‘Game of Thrones’ season 4, episode 2 review: Joffrey’s shock; the purple wedding

“Game of Thrones” had a season premiere last week that chose to highlight quite a substantial amount of story. But, we know that what most will want to discuss first and foremost was what happened at that Purple Wedding.

So there you have it. Joffrey is dead. The king had fallen. For those who did not know the books, this was the biggest stunner of the season, and may even top the Red Wedding for some. Joffrey’s death is in some ways joyous, but what does it mean for Tyrion? He was clearly blamed for poisoning the king, but of course the plot is so much more complicated than this.

At least you cannot accuse “Game of Thrones” stalling early early on in the season right? The death of Joffrey changes everything, and it also overshadows all of the other events that transpired in this hour. We will at least highlight a few:

-Tyrion’s wedding gift being shredded, a true-fire sign that Joffrey would hate Barnes & Noble.

-Olenna throwing shade on almost everyone, and Oberyn doing the same exact thing to Cersei.

-Brienna basically admitting that she loved Jaime, while Jaime got completely owned by Loras.

This was all excellently done, but who is the real murderer here? All we’ll say is that given that the wedding happened before the poisoning, the real winner here seems to be Margaery. She is technically now queen, and has all the power given that Tyrion the king has fallen.

Now, a few updates on some smaller, but less-successful stories.

Ramsey Snow – This one is probably the best of the subplots, mostly because this guy is all sorts of awful and is completely mesmerizing to watch. Also, he has Reek (a.k.a. Theon) trained completely as a source of information.

Bran – Hodor! Truth be told, we’ve never found Bran’s story to be particularly great, even though we do love the random trippy visions. Through this tale, we at least started to get more of an idea as to where he is supposed to head.

Stannis – Thank goodness this was brief. We find so much of this to be dull, and after all of the awesome stuff that happened at the wedding, we really couldn’t care less about Stannis, the Red Woman, and his family.

These plots drag down the wedding somewhat, but that story alone was so insane that we cannot help but to still cheer with delight after watching it. Good luck, “Game of Thrones,” trying to top that. This is actually a time when we are able to overlook some of the weaker aspects … only in that it brings this down from a perfect A+. Grade: A.

What did you think about tonight’s “Game of Thrones” episode? Share your thoughts below.