Television Review: Blood of My Blood (Game of Thrones, S6X06, 2016)

Blood of My Blood (S6x06)

Airdate: 29 May 2016

Written by: Bryan Cogman
Directed by: Jack Bender

Running Time: 51 minutes

By the sixth season of Game of Thrones, the widening chasm between the intricate, morally ambiguous world George R. R. Martin created and the narrative Benioff and Weiss were delivering on screen had become a yawning fissure. The latter seasons increasingly traded the novelistic complexity and brutal unpredictability of the source material for a more streamlined, crowd-pleasing spectacle, oriented towards the lowest common denominator. While undeniably magnificent production values – from cinematography to score – maintained a visceral grip on the audience, more discerning viewers began to notice a troubling trend. Plot twists and character developments, now unmoored from Martin’s textual blueprint, started to feel increasingly safe, predictable, and in some extreme cases, curiously bloodless and boring. Blood of My Blood, the sixth episode of the sixth season, is one of the early and telling representatives of this downward trend. It is a piece of television proficient in moving pieces across the board, but one that does so with a conspicuous lack of narrative courage, relying on convenient rescues, telegraphed character beats, and a climax that substitutes spectacle for substance.

The episode opens by briskly resolving the cliffhanger from The Door, a resolution that sets the tone for the contrivances to follow. Beyond the Wall, Meera Reed strains against the elements, dragging a catatonic Bran in a sled, her physical endurance pushed to its absolute limit as wights close in. Just as all seems lost, an unexpected saviour arrives: Uncle Benjen Stark, long missing and presumed dead. He dispatches the wights with ease, places Bran and Meera on a horse, and escorts them to temporary safety. His explanation for his survival is delivered in a rushed, expositional monologue: stabbed by a White Walker, left to die and turn, but saved by the Children of the Forest who halted the transformation with dragonglass. This is pure deus ex machina, a narrative shortcut of the highest order. The problem is not Benjen’s return per se, but the hand-waved, tell-don’t-show nature of it. The episode fails to linger on the horrific implications of his half-state, the potential tragedy of a man trapped between life and death. Instead, he is reduced to a convenient plot device, a taxi service for Bran to the next plot point, undermining the very sense of desperate peril the sequence aimed to create.

This theme of familial conflict, resolved with a simplistic moral choice, continues in the South at Horn Hill. Samwell Tarly’s introduction of Gilly and Little Sam to his family is a storyline that captures the show’s shift towards clearer moral binaries. His mother, Lady Melessa, and sister, Talla, are portrayed as immediately kind and accepting, a straightforward contrast to the monstrous bigotry of his father, Randyll. James Faulkner’s performance as Randyll is powerfully hateful, but the conflict is rendered in broad, unambiguous strokes. Randyll’s ultimatum – Gilly may stay as a servant, but Sam must leave forever – presents Sam with a clear-cut test. His decision to defy his father, reclaim Gilly, and symbolically seize the family’s Valyrian steel sword, Heartsbane, is presented as an uncomplicated heroic moment. While satisfying on a visceral level, it lacks the messy complexity of Martin’s world, where such defiance might have more nuanced, devastating consequences. Here, Sam simply rides away, the sword in hand, his moral victory neat and complete.

Nowhere is the episode’s strength – and the source of its few compelling moments – more evident than in King’s Landing, where the High Sparrow executes brilliant psychological manipulation. The political theatre he orchestrates is the episode’s highlight, demonstrating that the show’s writers could still craft intelligent intrigue when they chose to focus. By using Margaery’s potential Walk of Atonement as a bargaining chip, he outmanoeuvres both the Crown and the Tyrell army assembled by Jaime. The moment he declares Margaery has “atoned,” and she seamlessly takes Tommen’s hand, is chilling in its efficacy. Jonathan Pryce imbues the High Sparrow with a serene, terrifying certainty as he proclaims the union of “Faith and Crown as the two pillars of the realm.” This plot thread succeeds because it feels like a genuine, unpredictable power play. The consequences – Tommen’s naive dismissal of Jaime, and Cersei’s desperate gambit to send him to retake Riverrun – feel earned, setting the stage for the explosive conflict to come. Similarly, the brief scene at the Twins, with Walder Frey dispatching his sons to the same siege, efficiently re-establishes the petty malice of the character and expands the brewing conflict in the Riverlands.

Conversely, in Braavos, Arya Stark’s storyline exemplifies the season’s tendency to stretch a thin premise to breaking point. Her continued attendance at the play, culminating in her being moved by Lady Crane’s performance, is a beat that requires more time and subtlety than the rushed pacing allows. The conflict – the waif Bianca’s desire to poison Lady Crane – feels like a trite rehearsal for Arya’s moral crisis. Her last-minute change of heart, warning the actress instead of carrying out her assassination, is the epitome of predictable, “doing the right thing” storytelling. It is a clean, audience-pleasing choice that betrays the far more ambivalent and brutal ethos of the Faceless Men and of Martin’s world, where such sentimentality would likely get Arya killed far sooner. Her retrieval of Needle from its hiding place is a moment meant to thrill, but it feels like a foregone conclusion, lacking the weight of a truly hard choice.

The episode’s grand finale, Daenerys Targaryen’s reunion with Drogon and her rallying of the vast Dothraki horde, is pure, unadulterated spectacle. Emilia Clarke sells the moment with charismatic fervour, and the sight of Drogon descending is undeniably majestic. Yet, critically, the scene tells the audience nothing it does not already know or could not easily predict. We knew Drogon would return. We knew Daenerys would command the Dothraki. The entire sequence functions as a visual confirmation of an inevitable plot trajectory, using awe-inspiring imagery to compensate for a lack of narrative surprise or development. It is cinematic, but it is also hollow, a victory presented without meaningful struggle or cost.

This absence of cost is perhaps the episode’s most telling signature. “Blood of My Blood” is a rare instalment in which no human character of note dies. Benjen’s rescue is the only action set-piece. While not every episode needs to be a bloodbath, the complete lack of mortality contributes to a growing sense of safety that began to plague the mid-to-late seasons. The stakes feel manufactured, not organic. Even Bran’s vision of the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen (a brief, effective cameo by Daniel Rittoul) during the Sack of King’s Landing, while a tantalising glimpse into crucial history, serves primarily as foreshadowing for his later revelations, another piece of lore delivered without immediate narrative risk.

At the end of the day, Blood of My Blood is a competent but deeply symptomatic episode. It moves all the necessary pieces – Bran southwards, Sam towards Oldtown, the King’s Landing conspiracy forward, Arya towards rebellion, and Daenerys towards invasion – with professional efficiency. However, it does so by embracing convenience over complexity, moral clarity over ambiguity, and predictable spectacle over genuine narrative invention. The deus ex machina of Benjen, the simplified heroism of Sam, the drawn-out predictability of Arya’s crisis, and the bombastic, foregone conclusion of Dany’s climax all point towards a show increasingly confident in its visual language but increasingly timid in its storytelling. It is the work of a production that had mastered the how of epic television but was beginning to forget the why, sacrificing the rich, challenging soil of Martin’s world for the smoother, safer path of crowd-pleasing convention.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

==

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo
Substack https://draxster.substack.com

LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9