Game Of Thrones Recap: The Characters (And The Showrunners) Are Thinking Outside The Box

This is a recap of this week’s episode of Game of Thrones.

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Viewers who enjoyed last season’s ‘Arya and the Hound Show’ might have been looking forward to the sassy possibilities of Tyrion’s and Varys’s ‘Impy Wimpy Spider’ road trip to Meereen. Their lavishly appointed carriage is a pretty sweet ride, I’ve got to say – presumably borrowed from absent sugar daddy Illyrio. But Tyrion’s drinking and pouting are getting tiresome.

“What else is there for me to do inside this fucking box?” he complains.

“People like you and me are never really satisfied inside the box,” Varys muses. “Not for long.”

This episode was about ingenuity. Flexibility. Changing strategies. Sensing new opportunities. Pretty much everything poor, chivalrous Brienne is not doing, even when faced with direct evidence that the Stark girls don’t want her help. (She’s probably right, however, that Sansa needs her help. But could Brienne’s dashing swordcraft ever best Littlefinger’s conniving?) The House of Black and White in Braavos, where Arya seeks to redeem her coin, is also a symbol of fixed thinking – and its motto warns that death is the ultimate absolute.

Stannis and his wife Selyse are black-and-white thinkers – that’s partly why they’re attracted to the Lord of Light. And Stannis isn’t happy that Jon Snow’s mercy ruined Mance Rayder’s execution. Still, he offers Jon what he’s always dreamed of: legitimacy as a Stark, and lordship of Winterfell.

But Jon’s sticking to his “I’m a brother of the Night’s Watch now” line. His sense of honour makes him just as infuriatingly rigid as Stannis. But over the course of the series, we’ve seen how Jon bends his moral code in practice – killing Qhorin Halfhand; defending the wildlings; going downtown with Ygritte. As Sam points out in his impassioned stump speech, Jon’s ability to improvise – to do what seems right to him at the time – is his strength.

I wished we’d seen a bit more Westeros Wing backroom intrigue… but Sam’s speech does the job. Elected by one vote, Lord Commander Snow.

Meanwhile, Selyse doesn’t get why her kind daughter Shireen would teach Gilly to read. But reading has freed Shireen’s thinking – as, perhaps, has her formative brush with greyscale. From Gilly, we now know what the disease does to its sufferers. Disfigurement. Madness. Death.

It may not be the definition of insanity to expect different results from repeated actions; but as wise Ser Barristan Selmy counsels Daenerys, her father ‘Mad King’ Aerys brought down the Targaryen dynasty because of his rigid thinking.

It’s been frustrating to watch Daenerys struggle with leadership over the past season. Her ideals of justice are unpalatable to just about everyone. And she makes things worse by sticking to them because she wants to be seen as strong. The Mhysa who once crowdsurfed on Meereen’s slaves now ignores their pleas for mercy, as she has one of their own beheaded. She has to give a fair trial to that Sons of the Harpy insurgent hiding in the wall — but when her own freedman councillor murders him, Dany has to… what was I saying about fair trials again?

Having narrowly escaped from a rock-throwing crowd riot on the terraces, she’s visited by a reminder that her ambitions are bigger than governing former slave cities.

If Daenerys could only get Drogon to roost at the top of the pyramid like the Harpy statue she tore down… well, it would look pretty cool, for a start. But dragons helped the Targaryens conquer Westeros three hundred years ago, and now Daenerys must fly free like Drogon.

As Tyrion cruelly points out, when he learns of the bounty Cersei has placed on his head: his sister is at her best in the box. By which I mean that Cersei has never been an especially imaginative thinker. Worse, she’s a narrow and self-satisfied thinker. She’s always surrounded herself with sycophants – like paradigmatic Embarrassing Dad Mace Tyrell – who can help her achieve her immediate goals, rather than sensible people – like her uncle Kevan – who can challenge her to make more strategic decisions.

A power struggle is afoot between Cersei and Margaery, with sweet King Tommen as their pawn. No wonder Cersei wants Tommen away from the Small Council – she might as well be inviting her rival in. Cersei’s politics have always been personal. She chooses her enemies poorly: fixating on some; smugly underestimating others at her peril.

I’m with Grand Maester Pycelle in being absolutely appalled by the rise of creepy, expelled half-maester Qyburn, who has mysterious occult uses for the severed not-Tyrion heads that are now arriving in King’s Landing on the regular. Remember he was last seen performing a mysterious procedure on the dying Ser Gregor Clegane? Those experiments will come home to roost eventually.

Cersei may not grasp how badly she has provoked the southern principality of Dorne (which has so far stayed out of the War of the Five Kings) by facilitating Oberyn Martell’s gory death. But even she can read the unsubtle parcel sent by Oberyn’s bereaved paramour Ellaria Sand. Her daughter Myrcella – currently being hey-girled by Dornish princeling Trystane Martell – is in danger. Uncledad Jaime to the rescue!

This plotline, which diverges from the source novels, is a sign that showrunners Benioff and Weiss are also thinking outside the box. We, too, shouldn’t get bogged down in book canon as Game of Thrones rapidly outpaces George RR Martin. Whole characters and events are being neatly excised here, and earlier characters repurposed.

Case in point: the guy who’s rolled with the times better than most. Bronn the pragmatic sellsword has risen to a title and a noble fiancé – and, unexpectedly, he seems content. I love Lollys Stokeworth. She’s plain, chubby, and supposedly ‘lackwitted’, but she’s sweet and hilarious, and Bronn actually seems to regard her fondly.

Then along comes “Jaime fookin’ Lannister”, and just like that, Bronn’s upgraded to “a much better girl and a much better castle”. Noooo! Still, I can’t wait to see Jaime match wits with Prince Doran Martell, and Bronn match blades with Doran’s implacable bodyguard Areo Hotah.

This episode marks the first time we’ve been south to Dorne, and its Watergardens – filmed at the glorious Alcázar of Seville – are as gorgeous as I ever imagined. (The costumes, too: beautifully embellished with sunburst motifs.) You might expect its gouty ruler to be as mad as a cut Viper at Oberyn’s death. But Doran isn’t persuaded by Ellaria’s suggestion to send Myrcella home in pieces via Westerosi Post. When you’re confined to a wheelchair, you learn to play the long game.

Meanwhile in Braavos, Arya’s finding that the House of Black and White is a hard club to get into – and the passwords she knew aren’t working. However, it’s impressive that she’s whittled her death list down to four. (RIP Hound.)

You only enter the House if you’re willing to change your thinking; to abandon everything about yourself – your name, your appearance, your purpose – except your conviction that death comes for us all.

Just as Arya’s about to show those three alley punks her finest needlework, the House comes to her. And he is not Jaqen around with these shape-shifting powers.

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Game of Thrones airs on Foxtel’s Showcase on Mondays at 11am, with an encore broadcast at 7.30pm on Monday evenings.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She blogs on style, history and culture at Footpath Zeitgeist and tweets at @incrediblemelk. 

Read her recaps of last season’s Game of Thrones here.