Game of Thrones –Season 6: five episodes in and I’m loving it.

How I’m loving the new season of Game of Thrones. We’re halfway through and –it seems to me- the showrunners have gotten every little memo I sent them.

A few weeks ago I wrote a lengthy article complaining about the things I disliked about the last season. And, I guess, I wasn’t the only one because all those little ‘mistakes’ are being dealt with.

Jon’s watch has ended.

Jon is back! We all saw this one coming from miles away but it was still handled great. We got some developments concerning Melisandre (or ‘Smelly-Mellie’ as she is now lovingly called) along the way. And, by the looks of it, the Wall-storyline has been wrapped up with a nice little bow (around the neck of poor misguided Ollie –poor chap). Jon’s watch has ended, time to move forward and help the Stark family, beginning with Sansa. Bring on the Bastardbowl (google it).

Sansa is done playing nice…again

Sansa has finally become a force to be reckoned with. True, Littlefinger still managed to coerce her into travelling to Riverrun –and we all know he can’t be trusted (plus he’s still responsible for the death of her father – when will she learn that?). But at least Sansa’s done playing the victim. The dear girl is out for blood. Heck I’m starting to believe that the minute Sansa is done with all her arse-kicking (poor husbands) even her little psycho sister Ayra might wonder if she hasn’t gone a bit too far.

Ayra in training…again.

Speaking of Ayra. Great she got her sight back. And by the looks of it the girl isn’t going to last much longer in the house of black and white (I bet she's going to join that theatre troupe). So let’s summarize her journey a bit: she got trained by Syrio Forel– the greatest waterdancer of Bravos. She got some practical training from the Hound. And now she’s learning to be some kind of blind samurai bo fighter from mrs. nasty.

I think it’s about time to set her up against a formidable foe because she's got the skill set by now. If Cleganebowl isn’t going to happen (I doubt it) Ayra versus Franken-mountain would be interesting

Bran is on the road…again.

Then there’s Bran. Now he was promised that he would learn how to fly two seasons ago. I haven’t seen that happen just yet. But he does have some kind of time travelling power going on. And now that he’s out of the cave it looks like he’s going south for the winter (Bran-with-a-tan?) to join in the fight.

I love how the show handled Hodor’s departure. No matter how crazy some of the show watchers on the internet can get Hodor is and was always a beloved character. The sweetest guy in the whole of Westoros and the show runners gave him a heck of a hero exit. Brilliant!

Like Ayra it is time to see him get into some true action. In short it’s about time to see the Starks fighting back – long overdue.

Rickon… oh dear.

And he was such a nice chap in Vicious.

Which brings me to the last surviving Stark. I’m a bit worried about poor Rickon. He never had the ‘plot armor’ his brothers and sisters had. He is described in the books as a bit of a dangerous fighting boy but that’s about it. Usually he’s in the background somewhere. So now that the dear prince is in the hands of the mad dog Bolton –without his protector and direwolf- I’m a bit worried that another Stark is going to bite the dust.
I hope not, but truth be told it would streamline the show a bit by removing this (sorry for saying it) unnecessary character. But then again, who knows, maybe Rickon will kick Bolton into the next…

Cersei is back in old form.

To move on to that other family: Cersei and her (a bit too) loving brother are back together again and she has absolutely decided to clean up her mistakes and take on the religious fanatics head on (oh how I love Jonathan Price’s character). Naturally I worry a bit about poor Tommen because, as we all know, it’s not a question of ‘if’ he’s going to die but ‘when’ (a bit like Robin-though he might -obliviously- survive it all). But, anyway, we got the Franken-mountain looking threatening every scene he’s in (the show even managed to squeeze a rather enjoyable fart-joke in. Which I find amazing because I honestly hate bowel-humor).

I do think it’s about time that Maester Pycelle starts to show his true colors though. I loved that deleted scene between him and Tywin Lannister wherein he stopped his old-man-routine. But because it was a deleted scene he’s still an old man in the canon of the show. I think it’s time to change that.

Dragons and witches oh my.

Mommy?

Tyrion and the spider are great as always. The true pillars of stability in the show. And now they got dragons and a Melisandre-deluxe at their disposal. And with Daenerys returning and maybe even Ayra on the way this is going to be fun. Moreover, in two episodes flat they stopped that annoying rebellion that somehow caused the death of the greatest swordfighter of Westeros. Great another annoying plotline off the list. 

And that’s the main reason why I’m loving this season: Plotlines are finally being tied together!

For instance the clearing of the table of unnecessary characters.

As I wrote before the whole Dorne plotline wasn’t up to scratch.

I do still wonder why the show decided to recast the princess last season. Because, when you get right down to it, the whole of her role consisted of looking pretty and die. I’m more than certain that the previous actress could’ve pulled that off as well.

The show fixed the Dorne storyline in the very first episode by killing of half the cast there (unfortunately also one of my favorite actors–Alexander Siddig- but that’s a sacrifice I have to live with). The annoying prick on Pike (Patrick Malahide - yes, I still haven’t forgotten your amazing villain performance in the Singing Detective) is dead and replaced by a bit more active aggressive prick. Great, now Theon and his sister have to pick sides and get going.

Speaking of pricks by the way, finally HBO have decided to show some male parts together with the woman parts. The whole: ‘There’s a wart on the dingdong’-speech last episode was utterly useless. But at least it allowed for some equality in the showing of skin department. Still don’t really see the need to show it in the first place most of the time but that’s fine.

What other plotline got solved? Dany is always fun (because she has dragons). But this time not only did the show fix the schism between her and her BFF Jorah. The show also had her captured and escape/ take power in no time at all. Game of Thrones is comfortably in the end stretch now and knows that this experienced Dany doesn’t dillydally with emotions and indecisiveness anymore.

Davos get killing!

Now, are there things I still dislike. Sure! Davos hasn’t gotten his vengeance yet for the murder of Shireen. Moreover, I haven’t really seen any true grief over the death of his ‘rightful king’. And we actually had Brienne tell him for a fact that it was she who killed him. His storyline is a bit weird here. So it would be nice if he gets some closure on these strands (which doesn’t bode well for either Brienne or Melisandre).

And then there are storylines the show has to get to. I’m still waiting for Gendry to finish his rowing trip, the men without Banners, and others. But hey, we’re only halfway and already the show fixed a heck of a lot of them.