A lot of fans were disappointed by the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, as evidenced by a controversial remake petition that earned over one million signers, and how it wrapped up. However, one show managed to give Game of Thrones the ending it deserved in 2015: Bob’s Burgers.
Season 5 episode “The Gayle Tales” features each of the Belcher children coming up with an original story to cheer up their Aunt Gayle, with the lucky winner getting a ticket to see “Yarnival.” While Gene sings a country musical and Tina does a steamy retelling of Pride and Prejudice, fan-favorite Louise goes straight for the throat with the epic Gayle of Thrones.
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The episode is a straight parody of Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire books on which the show is based. In Gayle of Thrones, Aunt Gayle plays the Queen of Catsteros, who is a parody of Daenerys. The “Mother of Cat Dragons” rules peacefully over the realm until her evil sister Queen Lindaryen (a mashup up of Cersei, Melisandre and Lysa Arryn) steals her cats and traps them in the the Kingdom of Litter-Boxia. Gayle and Louise, her faithful knight, set out in search of her stolen children.
Even though Litter-Boxia hasn’t been cleaned in many moons, stinks and is surrounded by the dreadfully dull White Talkers, Gayle and Louise make it to the castle of the evil Queen Lindaryen. While there, Louise fights the Mort-ain, and Queen Lindaryen falls to her death into a pit of ravenous porcelain babies. The story ends with a sudden appearance from Scott Bakula, who flies back home with Queen Gayle.
A lot of the episode parodies the source material in an and intelligent entertaining way. Firstly, there are a lot of references to breastmilk and breastfeeding people, which riffs on the way in which Game of Thrones focuses on Daenerys breastfeeding her dragons and the many, many mentions of Lysa Arryn’s breasts. This ends up working really well in the episode, as it fits wonderfully with Gayle’s obsession with her own breasts.
Secondly, there’s Catsteros and Litter-Boxia imagery. Every Golden Guard uniform, every throne and every banner has a cat motif. Bob’s Burgers version of the Red Keep is a Red Cat Castle sitting next to a King’s Landing-like town inside a blue litter box. The episode absolutely commits to its parody, providing something just a bit more novel than the Red Keep.
Thirdly, the dreadful White Talkers, who tell stories that bore people into a state resembling sleep, also play a clever role in the parody. They serve as something of a jab at both the abundance of white men babbling non-stop in the classic fantasy genre while doubling as a physical representation of her impatience with older people’s small talk.
Finally, the episode’s framework itself, which sees the children writing furiously and competing for Gayle/the audience’s attention is a very meta parody of what TV writers have to endure in terms of deadlines and fandom impositions, as shoehorning Scott Bakula into the story is obligatory.
There are a lot of reasons the Bob’s Burgers parody is more satisfying than the one appearing in the actual show. People, for example. act in character and get extremely satisfying in-universe arcs and deaths. For example, Linda’s character, Queen Lindaryen, is a heavy drinker (like Cersei) that wears a suspicious red choker (like Melisandre) and who is obsessed with porcelain babies, moon doors and trial by combat. She dies being devoured by the porcelain babies that live underneath her Moondoor, which fits Lindaryen’s parody character. The death also resembles the prophecy regarding Cersei’s death in Game of Thrones, which stated she would die with her “little brother’s” hands around her neck.
There’s also the matter of the ending. Queen Gayle gets her cat dragons back alive and purring, and she goes back to breastfeed everyone in Catsteros. In Gayle of Thrones, the Daenerys character survives and even gets Scott Bakula. There’s something satisfying in seeing that conclusion play out.
The finale of Game of Thrones might have proved disappointing for a lot of people, but Bob’s Burgers parody of the show ends up giving a more satisfying ending on several different fronts. Whether or not you were a fan of how Game of Thrones ended, Bob’s Burgers ending is just good screenwriting.
