Frances Bean Corbray

MODIFIED MCSHANE SCORING SYSTEM PRESENTS: GAME OF THRONES S8 EP6 AKA PART 73 OF 73 AKA "....um, okay" Were there dragons? Was there a dragon? Yes and it was arguably the highlight of the episode? Were there there tits? No. Edmure Tully IS a tit, yes its true, but that's not the kind of tits we're talking about here and besides he'd only be one even if he did count. STARTING BASELINE: 5 out of 10 In honor of Seasons 7 & 8 and their alacritous pace, I am going to RUSH THROUGH THIS Peter Dinklage puts his Emmy Pants on one last time as he excuses himself [refusing Jon's offer of an armed escort] to go through the rubble of the keep, past the floor map and the hand's chambers, down through the secret pathways, past the dragon skulls, and into the depths and the rubble, and he breaks down when he sees a glimpse of Jaime's metal hand. He unearths just enough rubble to confirm both his siblings are dead, and has a nice breakdown. +1 GREAT shot of Drogon's wings flapping behind Dany that makes it look like they're her wings as she addresses her conquering army, exclusively in High Valyrian, getting everyone hype to stay on the conquering warpath and spreading THE REVOLUTION (fuck this staying and ruling shit). I'm quite cool with this. It's about the best path to take now that they're committed to rushing through to this end point and making Dany as nutso as possible. Going all High Valyrian and leaning into the foreign conqueror and not really caring much about the Iron Throne now that she's actually got it, and also implicitly threatening Winterfell & The North as part of her upcoming Burn It Down World Tour 300AC. Tyrion resigns as hand dramatically as Dany has him arrested for treason. Jon lurks around being a dour wallflower. Arya shows up and informs Jon re: Dany that "I know a killer when I see one" and tries to get Jon to leave, or at least not go off on another classic Jon Snow Heroic Suicide Mission, but you know our boy Jon. +1 Jon and Tyrion have a chit chat in Tyrion's cell where Jon tries to give Dany the benefit of the doubt but Tyrion breaks it down and does his best to tell in one 4 minute speech what the show could have shown us about Dany's descent into believing in her own manifest destiny and fanaticism. Jon quotes Maester Aemon ["Love is the death of duty"] which is nice. Jon know what the right thing to do is, he just knew he needed to have Tyrion talk him into it. +1 for more Dinklage Emmy Pants It really is too bad that we got such a late, such a fast-tracked, and such an abrupt heel turn for Dany because Clarke is really, really good as delusional wingnut Dany. Especially considering how much the interviews she's done lately seem to imply she personally didn't enjoy the Season 8 script. Really good stuff from her, wish she'd gotten to do more of it. Dany stands in the ruined throne room, staring at the Iron Throne [never actually sitting on it btw, which I like given she's already got her mind on the next conquest], and immediately rambling to Jon when he shows up about Viserys, and everything she's heard about the swords melted to make the throne, and breaking the wheel and making the world a better place and it's okay because they (inc. Jon but mostly it's a she) actually do know what's right. So it's okay for her. Y'know, every authoritarian's rationalization ever. Anyway Jon says "you will always be my queen" for the 500th time and FINALLY our boy Jon has learned some deceit, as he shanks Dany while hugging her, and lets her down to the ground gently as she bleeds out and dies with nary a whimper. +1 for Clarke selling Fanatic Dany as best as one could given the time constraints. -1 for the TV stab and easy death, like humans die on contact with a blade as easily as White Walkers. Remember Season 3? How slow and bloody and violent Jeor Mormont's death was when he got stabbed? Yeah. Microcosm of how the tone of the show has completely shifted once past the source material. DROGON MVP. WONDERFUL JOB depicting a make believe CGI animal's rage and grief. The bit where it tried to nudge Dany's body to make her move again was gorgeous. Drogon melts the Iron Throne completely (yay), grabs Dany's body in one talon (the left one, if you care about such things) and flies off to Parts Unknown with her. Great Shit, even though they wasted a little time trying to get us to buy into Drogon attacking Jon. Once it didn't happen right away you knew it wasn't (and besides, he's a Targaryen too). +2 for Drogon being so real. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but like the whole of the show itself, the first half is way better than the latter half. Most internal logic flew out of here in Drogon's other claw w.r.t. The Council Of Lords to pick a new king. We follow still-imprisoned Tyrion as Grey Worm leads him to the Dragon Pit where the convention is going down. Grey Worm yells at Tyrion to not talk anymore. Tyrion goes on to do quite a lot of talking anymore. (-1) Jon's absence is immediately raised as an issue and then quickly dismissed as an issue by some hasty handwaving. Sansa reminds Grey Worm that hurting Jon would be a bad idea given that the city is surrounded by Northmen. So I guess Jon confessed and the Unsullied arrested him alive rather than just killing him (or Tyrion for that matter?) on the spot. "Hey yeah uh Dany flew off on Drogon I dunno where she is but she totally left me in charge until she gets back" is the easiest lie in the world to tell here. Not that our boy Jon lies. But he did finally learn to sneak attack, so maybe? This should have been SHOWN, either way. Grey Worm could use a little explaining here instead of just looking like RRRGH HATE YOU NOW BUT NOT KILLING YOU FOR I DUNNO. -1 -1 LOL THE DOTHRAKI SPONTANEOUSLY DESPAWNED APPARENTLY. I do love how "everybody" came back for the council of lords. It was nice to hear Royce get to speak, the Generic Prince of Dorne looked suitably Dornish, Little Robin Arryn was there and he ain't so little no more. Yara is there being angry and getting a token pro-Dany statement. Would've been nice to have her mention her little brother, either resentful that he died for The Starks or being more pro-Stark out of respect for his memory. Arya threatens to silence her for good if she keeps talking shit. Boy we're off to a good start aren't we? Sam is there, Brienne and Davos are there, I think Gendry is there but the camera never focuses on him for long enough for me to be sure, some unnamed other lords are there, EDMURE TULLY IS HERE HOLY SHIT Y'ALL. And he gets to start the proceedings with a rambling, pointless speech puffing himself up that goes nowhere and never gets to the point because Sansa tactfully gets him to sit down and shut up. +2 for Edmure being back and as much of a dingus as ever. Episode needed the laugh. Meera Reed is NOT here, which seems a glaring omission considering this scene eventually becomes All About Bran (-1). After Edmure, Sam stands up and proposes Democracy. Everyone laughs him out of the room (well not literally but he's done talking). Eventually Tyrion, talking despite Grey Worm saying he can't talk anymore, suggests Bran, bringing up the whole stories and memories and wisdom thing that got dropped (along with Bran) after the Night King's early and ignominious exit. Sansa gives no fucks and straight up spoils that Bran can't have children. Tyrion says this is good because bloodline kings suck and we should do this council shit to elect a king from here on anyway. Bran is elected more or less unanimously though Sansa is all NORTHERN INDEPENDENCE YO. Yara and Generic Dornish Prince sitting over here like "wait, that was an option? Dang." Tyrion is named hand, which Bran frames as punishment/atonement "he'll spend the rest of his life fixing his mistakes" to placate Grey Worm. And along those lines, Jon is exiled to The Night's Watch which somehow exists again, and everyone just ignores that The Wall has a big ol irrepairable hole in it (also there's no White Walkers it needs to keep out anymore). Grey Worm is just whatever because he's on the plot rails and wants to get out of here. The last we see of him is scowling one last time at Jon and loading up all the Unsullied on a voyage to Naath. -2, one for each water bottle on the set. SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK. It's the last week of school and everyone's on summer vacation already. Teary goodbyes from all The Starks (well, not Bran, he's actually got a little smirk going), and Arya gets on some bullshit about going west of westeros because Okay, I guess? No buildup to this. Just some whatever shit. It's not like you have to write her out of the rest of the episodes, this IS the last one. -1 for Leif Ericsson Arya coming out of left field. Bran's small council convenes. Lord Bronn of Highgardren, Hand Tyrion (still no mention of whether he's Lord Of Casterly Rock or not BTW), Grand Maester Samwell, and Master Of Ships Davos Seaworth. Kingsguard L.C. Brienne is there too. Oh and Pod's in the guard which is kinda whatever considering his whole character now boils down to Magic Dick Man. He wheels Bran in and out. Anyway the council immediately sets to squabbling about what repairs to pay for first and how. I guess that's the bittersweet ending. All that shit and all that death and humanity's back where it was, arguing over petty shit without an existential threat to make everyone come together and focus on the big picture. Oh and Sam busts out Archmaester Ebrose's history of recent events, of course called A Song Of Ice And Fire. The gag being that Tyrion's basically not in it. Eyeroll. Anyway this is just tying up a lot of bows. I DO LIKE that Bran is smirking as Pod wheels him out, giving us just that little hint that maybe he's not so unemotional and detached after all, maybe he was Playing (and Winning) The Game his own way, after all. Hope so, as a lot of stuff makes more sense if he is. +1 Brienne fills out Jaime's entry in the Chronicles Of The Kingsguard. She is tactful and discreet about the whole thing between her, and Jaime, and Cersei. Is faithfully accurate about the rest. Necessary scene, executed competently. Right length, right beats, etc. Completely satisfied with the knot on this loose end. +1 So Jon goes to "The Night's Watch" which of course is actually all Wildlings. Tormund is there and everyone fucks off into the wilderness behind them. Jon's "punishment" isn't a punishment at all; Jon is effectively King-Beyond-The-Wall, which does explain why Goodbye really does seem to be Goodbye with Sansa and Arya. Jon's got what he actually wants (presumably). So basically Bran pulled another fast one on Grey Worm and whatever pro-Dany lords there were out there. Though I'm not so sure, given how fast reliable information travels in Westeros now, that it makes sense that nobody would go "hey, wait a minute, I thought there wasn't a Night's Watch anymore on account of them all getting killed defeating the thing they exist to fight" but whatever. Jon's got Longclaw, HE PET GHOST THIS TIME OMG YES, and he's got BFF Tormund, and I guess Jon's happy ever after. +1 for FINALLY PETTING GHOST Sansa's Crown Of Winter is pretty cool, I guess. BRAN DIDN'T WARG DROGON OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER WTF -1 ARYA DIDN'T STEAL A FACE ALL SEASON LONG WTF -1 House Stark rules the continent though. King Jon Beyond The Wall, Queen in the North Sansa, and King Bran of the southern 6 Kingdoms. But they'll all implicitly never see each other again. Que Triste. FINAL SCORE: 6 out of 10 Some good stuff, but could've been a lot better and a lot of potential seems [now forever] untapped. The symptoms of rushed writing manifest just about everywhere. The shit with Arya going west feels transparently and cynically STAY TUNED FOR THE SEQUEL/SPIN OFF, and King Bran feels pretty WTF though it would probably be less so had they not been so stop and start with him all along (really wanted ONE cut to him and his eyes turning blue during the closing Stark Exodus Montage, or even just rolling back white and finding/controlling Drogon. Even a "Ha Ha I won" laugh or smirk or ANYTHING. And as "TV"ish as it is for people to gratuitously call each other by name when they're just talking I really wish they had done more of it during the council of lords since several folks (Edmure, Robin) were showing up for the first time in a long time, and some of those people were entirely new. Who are they, where are they there? One of them being Old Howland Reed would've been a very good touch (and he could've vouched for Bran on his daughter's behalf if they couldn't get the actress to show up and be Meera at the council, though they should have if they could have). Feels weird to have it actually be over. I do want more than we got, even if towards the end I tended to only like about half of what we were getting. If only they'd taken a little more time. Oh well.

MODIFIED MCSHANE SCORING SYSTEM FOR: GAME OF THRONES S8 E5 aka EPISODE 72 OF 73 aka "DING DONG" were there dragons? was there a dragon? Yep. Were there tits? No, not really, unless topless Frankengregor counts. Starting baseline: 5 out of 10 Pour one out for Missandei. It was very bold of the Tits and Dragons show to kill off the best remaining pair of tits on the show. I choose to remember the good times, like when she revealed the gender-neutral nature of Valyrian pronouns in a very forced and ham-fisted way, like the producers were speaking through her and passive-aggressively including one last bit of book content. Or the time Ser Davos randomly started hitting on her and they turned Westeros' favorite Grandpa into Creepy Inappropriate Uncle Man. Or the time they aged her up so the Dany/Missandei bedwarming scene wouldn't be Creepy As Fuck but they ended up chickening out on doing it anyway. Ah well. Moving on... Varys seems resigned to his own death. One of his little birds reports in, and we quickly realize a poisoning attempt has gone awry because Dany is on hunger strike. Varys began this bit with some letter writing and the camera focuses on enough words to let us know that Varys is getting the word out to the whole seven kingdoms about Jon Snow. Welp, he's all in, ain't he? Not sure why the merman is suddenly tired of paddling and the consumate survivor is now gung-ho about dying for the cause, but here we are. Tyrion and Dany. Remember, folks: nothing says "crazy" like a woman no longer wearing makeup. Anyway, Dany's "paranoid" rambling is actually an astute and 100% accurate assessment of the situation: Jon blabbed to Sansa and Sansa blabbed to Tyrion in the hope Tyrion would blab to Varys and others and foment dissent among Dany's ranks and that's exactly what you did you little dummy. It's never spelled out if Dany's not eating because she knows some shit is up of if that's just supposed to be part of the mad with grief over Missandei thing. Anyway, Varys takes his rings off and burns his last letter before being arrested. Astute viewers have pointed out this is so his signet ring will go unmelted and can be used to verify his letters about Jon posthumously. Anyway Tyrion and Varys have a touching tender moment as Tyrion admits he ratted him out to save himself. Varys hopes he's wrong and deserves this, but the tone of his voice says he doubts it. Connleth Hill was a very good Varys and it's such a shame they really stopped giving him stuff to do once they ran out of source material to adapt. Dany asks Varys what time it is while Drogon emerges from the gloom and answers "4:20, time to BLAZE IT." Tyrion and Jon watch Varys burn. +1 for the fond farewell. Jon has shown up and reaffirmed his loyalty to Queen Dany for about the 400th time in the last couple weeks. He comes in on the tail end of a convo between Dany and Grey Worm, conducted in Valyrian, and we're given subtitles and its framed like its significant. Dany bemoans that the people do not love her, only fear her, but they love Jon. So she tries to play Come Into My Castle with her tongue and Jon's mouth one last time, but Jon ain't having it. "You're my queen." "Is that all I am? I guess it's fear then." This was really good, and the often-panned Emilia Clarke is doing a good job of playing broken down and nuts. It's just a shame they waited so long to start doing this and are rushing through to the end result. Game of Thrones, for all its great props and good costuming and wonderful music and even good acting, is still being written like it's a term paper due tomorrow morning. +1 The goodbye scene between Tyrion and Jaime is BEAUTIFUL. Wonderful enough for me to look the other way on the silly TRANSLATION HUMOR between Tyrion and the Unsullied guards to set it up. Oh and Jaime even fucking being here in the first place. Jaime now claims not to give a shit about the people of king's landing even though the whole essence of his character is that he chose their lives over his honor way back when. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT. But laying out Tyrion's emotional motives for putting his own neck in the noose w.r.t. Dany by springing a prisoner is done so well and these actors are so in-tune with their characters after all this time that this scene deserves a +1 anyway. Arya and The Hound join the bum rush and just barely get inside the gates before they close specifically because they pushed a woman and little girl out of their way. HAHAHAHA. Jaime misses the cutoff and has to take the long way around. +1 The battle is on. Dany uses the sunshine as cover (holy shit would you look at that sensible tactics! This show has missed you so much, sensible tactics, never run away from us like that again!). The Ninja Inverse Power Principle applies to dragons and the scorpion ballistas: now that Drogon is solo, dragons are basically invincible again, while the mass number of scorpions makes them all useless. The cannons are cannon fodder. Ha ha, it's irony! Ha ha? Ha? Ugh. Look I tried, okay? Dany makes short work of what's left of the Iron Fleet and the Lannister troops on the ramparts don't fare any better. Meanwhile, The Golden Company starts flexing like they're actually gonna accomplish shit in this show, and lines up outside the city walls. NO, SENSIBLE TACTICS, WHERE ARE YOU GOING PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME AGAIN I'LL BE GOOD THIS TIME I SWEAR! Anyway, Captain Harry Strickland gets his Cosplay Jaime on [I love the idea of Cersei hiring a guy who kinda looks like Jaime, its a good callback to Lancel] one last time before Dany blows out the walls from behind with dragonfire after which Jon & Grey Worm lead the charge. The regenerating Dothraki ride over everybody save for a bloodied and stumbling Strickland, who quickly gets finished off by Grey Worm. I am stunned -- STUNNED, I SAY -- that Captain Strickland did not survive to the end of Game Of Thrones +1 for this battle shaping up to be the one sided ass-whipping it always should've been, though it begs the question of why they bothered having the goodguys fritter away their army in The Battle For The Dawn and several instances of dumb tactics for the sake of plot to make Cersei look like she had a chance. CLEGANEBOWL was pretty good. Having The Mountain lose some of his Darth Vader armor so we could see the grotesque monster underneath was a necessary beat. Sadly, no Nedhead or anything super freaky like that, just some greenish Frankenskin. The best part was Qyburn being oddly fond of Cersei one last time and suddenly, ruthlessly, paying for it with his life when he tries to give Frankengregor an order and gets his head smashed against a wall gruesomely for his effort. Make a mistake and pay for it. Remember when Game Of Thrones was full of that? Anyway we get your standard human vs. zombie fight. There's a torch mounted on a half-broken wall and I _REALLY_ wanted that to play into the finish the way they kept leaving it in the shot. Having Sandor win by burning his brother the way his brother burned him to start this whole mess would've been poetic. But we got a good "stabbing Gregor through the eyeball does nothing" spot and a nice callback spot where Gregor does the same eyegouge that he did when crushing Oberyn's skull. Eventually Sandor makes the decision to tackle Gregor over the edge and send both men plummeting to their deaths, sacrificing himself to take his brother out. We'll call it a draw. I'm good with this. Qyburn's death might have been the highlight of the episode. +1 At one point Arya is running through the carnage and the rubble to give us that Horrors Of War feel and she runs into an extra that kinda looks like Gendry. I think it's the recurring walk-on they used for Alton Lannister way back when. Anyway, having Arya run into a Gendry lookalike is a wonderful touch and does a way better job of what I think they were trying to do with Arya than most of what they ended up doing with her in this episode. +1 for Doppelganger Gendry. Grey Worm eventually says "fuck it" and spears a surrendered Lannister soldier signalling that the rout and rampage is on. I actually kinda like the idea that Dany worked out a deal beforehand with Grey Worm to say Fuck This Surrender Bullshit we wiping these punks off the map, and that this was what their secret Valyrian convo was about. Since for all Tyrion's pleading that "the bell tolling means the city has surrendered to you" Dany treated it with a Yeah Whatever and I think (I should rewatch to confirm) she never quite actually agreed to go along with that. It'd salvage this whole thing if Dany went in never having intent of accepting a surrender. +1 All right. Let's get to the dumb shit. Euron vs Jaime. Jaime karate chopping Euron in the throat with his gold hand was excellent. The rest of this was a stinker. You know, I've been watching "blind" reaction videos on youtube from people who are just now getting into the show and starting with Season 1, so I'm seeing stuff like the Ned/Jaime fight again and boy the contrast between show the and show now is STRIKING. One spear wrecks Ned's knee forever. Now? Jaime gets stabbed in half his organs and it ceases to mean anything once the fight is over. Euron's lines are all clunkers. I really wish this guy had gotten more to work with than the Captain Jack Sparrow shit he got, and if a couple interviews are any indication so does he. -1 for stab wounds not mattering outside of actual combat. Jon stops one northern troop from committing one rape. Ask Mirri Maz Dur what the fuck that's worth. Okay we get it JON GOOD DANY BAD. Stop hitting me over the head with it. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. Arya almost dies but then she doesn't. OKAY WE FUCKING GET IT, SHOW. GEEEZUS. Look, if you stopped at one death fakeout, some people might actually buy into it. Textbook example of Diminishing Returns. The more fakeouts they go for the more obvious it becomes that they don't have the guts to actually pull the trigger on killing Arya off. Which is too bad because actually killing someone who really matters might have been the one way to close the gap and make Dany's rushed heel turn actually take in spite of it all. They also do some dumb shit with A PALE HORSE HAHA GET IT DEATH RIDES A PALE HORSE that takes way too fucking long for Arya to finally get on the thing and ride away. It's like they're stalling just to make this be an 80 minute episode. Also, while having Arya say goodbye and thank you to The Hound by finally calling him by his real name of Sandor was a nice little nugget of warmth, and I dug it as a detail, it's really not enough to offset how dumb and "characters serving the plot" it is to have them wait to have the "don't be like me, save yourself" convo NOW as the Red Keep is crashing around them and it by rights ought to be too late than, say, you know, AT ANY DAMN POINT DURING THE HUNDREDS OF MILES OF RIDING FROM WINTERFELL TO KING'S LANDING. It's not like Sandor didn't know why she started following her in Episode 4 in the first place. They clearly just wanted Arya to be there to run through the rubble but not be a casualty. Arya is _probably_ my favorite of the main characters bookside, and when this show started I was so hype and had Maisie Williams penciled in as the one sure bet among the new/young actors to come out of this Game Of Thrones gig as the superstar of tomorrow. And boy has this show kicked me in the balls repeatedly for having that sentiment. Arya was the first character to get victimized by the dialogue writing getting really bad. She hasn't quite gotten as bad a stinker as "BAD PUSSY" but it has not been for lack of shoddy effort on Benioff and Weiss' parts. Woof. Anyway, Arya suddenly has MATERNAL INSTINCT now and you can probably hear the dull fluttering click of my eyelids trying to do barrel rolls as Arya runs around trying to convince women and children to GET TO THE CHOPPAH! NOW! to little avail. I swear, if this is all just to have Arya be "WAIT I WANT BABIES AND TO BE A MOMMA NOW" and that's her pretext for getting back together with Gendry I'm gonna puke blood, and I hope Woke Feminist Twitter doesn't blow it's wad on Dany and has some outrage left in the barrel for _that_ rough beast lumbering towards Bethlehem to be born next week because I have a bad feeling they're gonna need it. -3 for all sorts of irritating shit. Jaime and Cersei run to the escape dinghy but the rubble has cut them off. They're stuck. They die together as shit collapses all around and on top of them. That sound you hear is the mother of all Wet Farts rumbling its way through a mummer's intestinal tract. NOW, if the result of this is nobody finds the bodies and Dany concludes they escaped, AND she resolves to hunt them and their baby in a mirror of King Robert's hateboner for her and Viserys back when we started, I can dig this. If Dany does the math and decides this is Tyrion's final straw and she has him killed, or even just tries to have him killed, that'd be cool. The show needs to go all in on selling the Dany heel turn and anything that can be used to sell it should be. But, on it's own, there's just something underwhelming about this, and maybe that's the point but man it just seems that so much of what they did with Jaime ended up not mattering and it really sucks that such an effective acting performance got squandered on what became such an inconsistently written character. And I don't mean inconsistent so much in terms of behavior but, like, inconsistent in the sense of they changed their mind on their vision for the character constantly, and it got dragged along for a bumpy ride on Plot Beat Road as a result. If book Jaime matters as much to you as book Arya does to me I bet you're PISSED right about now. And you should be. And boy does Brienne look like a chump now too. Knighting was the perfect denouemont. 'Shipping them was a mistake. One of them should've died against the White Walkers and this all would've been better (and then the Walkers would've had an actual effect too, wouldn't THAT be nice?). -1 But, really, this whole episode is about Dany, and hoping you the audience buy into the sudden heel turn. All the eggs are going in this basket. And unfortunately, the basket was placed half-hanging over the edge of a really large table and all this weight caused it to fall over and now we've got a bunch of cracked eggs and cleaning the carpet is going to be a chore and a half. Why didn't we put the basket in the middle of this big ass table? We had the room! There's lots of reasons to rationalize Dany going over the deep end. There is, theoretically, a lot of hints even going back to watching her brother die and not giving a fuck that Dany has had this in her all along. But, here's the problem. Everything from Viserys to Mirri Maz Dur to Pyat Pree to Xaro Ducksauce & Doreah to Kraznys to The Slavers Of Astapor to the Second Sons not named Daario to crucifying the slavers of Yunkai and Mereen to feeding that one dude to her dragons to melting The Tarlys was always framed as "WOO HOO BADASS!", contrary to the spirit of the books w.r.t. "righteous" vengeance. Also, they all Had It Coming. Even Varys at the start of the episode. They all crossed her first. The framing of the show has always presented this stuff as COOL. We've been expected to cheer Dany for roasting people even as Stannis' burning people was [rightly] cast as Pretty Fucked Up, man. But now we're expected to think The Tarlys and Varys were A Bridge Too Far and now we're supposed to boo her, even though Arya fucking up the Freys and doing morbid shit like baking Lothar and Black Walder into a pie is still presented as COOL. So, no, it hasn't really been hinted at since Season 1 because the hints weren't framed as such. Maybe if she'd killed Varys earlier on. Maybe if Dickon hadn't volunteered but Dany roasted him anyway. Maybe if Barristan had lasted longer and been able to give more WTF looks at some of this shit. Maybe if she'd never forgiven Jorah, channeled some Stannis, and gone like "yes you did all this great emotional journey to come back to me and you are doubtlessly 100% loyal to me now, and I appreciate it, but you did double cross me once and that must never be forgotten. DIE." Like, just imagine if Jorah had survived the white walker battle only to get executed in a fit of paranoia NOW when everyone else is turning on her and she decides "well he did it once, best not give him a chance to do it again, the Mormonts have always loved the Starks". Maybe if she'd tried to "accidentally" kill Jon during the White Walker battle. Maybe, even, if she'd gone straight for the Red Keep and nuked Cersei along with it, and that had set off the wildfire caches and made the first wave of civilian casualties accidental. And have her initially disgusted but frantically shifting blame and denying culpability (and responding to that criticism by doubling down, lashing out, and killing more.) Instead, it was framed like Dany flips out when she hears bells, specifically, and she started actively targeting civilians (when even Dany at her most furious has _never_ done before) and consciously avoiding The Red Keep [so that Cersei has time to run away]. This deserved to be set up better, and to have a slower, better paved road taken to it. Clarke is actually a lot of fun as Crazy Dany and it's just too bad we didn't get more of a chance to savor the descent. Maybe one great expository speech next week from Dany will pull us out of this nosedive. But it's gonna take a lot. Waiting until the penultimate episode to rush the turn is really hurting what could've been one of the most memorable TV moments ever. I want to love the Dany heel turn. I want to revel in the horror of it, see it coming a couple episodes away. It should be the last top level gut punch, like Ned's beheading or The Red Wedding. Reaction videos should be people screaming and crying and calling GRRM a sadist. Instead it's more "oh well they finally did it" and the reaction videos are "WTF". Like Stannis suddenly being in an eager hurry to burn Shireen because that was his next plot point, Dany going trigger happy on civilian targets without a sufficient explanation because She Needs To Be A Badguy Before The Last Episode is a really jarring shift and the foundation work wasn't adequately done, and it doesn't feel earned. And it's worse here because at least Stannis' extremes were always framed by the show as "hey this is actually a pretty bad dude" but with Dany the show has repeatedly framed her as a sympathetic hardass but NOW says "yeah all that stuff we told you to cheer? You should've been booing actually." And it underscores just how rushed and contrived the plot has been in the last couple seasons. Big -3 for not sticking the landing. FINAL SCORE: 5 out of 10 Stop me if you've heard this one before, but it looked and sounded gorgeous but made little sense if you forgot to turn your brain off before viewing. There were good nuggets here and there but the continued frustration of this show being so close to still being good yet deliberately not taking that last step, not paying that bit more attention to detail, just rushing through the plot points and not caring to stop do the homework that makes them cogent and emotionally gratifying. There's a dozen little things that could've been done in this episode, or even in the last couple, or even a couple years go, and the big punch would've landed. But they weren't and they didn't. And that's way more frustrating than if the show were just straight trash from top to bottom. I mean, even these goofy reviews of mine are actually starting to feel like work [and I'm cutting the corner of a second viewing] What does that tell you? NEXT WEEK: It's finally over.

Well. We WERE warned....

Strickland being Cosplay Jaime was a tremendous little touch. Euron's blood eye logo on the scorpions [which I didn't notice first time around] too.

Man. I really thought Captain Harry Strickland was gonna make it.

MODIFIED MCSHANE SCORING SYSTEM PRESENTS GAME OF THRONES, SEASON 8 EPISODE 4, "Last of the Starks" aka "Who left the fucking Starbucks cup on Dany's table?" Were there tits? ALMOST but not quite. Were there Dragons? Yes, although it appears we'll have to change this category to "was there a dragon" going forward. Starting Baseline: 5 out of 10 The funeral was some good shit. Dany crying and whispering to Jorah's corpse one last time. SANSA CRYING AND PINNING A DIREWOLF PIN ON THEON look if you didn't get at least a trickle of tear over that then you need to sense a raven to your therapist. Similar shots of Sam at Edd, Arya at Beric, and Jon at little lady Mormont. Jon gives a solid and dare I say kingly sounding modification of The Night's Watch eulogy. Then they torch everyone which I'm not sure is absolutely imperative now that the Walkers are gone for good (and Theon in particular should've gotten buried at sea?) but whatever, it looks cool and it is too many people to bury and there's the whole contaminated ground thing not that toxic air is that much better and the dead do deserve a bit more respect than to be dragon chow I GUESS. Anyway, +1.5 for Jon sounding like a king and Sansa making Theon an honorary Stark. [6.5] Now it's fuckin PARTY TIME! Leave no character interaction box unticked. Gendry, with a little needling from Sandor, goes off to find Arya but walks into a lordship instead as Dany catches him, cuts him off, declares him legitimate and makes him Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm's End. Saw it coming because it makes all the sense in the world. Would've been a good time to throw out a few more titles, actually: Tyrion being anointed Lord Lannister of Casterly Rock + Lord Paramount of the West with Ser Jaime as Warden would've been a nice move. Officially giving Sam the Tarly holdings (which now would also presumably include L.P. of the reach and Warden of The South) would make sense too, as Dany continues to shore up every section of the kingdom outside the actual capital [it would also be interesting to watch her conspicuously leave Sam out because he's Jon's Guy, more on that later] Tyrion talks to Davos about being unhappy because there's still more shit to deal with after all this. Tyrion tries to talk to Bran but Bran's more interested in being weird, as usual. Tormund affirms both his crushes, talking about what a maniac and cool guy Jon Snow is for coming back from the dead all other assorted awesome shit. GREAT shot of Dany getting insecure and jelly because everybody LOVES Jon and nobody at the party is really talking to her. Too bad there's a fucking Starbucks cup on screen. No, seriously. Fuck, man. Tormund makes another bid at his other crush, Brienne, who we are seeing DRUNK and SMILING for basically the first time ever and it's fantastic (because Gwen Christie is in serious running for Best Actor On The Show especially now that Iain Glen and Alfie Allen have finished up. More on this later) because she's playing a drinking game with Pod and The Brothers Lannister. Brienne eventually excuses herself to take a piss on the Blackfish Memorial Tree. Jaime follows. Tormund is adorably heartbroken for a few seconds before consoling himself with an implied whore because after all this IS still Game Of Thrones on HBO. She's no Ros. Neither is her teammate who Sandor roughly gives the brushoff too. We get a Sandor/Sansa moment that FORTUNATELY does not end in 'shipping but they do have a nice chat. Sansa is at last in proper Shake Hands & Kiss Babies mode. UNFORTUNATELY her clunker of an end line, "everything I've been through has made me who I am" is in context a little too close to ITS GOOD THAT RAMSAY RAPED ME BECAUSE IT MADE ME STRONGER and any time I have to be reminded of perhaps the worst Adaptation Change in the history of the show specifically, or Poochie in general, I'm going to be a tad cranky. I'm keeping an eye out to see if Alys Karstark actually survived or not but all I see is that damn Starbucks cup. Dany quietly ducking out due to Harshed Vibe and Varys reading the room and following was a fun touch. Back on the 'shipping front, Gendry, freshly minted as a lord, proposes to Arya complete with anachronistic kneeling. Arya rebuffs him as she is No Lady [and she's still got A LIST to work through]. Gendry, who admits to not knowing anything about being a lord, is appropriately sad. Lesson #1 In Lordship, Gendry: marrying for love ain't a thing that happens. Poor guy. I'd hope Ser Davos takes it upon himself to help Gendry out. Still on the shipping front, Brienne and Jaime. I don't HATE this and it's well done for what it is but I don't think it's even necessary for them to hook up, kinda pales in comparison to the emotion of him knighting her a couple episodes back. But it's good for what it was. That was some party, wasn't it? +1 for Gendry getting legitimized and Storm's End. +1 for Sansa/Sandor interaction that does not end in 'shipping. -1 for that interaction calling up the Ramsay shit and feeling a bit like another defense of the dumbest thing the show's ever done. a big MINUS THREE (-3) for the fucking Starbucks cup: -1 for missing it when filming, -1 for missing it again in editing/post production, and -1 for viral product placement advertising for a corporation that doesn't need the damn advertising. Seriously fuck this bullshit. Dolorous Edd did not die and briefly come back as a wight (Cadaverous Deadd?) in defense of the realms of men to let shit like this threaten it. God. Damn It. +1 for great acting from Gwen Christie. +.5 for Arya kinda letting Gendry down easy. +1 for Dany being jealous of Jon's charisma and being followed out of love & admiration. -.5 for I still can't tell if Karstark is dead or not. [6.5] Jon and Dany try a little 'shipping of their own but Jon's not into banging his aunt and, really, who can fault a guy for that. Dany, who now seems to believe Jon's lineage claim [why?] wants him to swear to secrecy, even from his family, because that's the only way for it not to become an issue. Jon swears he doesn't want the crown. Dany astutely points out that it's going to be a headache whether he wants it or not, because other people are going to want him to want it. She hints at marriage as a solution as she leaves. -.5 for Dany suddenly believing Jon's claim now when she was skeptical about it before. +1 for Dany's [justified] paranoia about Jon's lineage coming to bear. Jon has repeatedly chosen to give up his crown for his realm. Cersei has repeatedly chosen her crown at the expense of her realm (and basically doesn't have the latter anymore). Jon's true lineage causes Dany to face that dilemma. Just wish the show had more time to watch her struggle with that dilemma more slowly and believably (and in a better written fashion), unfortunately I'm remembering the rushed hatchet job that was Stannis' path to burning Shireen for all the wrong reasons. [7] Strategy session is pretty straightforward, Alys Karstark was in the previous episodes and it doesn't look like she's there now so I'm back to thinking she Died Off Camera but it's hard to tell because the camera is naturally focused on the characters who matter more. We tick the "Sansa and Dany disagree" box and the "Jon tries to smooth it over and appease Dany" box and as far as military plans go its decent enough, if you accept the hastily adopted premise that Dany needs the throne specifically and that she cannot abide Cersei being on the chair and thus "being able to call herself king of the seven kingdoms" when Dany's advisors should be pointing out to her that it's actually the other way around; Cersei has the throne but almost nothing else, ergo Dany has effectively already won. It's announced that Yara has retaken the Iron Islands off camera and a generic "New Prince Of Dorne" has pledged fealty as well. Dany's got the whole ball of wax outside the capital. Or at least she will once she names Tyrion Lord Paramount Lannister Warden Of The West from Casterly Rock and makes Sam likewise in the South/Reach from Horn Hill. Or, again, have her hesitate to give Sam that because Sam is Jon's Guy and she doesn't quite trust Sam. That'd do a good job of driving the wedge between Dany & Jon and selling Dany's paranoia if they really are going the Mad Queen Reborn route with her like it looks like they are doing. But smart tactics in this case don't make for good TV so strap yourself in for some Dumb For The Sake Of Plot as Dany decides to have Jon march on KL while Dany sails from White Harbor to Dragonstone to blockade the capital, expecting to handle Euron's fleet. Why is Dany in such a hurry? Does she only have 4 seconds left on the shot clock or something? Oh, yeah, there's just 2 episodes. Eh. It'd be nice if they did a better job of selling the idea that Dany's need to take the capital immediately is rash, that she is queen of 6.75 of the 7 kingdoms and could get that last .25 in due time by starving Cersei out and having all the taxes and levies from everything else coming to her instead of Cersei, and at least wait until Cersei can't afford to pay the Golden Company anymore. But no, everyone thinks the plan is fine. Oh well. -1 for a missed opportunity to do what I think they're trying to do with Dany more artfully and instead just letting the bolts and nuts of the plot rail shine through. -1 for Continued Alys Karstark Ambiguity. +1 for continuing to play with the Warhammer miniatures. +1 for the battle plan being competent. -1 for the battle plan being an unnecessary rush. +.5 for Sansa trying to stem the tide of video game battle logic by pointing out the Northern Army could use a little time to recoup from the whole surviving Ragnarok thing. [6.5] "We need to talk" Sansa says at the end of the above scene, and the surviving Stark kids have a pow wow in which Arya is actually the voice of reason rather than Sansa, acknowledging that Jon did what he had to do to get Dany here to beat the WW, but that doesn't mean you have to keep blindly trusting her now. Jon makes the sisters pinky swear to keep a secret, which Sansa balks at initially but she's finally on board, then we cut away as Jon tells Bran to tell them. HAHA. The actors have good chemistry with each other but that's the only good thing about the Bronn scene. How did an enemy knight sneak through a castle full of people with a loaded crossbow? Why are crossbow bolts reloading as fast as bullets in a clip? Why is Bronn faffing about with warning shots? Why does he believe Cersei will give him Riverrun? Does this mean Edmure Tully is canonically alive or not? Why does he believe Tyrion will give him Highgarden? Why did this scene even happen when it didn't advance anything? We already knew Tyrion would make a counter-offer if Bronn was ever paid to kill him. -1 point for wasting everyone's time. [5.5] Sansa immediately reveals she had her fingers crossed behind her back when pinky swearing to Jon and drops a "what if there were another option?" on Tyrion, to let him do with as he will. I actually really like this. From Sansa's perspective, Jon is walking south into a deathtrap like Ned, and he doesn't see it coming because he's dick-blind like Robb. And like any good Tully daughter knows [not that this is mentioned], it's Family Duty Honor. In that order. Family, then Duty, then Honor. So it's Sansa's job to do what she can to keep Jon alive despite himself, and in this case it's trying to erode Dany's coalition of brain trust. Either Tyrion gets on board with helping Jon or just giving him something else to think about will lead to erosion of trust between Dany and Tyrion and Dany will take it out on Tyrion instead of Jon. Jon helped, and one less ex-husband for Sansa to have to worry about. Littlefinger would be proud if he wasn't so busy being dead. +1 [6.5] Tyrion immediately tells Varys. Sansa's plan is working and Dany's dire prediction that Jon's lineage wouldn't stay secret for long is accurate. Varys reminds us He Serves The Realm and seems all in on switching horses to Jon. Tyrion has reservations. Gotta figure he officially flips and dies for it next week now. +1 [7.5] Sandor rides away. Arya joins him. They both have unfinished business in the capital. There's a fine line between being a badass and simply being an ass and who ever is in charge of writing lines for Arya lost sight of that line a long time ago. But they're off to King's Landing for Unfinished Business and, pointedly, neither expects to come back. Hmmm. Tormund says he will take the Free Folk back north as soon as the land thaws back out and invites Jon to come back up to The Real North with him to be bros forever. Adorable. Jon of course refuses because he's got business. JON TELLS TORMUND TO TAKE GHOST WITH HIM WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK. Ghost, looking all the world like they forgot to include him until post production, is clumsily and lazily written out with some mealy mouthed bullshit excuse. Remember how The Stark boys separating from or ignoring their direwolves used to be a big fucking deal and a huge warning sign that shit was about to go wrong? What could be a great way to hint at Jon walking into PERIL goes down as a massive wasted opportunity because D&D hate the direwolves and have given them depressingly short shrift for the entire series. Instead of "oh shit Jon's separating from Ghost this is bad" it's "filming the Direwolves is TOO HARD waaah waaah waaah so we're just getting rid of them." Jon doesn't even pet Ghost goodbye what is this horseshit. Jon Snow further cements his claim to the Dickhead Crown by hugging Gilly goodbye and telling her he hopes she has a girl in reaction to her telling him she wants to name the baby Jon if it's a boy. Dude, come on. At least the brohug and teary goodbye between Jon and Sam is nice. Presumably Sam is off to Horn Hill to become Lord Tarly but who knows, really. WE'RE SLASHING THE CAST. EVERYONE MUST GO. You get a write out and you get a write out and you get a write out. A big -2 for doing the direwolves dirty one last time. +.5 for the good teary goodbyes from Tormund and Sam. [6] Dany chillin in the air with her dwaggins as her fleet sails to Dragonstone when suddenly Klingon Greyjoy de-powers his Cloaking Device and just like that Rhaegal is shot out of the sky. The "scorpions" hit like cannons for some reason as the flagship carrying our named characters is blasted to bits and we get a fun shot of a mast (not of the fat pink variety) dropping down on Tyrion. Cut to a beach where our named characters wash ashore. Varys is secretly a Merman so of course he's fine. Tyrion and Grey Worm survive as well, but Missandei is nowhere to be seen. +1 for catching me off guard with Rhaegal's quick demise. [7] So Missandei is of course captured and Team Dany shows up for a parlay on the premise that Dany wants the PR of giving Cersei one last chance to surrender/avoid bloodshed so it's not Dany's fault when she has Drogon burninate the peasants hiding inside the walls of King's Landing. In fairness, I don't think any of them, certainly not Dany, expected negotiating with Cersei to actually work. They do trust Cersei to observe the rules of parlay, however, and that's a bit of a stretch, especially given the recurring theme in Game Of Thrones/ASOIAF about how the old system of honor and chivalry is breaking. But as D&D have repeatedly told us themes are for children and the Red Wedding was just about filming as much blood and guts as possible, nothing more. So the parlay starts. Never mind CleganeBowl, give me HAND-OFF! Tyrion and Qyburn exchange terms and talk about the screams of dying children ["it's not a pleasant sound" LOL Qyburn is fantastic as the face of Banal Evil] and it goes about as well as you'd expect, i.e. not at all. Tyrion walks past Qyburn and appeals to Cersei and her maternal instincts directly. But Cersei, and this show, have choosen violence. Cersei gives Missandei a chance for last words, Missandei says "DRACARYS" and the only black woman on the show promptly gets stuffed in the fridge courtesy of Frankengregor's big ass claymore. Whatever, I'm sure it'll make Grey Worm stronger and it'll all be worth it. Dany is MAD. I'm sure next week she'll "go overboard" but the problem is if they're trying to sell Dany going off the rails it doesn't work that well when the people she's going off the rails against Pretty Much Have It Coming. When people pull your punk card you have to check them. Besides, remember when Arya poisoned every male Frey and it was framed as KICKIN' RAD instead of Arya going overboard? Anyway, +.5 for HAND-OFF~! -1 for Cersei, the woman who blew up The Vactican to wipe out her rivals and most of her family in one swoop, suddenly caring about the rules of engagement, and another -1 for the unimaginative route to fridging Missandei. [5.5] Jaime bails on Brienne. Brienne is distraught. I'm mostly okay with this scene, though it suggests they had Jaime and Brienne bang just to make this more "sad" and I think this could've worked anyway without that. Might even have been stronger to have Jaime remain a near miss for Brienne and THEN bail, taking her one chance at action with him. Anyway, I think it's pretty clear Jaime is off to kill Cersei, doesn't expect to come back from the mission, and doesn't want Brienne to follow him into death nor does he want her to miss him when he's gone. So he's being a dick to chase her away. Like Arya throwing rocks at Nymeria way back when. But this seems to have been less clear to the audience at large? Lotta folks think Jaime is falling off the wagon and going back to her? I guess it's an effective enough cliffhanger then. I still think Jaime and Brienne banging is almost a step down after Jaime knighted her and this scene could've worked without it but this is by far the best bit of the last half of the episode. +.5 FINAL SCORE: 6 out of 10 First half of the episode was much more enjoyable than the second. Props and costumes department are still bringing their A-game, music is fantastic, and there's good acting to be found, but the plot writing is leaving money on the table left and right and the dialogue is, to paraphrase the late Melisandre, The Script Is Dumb and Full Of Clunkers. The end is in sight and the producers seem content to limp to the finish line so they can move on to some dumb show about What If The South Won The Civil War or whatever the fuck garbage they've got in the can. Strong start, underwhelming finish, much like the entire run of the show itself. I keep ending up saying what I've said about a dozen times before, because nothing's changed much lately. We all know what the show was and what it is now, and what it could have been. And whether the little nuggets of gold it still manages to drop are enough to keep you around is pretty much up to you. But seriously, the fucking Starbucks cup. God.

Tyrion will get Casterly Rock as a gratifying final Fuck You to Tywin. Gendry is highly likely to get legitimized as a Baratheon eliminating The Wall, the Night's Watch, House Tyrell, and Randyll & Dickon Tarly clears Sam's path to be Lord Tarly of Horn Hill and Warden Of The South

Yeah, that was Sansa's line. Faint praise for Tyrion, given the character of Joffrey, Ramsay, and even Robin Arryn, but praise nonetheless.

I'm still not over how Cersei was validated for continuing to play the game of thrones and disregarding the existential threat in the hopes that it would never get to her/only wreck her rivals' shit. Underwhelming that the Walkers ended up only ever being the "Northern Problem" the south always wrote them and all Wall drama as.

MODIFIED MCSHANE SCORING SYSTEM PRESENTS: GAME OF THRONES S8 E3 (episode 70) No Tits, Just Dragons, base line of 5. no "previously on" segment before the episode, and I like this because that usually functions as the cliff notes of foreshadowing and I like the idea of nope we're not giving you clues this time, just guess. Tonight's episode will be broadcast in SPOOOOOOOOOOKYVISION which means its too dark to see what's actually going on and who's dead or not. I respect the whole wanting to have fog of war and terrifying confusion and all but it's a television show, let us watch the television show. Minus 2 points [3/10] I've said before and I'll say again that I dig it when this show shuts the fuck up and lets its cinematography breathe. Again we start with an extended stretch of no [coherent] dialogue as last minute preparations are underway and we follow Sam's path through them. Varys and Tyrion heading towards the crypt, Theon marching off at Bran's side and I think the lineless Alys Karstark is with them for reasons unknown but it could just be an extra [not that Alys isn't one herself at this point] portraying a female Ironborn warrior, contradiction of lore though that is. Either way it's hard to tell in the gloom. +1 point for focusing on the show's strength and hiding its weakness (the dialogue lol). [4/10] Melisandre shows up at the last minute to cast a couple AOE cleric buffs on the party, then promises both Ser Davos and the audience that she will die before morning. SPOILERS, Mel, geeeez. Glad she's here. +1 [5/10] Dothraki death charge was a wonderful visual as the lights of their flaming arakhs gradually, silently, went out. Possibly the best visual of the episode. It's ALMOST enough to make me forgive and forget the terminal case of Dumb For The Sake Of Plot that went into this happening. Especially considering Mel showed up at the last second so the plan was to do this without even flaming arakhs. Having the first sortee be a catastrophic failure is fine (and like I said the visual was great and the "oh shit" of Jorah coming back from it alone was wonderful too). But what even was success supposed to look like with this? Did Jon and Dany think they had this in the bag, feel bad for The Night King, and want to spot him a couple touchdowns to start the game? Also, the timing of the trebuchet volley basically amounted to shelling their own men, and not even the most tactically bereft WWI generals were that cavalier about killing their own men (they considered it much more gentlemanly to let the enemy do it). There had to have been a smarter and more character-consistent way to get this disastrous start achieved and create this feeling of peril. Battle of the Bastards had a dumb early cavalry charge too but at least there they admitted it was dumb but did it anyway for plausible emotional reasons. Also way to summon Ghost back to his home planet in the middle of this charge. +1 for the visual of the lights dying, -1.5 for basically giving the NK their cavalry in a way that makes our heroes look like idiots. [4.5/10] The crush of the wights hitting the unsullied spear wall really felt like a crushing wave. That was good shit. Soon after, we have our first confirmed Named Character Death, and the dubious honor goes to Dolorous Edd, shortly after he saves Sam's ass one more time. In the grand scheme of things, Dolorous Edd died unflatteringly early and got rather ignominiously chumped from behind. I think Dolorous Edd would appreciate and even predict going out this way. His last words are "fuck's sake, Sam" which is a fitting epithet for show Edd if not necessarily Book Edd. I'm glad they gave me a clear opportunity to say goodbye last week. +1 point for the infantry crush visual and for giving Edd a good death. [5.5/10] NIGHT'S KING WITH A MAGIC STEALTH BLIZZARD LOL. Killing the visibility would've been more effective if visibility wasn't dead from the start due to SPOOOOOOOOOOOKYVISION but at this point I'm digging the flow of living and dead trading punches. Dothraki cav gets chumped, Dragonrider strafing torches the wight infantry, magic snowstorm kills the visibility and nobody can see Davos' signal to light the trench as the Unsullied retreat. LOVE seeing fire arrows get snuffed out by the cold wind as early attempts to light the trenches fail. Melisandre comes up clutch once again, lighting the trench by hand and by chanting mojo. Boy, how bad does the initial battle plan suck considering it didn't have her in it? She is saving some serious bacon out there. +1 for Mel being all over the place trying to repay the karmic debt for burning Shireen. [6.5/10] Setting Sansa up to be the Anti-Cersei in a replay of Maegor's Holdfast in the Crypts of Winterfell is lovely. Unfortunately the dialogue is up to snuff. Missandei, technically you're right but you're not helping right now. Varys says "at least we're already in a crypt" and Connleth Hill drags that line into acceptably amusing territory by sheer force of actor's will. Doesn't quite stick the landing but I appreciate Sansa and Tyrion having a moment. Didn't expect Little Lady Mormont to get smacked around and especially not to get killed. This is the only death from outside my "probably gonna die" list. I thought they did an acceptable job of establishing that she was making the choice to die because taking out the particularly dangerous Wight Giant was worth it. I suspect this bit was homage to some Lord Of The Rings bit I'm not familiar with, and I appreciate that they made it work even for someone like me who lacks that reference point. +1 [7.5/10] Collapsing the trench as the Unsullied covered everyone else's escape really should've been the moment of Grey Worm's death. I guess White Savior Dany getting all her brown people killed off wastefully was too much of a bad look even for the production team about to bring us the atrocious "Confederate" TV show? This episode is supposed to be a heavy die-off. And you marked this dude for death with the Naath retirement plan. Don't wimp out on me, guys. -1 [6.5/10] Speaking of which, how many times die Jaime Brienne and Pod get near crushed to death only without the dying bit? Pod's expendable and Brienne's knighthood completes her arc with the validation she always deserved. Wouldn't have been a dry eye in the viewership if you'd taken at least one of them out. Or at least don't devalue the fakeout by putting them in it so much? -1 [5.5/10] The Wights stopping at the trench until the Walkers start strategically sacrificing them to snuff out a breach was a nice tactical touch. I also appreciate the Lieutenant White Walkers were NOWHERE TO BE SEEN until they breached the gate, had overcome the walls, and looked like they could plausibly believe they had it in the bag. That's some tactical competence! Though I wish one or two had actually been in position to get got, it would've been a good pendulum swing of false hope before things really started going bad. Also, one other reason that I'm saving for the end. +.5 [6/10] Pretty sure Sandor was kinda over his firephobia as of his flame gazing at the start of Season 7? And they beat the drum a little too hard on Beric yelling at him to come on, over and over and OVER. But I do appreciate that it was Arya's peril that got him over the hump. So I'm only taking a quarter point off. -.25 [5.75/10] Arya stars in a commercial for the upcoming Game Of Thrones video game that hasn't been made yet as she gets her Solid Snake on in a Stealth Level in the Winterfell archives. Anyway she grabs one of Maester Luwin's favorite tomes and throws it, and all the wights spawn exclamation points over their heads and chase the noise, and Arya runs away. Too long and maybe I'm too jaded but I didn't ever think Arya was really in danger here. -.5 [5.25/10] Dwaggin Joust! Jon unhorses The Night's King! Okay that was pretty cool. Would've been nice if we could tell which dragons are which. Thanks SPOOOOOOOKYVISION. +.25 for the battle, it was nice, wish I could've seen it better and would give it more points if I could. [5.5/10] Beric sacrifices himself to cover Arya and The Hound's escape from a pack of wights. To put things absolutely on the nose in case you're too dumb for symbolism, the guy whose whole gimmick is that he's died and been resurrected literally strikes the Jesus Christ Pose to block as much hallway as he can. Later on Arya and The Hound barricade themselves in a room and... ...um, somehow Beric gets away from the wights he's dying to block and catches up with the people whose escape he's covering? So he can have one last look at Arya and die in the room with them? So Mel (oh yeah she's already in the room because why the fuck not) can pontificate on Beric having served his purpose in The Lord Of Light's plan? Okay look. You can do the heroic sacrifice to cover an escape. You can do the "I almost made it oops no I didn't" bleedout after everyone's escaped. Both are valid, both are good, both were even done well here. Except for one problem. YOU CAN'T HAVE THE SAME CHARACTER DO BOTH IN THE SAME SCENE. Shit, man. PICK ONE. There's plenty of other people who can get killed off and pick up either one of these mantles. You can still have Arya cry over Beric dying for her sake and have Mel give her the destiny pep talk without him physically being there. This way either his sacrifice was pointless because they didn't get that far away (he caught up with them) or the wight pack in question was beatable and didn't require a sacrifice to escape. Dumb, dumb, dumb. -2 points. [3.5/10] The Totally Safe Crypts turn out not to be safe. But its a matter of the invading wights breaching it instead of anything amusingly dumb like Headless Ned, Wolfhead Robb, or even Zombie Rickon. Sansa having to actually use that knife Arya gave her would've been a nice moment. Also nobody even died here that I saw. Not even Soup Girl. Though Gilly got the obligatory spot of clawing at the ground as she's dragged away on her belly, screaming. But even she didn't die? I think? Maybe I should re-watch before I do these things. Or I can just blame SPOOOOOOKYVISION instead. Missandei or Varys (or both) could have gotten got here, honestly. Missed opportunity. Dracarys! On The Night King. BUT IT DOESN'T WORK, failing as foreshadowed, and he smirks up at Dany before chasing her off with a death javelin aimed at Drogon. I love this guy. The wrinkle that the White Walkers are not emotionless alien robots but actually cocky motherfuckers who like to psyche the enemy out and taunt and toy with people before killing them is a wonderful wrinkle, both because it reminds us that they used to be human men, and also it's a good lampshade for the old problem of villains not finishing off the heroes when they have the chance. Being cocky all along is way better than only being cocky in response to plot demands, and I'm glad they put the effort into having the White Walkers, particularly the Night King, demonstrate this flaw. +1.5 [5/10] Sansa ALMOST makes the tough decision to gank herself and/or Tyrion to spare themselves agony when it looks hopeless. That would've taken some HUGE stones on the producers' part and I'd have applauded them until the end of time had they dared to do it, even as much as I would ultimately prefer they both stick around (and Tyrion still kinda needs to due to the Bronn thing and the Cersei thing). How "bittersweet ending" would THAT be, especially if the day got saved right after? But they don't. Cheers for getting me to think it for a couple seconds, though. +1 [6/10] I lost track of Gendry and Tormund and I don't think I even saw Lord Royce at all? They could all be dead or all be alive or somewhere in between. Thanks, SPOOOOOOKYVISION Jon rushes the Night King after Dragonfire fails. But he's not nearly in time to stop the Night King from doing his slow dramatic The Undertaker arm raise and, yeah, you knew it was coming. Finally we get it. Cut to a Dothraki with blue eyes. Cut to Edd getting blue eyes. Cut to an Unsullied that looks like Grey Worm [it's not but in the dark its hard to tell] getting blue eyes. Cut to Little Lady Mormont getting blue eyes. They held off on busting this nut for a long, long time. I applaud the patience. +1 [7/10] What I do not applaud is the new wave of wights instantly surrounding Jon and suddenly following Bruce Lee movie rules and coming at him one at a time to fight his way out of it. Also there's one of many cuts to Bran & Theon by the weirwood as Theon's crew start pumping the new wave with fire arrows and when we cut back to Jon he is considerably less surrounded than he was, i.e. nobody's behind him any more. Come. On. Now, of course Dany saves him with a strafe of dragonfire and that's FINE but the stall on doing it to let Jon get some Kickin' Rad sword kills in and having the wights suddenly deviate from their rush n' crush pattern (as seen with the Unsullied spear wall early and seen in several hallways of Winterfell at Jaime Brienne and Pod's collective expense) exposes the nuts and bolts of plot armor. Have Dany burn him an escape path and even drag him onto Drogon's back, fine, but do it right away before the wights have a chance to crush him. OR, kill Jon off. I'd prefer not the latter but Dumb For The Sake Of Plot is annoying when the badguys do it, too. -1 [6/10] Drogon lands and gets swarmed. Dany gets un"horsed" and somehow Jorah Mormont is back outside, making a heroic last stand with Heartsbane in a "doomed" effort to keep Khaleesi alive. Daenerys is suddenly and spontaneously competent with a blade in her own right as they sorta fight back to back but mostly fight with Jorah as her (willing) human shield. Dany wielding a sword for the first time in the series is some left field shit but whatever, I wouldn't buy her just cowering and giving up, either. I'm much more contentious over how Jorah got back outside into his Appropriate Dying Position right on schedule. Woof. -1 [5/10] One last cut to the Weirwood and, aw, damn. Theon standing alone beside Bran as the Night King and The Walkers approach. Welp, guess he's not making it after all. Minus Eleventy Jillion points. Just kidding. Theon apologies for not getting Bran out of this. Aww. Bran confirms that destiny is destiny and Theon makes a doomed charge with The Spear Not Of Destiny and of course completely fails to gank the Night King, and gets ganked himself. At least he got to go out against The King, and there's something suitably viking and thus Ironborn about him literally fighting to the last [in his section of the battle, anyway]. being unafraid to die in combat, and at least taking a 1 in a million shot at getting the lucky blow on the Night's King. Theon better get his damn bronze statue on the shores of Pyke. He gets to bleed out and have a death rattle before NK closes on Bran. +1 point for killing off Theon in a way that didn't irritate my inner fanboy, that's not always so easily done. [6/10] Anyway, unless you've completely avoided the internet for the last couple days (and if you're reading this, obviously you haven't), then you know what happens next. Arya comes out of nowhere with a NINJA JUMP and tries to gank the Night King, who catches her by the throat, and she drops the Valyrian Steel Dagger that's been known as Chekov since Season 1 Episode 2 but catches it with her other hand, shanks the Night King with it, and it's SNOW CONES FOR EVERYBODY! Quick cuts to the zombie hordes dropping here and there and everywhere in sheets. Viserion crumbles particularly nicely half way through rearing back to bite Jon. Jorah, having just barely technically made it through the battle, succumbs to his wounds, and Dany bawls like a baby over him, leaving me wishing once again Clarke actually got more chances to emote with this role. +1 for letting Clarke show something being stoic leader robot, and for giving Jorah the ideal death (even though he kinda hopped in the Littlefinger memorial Teleporter to get there) [7/10] Davos watches Melisandre ride off into the sunset except she has no horse and it's actually a sunrise, and instead of disappearing beyond the horizon we watch her cast off her ruby choker, revert to her true impossibly old crone form, and collapse before withering to dust. Davos says nothing. As much as he hated her for burning Shireen I want to think he respected that she showed up to contribute to the greater good and hey, she kept her word and died before morning. I doubt he'll point out how much she did to upgrade their battle plan from Shit to Not Very Good, but I'm hoping he channels some Stannis and says a few words about the good she did along with the bad next week, as everyone's (hopefully) eulogizing the heroic dead. +1 for giving Mel a good enough sendoff for me to overlook the convenience of her last second showing up to die on time. [8/10] Okay but seriously the SPOOOOOKYVISION was a huge damper on this episode and while I still don't have a good feel for who exactly survived and who didn't it's definitely clear that for as epic and grim and final as this was billed and as "hopeless" as it was supposed to be this episode really pulled a lot of punches and chickened out on the meatgrinder front. Nobody who would've left a huge void died, everyone who did die was either expendable or had finished up their character arc cleanly. And even among the expendable casualties were surprisingly light. Almost disappointingly so. And Ghost needs a better agent. Seriously. Appeared to die off camera when he didn't come back from the doomed cav charge but he's still hanging out in the previews for next week? Did Ghost pee in Benioff's cornflakes or something? -2 points [6/10] Final Score: 6 out of 10 fun in parts, fulfilling on some fronts, but room for improvement and they could've done more. Also mildly disappointed not that Arya got the death blow on the Night's King (that's pretty cool actually, even if Mel's pep talk about closing eyes forever and reminding Arya of Syrio's prayer to the God Of Death telegraphed it pretty forcefully) but because they had her go for it in an action movie way that any other show or film could have done, instead of doing something that could be uniquely Game Of Thrones: namely, having her sneak up on the Night's King by wearing a White Walker face. A little contrived and lore breaking for the sake of KICKIN' RAD but look we've already jumped that chasm anyway, might as well go all out with it. But unfortunately that window closed when they had the Lieutenant Walkers do the smart thing and not show themselves at all until things appeared to be well in hand. What they did was fine enough (though if Arya'd shown a little more hustle maybe Theon wouldn't have had to die ) but I feel like they left something on the table. Even sacrificing Bran so that Arya could wear Bran's face and spring up out of the chair to shiv the Night King. How "bittersweet ending" would that be? So much more they could've done here even if what they did was ok. But my main disappointment is a narrative/thematic one: It's entirely personal feeling so I'm not going to deduct points for it but I'm gonna say it anyway. I did not expect the Army of The Dead to get neutralized this early. See, from the very beginning of the show (and the books) we are shown the White Walkers, we have them established as looming in the background, seen sparingly enough that they can be temporarily forgotten about and distracted from, but when they reemerge you're reminded of them and the threat they pose to everything. Like Jeor Mormont says, "do you really think it matters who sits on the throne when the dead are up and walking?" The White Walkers, we're told, are the real battle. The real threat to everything and everyone, and the game of thrones is a dangerous and destructive distraction that further imperils everyone. And yet, in the end, the southern half of Westeros and the royal court's cavalier dismissal of the undead threat and, indeed, every crisis ever centered on The Wall, as mere "northern problems" and things they need not take seriously and can even trust to only inconvenience their nothern political rivals, just another bit of chaos they can spin to their advantage, turned out to be basically correct. The Maesters, The Tarlys, The Boltons, Renly, The Tyrells, Tywin, Littlefinger, Cersei, Euron, everyone who ever said LOL SNARKS AND GRUMPKINS and focused on the petty rivalries of Iron Throne machinations, ended up having the right idea. Cersei's "lol fuck you I'm not helping" got validated. She has been rewarded for making the opposite decision from what Jon Snow has made (i.e. immediately giving up his crown for the greater good of his people). Jon chose the song of ice and fire. Cersei chose the game of thrones. And the show has just said "yeah she's right" and even if Dany and Jon go on to defeat and even kill in the next 3 episodes, they cannot repudiate her. She effectively allied with the Army Of The Dead and it worked out for her. It cost her nothing but Jaime's loyalty. So unless Jaime, specifically, kills her and kills her in a specific way that Jon and/or Dany could not otherwise achieve, then Cersei being petty, selfish, and short sighted was tactically and morally correct. And the White Walkers were one hell of a shaggy dog story line after all. Boy was I wrong about the theme of this whole thing. Ouch. Well, we'll see how the last 3 episodes play out, I guess.

I like how Beric stayed behind to cover Arya's escape (even striking the Jesus Christ Pose to really put it On The Nose) but then caught back up with her group anyway, and before they put the barricade up, so she/Mel could watch him die. Either of these is fine but PICK ONE, otherwise they undercut each other.

Yuuuuup. The southern half of the country never had to deal with the "existential threat" it ignored since the beginning of the story. Wasn't all that much of an existential threat then, was it. Their hubris was morally correct and tactically rewarded. Severely disappointing. But the parts that weren't too dark to see were pretty, at least.

gonna pour one out for The Night King. [On The Rocks, natch]

A bit disappointed they passed on the chance to have Arya pull off a White Walker face as her method of sneaking up on the Night's King.

High Valyrian is gender-neutral, after all....

"First shot at all the good worms! About time I got some good luck."

Gendry got laid. He's dead. Brienne got knighted. She's dead. Varys and Royce are glorified extras. They're dead. Ghost is too expensive to film and you can make a strong narrative/character argument that Jon doesn't need/shouldn't have him anymore. He's dead. Jorah has finally made peace with the friendzone and had a family reunion with little Lady Mormont. He's dead. Edd finally got to act like Edd one last time. He's dead. Beric is just his flaming sword prop and doesn't fit in anywhere anymore. He's dead. Pod is comedic relief in a show that's run out of comedy time. DEAD. Davos? Old, not a fighter, not necessary going forward. He's dead. Soup Girl that looks like Shireen? gonna be the wight that kills Davos. Dead. Alys Karstark? Too many spitfire girls on the show as it is and you don't even get lines. Dead. Grey Worm and Missandei? That Naath plan was the most "Two Days Away From Retirement" speech I ever heard. Dead and Dead. Next week should be a lot of fun if you like crying. [and I continue to have a funny feeling Theon is going to live.]

LETS DO THIS. Once again we will use the Modified McShane Scoring System to rate this week's very special and very nice 69th episode of Game Of Thrones, and... ...wait a minute. Oh dear. Definitely no Dragons, at least that was cut and dry. And, well, we did kinda sorta have Tits and it's rather hard to ignore that because basically the entire internet is in a tizzy over a brief flash of sideboob and a whole lot of implication. More on that later. But this was very close to no tits AND no dragons which would've shaken this highly scientific exercise to its very foundations. So I guess we're starting at 5? We begin with Jaime on trial for lack of a better word. Jaime reports the obvious: that Cersei is full of shit and ain't gonna help. Dany wants to fuck him up and Sansa's kinda on board with it. Tyrion tries to vouch for his brother which just gets him more heat with Dany. Bran quotes dialogue from earlier, better written seasons which I think is him sticking up for Jaime in his own weird ass way. Eventually the physical manifestation of Sansa's conscience, Brienne, vouches for Jaime. Sansa is swayed. Jon, eye ever on the ball, simply says "we need all the men we can get" and like that Dany is outvoted 2 to 1 and Jaime gets to join the team. This scene is all about Brie being a god-damned hero and it gets us where we need to be without being too contrived about it. Do like Dany calling Jon "Warden Of The North" and Sansa side-eying the shit out of that. +.5(5.5) Dany tells Tyrion he's sucked for 3 seasons now. Or something like that. Varys ALMOST gets a line but thinks better of it. World's flashiest extra. Kinda sad, really. I think Varys is gonna die because at this point would he even be missed? -1 for having nothing for Varys to do. Dany really could've actually killed him last season instead of just threatening to.(4.5) Bran doing Bran things in front of the weirwood tree, "Bran things" mostly consisting of staring at shit and enjoying the thorazines, and freaking people the fuck out. This week it's Jaime's turn. He apologizes but Bran ain't even mad and points out how it needed to happen for them both to be who they now are, which is who they need to be. LOVE Bran's line about how Jaime can't fight for them tomorrow if they execute him today. Jaime asks about afterwards. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THERE IS AN AFTERWARDS as Branbot engages run:/C:/Troll Mode. Glad these two had a chat. +1 for Bran's troll game. [5.5] Jorah tries to convince Dany that Tyrion doesn't actually suck that much. Even if it means he stays demoted. He's a team player for Dany now, looks like The Fedora might be retired forever. Dany kinda seems to buy it, coming from Jorah. Jorah is totally Two Days From Retirement though. Jon is HYPE to see Edd again and I love it. Tormund intercepts the hug which is hilarious. Beric just gets a handshake because he's that one dude at the party who doesn't really know anybody and also keeps wanting to talk about Fire Jesus. Anyway, bad news confirmed, the Umbers of Last Hearth were wiped out and anybody who's not already here is marching with the Night's King. Bummer, but at least we're all together. +1 point for happy reunions and Beric being so obviously the odd one out. [6.5] Arya yells at Gendry to let her production line jump. Gendry doesn't quite drop a Mr. Spock The Needs Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few on her, but he's in the ballpark. Not sure we needed this. Arya's kinda being a dick. We'll see more of them later (har har har). -1 point [5.5] Jaime says he's not the fighter he once was but will be happy to fight under Captain Phasma's command if she'll have him. Brie's pretty juiced never the less. It's EH on paper, but the actors have good chemistry HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS ITS GHOST! Jon, Sam, and Edd, watching on the wall (not to be confused with The Wall) one last time. Edd even gets to sound like Edd for what feels like the first time in forever! Oh, Edd, you dour mofo, dunking on Sam as part of a greater dunk on the entire team. I've missed you! I guess this means you're definitely dying next week. You lasted longer than I feared and as long as I hoped. +1 point for HOLY SHIT GHOST (who is also definitely dying next week) and one last team shot of Jon with his Night's Watch Homies [6.5] HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS LORD ROYCE ACTUALLY GOT TO SAY SOMETHING. Most expensive gloried extra in the world after Varys. Put him down in the probably dying next week list. Anyway, Dany is trying to make nicey nice with Sansa. Dany tries to WELL ACTUALLY Sansa's complaint about men being manipulable by saying she's here because she's in love with Jon So Who Manipulated Who, eh? Dany is trying to politic and trying to appeal to Sansa's sense of Girl Power but politicing is not Dany's strong suit (that's what she has Varys and Tyrion for), and that loud siren sound you hear is Sansa's Bullshit Detector going Defcon 4. Sansa is a tad paranoid and cynical and loathe to ever be politically powerless again, being a political prisoner of Cersei will do that to you. Being a political prisoner of Cersei also makes Dany's girl power talking point a bit of a hard sell. Sansa wants to know what Dany's plan for The North is, and Dany runs out the clock until they're interrupted by a visitor. And it turns out to be MY BOY THEON, fresh of being a hero and shit. Theon does not mention how he rescued his sister but simply says she's on her way to take back the Iron Islands in Dany's name. All well and good but Dany doesn't quite get why Theon's here, though it becomes clear to her soon enough. Theon's here to fight for Winterfell if Sansa (NOT Dany, pointedly enough) will have him. A big smile and a crusher of a hug from Sansa (is Sophie Turner the tallest person on the show now?) confirms that Theon is down to probably die doing the right thing. Because Sansa and Theon have history and it's complicated but family is family. See, what Dany doesn't get about The North is that people will run through brick walls and into certain death for The Starks because they are beloved. It's not oaths, it's not might, it's not the loyalty of compulsion. In a parallel universe or another adaptation, a better-written Stannis would pipe up here about how a king can't just think about his rights, but his duties. Dany used to have her eye on the ball about this, back in the day, when she was Breaker Of Chains, but lately she's gotten so wrapped up in her birthright she's gotten sidetracked from her desire to be different and not just another tyrant once she gets it. Anyway, Theon owns bones and I really hope I'm right that he actually survives against all odds. +1 point because the Sansa/Theon hug was surprisingly powerful. Kinda hope Allen and Turner work together on future projects, honestly. Major Feels. [7.5] Speaking of Dany and the loyalty she commands, NO GREY WORM DON'T SAY IT! DON'T DESCRIBE YOUR PLANS FOR WHAT YOU'RE GONNA DO AFTER ALL THIS IS OVER! NOW YOU'RE DEAD! NO DON'T INCLUDE MISSANDEI IN YOUR PLANS NOW SHE'S GONNA DIE TOO! So, the thing here is, they don't plan to stick around once Dany's got her throne. They'll help her win it, but not keep it. Underlining the whole bit about how conquering is different from administrating and how Dany's way better at the former and not great at the latter and is going to struggle to even keep her team for doing that together. The Missandei/Grey Worm mush is short and sweet and effective this week. Too bad Grey Worm gave the most Two Days Away From Retirement speech in the history of film. They gonna watch each other die now. Not a fan of how much time this pair has gotten overall, but it was a good length this week and this will be the last time you see it. Seriously, they both gonna die now. -.25 legacy point for all the times Missandei and Grey Worm took screen time away from someone I wanted to see more. [7.25] Battle Plans Complete With Obligatory Risk Board Pieces. Blink and you'll miss the dialogueless Alys Karstark. Short Version: we're pretty well fucked unless we take out the WW captains, including the NK himself. Not sure we needed the Warhammer 40K miniatures to illustrate that but whatever, the props department's gotta do something and it's one of those fun GoT cliches by this point. Jaime saliently points out the problem that if the key to eating the enemy is regimental headshots, there's no way the Night's King, in particular, is going to be idiot enough to put himself in a position where he can get murked by a straw arrow Harald Godwinson style. Dr. Branhattan conveniently speaks up to remind everyone of how he's got The Night's King's fingerprints on him and that the NK has to come for him, because reasons, so dangling himself as bait will totally definitely work. It's all in mumbojumbo so Sam has to translate it back into English for everyone else, us included. Theon volunteers to die er I mean guard Bran on the downlow with his retinue of Ironborn which, look, let's be kind here The Ironborn don't have the best W-L record when it comes to Game Of Thrones battles but whatever it's the thought that counts and this all about Theon repaying his debt to his foster family and probably dying while doing so but MAYBE NOT. So whatevers. Love Theon and Jaime here but overall -.5 for how ALL SO CONVENIENT Bran being irrestistable Night King bait is. Some sort of subversive twist has to be coming next week. Unless Theon actually sucessfully snipes The Night's King and ends up The Biggest Most Important Hero Of All. If that happens next week I'm giving you fair warning I will automatically rate the whole episode 8 billion out of 10. If Theon dies after hitting the shot it'll only be 1 billion out of 10 [6.75] All Bran's babble about memories and books and being the complete record of humanity has given Tyrion the idea that maybe someone should talk to this kid and learn something. But we don't get to see what that is. Makes sense they'd talk and this is probably necessary table setting for something else in a couple episodes but this was pretty Meh. -.25 for slightly wasting our time. [6.5] Davos gives a bowl of soup to a little girl with minor grayscale scarring and he directs her towards the crypts where all the non-combatants will be totally safe. Uh huh. "The Crypts will be totally safe" is hammered on about 700 times in this episode just so even if you somehow forget the enemy is a necromancer and raising the dead is his whole schtick, you can still pick up the foreshadowing that the crypts will NOT be safe. HEADLESS NED GONNA HAPPEN Y'ALL. Also, Tyrion and Sam are gonna be in the crypts because they suck at fighting except every time they have to they pull it out so you know shit is going down in those crypts. Anyway, Davos rocks and he's totally fond of the girl that vaguely reminds him of Shireen but Davos is kinda superfluous and I think he's not making it out of next week. I will give huge bonus points if that little girl turns wight and kills him though. For this week, however, -1 point for going way too hard on the CRYPTS WILL BE SAFE thing. Might as well have Skeleton Lyanna start stomping about now. [5.5] Jorah meets up with his cousin the ever snarky young Lady Mormont who yells at him because yelling at grown ups is what she does. She will NOT be hanging out in the totally safe crypts with all the kids, which is too bad because she could probably beat down some Skeletal Starks just by yelling at them. She wishes Jorah good fortune, which is nice until you remember "I wish you good fortune" has become Westerosi shorthand for Respectfully Telling Someone To Go Get Fucked since Season 5. Sam shows up with Heartsbane and gives it to Jorah because it's a big fuck off claymore and as Sam explains he can barely hold the thing. Jeor was a better dad than his actual dad so Sam's paying it back (or is that paying it forward) by hooking Jorah up with some Valyrian Steel. Jorah's still Two Days From Retirement [espcially now that we've had a Mormont Family Reunion], I feel, but at least he'll go out like a badass this way. +1 [6.5] Tyrion and Jaime have some wine and talk about dad. Everybody cool with nothing better to do shows up. Pod, Brie, Davos, Tormund. Brie points out that getting drunk before fighting for your life may not be the greatest idea and tells Pod to keep it to half a cup. Tyrion tops him off anyway. Tormund tells the story about how he got the name Giantsbane and makes bedroom eyes at Brienne. Drinking outside, drinking inside. Arya cracks a cold one with The Hound because Ed Sheeran established Arya's old enough to drink last season. Beric shows up to talk about Fire Jesus and immediately gets told to shut up. Sandor says the Lord of Light is gonna wonder why he bothered bringing Beric back 19 times just to have Sandor chuck him over the wall just before the big fight. Sandor is awesome. But Arya doesn't want to spend her time with miserable old dudes. At first I was glad show Beric lasted longer than book Beric but he really doesn't fit in anymore and I'm past ready for him to go. The good news is next week he almost certainly will -.5 for overexposing a book character I dug.[6] Arya practicing archery. Gendry obviously creeping on here. You know where this is going. Gendry has made Arya her special thingy, which is a dragonglass tipped version of the Darth Maul spear. Which is oddly fitting since the Night's King does look rather Darth Maulish. Arya's dialogue isn't great here, sounds like standard jealousy shit as she interrogates Gendry on his sexual history. But really she just wants to confirm he knows what he's doing because she wants her V-Card punched before they all die. Also Gendry lets slip that he's Robert Baratheon's bastard, which doesn't really matter anymore. Arya having scars (presumably from Faceless Training) is one of the few upsides here. Arya totally wears the pants in this relationship, surprising no one. Oh, wait, I guess nobody's wearing pants after all. Whatever, if I thought I was dying in Ragnarok I'd probably wanna get one last bone in (or first bone, in Arya's case) the night before too. Could've been shorter. Could've done without the jealousy fakeout. Probably didn't need bareback and sideboob but then again this IS HBO. -.25 [5.75] HERE'S THE GOOD SHIT. Back to the fireplace party, Tormund asks about Westeros' knighting tradition and we go over how Brienne technically isn't one even though she does all sorts of knightly shit. "If I were a king I'd knight you 10 times over." Jaime interrupts and points out that knighthood does not require a king, only another knight, and HOLY SHIT YES IT IS HAPPENING. HEADCANON CONFIRMED. Brienne doesn't react at first because she's expecting bullshit. But Jaime is totally serious about this and yes, it absolutely happens. JAIME ANOINTS BRIENNE AS A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS IN THE NAME OF THE SEVEN GODS. Fuck. Yes. Well, the bad news is Brienne, having finally earned the official on paper respect she has always wanted and deserved but never gotten, just jumped way ahead in line on the "probably dying next week" list, but valar morghulis and all that shit. This was great. Good (enough) writing. Good acting. Fanservice done right. Some honest to damn goodness denouemont up in this place. Also I half-called this years ago. Technically I expected one or both of them to already be mortally wounded when this goes down and I'll hold onto that bookside, but this is pretty close to "right before one of them dies" in a sense. Beautiful climax for Brienne's story and character. And lots of Feels. +2 points [7.75] Meanwhile, in the Totally Safe Crypts, Dany creeps on Jon and catches him checking out Lyanna's statue, which has gotten a couple graphics upgrades since Robert blubbered at Ned in front of it long ago. Yep, you know what's coming. Jon spills the beans. Dany is not as enthused as Jon hopes. She immediately points out A] you realize this puts you ahead of me in line, right? and B] isn't it convenient that your best friend and your brother came up with this shit on some rather spurrious evidence? Both of them very much avoid the Aunt/Nephew incest implications of this reveal. This did not go well. Also, the irony here is that in this moment Jon acts the most he possibly could like Ned's actual son: blurting out an inconvenient alliance-threatening truth right before a big showdown where keeping that alliance is a matter of life and death, all while having evidence that we the audience know is legit but is really dubious and circumstantial in universe. minus half a point for ignoring the aunt/nephew thing because it's wonderfully gross and ALSO it complicates the "well let's just get married" easy way out of this and that in turn forces Dany to make a very thematically important moral choice w.r.t. the rights of a monarch vs. the duties of a monarch, especially with her ideals about Breaking The Wheel. [7.25] POD CAN SING. Not sure Jenny Of Oldstones dancing with ghosts old and new is the best pre-battle pump up music when you're due for a ragnarok first thing tomorrow, though. But it was nice to have a new song. I think this means Pod is dying next week though. Just a hunch. Final shot is of the unofficial three heads of the dragon, on the ramparts. Dany pulls away without saying a word to Jon. Jon sulks away. Tyrion is left alone, staring out into the darkness. White Walker theme song cues up, pan across the snow, and we pull up to the White Walkers, astride their zombie horses. The Night's King himself, along with Viserion, are not shown, however. HMMM. DUN DUN DUN. I'm gonna have some fun getting in some quick crackpot speculation on what he's up to for the next few days before the show disappoints me and makes it all wrong. wait a minute. Nobody died this week? Lame! Well, they'll definitely be overcorrecting in next week's feature film length 82 minute episode. FINAL SCORE: 7.25 out of 10. Dialogue is still pretty choppy and behind where it was in past seasons (Arya has gotten pretty bad and Williams really seeming to have fun with and loving the character is probably keeping it from looking even worse) but there's still plenty of equity from Seasons 1-4 the show can trade in on to generate some effective emotional payoffs and as long as it can execute those competently (this week's theme: saying goodbyes) I'm going to like what I see. This episode did what I think they set out to do with it and hell, I guess at 7.25 out of 10 I liked it more than i didn't. Episode as a whole didn't blow me away but one scene in particular did, and it tried to get me to care about these characters again and it succeeded with some of them, at least. NEXT WEEK: A Shit Ton Of People Die, and I probably take my vengeance on the scorecard if a couple key people are or aren't in that shit ton.

Lannisters Lie. Lying to Jaime about being pregnant, lying to Euron about not being pregnant. Either. Both. Look that wine isn't going to drink itself.

7.25 out of 10. Competent but not mind blowing, didn't make me regret looking forward to it. I am, however, so out of practice after the two year lay off that I put my rating post in the discussion thread, forgetting there was a separate rating thread such as this. Oopsie! here's a link

HEY! GAME OF THRONES IS BACK! HEY! I'M BACK! You know what that means. The MODIFIED MCSHANE SCORING SYSTEM IS BACK, TOO, and we're gonna ride it all the way through this 6 episode home stretch to determine scientifically just how good the swan song for this series is. First things first: Tits? YES, in the form of Bronn doing Bronn things to remind you Bronn is Bronn. Dragons? YES. So we have potential for a perfect 10 out of 10 episode. Since Season 8 is re-establishing the show after a 20 month layoff AND it's the climax of the narrataive where all the geographically divergent plot threads finish merging together, I decided the show would be in line for some bonus points if every active [i.e. not plausibly written out/killed off] character made an appearance and 8.1 got really, really close. Alas, no Pod and no Brie-Brie. No points off, because this was just a bonus thing, because they still got really close, spiritually fulfilling the idea if not literally, and because no Brienne of Tarth means I don't have to come up with any Captain Phasma jokes this week. I like when this show lets its cinematography breath. We follow the journey of a young boy running around and being a little brat who climbs a tree and watches the parade of characters roll into Winterfell. The tree happens to be near where Arya is standing so our perspective shifts to her as she smiles at all the people she likes (Gendry, Jon) and sneers at the people she doesn't (Sandor). I do like how the little boy (it's actually Lord Ned Umber, remember him?) and Arya are visibly WTF at all the marching Unsullied because of course they'd have heard of but never seen any before. NO DIALOGUE at first. Which turns out to be a good thing as the first words of the new season a couple clunkers of "lol Eunuch" jokes from Tyrion at Varys' expense. Varys even points out the naked hypocrisy of Tyrion making eunuch jokes while hating drawf jokes. To which Tyrion responds with another joke about eunuchs not having testicles. Well, at least it's out of the way. MINUS ONE QUARTER POINT for the jokes that aren't even that funny. [9.75] Once everyone who matters is inside Jon hugs his brother who is actually his cousin Bran and Sansa & Dany start exchanging feudal pleasantries to remind everybody we're in a period piece (with dragons) when Dr. Branhattan correctly interrupts and reminds everybody that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE unless we stop wasting time with medieval bullshit and focus on surviving personified climate change. We have a conference scene where little Alys Karstark does a little silent existing, little Ned Umber drives home the whole medieval period piece thing by asking for horses and blah blah de blah so he can go pick up his people, and little Lyana Mormont yells at Jon for being a simp on behalf of all Northerners and Jon reminds everybody for the 83rd time that he [correctly] did this because crowns ain't shit if everybody's dead. Now I understand and like that one of the central themes of ASOIAF and by extension GOT is that Feudalism Actually Sucks so they do need to belabor the point that people are stuck in the old ways of doing things and old tactics aren't suited to new battlefield realities but I GET IT ALREADY, SHOW. Minus .5 for beating the drum a little too much. [9.25] QYBURN shows up to inform Cersei that the army of the dead has breached the wall (you know, given that the wall is 8000 years old you'd think more people would be freaking out about it being destroyed, but whatever), to which Cersei replies GOOD. I like the efficiency in re-establishing that Cersei is evil, crazy, and dumb. Pan to the Greyjoy fleet just outside of King's Landing harbor WHERE: Captain Jack Greyjoy is the worst uncle Yara has ever heard of. BUT YOU HAVE HEARD OF ME. Anyway, we get a throwaway reference to Euron's crew all being mutes and the show at least TRIES to lampshade not just killing Yara off (set up oh so artfully by having Yara ask "so why haven't you killed me yet?"). Euron explains that he wants someone to talk to and we get our first obligatory LOL THEON GOT CASTRATED REMEMBER LOL joke of the season. Euron vows to go fuck the queen. You WISH you were on Sallador Saan's level, bro. I really should take more than half a point off for this shit, but I want Asha to live through the series purely because I think she's cool, and this scene keeps that hope alive along with her, so only minus .5. [8.75] Are you ready for the least Game Of Thronesy name ever that is ironically actually a canonical ASOIAF name? Say hi to HARRY STRICKLAND. He will be your waiter this evening at on-screen representation of the Golden Company restaurant. He explains there will be no elephants because the dragons eat up all the budget ER I MEAN they're too much of a hassle to transport over water even though Hannibal managed the feat just fine much to Republican Rome's chagrin. Harry Strickland looks like a Jaime Lannister cosplayer and I actually think that's a brilliant little touch. Cersei and Euron have the same conversation they had 3 or 4 times last season only this time it continues after sex and concludes with a vow to put a prince in Cersei's belly, and we get lingering silence on Cersei's face giving YOU time to remember she told Jaime she was already pregnant last season. Did they forget? Did Cersei lie to Jaime about being pregnant? Is she lying to Euron about not being pregnant? Does it really matter? No. Too long, too redundant, too much making me wish Sallador Saan was still here. But Strickland being generic store brand Jaime is just too good. Only minus half a point [8.25] Bronn does a Bronn thing until Qyburn cockblocks him by showing up to hand him his plot thread for the year [Cersei wants her brothers dead, will pay]. Joffrey's crotchbow makes its return to the show. The annuled Stokeworth engagment is referenced. Nothing remarkable about this scene, other than Qyburn tapping into his mad scientist spidey sense and predicting whore #2 will be dead of the pox within a year. Qyburn is awesome. I will give this a quarter point for Qyburn's line and for planting the potential for a White Walker Whore complete with Zombie Herpes shambling around in Episode 5. [8.5] JON AND ARYA HUGGING IT OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 60 EPISODES GET HYPE. Arya respects Sansa now. Jon thinks that's weird but Arya reminds Jon that they're all family and on the same team. Sorta. DRAGON RIDING. Okay this was pretty cool and while the dialogue is dragging behind the other elements of the show ("what if I fall off?" "Then I have enjoyed your company." I realize you THINK this is funny, show, but mostly it makes Dany sound like a dick and also I don't buy her being that blase about Jon potentially dying) but this scene does end with them finding a nice secluded spot to engage in Muchas Smoochas and it's good enough that I buy Jon and Dany as mutually horny teenagers. Maybe they will make me actually feel the love by the end of this thing. Gendry makes Sandor a Dragonglass Axe. Gendry is Mr. Dragonglass. Arya stops in to say hello and anachronistic shit about Gendry knowing one rich girl. There's a little more to feudal class divides than that, show. Arya and The Hound snip at each other and exchange begrudging respect. MINUS ONE QUARTER POINT for breaking my immersion with the rich girl lines. [8.25] I Used To Be An Extra Like You, Then I Took An Arrow To The Face. Mystery arrows start dropping fools on Euron's boat and the problem with an all-mute crew - namely, nobody can shout out the alarm - immediately presents itself. THEON IS FINALLY KICKING SOME ASS. Took long enough! While Euron is off trying to fill Sallador Saan's shoes, Theon is in his base, killing his d00dz, and liberating his captive. Yara headbutts Theon as soon as she's cut free, which really smacks of lazy action movie "punch you then hug you" tripe, but then again these are the Greyjoys and that might just be how they shake hands in that fucked up family. Also, as far as headbutts go, it was pretty good. Theon and Yara make a clean getaway and Yara writes herself out of the main plot by explaining she's off to re-take the homeland while Euron's busy getting his dick wet, and justifies it by stating Team Dany will need a fallback point in case Shit Goes Wrong (and let's be real here, Shit is going to go Wrong). Yara takes one more glance at the script and realizes Theon really wants to go to the sleepover at Jon's house and she gives him leave to do so. A little disappointed in the lack of a showdown with maybe Theon heroically overcoming some of his trauma long enough to beat Euron's ass, but this DOES conform to a classic ASOIAF theme of thinking with your dick screws you over, as has happened to Euron here. Theon got to be cool, Yara gets to live, and Theon is off to join the main plot at Winterfell. I AM HAPPY. Plus half a point [8.75] Tyrion and Sansa check the character interaction box, but this is pretty nothing other than making Sansa kinda look like more of a dick than I think she should be and making sure the Lord Royce costume is still in working order. Jon and Sansa have a chat. Apparently the Glovers are not coming to the sleepover. Sansa intimates this is Jon's fault somehow (even though she was already chirping about too many mouths to feed back when Dany's foreign hordes showed up) and implies that Jon bent the knee because he wants to bone Dany which, okay, kinda yeah (and Jon's face totally gives it away that this is part of it). And Jon reminds her for the 500th time that it's actually because ZOMBIES. I'm not sure if Sansa is supposed to be Not Quite Getting It because feudalism sucks, or because She Really Liked The Idea Of Being A Queen, or if it's just that they can't get the handle of characterizing someone as A Strong Woman without defaulting to Kinda A Bitch/"badass" dude only with tits. Which is hardly a problem exclusive to Game of Thrones. Anyway. WE GET IT, SHOW, Jon and Sansa don't trust each other and people aren't seeing the big undead picture. I'm taking a full point off because I'm getting annoyed. [7.75] Dany, accompanied by Jorah The Fedorah, pops in to say hi to Sam. Dany thanks Sam for saving Fedorah's life and does the classic feudal "name your reward" thing. Sam asks for a pardon for all his theiving, including Heartsbane, which leads into an awkward convo where Dany reveals that she killed Sam's dad and bro which is a bit of a bombshell for Sam even though his dad was a total shit. Family's complicated like that. And besides Rickon Dickon was a decent enough dude. Dany does not include the burnination detail. Sam, tears in his eyes, asks to be excused. I keep forgetting the name of the actor who plays Sam, which is too bad because I really like him here. The "I killed your dad. oh yeah, your brother, too" dialogue between Dany and Sam was good comedy beats, but this was supposed to be drama/tragedy. So it feels pretty forced and like you can see the nuts and bolts of the stage. DERP. Sam runs out crying into the night and of course Dr. Branhattan is there, and he consoles Sam's grief by informing him now would be a good time to tell Jon about his true lineage. Sam tries to pawn it off on Bran, because Bran is Jon's brother. Of course, the whole point of this is that strictly speaking he isn't, but whateves. Bran points out that Jon trusts Sam more (does not point out Sam also has the qualification of being able to walk) and off Sam goes into the crypt to hug it out with Jon. Ned Statue! Sam apologizes for going into the Stark only zone, even though non-Starks pop up here fairly regularly now. Sam drops the bombshell. YOUR MOTHER....WEARS COMBAT BOOTS oh no wait excuse me, typo, YOUR MOTHER WAS LYANNA STARK. Rhaegar's your dad, Bob's your uncle, you're actually Aegon VI and you might want to go backsies on the whole knee bending thing because you are ahead of Dany in line. Sam also cites his dead dad and bro as a reason why Jon would actually be better at the whole king thing. Jon also seemed not to know Dany burnt Sam's family, though I'm not sure why she'd be expected to tell him or why Jon would be particulary bothered by it. Also one literally asked for it and the other had it coming so while Sam's bias is understandable (and a good plot tension hook going forward, maybe) I'm not sure this is as big a deal as Sam feels it is. So we got that done. MINUS 1 POINT for Bran's "he's not my brother" line because he's still your cousin, you pedantic little shit. MINUS 1 POINT for Dany and Sam having a comedy dialogue exchange in a tragedy scene. PLUS 1 POINT for Sam's actor being great. PLUS HALF A POINT for Jon having a good freakout over learning the truth and for getting that reveal out of the way. [7.25] Next, an instructional video on how to paint your horror movie by the numbers. Tormund and Beric lead a cautious sweep of a very destroyed looking Last Hearth (complete with torn up Umber banners still hanging so you know) looking for signs of life, of which there are none. OMG FOOSTEPS EVERYBODY HIDE. Comedic relief of tension as it turns out to be Edd's crew doing the same thing. Edd leads Tormund and Beric to the only body they could find, which turns out to be Little Ned Umber, tacked to the wall in the center of a White Walker spiral pattern. "It's a message from the White Walkers" NO SHIT SHERLOCK BERIC the show wasn't on hiatus for that long, geez, it's been well established over 7 seasons as thing we do. Anyway, to the surprise of no one, the camera cuts to Tormund at an angle where you can see dead Ned over his shoulder and recognize the facial makeup used for everyone who springs to life as a wight and the dead kid starts screaming and hissing to provide your jump scare at exactly the right time. People freak out, Beric turns on his flamethrower and stabs the kid with his sword [once is enough with the Omni-Tool!] who immediately catches fire all over, spreading specificaly to the spirals and nothing else. Inhuman screeching continues until he finishes burning. MINUS A QUARTER POINT for being a scene for every horror movie ever. MINUS HALF POINT for Beric's flamethrower sword telling physics to eat a dick. PLUS HALF A POINT for courageously killing off a little kid. PLUS A QUARTER POINT for working Edd in and not forgetting about him. [7.25] THE HOODED MAN comes to Winterfell. Well that was quick, Theon. Oh no wait it's JAIME finally showing up, the other guy who damn well better stay incognito when showing up to Winterfell. Jaime's got some great gray beard action going on that has him looking like Old Man Luke Skywalker in the new Star Wars films. Of course the first person he makes eye contact with is Bran. DUN DUN DUN. and roll credits. FINAL SCORE: 7.25. Competent but not mindblowing. I'm probably being a soft judge here because I'm glad the show's back, also the degree of difficulty is down as they enter the home stretch and they just have to not piss themselves while tying up all the dangling plot threads into one big fuzzy ball of climax. Whatever. This didn't make me feel like a total fool for waiting 20 months to see and gave me enough good feels that I can say I was content with this episode and I can look past its warts.

Reusing the Viserys costume + wig for Rhaegar was pretty jarring. Actually showing Rhaegar was probably always destined to be a bit of a letdown, but aside from that it is weird to have him so physically resemble Viserys when the characterization we get for both brothers establishes how totally different they were in life. Not a huge complaint but it did take me out of the scene. I feel like Bran's established behavior pattern should have had him address Sam as "Lord Tarly" particularly since they've established that Sam didn't find out about his family while still at the Citadel. Missed opportunity. Another missed opportunity in the Dragon Pit scene. For once I really would've liked to see Missandei going into hype man mode and introduced Dany by all 37 of her titles and epithets, either just to fuck with Cersei or to see a bit where Cersei gets frustrated and interrupts her. Either way that'd have been fun and seems missing with all the other first time/long time reactions we got in this episode. Also this was one of the few times where the inability to put Lena Heady and Jerome Flynn in the same scene forced a contrivance, and it isn't a huge deal but again, like with the Rhaegar/Viserys similarity, it cracked that fourth wall, reminded me I'm just watching a show, and took me out of the scene. Repeating the "fine kill me then" bit with Cersei only to have her blink and back down was a bit much. But at least Jaime's walked out on Cersei. Sorta. Better late than never, and Jaime catching the beginnings of southron snowfall was a nice little touch. I would've liked Theon to not take quite so much of a beating before he made his comeback. Also the whole thing where he POWERED UP by being kneed in the genitals he no longer has was pretty goofy. Amusing! But goofy. I guess it works as symbolism/allegory for coming to terms with his mutilation. Anyway, the fight was way too Hollywood, but at least it ended with Theon kicking the crap out of someone and finally we're starting that Theon re-ascention arc. Speaking of "too Hollywood", the delay on the wight springing to life. Again, that serves more to fake out the audience (for no purpose other than to fake out the audience). Also it contradicts the earlier bit where it freaked out and started trying to break out of the box when Sandor played Knock Knock. Also having Sandor carry it on his back when it needed horse and cart to be toted around earlier. Okay I get that Sandor is a strong sumbitch and I know filming horses costs money. It is much easier and quicker to list the things I don't like about this episode than the things I do. For the most part this episode focused heavily on the things the show still does well and de-emphasized the things it no longer does well. Also, as the season finale, it was naturally heavy on payoffs and denouement, forgoing shockers for the sake of delivering on what's being anticipated. [Exception: Sansa's pivot to Littlefinger in the Winterfell Trial scene, which for some reason they heavily invested on misdirecting from in the preliminary episodes. But even that wasn't very shocking because they tried so hard to lead us one way it effectively told us they were going the other.] And there's other minor nitpicks like Ghost getting the whole season off, and will someone let Edmure Tully out of prison before he starves please? But on the whole, maybe I'm just enjoying being pandered to too much, but this episode largely gave me what I want in the way I wanted it. We had Dragons and we basically had tits even though we technically didn't see them, but we got enough of Dany & Jon taking the ferry to bone-town that I'm going to count it on the Modified McShane Scoring System (MMSS). Rather than what I've done in past weeks, this week I'm just trying to decide how much to deduct from a potential perfect 10 (tits and dragons) for the above minor nitpicks, because obviously this wasn't a perfect episode and yet I was satisfied with virtually everything else. Some of it was so gratifying I feel it's worth bonus points. So I guess - 1 for each item above (6 total). then a +1 for Jon saying what I've been saying for years and pointing out how crap it is that everyone believes Dany's barren just because some witch with a grudge says so. + 2 for all things Theon this week. The staredown with Euron at the meeting. The heart to heart with Jon, granting him the absolution he needs, incomplete as it had to be. The little touches, like symbolically re-baptising himself on the beach after beating the crap out of sassy Ironborn Lieutenant. Again, no huge surprises here, just gratifying delivery of what has been promised and teased in episodes past. What is dead can never die and I am HYPE for Season 8 Theon action. What Is Dead Can Never Die. Littlefinger not just getting killed off, but truly getting defeated. His dysfunctional and destructive game of thrones was rejected and repudiated, and he died on his knees, out of schemes, out of tricks, reduced to petulant tears and useless begging and pleading. Now he's not just dead, but wrong. It was perhaps the most gratifying demise this show has done. Yes, including Joffrey and Viserys. Almost makes up for how they tried so hard to make this "unexpected" they did a sub-adequate job of foreshadowing it. (+.5) And you know I'm going to love it when they bring the White Walkers in just long enough to remind you they are problem #1 and always have been. They are what everyone should be utterly terrified of and preparing for, instead of the pretty distraction that is the Game of Thrones. And now they've breached the wall. I can mostly look the other way on what I assume is going to be a third Tormund death fakeout (including 2 in consecutive episodes...is he going to catch up with Beric before this is over? +.5) I guess I'm really giving this a 7 out of 10 with qualifier that I am predisposed to be generous to this episode. My system is probably easily exploited by the nature of a Season Finale since, again, I like getting my denouement and this episode was of course being heavy on denouement. And fan service, but again it's a season finale, it's about sending the audience home happy (or at least gratified) to tide them over for the long layoff before the final season. Part of episode 7's score is what it did (and didn't) do relative to the rest of the reason.

And it'd be really irritating if I told you I was going to give you directions later on, before you left, but never actually did (Winds Of Winter, at the least, was "supposed to be" out by now).

GRRM can give them the destination, even landmarks along the way but they still have to improvise the journey in between. It's like if I invite you to my house for a party and give you the address but not the directions. Sure, you might get here. Eventually. You might even get here in time. But you're going to at least miss a turn. You might even have to double back half way through because you started down the wrong route. And if someone's riding with you they're going to start asking "are you lost" in increasingly irritated tones as you continue to meander.

Modified McShane Scoring System (MMSS) Dragons? YES. Tits? NO (though we did see Kit Harrington topless and technically that means nipple-age, and the MMSS team does endeavor to represent and respect all orientations and preferences, and does aim to recognize tit-equivalents for other perspectives. Hmm.) Okay we'll start at 6 out of 10 on the promise that topless dudes may count as tits for some audience segments. So let's get to the bonuses and penalties. No Alfie Allen in the opening credits. Show, we have talked about this. -1. (5) Seven Samurai In The Snow. We cut back to this team several times to get in all the interaction and reaction to each other. Some of it is interesting, some of it is amusing, some of it seems like conversations that maybe we should've had before they wandered into enemy territory with vastly reduced visibility, but whatever. Gendry hasn't forgotten he hates the brotherhood and why -- he wanted to join them -- and they don't apologize because after all they're dedicated to Fire Jesus and the ends justify the means. Good. Jon addresses the Longclaw issue with Jorah and they give Jorah a believable motive for not taking it back, i.e. his respect for his father and his decision. Good. Thoros doesn't remember the Battle of Pyke because he was drunk. Okay that's funny. Tormund telling Sandor how he wants to make babies with Brienne, okay that's funny, ran a little long though. And finally we get revenant chat with Jon and Beric. "You don't look like your father" HO HO HO here's another reminder for the audience of Jon's true lineage. Beric referencing the one time he met Ned was good, although remember when it was a relevant point that Jon looks VERY MUCH LIKE NED? Guess Beric forgot this one of the 6 times he came back from the dead. Anyway Beric drops a line I personally enjoy about "death is the enemy, the enemy always wins, but we fight him anyway." Jon references the Night's Watch oath. Does Beric's eyepatch symbolize tunnel vision? Is it still tunnel vision if it's focused on the thing that actually IS most important? I guess I'll give the preamble +.5 over all. (5.5) Sansa and Arya have an asshole contest. I think Arya wins. Hey, remember when Robb and Catelyn got that letter from Sansa and immediately knew it was horse shit because Sansa was a prisoner? Neither do I, neither does anyone else. Season 1 feels like a completely different show now. Anyway, Arya's story about having to retrieve her one arrow over and over after each shot with Ned watching and applauding when she finally hit the target was enjoyable. Rest of it kinda wasn't. Arya walks up to her sister, the acting lord, threatens the fuck out of her, then walks away? Guess she is Ned's daughter after all. -.5 (5) ZOMBIE BEAR! Okay that's fucking cool. A redshirt dies, we establish Sandor is still pyrophobic, Thoros gets munched by a bear and Beric cauterizes the wound with his very handy flaming sword. Remember this later. +1 point for HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE BEAR. (6) Sansa and Littlefinger establish that hey maybe keeping Brienne around for insurance is a good idea. And it is. REMEMBER THIS LATER. WASH. The Inglorious Basterds jump a small wight scouting party with one White Walker, who Jon busts with Longclaw [Jon WW Kill Count: 2] and all the wights save one collapse immediately. Well that's convenient. So they've figured out that White Walkers work like head vampires or whatever, except this one guy's gang had a transfer from another horde in it. Whatever okay lets just get on with this. They bound and gag the wight like a regular prisoner so they don't have to spend money on proesthetic stumps for for the extra I guess. Not at least chopping the arms and legs off seems dumb here. Gendry is dispatched sans hammer as a runner because "he's the fastest." Not sure how they'd know this, I assume they're actually just being tactful about him being the weakest fighter of the gang. Maybe we should've thought about this raven sending idea BEFORE we got to this point? -.5 for letting us see the bolts of the plot rail. (5.5) Tyrion addresses some logical concerns with Dany w.r.t. her not being able to have a successor thing, and her plan realistically requiring more than one generation. Dany tells a smalldick joke w.r.t. Jon before apologizing to Tyrion for the "little" pun. Really, show? Scene recovers as Dany correctly establishes she doesn't want to put the succession cart before the taking the throne horse. She also gets understandably heated at Tyrion and gets kinda paranoid about how much he seems to be thinking about her death. Dany doesn't totally trust Tyrion and with how crap his plans have worked out for her, she honestly shouldn't. +.5 because it's always nice when the director lets Emilia Clarke put an emotion besides The Badass Lack Of Emotion into the character. (6) Remember when Sansa was talking shit about Ned and Robb being dumb a few episodes back? IMMEDIATELY AFTER WE ESTABLISH KEEPING BRIENNE AROUND IS A GOOD IDEA AND SANSA ACCEPTS THE LOGIC SHE SENDS BRIENNE AWAY AS AN ENVOY TO KING'S LANDING JUST BECAUSE CERSEI WRITES TO THEM. Now this is a dumb remove your protection move that is worthy of standing alongside classic Stark blunders of seasons past. And Sansa should know better than anyone not to trust Cersei for a second. And we JUST ESTABLISHED THE OPPOSITE OF DOING THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. Minus a point and a half, because it's one thing to have a stupid plot contrivance in a show, it's another thing to imply something is stupid in a previous scene and then do it anyway. (4.5) Team Suicide Mission runs away, gets stuck on some thin ice and then has to run across it anyway, towards a convenient island of proper land in the middle. Now, I'm not going to complain about how the ice holds for our heroes and not for the horde since there is, after all, a vast difference in weight between 8 dudes and THOUSANDS. But man. "Hey if we take out that leader they'll all drop." "No! We need to keep this one animated so we can show it as proof." FIRST OF ALL, how the fuck you gonna get to the Night's King from here. Second of all, if you could, you wouldn't need to prove shit to Cersei because you'd have dealt with this whole undead menace on your own. So they're surrounded by a big ass horde and we get a standoff. Thoros eventually either freezes to death or he's finally heard one too many dumb lines of dialogue and his brain peaces the fuck out. Gendry, and coherent writing, have escaped clean. Beric's super convenient omnitool sword which cauterized Thoros earlier now easily burns him. Sandor kicking the wight POW at one point during the standoff because it won't shut up is funny, but otherwise this is pretty terrible. We know SOMEHOW they're getting out of this but this show used to not put characters it means/needs to survive in situations where their survival is completely illogical. minus 1 point (3.5) Gendry collapses right before the Eastwatch Gate but close enough to be seen and dragged in because of course he does. WASH. Hey, you know who'd have been useful in relaying information from the Suicide Squad to Dany and also would be able to act far enough in advance to make it more plausible she could actually arrive in time? BRAN. Where the fuck is he and why isn't he tailing these guys with a crow all the while? And come to think of it why is he letting Sansa and Arya misunderstand each other? This is the problem with omniscient characters. You have to come up with a reason WHY they don't act, or at least acknowledge that it's WEIRD they don't intervene and let the audience wonder why that is, and establish teasers and hints that we'll eventually figure it our or see why. But no Bran this week. -.5 (3) Dany gets the message remarkably quickly Tyrion tells her to buckle her seatbelt or whatever but Dany's done listening to Tyrion because she's a strong woman who don't need a man and well actually Tyrion's kinda been full of bad advice for her so far, which she points out, so she should blow him off at this point. Also clearly she gives a fuck about Jon and that's part of her motive here. Then again, if she was worried enough about Jon to fly off and back him up. Why. Didn't. She. Leave. Earlier. Whatever. WASH. (3) Sandor throws a rock and hits a jawless wight in the face and then calls it a dumb cunt. Okay that's fucking hilarious. He throws another rock and it lands short, which establishes the ice isn't all the fragile (somehow) so now the wights rush across the lake and we get an epic battle in which 7 stand against thousands and only take a redshirt casualty. Jon shouts "fall back" at one point and everyone watching the world over immediately sasses their TV/computer screen "LOL TO WHERE?" Honestly at this point I'm FFWing to when Dany shows up only stopping if it looks like a named character is in the process of biting it, so I may have cheated myself out of the effect of the Tormund death fake out. But then didn't they do a Tormund death fake out during Battle Of The Bastards? Anyway Dany rides in and roasts some fools, and every body piles on Drogon's back without buckling up (Sandor, however, wisely skewers the POW Wight on a convenient spike on Drogon's back). Oh but what's this Jon is playing hero ball for some reason, and that reason is so we can do another heroic sacrifice that ends up not actually being a sacrifice because Death Fakeouts Are Cool. Drogon flies away with everybody except Jon, who gets dragged under and then left alone by the horde. Jon holds his breath in freezing ass water for like 10 minutes or whatever and drags himself out after everyone has sadly flown away. Visually fun but man is this show's downturn in writing showing. -1.5 (1.5) Okay with that out of the way, the cool bits about this segment. THE NIGHT'S KING GIVES NO FUCKS ABOUT YOUR DRAGONS. There's a little detail that I really enjoyed, and that is there is, at one point, a line/wall of fire on the ground from burning wights. Now, this time, mind you, it's actual dragon fire, not regular fire. And again, we see the Night's King walk towards it and automatically snuff it out with his presence. Even dragonfire isn't Walker Proof. Taking these guys out won't be so easy after all Anyway, as you'd expect from a completely alien intellect like The One True King of Westeros and Beyond, the Night's King is unemotional and unphased by the arrival of the dragons and their laying waste to his army. He calls for an ice spear from one of his associates and grounds Viserion with one javelin throw that would put artillery fire to shame, let alone an olympian. Which would be more ridiculous except we've firmly established this guy is super magical so why the fuck not. Night's King flexing, I will always reward. +1 (2.5) Jon resurfaces and the horde notices. BENJEN STARK TO THE RESCUE. Okay I didn't think to see that coming. Anyway Benjen ends up making the heroic sacrifice because fuck it he's technically dead anyway, giving up his horse and drawing aggro while Jon runs way. There you go Jon, you found your uncle. Hah. +.5 for actually surprising me. (3) Sansa breaks into Arya's room and holy shit is this terrible. First of all Arya keeps her faces in a messenger bag we've never seen on her in previous scenes. Second of all the messenger bag is modern looking as fuck and I'm surprised they even remembered to make it out of leather (although to be fair the props department has generally done a really good job on this show even when the writing hasn't). Third of all Arya does this "let's play a game" shit. Then Arya peels off her mask to reveal it was really Ramsay all along. And again Arya basically tells Sansa I am going to fucking kill you and then...doesn't. And hands over Sansa the valyrian dagger Chekov. What a wet fart of a scene. If Arya were actually going to go evil this might work better. But it seems like they're trying to make Littlefinger's death "shocking" by not doing any set up to have make any sense. In the meantime, Arya and Sansa should be literally getting ready to kill each other in self-defense. Which would be tremendously powerful and tragic if they did it (much as I would hate to see it). But they won't. -1.5 (1.5) LOVE, however, the Dany/Jon scene. Tangent time: Emilia Clarke's performance in the Dany role has gotten a lot of criticism over the years, here and elsewhere. Her Dany has often been called wooden, and worse. I've never thought the criticism has been completely fair. Especially now, in later seasons, where I think it's more clear that there's a director/writer problem than an actor problem with several characters on the show. TL;DR Clarke does bring a decent amount of believable emotion to the role, it's just that she is rarely asked to do so. So I like scenes where Dany lets her public mask of stoicism slip and loses some composure; Clarke does these moments on the show really well, actually, they're just scarce moments. I still don't really feel LOVERS chemistry from the Jon and Dany characters yet but I finally got to see FRIENDS from them this week, and much of that is due to an all-too-rare (i.m.o.) scene with Dany showing someone the real her. Also, due to the circumstances of the scene Dany has seen Jon's scars. She doesn't ask him about them yet but that's coming, I'm sure, since she can see "stabbed in the heart" isn't just hyperbole after all. +1 (2.5) Okay where the fuck did the army of the dead get those big ass chains? -.5 (2) HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE ICE DRAGON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Knew this was coming, of course, but the scene was well timed as far as giving the audience time to have anticipation and anxiety build up before the final payoff, of that giant dragon eye springing open bright blue. +1 (3) 3 out of 10 overall. Much like last week the show is good visually and musically and is consistently delivering on cathartic big moments and amusing character interactions, but the path it takes to get to those moments is terrible, as the writing is actively harmful to suspension of disbelief. Once again the show is FUN without necessarily being GOOD, and it's painfully noticeable in relation to previous seasons. This show isn't as good as it used to be and perhaps the most frustrating thing about that is it isn't too far away from being almost as good as it was, and yet that final step towards cohesion is no longer being taken. Stuff like Jon forgetting that bringing a wight to Cersei is the means to an end (dumb as it is) and not the actual end itself. Ugh. Anyway this show used to reward the audience for paying close attention to detail and now it punishes the audience for it with glaring inconsistencies in internal logic. I don't mind a show I have to turn my brain off to enjoy. It's just weird and jarring to watch a show turn into that kind of show after making so much hay in early seasons by not being that kind of show. Whatever fucking zombie ice dragon \m/ \m/