6x08 No One

8.5/10. For a long time, Game of Thrones had a pretty reliable format in terms of how its episodes were structured. You would spend ten minutes in one location, ten minutes in another, and so forth and so on with little repetition beyond maybe having something at the end of the episode tie back into something from earlier. But the show has been playing around with that formatting a bit here, with cold opens, longer segments, and as soon in "No One" a different manner of dividing up the time we spend across Westeros.

Instead of a semi-linear progression from place to place, there was a certain symmetry to this one. We started with trips to Braavos, The Riverlands, and Mereen, and finished the episodes by visiting these same places in reverse order. And we come close to the same set up with King's Landing and Riverrun in the middle. So why the symmetry? It's hard for me to think about that idea without thinking of Watchmen. (That's right, longtime readers, over the long haul, any show I review inevitably gets compared to The Simpsons and/or Watchmen.) It too played around with the ideas of symmetry to show cause and effect, before or and after, or how a slightly different context for the same thing can result in a very different meaning.

There's some of that in "No One" as well, the idea that something set up or established in the first half of the episode is revisited and shown in a different light in the second. The compare and contrast serves the episode well and helps to make it something unique in both structure and storytelling in the Game of Thrones world.

But it also fits with the overall theme of the episode, which is people deciding who they are, caught between two extremes. Every major character in this episode--Arya, The Hound, and all three Lannister siblings, fancies themselves one thing and then finds that they are, or at least can be, another.

So let's start in the middle and work our way outward then shall we? No character embodied this theme in the episode more than Jamie Lannister. In the episode, Jamie is juxtaposed with two people, one who sees the best in him, and one who sees the worst. His reunion with Brienne is welcome, and brief, and reminds us of the person who effected this change in Jamie, who brought out his better nature and showed that even someone as spoiled and self-important as Jamie, who was introduced to us as a villain, had some good in him.

Then, in the episode's standout scene, Jamie confronts Lord Edmure, bound up as a prisoner much as Jamie once was, a fact which he reminds his captive of, and just one of the ways the episode mirrors the two of them. Jamie starts out trying to be reasonable and compassionate, to lean into the idea of honor that Brienne sees in him. But Edmure will have none of it, and despite his weakened state, spits back at everything Jamie says to him. He asks how someone who's been a party to the things Jamie has, the horrible acts that have changed the landscape of Westeros, tell himself that he's a decent man. Edmure rejects any goodness in his captor; and cannot see him as anything but a murderous, honorless cad. How, he wonders, does a man like Jamie sleep at night?

The question seems to get to Jamie for a moment, but he responds with vitriol of his own. He taunts Edmure. He threatens to kill his prisoner, to kill Edmure's son, to kill every Tully across the land. He appears to live up to the villain that Edmure sees him as.

But is he? What is the result of Jamie's threats and nigh-mustache-twirling promises of violence? Edmure walks into his castle, calls for a surrender, and this potentially bloody conflict ends with as few lives lost as possible. It certainly seems to suit Jamie's ends, but maybe there's more to it.

Perhaps, everything after Edmure's accusations were an act. Jamie plays up to the villainous persona that fills Edmure's vision of him. He nods at the rumors of incest; he riles up his prisoner by talking about Catelyn Stark; he even references the things he'll do "for love" that introduced the character in the first episode. Jamie would like to think himself a decent man, a man worthy of what Brienne sees in him, but maybe to do that, he has to step back into his old role as a villain, to convince someone whose help he needs that he's every bit the horrible person that Edmure thinks he is, so that Edmure will surrender in order to prevent this brutal, incestuous love-crazed monster from slaughtering his people. I believe that Jamie didn't want to slaughter anyone at Riverrun, and I believe he realized that playing up to the worse side of him, the side that Edmure believes is the real one, was ironically, the only way to be honorable, the only way he could fulfill his duties while killing as few people as possible.

But maybe not. His little wave to Brienne as he lets her go could be the confirmation that Jamie does in fact have goodness in him, and that his machinations with Edmure, his promise to once again try to kill a child, were just a feint to try to get to this mostly bloodless result. Or it could be that Jamie was telling the truth when he said that he would do anything to get back to his sister, that he is a man who tries to be honorable, but when faced with people who only see him as a scoundrel, reverts to form and can be as vindictive as his sister. That wave to Brienne could simply be a reminder that the people in Game of Thrones, like the people in the real world, are not all good or all bad, that they have blind spots and sympathies and pain points and people who lead them toward the angels and devils of their natures. In some ways, Jamie is still on the path to figuring out whether he's a good guy or a bad guy, and the answer likely lies somewhere in between.

His sister's predicament is not nearly as complex. In her first segment of the episode, we finally see her put Robert Strong to the use he was built for. When he own family member comes to her on behalf of the Sparrows and attempts to order her around, he says that if she does not comply there will be violence. There's trepidation in her eyes as she sics her brute on the fanatics at her doorstep. This is to be her saving grace, the thing that either keeps her safe or else leaves her at the mercy of the people who brutalized and humiliated her. But when push comes to shove, her monster prevails in a horrific fashion. And for the first time in a long time, there is happiness on Cersei's face. The reanimated Mountain is her safety net, and as long as he's around, no one, not even the sparrows, will be able to push her around.

And then, the second time we see Cersei, we see it taken away from her. Her son, the king, who cannot even look at her, announces that trial by combat is to be abolished in the Seven Kingdoms. Suddenly, the thing that was supposed to give her security and safety even in the face of the High Sparrow's capricious inquisition cannot save her, at least not in the way that she planned. There is the turn. In one moment, Cersei is on top of the world, given confidence that her grand plan to save herself regardless of the Sparrows will work, and in the next, that plan is dashed, and the one who dashed it is her own son, with whom she's become estranged and removed from.

But she isn't the only Lannister in the episode see a grand plan seemingly come to fruition, only to fall to pieces. When we first meet Tyrion in "No One" he declares that his plan has worked, that Meereen is a thriving city again, and that it is, not in so many words, all thanks to him. And in the great pyramid, he, Missandrei, and Greyworm all give themselves a moment to imagine what their lives could be without conflict, without the political machinations and internecine threats that have caused them so much strife and pain.

Tyrion speaks wistfully of having his own vineyard, of having only close friends to drink his special blends. Greyworm smiles and Missandrei laughs at his stilted attempt at humor. The three of them have a brief time to consider who they might be in a world without all this risk, all this death, all these tendrils of the old ways wrapping themselves around the necks of everyone across the map. It seems happier, something where slaves and imps and the others could be less on guard, more open, more able to enjoy the better things in life.

But their moment is interrupted by attackers coming in from the coast, and Meereen starts to crumble and burn. and it becomes clear that Tyrion is not the brilliant tactician and negotiator he fancied himself. Greyworm shuts him down as he tries to take command, and there is his turn as well. Tyrion means well; he's intelligent and has seen enough of the inside of the government to understand a thing or two about ruling, but he has not mastered it, and he can be wrong in a devastating fashion. When Daenerys storms into the pyramid, it's clear that she is the leader needed, and that he is there to assist, but not to rule. Once again, the ground shifts beneath the feet of a Lannister, and they find themselves stumbling and at a loss.

The Hound, on the other hand, is much more sure of himself. In the first scene where we see him in "No One," he is wielding his axe, brutalizing the members of the Brotherhood Without Banners, and reverting to the blithely murderous bastard we once knew him as. But in the penultimate segment of the episode, when we see him meet Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr once more. And they prevent The Hound from taking out the men who slaughtered his companions with such vigor. They allow him to kill the ones who wronged him (or two out of three of them anyway), but in a much less vicious fashion.

And they too suggest that The Hound could be someone else. As the show explored last week, the Beric and Thoros suggest that perhaps The Hound is still kicking around for a reason, that there is a higher purpose for him left out there. The Hound is skeptical, and the violence he engages him seems to fit him as well as the boots he steals off of a dead man, but there's an idea at the center of these scenes, not only that The Hound could be something more, a force for good, but that maybe, even though it seems to go against his nature, he wants to be.

Arya faces a similar decision. She can stay in Braavos and be no one, or she can reclaim her name and go back home. It's the weakest dichotomy in "No One" and the weakest element of the episode. While reuniting Arya with Lady Crane (who receives tearful applause after she takes Arya's advice on how to play Joffrey's death scene), is a nice touch, Arya's chase and battle with The Waif is underwhelming. I'm willing to cut the show a bit of slack that Arya can survive the wounds and spills she's taken this episode and last and keep fighting, but The Waif is a one-note, uninteresting antagonist, and their run through the streets and blind finish to the story doesn't add enough flair to the proceedings to make it interesting.

But Arya too, is another person in this episode who is changed from the beginning to the end. When we come upon her, she is wounded, bed-ridden, and seriously contemplates abandoning her quest and joining a woman who resembles her mother across the eastern part of the Narrow Sea. But in the end, she rejects what Braavos has given her, what the faceless men dangled in front of her, and the other paths available to her and she declares she is Arya Stark, of House Stark, and she's going home.

So often the rug is pulled out from under us. We think we have it figured out, that we know who we are, or where we stand, and what's coming next. We take a moment of peace or stop to reflect and think that the hard part's over. Then something comes to remind us that the world is far more uncertain that we might like, and that so are the people within it. All the characters in "No One" are caught in that terrible symmetry, found secure and made vulnerable, of pulled between old ways and new possibilities. That balance is unclear, and the structure of the episode seems to suggest there's an equal and opposite reaction in store for all of this. The only thing that is certain is that who we are, what side we belong on, is a question whose answer changes with time, even when we think we have it figured out.