Deleted Scene Changes GoT Character Completely: It's a Travesty It Was Cut
Throughout Game of Thrones, Grand Maester Pycelle was deceitful and self-centred.
Even when he presented as a doddery old man stuttering and stumbling his way through his duties, he never really hid his contempt for the servant girls he lured into his bed.
Remember his confused demeanour after bedding Ros? And how sprightly he was as soon as she left?
Because the whole confused and shuffling old man thing was nothing but a ruse. One that seemed to go unnoticed by so many and was compounded by him forgetting what it was "you need to know about kings" when Ros asked him, and the time he farted in court.
But one deleted scene from season 3 would have changed the perception of Pycelle – and changed Tywin into the bargain.
As (so it seems) the only person in Westeros to see through Pycelle's charade, Tywin (in the deleted scene) revealed himself to be pragmatic and conscious. It seems there is a lot you can miss when you are solely focused on raising your own profile or saving your skin. And many other characters in the show are blinded by self-interest.
Tywin, though, is a more down-to-earth type with a propensity for getting his hands dirty – as we see by him catching his own fish in this scene. That grounded approach to life gives him a clarity that perhaps was lacking in his character because of the decision to not allow this scene to make the edit.
As for Pycelle, it shows him to be far more than an annoying soul just out for an easy life. He is indeed looking to simply keep his head down and stay alive.
But it shows a depth and deliberateness to his deceit. It reveals the lengths he is willing to go to in order to have the life he wants. And it displays a level of calculation that nobody would have expected from him.
In this one scene, we learn that Pycelle is someone to be genuinely feared and watched very closely indeed. We see how easily he slips out of character once he realises Tywin has rumbled him (and thus how much focus he must require to keep up the façade at all other times).
And we see how Tywin realises that he now has knowledge that gives him power and influence.
In just a couple of minutes, we learn so much about these two and the relationship between them. It's a scene superbly acted by Charles Dance and Julian Glover. And it's a travesty that it ended up on the floor of the editing room.