‘Game Of Thrones’ Recap: Low Acts In High Places

This is a recap of Game of Thrones. Spoilers!

Melisandre stands on a cliff at Dragonstone, watching the beach far below where Tyrion and Missandei are greeting Jon Snow and Ser Davos Seaworth. This is just the first of the episode’s many lofty perches, which witnessed low acts of conquest and vengeance. (And I’m not just talking about the potentially spoilerrific hack of HBO’s servers.)

“I’ve done my part — I’ve brought ice and fire together,” says Melisandre, before nicking off to Volantis — presumably reporting back to her boss Kinvara. But anyone expecting sparks and steam from the first meeting of Jon and Daenerys would have been disappointed. This was an episode that teased at the distances between characters, rather than their closeness, even as the show abandons all logic regarding how far apart its various locations are.

As sites for walk-and-talk convos and speechy posturing, high places seem to be replacing the treacherous gardens of the Red Keep in King’s Landing. As Jon and Tyrion head along the catwalk to Dragonstone, they reminisce about the time they got high on the Wall (“We were pissing off the edge, if I remember right”). Later, they’re both drawn to the clifftops while sulking over their respective strategic setbacks. (“You look a lot better brooding than I do,” broods Tyrion.)

Theon is unceremoniously hauled up onto one of Yara’s remaining ships. Meanwhile, Sansa and Littlefinger jostle for authority on the courtyard balcony at Winterfell. “Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend,” Littlefinger says, red-flagging that he’s definitely planning to ruin her. And in the episode’s closing scene, we finally visit Highgarden, the Tyrell family seat, where Lady Olenna swigs Jaime Lannister’s poison before leaving him shook by her poisonous final words — that she was the one who ordered Joffrey’s assassination back in season four.

This episode also warned that the highborn should never count on fealty from lowborn people. Blinded by the privilege of her many, many titles, Daenerys struggles to understand why Jon (just one title) stubbornly won’t bend the knee, as generations of northerners have done to Targaryens past. And Tyrion’s puzzled that Jon won’t do something so pragmatic and symbolic, which only takes a second.

Dany and Tyrion have been schooled in old hierarchies of privilege — and this is both characters’ weakness. Deep down, Dany believes she deserves the throne because of who she is, even as she insists her strength comes from her own actions. And as a ‘half-man’, Tyrion grew up being treated as a low creature — and prides himself on his ability to subvert the system from within.

Much as Flea Bottom-born Ser Davos rose in Stannis Baratheon’s service because he knew the low places of Dragonstone well enough to break the siege and feed the castle, Tyrion’s insider knowledge of Casterly Rock’s sewers produced a triumphant victory for Daenerys’s Unsullied. But Tyrion has been wrongfooted twice now in this war — both times because he trusted in hierarchical power. He failed to account for the anarchic Euron Greyjoy, who’s now crippled the Dornish expedition and stranded the Unsullied.

Worst of all, he left Daenerys’s remaining ally, House Tyrell, open to attack by the Lannisters. Victorious atop the ramparts at Casterly Rock, Grey Worm realises most of the Lannister soldiers are gone. “There are supposed to be more than this,” he says. The viewer might similarly feel surprised by Cersei’s successes this episode — surely there were supposed to be fewer than this.

Cersei has a native cunning, but her political decisions have always been driven by fury and resentment. Qyburn does her dirty work — and masterminded her macabre revenge on Ellaria Sand for Myrcella’s murder — but he’s an inventor, not a strategist. Euron’s a loose cannon, and the Mountain’s just undead muscle. Jaime’s a moderating influence on Cersei and may well have learned from his past military mistakes, but as his adventures in Dorne and at Riverrun have shown, he’s only a barely competent negotiator.

So who’s the brains behind Cersei’s latest victory? Maybe we saw him riding for Highgarden with Jaime and Bronn (BRONN’S BACK, by the way) — former Tyrell bannerman Lord Randyll Tarly. Jaime promised him a plum gig as Warden of the South — and perhaps the attack on Highgarden was Randyll’s idea.

Now, Tyrion realises Jon must be wooed as an ally by allowing him to mine dragonglass. (How does he plan to do this, with just Davos and a few footsoldiers? Is he going to take his shirt off and chip away at it himself, like Ross Poldark?) But Tyrion doesn’t yet understand as Jon and Davos do — and as Cersei learned from the Sparrows and has since exploited in her favour — that social structures separating highborn and lowborn are crumbling.

Bran’s Eat Pray Warg odyssey has made him an insufferable dickhead.

The series has hinted that the White Walkers may even manage to breach the Wall — which, as Tyrion should remember, is a potent symbol of how Westeros polices Self and Other. It’s a high place for ‘low’ people: convicts, unwanted sons, and political nuisances like Janos Slynt. The people beyond it call themselves the Free Folk, but south, they’re ‘wildlings’ — and only Jon understands their shared humanity.

Jon and Sam — who’s been frantically bootlegging high knowledge from his low position at the Oldtown Citadel — are the two people in Westeros most motivated by the knowledge what a fragile, porous border the Wall is. And Archmaester Ebrose is reluctantly impressed by the success of Sam’s surgery on Ser Jorah. It’s back to scribing for Sam (and who knows what useful intel he’ll find in those old scrolls?), while the newly greyscale-free Jorah heads for Dragonstone to discover if Sam has also removed Jorah’s friendzone.

To Bran Stark, high and low are just two more arbitrary distinctions his quantum raven-sight can now pierce. Back at Winterfell, oddly unmoved by his sister’s joyous welcome, Bran’s Eat Pray Warg odyssey has made him an insufferable dickhead. He’s propped up in the godswood, greensplaining Sansa about her terrible wedding to Ramsay in a pompous ‘enlightened’ voice, until she flees in disgust. FFS Bran. Her dress was grey, not white. (Men never notice what you wear.)

“Give us common folk one taste of power, we’re like the lion who tasted man,” Varys tells Melisandre. “Nothing is ever so sweet.”

“Neither of us is common folk any more,” the Red Priestess shrugs.

Euron Greyjoy has tasted power and is now gorging himself: parading triumphantly up the hill of King’s Landing with his prisoner Yara, and his “gift” to Cersei: Ellaria and Tyene Sand. And it looks like Cersei’s into him, much to Jaime’s consternation. (LOL at Euron delighting in asking Jaime if Cersei likes “a finger in the bum”.)

Cersei doesn’t give a fuck who knows about her sex life now. It’s a far cry from the show’s very first episode, in which Jaime was ready to throw a small boy from a high window to protect his sister’s low secret. What will Jaime do now, with Lady Olenna’s taunts about Cersei ringing in his ears?

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Game of Thrones is streaming on Foxtel Now and airing on Showcase at 11am and 8.30pm every Monday. For more on this week’s episode, check out Sinead Stubbins’ power ranking.

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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She tweets at @incrediblemelk.