Game of Thrones: Miscellania

 

Miscellania

Note: I am going to write about six Game of Thrones posts total. Nothing about walking in these. Still to come: best/worst characters, scenes, deaths, episodes. I plan to write these pretty quickly and move on.

Actually, "miscellania" is not a word. The word is "miscellany." However, Miscellania is an island in a video game, so there are pictures on the Internet, so I used it.

The Intros

In Season 8, the introduction is different. It shows the same four places every episode: The Wall, The Last Hearth, and then Winterfell and King's Landing in great detail.

In seasons one through seven though, the introduction keeps changing, adding and deleting places to match, more or less, the locations of the story for each episode.

Only four locations - King's Landing, Winterfell, The Wall, and Pentos - show in the credits for episode one. By episode five, there are five locations. Starting with season two, episode two, we're up to six, and that becomes the standard all the way through season seven. Never more than six, never less than four, even when all of the action takes place at one location, as it does for some of the battles.

King's Landing is always first. Winterfell falls in different places, but it is in every introduction. The Wall is also in every one, and always right after Winterfell. Those things never change.

The places that show up in the credits, in order of appearance, are:

• King's Landing
• Winterfell
• The Wall
• Pentos
• Vaes Dothrak
• The Eyrie
• The Twins
• Dragonstone
• Pyke (The Iron Islands)
• Harrenhal
• Qarth
• Astapor
• Riverrun
• Yunkai
• The Dreadfort
• Meereen
• Braavos
• Moat Cailin
• Dorne
• Oldtown
• Eastwatch

Cold Opens

There are only five cold opens, where they show a scene before the credits. Here they are in order of least interesting to best:

• Season four, episode one: They melt down Ned's big sword and make two smaller Valyrian steel swords. One goes to Joffrey, the other to Jaime, which he gives to Brienne later.
• Season three, episode one: After the army of the dead attacks the Night's Watch on the Fist of the First Men at the end of season two, Sam runs back to join his comrades, encounters a brother with his head in his lap, then gets attacked by an undead guy and saved by Jon's wolf.
• Season six, episode seven: People are building a church, and the Hound is back! Arya left him for dead, but here he is, not dead yet.
• Season one, episode one: A really outstanding opening to the series, as three Night's Watch rangers beyond the wall encounter dead bodies arranged in a spiral, then a white walker. One of the three gets away, for a while.
• Season seven, episode one: The best of the cold opens, and one of the best scenes in the show. Arya killed Walder Frey at the end of season six, but here he is back again, and we realize it's Arya doing her faceless man thing. All the Freys drink a toast with poisoned wine, and winter comes to House Frey.

The Nude Scenes

Based on my exhaustive and careful research, I counted 74 nude scenes in Game of Thrones. A quick Google search finds that someone counted 79, so I got most of them.

• The most impressive nude scene is easily Cersei's walk of shame, which goes on and on and shows lots of full nudity, front and back.
• There are several characters who are in multiple nude scenes: Melisandre, who drops her robe for just about anyone; Roz and Myranda (Ramsay's girlfriend,) who are really only there to take their clothes off; Daenerys, especially in the first year. But there are also a number of characters who show up for a quick nude scene and then disappear,
• Nudity is much more common in the first years, then drops way off in the last two years (down to two scenes each year,)

Ok, enough goofing around, let's talk about the best and worst parts of the show.