The Small Fries

Welcome, welcome to a special post on the latest season of Game of Thrones! I was asked by the gracious runners of this fabulous site to write this special feature post about this latest season as a whole and how it relates to its source material: the book series A Song of Ice and Fire. What makes me worthy to write such a post? Is it the fact that I plowed through all the books (well the five that are released so far) in a matter of a couple months, that I watch the show every Sunday religiously, or the fact that I constantly find myself on fan sites that are dedicated to the show? I have no idea other than I am a sincere fan of both the books and the show. As such I will certainly try my best here. So without further ado, let’s dive right in!

This season took us on a wild ride just like the ones preceding it. It took us on a journey of the rise of many characters with their fall happening oh so quickly. Cersei went from finally being in charge to being jailed and forced to undergo a Walk of Shame and Atonement. Jon went from being elected to the Lord Commander to being stabbed in the back. Tyrion started off the season drinking his life away to ruling a second city of corruption, death, and despair in the form of Meereen. Every character in the series went through amazing transformations this season. Some more subtly than others but the thing that makes this universe so amazing to me is just that. The subtlety but rich deepness of the characters are what makes GoT and ASOIAF so popular around the world.

There are so many details that I could go into in this post and maybe I will get that chance in the future, but I am going to try to keep this as big picture as I can. The structure of this season was beautifully crafted in my opinion. Halfway through it seemed that all the action was gone, that episodes were being full of side plots and weird looking at castles…cough cough Brienne. However, as I saw these complaints happening online, I knew that something big was coming and man did it. The last three episodes gave us punch after punch of full out craziness. The showrunners did a great job of keeping the tension just under the surface with spikes of terrible acts done on our favorite characters till it just boiled over and everything went nuts.

Unlike others online, I find it difficult to pick whether I like the books or the show more. I take the words of the great George R. R. Martin to heart and see them as separate entities. They are simply two different methods of telling the same story. Understanding this allows me to be objective when discussing changes from the source material and whether they have merit or not. To me all the changes made can be summed up in one idea, especially in this one particular season. All the changes are simply moving characters to different locations to highlight the storylines that take place at said locations.

So far in the books, Jaime never goes to Dorne. However, by putting him there the audience is automatically seeing how this new place full of new characters relates to the big picture. Without Jaime there we just wouldn’t care enough about that storyline. Now we could argue about how well that storyline went and everything but the point is still made. The other blaring obvious example is Sansa. The show catches up with book Sansa’s storyline in the season premiere of seeing her at a tournament in the Vale of Arryn. That’s as far as the books go. The show then has her take the part of a super minor character by having her go to Winterfell. Now I will admit that before the season started I was super hesitant about this being a possibility. As a book reader, I knew how sadistically psychotic Ramsey is to his future wife and I sure as hell didn’t wish that upon Sansa, but that is the direction the showrunners decided to go on. And as awful as that is and how much everyone hated it, so badly that multitudes screamed that they were done with the show, one can’t argue how effective it was. Would we the audience had such a strong reaction if it was Sansa’s childhood friend in her place? I hate to say it but probably not. It also brought attention to the really tough issue of marital rape. That is the genius of the books and show. They make us think of the bigger issues out there.

Now to shift from direct changes between the two, I will give some of my thoughts on how the show took scenes from the books and how they translated on the screen. I have to say that the best book to show scene for me has to be Cersei’s Walk of Atonement. That scene was done perfectly leaving the audience with a sense of joy of seeing this character reap the consequences of her choices and total disgust of what she is put through at the hands of the crowd. By also having Cersei locked up by the Sparrows two whole episodes before the Walk and only showing small scenes of her captivity, they show a hidden depth to her quick fall from rule. It is quite an effective way of showing it, but at the same time they ended the season with a look on Cersei’s face that tells the audience she is far from being beaten. It would be insane for me to not mention the craziness of episode eight in this post. I’m sure that everyone was blown away with the Massacre of Hardhome. The really beautiful thing is that we don’t get to actually “see” it in the books! Due to the changes like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the showrunners decided to have Jon travel to Hardhome which he doesn’t do in the books. It is way more powerful to show the massacre than have it hinted at in letters that Jon reads. I was completely blown away with the last twenty minutes of that episode. It reminded us that the end game isn’t who sits on the Iron Throne no matter how intriguing that stuff is. The end game is who will save the entire realm from the malicious evil White Walkers. We were definitely reminded of that with that episode.

Now we have to wait nine to ten months to find out the answers of all the cliffhangers in that season finale! Will Sansa and Theon survive their jump? Pause to fist bump the air for Theon’s revival! Will the misfit duo of Jorah and Daario find Dany? What will happen to Arya now that she is blind? What will Jaime do when he gets back to King’s Landing? And is Jon really dead?? The truly amazing thing is that for the first time, the book readers are basically totally caught up with the show watchers. We are all now in the dark as to what will happen to our favorite characters in the crazy world of Westeros. In the meantime, the best we can do is speculate like crazy and obsess over the season as we re-watch it multiple times over the coming months. I for one plan on doing just that!

--Jeff