TV Review: This Week on Game of Thrones (S5 Episode 7/ May 24, 2015)

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

NOTE: Join us every MONDAY as we review the latest episode…

EPISODE 7: The Gift

THE PLOT : The long summer is at an end, winter truly is coming and with it the cold winds of war as five self proclaimed Kings claim dominance over Westeros, but there can be only one winner when you play the game of thrones.

THE LOWDOWN: (The following column contains MAJOR SPOILERS, so I don’t recommend reading this if you haven’t watched this episode). Jon Snow. I’m still very angry at how his storyline is progressing. I understand that for the sake of the story, he had to turn down the Lord of Winterfell gig, but there’s no way in hell you can make me believe that this character would have made that choice. Noble as he is, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I get what he’s doing with the Wildlings, and in theory I agree, but I’d be pissing my pants worrying about when an axe was going to split my damn skull. He so should have taken Ghost with him, but hey, if he had, Ghost wouldn’t have been wondering the damn halls when Sam was getting the shit knocked out of him. What a sorry scene that was, almost as cringeworthy as the sex scene that followed. Sigh. I hate to sound like a dick, but who the f*ck cares about Sam and Gilly!? Let me spell it out for you, NOBODY! Stop wasting critical screen time on that nonsense.

What truly amazes me is that in light of all the things going on, we get two minutes of Jaime (a scene which amounted to jack shit, btw), and then maybe five minutes of Bronn, or should I say, thirty seconds of Bronn singing and four minute of Bronn nearly dying as he stared at boobies—another scene that essentially didn’t amount of jack shit either, but I think we all know why it was there. I thought we were making some headway with Theon and Sansa, but that ended in disappointment as well. Stannis is between a rock and a hard place it seems. It figures that his men are either freezing their asses off, or deserting (typical), and then to make matters worse (just when you thought they couldn’t get worse), Melisandre wants him to sacrifice his daughter?! That came as a bit of a ‘WTF’ moment. I hope he doesn’t go down that road, the guy’s already sacrificed a good chunk of his soul for this war. It’s not worth total damnation.

It didn’t take Jorah and Tyrion long to get an audience with the queen, and that much, I’m happy about. I hope that storyline isn’t dropped next week because I’m dying to see where it goes. I got goosebumps when Tyrion introduced himself, this is one teaming of characters I think we’ve all been waiting to see. Speaking of things we’ve all been waiting to see, King’s Landing gets a reckoning when Cersei’s reign of tyranny finally explodes in her face. What I found interesting is that it felt like the High Sparrow knew about Cersei all along. The look on her face when Lancel walked out as perfect. She had to know that would come back to haunt her, he practically told her as much when he saw her at the funeral. She should have killed him then and been done with it. Now it looks like she’ll be joining Margaery and Loras on the chopping block soon enough.

GAME OF THRONES SEASON 5’s seventh episode certainly sees pieces falling into place, and although I’m feeling entertained, I can’t deny the impression of being a little duped. Thus far this season feels like a prologue to next season, a season where a bunch of cool shit is going to happen, cool shit that’s being dangled like a huge damn carrot with each passing episode. Yes, as per usual, most seasons of this show build to an impressive climax that starts to go bonkers around episode eight, and that’s good and fine, but with so many storylines (important ones), it feels like they’re trying to cover an entire piece of toast with just a drop of jam. If you separated all the storylines and clocked them (I didn’t, I’m merely guessing here), we’d no doubt have ten minutes of Brienne for example—who showed up for a ten second brooding moment of silence tonight. I understand this is primarily due to the dynamic of how the books were written, but dropping Bran (for example) was supposed to help tighten things up. Sadly, it didn’t. I love this show, and again, I’m thoroughly entertained, but I can see where some people may have issues. That said, I’m very excited to see things get bonkers.

SEX/NUDITY: Bronn gets a sexy show as he nearly dies of poisoning. At least he’d have gone out with a smile.

VIOLENCE: Sam gets a horrible beat down, Gilly nearly gets raped, there’s some real blood spilt in the arena, and Ramsay gets his flaying on.

MOST EPIC SCENE: If Ghost had ripped those two fools apart I’d have gone with that, but he didn’t so I’m going with Tyrion introducing himself to the queen. I’m extremely excited to see where that conversation is going.

FINAL VERDICT :

TELL US WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THIS EPISODE BELOW!