Game of Thrones S02E04 Overview

The first scene takes place at the battlefield  where Robb Stark has just defeated Stafford Lannister's army. I wouldn't mind if they had actually shown the battle.

However, they skipped it and we only see the aftermath – Robb's army is walking through the field full of corpses and wounded soldiers.

Robb's attention is caught by an unknown attractive woman who's sewing off some poor soldier's foot to save his life. The two of them have a short conversation and we get a feeling that they'll get to know each other better in the following episodes.

We're back to King's Landing in the next scene.  Joffrey is unhappy about losing a battle to Robb Stark once more, so he decides  to take it out on Sansa and have hear beaten  and humiliated in front of the whole court.  I found this scene excellent. All the actors were great and Jack Gleeson was awesome as ever with those icy eyes, sadistic expressions and egocentric demeanor.

Anyway, things aren't looking too good for Sansa there, but when it really looks like it's going to get tough, Tyrion marches in, stops the beating and saves Sansa. Tyrion and Bronn have a conversation about Joffrey's behavior afterwards. Bronn describes Joffrey's problem with an honest statement „There's no cure for being a cunt.“, but Tyrion disagrees on that one and decides to be optimistic and cheer Joffrey up by sending him two whores as a nameday present.

Consequently, the next scene goes  on in Joffrey's chamber. He goes in and finds the whores. It immediately becomes clear that he's not interested in them and obviously not very enthusiastic about the whole idea. Knowing Joffrey,  I knew he wouldn't just let this one slide and I wondered what kind of sadistic shit he was going to do now. With regards to this, a certain scene unfolds which was later much discussed and criticized by a lot of viewers as an unnecessary and too cruel display of Joffrey's sadism. Don't take my word for it, but I believe some viewers who had read the books said that this scene wasn't in the book.

I personally didn't find the scene that disturbing. I must admit I did get used to Joffrey's cruelty by now, so when watching this scene and anticipating, I pretty much thought something much worse was going to happen than what actually did.

Baelish visits Catelyn Stark at Renly's camp and tries to convince her to trade Jamie Lannister for Sansa and Arya. Catelyn seems unwilling at first, but she gets emotional when she sees Ned Stark's body in the coffin, which Baelish had brought her as a gift.

Moving on to the next scene. Arya, Gendry and the rest of the group are taken to some sort of  fort for war prisoners. They are held inside dirty, damp ruins together with other prisoners and every day one of the prisoners gets chosen and tortured by the keepers.

We get back to Renly who meets with Stannis the day before their battle. Stannis is very confident about the outcome of the battle and asks Renly to surrender, but Renly makes fun of him and refuses.

The Dothraki are still starving in the desert. They come to the gates of the city of Quarth which is ruled by a council of thirteen men and Daenerys asks The Thirteen who stand before the closed gate to let her and her people in. The Thirteen refuse at first, but one of them stands up for Daenerys and makes them change their mind.

Back at prisoners' fort, Gendry gets chosen to be tortured. Tywin Lannister appears with his men, stops the torture just in time to save Gendry from painful death and takes all the young prisoners to his fort as his new workers/slaves.

Lancel Lannister comes to Tyrion's chambers to deliver a message from Cersei. Tyrion tells Lancel how he knows about him and Cersei having sex, threatens him to tell Joffrey about it and blackmails him to spy on Cersei.

Lancel was so convincing when he begged Tyrion for mercy and sucked up to him, the actor looked so very natural in this scene, he did a great job  and it was such an entertainment to watch. I just have to love this character and it was one of my favorite scenes in this episode.

Following Stannis's orders, Seaworth escorts Melisandre to a sea cave at night. Just as I started to wonder what they were doing in that cave, Melisandre was suddenly naked with a 9 months belly and I was like why the hell is she naked and how did her baby grow so fast. Then, just like that, she sits on the floor and starts having a baby. The labor lasts about 30 seconds and when it comes out out it's not even a baby, it's a shadow in a shape of a human – my bad for the spoiler if you haven't seen this episode yet.

Overall I found the episode pretty interesting, with more real plot and better than the previous three.