Television Game of Thrones (TV) • The watch has ended

Sylar said:
Rating the last two seasons depends on how you do it imo
If you rate it Vs the earlier seasons it's not as good which I agree with
If you rate it Vs season 5 it's still better (season 5 was ok but just a big fat slog to get through until we get to hardhome)

These last two seasons have defo been rushed which means it's progressed way too quickly from a to d instead of a to b to c to then d.

If you compare these last two seasons to most nearly everything on TV or netflix it's really really above average imo. It's still a fantastic spectacle and some of the story is still good. Not everything is nonsense like euron. In a show with a magic element I don't get why they didn't just say he's found a way to hide himself whilst at sea manipulating water and fog or some shit. Anyway..

I do think this show has defo raised battle expectations (will take a long time for it to be matched on TV).

Given they worked their way backwards I'm expecting a good finale. I just hope it delivers something satisfying and doesn't end with everybody saying "that's it?"
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Yeah, I'd agree with this.

I also think there's a lot of over-rating of the earlier seasons going on. They were interesting because the whole thing was such a novelty, compared to previous television series. But there was a load of really boring exposition and random, pointless, episodes. Unless you were already invested in the books and thrilled to see various characters you already cared about up on the screen. For the rest of us there was a lot of "Another new character with a hard to remember name. Feck's sake" moments.

Basically, the whole thing has been great fun while also being relentlessly silly. From day one. Which makes the po-faced breakdowns of the most recent few episodes a little hard to take seriously.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, I'd agree with this.

I also think there's a lot of over-rating of the earlier seasons going on. They were interesting because the whole thing was such a novelty, compared to previous television series. But there was a load of really boring exposition and random, pointless, episodes. Unless you were already invested in the books and thrilled to see various characters you already cared about up on the screen. For the rest of us there was a lot of "Another new character with a hard to remember name. Feck's sake" moments.

Basically, the whole thing has been great fun while also being relentlessly silly. From day one. Which makes the po-faced breakdowns of the most recent few episodes a little hard to take seriously.
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I agree. I've not minded the pick up of pace it had to end somewhere and I found the books a bit too slow as well.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, I'd agree with this.

I also think there's a lot of over-rating of the earlier seasons going on. They were interesting because the whole thing was such a novelty, compared to previous television series. But there was a load of really boring exposition and random, pointless, episodes. Unless you were already invested in the books and thrilled to see various characters you already cared about up on the screen. For the rest of us there was a lot of "Another new character with a hard to remember name. Feck's sake" moments.

Basically, the whole thing has been great fun while also being relentlessly silly. From day one. Which makes the po-faced breakdowns of the most recent few episodes a little hard to take seriously.
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I think this is a fair point, certainly most of the people I’ve talked too who are the most critical tend to be fans of the book, myself included.

I do think there’s been a drop in quality over the last few seasons though, the people I work with haven’t read the books and most of them are a bit disappointed.
 
Cascarino said:
I think this is a fair point, certainly most of the people I’ve talked too who are the most critical tend to be fans of the book, myself included.

I do think there’s been a drop in quality over the last few seasons though, the people I work with haven’t read the books and most of them are a bit disappointed.
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I have read the books and I still, broadly, like the show quite a lot. There are elements I've disliked, but that is to be expected. The books are highly flawed too and I found the sprawling nature of the last two novels in particular quite irritating. I like both mediums, see them as distinct, and that is despite the flaws that exist.
As an aside, I like the way that both the TV show and books, in different ways, don't follow traditional screenwriter class character arcs (the strict adherence to which has irritated in many adaptations including, for instance, the generally well done but occasionally perplexing LOTR Jackson adaptation) and that, in many ways, feels more realistic to me.
 
Finally got around to watching it last night - It was a good episode, enjoyed most of it despite it being quite dumb at times.

- Enjoyed all the Tyrion stuff... thought his scene with Jaime was great, as were his reactions to everything that was going on.
- Mostly enjoy the Arya stuff too - though It was a bit silly that they got within 50 yards of Cersi and then they decided to have a chat... would have worked better and had the same impact had they done it whilst they were inside the Keep... but thats a minor quibble. Her running through the streets and everything was excellent - even if she did inadvertently kill a ton of people (though lets be honest, they'd have died anyway)
- I don't really buy that Danerys would go that bat-shit crazy... I mean i have liked her slow decent into madness, but this ramped it up a bit too much - though I get they didn't really have time to build it anymore.
- Plus she has always been a bit evil to be fair - I mean this is a woman who free'd a slave army - only to then command them to be her army (but as free men? I mean does that really work?)
- And anyway, I buy it more then Jon Snow's transformation into feckless, pointless idiot.
- As for the dumb stuff... Could have done without that Euron/Jaime fight.. that felt like something out of a completely different show.
- Why did only like two of those scorpions decide to fire at that dragon? Last week they were all getting arrows away... this week only like two of them get a shot away and he destroys them all in a matter of minutes?
 
Petition for remakes is gathering steam...laughed it when it was low hundred thousands, now it's creeping up to 1,000,000
 
Lot of talk about Dany asking Drogon to burn Jon and whether Jon is fireproof .

Does anyone think Jon might be immortal now since he came back from the dead ?
Would explain the amount of times he should have died in battle since . Arrows constantly missing him not drowning or freezing to death under ice how something always saves him just when it looks he is doomed .
 
Parents who named their children "Daenerys" or "Khaleesi" what are they thinking right now? :lol:
fecking idiots deserve it. Poor those kids though, they're going grow up with people mocking them. Statistically, kids with unusual name tend to do bad in school
 
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fallengt said:
Parents who named their children "Daenerys" or "Khaleesi" what are they thinking right now? :lol:
fecking idiots deserve it. Poor those kids though, they're going grow up with people mocking them. Statistically, kids with unusual name tend to do bad in school
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I love it. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
People are so weird. OK so the season has been hugely shit from a writing standpoint and is totally nonsensical, but do they actually believe that they'll see a petition and go 'oh yeah ok, we'll do it all again!'.

It's the dumbest shit ever. What kind of power do they think a fecking online petition has.
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Liverpool fans should have the answer to this.
 
Any criticisms of this show can now be off-set by the fact that Ser Davos... the doctor of onions himself, made it until the very end.

What a hero.
 
kouroux said:
I don't have exact stats but it's not tough to imagine it being above 50% (there are numbers floating arounf regarding GOT being the most illegally viewed TV show of all time)
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Well it is most popular show of all time so of course it is going to be most illegally viewed regarding numbers only.
 
The Cat said:
Got 79 in the quiz - got the coin one wrong.
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:eek:

I got 72 and I thought I did pretty well. I got the coin one wrong too.

I still can't get over Jamie and Tyrion just completely brushing over the fact that Cersei tried to kill them a few weeks earlier. If you remove that scene, which is just an empty one to give Bronn some screentime and to throw the audience with some misdirection, then maybe Jaime going back to her works a little better. If they keep that scene and have Jaime kill Cersei then it wouldn't have been such a waste of time.
 
Annihilate Now! said:
- Why did only like two of those scorpions decide to fire at that dragon? Last week they were all getting arrows away... this week only like two of them get a shot away and he destroys them all in a matter of minutes?
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I don't have an issue with the Scorpion bit (this episode - the previous "sneak" attack was not well done I feel and whilst I get what they were trying to do, it just felt too easy), as maneuvering massive ballistic weapons to hit a moving target that is deliberately adopting tactics making it hard to hit and requiring constant readjustment (attacking from the sun, coming from below, attacking from behind or the side, changing direction and profile regularly) makes more sense to me. If you're waiting to get a good shot, which given reload times you would be, it'd be very hard to hit an evasive and aware dragon (and the fact I've just typed that ridiculous sentence has hit home that I'm thinking about this far too much).
 
Ish said:
great video.
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kouroux said:
I thought so too. Perfectly mirrors my view
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That video really just vindicates what happened. Loads of hints in earlier seasons that she's capable of brutality. Which is an obvious risk when you have someone who comes from a family of people known to go crazy. They even set that up in this season, with the stuff Varys said about tossing a coin.

Then we have her endure a bunch of traumatic events and boom, she loses it. As in, has a full on breakdown. And full on breakdowns don't occur gradually over several months/years. In real life too. Look how often you hear about families/friends of people who suddenly murder their whole family - or commit school shootings - saying they were nice, normal people who they couldn't ever imagine doing such a terrible thing.

The storyline here is someone we know is capable of extreme brutality literally losing their mind in front of us. And - all things considered - we can't reasonably complain it was unexpected.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
Aye. Jon Snow killed a kid, but he's not mad nor are there any signs of him going mad. He did a horrible thing but he did it because it was justice.

Daenerys has done horrible things but she's done them to people who committed atrocities (slavery, plotted against her etc) and not simply for the sake of it. All of her decisions have been justifiable as someone who is in her position.

Heck, even Ned Stark chopped off a terrified guys head because he deserted the Night's Watch, but I doubt he was a bad day away from melting civilians just for happening to be there.

Like I've said before, Daenerys actively aiming to pick off fleeing civilians was OTT and clearly was done for shock value, it made little sense at all. Had she melted the Red Keep and caused thousands of deaths as a result it would still have been an atrocity and made sense (we could have had her still trying to justify it next episode) whilst remaining believable to her character. At no point has she deliberately slaughtered completely innocent lives (literally just refugees) out of completely misplaced revenge.

She had the source of everything which had hurt her (Cersei) waiting in the Red Keep but decided to stop to burn peasants. Why? It's not even like it hurts Cersei who she knows does not care about the common people.
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Other characters have done one or two "bad" things, Daenerys has served her own brand of justice since the beginning, that was the whole point of her scene with Barristan: the mad king thought he was justified too when he burned people alive. Since season two she has screamed about how she'll take what is hers with fire and blood and that she will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground.. who do you think lives in cities? She even told Hizdahr that if she burned his city to the ground the sacrifice aka the lives of innocent humans would be worth it. People were just blind to it because they still see the poor girl from season 1 who was raped and who lost her husband and child, if her story started right in the middle of it people would be a lot less sympathetic.

The scenes at the feast and post-feast with Jon and the scene with him on Dragonstone show exactly why she did what she did. She gets mad that the man she claims to love has friends, that he has the people's love but that he's also one of them. She wants to have an adoring public and be placed on a pedestal which is what she had in Essos where she was literally carried around by a crowd of POC and stood above them all in her pyramid, with Riefenstahl imagery and all. She sees how Jon reacts to her and says "fear it is," that's the choice she made. She expected to be seen as a saviour by the people of King's landing and the people of Westeros, she expected them to bow down to her like others did because she has dragons or can step out of fire, she expected others to bow down to her because she's special but instead she sees that these people will never love her, they're running scared from her, they don't see her as a saviour so she might as well make them fear her, that's the whole point of the series: how do rulers choose to rule? Through fear or through love? And how does this affect those they lead? This is the reason why Roose Bolton and Tyrion Lannister get murdered by their own children, they don't inspire loyalty, they inspire fear. In season 7 she said that fear got Aegon the Conqueror far and Tyrion even said she shouldn't want to be like Joffrey, Tywin and Cersei and she barely listened and then only because she wanted to bang Jon Snow. The worst thing about this storyline is that they had to kill Missandei for it when Dany has already shown and said what she's capable of before she even experienced any loss. George RR Martin has even praised a series of essays that's exactly about Dany's story in Meereen and how she slowly loses her humanity and that the ends justify the means for her. It's going to be the same in the books except he might take more time for it to get to this point but the writers of the show chose to do a 6 episode final season.

The worse thing they did is never offer a sympathetic point of view from the people in Essos who opposed her, that's why people have this misguided idea about her or can only see her as the saviour and are surprised she'd do something like this. They see her killing the "bad guys" but everyone's a bad guy in the eyes of their enemies and nobody sees themselves as the bad guys.. This is one of the most foreshadowed things in the books as well as the show and people act shocked. The point is that she lost her humanity and will do whatever it takes to seize and keep power and if she has to kill innocent civilians to do it she will, if she has to rule through fear she will. It's just a shame that every other character arc had to suffer to tell this story. It's been the Dany show for two seasons now and all other characters had to make way and suffer for this plot. People have been waiting for the Starks to reunite for 6-7 seasons and the only thing we got was barely two scenes of them together and then the moment they learn that Jon Snow is actually Aegon Targaryen and their cousin, that their father lied to them their whole lives, gets cut off. This life changing reveal for these three characters (Bran already knew) isn't even shown and instead it's about Dany and how she feels about it, instead of how Jon feels about his life being a lie. The last scene in Winterfell is probably the last time we'll see all four Starks together and that's all we got after waiting for 7 seasons because it all had to make way for Dany's descent and whatever bs "plot twists" they've concocted.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
That video really just vindicates what happened. Loads of hints in earlier seasons that she's capable of brutality. Which is an obvious risk when you have someone who comes from a family of people known to go crazy. They even set that up in this season, with the stuff Varys said about tossing a coin.

Then we have her endure a bunch of traumatic events and boom, she loses it. As in, has a full on breakdown. And full on breakdowns don't occur gradually over several months/years. In real life too. Look how often you hear about families/friends of people who suddenly murder their whole family - or commit school shootings - saying they were nice, normal people who they couldn't ever imagine doing such a terrible thing.

The storyline here is someone we know is capable of extreme brutality literally losing their mind in front of us. And - all things considered - we can't reasonably complain it was unexpected.
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I don't complain that it happened, just like the youtuber doesn't really either, how fast and sudden it all felt it basically the biggest issue.
Going from point A to B with Dany was their target, they needed her to be the last villain of the show and took a big shortcut to get there
No issue with the destination, just how fast we got there
 
kouroux said:
I don't complain that it happened, just like the youtuber doesn't really either, how fast and sudden it all felt it basically the biggest issue.
Going from point A to B with Dany was their target, they needed her to be the last villain of the show and took a big shortcut to get there
No issue with the destination, just how fast we got there
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Like I said, though, in real life these things can happen overnight. So why can't it happen in fiction? If it had happened completely out of the blue then maybe peopled could complain about Deus Ex Machina but - as the video points out - we know we're dealing with someone who is a) capable of immense cruelty and b) genetically predisposed to completely losing the plot. Both of which were made absolutely clear long before this episode came out.

And something else that is kind of admirable about the writing is that it's actually in keeping with the tone of the whole show. It's always been about subverting expectations and trying to avoid stereotypical good vs evil tropes. So the fact that evil uber bitch Cersei ends up weeping about how she just wants to do what's best for her baby, while the blonde haired, blue-eyed heroine torches a gazillion people is actually quite a classic GoT moment.

The final episode will be interesting, mind you. Do they write her as a someone who has gone completely mental? Or do they have her try to rationalise what she did?
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
Like I said, though, in real life these things can happen overnight. So why can't it happen in fiction? If it had happened completely out of the blue then maybe peopled could complain about Deus Ex Machina but - as the video points out - we know we're dealing with someone who is a) capable of immense cruelty and b) genetically predisposed to completely losing the plot. Both of which were made absolutely clear long before this episode came out.

And something else that is kind of admirable about the writing is that it's actually in keeping with the tone of the whole show. It's always been about subverting expectations and trying to avoid stereotypical good vs evil tropes. So the fact that evil uber bitch Cersei ends up weeping about how she just wants to do what's best for her baby, while the blonde haired, blue-eyed heroine torches a gazillion people is actually quite a classic GoT moment.

The final episode will be interesting, mind you. Do they write her as a someone who has gone completely mental? Or do they have her try to rationalise what she did?
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No matter how I try to "rationalize" it, how fast it all happened will always bother me. Oh well, time to finish this disappointing season now
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Cersei ends up weeping about how she just wants to do what's best for her baby.
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Isn't that a load of bullshit though? Surely whats best for the her baby was for her to send as many people to the North to help fight the dead? Isn't that a huge character flaw then? Instead she threatened to kill Jaime for doing just that. Her reasoning for not sending troops was to play the long con and if the North was defeated then "well, we'll be dead." instead of trying to maximise their chances of defeating the dead by grouping together? She started off the show being a mother and all of her actions were done to protect her children, in Season 5 that stopped even when Tommen was still alive. She started to care more about the Lannister name than her actual child, not wanting to sacrifice herself for Tommen and instead blew up the Sept to protect herself and get revenge. She then waves off Tommens death as him being weak. It's why the end of her character didn't fit for me. It was less about "oh my baby is going to die" and more a case of "oh i've lost and now i'm going to die".

I think they have to commit to her being crazy now. That's her snapping and there's no way back.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
And something else that is kind of admirable about the writing is that it's actually in keeping with the tone of the whole show. It's always been about subverting expectations and trying to avoid stereotypical good vs evil tropes.
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Same with Jamie. His fans just seem embittered that he didn't become a goody to me.
 
RedSky said:
Isn't that a load of bullshit though? Surely whats best for the her baby was for her to send as many people to the North to help fight the dead? Isn't that a huge character flaw then? Instead she threatened to kill Jaime for doing just that. Her reasoning for not sending troops was to play the long con and if the North was defeated then "well, we'll be dead." instead of trying to maximise their chances of defeating the dead by grouping together? She started off the show being a mother and all of her actions were done to protect her children, in Season 5 that stopped even when Tommen was still alive. She started to care more about the Lannister name than her actual child, not wanting to sacrifice herself for Tommen and instead blew up the Sept to protect herself and get revenge. She then waves off Tommens death as him being weak. It's why the end of her character didn't fit for me. It was less about "oh my baby is going to die" and more a case of "oh i've lost and now i'm going to die".
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It's not about her rationally doing what's best for her baby. That's not the point. It's about subverting the classic Hollywood trope of the one dimensional evil queen. So far this season, she was being potrayed as a very stereotypical cartoon baddie. So making her seem human again in her very final scene in the show was a twist that was very much in keeping with the whole GoT vibe. Which has always been about trying not to have the same sort of formulaic goodies and baddies you get in most other fantasy films. Which, ironically, seems to be the elements of the plot this season that has annoyed the more obsessive fans the most!
 
Cersei's end was suitably pathetic. A blubbering, panicking mess. She deserved it and I enjoyed it. Bitch killed Margaery, the true Queen Westeros needed!

As for her baby, you always knew she loved Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella more than anything but this child was used more as a chess piece, manipulating Jaime and Euron with it.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Same with Jamie. His fans just seem embittered that he didn't become a goody to me.
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I'm more miffed that his decision to go North after finally unshackling himself from Cersei (which was a massive moment for his character) had no real payoff. He goes North, kills some wights (doesn't do anything substantial in the battle), knights Brienne and then fecks her. I guess it's this issue with the speed of the story again. It's also his character giving a speech on his deathbed which conflicts with his most emotional moment in the show. Him returning to Cersei fits his character well, I don't think he was ever going to have a happy ending.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It's not about her rationally doing what's best for her baby. That's not the point. It's about subverting the classic Hollywood trope of the one dimensional evil queen. So far this season, she was being potrayed as a very stereotypical cartoon baddie. So making her seem human again in her very final scene in the show was a twist that was very much in keeping with the whole GoT vibe. Which has always been about trying not to have the same sort of formulaic goodies and baddies you get in most other fantasy films. Which, ironically, seems to be the elements of the plot this season that has annoyed the more obsessive fans the most!
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That to me just seemed like a last minute attempt to save Cerseis character and erase the previous two seasons worth of shit cartoon villain writing. Personally I didn't see that as a 'twist' I saw that as an eye roll moment. One of those shitty episodes in Walking Dead when a character is going to die and they share one of those "touching moments" before being killed 5minutes later.
 
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