Game of Thrones S07E01 Review: Tablesetting

Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 1: Dragonstone

The North Remembers.

So a huge warning to anyone not caught up to Game of Thrones, I'll be reviewing things in relatively intricate detail, both in respect to the novels and the show itself. Mind you, I'm not going to do a dissertation about the differences and the themes explored between page and screen, but, again, expect some references to the books every now and then.

Without further ado, how glorious was that opening theme? It's an episode that's more about table-setting, sadly, so there's not really that much that lives up to the one-year wait between the previous season and this one. Of course the actors are talented enough to hold an episode that's mostly exposition on their own, and I have enough confidence in the writers that it's not going to be a buildup without a satisfying payoff, so it's enjoyable enough to watch the episode and be happy about it. 

The episode's most exciting scene, for me personally, was the first scene it showed us. Walder Frey is inexplicably alive and talking to his huge family of sons and nephews and whatnot that is fucking hard to keep track of (seriously, I have the genealogy section of the addendum in my copy of Clash of Kings and I still can't remember how half of these idiots are interconnected to each other). I'm left to wonder if this is a scene that took place in the past, or something... before realizing that Arya is using her Faceless Men skills to impersonate Walder Frey, giving the mother of all amazing speeches before poisoning every single member of the Frey's family other than the underage wives to death. David Bradley is an amazing actor, and always has been enjoyable as the cantankerous Walder Frey, but here he gets to show off another part of his acting chops as he plays a disguised Arya, talking and gesticulating wildly like the egomaniac that Walder Frey is, before damning the Freys for killing her family, and in one swift stroke murders a whole ton of people. If Cersei didn't blow up the sept at the end of the last season, Arya would've probably held the record of most people killed by a single person. 

But after that, the seventh season premiere is content to slow down a little and explore the ramifications of the events that ended the sixth season. In addition to the Frey massacre, the sixth season also served in ending several long-running storylines -- the Boltons' takeover of Winterfell, as well as the whole complex situtation in King's Landing, leaving only Cersei in power. Oh, and Bran becomes the new Raven (whatever that means, as far as show watchers are concerned) and Daenerys leads the Horde her army to Westeros. 

So yeah, we get to see several scenes that's just getting characters from one place to the next. We get to see an amazing scene of the White Walkers and his moving army of undead death knights, decaying horses, a moving wall of snowy storms and even undead giants. That's all we get from our undying buddies for this episode, though honestly no one expected the White Walkers to suddenly murder everyone in the very first episode of the show. Hopefully the buildup for the Walkers doesn't take as long as, well, getting 'winter is here' into the show, and we have the Walker and Cersei plotlines running concurrently instead of 'let's deal with Cersei while the Walker stuff slowly, slowly builds up'.

We then cut to Bran and Meera arriving at the Wall, meeting with Edd (who I totally forgot got totally promoted into Lord Commander of the Night's Watch) and giving cryptic warnings about the White Walkers and shit and Edd's just got this hilarious "come the fuck on" expression on his face. We're then quickly cut towards King's Landing, where Cersei and Jaime, now the sole rulers of King's Landing with their very few allies basically outlining their situation. Enemies to the north, south, east and west. It's all a bit expository, but it's necessary to the more casual viewers comming in after a year's break. They also note their lack of allies (as far as named characters go, who's left? Zombie Mountain and the crazy alchemist Qyburn?) with the deaths of the Frey family. And honestly, for all the talk about Cersei being the final obstacle for Daenerys's rise into queendom of the seven kingdoms, it's hard to really feel that Cersei is a big threat right now. 

Of course... Cersei has already asked for help from Euron Greyjoy's Ironborn, who show up in a pretty impressive array of kraken-bannered warships. I'm not quite sure how they actually managed to build up such an impressive fleet after Theon and Yara stole all their best ones, and what little we saw of Pyke was a barren, tree-less bunch of rocks, but okay, I'll buy it. The deal between the two isn't super-lucrative, though. Euron's happy enough to put his chips as long as he can win Cersei's hand in marriage for... some weird childhood dream reasons, and his mockery of Jaime in front of everyone ("two hands" "you should try it") and his sheer nuttiness is entertaining enough, but Euron then proceeds to leave and bugger off to get Cersei a 'gift'. I'm not sure why Jaime ends up being such a dick to the only ally they might have, but his anger at Cersei is justified with his rants about how they never really talked about Tommen's suicide-death and how Cersei's growing even more distant. Again, the show's weakness here is probably being too transparent in telegraphing how Jaime's probably going to be forced to pick between Tyrion and Cersei in the near future.

Meanwhile, in the North, Jon and Sansa are butting heads similar to their counterparts in King's Landing. There are some exposition and moving pieces here and there -- Littlefinger's still around and being creepy, Tormund gets to man one of the castles to hold off the Walkers, little lady Lyanna Mormont is the most awesome little girl and could probably whup my ass in a fight, and Brienne is training Pod. Oh, and Jon and Sansa argue in public about how to deal with the traitorous Umber and Karstark houses that joined Ramsay Bolton. Jon's argument that the Umber and Karstark families should not be denied their houses and the treacherous heads of the family were killed anyway is... believable, but while Sansa's probably more spiteful than she should be, handing two castles that're going to be key points to stopping the Walker invasion to two inexperienced children isn't going to end well. 

Sansa notes about how she 'learnt a lot' from Cersei, and how they should not make the same mistakes that Ned and Robb Stark made -- putting honour above political strategy. Sansa wants to reward those who are loyal, while Jon wants to respect tradition. It's a neat observation of the two sides of the coin that is Ned Stark. One side the naive fool who got beheaded due to his simple black-and-white morality, and the other the beacon of honour and justice everyone should strive to be. Though the argument would be more poignant if Jon isn't such a dick to Sansa. "So what do you suggest me do, listen to you?" Trying to assert your superiority as a king so you don't get challenged in front of everyone is one thing, actively mocking your sister is another. Dick move, Jon. Especially when just a scene ago Jon's championing for gender equality as far as drafting civilians and children into combat. 

Mind you, taking previous events into account, Ned Stark was very, very fair in punishing traitors -- he did bring the Iron Islands to heel and basically took Theon hostage, as well-treated as he was, and never shied away from that. And Robb Stark's own brutal punishment of the older Karstark patriarch was what led the Karstarks to betray the Stark family in the first place. So there's a lot of awesome comparisons to be drawn as both Sansa and Jon struggle to find their place, with the serpent that is Littlefinger still trying to get Sansa to believe that she's the better candidate for the King, or, well, Queen in the North than Jon is. The fact that the North is facing two different threats -- Jon's very well-equipped to fight wildlings, psychotic bastards and wights, but woefully shit at dealing with the type of Cersei Lannister flavoured politics which Sansa can deal so well. Obviously the solution is to have our two main Starks actually work together, and other than the healthy infusion of Jon-dickery there's not much in the way of that. Still, I very much love the scenes between Jon and Sansa even if they're butting heads, so kudos on that.

There are probably two big filler scenes in this episode. The first is the Arya and the random Lannister soldiers. It's not just an excuse for an Ed Sheeran cameo, though, and it serves nicely to highlight how not all Lannister soldiers are evil. It's a bit ham-fisted with them talking about how they miss their failies and shit, and Arya's attempts to not to be treated as guests so she would be obliged not to slit their throats and steal their swords is darkly hilarious, but it dragged on for a bit too long. It is neat to see Arya laugh like a normal human being again after being in soulless vengeful assassin mode for so long.

The second filler scene (or scenes) are the Samwell Tarly ones. Sam isn'tn the most interesting character in Westeros. Hell, out of the highly-billed characters that get the most screentime, he's easily the least interesting. John Bradley-West does an amazing job of making the big lummox likable, but I honestly find it hard to justify really caring for long ponderous scenes like this. The montage is painful but I acknowledge its neccessity in highlighting how doldrum Sam's life in Oldtown is, and how he's justified in trying to steal books and stuff. The repetitive boredom of the Sam montage also makes the random jumpsacre of Jorah's scaled-skin leper hand shooting out of that door. The speech from the Arch-Maester about how nothing changes is delivered amazingly well by the actor but is hardly really necessary, and Sam finding out about the deposit of Dragonglass under Dragonstone isn't a super-big revelation. Even discounting the books, as Sam mentions here himself, Stannis Baratheon had said so several times in the past. I guess it's needed for the sequel hook of 'how to make Team Jon and Team Dany meet'. Overall, though, the Sam scenes dragged a little. Not so much to make me dislike the episode, but it did. 

The Hound's scenes arguably could also be called filler, but I really liked it, in no small part due to the great ham-to-ham combat between the Hound and Beric Dondarrion, the knight that never dies. They stumble across the house that the Hound hid out in and shared a meal (and later robbed blind) in season... four? Five? One of them, anyway. It's one of the weaker parts of the Hound's journey, and this season gave it a pretty sad payoff as the Hound's forced himself to bury them, trying to say a prayer for them and failing to even memorize the prayer. Dondarrion analyzes that the death is probably a suicide to stop them from dying and suffering out of starvation, something they wouldn't have had to suffer if the Hound hadn't stolen all their silverware.

I personally would've liked Dondarrion and Thoros to have more presence so their random re-appearance in season six after being a brief side-quest in season three (four? I'm bad at this), but I'm okay with how they're handled. The Hound gets to see into the flames and gets a vision of the Walkers marching to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, meaning that the Hound and the Brotherhood Without Banners are probably going to join up with Team Jon Snow sooner or later. Again, it's more table-setting and plot hooking, but at least the Hound gets a cool, somber moment.

And finally, the scene ends with Daenerys's return to Dragonstone, where she was born and where the Targaryen dynasty used to rule in. It's a scene that's been build up for a long, long time and it felt... hollow, just like Dragonstone itself, until Daenerys speaks. I did like it enough, and I felt that the lack of a background music after the CGI dragons have flown by is relatively appropriate to showing Danerys's mindset without her going into a tirade about her current motivations. I could go into a long, long talk about how Daenerys has transformed over the past six seasons from an entitled confused girl into Freedom Fighter Dragon Queen of Eunuchs and Badass Women, but I'll just say that the lack of music (a stark contrast to every single exposition-heavy scene before this) makes Daenerys look introspective and that's good enough. 

So yeah. Daenerys has her army. Her dragons, her ships, Tyrion, Theon and Yara, Varys, Gray Worm, Missandei, and both Ollena and Ellaria are allied with her. She has Cersei overwhelmingly at an advantage even without the dragons, but on the other hand Jaime did know that Cersei's going to land in Dragonstone, so is there some surprise or meaning left behind leaving the castle empty for her? Hopefully it's not another batch of green explosives. 

Overall, though, a slow but still relatively strong entry in Game of Thrones, a fitting reflective beginning to the final season-split-into-two-seasons-deal. Could be worse, could be better.