Episode 2 explodes with grand-scale action
Game of Thrones Season 7 delivers death, destruction and soft-core nude scenes
Spoiler alert: Spoilers ahead for prior episodes of Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones takes no prisoners.
Case in point: The premiere of season 7 of the HBO fantasy series had such gravitational force that traffic on pornography broadcasters plummeted. That’s serious stuff, with sites such as Pornhub.com reporting a 4.5-per-cent drop.
The premiere drew a record setting 7.1 million viewers. And that was despite pop star Ed Sheeran in his debut as a singing soldier.
While the first episode last week unravelled at a leisurely pace, the second literally explodes with the grand-scale action scenes that viewers have become accustomed to from the critically acclaimed series. Of course, that’s what happens when you’re playing with Michael Bay money for a TV show.
Combined with exceptional action scenes, Game of Thrones has always been a kind of House of Cards with dragons. The court intrigue is worthy of anything on Capitol Hill.
But affordable health care is the least of anyone’s worries in Westeros.
The episode “Stormborn” opens at Dragonstone, the ancestral home of mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen. Daenerys is assembling a formidable A-team of council advisers, and there isn’t a Sean Spicer in sight.
As her right hand, she has the smartest and shortest guy in the show, Tyrion Lannister. And now she has the sworn loyalty of Varys, who headed the top secret Master of Whispers and other dirty tricks division when he worked for her opponent Cersei Lannister. Also on board it seems, is Melisandre, the red priestess who worships the Lord of Light.
Melisandre tells Daenerys that Jon Snow is King in the North and would be a good ally. “He sounds like quite a man” says Khaleesi looking interested, though not in an Ashley Madison kind of way.
Daenerys sends word via Tyrion by raven mail, that he is welcome to pledge allegiance to Daenerys to form an alliance.
Despite the objections of his sister Sansa Stark, he leaves the North to meet with the queen. Still, Sansa shuts up remarkably quickly when he tells her that he is leaving the kingdom in her charge. Nobody will put this baby in a corner anymore.
Jon also has a run-in with the cunning Littlefinger who says he loves Sansa as he did her mother.
“Talk to my sister and I will kill you myself,” says Jon Snow, in a line that every high school teenager, or grown man attempting to woo a teenager, fears hearing. However, this sets up Snow on a dangerous trajectory with Littlefinger, and we all know it will not end well.
At King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister is doing her best impersonation of Dirty Harry. But Clint Eastwood’s .44 Magnum pales in comparison to the secret dragon-slaying weapon that the evil queen is developing.
It is a massive crossbow, about the size of a Ford F-150 and it has the power to shatter a dragon’s skull.
Arya Stark is reunited with her direwolf Nymeria, a huge thing that looks like it has dined on one too many foie-gras-eating Lannisters. Nymeria declines to follow her to the North, where Arya hopes to meet up with her brother Jon.
She also goes to a pub where she reunites with her old friend Hot Pie, who feeds her a hot pie. They trade pie-making secrets. Hot Pie says his is butter. Arya declines, perhaps wisely, to tell him her secret ingredient is tenderized human meat from House Frey, medium rare.
Apart from the usual death and destruction, Game of Thrones also continues in the tradition of providing Emmy-winning best soft core nude scenes on cable, at least this side of Outlander. The romance happens when Missandie, adviser to the mother of dragons, visits the unsul- lied — but soon to be happily sullied — warrior Greyworm before he leaves for battle and they finally share a moment.
The sea battle at the end of the episode is finale worthy. You know you’re not watching a rerun of Xena: Warrior Princess because there are more than three extras and the wigs are exceptional. Also you think paying an additional $20 for your HBO subscription might actually be worth it. It pits Greyjoy against Greyjoy and Iron Ship against Iron Ship.
Since Ramsay Bolton was dispatched, the villain-in-chief role is up for grabs. And Euron Greyjoy is jumping maniacally into the void. Perhaps with a little too much gusto, but the bastard son was a hard act to follow. And Euron makes up for it with enthusiasm.
Euron destroys his niece Yara’s fleet and threatens to kill her with Theon looking on. Theon does what any smart cookie would do. He jumps overboard to live another day.
Meanwhile, the body count rises once more as two of the sand snake daughters are dead, and mother Ellaria captured as bounty for Cersei along with Yara. He did promise Cersei a gift in exchange for her hand in marriage in the premiere.
We don’t know if the two survivors will be kept alive. But we do know Euron likes to do things with a flourish. In a future episode when he pays the Lannisters a visit with his housewarming presents, we can expect, at the very least, some exceptional gift wrapping.