Sucker Punch

Plus, there was the time he accepted the same offer from that girl in Tulsa and then everybody teased him because she was no Mila Kunis.

Plot? 

Virtually any movie can seem contrived if you know too much (or too little!) about some specific aspect of the story.  "That would never happen in real life" is a pretty common response, and we all have our personal nitpicks in movies - ones that nobody else even notices.

Heh.  Was just talking to Brian today about the next round of surprises coming up for non-book-readers.  The series is doing a pretty dandy job of head-faking some of them, and not telegraphing others at all.   

Tonight's final scene being a case where they didn't give much warning before it happened.  Nice, I thought. 

There was also one shot in tonight's ep that definitely felt like a wink to us who know where the Arya/Hound thread is going.

Small quibble: Giger did the character design for Species.   Carry on.

Overheard at a party, about a year from now...

"Hi, I'm George R.R. Martin."
"The guy who writes the novelizations of that HBO show?  Cool!"

Legal's still sorting that out.

Coming This Winter on HBO KIDZ:  White Walker Babies!   (aka "Craster's Bastards")

Yup.  Apparently this is the first example of the series getting ahead of the books.  Probably won't be the last for this season, either.

All of that, PLUS... 

there was also Tywin's reaction to Jamie's return home - "sure, you're alive but you'll never be any use now.  Might as well ship you back home."  And of course Jamie's own son the King dissed him as usual.   Jamie endured all manner of torment to make it back to his family and they ALL greeted him with a hearty "meh, we did fine without you" when he finally got there.   

He actually did seem a bit humbled for a while, but that wasn't getting him anywhere so he just switched back to doing whatever he damn well wants.   Ugly?  Sure.  Surprising?  Hardly.

Note also that Tywin added considerably to Cersei's grief-load by immediately taking Tommen under his wing and saying "Okay, so let's not be a fuckup like your brother, umkay?"    That's Cersei's new reality - her son was murdered and nobody in Westeros gives a damn, other than the expected kneejerk reactions about family honor and vengeance and such.  But Joffrey the person - nobody's sad to see him gone.  Poor Cersei, she's the only one who genuinely loved that little shit.

So not only are all these characters getting pushed to their breaking points by recent events, the show's showing us what the Lannister family's real problem is.  Tywin's so concerned about his family legacy that he's been doing serious lifelong damage to his actual family.

And we all know how that's gonna pay off sometime between now and the end of the season.  And if they stay true to the books completely, it will be Tyrion's turn for the audience to say "oh, that's so terrible and now I don't like him!"  Even though what Tyrion will do will make perfect sense as well.

"Incest?  Sure.  But it's gotta be consensual."   
                         - the internet

Interestingly enough, last night I hung out with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and we were talking about his tv project.  He mentioned he wanted to push some boundaries, and so I asked if he was a GoT watcher - speaking of the risks involved in pushing boundaries and so on.

He said he wasn't aware of the Jaime/Cersei controversy because he ragequit GoT two weeks ago when Arya put Needle through that guy's neck.  Arya was the only character he liked, but she was ruined for him when she became a cold-blooded murderer.

Which I found kinda surprising, since in the world of GoT that moment was about as close to a "happy ending" as the show ever delivers.   But different folks have different buttons.  Lorena Bobbitt probably wouldn't like the Jaime incident either, meanwhile John Wayne Bobbitt probably wouldn't be too fond of the Theon storyline.

All of which is fine, and if any particular thing turns people off the show, that's just the risk you run when you try to make anything edgier than Full House.  (Actually I'm sure somebody somewhere quit watching Full House because of some episode that went too far.)

What I don't get is the complaint that this changes anything about Jaime or Cersei, other than showing their dynamic has changed.  For me that scene was like watching two vipers fighting - the good outcome would have been if they killed each other in the process - but of course Westeros isn't ever going to be that lucky.