246 replies to this topic

[Greyjoy67]

Qhorin subtly told Jon what to do.

Maybe it was too subtle, being a TV show and all, but I guarantee his motivations will come up again. There were quite a few nitpicks I had with with Ep10, but this was fine.

[turdle]

Versiroth, on 04 June 2012 - 10:46 AM, said:

They just showed what Jon and Qhorin had talked about in the "previously on GoTs" and Qhorin told Jon that he must do what needs to be done.  He did as Qhorin instructed.

and jon put it all together once his sword was in qhorin's belly. unless they have a scene next season where jon indicates otherwise, i have no reason to think jon simply wasn't tricked into killing qhorin.

[Tadco26]

The question is what did they really gain by changing it?  Other than cutting Ghost, they could have stuck to the original storyline with roughly the same amount of screen time and budget.

Have Ygritte escape Jon rather than be recaptured.  Jon meets back up with Qhorin who tells him that the other rangers were killed by wildlings.  Have Qhorin tell Jon that he must do anything asked of him talk.  Move the fight up before episode 9, and then move Jon and Ygritte walking thru the snow together as fellow wildlings rather than as prisoners for their "bonding" moments this episode and still end with them looking down on the camp about to go meet Mance.

[Versiroth]

turdle, on 04 June 2012 - 10:50 AM, said:

and jon put it all together once his sword was in qhorin's belly. unless they have a scene next season where jon indicates otherwise, i have no reason to think jon simply wasn't tricked into killing qhorin.

That's not what happened at all.  

- Qhorin tells Jon that one crow in Mances army is worth how ever many outside.

- Jon tells Qhorin that they'll never trust him.

- Qhorin tells Jon that they will if he does what needs to be done and then pushes him down screaming that he's a traitor.

- Qhorin attacks Jon all the while calling him a turn cloak/traitor/etc.

- Jon does as Qhorin instructed.  He did what needed to be done.

Just because Qhorin didn't say "Kill me Jon" doesn't mean it wasn't heavily imply that he wanted Jon to do something extreme in order to get in with the wildlings.   It was obvious that Jon knew what Qhorin was doing.

[Versiroth]

Tadco26, on 04 June 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

The question is what did they really gain by changing it?  Other than cutting Ghost, they could have stuck to the original storyline with roughly the same amount of screen time and budget.

Have Ygritte escape Jon rather than be recaptured.  Jon meets back up with Qhorin who tells him that the other rangers were killed by wildlings.  Have Qhorin tell Jon that he must do anything asked of him talk.  Move the fight up before episode 9, and then move Jon and Ygritte walking thru the snow together as fellow wildlings rather than as prisoners for their "bonding" moments this episode and still end with them looking down on the camp about to go meet Mance.

The only thing I can figure is that because Ygritte will play a larger part than Qhorin in the series that they wanted more time with her over him.

[turdle]

Versiroth, on 04 June 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

That's not what happened at all.  

- Qhorin tells Jon that one crow in Mances army is worth how ever many outside.

- Jon tells Qhorin that they'll never trust him.

- Qhorin tells Jon that they will if he does what needs to be done and then pushes him down screaming that he's a traitor.

- Qhorin attacks Jon all the while calling him a turn cloak/traitor/etc.

- Jon does as Qhorin instructed.  He did what needed to be done.

Just because Qhorin didn't say "Kill me Jon" doesn't mean it wasn't heavily imply that he wanted Jon to do something extreme in order to get in with the wildlings.   It was obvious that Jon knew what Qhorin was doing.

obvious? please. i've watched it twice and at no point is it obvious that jon is on the same page. i'm giving the show the benefit of the doubt by saying that jon understood once he had already killed qhorin, but that look on his face could just as easily be the shock of knowing he had just murdered his fellow crow.

i agree qhorin did those things, and because you and i KNOW what qhorin is doing, we know what he wants. but i'm pretty sure jon snow has not read the song of ice and fire novels, so he has to put what qhorin says together in his head by himself, and the earliest that appears to happen is when long claw is siting inside qhorins belly.  jon seems legitimately angry when he is insulted, and it his rage seems to be the legitimate cause for him killing qhorin.  all it would have taken was one shot of jon seeming to recognize the weight of what qhorin was doing before he killed him for me to be on the same page, but it never happens.

[Tadco26]

Versiroth, on 04 June 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

The only thing I can figure is that because Ygritte will play a larger part than Qhorin in the series that they wanted more time with her over him.

Yes but doing it as I described would have given her exactly the same amount of screen time, it just would have been in this episode where she and Jon walk together and "get to know each other", with Jon having killed Qhorin in episode 8.  In fact her flirting with him would have actually made more sense if they were companions rather than captor/prisoner.

[victim]

After a second viewing I've decided I like what's happened here. Sometimes there is a need for ambiguity in television shows, would people seriously prefer it if they shoved exactly what was going on down our throat? I watch with a few non-readers, and they all understood it was a ruse devised by Qhorin. Jon proved himself, which is a major moment for the character given the liberties they took with his storyline this year.

Edited by victim, 04 June 2012 - 11:22 AM.

[turdle]

Tadco26, on 04 June 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

Yes but doing it as I described would have given her exactly the same amount of screen time, it just would have been in this episode where she and Jon walk together and "get to know each other", with Jon having killed Qhorin in episode 8.  In fact her flirting with him would have actually made more sense if they were companions rather than captor/prisoner.

i do prefer your scenario, but i think her flirting made enough sense in that she's trying to get him to let his guard down so she can escape. but again, what you suggest would have been a better direction for the show.

[Ser Elfor the Landstander]

Yeah, they really destroyed Qhorin's character in the show.

Jon's path is more or less the same (there are some deviations), but Qhorin was a much cooler character in ACOK. He only "lost" that fight with Jon because of Ghost (where is that direwolf, anyways?). And Jon learned a lot from their intense conversations before the fight.

It's a waste, but he's gone now.

[Howdyphillip]

turdle, on 04 June 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

i agree qhorin did those things, and because you and i KNOW what qhorin is doing, we know what he wants. but i'm pretty sure jon snow has not read the song of ice and fire novels, so he has to put what qhorin says together in his head by himself, and the earliest that appears to happen is when long claw is siting inside qhorins belly.  jon seems legitimately angry when he is insulted, and it his rage seems to be the legitimate cause for him killing qhorin.  all it would have taken was one shot of jon seeming to recognize the weight of what qhorin was doing before he killed him for me to be on the same page, but it never happens.

All of these things are very good points. I believed almost exactly the same way upon viewing the episode. I truly thought that the character of Jon Snow had been ruined, and that he had just murdered The Halfhand. It seems that this is an interpretation that I had because I was a book reader, and it was spelled out to us in a completely different manner.

The fact of the matter is that every single TV viewer that I have spoken to knows that Jon and Qhorin had a plan to do this. There is not one person that I have talked to that thinks the way that you or I were afraid of, so the show has not changed Jon's character in this regard.

[Crown]

Qhorin looked like an idiot on the show, I don't like that.

[Aegnor]

In the show Jon kills Qhorin because he was angry that Qhorin called Ned a traitor and his mother a whore. That is what comes across. Jon is a murderer and a traitor to the Night's Watch. I believe this is the worst mistake they have made in the adaptation, by far.

I'm not quitting the show, as I have a year to rewrite the scene in my head and pretend a scene exists where the Halfhand orders Jon to kill him.

[The Smiling Eye]

turdle, on 04 June 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

obvious? please. i've watched it twice and at no point is it obvious that jon is on the same page. i'm giving the show the benefit of the doubt by saying that jon understood once he had already killed qhorin, but that look on his face could just as easily be the shock of knowing he had just murdered his fellow crow.

i agree qhorin did those things, and because you and i KNOW what qhorin is doing, we know what he wants. but i'm pretty sure jon snow has not read the song of ice and fire novels, so he has to put what qhorin says together in his head by himself, and the earliest that appears to happen is when long claw is siting inside qhorins belly.  jon seems legitimately angry when he is insulted, and it his rage seems to be the legitimate cause for him killing qhorin.  all it would have taken was one shot of jon seeming to recognize the weight of what qhorin was doing before he killed him for me to be on the same page, but it never happens.

You're making something  out of nothing. Your argument holds no water. Jon understood perfectly well what Qhorin conveyed to him and it showed after he disarmed Qhorin, he took a second to gaze at him as a farewell before running him through. Had he really been angry, there would have been no hesitation and it might have even been a gruesomer death.

Qhorin conveyed to Jon that he needed to kill him, and Jon did so. This part of the story can not be argued. The part that can is the believability of him actually defeating the Halfhand in combat, without Ghost.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Morvran, on 04 June 2012 - 10:36 AM, said:

They should know better than to expect viewers to remember what amounted to a throw-away scene from a couple weeks ago where Qhorin gives Jon the "instructions" on how to carry on forward with the wildlings.  They needed to have a final order from Qhorin to help make sense of their little battle.

But viewers did remember it.  It seems odd for people to criticise a scene for creating "confusion" among viewers, when it seems that the viewers themselves understand exactly what happened.

The real complaint here isn't that the scene was "confusing", because both readers and viewers understand why Jon did what he did.  The real complaint is by readers who wanted it to play out exactly as it did in the books, and are using a bogus "it was confusing to viewers" argument to justify that.  If you are mad that it didn't play out exactly as it did in the books, fine.  But to raising the false argument that people were confused, when they really weren't, is wrong.

[Cheese Pudding]

The problem wasn't the fight, Qhorin needed to make it real enough so that the Wildlings could believe in it. The problem was the lack of communication between him and Jon. He said what he needed to do, but much of the nonreaders were like "wtf"

[Versiroth]

Aegnor, on 04 June 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

In the show Jon kills Qhorin because he was angry that Qhorin called Ned a traitor and his mother a whore. That is what comes across. Jon is a murderer and a traitor to the Night's Watch. I believe this is the worst mistake they have made in the adaptation, by far.

I'm not quitting the show, as I have a year to rewrite the scene in my head and pretend a scene exists where the Halfhand orders Jon to kill him.

It's hilarious to me that non-book readers got that the whole thing was a set up and a ruse, but some book readers now think Jon is a crow murdering turncoat....  

Qhorin said those things to make the fight believable.   Jon knew that Qhorin did not really think he was a traitor.

[SerMixalot]

Does anyone believe that Jon Show is the type of character to stand up to Stannis and Melisandre, beat the Thenns and defend the wall against Mance?

[victim]

In episode 8, Qhorin and Jon are having a nice peaceful chat (well, a nice secretive whisper) before Qhorin starts yelling at Jon. There is no way Jon didn't realise what was going on as they were talking calmly and then a second later it was "Oh, I hate you and I want to kill you." Puhhhlease!

[Howdyphillip]

SerMixalot, on 04 June 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

Does anyone believe that Jon Show is the type of character to stand up to Stannis and Melisandre, beat the Thenns and defend the wall against Mance?

Uh... Yes... Resoundingly... Jon Snow is still a Marty Stu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue