Review Game of thrones SEason 8, Episode 5: the Bells

Because we have been robbed of really satisfying writing for Tyrion and Jon’s characters — the Three Heads of the Story, if not the Dragon — the only tragic hero left from GRRM’s tale is Daenerys, pushed into her position by a trio of betrayals and a rejection from a lover. Jon is just a conventional hero; Tyrion is…well, basically a supporting role.

(All this is very hastily sketched out by the writers; the line from plot point A to point B is made of the flimsiest of spider threads at this point: but it is there.)

I could dwell on the negative and cry out once again what have these doofuses done to Tyrion, the bitter, raging dwarf who wants to see Westeros burn?

The Tyrion of the books might betray Varys to death, who he bitterly resents for making Tyrion a mere piece in his Game of Thrones; but I can’t buy that show Tyrion would sell him out so easily, nor simply watch him burn with a bit of regret. “It was me”, says Tyrion.

Varys should have looked at him, made a face and said “Ya think?”

And then Tyrion promptly betrays Dany. And then Davos promptly betrays Dany.

A word about the the Euron scene: of course Euron would be the sole survivor of Dany’s attack. And of course he would arrive on shore at roughly the same time as Jaime.

And speaking of Davos…when did he suddenly become the “best smuggler in the world?” Where is the smuggle-off competition that determined that?

But maybe he deserved the title: Davos had only one night to

• smuggle a dinghy to shore.
• go back and pick up Jaime.
• smuggle Jaime to shore.
• Get back to Dragonstone just in time to go back to the mainland to lead the vanguard in battle against Qarth. Or Astapor. Er, King’s Landing. (I guess it was deliberate to make King’s Landing suddenly look like a Middle Eastern/Morroccan city to draw parallels to earlier episodes.) At any rate, Davos has a had a long night. He’s not much with a sword, but he’ll walk behind the guy in the lead anyway.

The idea that oaths mean anything in Westeros is just ridiculous, but we know that already. Tyrion at least has sworn an oath, and I can only assume that Dany has made Davos do it too.

No one has honour in showWesteros because honour automatically gets you killed, unless you are Jon Snow.

The fact is, Jaime’s escape should have been the impetus for Dany’s decision to go nuclear on King’s Landing — because if her rage and despair was fueled by a double or triple treason it makes more sense; and it had to have been Tyrion. Is there a missing scene when she finds out the Kingslayer’s been sprung?

. I suppose in the next episode we’re going to see Tyrion’s trial but at this point who cares? Jaime’s escape itself should have caused Dany’s reaction: the escape should have been the final straw; or at least the next to last straw, if the show really wanted the final straw to be Jon Snow not responding to Dany’s come on.

---

But otherwise…yeah. I bought it.

I loved it. The show gave me what I wanted. Due to the extreme dumbing down of all the characters, it’s good that at least Daenerys remains a true tragic hero, and now, officially, the best-written character of the show and an immortal part of pop culture. In a perfect world, it should be Tyrion too, and maybe Jaime and Sansa: these are some of the greatest characters of fantasy literature. But at least the showrunners did well by Daenerys Targaryen.

Her decision to go “Mad Queen” of course is not all that mad: it’s her own character’s unstoppable drives that cause her to make that decision: it’s a rational decision to commit atrocity by ruling by fear: it resonates because this is how actual war has historically worked.

What was the bombing of innocents in Dresden or London or Nagasaki or Hiroshima but the decision to utilize fear as a tactic to get a people to submit? The sooner they submit, the less people die: you make an example.

History will judge Dany as having gone mad after she is inevitably assassinated; but the madness was calculated and justified to Dany by the belief that by doing this terrible thing, she will rid Westeros of the tyrant Lannister dynasty. It’s what might have happened if Boromir (or Aragorn or Gandalf) had seized the Ring. They would have rained fire down on the hapless victims of Mordor. Because Mordor wasn’t all orcs and trolls: there were slaves too.

If there’s a Frodo in this story, by the way, it will be the one who kills Drogon with a weirwood arrow (Arya? She has been practicing.)

Dany believes her own propaganda. She has to, because she’s not fundamentally evil like Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay Bolton was evil for evil’s sake: mad but also cunning. Joffrey was mad but stupid.

But Daenerys she does want to be a good queen. Or rather, she wants to be loved as a good queen.And Dany, utterly bereft of love just can’t take it. She’s been abandoned enough.

But she also feels rejected; by the North, by the South, by Jon Snow (and yeah, I feel Jon: I don’t think I'd be all about making out with her after she’d just roasted a man in front of my eyes, either. Or who knows, maybe it would weirdly turn me on? )

And deep down it is all about her: her horrible childhood and experience as the sex slave of a barbarian Khal has shaped her into this: this person who will do good things in exchange for love. But bad things in exchange for the lack thereof. We’ve seen her kill people before. And it was always personal and hitherto always justified to herself (and the audience/readers.) Her decision makes total sense to me: I don’t excuse it. I would hope that I wouldn’t make the same decision. But it makes sense to me.

I think that as Sansa is Everygirl (i.e. in the traditional sense: not physically brave; manipulative; using her good sense to push the men in her life into prominent positions, and working behind the scenes to keep everything going smoothly) Daenerys is, in her way, meant to be Everywoman with ambition and power.

Hey, the show just does that to women.

You may deny it: but I’ve known a few people who, if they had a dragon or two, would have shown less restraint than Dany has a long time ago. Heck, I run across them on Quora every other day. No names.

But she’s no more a straight up villain than the USA is, to use another example of a political actor that wholeheartedly believes in its own propaganda — or did until the current age made everybody a propagandist.

Is it a mistake to believe your own propaganda? I believe so. It’s unwise. And Dany: brave, compassionate, narcissistic, damaged, vulnerable, triumphant, hateful Dany, isnot wise.

But the effect of making the decision Dany has made will certainly have repercussions on her, won’t it? Doesn’t committing atrocities permanently damage the war criminal? At this point, when Jon (or Ayra, or Tyrion or whoever) finally kills Daenerys, won’t it come as a mercy to Daenerys, who has actually betrayed herself?

How the show handles her character in the final episode will be the clincher. Will she realize her monstrosity and regret it? Or will she snap because of it it and really go truly mad justifying her atrociites as necessary unto the bitter end?

But at any rate, when you pause to consider, I think you have to doff your cap to GRRM who made such a rich and complex character. A victim who spends her childhood fleeing assassins and getting abused by her brother; who is sold into slavery; who uses her sexual power to rise to Khaleesi; who commits miracles, who frees slaves, bans war crimes only to rise triumphant to commit war crimes; a religious saviour who saves one continent, whose coming caused a Revolution, who is literally worshipped as the literal Messiah (in the books), only to cause carnage and widespread death in another.

A narcissist who doesn’t realize it; who genuinly wants to be a good queen…but not a good person. And in her, we see ourselves and our own narcississtic societies’ mad flirtation with destruction in the present and past both.

Also I note, the big winner in all this is Sansa.

Like Littlefinger, she has found that a mere nudge in the right direction can result in in huge game-changing chaos for nearly everyone. And she will most likely rise because of it: if not as the Power in the North, then the Power behind the Power, working in the shadows.

But how will Jon react to Sansa once Daenerys is dead, if indeed Jon survives? (I'm guessing he'll kill Dany: but he may not ever sit the Throne he doesn't want.)

Either way, Sansa’s ultimate victory may prove hollow if she’s rejected by Jon or if Jon, Arya or both end up dead. (At this point, I’ll be greatly disappointed if Bronn ends up kidnapping Sansa or something in the final act.) While Sansa may reign somewhere, somehow, will she be happy?

And as I said last week, how dark is it that the main winner of the Game of Thrones power will be the female Littlefinger? Realistic, sure: but dark.

---

Great visual storytelling in this episode; and masterful use of music, again. Earlier I had written that I thought that the music was basically the only way to judge how we were supposed to fell about these characters who make no sense in a world that’s been written so badly that there is no discernible moral centre to it. It’s amazing how much of the meat of the storytelling is told through the music this season.

• Some other things: Cleganebowl was fairly cool. Bereft of real suspense though. It would have just been a lame story if the Mountain That Ambles had won.
• Jaime and Cersei’s ending was…oddly touching. The valonqar prophecy was never in the show, and clearly they went another way with Jaime…it feels hollow but it feels right within the logic of the show anyway.

By the way this YouTube guy writes the best recap/bitch sessions: