‘GoT’ RECAP: Well, Cersei’s Still A C*nt

Game Of Thrones Recap
Contributor: Josephine Rozenberg-Clarke, Melissa Mason

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES EPISODE 4. DUH GUYS, IT’S A RECAP. SO LEAVE NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

After the emotional turmoil that was last week’s Game of Thrones episode “The Long Night”, consisting of the huge Battle Of Winterfell and the dramatic slaying of the Night King, this week’s episode was always going to be a bit of a comedown.

[jwplayer W7JCDnGm]

Obviously they’ve got their dead to mourn but this episode consisted entirely of meaningful glances, a couple of hushed conversations that could have been spicy but stopped just short of interesting and really we have like 3 episode left and this is what the producers are spoofing out? We need more story progression, people! Or at least some overly graphic sex scenes to keep us interested.

As usual, myself (Josie, PEDESTRIAN.TV‘s Head of Editorial) and Mel (Senior Features / Style Editor at P.TV) watched and had many thoughts about the episode, which we will share with you now whether you like it or not.

JOSIE: It’s the aftermath of the big Battle of Winterfell and honestly as Jon was making his emotional speech honouring the fallen and the camera was panning across everyone crying, I was like how and also why are all these boring secondary characters still alive.

MEL: I was mildly distracted from my grief by Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) kissing the very, very rigor mortised corpse of Ser Friend Zone (Iain Glen) on the forehead. Here’s a thought, I get that he was like your step dad who you loved but was also a mid-level creep, but don’t kiss corpses that have been left to decay for days! Don’t do it!

christ, you really don’t smell great

JOSIE: It really sucks for Ser Friend Zone that the closest he got to getting it on with Daenerys was her chastely pecking the forehead of his prone lifeless body. Offensive, really.

MEL: And yes, most of those people should have been extremely dead, with Sam (John Bradley) at the top of the list – but I was thrilled to see that Ghost is 1000% alive, friends! The dog made it, that’s all that matters.

JOSIE: Sam should be embarrassed to still be alive. Jumping forward quite a ways but we did eventually see that he managed to get his leg over and knock up Gilly (Hannah Murray). Seriously, was his entire purpose for surviving the battle just this baby storyline?

MEL: I think it actually was, and while I’m happy he and Gilly get to traipse off into the North with their cute little family it’s all just a BIT unrealistic given he can barely carry a sword. But look, good on them. They’re cute.

but seriously how the fuck am i still here

So Gendry (Joe Dempsie) is now officially a Baratheon after Dany blessed him with the honour of a legitimate title and surname post-battle, further fuelling your mate Jono‘s theory that this series is going to end with three babies – a Lannister, a Targaryen and a Baratheon – placed to battle it out in the future for the Iron Throne. Or, it may just be another one of the showrunners’ little gifts to the fans – here! You get knighted! You get legitimised! Everyone gets a thing!

JOSIE: That was nice for Gendry! And it was extremely very cute when he proposed to Arya (Maisie Williams), but as soon as he said “I want yer to be mi’lady” I was like **bites fist** “ahh no doll you’ve stuffed it. never call Arya your ‘lady’ you bloody rookie”. Of COURSE she was never going to go for that! But as rejections go it was a very nice one. Really nailed the shit sandwich, did Arya.

that feeling when the guy you casually fucked because you thought you were both gonna die in a battle is way too keen

MEL: Yeah look Arya was never going to be anyone’s lady, was she. I can’t see her surviving this season and if she does, she’ll just wander Westeros Hound-style I think, drinking in taverns and getting into bar fights. It was really nice seeing everyone have fun and chilling out for a hot second, don’t you think? I particularly enjoyed Tormund (Kristofer Hivju) getting white-girl wasted and crying to The Hound (Rory McCann) when Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) (!!!) went off (!!!) for SEX (!!) WITH JAIME FUCKEN LANNISTER BABEY!!!!

ok fine i’ll go ya, but do NOT touch me with that cold metallic hand

JOSIE: Did I not tell you this in our very first recap! I KNEW there were sex vibes there! Look, I know people shipped her and Tormund but I think Brienne found him mildly disgusting. And finding out in this ep that she’d never boned anyone before, I think his particular brand of Wildling sex might have put her off it for life? You just know he’d be a bit intense between the sheets.

MEL: Yeah they definitely angled Tormund more toward the too-keen camp this episode, with his drunken lustfulness. If I were to pick rowdy Tormund or sensible Jaime for my first time, I’d probably go Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) too. And then they sort of revealed real feelings for each other, huh. I wasn’t expecting that but it was cute to see Jaime get excited with Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) for a minute. Then there was… unhinged Dany begging Jon (Kit Harington) not to tell anyone he’s actually Aegon Targaryen, legitimate heir of the Seven Kingdoms. Hooooo boy, she is on the right track to become the Demon Queen a la Mad King Daddy, isn’t she?

JOSIE: Absolutely yes! There were a lot of kind of foreshadowing moments around Dany going mad in this episode. Varys (Conleth Hill) could tell she was majorly off it when everyone was loving on Jon at the drunken dinner as well. It was funny when her and Jon tried to make out but both couldn’t because of the whole Targaryen revelation. I think he’s grossed out but she’s just all “not my THRONE!”. Even when he was like “I promise I don’t even want your dumb throne” she was just not okay with it. It was pretty interesting when Arya and Sansa (Sophie Turner) both took him aside for a “we hate your gf” intervention too.

uh not sure how to say this but your girlfriend’s a BITCH

MEL: My god, she was copping it from all sides this episode! And rightly so, she’s doing her Dany-thing where she gets on a bit of a hotheaded rush and needs things NOW – the throne, the triumph over Cersei (Lena Headey), whatever. She just needs things with immediacy whereas, as Varys pointed out, Jon is more cautious and level-headed. He’d absolutely make a better King and I think Dany is seeing that more and more. And instead of just conceding and maybe going for a marriage situation, where she can still have influence and impact on Westeros and its people, she’s digging her heels in and getting angrier every time things don’t go her way. I really hope they don’t make Dany a psychotic monster because it feels really cliche to have two powerful women (Cersei and Dany) both go power-mad.

JOSIE: I am genuinely interested to see how Dany’s arc plays out. Jon is definitely a very cute spanner in the works that she did not bank on. Meanwhile, Tyrion was in basically every scene of this episode. Before we get into his more ~strategic~ convos, how funny was it when he was shooting the breeze with Jaime, and Bronn (Jerome Flynn) just suddenly appeared literally out of the woodwork. I love that guy!

surprise, dickheads

MEL: I was waiting for Bronn to just shoot them both with his crossbow in a wild twist, but instead he was bargaining for a better offer once again. He’s even better than Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) at this deceptive shit, don’t you think? He’s a delight (even if he’s a bit of a snake) and I love that he came back and didn’t just disappear on the way from Kings Landing to Winterfell.

JOSIE: Yeah as much as I love him and thought that scene was fun, it did smack a bit of the showrunners being like “Ah fuck we forgot about Bronn and that whole plotline, quick get him in to tie it up neatly!” There is a LOT of that happening at the moment. Like with Tormund being like “Oh bye we’re gonna head off!” And the Sam and Gilly thing that we mentioned above. I’m just imagining the writers with a big whiteboard full of characters crossing them all off as they deal with their storyline. “What about Ghost? Hmm let’s just send him off with Tormund!”

aww man don’t send me off with that weird unit

MEL: Right!? I suppose they have a lot of characters we’ve grown fond of as viewers, and they need to account for them and not just have them disappear into the ether. Well, you know how they COULD have accounted for them? BY KILLING THEM IN THE BATTLE AGAINST THE DEAD. Juuuuust saying. Anyway, are you getting a bit tired of Sansa’s bitchy shit with Dany? I kind of am?

I hate you
I hate you too and also you are dumb so there

I am also tired of Dany being as impulsive as she is being, but when she was telling the War Team or whatever you call them all about her plan to take the throne, Sansa’s snippy comments about the armies being tired – a good point, but delivered very snootily I felt – got on my nerves. She’s a great character and I love that she’s become so confident, but doll JON is your leader? And this is meant to be your Queen?

JOSIE: You know my thoughts about Sansa, I know she’s grown and changed (and I did love the bit where she pointed that out to The Hound at the big drunken dinner) but she’s still just a bit of a bitchy teen at heart. Even Tyrion was like “Mate, pump the brakes on the Mean Girls BS”. It’s almost like she just hates Dany for the sake of it? Just to be different. Can you explain to me what Tyrion was playing at with his various convos – he spoke to Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) at the start and Sansa about ruling the North and I just zoned out a bit.

MEL: I don’t know, I really can’t tell what Tyrion AND Varys are up to but it’s clear they’re working some shit out regarding the Dany/Jon situation. I think Tyrion is still trying to get the Northern eggs in order so Dany can ascend the throne and still keep the North, but I don’t think it’s going to work without Jon getting involved and staying North to lead there.

JOSIE: Can I be honest and say the hushed political conversations were really boring me in this episode? In fact, I had just messaged you to say how boring I thought this episode was and literally two seconds later as our friends from the North were travelling South, Rhaegar the dragon copped a Big Arrow through the noggin. RIP scaly boi. That Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk) really is a dickhead, isn’t he.

o no

MEL: Christ that was unexpected! For a second I thought Sansa had turned on Dany for good and gotten all dragon-stabby. That was so well done, I was confused until those Greyjoy ships careened around that rocky cliff-face corner. He is the woooooorst, God I can’t wait for him to die.

the face of a man who will not survive the season

Loved Daenerys’ agility with the Drogon navigation, though. Although she is PISSED. And not the good kind of righteous anger – she was out for blood and was happy to burninate the entirety of Kings Landing. It was only Tyrion who talked her down, but she keeps seeing his suggestions for acting carefully as “failures”. I feel like soon we’ll see her ignore Tyrion’s pleas for the innocent and just fuck everyone up to kill her enemies, don’t you think?

JOSIE: Yes she is definitely boiling with rage and Cersei was deliberately baiting her by killing her “child” and taking Missandei prisoner.

hmm i shall shoot a Big Arrow at that hot little boyfriend of hers next

Dany never bloody listens to Tyrion. I am honestly baffled as to why she’d make him her Hand if she’s not going to listen to any advice. So Jaime after enjoying 0.5 seconds of domestic bliss with his new girlfriend Brienne was like “Oh on second thoughts I’m outta here.” He’s going to kill Cersei, right?!! Well that’s gotta be his plan, anyway.

MEL: I don’t know, coz he was all “I’m not a nice guy I pushed a kid out a window and murdered my cousin etc etc” to Brienne. I took that as him being like “lady, we may have fucked but I am not here to date you” – poor Brienne, copping the fuckboy bullshit we all experience in 2019. But maybe you’re right! I simply thought he was headed down to try and reason, once again, with his sister-lover before she burned to death from stupidity.

JOSIE: I feel like he has a secret murder plot that he could not tell Brienne about. And he was saying all that stuff like “she made me do it all so now I should kill her.” But maybe that is just wishful thinking and because it is 2019 he is just a fuckboy? That final scene when the small Northern crew rocked up at Kings Landing was pretty tense after a somewhat boring episode. I did think it was a very silly idea to bring your last remaining dragon to the place where the Big Arrows come from. Dany needs to be better. The dragon ended up being fine but other shit definitely went down!

MEL: Haha I agree, don’t intentionally wheel your last dragon out in front of the Big Arrows. Not a good idea! I loved the visuals of that final scene. Just this big desert, with Dany’s tiny Unsullied army and Tyrion bravely walking up to the doors to speak to Cersei.

helloooo

That entire conversation I was waiting for Cersei to spontaneously kill Tyrion in a wild twist, but she’s still a few clicks away from outright murder-hatred for her brother, it seems.

Controversial but I wasn’t too sad about Missandei dying. I mean, she’s a lovely character but we’re 2 episodes away from this entire series being over, and I won’t miss her during those episodes, you know?

Whereas Tyrion dying would have been upsetting because Peter Dinklage is just a magnificent actor and Tyrion is one of my favourite characters because of him.

love 2 behead people

JOSIE: They’re doing that thing of just killing people off who we gently like and not, like, stomping on our hearts by killing off our favourites. That would be far too Season 1 of them! Killing Missandei was such a power move from Cersei though, she knows that she’s important to Dany just like the dragon so it’s a very cold and deeply personal move. But Tyrion did manage to make Cersei cry by talking about her children. So she’s not 100% monster, just… 99.5% monster.

MEL: I’m interested to see how this showdown ends – it’s clear we’re going to see a big battle on our hands next week, but could Cersei actually… win? I feel like she’s in with a chance.

For more of Mel and Josie, check out the All Aussie Mystery Hour podcast.

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