Season finale review: Game of Thrones ‘Mhysa’ – Let Them Remember

As we learn at the episode's close, 'Mhysa' is a word for 'mother' in whatever language they speak at Astapor (Valyrian, I suppose?), so it makes sense that 'Mhysa' spends a lot of times on mothers and children - and feels even more logical after the close of 'Rains of Castamere', which saw the death …

Review: Game of Thrones ‘The Rains of Castamere’ – Show Them How It Feels

In the beginning of 'The Rains of Castamere', Walder Frey mentions how the "wine will flow red" at the wedding of Edmure to one of his many, many daughters and granddaughters. Sounds like a great time, right? But there's something that doesn't feel right behind the typically arrogant masquerading of Frey - and when later …

Review: Game of Thrones ‘Second Sons’ – And So My Watch Begins

Coming into the third season of Game of Thrones - and knowing the sheer girth of A Storm of Swords, a book that currently sits unread on my bookshelf - I wondered how the show would inevitably handle a cast of characters and story lines that refuse to stop growing in both amount and complexity. A few episodes …

Review: Game of Thrones ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’ – When It Suits Them

After two episodes of big emotional payoffs and plot movement, things slow back down to a crawl in 'The Bear and the Maiden Fair', an exquisitely shot episode (shout out to director Michelle MacLaren, who also directs next week's 'Second Sons') without a whole lot going on. In a way, I'm a little disappointed nothing happens …

Review: Game of Thrones ‘The Climb’ – This Is Awkward

In one of the more thematically obvious titles in recent memory, 'The Climb' saw a lot of characters ... well, climbing, be it literally (Jon Snow) or figuratively (just about everybody else in the world, as explained in the final scene by Littlefinger). It's also a fitting title in narrative terms; a lot of characters …

Review: Game of Thrones ‘Kissed By Fire’ – Burn Them All

If you couldn't tell things were staring to heat up in 'Kissed By Fire', episode director Alex Graves has got you covered: every scene incorporates flames into its visuals in some way, whether it's just in the background, or explicitly involved in the events unfolding, as it is in the opening scene. By far the …