SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW, NO SPOILERS FOR THE BOOKS — If you haven’t read the books, you can still read this. Crossposted from All Leather Must Be Boiled.

I’m struck once again by how Game of Thrones: The Show is establishing its aesthetic identity by what it does, for want of a better word, “wrong.” Episode Three’s breakneck scene transitions felt off versus what we’re accustomed to from television, yet complimented the byzantine complexity of this world’s alliances and rivalries. This week’s episode was one long violation of “show, don’t tell,” with character after character telling other characters lengthy stories about the past or filling them in on information about the present. Yet the conversations never felt boring or superfluous, because they told us so much not just about their ostensible topics, but about how this world works. The society of the Seven Kingdoms is held together by the stories its people, particularly people in positions of influence and power, tell each other. The victories and defeats of the past, the valor and ignominy of the competing Houses, the traditions that dictate the positions of men relative to women and the highborn relative to the smallfolk and knights relative to men at arms — in the absence of widespread literacy and with political power a precarious held-at-swordpoint thing, these stories are the glue that binds everything. Telling the right story at the right time can move the world in the storyteller’s desired direction.

Tags: A Song of Ice and Fire, fantasy, Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, reviews, TV, TV reviews

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