All week we’ve been each featuring favourite episodes of权力的游戏。To read the entire series, and all our other GoT content, please visit the GoT main pagehere.

What we discovered when we all started making our picks for our favourite episodes was that our choices say more about us than the actual show – just like gossip. So what does my selection, “First of His Name” (Season 4 Episode 5), say about me? Let’s start with what it doesn’t say about me. Duana thought for sure I’d go for the episode where Jon Snow shows us he knows something about eating pussy. This is not that episode. I thought for sure that I would go for an episode that doesn’t involve Jorah f-cking Mormont, I hate him so much. This is not that episode – but if we can go on a brief Jorah Mormont tangent for minute, WHYYYYYY are so many people into him, WHYYYYY can’t you see how gross he is? I’m not alone here either. Kathleen sent this to me yesterday and it is ONLY THE TRUTH AND NOTHING ELSE:

If you split a room down the middle dividing people into two teams, one pro-Jorah and the other anti-Jorah, what do you think the observation would be? I have some theories, but that’s for another time.

Anyway, Jorah, unfortunately, shows up in this episode with his dick in his hand, as usual, while pining over Khaleesi. This is insignificant and we won’t speak of him again.

因为他们在“他的名字的第一个”中所做的是杜娜和我只是在谈论最新一集的展示你的工作as we discussed the conclusion of the series and how they’ve been building it. Duana calls it “backing in” and her point is that from here, for this coming season, it should be easy. Easy because they’ve been “backing in” to it, laying the track, setting it all up in previous seasons – that work is already done. And “First of His Name” is one of those episodes, maybe THE episode, that is all about those seeds of work that will get us to full bloom in the finale season. Or, you might say, the bombs that have been planted that will finally go boom.

The biggest bomb, of course, is That Reveal – this is the episode where we find out that it was Littlefinger Petyr Baelish who engineered all of this to begin with. He was the one who told Lysa to kill her husband and blame it on the Lannisters. He’s the reason we’re all here, why families were torn apart, why fragile peace became all-out war, why Winter is Coming. Literally, as “Winter is Coming” is the title of the first episode of this entire series, when King Robert Baratheon comes to Winterfell after the death of his Hand, Jon Arryn, to ask Ned Stark to fill the position. Backing in, see? Layers and layers of backing in and the payoffs.

但是，尽管大炸弹是冲突的起源，但在这一集中播种的较小的炸弹将我们带到了今天的位置。“他的名字的第一个”是一个误导，一个关于男孩/男人的头衔，他成为一集的国王，该情节是关于女性（由女人米歇尔·麦拉伦（Michelle Maclaren）执导的），因为她们确保了自己的董事会职位。我们在Tommen的加冕典礼上开放，Cersei Lannister和Margaery Tyrell互相警惕，国际象棋匹配另一个不安的联盟。后来，我们看到Sansa Stark与她的姑姑Lysa Arryn团聚，与Littlefinger逃离了King的着陆。Sansa has been tormented by Cersei, her mother has been killed, she thinks she’s lost her sister, and at the Eyrie she falls into the arms of a woman she thinks she can finally trust who, later on, plies her with lemon cake before accusing her of seducing her boyfriend. Every time Sansa gets lemon cakes from a woman on this show it’s accompanied by a betrayal, a metaphor for how women have related to each other in this story: sweet and sour, intermittent solidarity mixed with suspicion and rivalry. Cersei and Margaery will go on to battle for years, Lysa clearly resented her own sister and now her sister’s daughter – does history repeat itself with Sansa and Arya, who have finally started working together as a pack but may find their alliances and loyalties tested when Jon Snow comes home to Winterfell with a possible new sister-in-law/secret aunt? This is the set-up, the backing in, that we now know was being prepared for us in "First of His Name".

不过，准备是该情节的另一个关键。这些都是由男人准备并因此受过训练的女性。我们看到泰温·曼斯普兰（Tywin Mansplans）向塞尔西（Cersei）讲述了他们的家人的金钱麻烦，关于铁银行的权力，关于必须安排的婚姻的财务安全。他可能没有打算，但是泰温在这里教塞西有关会计与权力之间的关系，当她坐在铁王座上时，她将全部使用的教训，为自己安排婚姻与Euron Greyjoy结盟，并将他送往争取黄金公司的服务。尽管Tywin将他的独生女作为典当的一生，但Cersei还是崇拜他，她的导师和偶像，以及自从他去世以来所做的每一步，她都从他那里学到了。

Sansa也有导师。在这一集中，Littlefinger将她带到Eyrie“安全”，告诉她到达时，“Know your strengths, use them wisely. And one man can be worth ten thousand”.Over the next few seasons, Sansa will continue to study at Littlefinger Academy until, of course, the student becomes the master. Sansa was able to see through her mentor’s manipulation and beat him at his own game.

同时，艾莉亚（Arya）也在接受训练 - 在与猎犬的奔跑中，她背诵自己的名单，练习剑术，塞里奥·费雷尔（Syrio Forel）向她讲述。想想她从中学到的所有男人：在泰温（Tywin）期间，她学会了正确评估敌人的价值；在本集中探索的猎犬期间，她了解了正确评估英雄的价值，以及如何造成致命的打击。后来，在与Jaqen在一起的期间，她了解了正确评估自己的价值，如何在成为一个低于低估她的人的人之前如何成为一个人。

然后一起,谁是训练她entire life to serve, and must now learn how to be served as Podrick auditions to be her squire. Brienne’s been let down repeatedly by the men she admired, in whom she placed her faith. Here’s a man who’s not her equal or superior and she’s learning that he’s the one who may be the most faithful.

These are the seeds from the episode that we’ve been waiting for to grow. What will these women do with their training as they battle for survival? What are the lessons they have to un-learn, lessons inherited from men who have failed, as they attempt to do better, be better?

How will Daenerys be better? She has vowed to be better and in this episode, she’s in Meereen, taking council from her advisors, ultimately deciding that “I will do what queens do: I will rule”. Will she though? Is she a good ruler? In Sarah’s post aboutHouse Stark’s chances of winning the Iron Throne, she quite rightly pointed out that while Jon’s courageous and inspires courage, he’s not actually that good at leading, at managing. Same goes for Daenerys. Daenerys is great at conquering, there’s no doubt she can fight, but can she govern? She told Jorah in “First of His Name” that she would do what queens do and rule… but her version of “ruling” in Meereen was pretty much setting fire to the mess that she was trying to rule. Which is kinda the same sh-t that her forebears did, and she was supposed to be the one to break that wheel. Can she un-learn the lessons of the past to forge a new future?

这些是什么estions that “First of His Name” was laying down way back then that have to be answered as we move to the end. Can these women fix what the men have started?

对我而言，这一直是这个节目的目的，为什么这一集对我来说这么突出。因为这一集为我们提供了我认为是整个系列中最重要的一行，所以我希望其他一切都在我们接近终点时所指向的线条，这只能由Cersei Lannister提供的线条：

“Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.”

Well isn’t that the f-cking truth. That’s what they should have called this show –权力游戏：世界上任何地方都伤害了小女孩。

这是一个关于伤害小女孩的情节，以及她们发生的事情，他们对伤害的影响。这是一集“回到”的情节，痛苦会随着时间的流逝而表现出来，并设定了在最后一个赛季必须回答的问题：会伤害小女孩总是伤害更多的小女孩……或者可能伤害小女孩。谁最终会阻止小女孩的伤害？

And so we end at Craster’s Keep, where hurt little girls demand that the place of their abuse be burned to the ground, and decide they’d rather be homeless than have to live under the protection of yet another group of men, the Night’s Watch this time. For these hurt little girls, a man will never be their hero. Think about that then on May 19, 2019, the night of the series finale: who’s going to be the hero that stops hurting little girls?

虽然我们在这里 - 还有一个问题，因为这一集中还有一个奖励使我最喜欢：幽灵！“七个地狱！”

I have watched this moment more times than I can count:

乔恩·斯诺（Jon Snow）的整个系列只有5倍。其中之一是为了幽灵。幽灵在上个赛季根本没有出现，因为正如制片人不断告诉我们的那样，他们要么没有钱买狼人的钱，要么不知道如何使它们变得真实。我们确实在第7季中看到了Nymeria。不确定Nymeria是否曾经回来，但肯定是幽灵will return for Season 8. And that’s the last seed planted in “First of His Name” that makes this episode so special: what role will Ghost play in the war?

WILL GHOST SURVIVE?

If Jorah f-cking Mormont lives and Ghost dies….

I can’t even think about that possibility. Please, please, please, protect Ghost.

Attached - Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams promoting GoT in Belfast today.