Game of Thrones Recap: Who’s The Butcher, And Who’s The Meat?

Daenerys Targaryen struggles to be powerful without being cruel. She confuses conciliation for weakness, and then when her principles force her into a corner, she can be arbitrarily ruthless. Now, her ex-gladiator lover Daario Naharis wants her to cleanse Meereen of terrorism by slaughtering all its former ruling class. “I am a queen,” she demurs, “not a butcher.”

“All rulers are either butchers or meat,” replies Daario.

Not just rulers. Game of Thrones has always espoused a Hobbesian ‘kill or be killed’ attitude, viewing cynical, self-centred manipulation as power, and tenderness – of the sort we see in Myrcella and Tommen Baratheon, Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly – as a childish weakness. The show is also leaning more and more on its trademark linkage of sex and violence. It treats bodies as meat – objectified, consumed – while conflating lust with butchery.

But this episode was relatively subtle and compelling. It showed characters we’d expect to be passive objects – the meat – taking the upper hand, while violent and conniving characters found themselves cut down to size.

“I am the king!” Tommen rages. “The queen is in prison and there is nothing I can do!” And for the first time, Olenna Tyrell is at a loss, too. None of her aristocratic threats to free her grandchildren work on the High Sparrow, who simply notes that the 99 percent are with him.

Meeting Littlefinger in his destroyed fleshpot is a low point for the Queen of Thorns, especially as it seems he encouraged Olyvar to testify against Ser Loras. But the ever-slimy Baelish has a pet tattletale on hand for each avowed ally – and now he offers up Lancel Lannister.

But I wasn’t sure if Cersei’s richly satisfying arrest in the bowels of the Great Sept was Olenna’s doing, or if the High Sparrow had merely been biding his time. He’s lulled Cersei with his perfect mildness and apparent lack of guile, so that she rejoices to see Margaery brought low with no fear of the same happening to her. But she really should have saved some of that venison for herself.

At the Wall, Maester Aemon – who advised Jon Snow to “kill the boy” – regresses in his dying hours to the boy who once played with little brother Aegon ‘Egg’ Targaryen, Daenerys’s grandfather. His poignant last words: “I dreamed that I was old.”

With Aemon’s watch ended, and Jon departing on his wildling rescue mission – to death glares from li’l Olly – Sam’s the only decent person left at the Wall. His black brothers seem to have fallen into the same animalistic fugue that gripped them at Craster’s Keep. And poor Sam, who can’t fight to save himself, is fighting two of his colleagues to keep them from spit-roasting Gilly Craster.

Sam and Gilly are saved by a direwolf ex machina – Jon’s wolf, Ghost. Please! The show has never really known what to do with the direwolves – especially Ghost, who only seems to show up when it’s convenient. Why isn’t he with Jon now? This was some rubbish plotting.

The attackers have kicked the shit out of Sam as the foley guys went to town on some watermelons. Surely Sam has sustained massive head trauma, multiple broken bones and internal injuries? Apparently not – just some cuts for Gilly to dab afterwards, as a prelude to a surprisingly tender sex scene.

At first I was unimpressed – oh, she’s gratefully giving Sam what she wouldn’t give his assailants? But while Sam’s previously patronising protectiveness of Gilly always rang false to me, considering what a milquetoast he is, this scene showed Gilly in charge, her face resolute in the candlelight. In an inversion of the usual virginity-loss tropes, she’s the one initiating the encounter and asking, “Am I hurting you?”

At Winterfell, Ramsay Bolton is most certainly hurting his new wife Sansa, locking her away by day and terrorising her by night. Some have argued that last week’s wedding night scene was intended to galvanise Theon into action. But it’s a bruised Sansa who takes control this week, begging Reek to light the candle that summons patient Brienne. “Your name is Theon Greyjoy!” she reminds him urgently.

But broken Reek just can’t rebel; instead he dobs her in to his master, who has Sansa’s housekeeper protector flayed to death. Still, Sansa bravely trash-talks Ramsay about his bastard origins, and sneaks a – corkscrew? – under her cloak while she’s outside. You’d best believe there’ll be a shivving.

Just as Ramsay predicts, Stannis’s army is suffering in the cold. But like Daenerys, Stannis is trapped by his own principles. He can’t retreat and be seen as weak; but he’s genuinely afraid he might lose if he fights. Melisandre offers him the victory he craves, but he must slaughter a sacrificial lamb: his beloved daughter Shireen. And this isn’t one of those Abraham-and-Isaac religious fakeouts to test Stannis’s resolve; it’s Shireen’s blood itself that works the magic. Appalled, Stannis dismisses Melisandre. Paternal love wins… for now.

Down in Dorne, Jaime’s paternal rescue mission is proceeding as lamely as ever. I love Myrcella’s floaty dresses – have you noticed how she and Trystane both wear coral-pink and butter-yellow? They’re much more innocent and romantic than any other character’s costumes – like the iconic blush-pink cocktail frock Jennifer Grey wears in Dirty Dancing, another story about a teen girl whose mean dad tries to bust up her steamy resort romance.

But Myrcella flatly refuses to be carried away home like a chattel. “I did my duty… You don’t know me!” she tells Jaime, who’s utterly wrongfooted (wronghanded?) by his ongoing lack of respect and authority.

Cut to Bronn crooning ‘I’ve Had The Time of My Life’ ‘The Dornishman’s Wife’ in his jail cell to the equally imprisoned Sand Snakes. (And he makes a good fist of it; actor Jerome Flynn was one half of the inexplicably chart-topping mid-’90s karaoke duo Robson and Jerome.) And it seems the youngest Snake, Tyene, is into him.

Not really. She’s more into finding out if her poisoned blade has finished Bronn off yet. And since it doesn’t seem to be infiltrating Bronn’s bloodstream fast enough, perhaps she can get his blood pumping by flashing her tits at him (sprang break forever, y’all!) and then making him beg her for the antidote.

I really wanted to frame this generously, as a woman toying with a man by inviting him to treat her as meat, then becoming the butcher herself. But Tyene’s nudity felt gratuitous – especially since the Sand Snakes desperately need either story or character by this point. Even her sisters think it’s excessive.

We’re used to seeing Tyrion use words to extricate himself from sticky situations, but at the slave market he displays a physicality we’ve not seen since the Battle of the Blackwater, in order to claim he and Ser Jorah are a fighting pair. They’re hardly Spartacus and Varro, but security is apparently lax enough at the two-bit pit they end up at (you’ve gotta kill it in the Meereen minors before you make it to the big leagues) both for Ser Jorah to run out and swiftly cut down everyone, and for Tyrion to make a break for it, too.

Pristine in white, Dany can’t conceal her distaste at the fighting, despite her fiancé Hizdahr zo Loraq’s emphasis on ‘tradition’. But she perks up at the mystery fighter, only to recoil when she realises it’s her exiled knight. Ser Friendzone has never looked more pathetic than at this moment.

But Tyrion is just the gift she needs. He’s the perfect Hand to the Queen: a pragmatist where she’s an idealist; ruthless where she hesitates. Can he put Daenerys on the Iron Throne?

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Game of Thrones airs on Foxtel’s Showcase on Mondays at 11am, with an encore broadcast at 7.30pm on Monday evenings.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She blogs on style, history and culture at Footpath Zeitgeist and tweets at @incrediblemelk. 

Read her recaps of last season’s Game of Thrones here.