Villordsutch reviews the eighth episode of Game of Thrones Season Four…
“The Mountain and the Viper”
Written by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.
Directed by Alex Graves.
“Far too much has been written about great men, and not nearly enough about morons.”
There is a smear in King’s Landing, a smear caused by a want for vengeance and overconfidence. Clearly I’m leaping ahead here, but these final moments of Prince Oberyn certainly left a memorable imprint inside me, which for a fair few minutes superseded the previous sixty minutes worth of story. With now only two episodes left of season however I’m in a bit of a fluster. Game of Thrones is coming to an end and shortly we’ll be without it for another year; why do I feel like we are only still at mid-season for the show? I’m enjoying this season immensely yet I’m not getting that satisfied feeling. Hopefully the final two episodes will be the icing on the cake.
To return to the latest episode and if we can place the fight scene to one side and try to focus back on those moments that had gone before it we’ll recall that we had a very good episode, with the stand-out moment being with Sansa and Littlefinger. As the nobles of Eyrie take Lord Baelish’s “Suicide” tale a pinch of salt, they call in his niece, at which point Sansa takes a leaf from Baelish’s book of “How to manipulate people, friends and Kingdoms” and twists the nobles around her little finger; shortly after, introducing some womanly charms, she attempts at twisting Baelish to her ways too. My enjoyment of this was the fact that Lady Sansa believes that Lord Baelish’s smirk is an acceptance into the “Guild of the Sneaky” when actually it’s just him working out the next twenty-four steps that will topple Sansa and her move.
With that we move over to another Princess with a plan, Daenerys Targaryen (Princess Stampyfeet), who thanks to Barristan Selmy, the moral compass of this marching band of thousands, has kicked Jorah Mormont from the raid. This is due to the revelation that since the dawn of the get together Ser Jorah was spying for the late Robert Baratheon and feeding back information, though as time went on he swore allegiance and stopped. Now I dislike this line of the story and always let out a disheartened sigh when it ends up here (moreso with the recent Grey Worm / Missandei romance), but when Daenerys kicked Jorah off her team with Selmy occupying Jorah’s still warm spot I was fuming – the only time I can recall feeling any actual real emotion at a Khaleesi moment.
Though short on screen time both the Hound and Arya made an impact with their two-minute conversation and especially Ayra’s manic laughter echoing around the Bloody Gate, as did Jaime and Tyrion with their conversation about their cousin Orson’s dislike for beetles and the fact the some people just like to kill and don’t need a reason to do so. We also saw that the Night’s Watch numbers are dwindling as the weeks go on, while a small band of rampaging Wildlings take out the local villages. What was also very interesting is Roose Bolton’s comments on the size of the North compared to the rest of the Kingdoms – is there a future coming where the Lannisters need to be concerned about their one time ally?
Finally, we’re back to where we started with this review – the fight between the Mountain and the Viper. I’d liked the character of Prince Oberyn a lot and with that I should have known that George R.R. Martin would destroy him in such a violent way. Watching him dance around the Mountain was fantastic, yet inside I was yelling to him to jab and when he finally floored the behemoth and Oberyn began to scream, demanding that the dying man confess, I had begun to shout out loud “Just finish him!”. I could see it was going to go wrong, but I never anticipated it being so grotesque. When his head burst like an overripe watermelon, we heard the remains wash across the battle-pit floor. Disgusting! Tyrion’s champion failed and he has been found guilty by the Gods. Tyrion is to be executed.
Next week we find ourselves at the penultimate episode “The Watchers on the Wall” and you can find the promo for it here. Will we begin to see our season start to wrap up? As I said earlier, it really doesn’t feel like we’re close to the end of the season at all.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
Originally published June 3, 2014. Updated December 13, 2019.
