There’s a scene midway through The Bastard Executioner’s fourth episode in which the characters of Chamberlain Corbett (Stephen Moyer, still ably smirking away) and Baron Pryce (Richard Brake) do a little verbal dance as they hash out an Evil Plan. Corbett has tricked Pryce, lord of a neighboring shire, into visiting Castle Ventris in order to pitch the idea that he, Pryce, should marry Baroness Ventris (I will be goddamned if I’ll call her “Lady Love”, no matter how many times the show does), thereby combining their lands and armies. Corbett would, of course, serve as Chamberlain to this new supershire. Pryce names two problems – his own chamberlain, an influential man, would certainly cut up rough, and Pryce’s consumption-stricken wife is still alive and might recover. He urges Corbett to “consider” these objections, and Corbett promises to “think deeply” on them. Everyone knows what’s been agreed.

It’s a good scene. It has layers, each character slipping in and out of roles (Corbett intermittently a humble, concerned servant, Pryce haughty and righteous) and yet communicating their real intent quite clearly, the actors are more than up to it, and it leaves the audience with a wink that’s as good as a nod. Groundbreaking it is not; it’s just two cunning and venal men in period costume plotting to turn forces greater than themselves to their advantage, but that is or was the essential basis of Game of Thrones, Rome, Deadwood, and so on. It’s a glimpse of what this show was meant to be, and might yet turn into, in spite of itself.

If it’s going to accomplish this marvelous metamorphosis, though, it had better get cracking. This was another extra-long episode (1h 22 including commercials) and the problem here is plain as the nose that used to be on that poor Welsh girl’s face: Sutter just does not know when to quit (this will not come as a revelation to anyone who saw the last few seasons of Sons of Anarchy).

The writing was better in this episode – the show may yet find its voice – but virtually every scene until the one described above inexplicably and infuriatingly ended with an expository recap of what had happened in that very goddamn scene. At one point a character offers up a piece of explication so bald that he calls it, shamefacedly, “…an observation that serves no purpose.” You are more correct than you know, sir.

Of spectacle as of writing, this show needs to cut away about 10% earlier. No one comes to a show titled The Bastard Executioner, run by the guy who gave us Sons of Anarchy and the Armenian foot-stealer character from The Shield, and isn’t prepared for a little, or indeed, a lot of blood, but there was at least one violent scene in this episode that was overlong and simply repellant. Sutter would do well to focus his savagery (and he will have his savagery) on combat, which he and his crew tend stage with confidence and occasionally aplomb, rather than torture.

So, besides unnecessary exposition and bloodshed, what else happens here? Baroness Ventris goes to Windsor where she is treated casually by Edward II and villainously by the King’s advisor (and presumable lover) Piers Gaveston, the Duke of Cornwall, who decides on the King’s behalf to divide Ventris’s lands into thirds and take one – the critical coastal region – for himself. She undermines the plan by claiming to be carrying her late husband’s heir, a clever play for time, but one that obliges her to conjure up a pregnancy, which might be difficult given that we’re led to believe she cannot conceive. Failing that, or even if she can arrange to get knocked up (clearly this painful duty will fall to Brattle), it’s only a matter of time before she links up with the Welsh rebels and arranges to give the English the business with the long-range archery and close-harmony singing for which the Welsh are justifiably infamous.

We also find another Evil Plan in the form of a covert war between a sect of clergyman who answer to the Archdeacon of Windsor and a group called the Seraphim, cultists of indeterminate origin whose bodies are tattooed with writing and symbols. Annora, the healer/witch, is one of them, and she can apparently feel it when one of her kind is killed, as indeed one of them is in the repellant torture scene. She knows that the Archdeacon’s people are coming for her next. Meanwhile, we’re led to believe that her henchman, Kurt Sutter under a lot of burn-makeup, may be out in the woods ritually murdering and mutilating people.

So, for those keeping track, we’ve got the central revenge plot, Corbett’s plot, Gaveston’s plot and Lady Ventris’s counterplot, and this covert cult/holy war. It’s a lot, but the show can just about handle it provided it doesn’t introduce anything else.

To be blunt, the show has been on shaky footing since the first half of the pilot; there were moments this week – the Corbett/Pryce scene, some of Lady Ventris’s plot – where it looked like it might be finding firmer ground. We can but hope.

Quick notes:

*The torture of the captured Seraphim is presided over by Ed Sheeran, who makes a much more plausible inquisitor than pop star. Christ, he’s a weird-looking dude (and I say this is a fellow ginger). He’s also perfectly fine in the role.

*Brattle’s original band of bandits, who might as well be called Sons of Wales, are still lurking out in the woods until they’re captured by Corbett’s men as leverage over Brattle. I’m not sure why but they just fall flat as characters, which is odd considering that the interpersonal relationships of SAMCRO were one of the better parts of the show, especially in the early seasons.

*I haven’t mentioned it before, but Sutter made the strange decision to have every scene before commercial end with a second or two of black and white. That would make a degree of artistic sense if this were, say, Boardwalk Empire, or another show that a modern audience tends to imagine in black and white because that’s primarily how we’ve seen the era. That is not true of early 14th-century Wales. It’s not unpleasant, just bizarre.

*In the show’s final act of violence, Brattle kills a dude with a chicken bone, which, taken for all in all, is pretty metal.