Game of Thrones asks: When does the desire for revenge go too far?
Now that Mad Men is over, I have some space freed up to talk about the last three episodes of Game of Thrones. Scott Kaufman has recapped last night's shocking episode here, so I won't be doing that, but I want to add a couple of thoughts about the themes of justice and revenge in that episode. It's common for many viewers of GoT to think of the show as more escapist than most "prestige" TV, and its shocks are more akin to a horror movie's than those of more elite, literary shows. Having read the books, I can see why it's easy to dismiss the whole enterprise that way, since George R.R. Martin favors a pulpy, overblown prose style to a more literary one. But, I think, last night's episode served as a reminder that there's something deeper going on with this show, and while the themes might be harder to ascertain than, say, those on Mad Men, they are still important and fascinating.