Game of Thrones Season 4: Review & Report Card

Season 4 Review

Grades for every character below
A note on spoilers: this post does not spoil anything significant, but does make oblique references to basic story lines from the show. Purists: approach with caution.

Many television shows peak somewhere in season two or three (ex: NBC's The Office), when the writers have established a rhythm but haven’t run out of ideas. Bad shows peak even earlier (ex: ABC’s ill-fated Last Resort, a show that wheezed its way to cancellation after only one strong episode). The best shows, however, get better with age (ex: AMC's Breaking Bad), refining the formula, correcting mistakes, and upending audience expectations. 

TheCroakingFrog says See It Now

What Hopped: superb season-long rhythm, balance of prominent narratives and subplots, plot developments that challenge your core assumptions about storytelling
What Croaked: overly nihilistic every once in awhile

Recommendation Key:
See It Now: see ASAP
See It: see if you have time
Skip It: see at your own risk
Forget It: avoid at all costs

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With its fourth season, Game of Thrones proudly joins the third group, a show that’s only gotten better, smarter, and more mature with each passing episode. In fact, Season 4 is significantly better than previous seasons, lifting the entire series from “one of the better shows on TV” to “possibly the best show on TV today.” How did this happen?

The least interesting—though valid—explanation is that Thrones Season 4 simply has more action. With more battles, physical altercations, and critical deaths than ever, the pace remains brisk, snappy, and impatient throughout. Where Seasons 1-3 swirled slowly, like a lazy fall wind on its way to a winter storm, Season 4 opens with a hurricane, and only lets up in two of the season’s ten episodes.

But to stop there wouldn’t be fair to Thrones, which has matured in many subtle, important ways as well. To begin, Thrones has finally found the right cadence, learning to play some notes short and others long, brushing past Bran’s never-ending Quest to Nowhere while lingering on Lannister lies and betrayals. With three primary plots and another dozen diversions, Thrones now gives us the best of both worlds: plots we can invest in deeply, and once-boring characters made less prevalent, and thus more interesting. Even for pouty old Stannis Baratheon, absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.

Thrones' fourth season also introduces a few new characters, none more mesmerizing than Oberyn Martell, the wily, sexual, articulate foreigner who can control a room with the flip of a blade, the flick of his tongue, or the hair on his chest. In earlier seasons, Thrones might have ran him out like one of a dozen actors at a curtain call, with two lines and 30 seconds to make an impression. In Season 4, however, we’ve already gotten to know most of our heroes and anti-heroes, giving us plenty of time to meet Oberyn, puzzle over him, marvel at his worldview and anticipate his next moves, a delightful journey and pleasant surprise in the fast-moving world of Westeros.

Finally, Thrones' fourth season stays a step ahead of us, inverting our expectations, daring us to hope, and sometimes, crushing our spirit. That Thrones still has this power over us—four years and myriad executions later—is a triumph of storytelling. I left some episodes depressed (even furious), but only because Thrones had convinced me to care, then tricked me into believing in all the usual fairy tales. You won’t be happy with all the developments in Season 4, but you will learn to reexamine every expectation, to reevaluate your own moral compass, and to rethink the way the game of thrones is played.

Season 4 Report Card

Note: I'm grading each character holistically: the acting performance, the narrative progression, the level of intrigue, and the way the character challenged us or made us think. Think overall score, not simply "presentation" or "technical merit."

Compare to my Season 3 grades here.

King's Landing

Tyrion
Peter Dinklage

Likes: crossbows, beetles
Dislikes: cup bearing, legal proceedings
Best moment: the trial


Season 4 Grade: A+
The MVP of Season 2 sets a new bar in Season 4, showing his fullest emotional range yet. He’s still just as clever, but his slow, stoic decent into bitterness and rage make for the most fascinating arc of the season.

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Tywin
Charles Dance

Likes: envelopes, desks, letters, speeches
Dislikes: disobedience, insolence
Best moment: his “birds and bees” chat with Tommen

Season 4 Grade: A
With a voice as golden as Frank Sinatra’s and a smirk more smug than a pampered house cat, Tywin (Charles Dance) is as entertaining as ever. He may only hit one note all season, but damn if it isn’t a great one.

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Cersei
Lena Headey

Likes: mourning, pouting, sniffling, playing the victim
Dislikes: arranged marriages
Best moment: politicking before the trial

Season 4 Grade: A-
Lena Headey’s Cersei remains the most quietly fascinating character on the show. Though she never draws a sword, she does “endlessly unhappy” better than anyone, while her political maneuvering—by turns, crafty and desperate—shows how smart she is…and how tough it is to be a woman in Westeros.

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Jaime
Nikolaj Coster-Waldua

Likes: chatting with one sibling, sleeping with the other
Dislikes: spurned advances
Best moment: giving away his sword

Season 4 Grade: B
Jaime was the surprise of Season 3: vulnerable, conflicted, and suddenly, caring. While he’s still as handsome and magnetic as always, Season 4 was a small step back for Nicolaj Coster-Waldua, as Jaime’s actions this season seemed uneven, unpredictable, and inconsistent.

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Joffrey
Jack Gleeson

Likes: naming swords, eating cake
Dislikes: marital festivities, gifts from his uncle
Best moment: drinking wine while insulting guests at his wedding

Season 4 Grade: B+
Joffrey’s long been the most hated character in Game of Thrones, and he only becomes more intolerable in Season 4. Writers Benioff and Weiss might have chosen to give the king a bit of complexity (a moment of vulnerability? a glance at a tortured past?), but instead, they triple down on Joffrey’s wickedness. It’s the right decision.

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Shae
Sibel Kekilli

Likes: pet nicknames for lovers
Dislikes: break ups
Best moment: her testimony

Season 4 Grade: B
Shae plays a small but critical role in Thrones’ latest season, exposing a few sharp, unexpected edges. While I thought the show found a near-perfect balance of screen time in Season 4, I would have liked a bit more of Shae’s newfound opportunism.

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Oberyn
Pedro Pascal

Likes: men, women, daggers, turn of phrases, revenge
Dislikes: ‘traditional values,’ lumbering oafs
Best moment: the duel

Season 4 Grade: A+
Tyrion still deserves Season 4’s MVP, but Oberyn is the clear alternative. Witty, snarky, and always captivating, he’s a joy to watch and even more fun to root for. An instant classic of a character.

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Across the Narrow Sea

Daenerys
Emilia Clarke

Likes: fancy royal titles; large, magisterial rooms
Dislikes: plot changes, real-world complications
Best moment: answering justice with justice

Season 4 Grade: B-
Everyone loves Daenerys Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. She should be Thrones’ best character, but her plot continues to lumber along, then stall, then stop, a subtle-but-disappointing trend over the last two seasons of the show. I did like a few things: how Thrones’ played up all the silly royal titles, how it dialed up the rivalries between her advisors, and how it suggested that freedom can sometimes be worse than slavery. But Emilia Clarke has thrown the same punch for two years now. Let’s see something new.

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The Wall

Jon Snow
Kit Harington

Likes: fool’s errands, long odds
Dislikes: showing emotion, acting
Best moment: giving up his post on the wall to fight in the courtyard below

Season 4 Grade: C+
He’s the worst actor on the show, so a C+ is actually good news for Kit Harington. Like Orlando Bloom, he has rapidly turned himself into the generic male heartthrob whom nobody actually loves (though at least Bloom has that distinct pretty boy thing going). Happily, however, he’s finding ways to make his character work, mostly by playing off of costars Sam and Ygritte. If Jon Snow can support other, more interesting characters without getting in their way, we’ll call that a success.

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Ygritte
Rose Leslie

Likes: reminding everyone that Jon Snow knows nothing; also, Jon Snow
Dislikes: the fact that Jon Snow knows nothing
Best moment: the last time she tells Jon that he knows nothing

Season 4 Grade: B+
Whether you like Rose Leslie's Ygritte performance in Season 4 will depend largely on whether you buy into her Jon Snow revenge fantasy, something that she repeats every other line in each of her half a dozen episodes. For me, it mostly worked. After an emotional, nuanced Season 3 performance, I found Ygritte’s determination in Season 4 more meaningful than redundant, more of a capstone course than a repetitive lecture.

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Sam
John Bradley

Likes: honoring vows, making rash decisions
Dislikes: cowardice, thinking about rash decisions he's made
Best moment: when he says he’ll “have words” for anyone who attacks his lady

Season 4 Grade: A-
Next to Cersei, Sam might be the series’ most sneakily intriguing character, a Night’s Watchman jeered by his own father and forced to live out his days guarding the kingdom, something that neither his demeanor nor physique would seem capable of doing. But Sam has blossomed into a determined, fascinating character, single-handedly making the Sam-Jon scenes worth watching.

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Dragonstone

Stannis
Stephen Dillane

Likes: money, armies, scowling, 
Dislikes: making his own decisions, relaxing
Best moment: riding into battle

Season 4 Grade: C- 
Like Daenerys, Stannis should be a lot more interesting. He’s arguably the one true king, often has large armies at his disposable, and even has a witch-like lover who loves fire and worships the God of Light. What could possibly go wrong? I’m beginning to worry that Stannis just doesn’t pop on the screen the same way he might on the page. His narrative is all potential and no payoff.

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Davos
Liam Cunningham

Likes: narrowing his eyes, shouting at people
Dislikes: the people he is narrowing his eyes and shouting at
Best moment: demanding money at the Iron Bank of Bravos

Season 4 Grade: C+
As Stannis’ advisor, Davos is a tad more intriguing. He does more of the talking. He once lost his fingers as punishment for disobedience. He’s got a beard to make Paul Bunyan jealous. But unfortunately he’s still with Stannis. C+.

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Somewhere in Westeros

Brienne
Gwendoline Christie

Likes: keeping oaths, Valyrian steel
Dislikes: incompetent squires
Best moment: the duel on the rock face

Season 4 Grade: B
Brienne was about twice as compelling in Season 3 as she jostled with Jaime and we learned about her past. In Season 4, her force of will still shines through, but a simple plot and unswerving motivation keep things a bit mundane.

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The Hound
Rory McCann

Likes: bounties, taking advantage of Good Samaritans
Dislikes: manners
Best moment: killing a stranger out of mercy

Season 4 Grade: A-
The Hound has long been the big, powerful brute with one kyptonite: fire. That alone was interesting enough, but Season 4 deepens his character in surprisingly affecting ways. His is a bleak world, a place where charity is worthless and life involves only fighting for survival. Call him Thomas Hobbes without the social contract.

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Arya
Maisie Williams

Likes: returning favors, blood, and preferably both at once
Dislikes: most people she’s met who are still living
Best moment: walking off against The Hound’s wishes

Season 4 Grade: A
In Season 3, Arya’s slow, countryside dawdling had started to wear thin. Fortunately, her vengeful, vindictive spirit breathes new (albeit sinister) life into the character, turning the Arya-Hound plot from tedious to terrific, seemingly overnight—one of Season 4’s biggest improvements.

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North of the Wall

Bran
Isaac Hempstead Wright

Likes: staring in blank wonderment at things
Dislikes: doing things of consequence
Best moment: Hodor beast mode

Season 4 Grade: C-
Unfortunately, Arya’s bother Bran experienced no such turnaround, his bumbling, but-seriously-guys-what’s-next plot breaking down into fumes by episode 2. Yes, there were a few briefly interesting beats (they get captured! they escape!), but this is all from Hollywood’s most basic suspense-creating blueprint. Next.

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The Eyrie

Littlefinger
Aidan Gillen

Likes: chaos, ladder analogies, spewing saliva while speaking
Dislikes: the realm
Best moment: the first time he appears on screen

Season 4 Grade: B
Season 4 was big for Littlefinger, and rather unfortunately, actor Aidan Gillen knew it. While the arc itself was one of the season’s better plots, Gillen’s constant intensity proved somewhat distracting, like the guy who tries too hard after landing a date with cutest girl in the class. Relax, Gillen. Trust the material.

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Sansa
Sophie Turner

Likes: changing outfits, taking control
Dislikes: surprises
Best moment: being questioned by the council

Season 4 Grade: A-
For three seasons, Sansa moped. In Season 4, Sansa finally learned to take control. It’s a satisfying performance, even though it might leave you feeling a bit sad…or maybe even gross. Still, I’m truly intrigued to see Sansa’s next move—something I can’t say for many other characters.

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The Dreadfort

Theon Greyjoy
Alfie Allen

Likes: pleasing masters, Emmy-baiting performances
Dislikes: liberators, family members
Best moment: offering a truce to the Ironborn soldiers

Season 4 Grade: B
After the madness that was Season 3, Theon’s role in Season 4 is a tad more intriguing (and far easier to watch). That said, I’m torn on whether Alfie Allen’s performance is more actorly or authentic, more for the show or more for awards season. I just can’t get lost in his character as much as most others: he gets a small penalty as a result.

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Ramsay
Iwan Rheon

Likes: mind games
Dislikes: mercy, keeping his word
Best moment: the bath scene

Season 4 Grade: B+
Ramsay might just have stolen Joffrey’s title as “most evil character on the show.” He is thoroughly despicable, and worse, his malicious actions tend to reward him. Occasionally, he slides into caricature, becoming nothing more than stock Mr. Evil, but more often than not, I find him convincing.

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