Lord
Varys [played by
Conleth Hill]: “But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A
gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.”
Petyr
“Littlefinger” Baelish [played by Aidan Gillen]: “Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.
Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them.
And some are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or
the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there
is.”— Game of Thrones,
Season 3, Episode 6, “The Climb,”
original air date May 5, 2013, teleplay by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, based
on A Song of Ice and Fire
by George R.R. Martin, directed by Alik Sakharov
Throughout 12 years of Catholic school, I was told
repeatedly that confession is good for the soul. So, when it comes to my
viewing habits, here goes mine: I have not been a Game of Thrones fan. In fact, this year I have not even
been a watcher. I have elected not to include HBO in my
already-swollen monthly cable bill.
This past
winter, with curiosity getting the better of me, I finally rented a DVD package
of Season 1 from an area library. I got through the pilot episode, “Winter Is
Coming,” and quickly surmised the elements it had in common with a prior HBO
hit series, The Sopranos: main
characters who were, at best, morally ambiguous; envelope-pushing sex and
nudity; power struggles marked by deceit and double-crosses; and eruptions of
over-the-top violence that might (or might not) spring from that infighting.
Most of all, there were a lot of unusual,
tongue-tying named characters and places. How could I understand the plots
without learning these names? And how could I learn that without devoting serious time to binge-watching, and/or
reducing my time for blogging? The decision not to watch seemed practically
made for me.
But a close relative of mine swears that the show is
must-see TV; I have been fascinated by some of the punchier dialogue from the series that has made its way into the popular press; and the closing episode of
this season was garnering even greater attention for the show than usual. This
past week, while on vacation and staying in an accommodation with HBO, I
decided to catch a repeat of this closing episode.
Somewhere in this great land, someone has missed that hour and some minutes, so I won’t be providing spoilers. But I will say that the master manipulator in the above quote features prominently in the proceedings—and,
especially after a Maureen Dowd column last month from the New York Times
that likened this fictitious individual to real-life counterparts on the
national stage today, my interest was piqued.
Additionally, this character possessed a nickname
similar to that of the man dubbed a “short-fingered vulgarian” by the magazine Spy in
the late 1980s. We will see soon whether
current events begin to resemble even more this TV series on the tumult
caused by access to power.
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