And in the end, the late Lord Bolton dies in a manner sadistic enough that even he’d approve of it, had he not been on the receiving end: fed to his own starving dogs by Sansa, who walks away smiling from the carnage. It’s a complex and unsettling set of images, even putting aside the shot of a gigantic hound tearing a man’s jaw off. Everything about it uses the cinematic hallmarks of badassery: the poetic justice of the method of execution; the exchange of quips and one-liners that eventually leaves the loser speechless; the blasé, almost slow-motion stroll away from the carnage; the vengeance-is-mine smirk. Certainly no one would begrudge Lady Stark her satisfaction, especially given the codes and customs of the place and time.

But righteous revenge is almost always an oxymoron. That goes double on this show: Theon’s betrayal of Robb Stark was repaid by a fate worse than death; Tyrion’s payback against his awful father Tywin also involved the Imp strangling his ex-girlfriend to death; the murderers of both the Hound’s religious community and Jon Snow himself died slowly at the ends of nooses; Arya’s kill-list victims have gone out in unpleasantly gruesome fashion one by one; and on and on it goes. Seen in that light, Sansa’s smile over her abuser’s hideous death is far from the simple “fuck yeah” moment it might seem. Again, there’s some question as to whether the series sees it this way, or if we’re intended to take her “cool guys don’t look at explosions” exit at face value. Given the unsparingly awful battle that preceded it, it seems safer to assume that it’s intended to make you uncomfortable. What kind of world would it be, what kind of people would we be, if we weren’t?

I reviewed last night’s Game of Thrones, which made me uncomfortable like a show’s supposed to, for Rolling Stone. My advice for processing this episode: 1. Don’t read the comments; 2. Don’t complain that Aquaman’s wife doesn’t have gills.

All of this is what makes boiling Jaime and Brienne’s relationship down to “You think they’re fucking?” so silly. It may be ex-prosecutor Marcia Clark, of all people, who’s best put this into perspective. She and former colleague Christopher Darden formed this year’s other great star-crossed-romance story line in FX’s stunning docudrama The People v. O.J. Simpson. Clark has spoken eloquently of their bond, marked by similar forced intimacy, breaches of trust, and mutual understanding: “Fact of the matter is, Chris Darden and I were closer than lovers. And unless you’ve been through what we went through, you can’t possibly know what that means.” I’m guessing Jaime and Brienne would have more than an inkling.

Which is not to deny the actual erotic potential of those two big, beautiful, blond-haired, brokenhearted warriors going at it. Repurposing the ideal physicality and emotional intensity of your favorite fictional characters into the stuff of sexual fantasy is an entirely righteous enterprise, or at the very least a harmless one. If your goal is to get off, by all means hop on that ship and sail off into the postorgasmic sunset. It can even provide readers or viewers, particularly those whose sexuality has been marginalized, with vital grist for imagining and thus understanding their own needs and desires. The problem with shipping arises when the entire spectrum of intimacy between adults is reduced to the romantic or the sexual. It does a relationship like Jaime and Brienne’s a tremendous disservice to flatten it into “will they or won’t they.” In the ways that matter most, they already have.

I wrote an essay on the history of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister’s relationship, and the limits of shipping on Game of Thrones and beyond, for Vulture.

“The things we do for love.” When Jaime Lannister says this to Edmure Tully, his prisoner and bargaining chip, he’s quoting no less an authority than himself. These were the same words he uttered just before he tossed Bran Stark out the window to cover up his sexual relationship with his own sister, Cersei. Now he’s using them to describe the intensity of his love for her — confident that his prisoner’s feelings for his own family (especially the young son he’s never seen) will lead him to surrender the castle of Riverrun to save them. His gamble pays off, of course. If there’s one thing that tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones — “No One” — gets right, it’s how much our desire to see the people we care about one more time can motivate us. That, and how much leaving them behind can hurt us.

I wrote about last night’s Game of Thrones, which I thought was dynamite, for Rolling Stone.

Sansa Stark (1:10)
The Queen in the North! From her head-in-the-clouds early days to her current role as a realpolitik rallying point against the Boltons and the White Walkers, Ned’s eldest daughter has learned from the countless torments she’s suffered to be strong while still being decent. If anyone will lead Westeros into its post-apocalyptic future, it’s her.

Jon Snow (10:1)
He’s the prince that was promised, to hear Melisandre tell it — the man to lead humanity against the Long Night. Here’s the thing about messiahs, though: They tend to sacrifice themselves to save the world. Granted, Jon’s done so already, falling to the blades of the Night’s Watch mutineers but returning to fight another day. Unfortunately, his supernatural luck can’t last forever. Expect Lord Snow to go down swinging in the final battle against the Night King.

Arya Stark (Even)
More like Arya Questionmark: Now that she’s spurned the Faceless Men, will the Starks’ wild child pick up where she left off with her kill list and make a kamikaze run into King’s Landing? Will she reunite with her old running buddy the Hound, or her siblings Jon and Sansa — or maybe even her direwolf Nymeria, who is still roaming around out there somewhere after she shooed the beast away way back in Season One? The answer will help determine whether her story is a cautionary tale about children in a violent world or a moving message of rescue and redemption.

Over at Rolling Stone I predicted the odds of survival for every major character on Game of Thrones. As always when I predict things, these are definitive and not subject to debate. Don’t @ me.

When Game of Thrones does a cold open, you know something big is about to go down. Tonight’s well-paced and well-packed episode — “The Broken Man” — is only the third time in the series’ history that the show has started with a pre-credits scene, the others being the Season Four premiere and the pilot. What warranted the break from tradition? The presence of two of the most intimidating actors in HBO history: Deadwood‘s Ian McShane, making his first (and only) appearance as a cheerfully profane man of the cloth called Ray, and the return of Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane, the motherfucking Hound himself. It turns out the mad dog of Westeros survived and joined a religious community in the Riverlands. After a lifetime of violence, a new life of peace was within his grasp. Seen in that light, the episode’s final shot, of Sandor reaching down and picking up the Axe of Vengeance, is crushingly depressing.

But more than that, it represents a surprising lapse on the part of the show itself — a Walking Dead style conflation of principled nonviolence with fatal naïveté. Ray’s belief that “it’s never too late to come back,” functioned as, well, a ray of sunshine in GoT’s bleak world. There’s no reason such faith in humanity need be portrayed as Pollyannaish; as Ray himself explains, it’s the result of bitterly earned shame in having participated in war atrocities himself. But the extreme sanction he and his flock face for this belief — slaughtered in minutes, with the septon hanging from the eaves of his own house of worship — makes him seem like a sucker, not a sage. He looks idiotic for leaving his followers defenseless, and Sandor’s Rick Grimes–style decision to murder the perpetrators seems like the just and moral choice.

You can say “Violence is a disease — you don’t cure a disease by spreading it to more people” all you like; you can even sincerely believe it. But actions speak louder than words. And by wrapping up this subplot in such spectacularly grim fashion, the series is shouting “kill or be killed,” at least in this circumstance.

I’m excerpting this part but you should really read the whole thing, because I had both negative and positive feelings about tonight’s Game of Thrones, which I reviewed for Rolling Stone.

Aeron, Euron, It’s On

Undoubtedly timed to coincide with our landmark 50th episode, George R.R. Martin has released, or rather read, a brand new sample chapter from The Winds of Winter, and Sean & Stefan are tackling it in our third podcast in a month! Suitably, it’s a biggie: Entitled “The Forsaken,” it’s told from the perspective of Aeron “the Damphair” Greyjoy as he’s held prisoner by his increasingly frightening brother Euron Crow’s Eye. How does this chapter function as prophecy, as plot mover, as horror fiction, as Lovecraftian homage? How far are we willing to go with predictions as to what it all means for the future? What is Euron’s true motivation? Is the apocalypse now? Listen and find out!

Download Episode 50

Additional links:

“The Forsaken” (Aeron I) preview chapter from The Winds of Winter

Poor Quentyn’s Euron Greyjoy posts.

Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour

Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).

Our iTunes page.

Mirror.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

There’s a lot going on in tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones, entitled “Blood of My Blood.” Isn’t there always? With so many characters involved in so many storylines spread across so many locations, the sprawl is simply incomparable to anything else on television. But that backstage sequence stands out because it demonstrates how nimble this series can be, despite its massive scope. Writer Bryan Cogman and director Jack Bender took time out of their busy schedule of zombies, dragons, and Dothraki hordes to craft an intimate exchange between two strangers, both of whom know the advantages and disadvantages of playing the role of someone they’re not. Yes, this gives the audience a big stand-up-and-cheer moment when Arya returns to stop the assassination she’d set in motion, but that’s almost beside the point. Revealing character through conversation, even if it’s buried deep beneath layers of deception, is what matters here.

I reviewed tonight’s wide-ranging Game of Thrones, which I found delightful, for Rolling Stone.

We Need to Talk About Hodor: ‘Game of Thrones’ Season Six (feat. Poor Quentyn)

Sean and Stefan are joined by a very special guest to talk about a very special episode! Emmett Booth, the ASoIaF analyst behind the widely read Poor Quentyn tumblr and a maester at ASoIaF University, hops aboard the BLAH train to discuss the shocking revelations of “The Door,” this week’s episode ofGame of Thrones, and use this mid-point opportunity to take stock of the season thus far. What do the secret origins of the White Walkers and Hodor mean for both the show and the books? What does the current political status quo portend for the future, in terms of both plot and theme? What’s wrong with the Game of Thrones critical discourse? Is the show…evil? We’re answering all these questions and more. If you like what you hear, subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes to help the Boiled Leather Rebellion emerge victorious!

Download Episode 49

Additional links:

Poor Quentyn’s tumblr.

Stefan’s review of the episode.

Sean’s review of the episode.

Sean’s “halftime report” for the season.

Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour

Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).

Our iTunes page.

Mirror.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

WHAT’S THE BIG PICTURE

In a word: Magic. Game of Thrones may have made its initial impression as an epic fantasy without much fantasy, saving its dragon hatchlings for the final shot of its first season. But it’s always been about both the public power plays and the game behind the Game — specifically, that all this scheming and warring is a tragic distraction from humanity’s real rip-it-up-and-start-again foe, the White Walkers. Jon Snow’s revival, Daenerys’s fireproof triumph, and Bran Stark’s increasingly powerful visions are a surefire sign that the endgame is approaching, and that certain characters may have a literally messianic role to play.

So it’s no coincidence at all that if and when the Walkers breach the Wall or Daenerys takes wing to Westeros, they’ll find conditions incredibly grim. Bloodthirsty killers control three of the Seven Kingdoms. Self-interested sociopath Littlefinger has command of the continent’s single largest intact army. The Riverlands appear poised for battle between the Red Wedding planners in House Frey and the Blackfish, saved from the massacre by a fortuitously timed bathroom break. King’s Landing is on the brink of full-scale civil war in the streets. Winter is coming, but good old-fashioned human cruelty and greed has set the thermostat close to zero already.

Yet the other big theme of the season so far has been reunions. Brienne and Sansa, Theon and Yara, Dany and Jorah, and especially Sansa and Jon: Each of these long awaited meetings sends the message to the audience that sometimes hope is rewarded, and good things happen to people who deserve them. Nowhere is this clearer than in its supernatural form: Bran’s visions may well get him the informational ammo he needs, particularly concerning Jon Snow’s true parents, to destroy the White Walkers for good. In other words, armies and dragons be damned: Human connections are humanity’s flame against the coming cold. Ice, meet fire.

I ran down the status of every major character and storyline and summed up the whole shebang for a Game of Thrones Season Six Halftime Report, now up at Rolling Stone.

To understand a show full of natural born killers, sometimes it pays to consult the original article — specifically, Oliver Stone’s hyperviolent, hyperstylized 1994 mass-murderer movie. There’s a very funny exchange between Robert Downey Jr.’s tabloid-TV sleazeball Wayne Gale and one of his show’s editors, played by a young, pre-Sex and the City Evan Handler. The exasperated staffer complains that they’ve shown the same over-the-top reenactment of one of superstar serial-killer couple Mickey & Mallory’s murders over and over again; Downey’s character barks back “Repetition works, David” — at which point Stone cuts backward in time, so the line “Repetition works, David” repeats all over again.

Much of what happened on tonight’s oddly off-kilter Game of Thrones episode — “The Book of the Stranger” — depends on whether you believe the point of the joke. Yes, repeating ideas and imagery can heighten their impact, reveal subtle variations, or emphasize the cyclical nature of events. But there’s also such a thing as diminishing returns; if you go to the same well too many times, eventually it’ll run dry.

I reviewed last night’s Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone. I was of two minds about it, as you’ll see in the review. As I say later in the piece, “Whether these scenes worked is an ultimately open question, determined by the resolution of the storylines — one reason among many why it’s best to engage each episode as it comes, rather than attempt to predict the future or put your faith in fan theories.” I wanted to include “or saying ‘here’s what they should have done’” in that list of Don’ts, but it got cut.

Arianne Nation

We’re analyzing the new sample chapter from The Winds of Winter available at GeorgeRRMartin.com this week, and it’s all about Arianne Martell! In this episode of BLAH, Sean & Stefan investigate the latest sneak preview of the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, which Martin has previously read aloud at live appearances, as it takes us further into the future adventures of the Princess of Dorne. What do her discoveries tell us about Aegon and Jon Connington’s invasion? What do they portend for the South now that it’s torn between so many rival forces: Lannister, Tyrell, Faith Militant, Martell, the Golden Company, potential Targaryen loyalists, and who knows what else? And what do they teach us about Arianne herself? In just under half an hour we tackle everything from the likely condition of the Seven Kingdoms when the Others invade to whether or not releasing this chapter was a subtweet of the show’s handling of Dorne and more. Enjoy!

Download Episode 48

Additional links:

The Arianne sample chapter at GeorgeRRMartin.com.

Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour

Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com)

Mirror.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

iTunes page.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

Jon Snow returned not with a bang, but a whimper. Resurrected last week after his murder by mutinying members of the Night’s Watch — not to mention a year of furious speculation by the audience and half-hearted denials by the cast and crew — the Lord Commander reentered the land of the living less like a triumphant messiah and more like a guy who’d just come to after a horrendous car accident. His breath came in gasps. His eyes were wide with confusion and distress. When he stepped off the slab, he couldn’t even walk without an almost equally stunned Ser Davos holding him up. And what did he learn on the other side? As the saying goes, he knows nothing. His rebirth was basically one big supernatural panic attack.

I reviewed last night’s Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone. One parallel that got cut from my review of last night’s episode is that in the show, Ned and Howland kill Arthur Dayne in much the same way that Jaime Lannister killed his boss, the Mad King; one was celebrated, the other reviled.

But what does Jon’s supernatural survival mean for the show itself? First and foremost, it means you are, indeed, watching a fantasy show. Melisandre’s shadow-demon babies, Arya’s shape-shifting assassins, that FrankenMountain monster, last week’s reveal of the Red Woman’s true form, the White Walkers and their undead army, Dany’s freaking dragons: The rules of reality have already been bent left, right, and center, up to and including several resurrections. Our boy in black’s big comeback makes perfect sense within the genre; the idea that this represents some unforgivable breach of audience trust has got to make you wonder what show people have been watching. On the flip side, the complaint that this was too easy to see coming is equally bogus: Isn’t that what foreshadowing is for? Fiction isn’t a magic trick designed to keep audiences in the dark until the big reveal; it works on levels of categorical conventions, theme, tone, character, and plot that can all trump the need for a perfect surprise.

I went deep on Jon Snow’s comeback for Rolling Stone.

SPOILER ALERT

A crippled boy walks again, a smile on his face as he walks around the place he once called home. A lonely girl sits isolated against a vast frozen field, mourning her brother and wondering if she has a purpose without him. A giant bursts through a gate, cowing a small army into submission. A drunk in the middle of pissing on the wall turns to face a masked killer, who crushes his skull and walks away without a word. A sullied knight and a man of god(s) face off in a holy place, the body of a princess in front of them, daylight shining through a seven-pointed window behind them. A dwarf ventures into the darkness to face dragons, illuminated only by the light of his torch and the fire in their mouths. A new mother clutches her baby as a madman releases his hounds to kill them. A broken man hugs the woman he rescued, and who rescued him, as they say goodbye. An aging king faces off against his own brother on a bridge above the ocean, blown back and forth by the storm.

And oh, yeah … Jon Snow comes back from the dead.

I reviewed tonight’s Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone.

If Game of Thrones were a Netflix show, there isn’t a man or woman in all Seven Kingdoms who wouldn’t have plowed right into episode two after watching tonight’s Season Six premiere. So many of the big storytelling beats went unresolved that the inability to binge-watch the next hour (or more) is an almost Ramsay Bolton–level torment.

We don’t get to witness the final showdown between Ser Davos and Ser Alliser. We don’t see the triumphant return of Dolorous Edd leading an army of wildlings (with or without a giant or two in tow) to his black brothers’ rescue. Neither of Cersei Lannister’s most loyal nights, her incestuous brotherJaime and her Frankensteinian bodyguard Ser Robert Strong (aka an undead Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane), face off against the fanatical forces of the High Sparrow. Tyrion Lannister and his buddy-comedy advisor Varys don’t free the dragons chained up in the basement of their Meereenese palace. Daenerys Targaryen’s dragon, the black beast called Drogon, doesn’t swoop in to save her from the clutches of Khal Moro and his Dothraki horde. Bran Stark, his wizardly mentor the Three-Eyed Raven, his M.I.A. kid brother Rickon, schemer par excellence Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish and the ne’er-do-well rulers of the Iron Islands from House Greyjoy don’t show up at all. Most importantly, to paraphrase Chevy Chase, Jon Snow is still dead—if his psychic baby bro, his telepathically connected direwolf Ghost or the apparently ancient sorceress Melisandre are going to bring him back from beyond, we’ll have to tune in next week, same Stark time, same Stark channel.

Shit, we might not even get to find out then.

So how come “The Red Woman,” tonight’s long-anticipated comeback ep, felt so satisfying regardless?

I reviewed the Season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone, where I’ll be covering the show weekly once again. Yay!

Huge thanks to editor Neil Janowitz for tapping me to help put together this massive Game of Thrones character relationship guide for Vulture, written by Jennifer Vineyard and assembled by their crack interactive team. You’ve really gotta see this thing to believe it. Enjoy!

5. What’s going to happen in King’s Landing?

Seriously, is there any place here that isn’t a ticking time bomb going into Season Six?! Like Jon and Dany, Cersei Lannister started last season in charge and ended up in deep shit. After empowering the extremist religious leader known as the High Sparrow — in the hope that he’d take down her rivals — she wound up in the crosshairs as well. Now she’s endured a horrifying walk of shame but will still have to stand trial … and we’ve all seen how trials in King’s Landing go. Her brother Jaime’s back in town, bearing the bad news of their daughter Myrcella’s murder, and her undead bodyguard Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane is running around too. There could well be a three-way bloodbath in the streets between Lannister, Tyrell, and Faith Militant forces before it’s all said and done — four-way, since Dorne’s Prince Trystane is a newcomer to the city this season. It’s a recipe for disaster potent enough to make Meereen look like Des Moines.

I wrote about 11 of the biggest unanswered questions facing us in Game of Thrones Season 6 for Rolling Stone.

The annual tradition continues! I wrote Game of Thrones Season 6 cheat sheet for Rolling Stone.