The Watchers on The Wall has just finished and given us an hour of real enjoyment, a rip-roaring ride of sheer action.
How about that for a contrast to last week's emotions at the conclusion of The Mountain and The Viper, eh?
How about that for a contrast to last week's emotions at the conclusion of The Mountain and The Viper, eh?
Instead of feeling anger and upset, this week I've been left feeling thoroughly content, almost warm with satisfaction.
How atmospheric did the battle feel with the snow billowing down through the purple-black sky? And that fire, wow, lighting up the North for hundreds of miles in sublime beauty.
Then there's the giants, the bloody wooly mammoths and those mega scythes. What an hour of fun we've just had - though I do wish HBO would set aside the final two episodes of each season to be two hours long: I don't think tonight's episode would have lost anything by going into a second hour.
To dismiss tonight's episode as being solely action, however, would be doing it a disservice. Yes there were plenty of deaths, explosions and steel crashing on steel but we saw a range of characters develop in significant ways.
Samwell became a man, declaring himself 'not nothing anymore' and shooting one of those bald prats in the bonce with a crossbow.
Jon Snow became the leader he was destined to be, displaying a knowledge of tactics on The Wall, whilst going on to rally the NightsWatchmen fighting in the grounds of the castle onwards to victory.
Ygritte showed us that she's not the cold-hearted biatch that we thought at the end of last season as her eyes caught Jon's and she couldn't bring herself to kill Snow; letting out a joyous breath and a loving smile.....that is before the nodding Jimmy Grimble fired an arrow through her chest.
Even the angry bloke, Ser Allister, became likeable as he kicked some arse and gave Gingerbeard a decent fight, narrowly avoiding death as the Crows pushed him down a cat-flap.
Yet one character is getting pelters on Twitter and on various internet forums discussing our great show - Janos Slynt.
Scouse Slynt is being derided as a coward, a traitor, a slimeball. Well I say....justice for the Slynty one!
It's easy to see Slynt's behaviour as being disgraceful. We're so used to Hollywood giving us brave, noble characters willing to die for their cause in heroic fashion. Characters giving their lives to protect the greater good. Think the guy in Independence Day sacrificing himself by flying his plane into the core of the alien mothership, ultimately saving humanity.
If Janos Slynt was flying that plane he'd have feigned a course set for the mothership's core; bypassed the ship altogether and flown to Hawaii to enjoy his last few days slurping Pina Coladas on a beach and doing the hoola with some hotties while the rest of the world bowed down for their new overlords.
Isn't there something more....human about Slynt's behaviour there?
No?
Well consider this.
The only reason Slynt is at the wall in the first place is because he showed loyalty to the royal family by arresting a plotter against the Crown in Ned Stark.
We, as the audience, knew that Joffrey had no right to the crown. And we knew that Ned would have made a fair and just protector of the realm, but the residents of King's Landing, and the figures at court were not partial to that information. In the Goldcloaks eyes, Joffrey was the son of King Robert and rightful heir. Whether bribery came into it, or whether Slynt had been promised rewards for his loyalty to the Lannisters, the fact remains that in essence he was defending the King against malevolent influences.
Should loyalty to the Crown be rewarded by a trip to The Wall until death?
Even the ardent Slynt hater must concede this is harsh.
I used to work for a well-known clothing company during my time at college. The store was high up at a local shopping centre, with no windows, and during the summers the hot air would rise. This created a stifling heat on the shop floor.
A shame then that the air-conditioning unit had been broken for two years.
This meant that customers fainted from heat exhaustion in the changing rooms. Staff members on a couple of occasions went home feeling sick. I'd spend hours in that heat, feeling like hell in a pair of skinny jeans. The only thing worse than the muggy temperatures were the clone-like 'its hot in here isn't it?' comments from the customers. Responding to that remark 30 times a day wore me into the laminated floor.
How then did I feel when I opened the newspaper and saw the owner of our company grinning with beautiful models on each arm under headlines detailing another year of record profits in the region of £500m?
The air-conditioning unit would have cost £50 to fix.
But nobody came. Nobody cared about the watchers on the shop floor. We were the little people, expendable.
Not unlike those hearty hundred on The Wall.
How disillusioned must they feel to have to give their lives, fighting 100,000 with a lack of resources, cheap weapons, poor armour in seeming isolation?
None of the other regions apparently give a shit.
In King's Landing they play in tourneys.
In Highgarden they sit around eating grapes amongst their greenery.
Characters like Cersei don't just ignore the pleas of the NightsWatch but actively mock them on the rare occasions they're brought up in conversation.
What motivation then has Slynt to die in pain, so plump little lords may enjoy their summer afternoons in peace and comfort?
Here is a man who has had his freedom and livelihood taken away for being loyal to the Crown and is now part of a tiny force given the task of fighting 100,000 men and monsters, under-resourced, as the rest of the realm sunbathes.
Given this context, can we still blame Janos Slynt for deciding against dying?
Or should we champion our much-maligned former favourite of the Lannisters for sticking two fingers up at his boss and refusing to be yet another expendable 'little person'?
Companies and Kingdoms can ill-afford to forget about those on the ground, in the dirt, because often they're the only line of defence against much worse horrors.
Mistreat them and don't be surprised when you get a wooly mammoth at your doorstep; or a dehydrated mother of two from Dudley with a compensation form - admittedly two indistinguishable beasts cut from the same cloth I concede.
~ If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to follow www.twitter.com/gotwhispers for updates and alerts on new entries, and don't forget to hit the 'google+1' button below. Cheers all. ~
