Episode 4 Review

Things seem to finally be picking up this season in episode three "Garden of Bones". Danny's gotten to Qarth, Arya arrives at Harrenhall, And Stannis begins to make his move on the other kings, starting with Renly. A lot more storylines were being juggled this episode, with less focus on a single one, than we've seen, but i don't feel like it hurt the overall narrative, because there's so much good stuff happening now.

The episode started off with a great scene showing Robb winning a victory over the lannisters in the West, something never really given much time in the books. More than likely they're giving us more Robb stuff in the show so we car a little bit more about him by the time season 3 comes along, just a guess. Speaking of Robb's future in the story, we may have met the woman he falls for out west, tending to lannister wounded after the battle.

We got to spend some time this week with Joffery. Just in case anyone didn't hate his guts already, this episode made sure of that, adding a pretty brutal scene that highlights a totally different side of Joffery's sadistic nature. While he didn't get bitch-slapped, he did at least get a thorough verbal beat down from Tyrion, which will suffice. As he has been doing since he got to Kings landing, Tyrion continues to protect himself against his sister in case the worst should happen.

As i had Mentioned last week, Arya's story was altered slightly to get her to Harrenhall much faster than in the book. Fortunately, here we see most of the important events that happened while they were still on the road in the book. This week served as the introduction to Arya's Prayer, something she learned from Yoren last week, speaking the names of all those you want dead before you go to sleep. It's an ongoing thing in the book and, i imagine, in the show as well. lets just say that you don't want your name on that list.

Finally We get a little more Danny this week, which some might like others not. she seems to be a pretty polarizing character. I like her.  We see her arrive at Qarth, at the edge of the red waste. I love that she mispronounces the name as "Quarth", and has to be corrected, especially because that's how i pronounced it when i read the books. The whole scene, where she refuses to show her dragons (why?) i am guessing was made up cause they couldn't afford to have the dragons on this episode. Who knows, that's just not how it went down in the book and there has to be some reason. As usual, the results are the same, so no sweat.

Stannnis arrives in the storm lands all of a sudden in this episode. He has no chance of beating his bro in the field, so we finally  get to see what Melisandre has been plotting, and boy is it pretty twisted! The finale of the episode was something i honestly didn't know how they would translate to TV but it was pretty impressive, and creepy. My only worry is the tension between this episode and the next is lost, so the culmination of Melisandre's scheme won't have as much impact as it would have otherwise. We'll have to see it play out.

Anyway, "Garden of bones" gets a 6 out of 7 stars, just for sheer creepiness.