Do you still believe good soldiers make good kings?

Who would have thought that the first Game of Thrones episode not to feature Tyrion would also be its best?  Not that “You Win Or You Die” was perfect, but the parts that didn’t work were few and far between and those that did were absolutely thrilling.  If the first six episodes were mostly build-up, this was the one where things started falling apart.  I could run down almost every scene in this episode and just gush about the awesome but, in the interest of focus, I’ll just look at how cleverly this episode reminds us of all the various ethics at play before finally letting them clash.

You don’t know cold

“Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things” is certainly the best episode of Game of Thrones so far and it didn’t take a lot to move this series from very good to great.  Upping the humour quotient certainly helped but, more importantly, this episode leveraged much of the painstaking set up we’ve seen thus far.  This world’s rich history has certainly been fun to hear about, and it’s clearly relevant to the characters, but this is the first time that it’s really become relevant to the narrative.