Game of Thrones

[the_bully_wee]

2 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

The Danaerys thing has been foreshadowed, no question.  But there was nothing to suggest that level of brutality.  It was a cop-out in the sense that her decent was basically from A to B to C.... to Z.  The problem, I think, is not where she ended up, but the speed at which things degenerated.    I very rarely feel this about television series, but I think as stated above, this is a series too short, and it's been shown up in this final series.  That's largely a problem with the source material, but still.

I do believe that there are serious pacing issues at this stage and have said so before in this thread - the first two episodes of the season, which account for about a quarter of the total run-time, saw very little in the way of serious plot or character development, which is pretty unforgivable when they made a conscious choice to wrap it up in six episodes. However, Daenerys' own personal judgement has been shocking for a while now, she's had very itchy feet with regards to seizing the throne and she's also been very begrudging of late when following the conflicting advice of those close to her. What with her two irreplaceable confidantes in Missandei and Jorah both being given their jotters mere days/weeks apart, an accelerated heid's-gone is kind of understandable. Plus, it wouldn't have made what happened last night as shocking if she'd extensive previous for committing gradually more heinous acts - though, I think some people tend to forget what she did to the Tarlys. When the Kings Landing bells rung out, I - though others may disagree - wasn't sure quite what she was going to do. My personal feeling was that she would light the entire place up, but there was a doubt there which made the eventual outcome all the more brutal. 

[weirdcal]

The Danaerys thing has been foreshadowed, no question.  But there was nothing to suggest that level of brutality.  It was a cop-out in the sense that her decent was basically from A to B to C.... to Z.  The problem, I think, is not where she ended up, but the speed at which things degenerated.    I very rarely feel this about television series, but I think as stated above, this is a series too short, and it's been shown up in this final series.  That's largely a problem with the source material, but still.

To be brutally honest, before she crossed the sea she had a kingdom, the unsullied, the dothraki, 3 dragons, trusted advisors and was in sight of her ultimate goal.

She's lost 2 dragons, most her armies, her advisors are dropping like flies and at each stage the goal is what keeps her going.

They should have made this an 8 part series, they could have drawn out the decent into madness with episodes before winterfell where the tension is building and the advisors are locked in massive war meetings intertwined with goings on elsewhere (Yara taking the iron islands maybe) and another afterwards where the impact of the loss, maybe have missandei and rheagal going early in what is currently episode 4 and her getting angrier and more irrational.

Basically I think the rushed feel of the episodes make her losing it seem a short term plot device rather than a long running showing of seemingly odder and more deranged decisions (possibly showing the loss of advisors as pivotal in keeping her in check).

In other words the show writers appear to have gotten off at Haymarket

[Thistle_do_nicely]

[Poet of the Macabre]

Ok, that episode was actually rather dull and also made little sense.

 

I get that Danerys being a baddie by the end was obvious but why pull the trigger with one episode left? If you’d done this a season ago then you’d have so much more build up and it would actually mean something when Arya kills her next week. Instead, someone who turned heel a week ago will get killed and folk are supposed to care.

 

Everyone debates who will get Cercei in the end and it’s...a few rocks. Yippee.

 

They also don’t seem to realise that there’s only so many times you can watch random extras get burnt to a crisp before you stop caring. Dany is bad, we get it, please move on.

 

I love Arya as well but her getting battered senseless over and over and over and over and over again but then being sad because folk she met 10 mins ago got killed. Christ.

 

As for the Clegane battle, I enjoyed it mostly. They both die fighting each other was quite predictable though and it was sad that the Hound had to die in fire. Should have just pushed Mountain into the flames and died laughing due to his injuries.

 

They’ve made a mess of this final season and it’s painfully obvious when you go back and watch episodes from the first few seasons. I think the white walkers were the main appeal of the show and the idea that people have to unite with unlikely allies to save their species. Instead they focus on Dany, the least interesting character in the whole show.

 

Disappointing.

 

Edit - I forgot one; Arya slowly but surely gets turned into a ruthless assassin, who will stop at nothing to get revenge on those who have wronged her family. She kills the Night King, she’s the biggest badass in Westeros...but Hound tells her it’s not safe and she should go home and she says “ok” and leaves. Staggeringly bad writing/storytelling.

[DC92]

2 hours ago, quickoverayard said:

Not sure who ends up on the throne but im punting for bran.

 

1 hour ago, quickoverayard said:

So im going for Danny to be killed, Jon to refuse the throne and bran to be appointed.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

22 minutes ago, the_bully_wee said:

...When the Kings Landing bells rung out, I - though others may disagree - wasn't sure quite what she was going to do. My personal feeling was that she would light the entire place up, but there was a doubt there which made the eventual outcome all the more brutal. 

Think that was all pre-arranged with Grey Worm at the meeting on Dragonstone we caught the tail end of and her taking off after the bells was the signal he would know when the time comes to run amok like the forces of an invading foreign conqueror rather than those of a returning rightful ruler. Main question now is whether she even lasts long enough to execute Tyrion and which Westerosi will take her out Jaime Lannister and the Mad King style.

[Gianfranco]

Like others are saying, this season has been far too rushed. Killing the night king should have been a season and the last war a season. Dani flipping it didn’t quite feel right because of the rush.

We had some major deaths tonight. I genuinely thought our Hound was about to have his guts ripped out or his eyes popped Oberyn style. What a guy.

I take it the end was meant to make us believe Jon is dead? It was definitely his sword Arya saw before getting on the horse.

[The Other Foot]

Phenomenal. GOT finally back to winning ways after three pish seasons. 

 

Daenarys and dragon to be killed in the ruins of Kings Landing by that green fiery stuff NAP

[DC92]

50 minutes ago, the_bully_wee said:

It's been very funny seeing all the really odd and creepy 'stans' of specific characters, in last night's case Daenerys, utterly outraged about what's going on. How thick do you seriously have to be to wilfully ignore the clear deterioration of her character and her descent into madness? She has been power-mad for some time now, and has pretty much only ever cared about sitting on the throne at any cost. Her advisors in Jorah, Varys and Tyrion have consistently talked her down from making dreadful, tyrannical decisions in the past - and even then, that hasn't stopped her at times. This has been nailed on from fairly early on in her arc, in my opinion, and folk claiming that her heel turn was lazy writing or a deeply misogynistic cop-out on the writers' part is just hilarious.

So why did she destroy it after she'd already won? It made no fucking sense.

Oh, I forgot. She's MAD now.

[King Kebab]

 

[Savage Henry]

Like others are saying, this season has been far too rushed. Killing the night king should have been a season and the last war a season. Dani flipping it didn’t quite feel right because of the rush.

We had some major deaths tonight. I genuinely thought our Hound was about to have his guts ripped out or his eyes popped Oberyn style. What a guy.

I take it the end was meant to make us believe Jon is dead? It was definitely his sword Arya saw before getting on the horse.

I genuinely wasn’t invested enough in the ashes and ruins to notice that. Arya’s arc is over, I reckon.

Assuming Tyrion gets his comeuppance somehow next week, I’m assuming Jon’s going to either kill or be killed in what may be a terribly banal ending.

[LongTimeLurker]

16 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

...Edit - I forgot one; Arya slowly but surely gets turned into a ruthless assassin, who will stop at nothing to get revenge on those who have wronged her family. She kills the Night King, she’s the biggest badass in Westeros...but Hound tells her it’s not safe and she should go home and she says “ok” and leaves. Staggeringly bad writing/storytelling.

Thought the point there was that Clegane finally acted like the father she has needed emotionally since Ned died and she snapped out of the assassin mindset as a result and went back to being a wee lassie again. Thought Maisie Williams sold that quite well in acting terms.

[the_bully_wee]

2 minutes ago, DC92 said:

So why did she destroy it after she'd already won? It made no fucking sense.

Oh, I forgot. She's MAD now.

Well, I doubt she gives a solitary f**k about the physical form of the throne like some in the kingdom seem to. She's wanted to rule Westeros from the outset and, to me, it seems like most of the good deeds she's done were to show everyone that she is a 'good Targaryen', as well as the rightful heir to the throne. She knows Jon, knows how much he's loved and respected throughout the land and yet finding out that he has more of a claim than her only made her wish to assert even more his subordination to her. It'll be very pleasing if she's offed next week (Jaime would be my preference, although a massively outside bet rn) and the social media meltdown from her stans will be supremely savoury. 

[Poet of the Macabre]

Thought the point there was that Clegane finally acted like the father she has needed emotionally since Ned died and she snapped out of the assassin mindset as a result and went back to being a wee lassie again. Thought Maisie Williams sold that quite well in acting terms.

She did brilliantly, the switch to looking young and innocent was amazing.

Still made no sense though. That’s literally *all* it took? A short pep talk?

I’m all for most of the things that are happening, they’re just all happening far too quickly. Dany is all for Team Good Guy after Battle of Winterfell and then she’s committing genocide before the end of the next episode? It’s just daft.

[highlandcowden]

I really cant see how Jamie would survive even if the roof hadn't fallen on him-did you hear his breathing after euron banjoed him,got him in the lung I reckon.

liked eurons closing line,he went out well

[the_bully_wee]

24 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Ok, that episode was actually rather dull and also made little sense.

It was many things, but I don't think dull is one of them. It contained one of the most shocking turns of the entire series with a character who could rightly be optimistically perceived as a (for once) fair leader of the people torching thousands for virtually no reason, and fulfilling her family's prophecy of being fucking raving pyromaniacs. And also Jaime's prophecy of being deeply in love with his bat-shit sister. 

I get that Danerys being a baddie by the end was obvious but why pull the trigger with one episode left? If you’d done this a season ago then you’d have so much more build up and it would actually mean something when Arya kills her next week. Instead, someone who turned heel a week ago will get killed and folk are supposed to care.

What sort of build-up, though? If there was a full season of it then it would be a massively, needlessly and nonsensically drawn-out affair. I doubt anyone other than the unsullied are with her now and I don't see at all how they could have written it for everyone to have feasibly turned against her before now, with things remaining anywhere close to how they now are.

Everyone debates who will get Cercei in the end and it’s...a few rocks. Yippee.

It depends on what you're after but I quite like complexity in my characters and, although she's a monster, Cersei hasn't always been a complete psychopath. If she has died alongside Jaime (I don't think it's totally impossible for her to have survived, given how some other things have played out) then I think it's a good ending for them both, showing both Jaime's flaws and the progressively-more-unseen human side to Cersei.

They also don’t seem to realise that there’s only so many times you can watch random extras get burnt to a crisp before you stop caring. Dany is bad, we get it, please move on.

There were certainly plenty of incineration scenes but they served a purpose in highlighting that she genuinely did want to torch the entire city rather than just merk some of it and its population.

I love Arya as well but her getting battered senseless over and over and over and over and over again but then being sad because folk she met 10 mins ago got killed. Christ.

A character showing compassion. What madness will they think of next?

As for the Clegane battle, I enjoyed it mostly. They both die fighting each other was quite predictable though and it was sad that the Hound had to die in fire. Should have just pushed Mountain into the flames and died laughing due to his injuries.

I'm no doctor, but I think it's far more likely that Sandor will have died from the multiple-hundred-foot drop before he even felt the heat of the fire on the ground.

They’ve made a mess of this final season and it’s painfully obvious when you go back and watch episodes from the first few seasons. I think the white walkers were the main appeal of the show and the idea that people have to unite with unlikely allies to save their species. Instead they focus on Dany, the least interesting character in the whole show.

There are lots of things they could've done better, but I wouldn't call it a mess. Different folk will have different ideas of what the 'main appeal' is; to single out Dany is odd when there have been many significant plot lines running concurrently throughout the entirety of the show. Only in this season has it properly started to unify.

Disappointing.

Edit - I forgot one; Arya slowly but surely gets turned into a ruthless assassin, who will stop at nothing to get revenge on those who have wronged her family. She kills the Night King, she’s the biggest badass in Westeros...but Hound tells her it’s not safe and she should go home and she says “ok” and leaves. Staggeringly bad writing/storytelling.

I'm not sure what you really want from the show, but it would be pretty damn boring for me if characters only developed to a point and underwent no further development or change. Over the last wee while we've seen her engaging in some of her first human acts since she witness her father's execution, from reunions with her siblings and The Hound to her romantic conquest with Gendry. It was clear that Cersei was going to die, in any case, and Clegane made that clear to Arya while showing care for her survival.

 

[Poet of the Macabre]

Last night’s episode was Game of Thrones directed by Michael Bay.

Absolutely fine as mindless entertainment but mindless nonetheless.

[JamieStevenson]

Anyone catch Jaime's hand grow back last night? 

[LeeVanTeeth]

I'm not sure about the mechanism that allows that dragon to produce all that fire but hopefully he gets a rest next week, that was some shift he put in.

Was talking to my daughter earlier on and she and all her pals seem to think that Bran will end up on the throne. Surely this is unlikely as it would please no one.

I'll go for Sansa, who is everybody else going for? Nail yer colours to the mast.

[HoBNob]

37 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Thought the point there was that Clegane finally acted like the father she has needed emotionally since Ned died and she snapped out of the assassin mindset as a result and went back to being a wee lassie again. Thought Maisie Williams sold that quite well in acting terms.

 

20 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

 

She did brilliantly, the switch to looking young and innocent was amazing.

Still made no sense though. That’s literally *all* it took? A short pep talk?

I’m all for most of the things that are happening, they’re just all happening far too quickly. Dany is all for Team Good Guy after Battle of Winterfell and then she’s committing genocide before the end of the next episode? It’s just daft.

 

The past few weeks she's been wavering a bit with regards to the assassin role, even at the battle of winterfell you could tell she was having some iffy thoughts about it. 

 

Just went back and rewatched the last bit, are we saying this is Jon's sword?