Of all the moments from the books to be tarnished by change, the love scene between Jaime and Cersei by Joffreys body is the most egregiously bungled. Regardless of how much it bothers you, or whether it even bothers you at all, the fact is that the show took a moment of consensual sex and made it more morally complicated than it should have been. The change is actually a culmination of various other changes leading up to this point. In the show, Jaime has been back for a while and there is a rift between him and Cersei. She is turned off from his lack of hand. This frustrates Jaime, and these frustrations boil over in this scene, where he forces himself on Cersei next to Joffreys corpse. In the books however, Jaime gets back after Joffrey dies; returning to find Cersei mourning over his body. They have been away from each other for over a year. Upon seeing Cersei, Jaime is overcome with lust, and while at first Cersei protests, she quickly succumbs. Any feeling of disgust on our part comes from its incestual nature and the setting, not because you cant tell whether its consensual or not. While reactions to this scene were, frankly, way overblown, it is still universally agreed to be a terrible adaptation of the scene. The fact that is spurred on discussions about whether it was technically rape or not is bad enough, but it also sullied the positive growth of Jaime for many people. Suddenly he was back to being a bad guy, which was made all the worse by the act never being mentioned again in future episodes. All in all, there is no question that this moment could have been done better. It goes beyond being worse than the book version; its just bad. Any moments you think could have been done better? Let us know in the comments.
