Right on time, salon.com had an article today on whether or not Boardwalk Empire is trashy or not and, oddly, seemed to come to the conclusion that it should be trashy (they call it pulpy but, incorrectly, appear to believe pulpy means the same as trashy). Articles such as that one crop up every September before Boardwalk Empire begins yet another season as many see the drama as an oddity, the somewhat ugly stepbrother of The Sopranos. Let me say up front, Boardwalk Empire is not as good as The Sopranos. However, no other show is (no, not Mad Men although I can hear arguments for The Wire) so that’s a tough standard to hold Boardwalk Empire to.

 I was fifteen when I first read the Game of Thrones book series. At the time there were only three novels out: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords. I read all three in my sophomore year of high school and eagerly read A Feast for Crows when it came out in the autumn of my junior year. It wasn’t until the summer after my undergrad that the fifth book, A Dance of Dragons, was released. By this point the first season of HBO’s show had aired and the release of A Dance of Dragons was greeted with a lot more press than A Feast for Crows was (although AFFC did hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list) thanks in large part to the success of the show.

“I’ll find another.”

With that one sentence it became clear that there was no way out, no last minute rescue, no reprieve. Sure, there’s been precedent for this with Ned Stark but at least he went out with a clean stroke of the sword. The red wedding, though? No. Here we see a horrible, ugly, mass murder. Totally unfair, disgustingly brutal, and like a knife through the heart.

Let’s talk about weddings.

I’m not a wedding person. I’ve never been interested in the fairy tale wedding, or having a wedding, or even getting married. There’s no question that on this issue, I’m a bit of an outlier. Weddings have been a staple of our community for centuries, acting as social, economic, and religious events. The media often likes to tell us that a wedding is the seminal moment in a person’s life (next to, maybe, having kids) which is why we have ten year olds already planning for their wedding.

What’s neat about Game of Thrones is how involved George R. R. Martin is in the process. He’s regularly consulted, Benioff and Weiss spent a weekend with him this past summer to pump him for future information, he gets talked about in regards to casting, and once a season he writes an episode (they’d love for him to do more but he has to write the next book). The respect Benioff and Weiss show Martin is one of the reasons this show works but it’s also worth noting that the respect Martin shows Benioff and Weiss is equally important. He’s been supportive of the changes they’ve made even if certain members of the fanbase have howled about them (That horse is now a female! Burn them all!). A direct adaptation of a book to the screen will never work, after all. It wouldn’t work for any good book as a book is a remarkably different medium than the screen. A lot of people don’t seem to realize this and it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Game of Thrones or the recently released The Great Gatsby (the movie’s finest moment has the emotion from the book but the line of dialogue, “I wish I’d done everything in the world with you,” isn’t actually from the book even though it so felt like it was); you can’t do a direct adaptation. 

One of HBO’s teasers from the season had a monologue from Littlefinger, which appeared in tonight’s episode, about “the climb.” Despite not having any new footage, when I first saw this teaser months back I was really intrigued because this season of Game of Thrones has a lot more magical elements and moments of shocking violence (Dracarys, Jaime’s hand, the duel with Benric and the Hound) yet the promo department focused on the idea of what people will do for power and what people will do once they have the power they wished for. It made me happy to see because that’s a much better representation of what the show is about instead of a sword fight or a scene of a dragon (not that I’m knocking those amazing moments). Martin’s books have always been interested in what happens when people try to “climb” to power.

Fire is an important part of Game of Thrones’ mythology. The book series is called A Song of Ice and Fire, the dragons breathe fire, Sandor Clegane has a fear of fire, Melisandre is obsessed with fire, and Daenarys cannot be harmed by fire. Tonight, we learned that redheaded women, of which we have a few, are considered to have been “kissed by fire” which gave us the name of the episode.

Let’s talk about justice. Namely, the fact that it does not exist. It’s a construct. If I smack you across the face the scales of justice aren’t all of a sudden out of balance and the universe isn’t going to rework events so that I somehow get punished. The only way some form of “justice” is served is if people I am among think I deserve a punishment. It’s no different in Westeros and George R. R. Martin certainly loves to show us that.

Has there ever been a more heart wrenching and then hilarious cut to black on a show? I don’t even think The Sopranos has managed something as darkly funny with its credits. We go from seeing poor Jaime’s hand severed to a phenomenal rendition of George R. R. Martin’s “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” a song I enjoyed even when I read A Storm of Swords. I flinched at the hand and then had a huge smile as the song came on. Having a huge goofy smile is not something that one associates with Game of Thrones but nevertheless I had one. I love sudden changes in tone in fiction, it’s a daring move, and this one worked perfectly.

A common point of contention as this third season has started is whether or not the structure of the episodes is too chaotic. We go from one character’s story to another’s within minutes and sometimes, such as with Sam and Tyrion in tonight’s episode, we will only see a character for one scene. A few critics have said that the show should adopt the more focused narrative that season two’s penultimate episode, “Blackwater,” had since it gave us such a powerful story.

There are no spoilers for any events beyond this episode.

I have read all five of George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels. I’ve read the first four twice. I come to the show with a unique perspective because unlike a lot of fans I’m fine with the story going in a different direction because I’ve watched a fair bit of TV, to say the least and to dramatically insult my social life, and know it can’t possibly be what the books are. If anything, I’ve been surprised at how damn accurate the show has been.