‘Game of Thrones’ Scorecard: Season 7, Episode 4, ‘The Spoils of War’

This Game of Thrones discussion is written by someone who has read George R.R. Martin’s books (as well as the occasional fan theory on message boards), but the column will usually only discuss events that have happened on HBO’s televised version. Please respect these boundaries should you choose to participate in the comments section.

FINAL SCORE: Violence 90, Sex 0

(Scoring is typically one point per killing or instance of nudity, though the reviewer reserves the right to award bonus points for style. This is SUPER not Sex’s season.)

Aside from a wildly fun and ultimately harmless sparring session between Brienne and Arya, the entirety of this episode’s violence came during an epic 11-minute battle between the Lannister army and a Dothraki horde supported by Daenerys riding a fire-breathing dragon, resulting in 35 deaths by human hand (or horse), plus an additional 50 deaths by dragonfire (more on this in the Notes section). I also awarded five bonus points: one per instance of violence to a horse, and one for Brienne and Arya’s swashbuckling.

Totals: (deep inhale) Six Lannisters trampled by horses; two Dothrakis speared; seven Lannister throat geysers; four men killed by arrows; four men killed by Jaime and Bronn each; seven additional killings by sword or arakh (that’s the Dothraki scythe-like weapon); one Dothraki impaled by giant crossbow (one of Bronn’s four kills); one guy run over by a horse while he was on fire. BONUS VIOLENCE TO HORSES: one horse stabbed, one horse’s leg scythed off, two horses charred by Drogon’s spicy breath.

Notes: Yes, the 50 deaths by burning seems low. If you’re new to this column, I only count specific, obvious deaths. So while the Lannister army’s supply trains surely resulted in the deaths of anyone inside those wagons, I didn’t have any bodies to count. Even in tight shots, the soldiers whose deaths I wanted to count were often so consumed by flames that there wasn’t much else onscreen. So, it’s 50 because that’s what I could count, with some limited guesswork. It is a round number purely by chance. (For readers who have to endure this caveat every week, I apologize. It’s worth it for me to not argue with drive-by geeks.)

Totals: [NULL SET]

Notes: Um, Davos said that Jon Snow was looking at Dany’s “heart,” wink wink. Which is a fun bit of innuendo the same way Luke and Leia kissing in Star Wars is sexy. But since we don’t have any OTHER sex to talk about, we may as well cover the bases for any Jon + Dany ‘shippers out there:

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Incest is not cool.

People who don’t watch Game of Thrones often have a common reaction to the show, and it’s typically something dismissive regarding dragons — dragons are too far into the realm of hard fantasy for them, or they find it puzzling that so many people would enjoy a show about dragons (a position they take without watching it, of course). But Game of Thrones is about dragons the way the Cold War was about nuclear weapons: No informed person would make an argument so reductive of such an expansive plot.

The excitement we felt for Drogon to drench the Lannister army in fire? That was the result of waiting SEVEN DAMN YEARS for a dragon to be unleashed in battle. Hell, the baby dragons didn’t even hatch until the final moments of the first season! Season 2 was the Qarth bullshit — extremely thin plot gruel that eventually torched Pyat Pree (the bald guy with purple lips).

Every season since has been a series of tiny shuffles forward: The dragons got a little larger, caused some problems, and maybe saved Dany when she needed it most. The showrunners even dragged their feet for half of this shortened season before getting to Sunday’s loot train battle. And finally, FINALLY, we got a full-grown dragon integrated into a combined-arms assault that laid absolute waste to an unprepared foe in a glorious 11-minute battle scene. Throw your hand up and exchange a high-five with me already.

Still, I worry that my dragon-cheering lessens everything that has made the show such a worthwhile investment of my time and energy. The arcs of the characters, particularly the surviving Starks as they reunite at Winterfell, spotlights just how long this journey has been. I had a girlfriend when the show’s pilot first aired; I am now married with two children.

Arya and Sansa don’t have the warmest reunion because the last time they hung out, way back in Season 1, Sansa lied to curry favor with Joffrey, which forced Arya to chase off her direwolf Nymeria before Ned — still alive back then! — could be forced to behead it. (He beheaded Sansa’s direwolf instead. Fair is fair.) I think that’s how it happened, anyway. It was all so long ago. Don’t make me look it up.

Point is, Sansa was a minor villain when the show started, and her harrowing, horrible journey to womanhood sharpened her mind and made her a savvy, sympathetic regent of the north. And now here comes Arya, the favored sister of the Stark men, matching swords with the mighty Brienne of Tarth the first hour she’s back at Winterfell, while Sansa’s power move is saying, “we need more grain” to the guy who was in love with her mom and supposedly loves Sansa but arranged for her to be married to the only character on the show more sadistic than her first fiancé, the virgin whose only use for a prostitute was nailing her to the bedframe with crossbow bolts.

It’s been a journey, man. Let us enjoy the occasional dragon.

JON: How many men do we have in the North to fight [the Night King]? 10,000? Less?

DAVOS: Fewer.

Say what you will about Stannis Baratheon — personally, I maintain that burning his daughter alive was a misstep — but the man was a ruthless grammarian, dropping a less-vs.-fewer lesson back in Season 5, Episode 5 (“Kill the Boy”). And though Stannis never saw fit to teach Ser Davos to read — that job belonged to Princess Scaleface (RIP) — the Onion Knight has maintained his former king’s devotion to good grammar, at one point even saying, “about whom we speak” (double Stannis points for using whom correctly and not ending the sentence with a preposition).

And, since today’s theme is apparently “references to minor events that happened several years ago,” Bran shutting down Littlefinger with the line “Chaos is a ladder” is a throwback to Season 3, when Lord Baelish revealed his philosophy to Varys in the throne room at King’s Landing.

Want more callbacks? Arya deftly handling a pair of dim-witted guards is something we’ve seen before, too.

However, I feel compelled to note that remembering all of this shit gets you absolutely nothing. It’s not worth money, it won’t get you laid, and you can’t exchange Reddit upvotes for extra time on this planet before you turn to die, alone and full of regrets. Let’s all agree to go outside more.

I know you don’t care how this delicious content sausage gets made, but bear with me for a moment. At 9 p.m. every Sunday, I watch the new GoT episode on live TV, then I watch it a second time on HBO Go to count deaths and collect screencaps. I am a man with a purpose during this second viewing: I have notes on which shots to capture, and I work quickly on a self-imposed deadline. But as I watched Arya and Brienne fight a second time, I was so transfixed that I didn’t think to get a screencap until the end of their duel.

It was a good scene is what I’m saying.

In a world so vast, Game of Thrones tells you a lot about location with color: Scenes at Winterfell and farther north are blue-tinged; the Iron Islands are forever gray and wet; King’s Landing is almost always golden-hued. These are cues that orient viewers in the moments before characters appear to confirm the location.

The loot train battle wasn’t just a departure from those colors, but it was an entirely new visual feel. This was less fantastic medieval realm, more American West shootout. And I liked it! It gave me the sense that Westeros was an honest-to-God continent with its own sprawling geography and not just a knockoff of Great Britain.

Anyway, here’s a screencap of Jaime attempting to ride down Dany:

Notice that his horse is running on the bank of the river, in maybe two or three inches of water.

Here’s a few seconds later, as Bronn lunges to save him from the incoming dragon flame.

Note that the horses are still running in a couple of inches of water.

Here’s a split second later:

This isn’t germane to the discussion; I just wanted to show the part where the horses got burned alive. NICE SHOES, IDIOTS.

Back to my point, which is: Just how goddamn fast is the dropoff in this river? One second you’re riding along the bank, then you fall in and —

At least we know why Randyll Tarly was having so much trouble getting his men to ford the river.

THEON: “Oh! Uh, hey Jon! WOW. Man I did not expect you here!

“This IS Dragonstone, right? Thought maybe we — maybe we sailed too far. Guess not. What are the odds?

“Ha ha, basically my brother growing up. Here in the flesh. Really thought you were gonna stay at the Wall for ... well, for the rest of your life. Such a ... surprise to see you here. A pleasant and welcome surprise.

“We had some good times at Winterfell, huh? I mean, yes, I did technically sack it and burn it, but I only PRETENDED to murder your two youngest brothers. And in my defense, I DID pay for that with a lengthy, torture-filled imprisonment that led to my castration. And YOU saw my wang. It was a good one. I still miss it.

“OH, HEY, how’s Sans —

“OK, enough about us. Is Dany around?”

Look at these goth dorks. Lookin’ like they’re about to cover Evanescence.

Eh, I liked it better when exposition came with a side of gratuitous nudity. “Your Grace, check out these hieroglyphs, which over the course of thousands of years still have blue eyes scratched into the stone, probably because of magic, because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.”

The big plot development here: Dany tells Jon she’ll fight the army of the dead with Jon ... IF he’ll bend the knee. She tells him not to let pride get in the way of helping his people. Yeah. Good lecture on pride; woman withholding the salvation of the world because a guy won’t bend to your will.

Poor Meera. She kept this dumb crippled kid alive for YEARS (in our time) just because her dad was friends with his dad. Her brother (AKA Liam Neeson’s son in Love, Actually) died for Bran, and then Hodor died for Bran, which left her as the only person to haul his ass around north of the Wall with the army of the dead on their trail. And Bran can’t even modulate his voice when he says, “Take a hike, swamp ass” (I may be paraphrasing).

I get it: Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven now. Brushing up on Westerosi history makes ME boring, too. But one of his first visions was Howland Reed (Meera’s dad) saving Ned Stark’s life when Ser Arthur Dayne was nearly done with a fatal ass-kicking. Bran should be able to voice the Reed family’s importance to the Starks, even if the show barely gives them any shine. Say thank you and mean it, young man!

Ya monotone warg. Chilling in that first-gen wheelchair with blankets on your lap like you’re F-Tree-R. Worst fireside chat ever.

I don’t know how much more we’ll get to see of Jerome Flynn’s note-perfect portrayal of Bronn, so let’s celebrate him while we have the chance: the tanned, heavily lined face that matches the distressed leather he wears instead of armor; his hair oiled with sweat. He looks like an old shoe and gives the impression that he’d smell about the same.

Bronn is a microcosm of George R.R. Martin’s touchstones in this series: Honor is a weakness; war is innately ugly; titles can be bought with blood. But on the screen, Flynn elevates Bronn far beyond anything the capable, capitalistic sellsword did in the books, and in the process, enriched the characters of Tyrion and Jaime as well.

Don’t die, Bronn. But also: Don’t shoot any more dragons.

Sam, the Night King, Qyburn, Gregor and Sandor Clegane, Edd, Tormund, the charming old archmaester whose name always escapes me, Jorah Mormont, Lady Mormont, Jeor Mormont, Chateau Mormont, Gilly, Hot Pie, Rhaegal, Viserion.