Both contributors this week asked that they write their own comments about Episode 9 of Game of Thrones Season 3.
Dublin’s Thoughts:
For those of us that have read the books, this was the episode of Game of Thrones that we all were waiting for. Could David Benioff and D.B Weiss possibly pull off The Red Wedding as good and with as much scorched earth devastation as George RR Martin put together in his third book of A Song of Ice and Fire?
The Red Wedding of the book is such a horrific shock that many readers are left shaken for a few days after reading it. There’s even a little bit of anger with Martin as a result. It was one thing to kill your main character in the first book but then to spend another book and a half with an entire group of characters that are all wiped out in one fell swoop, it makes readers start to question their relationship with the writer. No one is safe, including you the reader, who could be emotionally harmed with any turn of the page.
On the other hand, it’s such a dramatic turn of events that there is absolutely no way in hell you're ever going to be able to put that book or any of the remaining volumes down. The killing of the King of the North, along with the King’s mother and what appears to be their entire entourage, is such a brutal event that it takes the drama of the story up a hundred notches while throwing fuel on a tale that had slowed down a bit with weddings and religion spread on thickly in the chapters leading up to it.
The same thing has happened in the show, with the producers piling on even more tragedy by throwing Robb’s wife Talisa into the slaughter along with their unborn child. Ouch. As someone who has been aware of the Red Wedding the entire season I was still taken back and devastated. I’m not ashamed to say that when Talisa told Robb they would name their child Ned I got a little worked up, more so because I knew what was coming. The cry that Michelle Fairley gave when she watched Roose Bolton put his sword through Robb’s heart was the scream of her career, selling all of the tragedy in that moment just before slashing Walder Frey’s young wife’s throat and then getting her own throat cut. This episode was a brutal triumph.
DJ Undacut’s Thoughts:
This is why this show is the greatest show ever made in history! No show could ever pull this shit off. None of ‘em! So The Wire killed off Stringer Bell in Season Three? So what! The Red Wedding of Season Three of GOT is like if Proposition Joe came into Police Headquarters and wiped out McNolty, Jay, Keeva, and then somehow teleported into The Sopranos and wacked Pauly Walnuts. Holy shit!
The Red Wedding is George RR Martin’s way of saying: “Hey everybody! We’re just getting started here!” Unfortunately, I got a feeling that a lot of people are going to see it as him saying “Hey everybody! Fuck you! I’m going to fuck you up by just throwing every emotional punch I can at you, right into your unsuspecting stomachs.” And the Red Wedding is a gut punch, no doubt. Judging by how hard #gameofthrones and #vomiting were trending on Twitter it seems to have been right on target.
There were a few slight difference between the book and the show that I was unhappy about, one in particular. In the book it’s commented on a gang of times on how booty the wedding band is, and as a reader you kind of wonder what’s up with that. There is a deep sense of foreboding through the whole event that you can’t quite put your finger on but when the shit goes down, you're are still blown away. In the book the wedding band turns out to not be a band at all but a group of crossbow wielding assassins that happen to play harp on the side. I would have liked to have seen more of that, more build up.
Other events took place this episode: Daenerys begins her siege of the city, Jon Snow breaks away from the Wildlings (and Ygritte, which was sort of a bummer), and Bran learns how to jump into the body of a wolf and Hodor. But who cares? This episode was all about the main event of the season. To me, the ultimate heartbreak of the Red Wedding is the fate of Araya: after all this how can she not go cold, maybe even evil? The Hound had to pile it on with that speech about being “almost” there too. Let’s hear it for Rory McCann by the way, the dude that plays the Hound. Whatever shortcomings Maise Williams has an actress he makes up for in their scenes together.
Whatever depression/betrayal/involuntary vomiting viewers are feeling tomorrow morning, you can bet your sweet ass that they’ll be tuned in next week and to the seasons to come. That’s my word.
06/02/13
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