Dolorous Gabe

I can understand not liking book-Dorne. I can understand the feeling that seeing their POV or even having it there at the southernmost point of Westeros at all wasn't strictly necessary to the story. I liked it and felt it added to the richness and themes of the story as a whole, though it certainly isn't one of my favourite parts of ASOIAF. The difference is that liking book-Dorne is mostly a matter of taste. It's not stupidly constructed, it has some interesting characters and there is a reason and point to it in the grand scheme of the story as a whole. Meanwhile, show-Dorne isn't really a matter of taste. It's terrible in almost every single way and appears to have no discernible point to it whatsoever. I certainly don't agree that the rest of season 5 was even particularly good, let alone magnificent, but that's a different debate to the one about Dorne.

Agreed. One stupendously silly line spoken by an extremely minor character doesn't make Book-Dorne as bad as the execrable mess of Show-Dorne.

I highly recommend reading THIS by Chebyshov and Julia Martell. It's a long read but it gets to the absolute crux of the issues.

Well... the show decided to reveal his point of view whereas GRRM seemed to decide RW would be too much if we'd seen Robb's POV. Talisa is definitively not an improvement but that's another matter. Robb being obviously older makes it harder to justify the extreme stupidity of his decisions. So all in all I would disagree with the bolded, but I did love the first three seasons of the show and it was interesting to at least see the parts of Robb's story that were off-page in the books.

Yep, Hardhome was it. The only decent episode.

One cannot label an event in and of itself as shock value. What made the Shireen burning shock value was the fact that they didn't show any kind of problematic suffering or grappling with an impossible decision in Stannis' camp and also the fact that we had seen Stannis give Shireen a beautiful speech telling her the story of her greyscale proving his devotion to her. He was of sound mind up until 20 ridiculous fires flared up simultaneously all over the snow-buried camp without anyone seeing these magical assailants. It was shock value storytelling.

I don't see how the comparison works either. Chaos isn't really a ladder because chaos cannot be that structured.

I still think that introducing the Manderlys this season could have worked if they'd focussed the Northern story specifically at White Harbor. They could have had a few factions do what Davos does in the books and look to gain their support, and this could have included LF and Sansa. You could have had Davos, Ramsay and/or Roose, LF and Sansa and some Freys all be at WH for varying reasons. That could have had a very tense and interesting plot and would be streamlined so as not to have too many locations and characters in different places. It could have concluded around the end of episode 7 at which point Roose/Ramsay could have learned that Stannis was marching for WF, an actual plot to retake Winterfell could have been formed amongst Sansa, LF and Manderly and could have involved faking their allegiance to the Boltons against Stannis, and the political intrigue of the North would be better established. I'd have preferred that to the Ramsay show of Winterfell that we got.

Indeed. Clearly she wouldn't take it though, because she loves him so much and had become protective of Sansa. And then... "It was Tyrion and Sansa. They killed Joffrey"

Changes do have to be made. I've never pretended otherwise. I loved seasons 1-3, and 4 certainly had its moments that kept hope alive in me. That hope has diminished this season in the extreme. I hated a lot of their choices and don't feel the spirit of the books is being adhered to. Many plot points may be similar or the same but to me it doesn't feel like GRRM's voice. It feels like D&D's voice is being imparted into it, and I'm finding their voice considerably less interesting. I gave the finale a 3/10. It isn't catering to what I would like the series to be and even on the level they are aiming at it isn't particularly good IMO. The Hardhome episode was very good, even the stories outside of the titular battle sequence seemed to be done much better than in other episodes this season. Only Hardhome got over a 6 from me this year. 6 used to be my very lowest rating. Regarding Cersei, I wouldn't necessarily say she's more complex in the show. They just haven't portrayed her losing her mind despite putting in the Maggy The Frog prophecy. She has just continued scheming with a level head. I would also point out what happened with Shae, which is a major part of what made me start to lose faith in what D&D are doing. I always understood why they made Shae into a more genuinely caring person. It would have been harder to portray her as her books counterpart without making Tyrion look foolish (and we can't have that, can we? :P ), however having changed her, her fate should have been different and should have fit her character (not only that, but having omitted the Tysha reveal they could have made Shae into his Tysha, since their love was portrayed as genuine. Had Tywin hanged her as he said he would, it would have given far greater motivation for Tyrion to seek him out after his release). The point I'm making is that if D&D stick to whatever Cersei's fate is in the books, the alteration in her portrayal is going to affect how that comes across. I cannot agree about Sansa. I despise what they have done to her. Context matters, which means D&D's choices matter, and their choices are quickly getting worse in my opinion.

But that's the point at that part of their story. Dany is lost and is trying to find her way again. That's the point of the Daznak's Pit scene when she embraces her heritage for the first time in a long while. Tyrion is a mess and quite reasonably so given what happened in ASOS. I didn't like Feast at all on first read. Like you I wanted to read about Tyrion particularly. There are problems with it but on reread you do start to notice the qualities in it. There are maybe one or two too many Brienne chapters going nowhere and we probably didn't need to see Areo Hotah's or Arys Oakheart's POV in Dorne. And in Dance we could have had Quentyn turn up in Meereen without his POV in getting there after establishing through Dorne chapters that he is going there. There are problems but there are also a number of genuinely great chapters and sequences. Some editing tweaks and they wouldn't be that far off books 1-3, though clearly that ship has sailed.

I'm pretty sure we all want the show to be great. I know I do. I loved it all the way through seasons 1-3 and it introduced me to the books. I'm highly conflicted and not quite ready to give up on it, but I'm really struggling to truly care about it right now.

Interesting hypothesis. I completely agree about Feast and Dance. They're a long way from perfect but they have some genuinely great segments. I'd add Jaime trying to sort out the Riverlands mess and Davos at White Harbor to your list. Great, great chapters, as are a couple of the crazier Cersei chapters for the entertaining madness she develops.

Fully agree with these sentiments.

I enjoyed Hardhome but I would point to book sequences like Davos at White Harbor, Daznak's Pit, Theon and Jeyne escaping Winterfell, and Jaime quite hilariously trying to sort out the mess in the Riverlands as much preferable in my opinion. They created a very good battle sequence at Hardhome, but it's merely a beacon of light amidst a barrage of crap.

But... we can't deny Bronn his much needed "bad pussy". How will he survive without it?

All brilliant. The bolded particularly had me in stitches! The death of the pouty and juvenile Faullaria (and the Sand Fakes for that matter) would be most welcome.

People are quite obviously going to have different methods of rating an episode. I rated episode 9 1/10 because the whole episode was absolutely terrible in my honest opinion. There was absolutely nothing I liked about it at all. Special effects are mostly an irrelevance to me and even good actors can't redeem a hopeless script. Episode 10 I rated 3/10 because there were a couple of things I liked but for the most part I hated it. I gave episode 8 an 8/10 and the previous worst rating I'd given was a 4/10.

Gave it a 3 but will probably watch again and consider the 2nd viewing. My 2nd lowest mark after last week. I'm invested and should continue watching in the vague hope that they can pull it back together, but season 5 has been uniformly terrible.

Yep, pretty much. I'm pretty sure there's a quote that's been flying around from one of the show runners that is pretty all-encompassing when it comes to the plot choices they have made this season :P

Oh I know he isn't in that place in the show. I admit I was really just talking about the books. On the show I literally have no idea how it's going to play out. I have a feeling he would care about Tommen in the show, because I get the impression the change to his arc is essentially that he now wants to become more of a father to his offspring. That seems to be the sum of his 'redemptive' arc in the show that started in the Riverlands. Apparently something major is supposed to happen in Dorne in the final episode of this season so I guess it might shed more light on what the point of it is.

I hinted at it in the comment you replied to, but I don't see the affairs as the only reason for Jaime turning against her in the books. Obviously the words get stuck in his brain, but I'm not even convinced he believed Tyrion's words. Jaime's outlook is fundamentally changed by his experiences with Brienne, even if he doesn't realise it fully until much later. Although they are initially pleased to see one-another when they reunite, it doesn't take long before Cersei outright says that he has changed. This fundamental change is most obviously represented by his missing his sword hand, but it goes deeper than that. I believe Cersei never truly loved Jaime, at least not in the way that he loved her, and she has been manipulating him all his life. What eventually turns him against her is that he starts to understand her manipulation of him and he starts seeing things in her he doesn't like (the growing madness, the burning of the Red Keep etc). I believe it was a mutual fall-out that was organically written throughout the time they shared in this period of time in KL when both of them had gone through traumatic events that shaped them into different people, that is until Cersei gets arrested and sends that letter (again, manipulation when she needs him). It's much a deeper chasm that opens up between them than mere infidelity, and it's mutual up until Cersei's desperation. Regarding 'redemption', what's is redemptive is his newfound desire to hold to his word and the desire to create a greater legacy for himself than that of the dishonourable Kingslayer. Now, this is still fairly egocentric but it's a start. He is no longer doing Cersei's bidding out of love ("the things I do for love") and Brienne's sense of honour has rubbed off on him.

The trouble here is that they haven't established any reason for Jaime to fall out with Cersei. In the books Jaime comes to the realisation that Cersei never truly loved him the way he loved her and starts to see through her manipulation of him, but the show hasn't yet given him any reason to think that is the case. He hasn't watched her losing her mind, Tyrion never spoke his line and they never fully played up the way their relationship is significantly changed since he returned to KL less a hand. So, I'm really not sure how it's going to play out and what the show has in store for them. If he received a letter now and burned it, Jaime would look a bit of a dick to be honest.

If Davos can get back to CB, so can the rest of them. There was no established reason for it. None whatsoever. It's not even proven that it works.

By far the worst episode of the show yet. Cheap emotional manipulation through inconsistent characterisations. Myriad gaps in logic. It's just bad storytelling on every level. There was literally zero reason for the decision to burn Shireen. None whatsoever. If it were to happen, the situation should be in extreme desperation and have absolutely no alternative. They had an alternative, which they even established. Turn back for CB along with Davos. Added to this, having any scene after it was insulting both to the viewer and to Shireen, whose elevation as a character compared to her book counterpart has been a major positive for the show previously. It was like they were telling us "yeah that was horrific and sad, wasn't it. Now here's some fighting and a dragon and a khaleesi riding a dragon to finish on. That's better, right?". They're treating their audience like morons, their story with complete disregard and their characters with disdain. And this doesn't even begin to touch on how lacking the rest of the episode was in narrative sense. No reason given as to why Jon and co. decided to abandon ship and walk through the haunted forest to the wrong side of the wall at CB, halfway along said wall no less. Dorne's rapid resolution rendered the whole thing even more ridiculous and pointless than it already seemed. The Meereen pit sequence was clumsy and senseless. I guess marrying a Meereenese noble and opening the fighting pits didn't work after all. So many questions linger over wtf has been going on in Meereen. My previous worst rating was a 4. This one gets a well deserved 1/10 from me. I've never been close to being a Stannis fan and I gave last week's good episode an 8.