This week’s episode dispenses with a Previously… in favour of picking up where the last episode left us: staring at the bloodied corpse of the winner of this year’s “Much More Likeable Now He’s Dead” award, King Joffrey the Purple. Tyrion is arrested as Sansa is led off by Joffrey’s fool, narrowly avoiding being arrested herself. She is whisked away on a boat where she falls into the awaiting arms of… Littlefinger! So that’s where he’s been hiding so far this season. Dontos recieves his payment in crossbow bolts and we are left wondering what Little Finger’s motivation is as he basically tells Sansa that she’s been framed, by him. It’s worth noting that Littlefinger has obviously been spending far too much time at sea as his accent has become inexplicably piratey. Yarrrr.

Margaery Tyrell/Lannister decides she must be cursed, we can’t help but agree.

Tommen attends his first Regal 101 lecture with Tywin over the still cooling corpse of his brother. This feels slightly less appropriate that what Jaime and Cersei get up to a couple of minutes later after Cersei tries to persuade Jaime to murder poor old Tyrion through the medium of shagging him over Joffrey’s body. Seriously guys, the dry humping comments last week were just a joke okay.

We’re back with The Hound and Arya next and we start to see a slightly softer side to The Hound as they are taken in by a father and daughter and given shelter and food. We’re reminded how much of a cad Walder Frey was when as he broke the hospitality clause by killing his guests at the Red Wedding and The Hound agrees to help the farmer deal with some bandits for a fair wage. Aww… That’s so sweet… No wait… He’s still an absolute bastard as he robs them blind and wanders off into the sunrise.

Castle Black gets a new intake of thieves, murderers and rapists for the Night’s Watch and we can’t help but root for the Wildlings at this point. Our only hope is that Sam and his girlfriend get out before the killing starts.

Stannis and Davos catch up with the King’s Landing current events and Davos hatches a cunning plan. Something to do with The Iron Bank which seems to be getting mentioned a lot of late, perhaps they are planning to take down the empire through the small claims court?

Prince Oberyn and Tywin get together over a glass of wine and some naked bodies to discuss Joffrey’s murder and Oberyn is offered a position as third judge on the murder trial.

We finally get to catch up with Tyrion as Podrick gets visitation rights. It appears that pretty much anyone who could have spoken up for Tyrion has either been offered a bribe, gone missing or been denied due to being cut-throats so things are not looking particularly good for Tyrion at this point. I really don’t think that they’ll have the same trial by combat clause in King’s Landing so, barring a miracle, I doubt this is going to end well.

Ygritte and The Wildlings (a punk band if ever there was one) partake in a bit of recreational slaughter on their way to Castle Black as Jon Snow and The Night’s Watch (80’s New Romantic covers band?) realise that they are about to be trampled by the horde from the north.

We end on this week’s Daenerys update which consists of a literal pissing contest and a promise that she will free the slaves of the city.

All in all, a predictably downbeat episode after last week’s offering. Again, we can see the cogs grinding towards a lot of unpleasantness occurring in the back half of the season as the pieces on the board re-shuffle in the wake of Joffrey’s demise.

Quote of the Week:
The Hound
How many Starks they got to behead before you figure things out?