Episode eight from season five of Game of Thrones discussed below. Like winter, spoilers are coming.
It's about time we met the real King of the North:
As you know, I've been quite fond of this season of Game of Thrones. Sure, the pace has been a bit languid, but I love what showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are doing in terms of world building: Arya's training with the faceless men; the High Sparrow's ascendance; the sad ruin that is Winterfell under the thumbs of the Boltons; even the stuff in Dorne, which is weak, has its moments. Perhaps it's not for everyone. But even the skeptics must have been heartened by what they saw last night: a full-on assault of the Wildling encampment by the undead forces of the White Walkers.
It was a marvelous sequence, one that paid off the very first Game of Thrones scene. You remember: before we met a Stark or a Lannister or a Baratheon, we spent a few moments with men of the Night's Watch and a rather vicious White Walker reanimating some wildling corpses. We've seen glimpses of them from time to time. There was Sam's stumbling, bumbling, miraculous killing of one with dragon glass. The occasional zombie, necessitating the need to burn the bodies of the dead. And the shot of a whole army of the undead marching, to where we weren't sure.
All of these little tidbits and more (so that's why people are so enamored of Valyrian steel; given that so few in Westeros even believe in White Walkers, there must be some sort of deep, dark, lizard brain memory of its brilliance) paid off last night when the White Walkers struck. We've been waiting five seasons for this and we didn't even really know it. Oh sure, we knew we had reason to be worried about the White Walkers, but we've always been much more enthralled by the politics of King's Landing and the machinations of the squabbling heirs to the Iron Throne. It's one thing to hear Jon Snow yammer on about the oncoming undead horde. It's another entirely to see them in action: ice zombies throwing themselves off a cliff, killing the White Walkers' enemies, and then absorbing the newly dead into their ever-growing ranks. Last night's attack was horrifying and exhilarating and, best of all, rather unexpected. Game of Thrones often uses the penultimate episode in a season to stage some sort of massive attack: the Battle of Blackwater Bay and the Red Wedding and the Wildling Assault on the Wall. But the show's never been shy about mixing up big events into the rest of the season (Viserys' crown of gold; the purple wedding; etc.), and that's one of the things you have to love about it.
With last night's stunning reveal, I think it's fair to say that Game of Thrones has cracked the all-time top five HBO shows. I know: it's dangerous to make such bold statements about a program before it ends.* But I feel pretty confident that Benioff and Weiss know what they're doing and won't let us down. So, The Wire? You're out. HBO's top five are now The Sopranos, Deadwood, Band of Brothers, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Game of Thrones.** Let's see how high it goes.
*See: Everyone who proclaimed The Wire to be the greatest show of all time before watching the abortion that was its fifth and final season unfold.
**If Carnivale had made it past two seasons, it might be on this list too. A sadder "what could've been" than even Deadwood. It's too bad those two shows didn't debut at a time when HBO was giving every half-assed period series (coughBoardwalkEmpirecough) five seasons to muck about with.