Review Roundup: Season 5, Episode 9 “The Dance of Dragons”
Where last week’s episode had me singing “Ice Ice Baby,” this week’s episode is more like “Burn, Baby, Burn,” but in a way that made me feel awful and very confused. This was yet another episode where the smaller scenes (Dorne, The Wall, Arya’s Kill Bill Vol. Westeros arc) took a backseat to the two biggest events of the night. So come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away…
On Shireen and the screams of innocence fading away:
Was Stannis’ decision to burn his only daughter, one he professed to love (not in so many words, but we’re talking Stannis here), in character? This was the biggest question surrounding the discussion of this week’s winner of Most Nauseating Scene on Television. Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd discusses how the layering of Stannis’ character worked in favor of making the knife-twist of this scene hurt even more:
With Stannis, the man is so logical and sensible in the scenes where we see him interact with characters like Jon Snow, that’s it’s easy to forget that he’s also a religious fanatic. He may not come off like a pinwheel-eyed Lord of Light worshipper like his wife, but he’s still been burning people alive for a while now. […] We’ve acted like his penchant for human bonfires is just a weird random predilection—like driving an orange car—rather than condemning people to die the most horrible death possible for faith-based objections.
For Stannis, his thinking was that his path had already been set, he’s just following it. When he did things on his way to becoming king that worked out well for the good guys, like saving Castle Black from attack, we applauded him. When he did things on his way to becoming king that made him the opposite of father of the year, like deciding to sacrifice Shireen to the Lord of Light to clear the way to Winterfell, we abhorred him. But Stannis Baratheon was and always will be Stannis Baratheon. This horrible act was not out of character. This was quintessential Stannis. […] I’m not defending his actions. It’s a dick move. But there’s absolutely nothing out of character here.
On the flip side, over at Hammervision, Julie Hammerle is completely frustrated by this seeming reversal of Stannis and Selyse’s characters:
This Stannis was not the one we’d grown to love over the past nine episodes. This was vintage Season 2 Melisandre’s bitch Stannis, and I don’t like it. I don’t accept it. I don’t think Stannis would’ve given up his daughter for Mel’s big plan. You know who would though? Selyse. Selyse, Stannis’s wife and Shireen’s mother, TOTALLY would’ve given Shireen to the Lord of Light no question. She loves the Lord of Light shit. […] What happened in this episode, with Stannis turning cold all of a sudden (remember, this is the guy who brought all the maesters in the land to help Shireen with her grayscale) and Selyse having a moment of remorse and “That’s my baby!” went against everything we’ve come to know about these two characters.
And USA Today’s Kelly Lawler is on her side:
Stannis is a character that has always been defined by one thing above all else: His honor. He was the man Ned Stark picked for the throne. Yes he is exacting and cold and often emotionless, and yes he killed his own brother, but he has never been cruel. His desire to kill Shireen is about a lust for power, not about his belief that he is the rightful heir to the throne. Stannis, no matter how much of a prick he is, simply would not do this. And so, once again, the show has chosen shock value over character development, and that is not a sustainable plan in the long run.
This was kind of an unexpected conversation. I knew the scene would disturb or alienate anyone who watched it (the reactions were particularly rough for some critics who are also fathers of daughters), and I knew it would revive the conversation about the show’s approach to violence in all forms, particularly in the context of Arya’s brothel scenes in the same episode. But it never occurred to me that this could be considered egregiously out of character for Stannis (and Selyse, who is perceived as the more devout of the two in this marriage).
Anyway, suffice it to say that #TeamStannis is pretty much dead.
On Daenerys Queen and the scene in Meereen:
On the other hand, DRAGONS. Laura Hudson at Wired captures the raw beauty of Daenerys’ flight from the city:
For all of this show’s cynicism, for all its dead Starks and foolish, burned knights, Daenerys is the one character who has the sort of thrilling, epic moments that we expect from legend. But unlike Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, she can walk into the fire of living myth, and emerge without being burned. Game of Thrones has worked very hard to make us doubt our instincts about who the heroes really are, which perhaps makes it more satisfying when we find the real thing. You can see it in Tyrion’s eyes as he watches her, starstruck: He believes.
Hizdahr zo Loraq finally made an impression, in that everyone was glad to see the back of him as he got shanked by a Son of the Harpy. The philosophical conversation between him, Tyrion, and Daario was also quoted in various ways and for various reasons; certainly, the banter here was better than the conversation in Dorne. (Nerdist’s Alicia Lutes: “…remember when, in the books, the Sand Snakes were great and vengeful and interesting? I mean, they even gave Nymeria’s Small Council seat to Trystane! Sigh.” Yeah, that’s how I feel too, Alicia.)
Nina Shen Rastogi at Vulture also had an insightful take on Drogon’s timely arrival:
Unlike every other competitor in the game of thrones, who would never be taken seriously as monarch material unless they could swing a sword, Daenerys doesn’t get physical. She’s the still white spot in the middle of the blur. But then Drogon arrives […] The look on her face doesn’t suggest that she’s doing it to demonstrate her power, or to establish dominance and thus quell the riot. She just … flies away. Away from her supporters, away from her enemies, away from her people — some of whom are choosing the way they will die, and many who are not. The path she chooses is the path of not choosing, and it’s a cruel fantasy ride for a queen to take. What sort of spectacle will await her when she returns?
The sequence also put multiple people in the mind of The Neverending Story (which never occurred to me even though I love that movie), Star Wars: Episode II’s climactic sequence in the pits of Geonosis, and, at least for HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall, the original Star Trek. Oh, and Jurassic Park. Of course.
Other Quotes of Note:
“At some point, what “Game of Thrones” has to realize is that there’s no need to continually remind audiences that the world at large is a dangerous and cruel place for women. The reason it’s unnecessary is because we exist in that world already and the genre the show exists in is called “fantasy,” not “reality.” If I wanted to see the continual abuse and devaluation of women within modern patriarchal contexts, I would watch TLC.” —Libby Hill, Salon
“As Jorah faces death in the pits, Tyrion implores Dany, “You can end this!” Hizdahr butts in: “She can’t.” Tyrion: “You can!” Notice he doesn’t say, “She can,” to Hizdahr. He keeps talking to Dany, keeps the ball in her court. Tyrion can’t get back in the Tower of the Hand soon enough.” —Brandon Nowalk, The A.V. Club
“Meryn passes on girl after girl, deeming each one “too old” until he is brought one to his liking. She looks … let’s not even go there.” —David Malitz, Washington Post, with the most polite way of saying that Meryn Trant is a truly sick man whom Arya should have killed right then and there (which is what everyone else said, in so many words).
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