Whether you choose to consider its slow and exacting work artful and subtle, like the throne room machinations of Varys and Pycelle, or stolid and stubborn, like the labor of Gendry’s former boss in the blacksmithy, the takeaway was the same: The episode was a means to an end. Yet those looking for an overarching motif on which to hang their critical hat - or bull’s head helmet - will be disappointed.
Spanning the length of an already quite lengthy continent, it was a compelling and rich hour: Alliances were threatened, bruised pectorals were massaged, and familiar characters were shish-kebabbed like so many hunks of wine-drunk, bearded shawarma. This came to mind more than once during “What Is Dead May Never Die,” the third episode of this highly enjoyable second season of Game of Thrones. At least not as it was traditionally understood.
But, as the network loves to brag in its commercials, it’s not quite television. Next week will most likely feel different, but it will still be the same show.) By privileging the season over the episode, HBO has produced some undoubtedly great art. (Take last week’s episode of Mad Men, for example: It advanced the serialized plot and engaged with series-long tropes about human nature and infidelity, but did so in a contained, fascinating hour that played with elements of slasher flicks and psychological horror. One of the great joys of the medium comes from seeing storytellers take advantage of the capsulized format to deliver something coherent and thematically sound every seven days. Obviously, television as a whole has become more serialized of late, but this disappointing point rings true. Both pieces are worth reading, and more or less share a thesis: HBO, and the cadre of high-minded auteurs on their payroll, are increasingly less and less interested in producing individual dramatic hours that can stand on their own that episodes of The Wire, for example, are more akin to chapters in a larger story than singular experiences worthy of being judged on their own merits. Recently, two fine television critics from House Ryan (their sigil is a Comfy Ottoman) took to their keyboards to write thought-provoking essays on the declining importance of the single episode.
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