Monday, April 21, 2014

Game Of Thrones 4x03 Breaker Of Chains review

Breaker of Chains is the third episode of GoT season 4. I was excited when I found out about the title of this episode since it referred to one of Daenerys' titles. So automatically I assumed that we will see a lot of her badassness in this episode, right?? Boy how wrong I was. 


--- SPOILER ALERT ---

This episode picked up directly after the event of Joffrey's death the previous week. Right after Joffrey's last breath, Cersei without further ado, straight away accused Tyrion of being her son's murderer. Not satisfied with getting only Tyrion, Cersei also wanted to take down Sansa. 

Meanwhile, Sansa had escaped the crime scene with the help of Ser Dontos a.k.a the king's fool. He brought her to a ship, where we met once again with none other but Petyr Baelish a.k.a Littlefinger. Creepy but sneaky man, as always. 


You know what the ship scene reminded me of? Pirates of the Caribbean, haha. Also, FOG. Thick fog. We could almost only see their faces, no other thing was visible. A few minutes earlier Sansa was in a bright sunny day, then suddenly they reached a place where it seemed to be the darkest night time. How long had they been running? But, I guess this helped with the "mysterious aura behind Littlefinger" because we know that man always has something up his sleeves.

Last week, when we saw Ser Dontos trying to help Sansa, I assumed (just like Sansa did) that he was doing that as a favor in return of Sansa saving his life back in Joffrey's name day. But from Littlefinger, we now know that Dontos did all that because he followed Baelish's order. 

Something I noticed. Viewers were lead to give a special attention to the purple necklace Dontos gave Sansa, which was also Baelish's order. Now, why did the writers do that? I mean it doesn't seem to be much of an importance, that necklace. Does it have something to do with Joffrey's poisoning? Or maybe some other mystery we don't know yet? MAJOR SPOILER ALERT HERE, yes it has everything to do with Joffrey's poisoning.


Back to King's Landing. Who was the new king, you might wonder. The answer is Tommen Baratheon, Joffrey's little brother. In the sept where Joffrey's dead body lied, Tywin Lannister gave his youngest grandson a speech about being a good king. A great, educative speech actually. 


But this means Tywin would indirectly rule The Seven Kingdoms right? Joffrey was hard to control but Tommen, in Tyrion's word,


The investigation of Joffrey's death was still going. Poor poor Tyrion was being held captive in some sort of a dungeon, and his men, Bronn also under investigation, and Podrick was approached by a mystery man to betray Tyrion. 


Meanwhile, Tywin was also approaching Prince Oberyn with an offer. 


Everything's a bit suspicious about this investigation. Everything has shadow upon it. It seems that someone really wanted Tyrion to take the fall, but who? Could it be Tywin himself? Or Cersei since she was the one who hated Tyrion the most? 

Let's move to the land across the sea. Daenerys has reached the city of Meereen, again to free the slaves. 


This time though, we didn't get a big bombastic scene like in Astapor or Yunkai. Instead we saw Daario Naharis did a one-on-one battle with the champion of Meereen, Troy style, also a scene where Dany's army used giant catapults with wooden barrels that were filled with broken slave collars, symbolizing her bringing freedom for all the slaves there.


In my opinion, Dany's scene in this episode lack the big "OOooohh" element, but it still  served 2 purposes. 

First, to remind the viewers again about Daario Naharis, especially since the change of the actor, that he was still a skilled killer, and to further show us his intention towards Dany. Ugh really, you've got a war to win and a throne to claim, stop it with all the teenage crush drama.


Second, to show that Daenarys Targaryen's power was not only her dragons. She brought something different this time, she played smart. The city of Meereen looked like a fortress, again like Troy, it would be hard to attack the city from the outside. So instead of burning the walls, Dany's army simply threw those barrels. By sending the message directly to the slaves inside the walls, perhaps Dany hoped that the sacking will come from inside, done by the slaves themselves. But again, this is only my opinion, so idk, haha. 


One more thing, Emilia Clarke's Valyrian language is getting better and better yeah? I feel like I'm actually convinced that it is her native language. Well done.

A quick review of a few other things occurred in this episode that I didn't really care about:

  • a bit comical part of Arya and The Hound's journey to the Eyrie. Arya still a badass little girl, great great.
  • Sam and Gilly part, where Sam sent Gilly and her baby to stay in another town instead of Castle Black since he's worried about her safety being surrounded by 100 men. Now, I didn't find their story line important nor interesting, at all, but based on some spoilers I've read, it seems that Sam will hold an important role in a near future. We shall see.
  • The wildlings were getting closer to the wall. The Night's Watch guys were preparing to face them when some rangers came in bringing the news of a mutiny at Craster's keep. So now they had to watch for not only the wildlings but also the traitors. Jon Snow then told the rest of them that they should attack the wildlings before they figured out that the Wall was only guarded by 100 men. This scene feels like only a build up for the next big thing of Wildlings vs Night's Watch.
  • We also get another glimpse of Stannis Baratheon's attempt to claim the throne. Still a bit pathetic, in my opinion. But this time we got a bit more focus on Ser Davos, who seemed to get an idea on how to get golds so Stannis could buy army. The Onion Knight had proven multiple times that he's far more useful that Melisandre. What the hell was Stannis thinking actually, smh.

--- SPOILER ENDS ---

I give this episode of GoT 3/5 noises. A bit slow, with lots of prolonged discussion, seemed with extra double meaning behind them. Yes it's a great continuity for a series, a deeper look into each character's story line, which will be a build up for further plot. But still, subjectively, when it's about the character I don't really care about, I find it a bit boring. haha.

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