Last night Charles and I watched the next two episodes of Game of Thrones, season five: “High Sparrow” and “Sons of the Harpy.” I’ll reproduce the imdb.com synopses for these two episodes:
High Sparrow: Sansa and Littlefinger finally
approach their destination where she learns she is to marry Ramsay Bolton. She
initially refuses but Littlefinger convinces her that it’s all part of a much
greater plan. In Braavos, Arya has now entered the House of Black and White, a
dark and somewhat unpleasant place. She learns from Jaqen H’ghar that as a
first step, she must rid herself of all personal possessions. Tyrion and Varys
arrive in Volantis where Tyrion, already fed up with traveling, heads straight
to a brothel where he is recognized. In King’s Landing, Tommen and Margaery are
married and the young king is enjoying the pleasures of married life. Also, the
High Septon is ridiculed when the Sparrows find him in Littlefinger’s brothel
and march him down the street stark naked. The Septon demands that Cersei does
something about these outrageous acts and she decides to visit the man commonly
referred to as the High Sparrow. At the Wall, the new commander hands out the
assignments but one of ...
Sons of the Harpy: Jorah Mormont steals a boat to
navigate with his captive, Tyrion. Aboard a merchant ship, Jaime and Bronn sail
to Dorne to rescue Myrcella. The Iron Bank is charging their loan and Cersei
sends a representative of the Small Council to negotiate with the bankers. She
then has a meeting with the High Sparrow and gives an army and power to his
followers to neutralize the capital’s sinners, including the patrons of
Littlefinger’s brothel, and Ser Loras Tyrell, the brother of Margaery. Tommen
and his Kingsguard are stared down by the Faith Militant, and the king refuses
to fight his way to the Tyrell knight. The disappointed Margaery leaves his
side to stay with her family. Stannis Baratheon plans to head to Winterfell
before the snow. Jon Snow is summoning nobles to help the Night’s Watch with
men and supplies and he has a dilemma with the name of the Bolton family.
Melisandre tries to seduce Jon Snow, but he resists the temptation and does not
break his vows. Shireen, restless at Castle ...
The most interesting thing that happens in these episodes is
the rising of a new religious cult, the cult of the “High Sparrow,” who at
first I thought was preaching the Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of the big
all-in-one, one-in-all “Sky God” (to use the late Gore Vidal’s phrase) that
directly intervenes in human affairs and enlists the help of the righteous to
smash human immorality in general and sexual immorality in particular. It turns
out that the overall religion of George R. R. Martin’s universe remains a
system of seven gods (represented by the seven-pointed star that is seen as an
emblem on quite a few places, including both above the Iron Throne and as a
design on the floor of the throne room. It turns out the “High Sparrow” is
merely a Fundamentalist leader within
the Church of the Seven Gods, and he’s encouraged by Cersei Lannister, mother
of the current King Tommen Baratheon (Dean-Charles Chapman), who has just got
married to Margery (Natalie Dormer) and is having so much fun having sex with
her (he really was a virgin on
her wedding night, a rare accomplishment in the Game of Thrones world: when one character complained that the people
in another tribe do nothing but “fighting and fucking,” I said, “That’s all anybody does in Game of Thrones: fight and fuck!”) he literally doesn’t want to do anything else.
Only Margery’s
brother is one of the alleged “sinners” kidnapped by the High Sparrow’s
acolytes, and when she complains to Tommen and demands that he do something to
get her brother released, he confronts the High Sparrow’s minions but refuses
to disturb the High Sparrow personally because he’s told, “He’s praying,” and
even though he has an army at his back Tommen recoils from ordering the sort of
violence and slaughter it would take to rescue his brother-in-law and instead
withdraws and pouts, “I’ll find another way.” Of course this, in the Trumpian
world of Game of Thrones, means
he’s not long for this world because he’s too weak to survive at all, let alone
be king. What’s more, though Queen Mother Cersei encouraged the High Sparrow
cult to re-form the “Church Militant” and go on their rampage in the first
place, at the end of the surprisingly short (only 51 minutes), she’s going to
get a what-goes-around-comes-around comeuppance at the end because the High
Sparrow’s minions start the old rumor (which I think we’re supposed to accept as fact) that Cersei’s sons
Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), the Nero-like psychopath who got assassinated several
episodes before but who was such a fascinating character he’s sorely missed in
the dramatis personae) and Tommen
were really the product of an incestuous affair she had with her brother Jaime
Lannister (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) and are therefore “bastards” who didn’t and
don’t deserve to sit on the Iron Throne.
The two episodes deliberately contrast
Tommen’s wimp-out to Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) actions as commander of the
Knight’s Watch, the army corps who protect the north wall and are supposed to
keep the Wildings and the White Walkers (the former are human, the latter are
ghosts or something) from invading “Westeros” (i.e., they’re maintaining
Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland), who summarily has his old friend
and advisor executed — and even beheads the poor guy himself — when the old man
turns town Snow’s order that he take over a ruined castle even farther out in
the middle of nowhere than the rest of the Knight’s Watch’s infrastructure and
rebuild it. In the very Trumpian
value system of Game of Thrones
(and though most of was filmed while Barack Obama was President it very much
reflects the Trump-era Zeitgeist
and in particular its total rejection of compassion and empathy as values, and
its focus on strength and sheer force as not only necessary but positive and
desirable) this indicates that Jon Snow is a real leader and Tommen Lannister Baratheon a wimp who deserves
the assassination that is no doubt his inevitable fate. There’s also some
interesting backstory concerning the female night Bronwyn, or whatever her name
was, and her squire Bronn; she tells him she married one of the Baratheons even
though she knew he was Gay simply because everyone else laughed at her, and
when he was killed she had a
major trauma over her inability to protect him — a rare instance of tenderness
and vulnerability in a story that otherwise takes so low an opinion of love and
the gentler human virtues in general that the end of the cast list for “Sons of
the Harpy” (a reference to the Daenerys Targeryan plot line, which barely got
mentioned in these two episodes) includes listings for “Whore #1,” “Whore #2,”
and on up through “Whore #6”!
