After last week’s patient scene-setting, this week’s episode seems an absolute slurry of plot points and exposition. Tables are set! Tables are turned! Terminal illnesses are cured at random! Two roads actually diverged in a yellow wood! Grey Worm and Missandei bumped… ugly?

(Nothing about that was ugly. Nothing.)

So much happened! I can’t possibly cover it all!

Let’s just dive in, shall we?

How to Strain Your Dragon

It was a dark and stormy opening. The seas waxed mad. Sheets of rain lashed the parapets of Dragonstone. And inside, Daenerys, cloaked in black (her virginal whites and ave maria blues left crumpled in a hamper somewhere in Essos), turned a cloudy countenance to her grandfather’s baller D&D set, and sighed.

According to Tyrion (dungeon master) if she wants to win the throne without setting the entire kingdom ablaze, she’ll have to wait a few turns. And it’s here that Dany – after all these seasons of pomp and Dragonlance – finally begins to monarchize: When things don’t go your way, look around the room and find someone to blame.

Her glower falls on Varys, prim and perky as a honeydew, perched and listening with silken attention. She feigns a thank you for his adding not one but two kingdoms to her cause, and in a flash of stony paranoia, recites the gambits and murky misdeeds that led him there, standing before her in her shiny new war room, offering council for the battles to come.

If I sound like I’m taking sides – I am. I’ve never been fond of Dany. She’s spoiled and naïve, leavening her ambition with cheap bromides about freedom. This from a queen, no less. Daenerys Targeryen is the George W. Bush of Game of Thrones – an unschooled neophyte who inherited power only topple a violent regime with no notion of how to maintain order or bring about the democracy she supposedly sought to install. And when all else failed, when the violence reached its bloodiest pitch, she dropped fire from the sky.

Meanwhile, Varys – for all his whispers, smiles, and secret swindles – when pressed, never fails in dolling out the unbuttered truth: it may catch in your throat, and hurt on the way down… but it’s healthier than the alternative. When asked what kind of “servant” (again – this from a suffragette) conspires against the cruel, the mad, and the indifferent, Varys responds – his voice growling past his typical, amiable purr:

“The kind the realm needs. Incompetence should not be repaid with blind loyalty… You wish to know where my true loyalties lie? Not with any king or queen, but with the people.”

Dany relents. Tyrion lets out a tiny, heavy sigh. She asks Varys swear his fealty, and honesty.

And then she threatens to incinerate him should he break his promise. The threat isn’t lost on me – she sounds like her father.

Oh, and Melisandre shows up, spouts daffy theo-babble, and saws the air with her cheekbones.

Exeunt.

Lyin’ in Winter

Meanwhile, another tyrantess is making some threats of her own. We find Cersei holding court hostage in King’s Landing, twisting the arms attached to House Tyrell’s bannermen, and twisting tales of the evil hordes conscripted to destroy them. Cersei isn’t exactly lying about the forces Daenerys brought from Essos (#fakenews), but she’s hardly telling the truth either. In the end, it’s Jaime who has to entice Randyll Tarly through the cunning use of a West Wing walk-and-talk.

Jamie: Look. Be a bad guy. I’ll let you sit up front with me.

Tarly: Okay, first: no. Second: you guys are honorless swine.

Jamie: What if I let you sit up front AND let you be mayor of FoodTown?

Tarly: Eh, okay. Who needs honor anyway?

This spells dark days for Olenna Tyrell, which breaks my heart into a thousand wet chunks… but makes sense narratively. Dany’s forces are too overpowered, hence there’s no tension moving forward. The story has to even the odds, which means the Tyrells (Tyrell, rather) have to be scratched off the roster.

Still.

<3 Olenna 4 EVA

Ladies Who Launch

Speaking of Olenna (my moon and stars). She’s sat in Dragonstone, wreathed in patrician silence, draped in the dour funereal frock she’s worn ever since her sexy grandchildren and dopey son were vaporized. She’s basically an Italian grandmother now. Or my Aunt Barbara – for real, she wore all black at Easter this year. <3 AB.

Olenna is but one of four powerful women sat at Dany’s Gynocratic War Party Roundtable Extravaganza™. It’s an impressive sight, and an exciting trend this season – all the men are either dead or running errands, leaving a cast of smart, ruthless women in power. Nearly every House is led by women now. There’s Olenna, my acidic valentine. Cersei’s on the Iron Throne. Daenerys is in Dragonstone. Sansa’s overseeing the North, now the Jon has left on some damn-fool-idealistic-crusade-like-his-father-did. Yara Greyjoy is admiral of a pirate armada (Yaar’a!). Ellaria Sand stabbed Julian Bashir to death and is leading Dorne. Hell… even Nymeria is alpha of her own wolfpack now.

It’s a fascinating upheaval of the show’s now seven-season long power structure. And it looks to last about three, maybe four episodes in total. I don’t mean to be cynical about it. I’m just bummed. I wish we could have more time to explore it all. GoT has received many a ding for its portrayal of violence toward women. And even with that chorus of criticism, this new chapter seems to have occurred quite organically.

I’d love to spend an entire series here.

I’m with tH->em.

“Thank you for calling Tarly Dermatological Associates, please hold…”

… this leather strap betwixt your teeth while he flays fetid sheafs of flesh from your chest. Seriously – who’d have thought Oldtown would house such a stunning spray of oozes, dribbles, squirts, and seepages?

Yes, despite Archmaester Hubris’ warnings, Sam appears to have cured Jorah Mormont’s greyscale. It’s a grisly scene that went a long way to prove what we’ve always suspected about Sam (he’s the bravest character in the whole damn show) and undo all the careful, tragic plotting hastening Jorah Mormont to a brutal, horrifying end.

Don’t get me wrong – I like Jorah. He’s handsome and brittle and a good man haunted by his own dishonor. But he’s been coughing blood into his handkerchief for two seasons. I was all set to watch him wither into a metaphor of his own self-loathing – a man unable to move beyond his past misdeeds, yearning for a woman he can never attain – a stone man.

But in comes Sam with his cart’o’salves and scalpels to perform a Deus Ex Maester.

I’m glad for Jorah – but wary of where this leads. What narrative function will he serve now?

Slither Me Timbers

Guys. I love Euron Greyjoy. So much. And not just because he dispatched 2/3 of the dreaded Sand Snakes this week. The actor has sunk his teeth so deep into this goofball character and is just devouring every scene, every set, every second he’s on screen. It’s a joy. A gruesome, sociopathic joy.

I know! I hear you: But Andrew, he’s so one-dimensional!

More like fun -dimensional, loser.

Actually, he’s bloody terrifying.

One minute we’re hanging out below deck with Yaaar’a and Ellaria, sipping boatwine and canoodling; the Bland Snakes are in their bunks, hissing obnoxiously at each other. The next moment, Euron’s dreadship plunges through the gloom, and Euron literally drops in on a giant skull, swinging his axetopus(!?) and pulping anyone within wielding distance.

The Sand Snakes strike. They land a few blows. And then Euron murders them with their own weapons – their only definable character traits. Meanwhile, Yara, Knifesnake and Ellaria are taken captive. Leaving only Theon.

Poor Theon, crushed yet again under a tide of sudden and terrifying violence. He has a chance to save the sister who saved him. To be the brave man he imagined he’d be. But he doesn’t. Of course. He jumps ship… leaving his sister to her bloody fate.

And this is our final tableau: The Greyjoy armada (the good one) a flaming ruin. The serpents skewered and dangling. And poor, broken Theon, bobbing in a dark, swirling ocean… lost amid the rest of the wreckage.

Odds and Endings: