Game of Thrones: Season 1, Episode 9 "Baelor"

Game of Thrones: Season 1, Episode 9 "Baelor"

June 12, 2011


SPOILERS AHEAD!



Without a doubt, “Baelor” is the best episode of this season so far. The ending is an absolute shocker, and one of the best endings you will ever see. My feelings for Joffrey, the snivel brat king, took a deep dive. When a character makes you so angry through his actions, that means you have quite the memorable character. You gotta feel for poor Ned. He was an honest, trustworthy man who kept his code to the end. As the sword was about to take off his neck, through King Joffrey’s orders, I was shocked by such a powerful moment.



While Ned and the Starks were the important part of the episode, the centerpiece belonged to Tyrion. Peter Dinklage created many Emmy-worthy performances and he has many of them here at use. We learn a little more about his tragic backstory and his doomed first marriage, but he remains as funny and snarky as ever. He even gets to suffer a war wound, much to the surprise of his father. One of the best sequences here is the “Have I Ever” game that Tyrion played with Bronn and Shae, a woman that Bronn found. We delve deeper into Tyrion’s past while maintaining a humorous vibe. Tyrion was also ordered to be the army’s vanguard against the Stark army, where he gets injured with a hammer.



Back in the capital of Westeros, Joffrey originally promises that Ned’s life will be spared after Sansa begs for mercy. With the backing of Cersei, Joffrey agrees. He agrees only on the condition that Ned admits he is a traitor. Ned is adamant at first on not doing anything for a person like Joffrey, but he realizes he needs to protect his children. He has a nice conversation with Varys admitting he does not fear death because he is a soldier. As for Arya, she escaped the clutches of the Lannisters and lives in King’s Landing as a peasant. But in the end, she sees what is truly happening to her father. Something that no child should ever witness.



As we go across the Narrow Sea, it becomes clear that the Dothraki invasion will not be happening anytime soon. From what seems to be a minor wound, this week has Khal Drogo knocking on death’s door with nothing but a witch to aid him. Daenerys figures out she doesn’t have much power without Drogo backing her up. But at least we can figure out that Jorah Mormont is a loyal ally to her.



We do not spend much time in the North at the Wall, but the little time we spend there still has Jon contemplating his values. He wants to join his brother in war against the Lannisters, but then again, he made a commitment to the Black. A commitment that cannot be broken unless he wants to die. Master Aemon tells him as much when he recounts his Targaryen lineage that used to be on the throne.



As for Robb, he becomes a valuable general here. Richard Madden certainly is taking his character to another level. With each passing episode, I become more enamored with his character. He was also able to capture a certain Lannister prisoner. Cersei will certainly not be happy! I also liked the addition of David Bradley as Walder Frey, a sleazy old man with a wife whose age could be his granddaughter’s. Creepy old man! But this British thespian is great at playing these kinds of characters, so it should be no surprise he does it well here. We definitely will see more of him considering Robb is engaged to one of the Freys.



Game of Thrones reached its season’s peak with this incredible episode. The ending is shocking, and it serves as a launching pad for what is to come next. These scenes are truly heartbreaking. When Ned sees his two daughters for the last time, I nearly lost it. You could tell that this execution was not planned. The shocked look on Cersei’s face was pure golden. These are the moments that we truly live for in this series. One could forgive the fact that there were tons of off-camera fighting. My biggest gripe of the series is that we have not been many battles. They are only spoken about. After all, even the biggest shows have budgets….but still. Anyhow, an utterly amazing penultimate episode!



My Grade: A+

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Image
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” Ah, wise words from our new young friend, Ferris Bueller. In John Hughes’s 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , all Ferris wants to do is take a day and have fun. That is the most simplistic theme the movie has. You can go deeper, but the main takeaway is that it is okay to have fun. That is a motto I have taken to heart. I really loved the film. People consider The Breakfast Club to be Hughes’s best and most important movie. That’s a fine statement to make, but I would personally rank the film number two behind this particular one. The teen characters are instantly relatable, it has a memorable antagonist for the children, and this is basically a thirty-year-old travel guide for Chicago. Just how Woody Allen creates his movies as love letters for New York, this is applicable for John Hughes. A Chicago love letter!   Like all of his films, Hughes wrote...
Read more

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Image
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) The James Bond franchise is one of those franchises that will never die. It has been going strong since the first movie rolled out in the early 1960’s, and new James Bond movies are still produced today. What makes this series unique is they use multiple actors to play the titular character over the years. They all bring their own gravitas to the role, and each Bond is a different man when compared to each other (although the martini, shaken not stirred and the beautiful women among other things remain a constant.) So my first James Bond review for this blog is 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. This wasn’t my first look at the series, but it was my first look at the older movies. I really liked what I saw. This is an old-fashioned story that combines a spy drama and an action-packed war movie into one package. Like many of the older Bond movies, the story can get borderline preposterous. The cheesiness of the plot did come to grow on me after awhile, even...
Read more

Table for Five (1983)

Image
Table for Five (1983) I can guarantee that ninety percent of my readers here have not seen this tear-jerking melodrama 1983’s Table for Five , yet alone heard of it. Hopefully after reading my kind words, you will be somewhat intrigued by this movie. When doing my research for the film, I was shocked to see how vastly underrated the movie is. There are only a few reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, hardly any information on Wikipedia or Google-hardly anything out there in this vast Internet landscape. Then, why on earth is this movie so good? Sure, maybe some folks will say the movie is just a predictable Lifetime TV movie, but honestly it is much more than that. There are some elements that makes this film seem destined for the television at times, but to me it is much more than that. I consider the movie to be an honest, emotional portrayal about fatherhood and family. Directed by Robert Lieberman, this film is about a man named J.P Tannen (Jon Voight) who fails at being fathe...
Read more