Xenophon

Granted I had the same issue when everyone in the books was whispering about how Jon defeated the Halfhand. Once again, dude has a direwolf. People aren't gonna give me credit for beating up Manny Pacquiao if my bear mauls him from behind. People of Westeros, stop giving credit to people for what their animals do!

Anyway this isn't a criticism of the show and I never had a problem with how it was presented in the books. It's just seeing it go down on the screen which has me revisiting the surreality of the scene. I still love the show for trying to bring the sequence to life, and if I knew how, I'd make that 3 second clip of Grey Wind biting off his fingers my avatar.

You have a bear! Down with Ran, Jaime L is the rightful King o' the Board!

But seriously, I agree exactly with the sentiment that it somehow seemed more silly on screen than in print. That's why I'm glad the Greatjon got a few more lines at the end of the episode--it made him less the character who ends up laughing about losing half his hand.

But in the show, to me anyway, I thought the line out of character with the show-Ned. Show-Ned is far more formal, far more stuffy (in Winterfell especially), far less apt to allow for informality. Thus, when Greatjon says the line it echoed in my ears all wrong. That same line worked fine in the books- not so well in the show.

Thus concludes "Rockroi Gets Defensive About a Mistake He Made Nitpicking the Show And Hopefully This Will Be a Lesson To Him to Stop Nitpicking You Ungrateful SOB Who Should Just Be Happy That the Only Sci-Fi Fantasy Book He Ever Liked Was Made Into A Movie And Get Off People's Backs. Asshole."

LOL. Loving the section titles.

But how bout this as an ad hoc justification:

The Greatjon is clearly fairly uppity. First he's telling Robb that he'll take his ball and go home if they don't play by his rules, then he's shooing all the other lords out of Robb's tent, and telling Robb what to do with the scout. So, it actually makes sense that he's talking about Ned in a disrespectful way. Most of the bannerment would call Ned "Lord Stark", but the Greatjon, with his exaggerated sense of his own importance won't stoop to such pleasantries.

Basically, Ned's mistake was that he didn't have a direwolf to teach the Greatjon manners the first time he sauntered into Winterfell and was all "what's up, Ned?".

The Tyrion scene was especially befuddling. How the heck could that party get that close to the Lannister camp without either any resistance or escort?? Crazy.

I agree, a Lannister soldier saying "there is your Father's camp, Lord Tyrion" at the beginning of the scene might have made things clearer. But it didn't distract me at the time, and it's perfectly possible that Tyrion ran into the Lannister outriders and sent them on ahead to announce his arrival. Tywin and Kevan certainly seem to be expecting him when he enters the tent.

Another thought on that line - I recognised the actor despite the huge beard, which is the sort of thing which will make it difficult for them to disguise Barristan further down the line.

Yeah, I'm betting they aren't going to bother trying to hide it from the audience. Dany won't know who he is, but we will. It will be a nice teaser/cliffhanger for the end of season 2: why is Barristan there, when/how will Dany find out who he really is, and what will she do about it?

One thing I noticed, a friend of mine is watching the show who has not read the books, and he is so confused by the Targaryen, Ned, Robert background, even though he is very keen on the show and likes it. I wonder if they needed to do more there in the tv show.

Maybe you should direct him to the HBO viewers' guide. I had a friend in a similar situation, and he seemed to find it helpful.

He could have counted/approximated 100, then put his hand in front of his face to divide that hundred from the rest and use that group to estimate 1000, to estimate the total, while keeping track on the fingers of his other hand.

Also very possible. I've seen people do something similar when estimating crowd sizes at events.

As I said in the previous thread, it's actually quite unlikely that a scout could count the spears of an army without using his fingers. There's a reason the word 'digit' has double meanings and it's because the decimal system is based on our number of fingers. It's just logical that most people in Westeros are on the level of children by our standards, if they can count beyond a few coppers for purchases at all that is. I think some people are severely underestimating what it takes to have a literate and educated population, even on a low level.

Also, he may have been trying to keep track of multiple things (number of foot, horse, lords, siege engines, baggage carts, etc.). That could get tricky fast. And we don't know it was using his fingers that gave him away, right? He could have been making marks in a stick to pass on to a courier, or they could have just assumed he was counting because why else would he be hanging around the camp.

Re. the question of how they'll market the show next year, I don't think a big name "star" is nearly as important for the 2nd season as it was for the 1st. By now, people have a good idea of what the show is all about. If you like quasi-medieval political dramas, you're probably going to watch anyway. If you don't you aren't.

The existing cast are recognizable enough now to use in ads reminding HBO's target demographic that the show is coming back. And, short of doing something crazy like casting Jay Z as Stannis and Beyonce as Mel, they're probably not going to expand the audience much beyond that target demographic regardless of who they cast.

Hmm, this was an odd one for me. I liked all the individual scenes, but I felt they didn't fit together into a whole, and the episode as a whole left me fairly cold.

IMO, all the previous episodes packed a serious emotional punch because the various storylines complemented each other so well. I didn't get that here. Each bit was good, but they didn't seem to build on each other. Other than a slight thematic connection between Bran and Sam's stories, I didn't feel like the various scenes commented on each other in the way that Dany's marriage reflected on Cersei's in ep 1, or Ned/Arya reflected on Cersei/Joffrey in ep. 3.

Overall, though, it was engrossing and they did a good job of setting future action up, while still keeping things interesting in this episode. So I'm giving it a 7. My rankings for the season are now: 7/8/8/7

Edit: Interesting, I seem to be decidedly in the minority, comparing the poll results from last week to this week.

I noticed that many of the soldiers travelling with the royal family were carrying flags with the lion sigil of the Lannisters. I know the King's sigil is the stag, and would have expected his men to be flying the sigil of his house. Do the men carrying the lion flags belong to the King, or to their native kingdom?

I was confused by that too, and someone here pointed out that if you look at the men surrounding Robert and Ned when they have lunch in ep. 2, you'll see that those guys have stag flags. So, it seems like Cersei travels with her own Lannister guards, as well as Robert's Baratheon troops.

BTW, the Baratheon troops also can be identified by their Norman-style teardrop shields, IIRC.

Gave it an 8. To me, it was about the same as episode 2. Episode 1 still had the most drama, and felt most like a mini-story, but these were more engrossing and had better character development (and they didn't have the ghastly Dothraki wedding or soft-core porn feel, which were minuses in my book).

So I'm at 7/8/8 for the season. I'd be interesting in knowing how other people ranked the other episodes too.

[mod hat]

Please be reminded that this thread is meant for material restricted to aired episodes only. If you are reading the book, and you have general questions, you should probably seek out the book-related forums. There are plenty of material that are in the book, but which are not in the aired material.

[/mod hat]

Got it. Thanks.

Thanks for this thread, Ran!

Ok, why do the Targaryens have white-blond hair? Is this just a family characteristic, or does it have some significance?

What's the normal level of magic in the setting? I vaguely remember from reading the books once that magic starts to get stronger over the course of the series, but what's the normal level? Is it pretty much non-existent at the start? Also how long has it been that way?