Following last week’s bombshell final scene, this week’s “Game of Thrones” ("The Gift") was always going to be in a tricky situation. On the one hand, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have established the world as one that is just always going to be filled with horrible sexual violence, where murder and/or assault happen at nearly every single wedding (they and George must have some strong feelings about the institution of marriage). On the other hand, it’s so obvious that rape has become this storytelling crutch for them, this thing that they lean on to show deep, deep evil, or motivate female rage, bitterness, power. But it's such a loaded device, and they play very fast and loose with it, pretty irresponsibly at times. It’s very confusing and complicated to suss out without seeing the whole season and how it’s going to tie together. I wasn’t even going to bring it up, but they seem to have doubled down on the sexual violence thing this week, in different ways, but...
