Game of Thrones (HBO) TV Show • Page 327

And now apparently we don’t even get to see her die and she’s just peacing out. I should have been drunk for this.

 

Day drinking is always a good choice!

 

Tyrion’s story is good

 

I need Cersei here to guide me.

 

Cersei... Cerveza...

There's something there with that.

 

Bran got better at warging to the past to name people and happened to be ordering a beer during that one?

 

There’s too much going on to spend like 6 different scenes with him just spouting catchphrases and being funny and failing to get Grey Worm and Missandei to laugh. They have such an interesting dynamic and nothing happens until the end of episode 8 basically.

 

I think it was mainly just jarring to most people (it's definitely not a plot hole by any means). They never really did that too often throughout the show until this latest season so it seemed like a noticeable change.

But the difference is that much of the story had been told while the travel was taking place. We got to see Arya, Jon, Jamie, Tyrion, etc. have their stories impacted by the things that happened to them while going from location to location. In this most recent season, we didn't need that shit. We're at the end and really don't need to see the character's growth between physical destinations anymore.

 

By that point we had already known about Beric being revived like 6 times so that aspect of it didn't really need to be trotted out again. But yeah he mostly just broods a little more than he already did lol

The only time it annoyed me was s7ep6 where the wight hunting crew had Gendry run to the wall, then sent a raven all the way to Dragonstone (more than half the length of Westeros, looking at a map), then Dany rode her dragons all the way back. The shows makes it feel like all of that happens within hours (it definitely could not have gone on that long or the crew probably would've froze to death) when the show has consistently shown a one-way on-foot trip of that length to take weeks.

 

this dude usually does fun drink recipes, but it was fun to seem him nerd out on this rant.

 

So Stannis’s men leave him after what they do to Shireen, but all of Ramsay’s army is fine with him toying with a literal child prisoner and murdering him on the battlefield? Cool cool cool cool cool.

And I know Jon is literally Jesus, but he would have been dead the second that started what.

 

Ramsay is one of the GoT characters that is great at ruling through fear.

Faith in Stannis at that point was already at the bottom of a slippery slope that been slippin.

 

Ah, that’s fair about Stannis. It still seems strange to not even show anyone having a look of doubt when it happens though. Sansa and Jon already had a long talk about how no one is truly loyal to him, so the whole “his strength is his weakness” thing could have been really interesting if it led to them turning on him.

Of course this whole thing is about 12 kinds of silly at this point, so that’s a small issue.

 

And of course one is murdering your own child vs. killing the male heir threat to your seat as the Great House in the North, which some houses will frown upon more than others. House Bolton certainly wouldn't be a house to have issue with that considering they're known for flaying enemies and such.

I think Ramsey knows there would have been more stink made about what he had done to his brother and step-mother, which is why it wasn't done out in the open.

 

So I'm somewhere in the middle of EASheartsViynl and David where I don't think it's as bad as these live posts seem to indicate but it's not a top three show for me like it is for David.

It's definitely entertaining other than some slog storylines. And I'm glad I've watched it over the years. But I'll never return to it like I do with things like The Wire, Rectify, etc.

 

Bran is the Night King

 

Oh yeah, that’s completely fair. Honestly, outside of the misogyny and poor representation, if it was just allowed to be the sloppy and silly soap opera with incredible production value that it is I wouldn’t feel the need to be so hard on it.

 

This show is all about the political/palace intrigue and, later, the magical elements. If those aren't as interesting to you, it's not gonna be a top show for you IMO.

I.e. Stannis killing Shireen being 'out of character' for him doesn't really matter much to me as far as quality of the show is concerned. It was heartbreaking and led to the downfall of one of our 5 kings, so it got the job done story wise.

Now obviously since I've read all the books now I know the northern story line could have been SO much better...but just knowing it could be better doesn't mean the show isn't already GOAT, at least for me haha.

Their biggest slip ups have been the terrible Dorne botching of Season 5 and the way they handled violence towards women re: rape, but I don't think either has been bad enough to drag down the overarching story of the characters, many of whom started from the bottom, then things got worse (or much worse) for them, and now they're in places of power and ready to exert said power to get what they want (or, defeat the existensial threat to life, the White Walkers). But the other plodding storylines, mainly Arya's House of B&W experience and the High Sparrow, I wasn't nearly as turned off by as some others are. They were never my favorites but I took them in stride as part of what needed to happen to get our characters where they are now. The Sparrow storyline is also more understandable with a knowledge of the history of Westeros and how religious factions have risen up to control the Iron Throne at times and such.

Jon has been all about the White Walkers since at least Season 4, and it's been his only purpose as KITN, so if he survives until the end I'm interested to see if he even wants to rule, whether it be as KITN or sitting on the Iron Throne. This show is up there as GOAT for me but a shoddy ending could hurt that standign a lot. They def need to stick the landing here.

 

Also a huge chunk of Stannis’s army were sell-swords (the Golden Company?), so they had no genuine loyalty in him and weren’t down with the whole burning thing as much as Stannis’s actual men were

 

Nah he turned down the Golden Company idea I believe.

 

I know I did it defending the Harry Potter movies back in the day, but using anything in the books to justify the show independently is cheating. The story as it is presented has to stand on its own, and it crumbles in a ton of areas. Saying things like entire storylines were bad but it doesn’t matter because it’s all about the endgame for the characters is missing the point that that’s ALL still a part of the show. It all needs to be counted when thinking about how it rates critically as a complete work.

 

Do LOST next

 

I like shows that are more about characters making political plays against each other in a fight for power, but GoT is far from the most compelling in that regard. It peaked with Tyrion being the acting Hand in s2.

Especially when it’s stuff like most of Dany’s plot where so much of it doesn’t matter (like pretty much the entirety of Tyrion’s s6 plot) because she’s just going to use brute force to win anyway.

 

Yeah but I don’t actually find Arya or High Sparrow stories to be bad, more just slow here and there. The only part of Aryas story that I found to be somewhat bad was the not explaining how she survived the 2nd encounter with the waif. Okay the actress sowed her up the first time, but what about after the fight? Was she just not as injured as she was acting? She did seem to be pretending once the waif entered the room...but then she was still bleeding a lot. That was some plot armor sorcery imo, but I don’t find the rest of it to be “bad”, just plodding at times. I get they wanted to show her training and becoming better because they didn’t want her to just show up in season 7 being able to shape shift and beat certain great swords in a fight, but they were a bit too repetitive with it in Season 6.

Season 5 I didn’t have as much a problem with because it was our intro to it all. I just wish in Season 6 they tweaked her story a bit so it wasn’t just her v. Waif.

 

Just looked it up and it’s not the Golden Company but they do get funding from Iron bank in Bravos and use that to hire a much larger force. Stannis had barely anything after Blackwater and he didn’t get the help from the Night’s Watch that he wanted, so there’s no way he would’ve stood a chance against Ramsey without extra backup