AlpenglowMemories

4/10 I'll say this: it's was better presented most of the other actiony stuff this season. But it was really, really dumb. Like, so dumb. Am I supposed to seriously buy that wights can be stopped by some cold water? And even then, can't the White Walkers just freeze the lake? When did fire stop being the only way to kill wights? Jon not getting on Drogon felt very, very contrived - pointlessly so, considering he's back safe and sound at the end of the episode. Gendry ran to Eastwatch....what? Benjen swooped in out of nowhere, and I'm still not sure why they made him Coldhands: does his magic still work even if all the Children dead? Arya and Sansa? Another false conflict to extend Littlefinger's existence out just a tiny, tiny bit longer. And chains? The Others have giant chains now? Why? In case a dragon fell into a lake?

Not saying this is a reference or anything but it is a bit of a fun overlap. In this interview Tolkien uses the now somewhat famous Ice and Fire phrase "All Men Must Die". Not saying it's deliberate reference from GRRM or anything, but it is pretty fun and quirky - at least for me.

4/10 That cheesy conversation with the actress and Arya (is domestic abuse badass now?), the awful "butthole" jokes, the Hound butchering the man's groin - is this show written by 14 year olds? Grey Worm doesn't know what a joke is. Tyrion wants everyone to drink, oh and his own vineyard. This scene goes on forever. Dany's return was the most underwhelming and pitiful scenes they've done all season. Rivverun felt like filler. So the Blackfish either escaped again, or died off-screen (what is it with them wasting actors now?) and Jaime loves Cersei long-time. Ugh, just ugh. Also Arya fighting the Waif was mehly done.

We’re at the third act of the season now and everything still feels like set-up. Dry, tedious exposition is still their primary way of conveying information. Every scenes feels too long, bogged down. Yara is now a lesbian, apparently, and is empowering Theon through shame. Arya really shouldn’t be surviving that. What a waste of Ian McShane. The Hound’s out for bloody revenge because that isn’t an overused trope by now. Sansa’s snarking everyone into action. Just meh.

5 The opening fight scene was really meh. The Sam/Gilly/Family stuff was extremely boring. Tommen and Margaery was long, tedious, cringey. I had to fast-forward through it. That dinner scene as well...talk about going on forever. I also don't buy Sam going there, even sending Gilly there, when Randyl is present. Seriously, those scenes felt endless. Arya kills the waif next, I'm guessing, so good thing they've done a Meryn Trant on her, making her as unlikeable and 'deserving' as possible. Dany's end scene was pretty repetitive. Felt like that should have been linked with E4's moment.

5/10 If last week showed improvement, this knocked it back down again. Emilia Clarke was really bad in her scene and the teary-eyed goodbye to Jorah had me laughing. Jesus wept, the man’s an obsessed stalker. Arya’s scenes continue to bore: now she’ boxing with the waif! The play was entertaining, but too long, and they’re dragging the life out of this stuff now. The Kingsmoot was atrocious. From Theon upstaging Yara to Euron arriving like a drunk at a wedding, no charisma or charm, no dragon-horn. Somehow he wins the Kingsmoot, but Yara still has more supporters, enough to steal most of his ships, but it’s okay he’s going to make 1000 more with...what? Jon hasn’t changed at all, the Night’s Watch no longer votes, and Sansa has become yet another cipher in the show bleating about ‘ruvenge’. The Others reveal...who cares? They’ve created zero tension or mystery surrounding this, nobody in that cave has been established as an interesting, sympathetic character, so why should I care about them dying? The scene where the children ‘create’ the Night’s King looked really cheesy. I wasn't too impressed by the action scene at the end: the Children’s napalm bombs amuse me more than they look cool, Summer’s death was weak and bordering on offensive, the wights are the least threatening things on the planet: one slap, I swear, and they go down.I'm pretty sure Hodor's name-origin will be different in the books. They kinda wasted Sydow.

6 Jon’s return scene was okay. Character motivations still don’t make much sense, but the Tormund moment was nice. Bloody boring episode overall though. Scenes continue to drag on and on, endless exposition in dry scene after dry scene. That Tommen/High Sparrow part was excruciating. Varys offering the woman money to leave was LOL funny. Dany’s scene was fine, I guess. Ramsay-Sue continues to frustrate, now we’ve got a dead Shaggy-Dog and a potentially raped Osha to add to the endless misery and shock value. Umbers motivation is extremely weak. Tower of Joy...bleh. Arthur Dayne swinging two swords around like Darth Maul, the weak performance from YoungNed, Bran and Sydow stupidly pointing out obvious points, Howland backstabbing Dayne was weak, implication of Ned bragging doesn’t fit either show or book character. Sam and Gill was another scene that just went on and on.

6 Bran’s vision was okay. The actor, forgot his name, was really dull though. The scene with Meera left me indifferent as well. The Wildlings vs the Night’s Watch was...underwhelming? Everything about it felt so passive, bland, perfunctorily handled. Plot contrivances continue to annoy me: the man mocking Cersei in public, suddenly Robert Strong is just randomly there? Why and how? Really tired of the exposition scenes on the show now, they’re just so...plain? Uninteresting? Repetitive? It just feels so depressingly dry. Characters hanging around, stating what they think and feel, or rambling on about the plot… it’s just...there’s no artistry to it. Ramsay’s killing off Roose felt extremely contrived. Don’t know why a woman who has just given birth in a medievalist world is wandering around. Why does Davos seem okay with Melisandre? Why hasn’t he demanded answers about Shireen and Stannis? And why, why, is he so adamant about protecting Jon’s body?

I gave it 5. The opening scene was decent though it suffers from the thinning of Jon’s story, putting all of it on the wildlings doesn’t really capture the essence of the betrayal against the vows. Ramsay with Myranda was laughable. The show feels boring to me. Every scene is just some dully written exposition dump with zero creativity put into the establishing of information. Tyrion and Varys was one of the worst examples of this, especially the weak attempts at humour “Well, she won’t be sailing to Westeros now...” Sansa being afraid of icy water when her tormentor’s men are on her heels was absurd – she’s a child of the North for the love of God! Brienne appeared out of nowhere for a somewhat stilted fight (people really hang around waiting to be killed in this show, don’t they) and the hounds vanished? Dorne is still terrible, except now makes even less sense: so apparently the people are fine with their Prince just being murdered? And now Trystane was on another ship? How? When? What? Jaime reverts back to his season one characterisation – why? Cersei is still the weepy good mother, bland as usual. Some of dialogue is truly wretched: “We’re not here to feed you!” “We’re here to kill you”. On the whole it just felt boring. Really boring.

I watched a scene from season one and then one from season five. The decline in the quality of the dialogue is tremendous. I have to wonder at this point do they even care about turning in a solid adaptation? I've had increasing problems with the show since the second season - the issues in S1, bar the lower production quality, seem like trivialities now - but I must confess I never really expected it to get this bad. Even the smallest of changes seemed to be befuddling and have an absurd impact on the quality of the episodes. Do they honestly think that Ramsay Snow is a better chief villain than Roose Bolton? Why on earth did they think having two random servants - an old woman and man - were a quality replacement for Lady Dustin and Wyman Manderly and Alys Karstark? Do they also truly think that having Dany frown and read lines dramatically, forcing Clarke to turn in the same limited performance every year, is working? Is cutting Bowen Marsh and the pink letter wise? Did they really feel replacing the political aspects of the Wall with Thorne and Olly was a worthwhile venture? So many bamboozling choices, so many failed scenes.

5/10 Worst episode the season. Really bad. The Walk was the only scene I thought they did a decent job with. Everything else was either mediocre or really, really bad (Trant, Dorne).

I settled on a 6. Possibly the weakest episode 9 of the show so far. Dorne is almost offensive in how bad it is. Everything from the acting, the direction, the writing, the characters, the action scenes. It's been progressively worse with each passing appearance. Bronn/Tyene's last interaction made me want to punch the screen it was so cheesy. Ramsay's attack on the camp - what was that? A 30 second sequence of miscellaneous extras running around and tents somehow just bursting into flames in a CG wideshot? And this all happened because Ramsay knows the geography? Arya was...fine, I guess? Nothing too interesting there. It was cool that Mace had some more screentime. Not sure what the purpose of making Trant such a pervert was. He murdered Syrio, abused Sansa, is a general jerk. I think that's motivation enough. Or it would be is B&W credited their audience with any kind of intelligence. Shireen burning...I can see Stannis doing it. I just don't think it worked particularly well. It seemed underwhelming to me, as if it was mostly thrown in there. Undeserved, as someone said, is a good word. Jon's List...meh. Why are they on the North of the Wall? For false drama, of course! Otherwise the scene was just sort of there...not doing much. Could have just taken them along the South side. Nutter's direction is mostly just competent. Granted, he shot the fight choreography in Daznak's better than most of the other action this season, but holy smokes was it a disappointment. The random Sons of the Harpy attack, Hizdhar's death just randomly thrown in and forgotten about, Dany somehow feeling for Jorah again. And Drogon; they managed to make a dragon lame. That's talent. He flies in, burns a few guys, gets hit by a few spears. I don't know. It lacked spectacle for me. It lacked emotion. Dany riding him didn't feel like a huge character moment, it just felt like something that happened. And the shots of her flying looked really mediocre. :dunno:

7.5-8 Olly continues to be a ham-fisted plot device. We've had, what, three scenes dedicated to this exact same information? It's tiresome now. The Tyrion/Dany scenes were fine, although still underwhelming. The Sansa/Theon scene was nice as well. Hardhome is obviously intended to be the highlight. I thought it was mostly good. There was sufficient build-up (although it seems Jon's developed a very modern potty mouth) and the CG and effects work was very impressive - possibly the best they've done. I have two gripes though: firstly, some of the close-combat stuff was almost incomprehensible, and I can't fathom why they continually shoot action like this. And I don't think the fast-moving, super agile, climbing around like Spiderman wights are all that scary. The White Walkers are cool though, I'd have liked to see more of them. So, it was a good action set-piece, though not as good as Watchers on the Wall.

7.5/10 Parts of it were good, parts of it were underwhelming. Aemon's death wasn't particularly strong and felt tossed in. That seems to be a theme this season: the "big" moments have passed by without much of an impact. Like Slynt's execution - they're not bad, they just don't resonate very well. I also find three violent scenes (Sansa's abuse, the flayed woman, attempted rape) very trying on a viewer. I don't see why they needed the sex scene to be built up through sexual assault: sharing comfort over Aemon's demise would have sufficed, and added pathos. I'm not sure why Ghost doesn't travel with Jon - are they dropping the connection? I also liked the High Sparrow and the Queen of Thorn's sparring, although it did read a bit to modern in my mind. Ramsay is particularly gruesome. The Tyene scene was fine for what it was - at least the nudity had a point. Direction-wise, I thought MS was fine, he made good use of the sets and environments. One thing I didn't like was the fight scene (it's also, iconographically, way too close to Gladiator) where the motions felt very augmented and visually unappealing. Tyrion beating the slaver was funny though. Thrones continues its complete lack of subtlety in the "30 Dismayed Reaction Shots of Olly" and "Cersei Threatens to Burn Cities - What Could THAT Mean?" department. :rolleyes:

I changed my rating to a 7/10. I'm still not fond of Sansa being in Winterfell, but looking again, I felt the scene was well-performed and deserves credit on its own merits. The House of Black and White is, again, very nice tonally well done. Arya manipulating the girl to take the water might be the best scene. I don't feel the overall direction was as strong as "Kill the Boy" from Podeswa, but it was mostly serviceable. The worst thing? Definitely Dorne. It's been the strangest thing they've put on screen. Everything about that sequence was beyond bad.

I gave it a 6 after some deliberating. There were good pieces in there - the House of Black and White stuff, the performances at Winterfell, Jonathan Pyrce - but I do feel we've lost a lot now. Sansa...I don't know. I was uncertain about the idea since the rumours first began because I knew it would have to end up here. And I don't like it. This isn't her story, this shouldn't be her trauma. The scene itself was well-done, but...I don't know. Other things in the episode - Dorne, King's Landing - were poor. They've stripped the complexity of the plots and characters so much that the whole thing feels a mite beige. The Sand Snake fight was pitiful: it felt more like a series of stunts being performed, without tension, rather than a serious skirmish. Nor do I understand why they pushed Sansa into such a brutal arc and yet are petrified of actually bringing the darkest elements in the other plots and characters to life. I don't really expect or anticipate a satisfying answer from the writers.

Podeswa's a decent director. But with writing like that, what can you do? :dunno:

Very ambivalent towards this. It feels so off-course from the text now that I can't even really muster any point in trying to compare them: characters are radically different, plots are all over the place. Based on its own merits it was...mostly fine. Arya's material was perhaps the strongest part with the excellent dying girl scene and the really eerie and cool hall of faces. Podeswa's direction was serviceable, nothing particularly outstanding from him. Dorne was bizarre. It's way too easy for Jaime and Bronn to infiltrate the water gardens, the sand-snakes continue to barely exist, and the fight scene itself was odd. The birth-mark plot was absurd, in my mind, but not unexpected from this show. Pyrce continues to do well with the material given, but the faith have lost all nuance. Granted, it wasn't as silly as the montage from episode four, but still. Tyrion/Jorah was fine. I liked the scene with the slavers. No idea how Tyrion knew the nitty-gritty details of Jeor's death. As for Sansa....I cried. I raged. This wasn't something I ever wanted to happen, and the dread has been with me all season. I don't know what to think. All I know is that it's been the hardest thing to watch on this show. I don't know what to rate it. I don't.

Speaking of Talisa, I wonder if there's any chance they'll actually address her family's response to the Red Wedding?

I gave it a 7. From a direction standpoint, the use of space was nice, in particular the beach scene with Tyrion and Jorah. Otherwise it was just sort of there. I'm bothered by the complete lack of dignity/send-off for Barristan. There seems to be a thing this season with ideas from the book making their way in, but lacking the appropriate context and weight. Kill the Boy just didn't resonate with me. The Stone Men were...err. Very generic b-movie horror monsters. The scene itself also just happened, without a lot of tone or tension. Stannis leaving the Wall was nice. Is it just me or does everyone in this show talk? Every single scene is just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. There's very rarely a time when they just allow the visuals to communicate the story. Everyone is always speaking. I mean, seriously, B&W take 3 script pages to communicate something that could be established with 3 shots.

In general, the scoring has been rather disappointing this season. I don't think there's been any new motifs that have been particularly interesting.

7/10 Another decent enough episode, although my faith in the Winterfell story is dwindling. Littlefinger's plan is confusing and poorly conceived. I also found it amusing how they've ignored the Rhaegar history for four seasons now, but just decided to dump multiple scenes about it in one episode. The Barristan ending was decent. The choreography and editing could have been better, and it suffers from having one too many flashy fights previously. Meereen has been handled reasonably well this season. Winterfell was mostly good. Stannis/Shireen was nice, although they continue to be officiously unsubtle with Melisandre. Sons of the Harpy was awful. They're like 80s villains: dressed in black with funny signs carved into their heads. And more ham-fisted, “they're homophobic, see how bad they are?” Sand Snakes weren't much better. In particular that “badass” kill.

7/10 I thought this was another mostly solid episode. The interaction between Brienne and Pod was nice, and the Sansa scene that preluded it featured some nice acting from Sophie Turner. Janos' execution was decently handled, if a bit rushed. Still not sold on the Winterfell storyline, frankly, but we'll see how it progresses. The House of Black and White material was good. The High Septon bit brings back B&W's lack of subtlety, as does the Cersei-Margaery material. While I never expected them to really go with Tyrion's dark descent, I think the show's version really lacks that blackness of the character's morality, and it weakens his material.

7/10 It was a decent episode. One problem seemed to be the complete lack of weight anything was given. Jon's Lord Commandership is dealt with in a matter of minutes, the conflict and his emotional responses are mostly brushed aside, although the scene itself was quite good. Dorne felt like an add-on, unimportant, uninteresting. Kevan standing up to Cersei again felt unearned and limply developed. It just happened. Ellaria appears to have adopted the Sand Snakes' personalties, why, I don't know – just have the Sand Snakes confront Doran. I liked Lollys. I've given up on seeing Brienne reflect her book character. The chase was one of the better action scenes in the show, however, and I liked seeing the sharpness of Valyrian steel emphasised. Arya's material was fine. I liked the shot of the Kindly Man putting on Jacquen's face. Why did the street thugs sound so British though? Daario's little speech was cheesy, that whole scene was just ridiculous. The production elements continue to impress. Drogon was wonderful.

Huh. I'm surprised by how lukewarm the reception has been to this episode. I thought it was reasonably solid, but even some of the 'Unsullied' I know were less than enthusiastic about it.