Game of Thrones 501:" The Wars To Come" thoughts

Season five of Game of Thrones has limped lethargically into action. Were it not for the episode title, I might have gotten a bit worried this show was having an identity crisis.

Note: I haven't read the books. There will be TV spoilers in this. This is just my opinion. I don't care (I love it).

"Perhaps."

The best moment of this entire episode lasts less than a second, a single-word sentence uttered by Margery Tyrell moments before an ad-break. It's a word that by definition opens up a realm of possibilities, and Margery uses it to cryptically imply she has plans to further antagonise Queen Cersei that go beyond just fucking all of her children. It's classic GoT politicking, with intelligent characters deftly maneuvering to get one over on each other whilst not showing too much of their hand themselves. It's a familiar dialogue in King's Landing, the fictional capital city that has turned into a literal game of king-of-the-hill.

It's a shame, then, that the rest of this season opening feels flat to me. There's not much in the way of character development or a sense of purpose for many of our heroes and villains. The stakes feel dramatically lowered and the cast seems oddly aware of it. At the end of last season the show had eliminated most of the biggest threats to Westeros; Tywin is no longer puppeteering his regal children, the wildling army is defeated, and Joffrey's murder trial has passed. These were things motivating our characters to act before, but with these issues solved we've been left with a vacuum in the show that's yet to be filled. This episode offers zero indication of what's going to fill it.

It feels a little like an epilogue to season four in many ways. Scenes quickly cut from character to character, showing them reacting to previous events but never dwelling long enough to show you what they are planning to do next. Over half the scenes in the episode end in an identical way: a character meets someone, says something along the lines of "I'll be fine" or "everything sucks", then they walk out of shot without purpose and the scene ends. Baelish and Sansa drop his son off at some kind of medieval boarding school, before walking out of shot without purpose. Cersie mourns her father, and rebuffs her born-again cousin, before walking out of shot without purpose. Brienne stands in a field aimlessly whining about how irrelevant her character has become before the camera shrugs her off screen.

Even the one character that does have an identifiable goal in this episode ends up the same. Jon Snow is tasked with persuading wildling leader Mance Rayder to kneel for Stannis and form a deal with him that takes more than a little inspiration from William the Conqueror's mercenary-fuelled plan to take England in 1066. By the end of the episode, Jon Snow has failed to convince him, and Rayder is executed at the stake. Snow gives him a merciful arrow to the chest, before purposelessly scowling his way out of shot to close the episode. It's all too obtuse, with no carrots dangled indicating why the show is back. It doesn't have to be the case, either. Stannis and Danerys are in control of large armies and could march to the capital tomorrow, Arya is yet to appear and the deliciously twisted Boltons are the North's biggest house. The characters and motivations are there, this episode just didn't seem to use them.

Tyrion has been rescued by old chum Varys, and is now playing fugitive at an exotic villa. Varys lets him in on his master plan - to through his political weight behind the only person he sees fit to rule the nation - Danerys Targaryen. She, he says, has the perfect balance of qualities to inspire peace. The script has other ideas, however, and then spends the rest of the episode making Varys look uncharacteristically stupid, with all of Danerys' scenes showing her to not be at all what the eunuch thinks her to be.

Dany's struggling to run Mereen, let alone Westeros. She's barely been in control five minutes but has already resorted to martial law after one of her unsullied is murdered in a brothel. She then provokes the ire of her civilian population, closing the historic fighting pits because she is morally offended, despite them seeming to be unanimously popular amongst fighters and fans. Disagree? Fuck you, I have dragons. Ohh wait, she doesn't even have them any more. The dragons were her biggest asset, the only real outstanding power she wielded. They were a kind of twisted political mandate, giving her a self-proclaimed right to rule because she had the biggest, scaliest sword in the room. Now one is missing, presumed renegade, and the other two chained up and tetchy after her betrayal. All she now has is her army of unsullied, which are no longer slaves thanks to her own moral convictions, able to be poached away by a higher bidder. Her plans are slipping away from her, yet Varys thinks her fit to sit on the iron throne? I need more convincing.

I'm not saying the episode needed any more action or spectacle - last season had a double helping - but it needs a thread to follow. The Wars To Come felt like a false start, like when you find the end of the sellotape but it just peels off to the side. You get left at square one with a tiny noodle of tape to hold the package together.