Ready for a New Game? Mr. Smith Is…

Before Season Three

After an unfortunate hiatus to do this and that, and sometimes nothing at all, I humbly return to you, my fellow fans of Game of Thrones. I need to do a little catch up, so I’m going to briefly sum up seasons one and two.

For those who are coming into the fold for the first time, never having read the books or seen the first two seasons in their entirety, I have to say, good luck. You aren’t going to get much out of this. There is no way you’re going to really get it unless you read it AND watch it. There’s no way you can just pick up in the middle. You are committed to dedicate yourself to this world and this mythos. This is the only way.

*chanting* one of us…one of us….

George RR Martin has been cranking out these novels since 1996. He’s been compared to JRR Tolkien in reference to his ability to wrangle hundreds of characters and still keep a story moving. You could make the same comparison between Tolkien and Terry Brooks or Robert Jordan, but George stands alone because of two major qualities.

The first is that he will kill anybody. ANYBODY. It doesn’t matter if millions and millions of readers/watchers are rooting for any one character, if they have to die, then they will absolutely die.

The second is the brutality of his world. George has a unique gift, similar to Steven King, that allows him to indulge the darkest phantoms in the bloodiest corners of his mind. What he imagines is complete, without apology, and somehow true to our nature, though they are very reluctant truths.

If you’re completely unfamiliar, GoT is about the struggle for power, basically. It’s about who’s gonna be king next.

It’s starts with one king, who’s chief adviser and enforcer suddenly dies, so the king talks his buddy into replacing him. His buddy is an honorable man, but we learn that honor isn’t the same as intelligence.

The King’s wife is being intimate with her own bro….You know what? No. You need to do your homework. I have a whole series of posts you can check out that will give you all the information I was gonna put here, on in a much more clever way. You will thank me for this tough love. Just give it a whirl. It’s a complex story with hundreds of players, with amazing performances from every one. The writing is solid, with at least one episode a season written by George RR Martin himself, and the production design is incredible. We can talk more about it as it progresses.

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It’s a privilege for me to bring you re-caps of this show again this season. So look for that again in the next couple days, huh?

Mr. Smith.

[Official Show Site at HBO]