The Small Council: A look back at “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”

“Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” made waves, to say the least. The final scene inspired widespread anger and sparked debate across the internet. People didn’t exactly rave about the rest of the episode, either, with the goings-on in Dorne singled out for special criticism. What did Winter Is Coming’s Small Council make of it all? Find out below.

DAN: While “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” wasn’t the best offering of the season, I feel the controversy surrounding it has drawn attention away from the things it did well. Case in point: everything involving Arya was wonderful. With the constant threats to her life removed, Arya has been forced to look inward, and watching her struggle to let go of her outsized personality has been very compelling. Her scenes with the Waif and Jaqen H’ghar this week were both cleverly written, and the reveal of the Hall of Faces, in addition to being a triumph of production design, beautifully paid off her adventures in the House of Black and White up to this point.

I also enjoyed the scenes between Jorah and Tyrion, although the much ballyhooed “cock merchant” conversation struck me as a bit desperate, not to mention impractical. That is one specialized market.

Much of the rest of the episode, it must be said, felt frayed around the edges. The King’s Landing stuff continues to feel underwritten, in large part because there’s still little sense of why the Sparrows are doing what they’re doing. “Religious fanaticism” is not a motivation—it’s a label, and until we get the particulars, these guys will keep feeling like a device concocted to get the characters into trouble. Basically, I want Septon Meribald’s “Broken Men” speech from A Feast for Crows, and I want it now. And Dorne…oh, Dorne. I know there are a few episodes left, and the producers are making a noble effort, but they haven’t been able to fix what was fundamentally broken. Dorne was a pandering distraction in the books and it’s a pandering distraction on the show. At least the show is getting through it quicker.

A lot has already been said, here and elsewhere, about the rape scene, and I’m not going to add much. Did we need yet another reminder that this world is harsh, cruel, and brutal? A lot of people have already answered no, but that’s the world the producers are choosing to show us. Much will depend on how they choose to follow up.

What did you guys think of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken?”

KATIE: Apart from the final scene, I actually really enjoyed the episode. Or, at least, I really enjoyed both Olenna’s and Petyr’s return to King’s Landing. They’re a breath of fresh air amidst all the religious upheaval, and it’s clear they’re as tired of Cersei’s descent into uselessness as I am. That’s not to say that Cersei’s character arc is useless—quite the contrary. But her antics aren’t exactly well thought-out. I’m disappointed to see her losing her touch, however integral that is to her storyline. I guess this isn’t the first time Cersei’s gotten in over her head, but her constant denial that she’s responsible for anything comes off as weak to me, which is possibly the point, but Cersei is usually a better liar than that.

One moment I really loved was the short-lived but poignant conversation Tyrion and Jorah have about Daenerys’ right to the Iron Throne. Tyrion pretty much summed up what I’ve been thinking for awhile: that Daenerys might not make a good ruler. Certainly she’d be better than Tommen, who doesn’t seem to have the chops for the job, but at this point I’d rather see Stannis take the throne. Daenerys tends to underestimate her enemies, seemingly because she’s got her dragons to back her up, but what good are her dragons if she can’t control them? She’s had a lot of success conquering parts of Essos, but what does she know of Westeros? Tyrion makes a good point when he asks what comes after Daenerys sits the throne for the first time, and sometimes I’m not even sure that she’ll make it that far. Time will tell.

Arya’s scenes were tight and I’m really looking forward to whatever new face she puts on, but Dorne was ridiculous again. The goings-on there read more like a bad sitcom trope than anything else. Oberyn’s charisma just doesn’t translate to an entire kingdom, I guess. As for Winterfell…I really can’t bring myself to touch that topic again. I’ve exhausted myself. Call me when Ramsay bites the big one at Sansa’s hand, and then maybe I can say that scene was worth a shred of something.

DAVID (RAZOR): I wasn’t impressed with this episode at all. I have tried to give the Sand Snakes a chance to come into their own, so to speak, but they have only come off as cartoonish buffoons, and this is coming from someone who really liked them in the books. Every time I hear their clunky dialogue or watch their horrible choreography, I can’t help but think about how much wasted potential is sitting on the Iron Islands right now.

I’m also not pleased with the events transpiring in King’s Landing. If the show wanted us to really buy in to the Faith Militant storyline, then I feel like it should focus a little more on their story, instead of showing them as homophobic bullies with homicidal tendencies. The resurgence of the Faith Militant is a result of the suffering of the small folk of Westeros. The Riverlands are war-torn and ravaged by not just the Lannisters, but by a bunch of “broken men” wandering the countryside, raping, pillaging, and burning anything they come into contact with. And so, the Faith has risen up to provide protection for the smallfolk.

But what do we have instead? We have Jaime and Bronn in Dorne, a plotline that I was excited for because more screen time with Bronn equates to good television, but the downright campiness of the Bland Snakes has killed any enjoyment I had anticipated. I’m still on the fence about Tyrion and Jorah’s bromance, because I’m having a hard time trying to see Valyria as a lush, green, and beautiful countryside, but that may just be me being a nit-picking book purist, and I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore since the two have been kidnapped by cock merchant pirates.

I will abstain from discussing Sansa’s story this week, because quite frankly, I think that’s a dead horse that just cannot take another beating. Am I interested in what will happen this Sunday at Winterfell? Heck yes I am, but I feel it’s time to move past that particular scene.

ANI: A couple of responses to the above, because I already spat out a couple thousand words on this episode, and I’m tired. Katie, as an Unsullied, I know Tommen feels useless to you, and you’re not the first Unsullied to say that. It’s a reminder that when the show aged Tommen up from seven to mid-teens, they didn’t quite think through how it might change his character’s reactions. I had one Unsullied ask me why he didn’t react when they dragged Magaery way, since she’s his goddess of sex, and any good teenager with authority would go ballistic in his place. And I had to admit…I didn’t know why, except that in the books, he’s too young to even get what’s happening.

Speaking of the Faith Militant, David, I’d like to jump off your point that part of the reason the push behind the Faith Militant feels empty is because the show has rerouted Jaime to Dorne and Brienne to Winterfell. In the books, their meanderings around the Riverlands feel aimless, but you’re right—the images of the poor folk who have suffered contrast and heighten the class warfare aspect of the Faith. With those images of the poorfolk dying and suffering a thing of last season, it’s harder to make the connection. I understand why the show chose the change this, because good television and all that, but perhaps they should have added in a couple of scenes of Pod and Brienne running into angry fed-up peasants before they reached Winterfell.

CAMERON: This was probably the first episode where, upon reflection, I found most of it to be absolute junk. Dorne has been a complete disappointment, Tyrion and Jorah are being forced to drag their feet for little reason, and the last scene is the last scene many people will ever see of this show because they are giving it up (and I don’t blame them for a second). I know many people didn’t like Dany’s “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS” plot from Season 2, but I think I’d rather have that back than whatever muddled and confusing mess is going on this season.

And as for that last scene, I’d like to point you toward a speech given by Dessa, one of my favorite musical artists, at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in 2012. The whole thing is well worth watching (so, see you in an hour), but I want to call attention to a section at the end, where she’s talking about the impact that pop culture has on our individual sense of self, and about the prevalence of offensive content in hip-hop:

I can see that what I expose myself to messes with my head. If I read those magazines all day, I start to feel weird, y’know? I wanna do it with the lights off! Because what you expose yourself to affects you! And I think a lot of times consumers say, ‘oh yeah but I put that block in my head when I listen to that really misogynistic lyric, I would make the following argument: If it was really racist content, it would be so overwhelming to you that you wouldn’t be able to listen through the offense. The reason you CAN listen to it is ’cause it already got to you.

While her speech is specifically about hip-hop, a lot of what Dessa talks about in this video is broadly applicable to any piece of pop culture. I was thinking about this a lot this week as I read essay after essay about the last scene of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.” It deeply worries me that this show (and as Libby Hill pointed out, other so-called prestigious cable dramas), by continuously using rape as a plot point without care or concern for the personal consequences of all involved, is failing to reflect the realities of rape in the real world. (Or maybe, in its own weird meta way, it does reflect the realities—after all, I wouldn’t want to give the false impression that our “modern civilization” cares about the plight of rape survivors in meaningful ways.) This is sort of the extended version of what Price Peterson mentioned briefly at the top of his review for the episode: “Maybe we don’t need to see quite so many rapes, eviscerations, and genocides. If most entertainment — especially the fantasy genre — works best as escapism, then is this a place we really want to be ‘escaping’ into?” This week, for many people, the answer to this question will be “no”—and that’s okay.

I…probably could write a whole essay about this myself. But I didn’t really want to contribute to the endless pile of thinkpieces and counter-thinkpieces that I knew the scene would inspire. Still, it wasn’t just that scene that made me go on a deep soul-search this week; it’s that most of the rest of the episode (congratulations, Arya, you’re the best character in any version of A Song of Ice and Fire) wasn’t even memorable enough to be worth discussing other than being “the stuff that happened in that episode where Ramsay rapes Sansa while Theon watches.” And that’s where I have to stop and think about how this show has affected me without my knowledge and consent.

• Published on 05/22/2015 at 1:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT