The North Remembers

           I had a stroke of something like genius on Saturday morning. With its theme song surging dramatically forward in my head, I resolved to re-watch the entirety of Game of Thrones’ first season before the second season’s premiere on Sunday night.  An urge to re-read A Clash of Kings, the ostensible source material for the new season, struck also, but it didn’t take long to debate the idea out my head.  Reasons of time played a part in the decision, but ultimately the media are simply too different to combine without doing injustice to both. The Song of Fire and Ice novels depend heavily on their characters’ interiority, particularly when dealing with the books’ thematic strengths – they dwell not simply on the tensions within actors’ thoughts but on how each situates themselves in the social order and, more importantly, the deep and recent pasts.  The books (particularly the earlier, better ones) demand extended interrogation and engagement, something of a very long essay that contemplates the nature and intersections of duty, contingency, honor, religion, and history in human existence.  It’s project best left for another time and venue – so Robert Silvers, if somehow you’re reading this, holler when the next book comes out!

            Separating the two proved hard in practice. Of the random notes I made as I plowed through each hour, I’d bet 90% dealt with differences between the books (which I read after season one) and the TV shows that I noticed.  As one might expect, much had to do with television lacking the depth noted above, or making up for it in awkward ways. I found the television show excelled, though, in its Lost-iness – in how it spun out long plots from seemingly tiny details over the course of several episodes and, more importantly, how the characters related to the swerves of acting and being acted upon as those plots unraveled. 

            The Ned Stark character played a key role in those developments.  Driven by easily understandable motivations – a clear sense of honor and duty, loyalty to liege lord, and protection and perpetuation of house and family – he played protagonist against a world of characters driven by any number of oedipal, resentful, or just plain selfish drives.  With Ned’s gravitas and his plot as anchor, the rest of the storylines could wave about as they would.  When (SPOILER) Ned lost his head, the loss hit hard – again like Lost, it made us wonder what this whole show has been about all along – but a sense of opening followed not long thereafter.  When the main character dies, anything can happen (and will happen, if they stick to the books – Martin has a particular genius for ground-stealing plot shifts that wrench our gaze without pulling it out of the thrones-iverse) and now everything could and would happen.  After a whole season thinking we were watching it, we realized the game of thrones had only just begun. In the final episode, we saw moves made all over the Westerosi world, foretelling chaos to come.

            Last night’s opener continued those threads, but without the energy.  Had I not read the book before, I’d have wondered at their connection.  Sure, when relevant, each of the characters spoke of how their situation played into the overall game, but only a handful exhibited the energy we’d expect of planets around a collapsed star.  Ned’s gravity kept the satellites moving in their appointed directions, ones that felt oddly unchanged by the presence of a black hole where an anchor previously held firm.

            I’m wary to judge the show-runners too much for this.  The story is a complex one and requires the stage to be precisely set for every scene and act to hit as it must and being on HBO allows them to take the time to make those moves before a knock-out combo.  Where ABC allowed Lost slow penultimate episodes to set up jaw-dropping finales, HBO’s fine (to an extent) with Game spending a half season (or more) for an hour of real payoff at the end.

             It’s a risky play – we don’t turn to television to exercise our patience – but there were hints in the opener that it will all be worthwhile.  In the absence of plot, characters must fill the void and last night’s three kings earned their crowns in filling the breach.  Stannis’ stern calm, Joffrey’s Caligula glare, and Robb’s near liquid rage at Jaime Lannister portend fury to come, one imagines everyone else in the Seven Kingdoms will have to be dragged along for the ride. The game of thrones appears to becoming a war of vengeances and vendettas.  If Ned's dopy righteousness kept season one hurtling forward, his son and his enemies' righteous anger might fuel the next.