The second season's first episode takes us right back to George R. R. Martin's fantastic creation Westeros and as soon as the HBO logo has left the screen and the legendary opening credits start, it feels as if we have never left this amazing fantasy world. In the very first scene, underage asshole king Joffrey reminds us why we all hate him so much while also delivering an immensely entertaining scene that directly merges into another one involving the only two characters that are even more entertaining than Joffrey: his mother and his uncle, Cersei and Tyrion Lannister. The two have a heated debate during the Small Council that has Tyrion delivering this episode's most rememberable one-liner, "It must be hard for you to be the disappointing child." This marks as the first real confrontation between those two and it is awesome. The fierce chemistry between the mutually abhorring brother and sister is magnificent and shows the enormous acting qualities of Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey.
Because of this scene, the episode has already had its top point in the first ten minutes, but that isn't really bothering since the simple comeback of all those great characters that we learned to love or hate (sometimes both) in the first season is absolutely great. Some scenes admittedly lack the tension and fantastic screen writing that the one with Cersei and Tyrion had, yet the further evolving of the different characters is enough to keep anyone who liked Game of Thrones in its primal season delighted. Additional intensity comes from a new setting that involves Stannis Baratheon, rightful claimant for the Iron Throne, and television's hottest redhead since Christina Hendricks in Mad Men. It's hard to grasp what is exactly going on in – where are those scenes set, for Christ's sake? -, but future episodes will surely give more insight into Stannis, Melisandre (a.k.a. "Hot Redhead"), and the other characters involved. The introduction to this location was definitely very well-done, however, I remember to have been way more swept away by how they presented us all the settings in season one.
All the other basic locations of the series return as well, with the Night Watch part going into a whole new direction that seems utterly appealing to me. The scenes at the Stark camp are quite good, especially the argument between Robb Stark and his captive Jaime Lannister; while the five minutes in which we travel across the Narrow Sea to find neo-dragon mother Daenerys and her extremely exhausted 'khalasar' are a bit unfulfilling. It's sad that not even dragons can help those scenes get any more interesting, they still are the weakest fraction of the series, like we were used to it previously.
All in all, we shouldn't forget that this is one of the visually best TV series of all time and the whole look ranging from cinematography and editing to make-up, costumes, and set design is absolutely grand. And though creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss start to deviate from the novels more remarkably at this point, it's still a fantastic adaption. I believe my high rating for this episode is warrantable since the weaker parts really don't carry weight that much and it's just tremendously entertaining to watch.