The Game of Too Many Kings + a Queen

April 1. The return of one of HBO's most successful series, the critically acclaimed Game of Thrones. The series is based on George R.R. Martin's books "A Song of Ice and Fire". This broad and complex series tells the story of different people of Westeros - a fictional country - fighting for the Iron Throne (to be the King of all seven kingdoms). Well, I guess that's the summary of GOT in one, very vague, sentence.

Season 2 started where its predecessor almost left off. 

 - In Kingslanding, and the one sitting in the Iron Throne - Joffrey Baratheon, the incest and secret son of Cersei and Jaime Lannister, but many people know him as the true heir of the throne since his "father" is the former king Robert Baratheon.

- In Dragonstone, we have Stannis Baratheon. The Rightful King (well, at least for me). Since Joffrey is not the true son of Robert, the former king's older brother must be the heir of the Iron Throne. 

- In the North, we have Robb Stark. After the beheading of his father - Lord Ned Stark - by Joffrey for "treason", Robb and the people of the North decided to be independent from the entire Westeros by forming their own kingdom. 

- In the... somewhere outside Westeros, we have Daenerys Targaryen, the mother of the Dragons, the last descendants of the Targaryens - the family in the Iron Throne before Robert became king. Her story is so complicated so I'm not gonna go to the details. Since she's a Targaryen, she believes that she must be sitting in the Iron Throne just like her ascendants. With the help of her 3 newly born dragons, and the people of her khalasar, she will rightfully claim what is hers.

- In Storm's End, we have Renly Baratheon - the youngest brother of Robert and Stannis. After the death of his brother Robert, he believes that he must be the king. Well.. he's stupid. 

-In Iron Islands, we have Balon Greyjoy. He's really not a major character so I can't say anything about him. We'll see in the next episodes.

Now for the Review Part:

Boy, there are a loooot of characters in that episode. Nevertheless, they were able to balance each other out  and the transition between one set of characters to the other group of characters was amazing. Although we didn't see Arya until the last few minutes of the episode, I know she's going to appear more next week. (Arya's my favorite character).

The cunning lines, the sly conversations, and the strong scenes between the characters are the reasons why I love this episode. Many people are dissapointed with this one because of its slow progress, well, I love it. It reminds me of the pilot when we were overwhelmed by these huge casts and very complex plot. 

Tyrion and Cersei are the stars of this episode. The former proved that he may be small, but he can scare the shit out of his sister. Also, the scene between him and Shae were so cute. 

The scene where Cersei slapped Joffrey and the latter threatened his own mother... Holy Crap. Finally. Cersei realized that she created a monster. 

We were also introduced to new characters. Stannis, Davos, and Melisandre. The people from Dragonstone. If you read the book, you know that the prologue was the death of a priest (LOL forgot the name) in Dragonstone. Well, in the series, they didn't do that as the first scene. It was shown in the middle part which surprisingly worked. It showed the hot-headedness of Stannis, the "powers" of Melisandre, and the boring personality of Davos.

As my conclusion,.... 5 STARS. This episode proved why I love Game of Thrones. The characters are flawless. The writing is superb.

 I can't wait for next episode!

PS. The new and improved opening shenanigan is breathtaking. Ahh..