Game of Thrones, continued

[LuckyNumber7]

Almost like they needed two more episodes, yeh?

 

[anitram]

It was beyond brutal. That council scene was the worst thing I've seen on this show, I had secondary embarrassment just by watching it.

The only reason that it's "just" bad as opposed to "shockingly" bad is that we've been conditioned by the preceding 5 episodes to expect the worst. They sure delivered.

I really don't know how they could have made it any better. If we're looking at the finale in isolation then maybe having Tyrion make a hard choice and order Jon Snow executed in the name of the bigger picture would have been somewhat more satisfying. Jon Snow was a joke this season anyway, the least consequential of all characters. Again, it wouldn't have fixed the 984 other problems, but could have possibly helped a bit. Generally speaking in terms of S8, I actually wasn't one of the people who minded that they dispatched with the Night King so quickly. I mean I didn't love it, but ok, I always saw this as a story about the games/wars/politics of men (and women) and the Night King was a side story in that bigger arc. So kill him early and finish that plot line, maybe that could have worked with competent writers. Not these two, though. It's as if they gave up and had no idea how to wrap up the show after that. In that sense it was a massive mistake what they did - they should have gone in reverse order, deal with Cersei and then the Night King afterwards. At least we could have ended on a super bloody note, with way fewer survivors, and all of Westeros pretty much reduced to ashes so they have to rebuild.

Anyway, even having said all of that, it wouldn't have made much of a difference since things had been going sideways for way longer than this last season. It's a bad taste to leave in the mouths of fans. And truthfully I would not recommend this show to somebody who hasn't seen it because it's just not one of those "watch the first 4 or 5 seasons and then stop" things like say The West Wing or Lost or ER or whatever. You really want to and need to see what happens to the characters. Except in this case you don't.

 

[lazarus]

Generally speaking in terms of S8, I actually wasn't one of the people who minded that they dispatched with the Night King so quickly. I mean I didn't love it, but ok, I always saw this as a story about the games/wars/politics of men (and women) and the Night King was a side story in that bigger arc. So kill him early and finish that plot line, maybe that could have worked with competent writers.

Actor Who Portrayed The Night King Recalls Challenge Of Playing Character With No Purpose

it's just not one of those "watch the first 4 or 5 seasons and then stop" things like say The West Wing or Lost or ER or whatever. You really want to and need to see what happens to the characters. Except in this case you don't.

I think most people wanted to see what happened to the characters in Lost. You can't just hang around for most of the ride and then be like ok I'll check out now. Those other two shows are considerably more situational, even though they do have character arcs as well.

 

[LemonMelon]

I think the aspect of the episode that I found most annoying was Dany's three-day transformation from a firebrand, to a genocidal killer who snapped, and finally to a remorseless dictator. Deep down, I had hoped there would be some guilt or at least self-reflection after pushing herself far beyond any reasonable moral code, but I guess she just outright became Cersei. I mean, that certainly plays to the cheap seats. It's difficult to miss the parallel. But holy fuck is that dumb and an enormous simplification of her character arc.

A woman who once locked up her dragons for killing a child wouldn't wipe out a city full of innocent civilians and put her own soldiers in the path of destruction and just laugh it off later. That's ridiculous.

 

[cobl04]

What other choice did they have? Her development into a monster is probably palatable in the forthcoming books. They didn't have enough time to explain it well enough.

 

[LemonMelon]

What choice did they have to make her seem more sympathetic and reflect the behaviors of an actual person? Almost anything else would have been better. Instead of spending 30 minutes of the last two episodes riding glowing white horses and stumbling around the rubble of King's Landing, give a fucking POV character some internality. Let us know what she's thinking. That takes a minute or two, tops. A few scenes if they really wanted to flesh it out.

Apparently it was a creative decision to have Dany go AWOL for much of episode 5 in order to help the audience experience "the horrors of war" through the eyes of characters we don't care about. Genius. Back up the Brinks truck, Disney. D&D is poised to save Star Wars and you can't let them slip through your fingers.

 

[lazarus]

Actually, I thought her conversation with Jon was odd in that she seemed to be level-headed in most of her reasoning and not overly emotional. One would think she was back to normal the way she was talking, until she got into the "they won't have a choice" stuff that caused Jon to take action.

They already fucked up her character arc but you'd think she'd be completely out of her mind for good after burning down the entire city. Like her fascist speech to the troops make sense, and then when she's alone with Jon at first she seems like good ol' Dany again.

But this is also testament to how hard Emilia Clarke was trying to sell the shit sandwich she was given. She really deserves an Emmy just because of that thankless task.

 

[LemonMelon]

No, I'm with you. Her level-headed delivery mere hours(?) after burning a city to the ground is what strikes me as oddly cold-blooded for her character. Or, as I worded it, remorseless. I too would think she would be a mess in that situation.

Not Emilia Clarke's fault, of course, it was a directorial choice that simply wasn't borne out well beforehand.

 

[Irvine511]

Another thing they skimmed over was the conflict with Grey Worm. He goes from slaughtering people in the street to being cool with them choosing a Stark ruler and going on vacation?

right?

otherwise, i thought it was pretty to look at much of the time. that's about it. it was totally fine.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

Yeah and since all the Unsullied and presumably the Dothraki were leaving Westeros what exactly was the point of banishing Jon to the Wall?

Overall there were a lot of pieces I enjoyed from this season but there was just no time to breathe or allow for character development so I am left felling very meh about the whole thing. I really hope I get better closure from the books.

 

[gump]

I really don't know how they could have made it any better. If we're looking at the finale in isolation then maybe having Tyrion make a hard choice and order Jon Snow executed in the name of the bigger picture would have been somewhat more satisfying. Jon Snow was a joke this season anyway, the least consequential of all characters. Again, it wouldn't have fixed the 984 other problems, but could have possibly helped a bit. Generally speaking in terms of S8, I actually wasn't one of the people who minded that they dispatched with the Night King so quickly. I mean I didn't love it, but ok, I always saw this as a story about the games/wars/politics of men (and women) and the Night King was a side story in that bigger arc. So kill him early and finish that plot line, maybe that could have worked with competent writers. Not these two, though. It's as if they gave up and had no idea how to wrap up the show after that. In that sense it was a massive mistake what they did - they should have gone in reverse order, deal with Cersei and then the Night King afterwards. At least we could have ended on a super bloody note, with way fewer survivors, and all of Westeros pretty much reduced to ashes so they have to rebuild.

Anyway, even having said all of that, it wouldn't have made much of a difference since things had been going sideways for way longer than this last season. It's a bad taste to leave in the mouths of fans. And truthfully I would not recommend this show to somebody who hasn't seen it because it's just not one of those "watch the first 4 or 5 seasons and then stop" things like say The West Wing or Lost or ER or whatever. You really want to and need to see what happens to the characters. Except in this case you don't.

I'm with you in that some of the greater character arcs were not fixable in these last two seasons. Like, why did they treat Bran as a non-entity for several if this was the supposed end of the story? It makes no sense.

I didn't care much for the plot development, but I would have lived with a sub-optimal resolution of the Night King/Cersei fights if at least they had delivered on the character front. But I feel they ruined both dimensions.

Jon's character was so fucked up by B&W. For me, the best moment in the entire series was the Tower of Joy revelation at the end of Season 6. Any normal series would have made that storyline the heartbeat of the show through its end (which I assume/hope is what GRRM will do). But Jon became a caricature of himself since then, and the whole lineage story only served as a cheap plot device to create tension with Dany/isolate her. It's unthinkable that it was not mentioned during the dragon pit meeting.

They could have taken some small decisions that would have helped. Instead of having Tyrion/Bran banish him to the wall, they could have made it so that it was Jon's choice to abdicate his succession rights and go into exile. That would have been truer to his character. I don't even understand why they decided to go that way.

 

[lazarus]

Agreed on all that. And in that case, why couldn’t he had gone off with Arya? It’s not like they would run into any Unsullied or Dothraki, let alone any who would recognize him.

Not as poetic as seeing him return to his origins, but also not as unnecessarily bleak. The guy still deserves to be with some of the family he sacrificed everything for.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I genuinely don’t understand why his fate was necessary. He has a rightful claim and she was mad.

 

[nielsgov]

I've just started watching season 1 again. My word, there's just no comparison with season 8. The worst part about these final 2-3 seasons that just aimed at having unexpected, spectacular moments is that it made everything so inconsequential. I just didn't care for the characters anymore. I'm happy that I can still care for them when rewatching older seasons.

 

[bono_212]

I didn’t open the thread.
View attachment 12295

This is what shows when you post something to a topic without some buffer text or a spoiler tag.

The way you can avoid this is by either using a spoiler tag or just rambling for a sentence or two before mentioning something. A spoiler tag will generate the “[emoji85]” emoji as a preview to the post in the mobile app.

In general I agree, don’t open the topic if you haven’t seen the show. But also remember 9 PM EST is 2 AM GMT (I’m currently GMT right now or BST or whatever the heck it is here) etc. etc., so across the pond or out in Australia (god knows what time it is there), people haven’t seen prime time yet and won’t until their following prime time comes along. Well, Aussies might get daytime opportunity, I don’t know.

Fwiw, if I recall correctly, even with a spoiler tag what's in the text box show up unless they finally fixed that.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I think it was finally fixed with the monkey emoji [emoji85]

 

[bono_212]

Oh good. I got some stuff spoiled for me by that glitch back in the day and I was... Not thrilled.