In recent weeks I’ve been looking at each episode of Game of Thrones under a specific lens, choosing to highlight the five best things that happened each week. Some weeks it was hard to just pick five but for the sake of consistency I kept it down to five.

This week’s episode threw consistency out the window.

Not only could I not come up with five good things in this week’s episode, I struggled to find three, so instead of picking the five best things this week, I thought I’d take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly parts of what might very well be the weakest episode in the history of Game of Thrones.

Spoilers to follow…

The Good

KINGS LANDING

The Kings Landing story arc took an interesting turn this week, though the interesting aspect of it could probably be due to the fact that its finally becoming unpredictable. Cersei has finally been informed she can’t demand a trial-by-combat, which leaves her pretty much devoid of options. This could be a very interesting turn for the character as we might see her escape Kings Landing with help from Qyburn; though the burn in the latter’s name might prove prophetic if the item his birds found was the Mad King’s wildfire. It really does boggle the mind to think that Cersei has been in Kings Landing since the first season, playing her part in the same story arc. It could be a great move to take her character out of Kings Landing and send her back to her home Casterly Rock, an area we have yet to visit. Though this excitement is very much of the minimum variety and the fact that it deserves mention shows just how poor a showing Game of Thrones had this week. Let us just hope there is more to be excited about in the final two episodes.

THE HOUND

Thank the seven gods, the drowned gods, the old gods and the lord of light for the Hound. Without his presence in the past two episodes we would have been faced with two very, very poor episodes of the show. Though he doesn’t save this episode like he just about managed to do last week, he does provide some quality scenes, including some great interaction with the Brotherhood Without Banners. The Hound provides great hope going forward for the show as he is not only an interesting character but one well-placed within Westeros to affect areas that haven’t been visited in a season or two. Viewers haven’t really been privy to happenings in the Riverlands for a long time. With Sandor Clegane picking up his axe in the name of the common folk there could be some great stories going forward, especially if Cersei and The Mountain make their way toward Casterly Rock.

The Bad

MEEREEN

The bad parts of this episode started in Meereen where we witnessed a scene that summed up the wasted year that befell Tyrion. To put it simply, Tyrion did absolutely nothing this year. In eight episodes the most interesting thing he did was release the two dragons from captivity. Other than that he simply brokered a deal with the slavers, in a scene which lasted about five minutes. For the majority of this season I’ve thought Daenerys had very little to do but Tyrion has made her story looked heavily complex by comparison. In this episode Tyrion sits around trying to pull a joke from both Missandei and Greyworm, a scene that could almost be viewed as a metaphor for him trying to pull interesting plot points from his story this season. Then, to make matters worse, it looked like he was just about to get his time to shine, to lead the people of Meereen against the returning slavers but it is pulled away from him. Daenerys returns and in the blink of an eye all tension fades. This was a terrible decision in my opinion. If the writers had decided to cut away from Meereen in the middle of the attack there would be genuine tension going into next week or the week after, as viewers scrambled to think what will happen in Meereen. This would have created genuine tension, even though we know Daenerys will eventually arrive to save the day. Daenerys showing up right away simply cements the story in place. She will use Drogon, possibly with the help of Viserion and Rhaegal to burn the slaver fleet and even if that isn’t enough, the Iron Fleet seem to be right around the corner, ready to arrive just in time to save Daenerys and hand over their ships to help her cause. Meereen wasn’t a total disaster this week but it certainly was frustrating.

ARYA

This episode downright infuriated me for multiple reasons but it was the cheap writing that annoyed me the most. Arya had been stabbed multiple times in the stomach at the end of the last episode and we are supposed to just buy that her actress acquaintance happens to have a magic healing ability, one that allows Arya to heal quicker than a normal human, and gives her the ability to use your agility to the best of her ability. Arya should be barely able to move this episode but instead she’s running around Bravos like Jason Bourne on crack. The problem with this is it also makes last week’s episode worse in hindsight. There was plenty of theories going around in defense of Arya, as her actions made her seem naïve and stupid. A work around would have worked a lot better. Now she will be tainted with the reputation of someone who idiotically walked around Bravos drawing attention to herself and nearly getting herself killed, after spending years training to be an invisible assassin. Arya will need a strong season next year because though this season had some highlights, I’m starting to worry that a lot of Arya’s Bravos story arc will be jettisoned and end up being nothing more than smoke and mirrors, a temporary but overly long stop on her way back to relevance.

The Ugly

RIVERRUN

This one hurt on almost every level possible. This has to have been the ugliest translation of a Game of Thrones story to date. Where to even begin with this story? The most glaring problem with the ending of the Riverrun siege comes from the fact that Edmure Tully simply gives up his castle and men, and uncle The Blackfish, based on a warning from Jamie. Edmure even admits he has never met his son, meaning he might have never received confirmation that the child actually exists. To top it off he gives up his men to defend his wife, who was complicit in the murder of Edmure’s sister and nephew at the Red Wedding. He has no reason to give up every man in his castle for their well-being. Even if he was a happily married man, having raised his child for years, it makes no sense to hand over his men to a man who just threatened to murder his child via catapult. He has no reason to trust Jamie to not simply kill every man in the castle. It was all a terribly contrived way to end a story that probably should have been left to sit on the shelf with some other good arcs from the books. Another aspect that pained this story was the continued destruction of the character of Jamie Lannister. He has simply gone past the point of salvation at this point. It’s like the writers don’t even understand their version of the character. One moment he is being noble and giving googly eyes to Brienne and the next he’s threatening to murder Edmure’s son with a catapult and pining after Cersei like he has absolutely no self-motivation. The writers need to decide what version of Jamie they want. Do they want the one from the books who is striving toward a redemption void of his familial loyalties? Do they want their new version who doesn’t really care for redemption and just wants to be with his sister? Or do they want a new version, a cross between both, because that version is too convoluted and makes it hard to get a grip on either way. The Riverrun story has actually managed to rival Dorne as the most botched story in the show to date and it was made even worse by one simply thing: The Blackfish, a man considered to be a great fighter, a proud representation of his family, and a great commander, gets killed off-screen by some random soldier. The fact that we even went to Riverrun in the first place seems to have provided little to no benefit for this season of the show, with the only thing that remotely pushed the story forward being Jamie having a brief reunion with Brienne and an excuse to get Bronn to return.

This week’s episode was certainly the low point of this season and quite frankly one of the weakest in the show’s history. Thankfully next week’s episode looks likely to make up for it in a big way.

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If you like my review of this week’s Game of Thrones, why not check out my opinion of the Five Best Things in Last Week’s Episode “The Broken Man” or follow me on twitter. Thanks.