Midway through Season 1 of “Game of Thrones,” viewers were treated to a particularly gruesome scene that showed a lovely princess named Daenerys Targaryen eating the raw heart of a horse.
Turns out it was something of a metaphor for the series itself. In the second-to-last episode last season, “Game of Thrones” in effect ate its own heart by killing off its main and most noble character, Ned Stark, who was played by Sean Bean, perhaps the best-known actor in this cast-of-thousands extravaganza.
So the question for HBO as Season 2 begins on Sunday is this: Who is going to replace Ned as a focus of the series? The answer, at least four episodes in: no one.
The new season of this dense medieval fantasy set in a land called Westeros serves up a whole bunch of wartime posturing, a seemingly endless number of would-be rulers and the usual sex and (sometimes in the same scene) violence. But it sure doesn’t give viewers much to latch onto.
Continuing with our body-parts metaphor, is our attention supposed to transfer to Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), the bile duct of the show, who had dear old Ned’s head lopped off and now sits on the throne? How about to Ned’s widow, Lady Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), the appendix, present but not particularly necessary?
Ned’s assorted children are floating around and might turn into something important — lungs, kidneys, even a heart — but it’s hard to tell, because so many plotlines have been set in motion that in any given week none of these offspring get enough screen time to evolve into the kind of layered character who can sustain a series. The same is true of the heart-eating Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), who lost her husband in Season 1 but gained some baby dragons. She may be the most interesting figure still standing, but, at least early in the new season, her scenes are few and far between.
In the opening credits, top billing now goes by default to Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, younger brother of Cersei and Jaime, the incestuous twins who spawned Joffrey. Mr. Dinklage won the supporting actor Emmy for his work in Season 1, though his role was relatively minor. He has more to do in Season 2; Tyrion is just about the only character developing any complexity. Maybe even a glimmer of a conscience.
Everyone else is busy preparing for war, though against whom seems to be almost random, as if enemies and allies were assigned by throwing darts at a wall chart. “Another king?” Cersei (Lena Headey) says in the season’s second episode, referring to one of those who are gathering armies and staking a claim to the throne. “How many is that now? Five? I’ve lost count.”
You aren’t the only one, Your Majesty. And for every claimant, there are relatives, mentors, aides, lovers. The character board for the series on HBO’s Web site has 49 head shots on it. Thinking of jumping into the new season without having seen the first? Don’t even try; your brain doesn’t have that many neurons.
Some people love this kind of stuff, of course, and presumably those addicted to the George R. R. Martin books on which the series is based will immerse themselves in Season 2, just as they did in Season 1. Will anyone else? You have to have a fair amount of free time on your hands to stick with “Game of Thrones,” and a fairly low reward threshold. If decapitations and regular helpings of bare breasts and buttocks are all you require of your television, step right up.
Sure, it’s possible to make a decent no-character-is-safe show; a series needn’t have a sympathetic major figure if its evil ones somehow shed light on the human condition or the wages of sin. And there may be illuminating episodes ahead in “Game of Thrones.” But in the early going Season 2 seems mostly to be presenting vileness for voyeurism’s sake. You wince every time Joffrey, a sadist, comes on the screen, and not in an “Ooh, I wonder what nasty thing he’ll do next” sort of way. If you find yourself looking forward to Joffrey’s scenes, there’s something wrong with you.
What “Game of Thrones” needs if it is to expand its fan base beyond Dungeons & Dragons types is what most of the United States didn’t get this year: a hard winter. Life in this particular fantasy land consists of seasons of indeterminate length, and since the series began there have been references to an impending winter of fearsome power.
Now there is also something else ominous brewing beyond the Wall that protects the kingdom’s northern border. Mysterious forces and creatures are up there, along with a bunch of wilderness people who may be getting organized. Any and all could be heading south at any time.
So far, the rough weather and the invaders from the north have mostly been hinted at, vague threats that don’t seem in any hurry to materialize. Here’s hoping that they get a move on. To this point we’ve seen only a bunch of petty pretenders jockeying for a throne that, frankly, doesn’t seem all that desirable to begin with. How would they react to an outside force that puts allies and enemies alike in jeopardy? That might be enough to get this meandering series back onto some kind of track.
