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Welcome to the Game of Thrones podcast, the officially unofficial podcast for Game of Thrones on HBO. I'm Jim. I'm Aaron.

And today we're talking about season episode season one episode nine titled Baylor. Man, I put you that. I'm just I'm so shook up or ill and pain. So shook up by Ned's Ned's poor beheading poor Ned poor honorable stupid stupid Ned.

Disautorable in the end, I guess. I don't know. He for sake everything he cared about even turned his back on his god's save his daughters and then it didn't work out for him. It's so it's so funny. You've seen watching this again with so much more of the back knowledge is I got a lot of things like how much of a humiliation this was for Ned and fact it mounted nothing.

So I had but the main thoughts swirling my head as I was watching this is like I don't know that this is a stronger episode than the last two or three we've seen. Like if you take the shock of an end to get like they cut off Ned starts head. I can't you know that was such a huge shocking thing when I first saw it because I had not read the books. I was not expecting like to Sean Bean. He's the major star not just a show but like you you know he's the biggest star of this whole production put together and they cut his head off.

Not even in a finale as a cliffhanger just like fuck use episode nine boom will deal you know. Uh huh.

It was it was really really crazy. Yeah and I was actually thinking like about season one as a whole and trying to see.

Like recontextualize it in in how good it is compared to other seasons now haven't seen season two or three in a very long time.

But season one I remember kind of blew me away and I think it was mostly on the back of this Ned thing. Sure.

I don't know that like it's not I'm not saying season one is bad. I'm not saying it's not even not good.

It's just like not knowing that that thing was coming up with Ned and he's going to be killed that way.

Man it just gave it it kind of wiped away any sort of negative feelings I might have had about this season right and replaced them with awe.

Yeah because it's such it's such a fearless thing to do to like completely subvertive viewers expectations and emotions like that and kind of risky too because we've been trained that the good guys always win like we're bummed out when we go to movie like Braveheart and you know Mel Gibson gets his gut ripped guts ripped out and be headed and the only thing that he gets is years later these not even going to know about you know.

The dead one here the song sure sure but that was such such a shocker that they would commit that it makes you sit up straight and it was funny is the gamble paid off obviously because game of thorns is worldwide phenomenon but I don't know that they knew that going in like that was probably risky.

I think asked the audience to invest in this family in this character and to build him up as this Paragon and then to just chop his head off.

Yeah matter factly like everything I thought like you know there's going to you know various is going to do something at the like they set up all these things where something maybe could have happened.

But just for like you know in the day the reason this good man died like yeah I say he's dumb and all that stuff but he's still a good man yes the reason he dies is because the whim of a 15 year old and that's re that that's both tragic but also very cool from a storytelling perspective.

Right I'm trying to think back to win this actually aired and the kind of stuff that was on I wonder if this was a much needed change for television if people were we're not just really ripe for this sort of subversion I think so because I can't think of I can you know I'm trying to think of season one something like this it's ever happened.

You know the closest thing I can think of is like the best of both worlds in Star Trek where there was a legit cliffhanger that Picard might die and at the time I remember reading a starlog and other magazines that like that that was a contract year for stewards like maybe this was the tip to write him off and like you know my 12 13 year old self's heart was just beating Peter Pat at a fact that Picard might die.

Right this is like that except for like nah we're just going to do it.

Right and I just wonder if that that excited audiences like obviously it did I mean it seems generally the people were as as interested in this subversion as I was when I first saw it and I

saw it a couple years into game of the rounds right but at the time I was certainly ready for something different where the good guys just didn't win constantly.

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