[Book Spoilers] EP104 Discussion

[Mr Bean]

First off I hate..Hate...HATE the giving of Sandor's story to Littlefinger

Let me just say this, Sandor is the one character who has both the MOST grow and the Least. By most I mean from the reader's prospective not from his own prospective but from the Reader's prospective.

Here we have a horrible mean tempered burn victim who looks, sounds and acts like the horrible burn victim asshole he appears.

But... then we find out why he's so burned (Gregor)

We learned he hates Joffery just as much as anyone else but he's a loyal dog and tries to moderate Joffery to act like a decent human being (Re:Sansa)

Then we have the stuff in Storm where we feel ultimately sad for this poor bastard who at heart is the most terrified man in the world.

Consider he grew up under someone who could give Lecter a run for his money, he knows his older brother is responsibility for his parents death and his sisters death. Yet he has no official recourse because as a Lord Gregor can just request a trial by combat and we all know how that's going to go for 99.99% of the people he will be fighting out there, not to mention Lord Tywin finds the Mountain that Rides oh so very useful. Not only that but his older brother is bigger than him, stronger than him and perhaps better than him. Worse he fears his brother though he rarely shows it, he's in constant pain and drowns himself in poppy to cope. He has no hope, no friends, no home, by the time he's left in fever in the woods by Arya he is one of the most wretched men to ever walk Westros and most people feel utterly sad for the poor beaten dog.

And it all starts with his origin story, a story told drunkenly late at night... to a scared thirteen year old girl in the dark... and then makes her swear to never tell anyone least he murder her. Don't tell me that scene was not a great one in the books and we lost it. Just as the things we do for love introduced us to Jaime as nothing else could the story in the dark introduced us to Sandor.

[iheartseverus]

You mean like "she hasn't bled for 2 moons" from Episode 3? Pretty decent passage of time indicator there.

Yes, exactly.

[So1ar]

so i guess now it's confirmed that vary's little birds are children?

[C.T. Phipps]

large city hosts a major tournament - 20 people attend

They were all at the melee.

:)

[Mr. X]

so i guess now it's confirmed that vary's little birds are children?

At least one of them is, if you believe Littlefinger.

[C.T. Phipps]

I imagine every servant in the castle is one of his birds.

It's pretty easy for people to ignore the servants in RL, let alone fantasy.

[Lannes]

And it all starts with his origin story, a story told drunkenly late at night... to a scared thirteen year old girl in the dark... and then makes her swear to never tell anyone least he murder her. Don't tell me that scene was not a great one in the books and we lost it. Just as the things we do for love introduced us to Jaime as nothing else could the story in the dark introduced us to Sandor.

Not a deal breaker for me, but...yeah....I'm gonna miss that scene a whole lot. :thumbsdown:

[Trebond]

They should have had the Mountain appear on foot first beside average knights so that his massive size would be apparent immediately. You don't really get an impression of his sheer badass-ness from that little peek he gives the camera from underneath his visor. If you're going to go to the trouble of finding a 7'+ actor, show off his size from the get-go to make it clear WHY he's called the Mountain instead of sticking him on a horse a little bit bigger than the other horse in the joust and leaving it up to the audience to figure out who Littlefinger means by "The Mountain."

I can understand dramatic purpose of explaining the Hound/Mountain rivalry BEFORE they have their big showdown re: Loras, so I suppose I am willing to move on with my life after they took that great speech away from Sandor.

I did kind of feel like the impact of the Clegane story was lessened by Littlefinger explaining it in a "first he did this, THEN he did that, and THEN he did THIS!!" *DRAMATIC LOOK!* fashion...but that might have more to do with my unnatural obsession with the Hound/bitterness over him losing lines than with any actual shortcomings of the episode.

I also have some reservations about the Viserys bathtub scene. It started off as useful and helpful exposition...but when Doreah fired up the hand job and Viserys kept chatting away listing off dragon names, I did this: -_- . Don't get me wrong, Harry Lloyd is absolutely perfect...I'm just convinced that sex and simultaneous dialog is, as a rule, over the top. It's distracting and often silly.

I'm nit-picking. Everything else was glorious. Jon and Dany SHONE in this episode.

Time to rewatch....

[AHackeySackOfIceAndFire]

At least one of them is, if you believe Littlefinger.

why should anyone believe littlefinger? i had forgotten how dumb Ned is. he takes Littlefinger at his word about everything. he could have said "that guy works for me and his dog works for varys and his dog's turd reports to the queen" and ned would have eaten it up, turd and all.

anyway, great episode. i was very happy with the three-eyed crow scene and the Tyrion and Catelyn at the Inn scene, but I was very unhappy that Ghost growled. I mean, it's really only significant if you make the wolves significant, which the show has not done. But it irked me almost as much as Theon not kicking the head in the pilot. its just removing something that gave those characters meaning to me.

[IheartTesla]

I think the actor playing Hodor was a scene stealer. Wonder how he memorizes all his lines......

[Huan]

First off I hate..Hate...HATE the giving of Sandor's story to Littlefinger

Let me just say this, Sandor is the one character who has both the MOST grow and the Least. By most I mean from the reader's prospective not from his own prospective but from the Reader's prospective.

Here we have a horrible mean tempered burn victim who looks, sounds and acts like the horrible burn victim asshole he appears.

But... then we find out why he's so burned (Gregor)

We learned he hates Joffery just as much as anyone else but he's a loyal dog and tries to moderate Joffery to act like a decent human being (Re:Sansa)

Then we have the stuff in Storm where we feel ultimately sad for this poor bastard who at heart is the most terrified man in the world.

Consider he grew up under someone who could give Lecter a run for his money, he knows his older brother is responsibility for his parents death and his sisters death. Yet he has no official recourse because as a Lord Gregor can just request a trial by combat and we all know how that's going to go for 99.99% of the people he will be fighting out there, not to mention Lord Tywin finds the Mountain that Rides oh so very useful. Not only that but his older brother is bigger than him, stronger than him and perhaps better than him. Worse he fears his brother though he rarely shows it, he's in constant pain and drowns himself in poppy to cope. He has no hope, no friends, no home, by the time he's left in fever in the woods by Arya he is one of the most wretched men to ever walk Westros and most people feel utterly sad for the poor beaten dog.

And it all starts with his origin story, a story told drunkenly late at night... to a scared thirteen year old girl in the dark... and then makes her swear to never tell anyone least he murder her. Don't tell me that scene was not a great one in the books and we lost it. Just as the things we do for love introduced us to Jaime as nothing else could the story in the dark introduced us to Sandor.

Very well put, Mr. Bean. I'm not a SanSan shipper, I just really like the Hound, and to lose the first key scene to gaining insight into his character is very sad. I would have been okay with him telling the story to someone else besides Sansa, as long as it was said by HIM, and not Littlefinger. I think at this point I just have to remind myself that Game of Thrones is not A Song of Ice and Fire. It's based on ASoIaF, and no matter how much D&D state in interviews they want to be as faithful to the books as possible, that is not happening, they have their own vision. I know I'll enjoy the HBO series a lot more if I let go of hoping for certain things in the book. This one is very hard though.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Loved it!!! The three-eyed crow was awesome, Sam/Jon amazing and I am liking Dany more than I did in the books

[unJon]

Great episode. I didn't mind Littlefinger telling the Sandor story. I'll withhold judgment until I see how it plays out in interactions between San/San. Could still work fine there I think and I like how it fleshes out LF a bit.

ETA: fix typo

[C.T. Phipps]

I love how Ned loathes Littlefinger for making money off the tournament.

[Bishop437]

Seeing Ghost made me happy.

Hearing Ghost made me sad.

how would you explain Ghost and his silence to a television audience? Its not that important.

[Shillen]

I loved this episode. Best of the 4 so far. I felt like the first 3 were a bit slow because they had so many elements to introduce. This episode managed to give a lot of history and back-story and not feel like a tiresome exercise.

People really need to stop nitpicking on every little detail. If it's already bothering you now you're going to be irate by season 2, 3, 4. The story is only going to diverge more and more as it goes on.

[Bishop437]

Honestly I sort of like the way they introduced Ghost, meaning that they waited on introducing him until they could introduced him in a way that was really meanacing and in a way sort of super-sentient. He is by far the most intimidating of the direwolves and I think the scene kind of pulled off that contrast.

Shaggy i think is the most ... That f'er will kill you quick as look at you

[Ser Greguh]

how would you explain Ghost and his silence to a television audience? Its not that important.

Well, Ghost's silence is never exactly explained to the book audience, either. It's creepy in an undefined way in the books, and would be the same in the series if that's the direction they chose.

It's a travesty, travesty I tell you!

(Kidding. It's a minor, minor, nitpick, but it did make a bit of a frowny face on me as I watched it).

I am 99.999% sure there will still be an awesome scene between Sandor and Sansa. It will likely play out with slightly different dialog than in the books, but can convey the same overall tone just as well.

Actually my biggest issue with the episode was Coster-Waldeau's accent in the scene between Jaime and Jory.

[johnnysd]

First off I hate..Hate...HATE the giving of Sandor's story to Littlefinger

Let me just say this, Sandor is the one character who has both the MOST grow and the Least. By most I mean from the reader's prospective not from his own prospective but from the Reader's prospective.

Here we have a horrible mean tempered burn victim who looks, sounds and acts like the horrible burn victim asshole he appears.

But... then we find out why he's so burned (Gregor)

We learned he hates Joffery just as much as anyone else but he's a loyal dog and tries to moderate Joffery to act like a decent human being (Re:Sansa)

Then we have the stuff in Storm where we feel ultimately sad for this poor bastard who at heart is the most terrified man in the world.

Consider he grew up under someone who could give Lecter a run for his money, he knows his older brother is responsibility for his parents death and his sisters death. Yet he has no official recourse because as a Lord Gregor can just request a trial by combat and we all know how that's going to go for 99.99% of the people he will be fighting out there, not to mention Lord Tywin finds the Mountain that Rides oh so very useful. Not only that but his older brother is bigger than him, stronger than him and perhaps better than him. Worse he fears his brother though he rarely shows it, he's in constant pain and drowns himself in poppy to cope. He has no hope, no friends, no home, by the time he's left in fever in the woods by Arya he is one of the most wretched men to ever walk Westros and most people feel utterly sad for the poor beaten dog.

And it all starts with his origin story, a story told drunkenly late at night... to a scared thirteen year old girl in the dark... and then makes her swear to never tell anyone least he murder her. Don't tell me that scene was not a great one in the books and we lost it. Just as the things we do for love introduced us to Jaime as nothing else could the story in the dark introduced us to Sandor.

I think everyone is getting ahead of themselves with Sandor. Although Benioff and Weiss don't spoil changes often they have stated that they are excited with what has been done with Sandor. For all we know. next episode he DOES tell her the story and Sansa is terrified that he is going to hurt her. I really think that this is a watch and find out, and think we may be surprised that the Sandor arc remains very much alive and well.

Tonight I think I was most amazed by how little they are dumbing the show down as in not at all. Tonights episode was especially awesome,

[Caine]

Haven’t commented before because I enjoyed the other episodes overall. This episode was particularly boring though, too much backstory and too much exposition and just way too much talking IMO. Things are happening, but it only seems like they happen at the end of episodes. I mean it’s great to watch the series I’ve read and love come alive but if it’s boring and talky to me, I can’t imagine how this will convey to non-readers. This was the only episode which seemed to drag on and on for me. The hour felt like 2 hours.

Looking forward to what’s to come however, should pick up next episode from the early preview that I saw.