Contest of Fancy Chairs - Episode 6 - A Golden Crown

Pack it in everybody. The only thing I ever cared about seeing happened this episode. I have no reason to continue watching.

Let's talk about Episode 6, A Golden Crown.

QUESTIONS:

...On a scale of 10 to 10, how awesome was that scene where Viserys got molten gold poured over his head?

...Viserys seemed very surprised at the design of his crown. What do you think he expected his crown to look like?

...Oh man, that fucking crown scene, you guys. Am I right?

...Now that the crown scene is over, why even continue the show?




What? You guys want me to recap the rest of the episode? Shit, man. I mean, I guess I can.

We start out with Ned waking up to a very blurry King and Queen. They have just gotten word that Catelyn took Tyrion to Winterfell on Ned's command, and Cersei isn't taking that news very well.

Well, you know how women can get when their siblings get kidnapped. Nag, nag, nag. Am I right fellas?

Anyway, the King smacks her what for, and Ned is like, hey guys, I'm kinda bedridden right now and it's realllly uncomfortable to watch a couple fight, so maybe you could smack her when I'm not around, is that okay?

Cersei storms out and the King tells Ned that he's 3 million in debt to the Lannisters, so in order to avoid a war, the Lannisters and the Starks have to put this shit behind them. He tells Ned to send his wife a raven and reinstates him as the Hand, threatening to give the position to Jaime Lannister if he ever takes it off again. Well, that's one way to get him to stick around, I guess.

Over in Dothrak, Daenerys is putting one of her dragon eggs over some hot coals.

A servant walks in and freaks out. She grabs the egg, trying to prevent Daenerys from burning herself.

The servant got egg burns all over her palms, but Daenerys' hands were unmarred.

Meanwhile, Bran is having that fucking dream. Again. They used the same footage and everything, the hacks. Oh, but this time, the three-eyed raven flies down a corridor, giving us no real further information other than that there is a corridor down that direction. Is that how this is going to go now? Each episode we get a repeat of this scene with one extra step tacked onto the end?

So anyway, Bran wakes up as Hodor is walking in. (How convenient.) Hodor presents him with his cripple saddle.

Cut to Atreyu Bran riding Falkor his horse, through the forest, screaming loudly. Somehow, Greyjoy and Robb Stark manage to lose track of him, and he gets ambushed by a bunch of hobos who want his horse to ride south.

Robb shows up and attacks the hobos.

He has the woman in his grip, but Bran has been taken captive and the remaining hobo has a knife to his neck. Bran seems pretty okay with this, telling Robb not to comply with the hobo's demands to put down his sword.

But then the hobo gets an arrow through the heart from Greyjoy.

Tough break, Bran. You are burdened with life for another day.

Over in the Vale, Tyrion is having a tough time convincing the guards to let him speak to Lyssa.

Then there's a part where Arya is having sword dancing lessons. She's not really feeling so great because of all the shit that's happened to her family. But Syrio says this is the best time to train. You don't need to fight when things are well, so you must learn to fight when things are going poorly.

He also asks her is she prays. She says yes, to the old gods and the new gods. So here we've learned that Arya is a fan of Jack Kirby, I guess? But Syrio says there is only one god:

(emphasis mine)

And to him we say:

So Daenerys is eating a horse heart.

Viserys gets all butthurt that the army hasn't been granted to him yet, so he decides to steal the eggs to sell in exchange for a boat and a large army.

But Jorah Mormont steps in and is all like nuh-uh, those are not your eggs.

So Tyrion finally get his council with Lyssa, where he proceeds to confess his crimes.

He speaks much of his sexual misdeeds, but when questioned about the murder, he claims to be innocent, and demands a trial. Despite having everyone on her side, and she agrees to have Robin listen. And if he's found guilty, Tyrion will be tossed out of a hole in the floor of the tower called the Moon Door.

Robin really wants to see him go through the Moon Door.

Then Tyrion demands it be a trial by combat. Despite having everyone on her side, Lyssa agrees to make it a trial by combat. Then Tyrion demands a champion, and Lyssa agrees to that too.

Now look, I get that these are the crazy laws of Westeros, where a man can be proclaimed guilty or innocent based on how good another man is at killing, but why is Lyssa agreeing to this? She is the only one present who has any power. Everyone is on her side. She clearly has no interest that true justice be done. If she tossed Tyrion out the Mood Door without trial, the dead Tyrion would be the only one to take issue with that.

But whatever. Tyrion demands Jaime Lannister be his champion. Finally, Lyssa stops giving in and says that it must be someone in the room, as the trial will take place today. Bronn, the sellsword who traveled with Catelyn and Tyrion, steps up to defend him.

-

Meanwhile, in King's Landing, Ned is filling in for Robert while he's out hunting.

A group of peasants from the Riverlands are pleading for help after a group of men came and burned their homes, raped their women and killed their kids. Then, in a baffling act, they dump fish on the floor, saying this is what was left behind. Thanks, guys. Dumping fish on my floor really makes me want to help you. You could have just told me about the fish instead of giving a demonstration, you know?

Anyway, Baelish starts giving a collection of hints to Ned, with varying degrees of uselessness, like his some kind of Simon's Quest NPC.

Tully, is your wife's house, he explains, making this the first instance in which anything is made explicitly clear in the show. I get why they would want to give the audience this information, but at this point it just comes off as clumsy, what with literally everything being vague up until this point.

Oh, and the guy leading them cut the head off of one of their horses.

Is this guy starting a fucking collection or something?

Anyway, Ned gives them permission to get a group together and kill Gregor 'The Mountain' Clegane.

He also summons Tywin Lannister, the father of Cersei, Jaime and Tyrion, to be held accountable for The Mountain's actions, since The Mountain was his knight.

Over at The Vale, Bronn kills Lyssa's champion.

So Tyrion is just allowed to leave. Just like that. Huh. Justice is funny around here.

Then Joffrey gives Sansa a hollow apology (an ahollowgy?) and a necklace.

Okay, so here's the part we all really wanted to see. Viserys walks in on Daenerys' party and holds her at swordpoint, telling Drogo he wants his golden crown. See, the Dothraki cannot shed blood in their sacred city, so Viserys knows they can't just stab him or whatever. So Drogo's like, yeah okay.

Viserys is pretty pleased until Drogo's men grab him and break is arms and Drogo throws a bunch of large gold coins into a cauldron.

So Viserys falls over, presumably dead. Daenerys says that Viserys could not be The Dragon because The Dragon cannot be harmed by fire.

QUESTIONS:

...What do you say to Death?

...Which animal's heart do you think is the tastiest?

...Have you ever confessed your sexual deviancy to a judge? Were you on trial for something else at the time?

...Do you think Viserys made a good decision? Why or why not?

Contest of Fancy Chairs - Episode 5 - The Wolf and the Lion

This episode's theme is the Mafia.

Let's talk about episode 5, The Wolf and the Lion.

We begin in King's landing where Hugh's neck hole is being stitched together. He didn't have any family in the city, so I'm not sure who that's for. They're just going to put him in the ground, right? Anyway Ned begins to have some questions about who decided to put him up against The Mountain.

Turns out, they drew straws. "But who held the straws?" Yeah. Good one, Ned. Even if he was put up against The Mountain on purpose somehow, do you have any idea how difficult it is to dictate where all your lance splinters end up?

Ned gets tipped off that King Robert wants to joust, so it's up to him to talk the guy out of it. He finds the King with his squire, Lancel Lannister, who is trying to help him get his armor on. Lancel, ever so carefully and tactfully notes that the breastplate was made too small, but the King is pretty intent on just making him feel like a total sack of donkey excrement, yelling at him for being unable to get the armor on.

Ned points out that Robert is too fat for the armor, and so Robert acts all offended before starting to laugh. Lancel takes the cue and begins to laugh as well.

Robert decides this is a good time to do his Goodfellas act and fuck with Lancel's head some more before barking at him to get the fictional "breastplate stretcher." Lancel runs out of the room.

This fuckin' guy... Yo, he play too much.

Anyway, there's this guy, Loras Tyrell, who is up against The Mountain next. A real knight in shining armor. He hands Sansa a rose and glances up at this Renly Baratheon fella behind her, who for some reason thinks he's Professor-fuckin'-Xavier over here.

They stand at each end of the jousting arena and The Mountain's horse starts acting funny. Sansa gets all worried that this guy she's only just now seen is going to be hurt by The Mountain.

Little does she know Loras was riding a horse that was in heat, which made the Mountain's horse trip over his own boner.

The Mountain got pretty bummed out about that and went home to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Nah, just kidding. He totally hacked his horse's head off. I bet the horse will remember that valuable lesson next time he gets horny, eh?

Then he goes after Loras...

...only to be intercepted by The Hound, The Mountain's younger brother! They were all like *ting* *ting* *schwwwwing* *clang* *grunt* *ting*, it was nuts!

The King yells out for them to stop. The Mountain throws a hissy fit and storms off, leaving The Hound as the winner, I guess? He doesn't seem to enjoy the attention very much.

Meanwhile, on the road, a Jawa is being pulled down off of a horse.

My bad, it was Tyrion. He realizes that he's not on the road to Winterfell, as Catelyn had so loudly pronounced earlier. She has misled everyone so that they wouldn't know where she was taking Tyrion. He recognizes that the road they are on, and concludes that she is taking him Vale, where her sister rules.

He tells her that her sister went totally nuts, and that bringing him there is a death sentence, and besides that, he didn't try to kill anyone. If he did want to, he wouldn't use his own knife to do it. Before they can continue, they are attacked by people of the Hill Tribes. The men, fight off the tribesmen, and Tyrion even protects Catelyn. There was a real moment there.

Then there was a scene where Arya chased a cat.

Meanwhile, Varys tells Ned that Jon Arryn was definitely poisoned. He began asking too many questions and someone with money decided he had to go.

Arya chases the cat down into the dungeon where she finds a huge dragon skull. She hides in its mouth when she hears people coming though talking about the botched attempt on Bran's life and talk of war.

Once they have passed, she runs over to the gate and loudly yanks on the lock, not actually trying to pick it or anything. To nobody's surprise but her own, it doesn't open. Also, those are some damn wide bars on that gate. She could probably slip right through. Hell, I could probably slip right through. I'm not sure what she thinks is back there, but it must be pretty sweet. Unfortunately, Arya is too stupid noble to squeeze between the bars, so she runs down the stairs instead.

The King calls a meeting with the Small Council to discuss an important matter. He has gotten word that Daenerys is bearing Drogo's child, which means that the Targaryens and the Dothraki have teamed up, and this new child will surely take back Robert's throne.

As a solution, Robert decides he wants Daenerys and her baby dead. Seems like a foolproof plan to me. There have never been any stories of kings getting bitten in the ass trying to preserve their own power by committing infanticide. None that I can think of anyway.

Ned wants no part in this, so he steps down from his position as Hand to the King.

Meanwhile in Vale, Catelyn is still convinced that Tyrion should be her prisoner, despite those pesky little things like "logic" and "honor" trying to get in the way. She brings Tyrion before her sister Lyssa. I've got to say, what a breath of fresh air it is, that amongst all this craziness, George R. R. Martin took the time to show us that he's still grounded in the real world. Lyssa is the voice of reason we've been needing.

She takes Tyrion and puts him in a cell with a wall open to the outside... several dozen stories up a tower.

Back at King's Landing, Loras is shaving Renly with what appears to be peanut butter, telling him that he should be King because the people love him. Speaking of loving him, he decides to give him some love, HBO style.

As Ned finishes talking with the last person Jon Arryn spoke with, a prostitute who had one of the King's kids, he is met outside by Jaime Lannister.

See, he's not too happy about his brother being kidnapped, and he wants Ned to give him back. Ned tells him that if Jaime kills him, Tyrion will end up dead too. So Jaime has Ned's men killed and orders Ned to be taken alive.

Surrounded by Jaime's men, Ned gets into a swordfight with Jaime. I'm not entirely sure what he was expecting to happen. Even if he wins--even if he kills Jaime--the guards still completely outnumber him. But whatever, because before the fight ends, one ambitious guard decides to spear Ned right through the leg.

Jaime wasn't quite done with him yet, but he got over it pretty quick. As Ned keeled over on the ground, Jaime rode away on horseback screaming that he wanted his brother back.

QUESTIONS:

...What do you mean I'm funny? I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?

...The Mountain cut off a horse's head in this episode. Have you ever decapitated a horse? Why or why not?

...If you were asked to help commit infanticide, how would you respond? Remember, there are no wrong answers.

...What is your favorite sandwich spread to use as shaving cream?