That Big <em>Game of Thrones</em> Moment: Better for Book Readers, or Not?

Spencer Kornhaber, Christopher Orr, and Amy Sullivan discuss the latest episode of Game of Thrones.

Orr: So, Spencer, is your appetite for justice at least a little bit sated? Last episode ended with a Stark retrieving her sword and using it to mete out some bloody vengeance, and this one ended with a Lannister—the king, no less—gagging on a cup of the World’s Worst Vintage. Sure, the fact that they’re both children may complicate things morally, but you said you’d like a little payback, and you got it. I have more to say about what’s known colloquially as the Purple Wedding, but I’ll come back to it at the end.

Instead I’ll begin at the beginning, with the reintroduction of Ramsay, the Bastard of Bolton. Did you know that he’s a psychosexual sadist? If that somehow escaped your notice during the eleventy-six hours he spent torturing Theon last season, then you’re in luck! We have a nice remedial lesson lined up here in which he and a lady friend—I’m not sure who she is or whether we’ll be seeing more of her—hunt down an innocent girl and then let her go, literally, to the dogs. (Is it a coincidence that last episode ended with a metaphorical Hound having a bite of literal chicken and this one opens with literal hounds dining on a metaphorical “chick”? I doubt it.)

I explained my unhappiness with the way the Ramsay character has been used at length in , and I won’t re-litigate it here again. I will, however, note that the minor Bolton vassal Locke—the guy who hacked off Jaime’s hand and reappeared at the Dreadfort this episode—is almost as problematic. In the books, the de-handing of Jaime was performed by borderline-lunatic mercenaries who answered to no lord. But Locke answers to Roose—that “Theon was a valuable hostage, not your plaything.” How much angrier would he be at a non-blood-relative crippling a vastly more valuable hostage? Locke ought to be a dead man—indeed, his death would certainly have been a part of the price Tywin demanded when Roose switched sides—but instead, he’s yukking it up with Ramsay about how much fun it is to mutilate noble hostages. Lame. On the upside, at least Ramsay is getting sent south to take Moat Cailin so he’ll have to do other than hunt and flay.