Ice and/or Fire

“I can’t tell the difference between this charred battlefield and a steak ordered by Donald Trump!” Macall B. Polay/courtesy of HBO Last night’s Game of Thrones was talky and plotty—which was to be expected after the full-throttle action of last week’s episode. With “Eastwatch,” the story mostly came down to Earth (or whatever the hell […]

Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO So far, this is Game of Thrones’ best season—and last night’s episode, “The Spoils of War,” was fantastic. Let’s get into it. Spoilers, obviously. WE BEGIN IN HIGHGARDEN…… where Jaime and Bronn are packing up the Tyrells’ gold. Bronn’s all sassy because he doesn’t have a castle yet—which seems weird, since […]

“The bellhops here are really on the ball—they’ve even offered to carry our heavy weapons for us!” Macall B. Polay/courtesy of HBO Last night’s Game of Thrones was jam-packed with plot. The show continues its late-series trend of getting down to brass tacks, and we finally saw two of its lead characters sharing the screen […]

BOAT FIGHT!!!!!!! Courtesy of HBO Last night’s episode of Game of Thrones suggested there’s not going to be much in the way of downtime this season. We’re only on Episode 2, and shit is already going down. I think “Stormborn” may be one of my favorite episodes of the series—as the sphere of the show […]

So THIS happened last night. Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO The seventh season of HBO’s Game of Thrones appears in a decidedly different America than the sixth season did. It’s a different Westeros, too: With Cersei’s destructive ascension to the throne, the show’s been stripped of a lot of supporting characters and side plots. We embark […]

Cersei’s stint as a cup bearer was surprisingly unsuccessful. HBO Game of Thrones’ sixth season ended with a big bang. And then a bunch of other, littler, more metaphorical bangs. Despite a slow and plodding start to Episode 10, “The Winds of Winter” brought the season to a rousing conclusion, and while I’ve seen some […]

“Nice try, enemy army. I’m not falling for that ‘Look behind you!’ trick.” HBO “A true history of the world is a history of great conversations in elegant rooms,” said Tyrion Lannister in an earlier episode in this season of Game of Thrones. I think the show itself largely wants us to believe that idea […]

“Sansa’s just like her mother—she dots her i’s with cute little hearts.” HBO This week’s episode of Game of Thrones disproved a number of fan theories—mainly, the ones about Arya and what is actually happening with the Faceless Men. Sometimes what we see is actually as it seems. Oh well. More importantly, the show gave […]

All hail the new queen. HBO That was kind of weird, wasn’t it? Last night’s Game of Thrones didn’t feel quite like a normal episode. This was a good thing, in large part—there was a freshness to much of “The Broken Man” and its mood of introspection. But it was also, well, a little weird: […]

REUNITED and it feels so good… HBO After the thrills and tragedy of last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, it’s not a huge surprise that this week’s episode dialed the excitement factor down a few notches. But it wasn’t bad or boring, necessarily—in fact, my biggest annoyance with “Blood of My Blood” (an episode […]

Smile while you can, big guy. HBO Throoooones! Last night’s episode was as thrilling and heartbreaking as the HBO show has ever been in all of its five-and-a-half seasons. That didn’t make last night’s final scene any easier to watch, mind you. But we all knew what we signed up for when we started watching […]