The <em>Game of Thrones</em> Season 3 Premiere: All Talk, and What’s Wrong With That?

Kornhaber: Sex and death get the headlines, but anyone who's binge-watched the first two seasons of Game of Thrones in a few-weeks span—guilty here—knows that the show spends most of its time with chitchat. So it's a good sign that last night's Season Three premiere had some of the show's best all-talk scenes yet.

Chris, you've marveled at how Game of Thrones adds locale after locale, storyline after storyline, character after character, without collapsing on itself. One way it manages the clutter, I'd argue, is by forcing the characters to grapple with new elements at the same time as the viewers—in other words, by staging meet-and-greets that happen to be as entertaining, tense, and plot-advancing as most of the show's other moments.

So in this map-expanding return, we were treated to some sorta-hilarious kabuki diplomacy between members of newly conjoined tribes. Jon Snow kneeling to the wrong guy—and kneeling at all—when brought to Mance Rayder's tent. Margaery Tyrell (introduced but inscrutable last season) performing a doe-eyed flatterer routine at the