What I’m Watching: Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 2 “The Night Lands” (B+)

This show is in full swing as several characters less featured in last week’s premiere take center stage in irresistible plotlines. It’s especially great to see Arya, going incognito as a boy in her camp, get recognized as a girl by Gendry, who promptly realized that he should be calling her a lady, something about which she was not excited. I’m glad to see her taking on this role now that she’s out of the kingdom and has to fend for herself. There was plenty of cruelty present in this episode, starting with Petyr consoling Ros and then turning into something far less kind. Balon was extraordinarily harsh to his son Theon, and his manipulative sister Yara wasn’t too concerned about his feelings when she told him she’d be the one leading the attack rather than him. After Tyrion accused Cersei of ordering the babies killed and learned that Joffrey had done it and not told her, she snapped when he made a crack about Jamie falling on her. Telling Tyrion how nothing was funnier than his first joke, which was killing their mother when was born, was an awful thing that even the occasionally offensive dwarf didn’t deserve. Stannis is proving to be rather corruptible, easily falling prey to the advances of Melisandre, and his new alliance with the pirate Salladhor Saan is sure to be sticky at best. The most memorable line of the night was “What has the world come to when pirates must vouch for kings?”