, and knows, he’s still cautious: cautious to surrender to the despair he feels in that moment because this cannot be happening, this isn’t happening, how could I have been this wrong.

Characters.

Behold my list of character arcs that were fucked up this week.

Jaime.

As I type this, I’m sitting here wondering why I’m not crying and screaming in a heap on the floor. Then it occurs to me that my reaction is precisely what it would have been had Jaime been killed off in Season 1. Because that’s where today’s episode has left Jaime: right back where he started.

What in hell have the past ten years been for, just to have him break free from Cersei at last; to embrace his true self and his own glorious individuality, and then go back to her? What has been the point of his loss of his hand, his suffering, his painful questioning of his very existence and purpose, his small, quiet thoughts of the possibility of something better, if it all ends with him turning tail and running back to Cersei like a poodle, to die?

Shoddy writing. What the fuck?

Cersei.

While the manner of Cersei’s death does serve to humanise her after two seasons of deliciously dehumanising her, it does seem somewhat odd that she dies with a whimper as opposed to a roar. Cersei has spent an awfully long time setting herself up as Tywin Lannister with tits, and Tywin would sooner have faced a thousand swords than stand, lip quivering, as King’s Landing burned, whimpering to his brother that he didn’t want to die. He would have made a clever plan, most likely one involving a hasty retreat, or led a badass cavalry charge, or fallen on his own sword rather than allow himself to be killed or captured by the enemy. All three of these options would have been fitting ways for this formidable woman to depart this world with her middle finger raised high. Instead, she stands around weeping and blubbering and gets crushed to death in the arms of a person that she doesn’t love anymore.

Daenerys.

One website called this a ‘shocking Dany twist’. It’s a shit headline, largely because the person in today’s episode was not Dany, and because her actions were not a twist. They were simply bad storytelling.

For the Mad Queen ending to work, and I mean, really work, the showrunners should have been laying groundwork from many seasons back, if not from Season 1. With skillful enough handling, it could even have been brought in last season (and no, the execution of the Tarly’s doesn’t count). Clues should have been left along the way like caches of gold. Oh, these didn’t need to be especially grandiose: something as small as a phrase or a look would have been enough. But what has been left along the way for us has simply not been enough for this character arc to be justifiable. True, Daenerys has always been fond either of burning random shit and people alive or threatening to burn random shit and people alive. She’s also done some pretty dodgy stuff, like crucifying the Masters and locking Doreah and Xaro Xoan Daxos up to starve to death. None of this means that she’s always been a Mad Queen in the making. Most of the characters on this show have done equally reprehensible things without people questioning their sanity. My point is that nothing that has happened up to this point is enough to convince me that Daenerys has been traumatised enough to lose her mind. To be depressed, yes. To be suicidal, yes. To be angry, yes. But not to go mad to the point where her actions make her father’s vision for King’s Landing come true after twenty years;  the Wildfire Plot not thwarted, only delayed. Ooh. That’s another thing to add to my ‘Jaime’s character arc has been destroyed’ list.

The inciting event of the Mad Queen storyline was the scene in which Jon revealed his parentage to her. The exchange, while moving and brilliantly acted, gave no indication that Daenerys was losing control of her wits. Her losses, while considerable and horrifying, are not enough to make her Aerys III. There needs to have been another factor in this equation, and that’s what the showrunners have lamentably failed to provide us with.

Daenerys is a woman who has always ruled through an ideology of love. She has relied on the love of the common man, and it’s brought her close to death on more than one occasion. ‘Let it be fear’, plus a bout of convenient madness that no one knew about, is not a good enough reason for this shameful abandonment of her principles. ‘Let it be fear’ is lazy storytelling.

I choose to remember her as she truly is:

‘I’ll tell our men to ride ahead and bury them. You don’t need to see this.’ ‘You will do no such thing. I will see each and every one of their faces.’

Random ramblings.

• Why didn’t Daenerys deploy her Iron Fleet-destroying badassery last week?
• Grey Worm throwing Missandei’s slave collar into the fire provided heartbreaking insight into how he wants to remember her.
• Tyrion annoyed me a lot in this episode. Since this has never happened to me before, I am thoroughly confused. I don’t know if it’s because of his absurd plan for Jaime and Cersei or because he talks soothingly and obsequiously to Daenerys when he should be screaming at her. I’m one of those strange people who ships Tyrion and Daenerys, largely because he is willing and able to give her the kick up the arse that she sometimes requires. Not seeing him demonstrate this ability in the episode was disconcerting. Then again, his words to Jaime about not surviving his childhood without his older brother made me cry, so I forgive him.
• I’m sorry about Varys, but have so much to be angry about I can’t concentrate on saying why.
• Jon has become such an annoying, whiny, passive little non-entity.
• How did the showrunners manage to make King’s Landing look less intimidating from the land side than any other city in Westeros? It looks like the kind of shack that Tywin Lannister would use for target practice.
• What led to the decision to let one wave of people into King’s Landing and lock out the people who arrived 0.5% of a second later? Since this is the decision that gets Sandor and Arya into the city and that condemns Jaime to be stabbed at the dragon skulls, doesn’t this warrant a bit more attention?
• Euron and Jaime fighting was beyond stupid and unnecessary and achieved nothing except reinforcing the fact that Jaime’s character arc has been irredeemably fucked.
• Speaking of that, why wouldn’t he cover up his hand? He really wouldn’t be that stupid, stupidest Lannister or not.

Thoughts on Next Week.

Next week’s trailer seems to tease Arya killing Daenerys. Here’s how I want shit to end.

• Jon smothers Daenerys, echoing her mercy killing of Khal Drogo.
• Jon has Drogon killed.
• Jon takes the throne; then, as he is presented to the people after his coronation, they start to boo. Fade out.