Game of Thrones S4x03 “Breaker of Chains”

Warning! Major Spoilers!

Note: I have read the books, but I’m keeping this review as spoiler free as possible in regards to the novels.

Joffrey’s dead. Things aren’t looking good for Tyrion, with King’s Landing dealing from the fallout whilst the Night’s Watch finally understand that they’re in real danger. We also get more of Arya and Dany this week, after they were absent in episode 2.

Who thought that you would ever compare an episode of Game of Thrones to one of The Simpsons? Well, this is classic Who Shot Mr. Burns, only this time not only is Joffrey not coming back, but it’s Who Poisoned King Joffrey? Everybody has a motive, and nobody is safe. Tyrion is obviously the main suspect, but it’s also safe to assume that Littlefinger, having planned Sansa’s escape, at least is in the know. It’s turned the epic fantasy series into a murder mystery – and gives the series momentum for a while.

Just when you were starting to like Jamie as a character, he rapes Cersei. This show continues to give us some big moments like these that change characters, and this is one of the more shocking moments of the whole series. There was also some other vital moments this week, and it shows that each episode isn’t afraid to continue pulling punches. If you thought you earned a relatively relaxing episode after last week, think again – Breaker of Chains is packed to the brim with several scenes going on, and thankfully not only in King’s Landing.

The main focus of the Night’s Watch was with Sam this week, who took Gilly to work in  a brothel in Mole’s Town. Let’s say that it wasn’t the greatest idea that Sam’s ever had, whilst it wasn’t really great for Jon either – whose scenes, whilst better than Sam’s, only served as wanting to set up the next episode.

Dany’s scenes were awesome this week. Whilst not as good as the season 3 attack on Astapor, showing signs of repetitiveness in storyline, they did have some good moments and also showed more scenes with Daario, who probably needed more screentime, the most, giving the switch in actors and the need to re-establish the character.

Back in King’s Landing though; Tywin had a great moment with Tommen. Yes, he’s already grooming Tommen to be King, but the speech that he delivered to the boy was one of the stronger moments of the episode.

We also returned to Arya this week, as well as Stannis. There’s lots more stuff going on in this episode than just “Who Killed Joffrey?” and it’s handled very well with some strong pacing so that you never feel like one storyline is more interesting than the other.

We’re still only three episodes into season 4 though so there’s plenty more to come, and it should be interesting to see where we go from here. Breaker of Chains may not be as strong as the previous two episodes in terms of quality, but that doesn’t make it a bad episode, still managing to be very awesome. Lots of threads were dealt with effectively and it’ll be interesting to see where the show takes us next time around. The wait for next week begins again, and where we go from here in the forthcoming “Oathkeeper” should be very interesting indeed.