re: GoT S3: Episode 6 "The Climb" <<<Book Readers Thread>>> SPOILERS

This is what I was saying earlier about the drastic changes of Littlefinger, and why I do not enjoy his portrayal in the television show as much.

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The title of the episode, after all, ends up receiving an even-more-obvious meaning by the end when we hear Littlefinger reveal how he thrives on chaos, how he sees it as a ladder one can climb. As a long-time reader of the series, it feels very odd to see this character speak so nakedly and openly about his ambitions and his philosophy; I recall arguments on the forums not long after A Clash of Kings came out in which my argument was that Littlefinger deliberately fomented and encouraged chaos so he could profit from it was somewhat controversial at the time, as I pointed out how he was surely behind Lysa Arryn’s warning to the Starks (this was correct), lied about the ownership of the dagger in a dangerous game of keeping tensions high (also correct), and that the same agent that delivered Lysa’s message was surely behind the attempt on Bran’s life (wrong, wrong, wrong). At no point in the novels to date has Littlefinger been so plainspoken of his intentions as he has been on the show. Of course, the show has veered far away from that Littlefinger—Martin himself keeps citing the show’s Petyr Baelish as being markedly different from his own character—and in theory this is all right. But the thumping obviousness of everything he does has, alas, begun to grow tiresome; he’s not far from the mustache-twirling cartoon villain or, if we’re kind, a James Bondian villain. The Varys-Littlefinger colliquies were something to look forward to in the first two seasons, but it’s becoming a tiresome device when it explains everything in an overt way as if viewers would miss something if they weren’t guided straight to it. Is it a well-written speech? Sure. But it would have been a much more interesting moment had the show been able to obscure the depths of Littlefinger’s duplicitousness until that particular moment, but it seems a luxury that the novels have and, for some reason, the television show doesn’t.

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