Monday, May 13, 2019

Daenerys Targaryen Breaks Bad

Disappointed by the hard left turn Daenerys Targaryen took in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones? You’re far from alone. (And if you have no idea what that sentence might mean . . . consider skipping ahead to the next paragraph, at least if you care about spoilers.) But if you’ve read the books on which the series is based, you may be having an easier time adjusting to this strange new reality. “The theories about Daenerys becoming a Mad Queen kicked up in earnest after she started hallucinating in the the latest book, A Dance with Dragons,” Joanna Robinson explains. “But truth be told, [George R.R.] Martin laid the track from the start . . . For viewers who didn’t read the books, these contextual clues might be easy to miss. Martin likes to paint his villains as heroes and vice versa—so the buildup to Daenerys’s break is a subtle one even on the page. We’re likely meant to sympathize with her even up to her fall.” On the screen, however, these nuances are tougher to discern—which is probably why all of Sunday’s fire and blood came as such a shock.
Elsewhere in HWD, Laura Bradley checks in on Fox (and its ever-roiling Empire drama) as TV upfronts week begins; we bid adieu to Doris Day, who has died at the age of 97; Anna Chlumsky gets real about the end of Veep, which just wrapped its seven-season run; and Richard Lawson previews The Souvenir, a gripping new film featuring Honor Swinton Byrne—and her mother, Tilda Swinton.