No, what made me actually shake was the way it all went down.ĭread is an underutilized emotion on TV. (Also? Industry trades don’t bray about things like this unless the actor in question has agents who want to make it very clear their about-to-be-unemployed client still has some work lined up, thank you very much.) Game of Thrones proved in its first season that anyone is expendable proving it again is no great shakes.
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Furthermore, the story line of proud Robb Stark - a warrior who never seemed to fight any battles a father’s son who cut off a loyal ally’s head to spite his own face - had long ago dead-ended itself into a series of increasingly foreshadowy pronouncements, the last of which, about how much he was looking forward to teaching his unborn son, Ned Jr., to ride horses, was more or less lifted directly from the shooting script of McBain: The Movie. When it comes to optimism and the overall efficacy of rigid moral codes, Game of Thrones tipped its hand back when it clipped Ned’s neck. The events of what even a non–book reader like me has come to recognize as the Red Wedding were shocking, but I can’t say they were all that surprising. The Starks prayed to the Old Gods to the very end, but it was their allegiance to the old ways that cost them everything. The most shocking scene on television in 2013 was a quick and brutal affair carried out with daggers, crossbows, and slithery, secondhand deceit. (Attacking the Lannisters with outmoded ideas like “justice” is like taking on a nuclear submarine armed with nothing but a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order.) And, tellingly, there were no swords unsheathed in last night’s carnage either - assuming you don’t count dumb old Edmure’s non-metaphorical bedding ceremony. Ned found that out himself in King’s Landing when his slash-and-burn truth-telling proved no match for the million pinpricks and paper cuts of gossip, power, and innuendo that did him in. Way back in the pilot, Lord Stark taught his boys an important life lesson when he meted out rough justice upon a deserter, saying “He who passes the sentence should swing the sword.” But sword-swinging is a creaky and clunky way to get things done in a more modern era, one when the line of fate separating those handling the blade and those receiving it is smaller than Roose Bolton’s bar tab. In a typical fantasy epic, Ned would have been the hero the only thing heavier than his chain mail was his conscience. Noble and unflashy, they were the Derek Jeters of the Seven Kingdoms: praised and resented for playing the Game the right way. Unlike the conniving schemers to the South, the fair-minded and merciful Starks were as sturdy as a Northern oak. From day one, Game of Thrones presented the Stark family as the heroic moral compass of its endlessly twisting narrative. “Someday it’ll get you killed.” If ever there were words to live by - or, more likely, the opposite - in Westeros, it’s these. “You’re very kind,” says the Hound to Arya, in between bites of pickled pig trotter.
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