A review of this week's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, "In the Name of the Mother," coming up just as soon as a pig eats your head...
Alan Sepinwall
Two things can be true. There can be, as my friend Kathryn VanArendonk has pointed out, way too many TV seasons where the penultimate episode is a flashback to events from before the season began. And some of those episodes can be very good, even great.
When I realized that "In the Name of the Mother" was going to devote a good chunk of its running time to Dunk's adolescence as a Flea Bottom orphan (played by Bamber Todd), I worried that this was the worst possible time to do it. The whole season had built to Dunk having to prove himself in the tournament — now with life-or-death stakes added to his simpler desire for individual glory and success — and suddenly we were going to cut away from that to follow the adventures of Young Dunk and Rafe?
But "In the Name of the Mother" works for several reasons.