Quick Reader Question: Why do you call Littlefinger “Scratchy the Pimp”?
A: Sometime around the second season, Aidan Gillen started voicing Baelish in something closer to his native Irish accent, and gave up the smooth talking pimp voice in favor of the constricted growl that everyone seems to have gotten used to. I thought it was odd, and made some joke about his suppressed rage causing symptoms of
spasmodic dysphonia.
I feel bad about that now, because spasmodic dysphonia is a painful and debilitating condition that is widely misunderstood, and I shouldn’t use it for laughs just because it sounds made up.
But yeah, his voice is scratchy and he’s a pimp. And it’s shorter than his old epithet, The Unspeakable Pimp Baelish.
Our third to last new episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones begins at the Globe Theatre, with Miss Fischer going off script. Her new rage speech is a hit, and she gets a chance to thank Arry for the notes with a field dressing and a pep talk. And a dose.
And since this is Shakespeare, we get some bawdiness around the campfire with the BWB shitballs who whacked Septon Al. Know this: The Hound, when crossed, crops necks and rains guts.
Varys is rolling home, leaving Tyrion with no one in the city to banter with. Oh, the shade of it. He puts a brave face on it, but you can see Tyrion is miserable.
Back in Cersei’s gilded cage in the Red Keep, creepy cousin Lancel and a squad of scarheads have come to haul Cersei off for another round with the HS. That’s a big fuck no, and we finally get the long-teased I Choose Violence bit.
Note that the scarheads are pretty shit when they aren’t going up against unarmed sex workers and wine merchants. The brave one sticks his crowbill dead center in the Mountain’s armor, which annoys the big fella just a bit. The look on Lancel’s face when his buddy gets his mandible yanked off is pure middle management panic.
This is one gory ep so far. Qyburn looks like a proud papa.
Meanwhile at Riverrun, the siege is looking much tidier, and the lookouts are actually looking out. Jaime’s got this shit handled.
Bronn is clearly overjoyed to see Towering Pod, and effusively bullies and mocks him. Ah, dudes.
Brienne and Jaime are settling back into old roles with each other, and they go through the litany until it occurs to them that they respect each other and shouldn’t be fucking around. “We shouldn’t argue politics.” Once they settle down, they make a solid plan and Brienne is off to propose a reasonable plan to the fucking Blackfish.
By way of a farewell, Brienne warns Jaime that if this goes south, they’re fighting. Jaime sincerely hopes it doesn’t come to that, and perhaps not entirely because he remembers the last time they tangled. I swear Brienne’s lip quivers before she sets off.
So Brienne gets to chase the Blackfish around the castle while he makes grumpy old man noises. He does finally relent and read Sansa’s letter, which he acknowledges as genuine. But he’s not going anywhere. Looks like it’s going to come to that.
Back at King’s Landing, Cersei is going from ordering faces torn off to being left off the invite list for all-staff announcements. Office politics are dreary everywhere. But Cersei is out of favor with the clown-show small council she assembled herself, and she’s a pariah amongst the court. And she has bad hair.
Can things get worse? Well, her son the sock puppet could always demolish her only hope for a trial victory. When your only good news for the day comes from Qyburn, things are very bad indeed.
(What’s the rumor? Who knows, but I’m guessing it involves the Mad King’s wildfire stash.)
Tyrion, meanwhile, is fortifying his brave face with wine. Tyrion is a terrible boss, and these scenes with Grey and Missandei are like the most gruelling bits from The Office.
Tyrion is bad enough as a pompous drunk, and now he’s become one of those drunks who can’t stand to see people not drinking and won’t let it go. It’s still a terrible moment when he realizes at the end of his musing about his future vineyard that he has no close friends.
(I tell that joke, only the Lannister is an Englishman, the Martell is an Irishman, and the Stark is a Scotsman.)
We’re never going to hear that joke about the honeycomb and the jackass, sadly. I still want to know how many Dornishmen it takes to fuck a goat. But there’s nothing like a horizon filled with enemies to fuck up a punchline.
And we get a brief, though not brief enough, return to the captor vs. captive dynamics that the show ran on in earlier seasons, this time with Edmure and Jaime going back and forth. Edmure defiantly demands to know how Jamie lives with the evil he has done.
As a reply, Jaime chillingly echoes his closing line from episode 1: “The things we do for love.” That was a throwaway line, delivered as he shoved Bran out of a tower. Here, he’s getting into character in order to scare the holy fuck out of Edmure. He probably could have done that with a rubber spider, but he’d have to find one. Work with what you have.
And it does work. Edmure uses his authority as Lord of the castle to end the siege bloodlessly, almost, and the Blackfish gets his good death in the end, covering Brienne & Pod’s escape.
Back in Mereen, the city is being firebombed and Tyrion’s run out of bullshit. And of course the boss flies in just in time to see how hard he’s fucked up. Dany doesn’t say a word. She’s not mad, she’s just very disappointed. Drogon doesn’t stick around, since he has a fleet of slavers to put a nice sear on.
The Hound finds his man, and two of his asshole buddies, in the hands of the actual BWB, who are preparing to stretch their worthless necks. There’s a bit of nasty bantering and dickering, and the Hound settles for two sorry deaths and a new pair of boots.
Later, over ribs and rum, Beric and Thoros make their pitch. They don’t get an answer, but they don’t get a no, either.
Arry’s looking rested, and Miss Fischer’s looking suspiciously motherly. And Ginger Bitchface is looking like she has a giant murder boner. Arry leads her on a merry Bourne Identity chase through the city, leaving blood trails at helpful intervals. It ends in Arry’s hidey hole, where she draws Needle and concludes her plan.
Back at Project Mayhem, a girl drops off a fresh cut bitchface for the library. Capt. Jaquen recognizes her achievement, and a girl claims her name back. His pride shines through his placid face as she peaces the fuck out.
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