Game Of Thrones: The Gift

It's seems like the endgame of season 5 really kicked off this week with 'The Gift'. A lot happened in this extended hour long episode as several storylines were fast-tracked to get them exactly where they needed them to be for the final episodes. 

- Unfortunately my fears from last week were mostly true, Sansa is once again back to square zero when it comes to developing her character in any way other than an innocent girl who's a punching bag for the show's worst villains. Guys we've had five seasons of this, give her something to do! At least she showed some form of initiative in 'The Gift', even if it blew up in her face. Sending Theon to light the candle (presumably so Brienne can go save her) was a smart move....but she didn't count on him immediately going to Ramsay and telling him everything. Speaking of characters with no development, Theon once again proves he's Ramsay's lapdog and seemingly nothing can break him from his spell. Oh well, at least you tried Sansa. I'm still holding out hope that both of them will be stabbing Ramsay in the back by the end of the season, they're signposting this all over the place (notice Sansa stealing that corkscrew? Sneaky) but considering this is Game Of Thrones we're talking about watching the opposite is just as likely to be true.

- I've said before that the show should be hesitant to kill off Ramsay because he's one of the only major villains left, but I'm starting to feel like his character has been played out. Like Joffrey you can only watch one person being unbelievably cruel towards another person for so long before it starts to get old, you inevitably have to cash-in on those karma checks and give him a delicious comeuppance. Joffrey had his, now I think it's Ramsay's turn on the chopping block.  

- Stannis had a short but important scene this week, maybe the Battle of Winterfell isn't as one-sided as I once thought. The snow blizzard in this episode seems to have evened the ground a bit as Stannis' forces are either leaving or dying out in the cold. This prompts crazy Mel to propose sacrificing his daughter Shireen to guarantee victory. Thankfully Stannis refuses but I have a feeling this will happen anyway....not to point fingers but I predict his wife is totally going to go nuts and kill poor Shireen. Whatever happens there's no chance in hell Stannis is going to go through with this. Right? RIGHT??

'You think marrying Joffrey was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet'

- At this point I'm starting to think that the showrunners are deliberately shortchanging Jaime's plot this season to make time for everything else. Barely anything has happened there and this week all we got from Dorne was a brief conversation between Jaime and Mrycella that was over before it began (it literally lasted one minute!) and a scene with Bronn and the Sandsnakes. What was the point of Bronn being poisoned if he was IMMEDIATELY cured in the same scene? Why boobs of course. At least the Sandsnakes were in a scene that characterized them more than 'the whip one' or 'the spear one', now we have 'the one with the nice boobs'. Just....*SIGH*. I will admit that Bronn's singing was fabulous though, more of that please. EDIT: the last time we saw Bronn singing was in season two's 'Blackwater', which funnily enough also had boobs in it. So Bronn + singing = boobs? Makes sense. 

- Ultimately the reason why Dorne has been so lackluster is that we're missing big, chunky scenes of character interaction. The Jaime/Bronn stuff was so fun in the beginning but with only a few minutes here and there we're not getting any meat to chew on and nothing interesting is happening over there. A Jaime/Doran scene could fix this though, I'd imagine they would have a lot to say. Also the 'You don't know me!' line from Mrycella? Ouch Jaime, you got some catching up to do. 

- Of course, the moment Jon leaves to go to Hardhome sh*t hits the fan as Maester Aemon passes away and Gilly almost gets raped by a pair of Nightwatchmen. It was sad to see Aemon go, he's always been the wise man of the show and a father figure to Jon. 'Egg, I dreamt I was old...' was pretty heartbreaking I must say. A real shame, actor Peter Vaughn was a class act. His death served to further sow dissent among the men of the Night's Watch, verified by Gilly's unfortunate encounter. Sam the Slayer tried his best, bless him, but luckily Ghost was on hand (where the f*ck did he come from? And where has he been?) to stop yet another rape scene. This leads to Sam losing his virginity to Gilly, which considering he just tried to save her from being raped is a bit....unsensitive. I know Gilly was the willing participant here but they could have waited a bit! I'm all for Sam and Gilly getting it on together but it was a bit too soon. You don't save a girl from rape and then get sex as a reward, that's just plain f*cked up. 

'Weren't you in a box a few days ago? This has been a very eventful week.'

- Olenna seems to underestimate the church this season. On both counts it seems Jonathan Pryce has got the 'Queen of Thorns' on the defensive doing everything she can in order to get her grandchildren out of jail. Olenna is unable to deal with the situation because there's nothing the new High Septon wants. He can't be bargained with, he has no immediate weaknesses and he's not fake: he genuinely believes that the common folk deserve justice and that everyone should be judged in the eyes of god, and thanks to Cersei he's been given a position of power. Olenna's bullsh*t detector leads her astray simply because there's nothing to read, and that's an awesome power to have on this show. It's a bit unclear what the implications of her scene with Littlefinger was, were they the ones who brought Lancel to the High Septon's attention or was this always a card waiting to be placed upon the table? It seems Littlefinger and Olenna are working together on something anyway, it's always delightful seeing master players interact with one another. 

- Cersei finally got her comeuppance this week in quite possibly one of the most satisfying scenes in the entire series. The moment she left Margaery in her cell with that smug-ass grin you knew something was about to happen, things have been going far to well for her so far. This was reflected in her scene with Tommen who finally seems be growing a backbone of some sort (let's hope this doesn't turn him into Joffrey 2.0). Remember all of this is so she can coddle her son again, which strikes me as being incredibly petty. Her season long arc of mistakes finally came crashing down on her though, sure enough once the High Septon had had his say Lancel walked in and the Queen's mother was also tossed into a cell. THANK F*CKING GOD. With Cersei behind bars I wouldn't be surprised if Tommen (the product of her incest) was next. Maybe this is all a power play for the High Septon? Throw everyone in jail, take out the rich, assume control of the city, rip down the 'refinery' etc... we could be watching a big game player here! 

- Tyrion and Jorah's storyline got insanely fast tracked this week as they basically hit the fast-forward button and made the jump from them being slaves to meeting Dany in just two scenes. Wait, what did I just say? HOLY SH*T TYRION AND DANY JUST MET EACH OTHER!!!!!! < It should have felt like that at least, interestingly this entire segment felt rather anticlimactic. Dany and Tyrion meeting is a huge deal for watchers of the show but it ended up being done in a small training pit where Danearys just so happened to be in attendance. Couple that with a few lucky coincidences: Tyrion convincing the slaver to take him and that random dude cutting him free so he could run onto the fighting pit, it just reeked of the writers skipping plot points and staging coincidences to have them meet up before the end of the season. I like that they're not prolonging the inevitable but the way they did it felt oddly perfunctory and inconsequential, exasperated by the fact that they chose to end the episode on Cersei and not on this huge moment for the show. I'm not making that same mistake. 

So that's it for this week. While there hasn't been a standout episode so far this season I think it's safe to say 'The Gift' was a very good episode with a lot of good moments that outweighed any misgivings I had with the previous episode. Hopefully they can keep this streak up til' the end. GOT Ranking: 8,5/10.