And if you told Savage that, I'm sure he would say something along the lines of: OK, if you say so, but very, very, very few people are that way, and it's a bad idea for people to expect themselves or each other to be so pure of heart. Assuming you're not actually holding yourself up as an ideal and saying everyone…

@avclub-da496e2db2e50a068b4ae5549d4ae1b0:disqus At first I read that to mean that staying together for your whole lives is still only about 3% of the way through. Which might also be true.

@avclub-e57f718840a576abbb40a7d046c4e3b0:disqus I don't disagree with the basic premise that being horny is no reason to destroy your family. However, you picked the worst possible example for arguing that "it's totally possible to continue living a normal, healthy life without sex." You were in a multi-year major…

I thought the Eddie Izzard character was at least a slight gesture toward some balance in that regard. Here's a guy who killed a bunch of immediate family members all at once with no particular panache, sat around in a cell for years being uninteresting, and then brutally murdered the first person he had a chance at,…

@avclub-9b972ab65a176d0a3aabf71ea0c01ffc:disqus A normal dog? It was rearing up to look out the window of the cell which was at least 6 feet off the ground. Plus there was a shot of it trotting in front of Robb's army on the way to the castle— still pretty damn big.

You're partly remembering wrong. Book-Tywin is fully aware and on board with the Frey plan, and (like some commenters here) thinks there's no reason you shouldn't kill people at dinner rather than on the battlefield if it gets the job done. However, he does realize that this looks bad to other people, so he's careful…

@avclub-fddd7938a71db5f81fcc621673ab67b7:disqus It's not a missed opportunity if you can't actually do it. They didn't have the actor. Even supposing that they could've kept Clive Mantle signed on after season 1, they would've had to find enough things for him to do throughout season 2 that people would've remembered…

@avclub-fd8d024c27163110ec4451f10672fc26:disqus I think it's a bit early to jump to conclusions about what's "relatively bloodless." Tywin certainly will rationalize it that way, but his idea of long-term thinking is strictly about preserving the Lannister line. He's in effect just swapped a blood feud between Stark…

@avclub-9b60cf1b2106f886f17cba2b1a0359b9:disqus No problem. We could still nit-pick about this— I think strictly speaking the Targaryens did convert to the Faith right away, even though as you say they had a lot of conflict with the church due to the whole incest thing; Baelor wasn't the first convert, he was just…

@avclub-7194d12c6b5c71da581f8c34e6432846:disqus "Nothing that carries any actual weight" is an exaggeration. Martin obviously doesn't believe in the divine right of kings or think that proper inheritance is a guarantee of good government, but the laws of succession mean a great deal to many of the characters and are…

@avclub-9b60cf1b2106f886f17cba2b1a0359b9:disqus Like I said: the Faith of the Seven was an import from an ancient invasion before the Targaryens. That's what the Andals were.

I'm not sure what you mean by "it came at the cost of allowing the tension over what the proud and mercurial Frey patriarch's reaction would be to build, then ebb, then blow up in everyone's face." I saw plenty of that roller-coaster of tension in this episode: Frey antagonizes them, they tense up and try to take it,…

As others have said, the Faith of the Seven is the establishment religion, but it's also the more recent one, an import from an ancient invasion before the Targaryens. The Old Gods that Ned prayed to, that are only shown as faces carved onto white trees, originated in Westeros and are only still worshiped by wildlings…

This is an only slightly rowdier version of a real historical tradition among, I believe, Scandinavian Lutherans. It was supposed to be just a ceremonial point where the priest could declare the marriage officially valid, because we put these two people in their underwear together in a room and closed the door so it's…

Yeah, I honestly only realized that in the middle of typing another comment here… that she'd been introduced in an early scene with Catelyn, and in a way that made her an object of sympathy to Cat and to all decent-thinking people in general.

I think the show bent over backwards to offer viewers excuses to have hope in the face of Robb's run of fuckups. Making such a big deal of Robb's crazy new plan to attack Casterly Rock— so crazy it just might work!— especially after having Tywin say things like "Robb Stark doesn't have a chance, there's nothing he can…

Although the show softened Cat's final moments in terms of physical gruesomeness, I actually found this version more emotionally violent in a way, because the book doesn't give you a second to think but the show has that long quiet moment where she's just alone on screen, like maybe somehow they've actually just left…

@avclub-349b4d0760cb85b962fa79800c168927:disqus I don't think they ever formally explained it, no. I think rather than try to get the audience to put full faith in a just-now-explained fictional/historical tradition, they went for an equivalent dramatic effect by emphasizing all the formalities and the interplay of…

@avclub-9d66a6ebf0e17da71a6441374275370a:disqus I guess it depends on what you mean by plot, but I think it would make some important differences in how the characters feel. In the book, Jaime doesn't get to have a moment of homecoming— everything is totally fucked before he gets there. He didn't get to see his son,…

@avclub-fec1b8d3fbc08f27a84e5a334d45bb5a:disqus Heh, I'm slow— I only just now realized that Manderly started that line with "Mayhaps."