Liam drops a review of the latest episode of GOT. Read it here.
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| Hoth sucks. |
As many of
those of you who browse social media on Sunday nights know, season six of Game of Thrones (GOT) continues this
week with the episode entitled “Home”.
“Home” is an episode that picks up directly with where viewers were left
off last week and manages to deliver on the blood, gore, and great character
work that fans have come to expect from the series. It continues the set ups that last week
provided and manages to answer the biggest question that has been on every
viewer’s mind since the last season. Even if it didn’t answer that question, “Home”
was a great hour of television.
This week,
GOT catches us up with Bran and Hodor and the three-eyed-raven. While I like
these two characters, I have never found them to be engaging narratively. Their
stories in the previous seasons started off great but went into a narrative
dead end, which I thought, was fixed by their absence in season 5. Thankfully,
the writers now seem to be focused on actually moving the story forward and
having us understand the characters more clearly. We learn more about the Hodor character and
his relationship with the Stark family in the first 10 minutes of this episode
than we have in a long while. We learn not too much but just enough to make us
wonder where they are going with this.
“Home” was
a great acting showcase. There were many standouts this week. Max Von Sydow
does a great job serving as the young Bran Stark’s mentor. Peter Dinklage
knocks it out of the park with both the humor and gravitas he brings to the
character of Tyrion Lanister. There is a scene involving Peter Dinklage and the
Khaleesi’s (oddly absent from this episode) dragons in the second half of this
episode that is so such a joy to watch. Last but certainly not least is Liam
Cunningham’s performance as Ser Davos. Cunningham has always been underrated
for his work on this show and nowhere is that more apparent than his big scene
with the Red Woman. It is a satisfying scene that is not only well acted but
also well written.
My only
issue with this week’s episode is in regards to the two of the sets of
characters I don’t care for on this show: The Boltons and the Greyjoys. I
understand that these characters are important but their scenes this week felt
like especially tacked on scenes to pad and eat up the running time from
interesting characters like Arya or Brienne of Tarth. The conflict for these characters remains the
same and they are not well fleshed out so I don’t find them interesting. It
didn’t ruin the episode but it is still a weak spot for the writers as a
whole. That being said that is a small
quibble or price to pay for an episode like this with an ending that manages to
answer the question that fans have been dying to know about for ten months.
Unlike The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones has decided to stop giving the viewers
narrative blue balls and it has worked perfectly for this season. We are only
two episodes in to this season and it is already better than season 5. I am definitely excited to see where the
story takes us next.
Score
-Liam S. O'Connor