Review Roundup: Season 5, Episode 5 “Kill the Boy”

A subdued episode of Game of Thrones elicited some fairly subdued reactions from the critics, although a handful revealed ambivalent feelings about Jon and Dany’s newly-hatched plans. Let’s see what people are saying about “Kill the Boy.”

On The Bolton Bunch, America’s #1 new sitcom:

It’s almost like Thrones viewers don’t like the Boltons for some reason. I can’t possibly imagine why. Trying to quote every single Bolton smackdown would be a fool’s errand, but most reviewers had some words to mince with Westeros’ top sociopath. Here’s a few of my favorites. Alicia Lutes:

Anyone else not-at-all surprised that Ramsay Bolton was born of rape and murder? Of course he was. I bet they baptized him in the blood of helpless, dead orphans, too, just to really cement the deal.

Mike Hogan at Vanity Fair:

I hope he [Stannis] finds a super painful way to dispatch Roose as well, because Jesus, could this family get any more fucked up?

And Laura Hudson, keeping it real as usual, after describing the scene where Roose tells Ramsay the story of his birth:

Ramsay agrees with shining eyes, because paternal affirmation and killing people are his two most favorite things in the world.

#justBoltonthings! Roose telling Ramsay the story of his birth was also seen as a twisted parallel to Stannis sharing a similar story with Shireen in “Sons of the Harpy.” Given that the two men are about to go to war, that seems very intentional on the part of the show. But I think Nina Shen Rastogi has the right idea here: “Raise your hand if Ramsay’s googly-eyed villainy felt played out, oh, about two seasons ago.” I’ll drink to that. (Incidentally, James Hibberd called Ramsay’s eyes “Clockwork Orange-ian insane.” Poetry is frequently born of passionate hatred.)

Elsewhere, Huw Fullerton at Radio Times and Joshua Yehl at IGN are worried that Sansa may have regressed a bit since her evolution into Dark Sansa. The former felt that, combined with the need for exposition about how Theon fake-killed Bran and Rickon several seasons ago, the Winterfell story was somewhat weak, while the latter pointed out the lack of tact in the dinner scene:

She seemed naive-as-ever talking to Miranda. And at the dinner table she wore her emotions on her face as Ramsay tormented her by adding Theon to their wedding ceremony. Considering how much we’ve seen her transform this season, it was odd for her not to mask her true feelings and play along in order to lure Ramsay into a false sense of security. […] Obviously she’s not going to become a Cersei-level manipulator overnight, but this episode made it seem like she forgot all of her lessons in playing the “game of thrones.”

I do like what Alyssa Rosenberg had to say here, though. The subject of her piece is on how to build a country, which included this lovely grace note to her discussion on the story at Winterfell:

But in this disgusting play Ramsay’s staged for his own amusement and in hopes of impressing his father, a more genuine act of nation-building is taking place without his notice. There’s genuine regret in Theon’s agonized apology to Sansa. And maybe there’s the beginning of forgiveness in her ability to hear him.

I’m inclined to think so too, Alyssa.

On Daenerys, who has no fate but what she makes for herself:

Is Daenerys’ re-opening of the fighting pits and plan to marry Hizdar zo Loraq a good thing? The critics are conflicted. Huw Fullerton calls it an odd choice: “I can’t imagine marrying a wet blanket will mollify her enemies in Meereen (who want to return to their slaving ways), and Hizdahr’s no good when she wants to head home and take Westeros.”

But Libby Hill (and others) took Dany’s decisions in stride with the theme of the episode:

But really, that Dany is so blasé about her romantic entanglements makes sense. She gave her heart to Drogo and was destroyed by his death. She gave her trust to Jorah and was devastated by his betrayal. She is wiser now, more mature, and she understands that emotional involvement leaves her weakened. Relationships are much more useful tools when she is the one in charge.

Myles McNutt finds the storyline refreshing due to the unfamiliar characterization of Dany in the show compared to the books:

She is not doing what her advisors suggested, but rather makes her move after Missandei tells Dany to trust her own instincts. Having been aged up, Dany has greater confidence, and here handles the aftermath of Barristan’s death with dragon-feeding authority, drawing on the counsel she has received in the past in order to move forward for the future.

Speaking of book-readers, despite the shocking twist of Ser Barristan’s death (which I still maintain is not nearly as shocking as the show would have us believe), the show is still following the broad outline of Dany’s story, although the thing happening to Jorah at the end of this episode may present a whole other set of adaptation obstacles next year—or maybe even later this season.

On Jon Snow and STANNIS THE MANNIS:

Stannis had a pretty sick grammar burn. Oh, and Jon Snow did some maneuvering too. The reaction to Jon’s decisions were more measured than the reactions to Dany’s decision, likely for two reasons: first, the anxiety for Jon is meta in nature, because Stannis leaving for Winterfell at the same time that Jon is preparing to hop a ship for Hardhome just screams “trouble ahead”; second, the episode’s title and theme of maturity was laid out by Aemon to Jon, which probably made it easier for Unsullied to follow Jon’s decision-making. (And since parallels were quickly drawn between Aemon’s advice to Jon and Missandei’s advice to Dany, I’d say it was a rousing success.)

In any case, Julie Hammerle cut to the quick on why everyone was mostly on board with Jon’s plans, even if they fear for his (and other characters’) safety:

He has to free Tormund Giantsbane in order to let him pass back north of the wall and lead the wildlings to safety. Most of the Night’s Watch are against this move, but Jon is playing “Winter is Coming” chess and knows that they’ll be better off in the long run with a bunch of live wildlings instead of an army of cold, dead white walkers. Not just a pedestal to hold up Kit Harrington’s luscious locks, that thing atop Jon Snow’s neck.

(Do you think Jon would even keep his hair if he turned into a White Walker? THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS, GEORGE.)

On Tyrion, Jorah, and that time Game of Thrones turned into The Walking Dead:

I was surprised by this storyline in two counts. For one thing, at least two people (Laura Hudson plugging away at Wired and Eric Dodds in place of James Poniewozik over at TIME) said that Valyria felt more like the fictional Atlantis instead of the decidedly not-fictional Roman Empire on which Valyria is based (at least as far as I know; perhaps there are other historical analogues as well). For another, absolutely no one made the comparison to the scene at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring when the company is traveling on the river and they pass underneath those giant stone statues. I thought that was going to be the most immediate flashpoint! Ah, well. I’ll just sit here and fiddle with this magic ring I found in a cave…

Thanks to Erik Adams, The Walking Dead wasn’t the only comparison made for this sequence:

In his first time behind the Game Of Thrones camera, director Jeremy Podeswa stages the scene as “Kill The Boy”’s tensest sequence (non-Bolton dinner division), the suspense naturally and automatically heightened by Tyrion’s constraints. The assailants’ craggy hides and inhuman ferocity put them in league with the living dead of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2; the underwater photography draws the parallels even tighter, give or take a killer shark.

And both Alyssa and Nina pointed out the melancholic beauty of Valyria as a memory of a ruined civilization. (In fact, it kinda put me in mind of The Last of Us, too.) Alyssa:

But before they’re attacked, as their boat glides through the astonishing ruins of a lost city, the two enemies are momentarily stunned enough to consider what happened before the Doom. “How many centuries until we learn how to build cities like this again?” Tyrion asks, wonderingly, recognizing that he’s lived in a civilization that is the result of a great and tragic fall. “All that men had learned,” Jorah quotes a bit of poetry. “The Doom consumed it all alike.”

Nina:

I’m sad we rushed so fast through Valyria; the cinematographer, Gregory Middleton, lavished some beautiful shots on Jorah and Tyrion’s little boat, the lush foliage, the heavy clouds, and the haze around the crumbling ruins. In a season that’s placed so much emphasis on monumental structures — the Titan, the Harpy, the Great Pyramid, the House of Black and White — it was chilling to be reminded of just how impermanent a great society can be.

And shout-outs to Price Peterson for calling the fade-to-black the “rudest” in Game of Thrones history. They do like knocking Tyrion out, don’t they?

Other Quotes of Note:

“What Nicholas Sparks movie were these two airdropped in from?” —David Malitz, clearly not a Missandei/Grey Worm shipper

“I don’t know if the show has had enough time to really make this [the Unsullied growing more human] land fully, but the theme works, and I’m interested to see if they go anywhere with it.” —Myles McNutt, seeing the silver lining in the Grey Worm/Missandei story

“Hell, maybe she’ll decide to take on multiple husbands after ascending the Iron Throne. I, for one, would gladly watch a gender-reversed Game of Thrones spinoff based on Raise the Red Lantern.” —Mike Hogan, making me Google another film I haven’t seen yet (this one looks cool too!)

• Published on 05/13/2015 at 10:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT