Welcome to Game of Boners, your weekly tally of all the nudity that appears on everyone’s favorite fantasy fuck fest, Game of Thrones. Every Monday, we will recap each boob, buttock and sex act that appears on camera, along with some other fun facts from the episode that may or may not have anything to do with sex whatsoever. Keep a box of tissues on hand because Winter is definitely coming.
Only on Game of Thrones would a wedding, the destruction of an ice zombie and two severed heads rolling out of a bag make for a slow week. Compared to the rest of the season, last night’s episode “Second Sons” was a walk in the park, a bit of a breather before the final two installments of the season when shit is bound to hit the fan so hard that we’ll still be finding flecks of it in our hair weeks from now. That’s not to say that nothing happened. Thematically, “Second Sons” was so heavy-handed that it was hard not to take at least a couple of things away — the first being Where are Jaime and Brienne? and the second being about the relationship between lambs and their shepherds or, more generally, caretakers and their charges.
“Have you ever slaughtered a lamb, my king?” Melisandre asks Stannis. “If the lamb sees the knife, she panics. Her panic seeps into the meat, darkens it, fouls the flavor.” Of course, it’s not a real lamb she’s talking about here — it’s Gendry. Having bought him from the Brotherhood, she’s since informed him of his royal paternity and dizzied him with luxurious digs and good wine. Gendry remains rightfully suspicious until the ol’ fire witch wins him over with some ancient penis magic. Too bad he doesn’t get to enjoy it too long. Mid-coitus, Melisandre steps away, straps Gendry down and puts a leech right on his wiener. It’s rude bedside manner to be sure, but in a way, Gendry getting off light (“I cried because I had a leech on my penis, then I met a Greyjoy who had no penis.”)
Speaking of a lamb being led to slaughter, it’s Sansa Stark’s wedding day! Joffrey, unlike Melisandre, doesn’t hide the knife at all as he walks her down the aisle towards her doom. While being married to Tyrion isn’t a death sentence in and of itself, it represents something almost worse — a life surrounded by Lannisters, a life of seeing the knife (in this case: knives) that could stab you to death at any second. Tyrion has promised to be a kind husband to her and from what we know of him, we can expect him to keep that promise, but there’s only so much he can do. If we thought that Sansa’s life would be somehow protected by marrying the half man, we were sorely mistaken. “Well, you’ve done it. You’ve married a Lannister. Soon you’ll have a Lannister baby. It’s a dream come true for you, isn’t it? What a glorious day,” a disgusting Joffrey threatens following the wedding. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter which Lannister puts the baby into you. Maybe I’ll pay you a visit tonight after my uncle passes out. How’d you like that? You wouldn’t? That’s all right. Ser Meryn and Ser Boros will hold you down.” There is at least one man who she’s safe from. Tyrion — put off by her fear, her age and his love of another woman — tells her that he won’t touch her until she wants him to.
There was one delightful (though also frightening) interaction to come out of the wedding. Margaery, perhaps getting a little too big for her britches, tries out some of that Tyrell charm on Cersei, but Queen Bitch is having none of it. If you ever wondered which parent Joffrey inherited his skill for crafting cruel, manipulative and meandering verbal threats from, here’s your answer. Cersei’s warning to Margaery about the last family to think that they were stronger than the Lannisters, delivered after the latter called the former “sister,” flows so easily that it almost seems lazy — that is until Cersei finishes with a cold and direct “If you ever call me sister again, I’ll have you strangled in your sleep.” There is one big difference between Cersei and Joffrey, however — while Joffrey’s threats are motivated by a sick pleasure derived from other people’s pain and fear, Cersei’s are motivated by a barely-contained and ever-present rage.