Game of Thrones/Recap/S2/E01 The North Rememebers

The episode begins with the Hound in a fight - that ends very quickly, as he knocks his opponent over the edge of the battlement they're fighting on. The opponent doesn't land so much as splash on the courtyard below, and everyone claps.

It's Joffrey's name day tournament. Remember what Joffrey was like last season? Well, now he's having a man drowned in wine for arriving to fight late and slightly drunk, isn't that nice? Sansa, thinking quickly, gets the tipsy Ser Dontos off the hook with a little help from Sandor, but it's clear everyone is taking care not to offend Joffrey. Except for Tyrion, who shows up out of the blue and also shows up Joffrey completely.

Tyrion then proceeds to the meeting of the Small Council to show up Joffrey's mother as well. Tyrion is definitely not the brother Cersei would prefer to see right now, but she's stuck with him - he's filling in for Tywin as Hand of the King, after all. He suggests that Arya Stark would be a great bargaining chip in negotiations with Robb Stark, and is none too pleased when Cersei admits that she not only let Joffrey behead Ned Stark, she's lost his younger daughter as well. "We had three Starks to trade. You chopped one's head off and let another escape? Father would be furious. Must be odd for you, to be the disappointing child."

Meanwhile, back in Winterfell, Bran is bored with being the Lord of a castle, but he's soon livened up by a wolf dream and a red comet. Osha has this to say: "The comet means one thing, boy. Dragons." Cut to...

...the Red Waste. Dany is currently minus a horse, since her Silver has just dropped dead, and being plus three (incredibly good CGI) dragons isn't as marvellous as you might expect, especially since she can't work out what to feed them. Or any of her khalasar, for that matter, as they're running low on supplies. In an attempt to find food or civilization somewhere, Dany sends out her bloodriders on a desperate search.

We follow the red comet to the Land Beyond the Wall, where Jon, Mormont, Sam and their party have been travelling for some time, and are now arriving at Craster's Keep. The good news is: there are girls! The bad news is: the lads can't touch them. The ugly news is: they're Craster's daughters...and his wives, too. Eeeesh. 'Your house, your rules' never sounded so nasty before. Jon is understandably as creeped out as we are, but Mormont, also understandably, tells him to keep his mouth shut. Also; where are all of Craster's sons?

Then to Dragonstone, where Stannis Baratheon is having a nighttime bonfire on the beach. And by bonfire we mean he's burning the statues of the Seven at the urging of Melisandre, who has a thing for red and fire and who is seeking to convert Stannis to her religion. "For the night is dark, and full of terrors." Maester Cressen and Davos, Stannis's right hand man, aren't too happy about that. Cutting to inside the castle, Stannis dictates a very exact letter addressed to all the lords of the Seven Kingdoms, revealing that the Baratheon family tree wasn't exactly forking. Neither was the Lannister one, for that matter. It turns out that Maester Cressen is so unhappy with Melisandre and the road she's planning to take Stannis down that he tries to poison her. Try being the word, because not only does he have to drink first to pretend the wine he offers is safe, but as she watches him die she takes a big draught without flinching, as the ruby at her throat flashes. "The night is dark and full of terrors, old man, but the fire burns them all away."

Stannis' ravens travel fast. Robb goes to confront Jaime Lannister, who he's been dragging around with him wherever his army goes. Jaime is as cocky as he can be in reply, which is pretty hard when you have a really big wolf standing beside your captor looking quite ready to tear your throat out. Brave man, that Kingslayer.

Back in King's Landing, Tyrion and Shae have some time together where they discuss just how appalling the city smells, and Littlefinger tries to one up Cersei. "Knowledge is power." It really doesn't work, since she pulls on him what he pulled on Ned last year - the palace guards belong to her, for the moment, and Littlefinger will have to watch himself. "Power is power," she says, and smiles.

In Robb's camp, peace terms are under discussion between Robb and Alton Lannister. Robb basically wants his sisters, his father's bones and his father's sword back, and for the North to be left alone from now on. Alton is amenable to the first three, not so much to the last one. And Robb reminds us, once again, that just about everyone now knows the Lannisters' dirty little secret, just before he dispatches Theon to the Iron Islands so as to drum up support from his family, and Catelyn to negotiate with Renly Baratheon.

Ironically enough, it seems that the last person to learn the secret is Joffrey himself. Not that he's willing to doubt his own legitimacy; he's more concerned about the existance of Robert's bastard children, as he believes they would be an insult to his father's memory. (The irony, it hurts.) In the midst of redecorating the throne room he questions Cersei about it all, and is pretty darn rude. Cersei does what all of us having been longing to and gets the requisite Joffrey slap of the season in. Unfortunately it appears Joffrey isn't half so afraid of her as he is of Tyrion. "What you just did is punishable by death. You will never do it again. Never." Cersei's hold over her son is crumbling fast, and she knows it.

And she's powerless to stop what comes next, which happens to be a lot of Gold Cloaks bursting into Littlefinger's brothel, where Ros has apparently been promoted - by what means we shall not guess - and is coaching the girls with a rather familiar speech. Janos Slynt arrives, seizes Robert's infant daughter Barra and, as her mother screams, slits her throat.

The same thing is happening to black haired children all over the city. (How many bastard children did Joffrey think Robert had?) But, though they're prepared to torture Tobho Mott for information, they've managed to let at least one bastard slip through their grip...

...because Gendry and Arya are long gone, riding through the Dark Hedges and on their way to the North.

"Cersei: Robb Stark is a child. Tyrion: [as if talking to a child] Who's won every battle he's fought! Do you understand we're losing the war?"
 * Adaptational Villainy: See Moral Event Horizon below
 * The Alcoholic: Dontos Hollard, a.k.a. Ser Dontos "the Red."
 * A Fate Worse Than Death: Sansa convinces Joffrey that executing Ser Dontos would be mercy and that being made a fool (jester) would be worse punishment.
 * Ambiguously Evil Redhead: Melisandre.
 * Anyone Can Die: Cressen. And Barra. And several others of King Robert's bastards.
 * Automaton Horses: Averted, Dany's mare, Drogo's wedding gift, dies of exhaustion.
 * Badass Boast: A brief one by Cersei: after Littlefinger mocks the reveal of her Twincest and tells her "Knowledge is power," she demonstrates how the Lannister guards will instantly follow her every command, including killing him, and replies "Power is power."
 * Melisandre, after deliberately drinking a poisoned cup: "The night is dark and full of terrors, old man. But the fire burns them all away."
 * After Jaime Lannister again tries to rile him up, Robb gives him one of these about how he, "a boy," has done so well against the likes of the illustrious Kingslayer. He clinches it with an intimidating snap from his direwolf, to boot.
 * Bald of Evil: Janos Slynt
 * Big Badass Wolf: Grey Wind. Boy those direwolves sure grow fast.
 * Break the Cutie: Poor Mhaegen.
 * Broken Bird: Sansa.
 * The Brute: Both the Kingsguard and specially Lord Janos Slynt
 * Canon Foreigner: Kovarro, one of Daenerys' three bloodriders. Also Alton Lannister, based on Ser Cleos Frey.
 * Three minor ones as well: the two lords Bran meets and Daisy the prostitute.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The little conversation between Daenerys and Rakharo
 * Dark Reprise: Of "The King's Arrival" as Robert's bastards are killed.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Robb, of all people.
 * Death by Adaptation: Daenerys' mare. In the books she's still alive.
 * Dirty Old Man: Craster
 * Establishing Character Moment: Oh, Dolorous Edd. "I was born in a place like this. Later I fell on hard times."
 * Foreshadowing / Early-Bird Cameo: That tune Tyrion is whistling as he walks into the Small Council meeting?
 * Infant Immortality: Not so much averted as utterly and thoroughly annihilated.
 * Ironic Echo: Ros chastises a prostitute for overdoing her performance with precisely the same words Littlefinger used on her when she did the same thing, shortly after getting employed at his brothel.
 * Just a Kid: Cersei involks this in her conversation with Tyrion.


 * Knight Templar: Stannis will not make peace with Renly as long as he keeps declaring himself King. The same goes with Robb for declaring the North and the Riverlands an independent kingdom.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Janos Slynt's betrayal of Ned was a bit lost to the audience next to Littlefinger's betrayal. Not so much his leading a massacre of Robert's bastards, including personally killing baby Barra, which is a case of Adaptational Villainy; in the books the killing of Barra, and her mother, is carried out by Allar Deem, an officer under Slynt's command.
 * My Gods, What Have We Done?: One of the Gold Cloaks is horrified over their killings of Robert's bastard children.
 * Cersei is now really getting a sense of how out of her control Joffrey is.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: Joffrey's orders to the Gold Cloaks to kill all the black-haired bastard children in the city. Subverted in that Joffrey is only partly worried about some illegitimate claimant causing problems and mostly wants rid of his "father's" bastards as he sees them as a personal insult. Also, no such claimant exists, as almost all the victims are genuinely ignorant of their parentage and there are no shortage of other relations farther up the line of succession.
 * Lord Slynt counts as well for the incompetence with which he carries out the order; it's going to be obvious to people that something's happening, but it doesn't help his cause in any way whatsoever to personally murder an infant in front of so many witnesses (especially since the brothel caters to many people of high birth and influence, so some of the witnesses could actually be worth taking seriously.) I'm sure everyone eagerly awaits what the Small Council's reaction to this escapade will be...
 * Oh Crap: Check out Cersei's face when Joffrey threatens to kill her if she slaps him again. Pure "I think I've created a monster."
 * Out of Order: Jon's subplot is taken from much later in the book.
 * Parental Incest: Craster and his daughter-wives
 * Pragmatic Adaptation: The show creates a new Lannister, Alton, to take the place of Cleos Frey, so the episode can make better use of the time that would have gone toward explaining why Cleos is fighting for the Lannisters, when we saw the Freys become allied with Robb.
 * The Purge: Joffrey's slaughter of Robert's bastards.
 * Railing Kill: Sandor defeats his opponent in Joffrey's tournament and throws him off the castle wall in one move.
 * Real Life Writes the Plot: Osha talks about the comet rather than Old Nan, due to Margaret John's death.
 * Refuge in Audacity: Tyrion, from the moment he arrives in King's Landing. Littlefinger tries it, but is quickly put in his place by Cersei.
 * Arguably Littlefinger proves his point perfectly; no matter how much Cersei threatens him, he is far too essential to kill off thanks to his network of contacts.
 * Remember the New Guy?: Dolorous Edd is suddenly part of Lord Commander Mormont's group, without the scene from the book where he meets up with them.
 * Partially justified in that the Night's Watch has ridden in large numbers.
 * Spared by the Adaptation: Doreah, who in the books dies in the Red Waste. Also Mhaegen, who dies, trying - unsuccessfully - to protect Barra.
 * Torture Always Works: The Gold Cloaks interrogate (torture) Tobho Mott about Gendry's whereabouts. He tells them everything.
 * The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Gilly, of course.
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Craster and his daughter-wives, particularly Gilly.
 * Villain Ball: Joffrey seems to be doing everything he can to avoid Pragmatic Villainy, showing such wanton cruelty (and in public!) that it can only undermine his reputation. His slaughter of the black-haired bastards likewise falls under this, and is likely to elicit horror and fury even from those members of his Small Council who don't have moral objections.