Bryan Cogman Tweets Two Swords!

If y’all popped in expecting a Twitter post, well, you’re only partly right.

In the latter part of last night, Game of Thrones Writer/Producer Bryan Cogman took to Twitter to opine about season 4’s opener, “Two Swords.” And it was good!

(Apparently as part of his own #GoT50 coverage, Bryan is going through his own personal top ten list of favorite episodes, tagging them #GoT_BC_TopTen. And I missed his tweets last week regarding his number 10 choice, Fire and Blood. Bad FaBio!)

His thoughts, in full, after the break. (And oh, yeah, follow @b_cogman if you know what’s good for ya!)

P.S. If you want to re-watch ep. 401 prior to reading this, be my guest. But I’m kind of guessing most of y’all know the parts he’s hittin’ here…

Ok! It’s time for #9 on my list of top ten personal fave #GoT episodes. In case you missed last week’s tweetfest of #FireandBlood… I’ll be counting down and tweeting (hopefully) fun facts while rematching my personal faves, leading up to our premiere of S6 in April.

Again, to remind, these are just MY PERSONAL FAVES. Not a definitive list, not a diss on any other episodes. And this fave list seems to change from year to year.

Ok, so here we go: #9. Season 4, Episode 1: ‘Two Swords’, directed by D&D, written by D&D.

In truth, these #9/10 slots were the hardest to fill — considered quite a few: KILL THE BOY, THE WATCHERS ON THE WALL, A GOLDEN CROWN… but I went with this one as I think it’s probably our strongest premiere episode. They are VERY tricky to get right.

Axey: A Golden Crown is definitely in my personal top 10. Alas, poor Baelor got edged out of my list after this past season. Felt guilty doing it too!

I think this one arguably does the best job at reacquainting, teeing up new plot lines, and being all around entertaining.

Starting with this cold open. The Stark sword ‘Ice’ being melted down into the two Lannister blades. One of @GRRMspeaking‘s inspired beats and a great way to reset after the bloodbath of Season 3. Ramin beautifully weaves together the Stark and Lannister themes here.

That’s Tommy Dunne our chief weapon master/armorer as the smith melting ‘Ice’ down. He must have a twin brother who serves at a barber in Winterfell cuz he sure looks like that guy who shaved Robb, Theon, and Jon in ep 101!

S4 was a lot of fun to write. Particularly the King’s Landing scenes, as it was the 1st time all the Lannisters lived under the same roof.

Ah, Oberyn. @PedroPascal1 is missed by all of us. A gentleman and an amazing talent.

The hope was (for viewers who hadn’t read the books) was that he would make a huge impression. That people would expect him to stick around for years to come. It worked! When he was killed in 408, my wife (who didn’t know the story) screamed and punched me in the arm in anger.

Axey: My wife had the same reaction when it happened in the book (since I was the one who recommended the series to her), and then refused to watch the Red Viper’s death episode once she fell in love with Pedro, so I totally get this reaction.

I think, with a lesser actor, Oberyn could have been cartoony. But Pedro underplays so well, plays each moment with such specificity.

This intro to Oberyn was intended as a nod to Tyrion’s intro in 101 (rogue member of the family doesn’t show up as expected, finds his way to the nearest brothel.)

We decided to streamline the tale a bit and make the big rivalry between houses Martell and Lannister (as opposed to Martell vs Tyrell)… mainly because there was so much backstory to get out in this episode about the death of Oberyn’s sister and her kids. Thankfully… Pedro and Peter make this heavily expository dialogue (no disrespect to my bosses!) highly entertaining!

Ah, Croatia. One of these days I’ll see it. Maybe I’ll take the GoT Locations Variety Tour when this all over! Think I’ll get a discount?

We killed a lot of goats in Season Four! Not real goats, of course. None were harmed.

Or is that a sheep the dragons roast in this first scene? Can’t tell…

The trick with these scenes (especially in a premiere) is tracking where all the characters are emotionally without burdening the scenes with “as you know when such and such happened” kind of dialogue. It’s an easy trap to fall into in a show like this with so much story… so many characters, etc.

One thing that strikes me, watching this one back, is how the Lannisters largely became the protagonists of Season Four.

Ha! Uh oh, I just lost two followers. Someone doesn’t like this!

Axey: Lannister haters, clearly. Best family in the series.

Anton Lesser is a personal fave of mine. He originally read for Maester Luwin way back when. When Qyburn came along he was our 1st choice This first wildling scene was shot in Iceland. It was HOT that day. Felt horrible for everyone in all dem furs.

We were happy to get Owen Teale back as Ser Alliser. We’d originally planned to have him appear in King’s Landing in S2, reporting about the wight that attacked Mormont. But there was a scheduling conflict, so we couldn’t use him (ended up having Mormont send a raven to the small council instead). But he was a huge part of the success of Season Four’s Wall storyline, imho.

Season Four, was in many ways, the final act of the first ‘phase’ of GoT.

Love this line of Diana’s to Gwen: “Aren’t you just marvelous?! Absolutely singular.” I’ll say that to @lovegwendoline when next I see her.

This Joffrey/Jaime/Meryn scene was written later in the process. We realized Joff had no major scenes before his final episode!

All this stuff with the Kingsguard book was originally in my episode, #Oathkeeper, but D&D stole it for this scene. Fiends!

Axey: For whatever reason I read that with my inner John Cleese voice.

“Fiends! I’ll tear them apart!”

Season Four was the hardest season to map out, at that point. We were essentially adapting the final third of a book. A bunch of climaxes. But we had to structure it as it’s own TV season with its own beginning, middle, end…

Oof. A hundred and sixty-three crucified kids. This show is fucked up.

Ah, now we come to my fave part of the ep (I suspect most people’s): Arya and the Hound.

Their season was modeled on westerns. And, oddly, enough, on the classic movie ‘Paper Moon’! As I have mentioned before, for S4, I was assigned a few storylines to ‘break’ on my own before we met in the room. Arya’s was one of them. The ‘farmer’ sequence in ep 403 was a riff on ‘Shane’. If Shane, instead of saving the family, beats and robs them.

Axey: I sniggered.

And this scene, without a doubt, in writing, staging, editing, performance — a classic western showdown.

In my original outline, this bar fight didn’t happen til later in the season. The opening sequence I conceived involved Hound/Arya encountering a Frey patrol, getting into a scrape, & Arya managing to steal her own horse (after complaining she didn’t have one). But D&D very wisely said that it was a stronger choice to open the season with this fight, revenge for Lommy, and the retrieval of Needle.

“What the fuck’s a Lommy?” one of my favorite lines in GoT history.

Axey: It went over well on Twitter too.

The Hound sort of sneaks up on the viewer as a main character over the course of the first four seasons. This was Rory’s showcase.

D&D knocked it out of the park with this scene, as directors. It’s one of the best fights in the series, very kinetic.

We made the choice to slow down Arya’s journey to being a ‘killing machine’ as compared to the books — her final scene in S3 and this one were designed to launch her into the next act, so to speak.

Again, this entire season storyline was born from our having adapting almost all of Arya’s ‘Storm of Swords’ storyline in Season 3 this season, I believe is just one, maybe two chapters in the book. So we were able to have fun and develop the Hound/Arya relationship.

God, I love @Maisie_Williams. We she slowly drives that sword into the dude, then looks up, ready for the next kill. GOLD!

Hm. It occurs to me we should have called this ‘Three Swords’ since this last scene is all about Needle.

What’s wonderful about @Maisie_Williams, is that she ‘got’ Arya’s dark side from the beginning. Rewatch ‘The Kingsroad’ from S1, the scene where she has the sword pointed at Joffrey. The look in her eyes in that scene. Huge foreshadowing! Love her.

This Hound/Arya storyline in S4 also gave us the opportunity to show how the war affected the poor folk and the countryside. Starting w/ this last shot, then continuing w/ the Farmer story in 403 and the old dying man in 407. We had one or two scenes planned for seasons 2 & 3 which showed some of the ravaged Riverlands but we had to lose them in prep, so I was happy to explore some of it in S4.

Ok, that’s it for #TwoSwords! Hope you enjoyed. I’ll be back in a few days with my #8 pick.

Love it! This is sorta like have a bonus-bonus commentary on the Blu-Ray.

We’ll stay tuned, Bryan!

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