Dolorous Gabe

I think you're getting into territory that should be avoided here and will only cause actual debate to suffer as a consequence. I'm pretty sure these defences are defending the creative decision to have the rape scene given the nature of Ramsay. I'm with you though. It may work in the context of having put Sansa in this position, but the contrivances the writers have invented to put her in that position are utterly nonsensical. The woman who sent that wonderfully written and highly moving response to Sansa's rape to AngryGoTFan made a brilliant point that things could have gone differently even in the context of the show though. The point was that given the time that Littlefinger left WF for KL and Stannis left CB for WF, Stannis' forces should have made it to WF ages ago given that Littlefinger has already made it to KL, given the immense difference in distance.

This is literally the only thing anyone needs to read on the subject.

Below you will find the two segments I was responding to in separate sentences. I stand by my response. Although I admit I was being slightly facetious. "it's not cool to be forced to sift through baseless complaints made on the fly as people rush to be the first to make comments during real-time airings of the show" "Your complaints are ruining the show's image"

I'm very sorry you're being forced to read the forum as people react to an episode. That must be horrifying for you. If you can't deal with valid criticism of the show, I suggest sticking to the Positive Nitpicking thread. This is such nonsense, I can't even begin... Accepting "bad acting, horrible casting", terrible storytelling, dreadful dialogue, nonsensical plotting as a necessary means to an end is ludicrous. As an an avid fan of the books, I don't ask that everything is included from them. I'm judging the show on its own merits and the choices being made by the makers of the show are not good. They were okay while they stuck fairly faithfully to the books, but their attempts to streamline and take different paths are leading to problems; wanton destruction of character arcs, senseless plotting due to hazy and undeveloped character motivations. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have attempted to streamline and make alterations, it means they made bad choices for reasons beyond the main basic storytelling factor. I still enjoy watching the show for the most part, but the criticisms are not even close to being unwarranted.

I thought the first half was pretty good, a solid 7 between the HoB&W and Tyrion & Jorah. The second half halved the score with the train wreck of Dorne and Sansa Bolton story lines. However the fallout of the rape of Sansa pans out, it cannot be a good storytelling device. If she is empowered or becomes determined for revenge, it is simplistic shock-value writing. If she ends up like Jeyne Poole, it destroys her character arc and leaves D&D having to start a completely new and distressing character arc for her. Also, "cock merchant"? WTF? That conversation should have stopped on Tyrion saying "guess again", which would have beena good, humorous point at which to end it.

Clearly missing my point. That's three undeveloped side characters instead of the person through whose eyes we see the Dornish side of things in the books. If it turns out that all three sand snakes are necessary and they're more interesting than they appeared on their one appearance so far then fair enough. As I said, I'm willing to wait before passing judgement fully.

The point that they can't have 500 characters as a reason for not casting Arianne is moot given they have cast three Sand Snakes. I'm willing to wait until we've seen more of Dorne before passing judgement but it doesn't look positive. Unless it improves it looks like they haven't replaced Arianne with anything interesting. The idea of having Arianne accompany Oberyn to KL seems a pretty good one to me.

I agree with the comment on Jurassic Park, but that film has stood strongly against the test of time. GoT has yet to take that test. Retrospect will be the best point at which to judge the show absolutely. Let me counter it little with Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep though. I actually ever-so-slightly prefer the film to the book but I like them both a lot. Blade Runner was a different vision of the book's ideas and changed things in order to facilitate the themes it wanted to bring to its vision. The book actually had slightly different themes at its core. I would argue that one failure of the show is to replace the themes of the books with something equally interesting. It's a great story, thanks to the groundwork of GRRM, but the show has reduced many of the thematic complexities to soap opera level dynamics. I like the show but I think some people are willing to defend it against almost insurmountable issues. At the same time, a lot of people have become so disillusioned that nothing it will ever do will redeem it. the truth is somewhere in the middle I think. I don't think there are any episodes that deserve 1/10 and I'm not sure there are any more than a couple of episodes that deserve full marks. When I first watched the show, I enjoyed it thoroughly but I never considered it as good as the very best TV shows. I have the show to thank for bringing me to the books as I had a feeling I would like them based on watching the show, but it was never as great as the likes of The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under or Breaking Bad.

I actually liked this episode overall, ignoring some of the nonsensical plot lines. Bryan Cogman really should be writing every episode as his dialogue and crafting of individual scenes is far superior to the other writers and it's not his fault the showrunnners are choosing plot changes without enough consideration of cause & effect, motivation and character arcs.

Gave it a 5, which matches my lowest ratings I think. The usual current mix of the good and the bad, with some of the bad being extremely bad. I keep trying to switch my brain off to enjoy it more, but I can't quite do it. I suspect Sansa's character arc has been ruined, as has Jaime's. I'm withholding judgement on certain things until I've seen where they go in this season, but I have very little hope for Dorne, as there was a reason the Sand Snakes were only side-characters in the books so to have them be a focal point meant they should have changed those characters or developed them to be more interesting. Meereen is okay overall so far but there are many highly unclear elements to it. KL is the biggest mixture of the good and the bad. The faith militant portrayal has gone too far, too quickly and seems at odds with the portrayal of the High Sparrow. It needed more development to get where it is. The change to the Cersei/Margaery/Tommen dynamics was needed due to the ageing up of Tommen, but while it's quite interesting it has problems created by the changes that haven't been addressed.

Hmm, I thought it started earlier than that. My reading was that Jaime had gone through the opening stages of a change in his philosophical mentality in his experiences with Brienne. As a result, not only does Cersei recognise and dislike this change, Jaime in his new mentality finally starts to see Cersei for what she really is. I got the impression he didn't let himself believe what Tyrion told him. It obviously bugged him as he kept thinking about it, but he always seemed to make himself believe it couldn't be true.

Gave it a fairly generous 7. I enjoyed it generally and I understand the difficulties of a season opener. A few points. I'm not too bothered that it appeared to be the real Mance who was burned. Hinds is a good actor but the character isn't as interesting as he is in the books (simililarly to The Halfhand). Also, the glamouring stuff feels like a bit too much weird deception anyway. Brienne constantly complaining about Pod is just annoying. Something needs to happen to make their dynamic more interesting. It felt like they went back in time in their arc development. Is Illyrio even going to appear in his own manse? Not sure what TV LF's game is! Looking forward to Arya meeting The Kindly Man next week. And hopefully Dorne will spice things up a bit.

It doesn't bother me all that much that they changed it, but I personally think it has to do with the subtext behind the words. I think "your sister" conveys a sense of vindictiveness towards Lysa that doesn't actually exist. Lysa is really just a pawn in Littlefinger's overall plan but I don't think he hates her. "Only Cat" uses the name of the object of his affection so suggests he's really just thinking about her in the moment and has a kind of nonchalance towards Lysa (she's not part of the equation) in pushing her through the moon door like she wasn't even really there. Just my take on it. It is a very very minor quibble that doesn't really matter though. Agree it shouldn't be discussed here but I guess the last episode of the season is always going to have people discuss the season as a whole.

Thanks. I read through the article you linked, very interesting. the following quote from GRRM is particularly relevant: "It’s also worth mentioning Shae is one of the characters that really has changed significantly from the books to the TV show. I think that [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] wrote Shae very differently, and a symbol to Sibel Kekilli — the incredible girl playing her. Shae is much more sincere in her affections for Tyrion. This is almost contradictory, but with the Shae in the TV series, you can tell she actually has real feelings for Tyrion — she challenges him, she defies him. The Shae in the books is a manipulative camp-follower prostitute who doesn’t give a s–t about Tyrion any more than she would any other john, but she’s very compliant, like a little teenage sex kitten, feeding all his fantasies; she’s really just in it for the money and the status. She’s everything lord Tywin thought Tyrion’s first wife was that she actually wasn’t. So there are all layers of complexity going on here. They’re the same character, but they’re also very different characters, and I think that’s going to lead to very different resonances playing out in the TV show than in the books." It says it was published very recently, but the comments suggest he thought it would play out differently. I'd be interested to learn when he said this. I can't recall which episode it was, but I know GRRM provided a commentary for one of the episodes in season 3 in which he mentions the changes to Shae's character as the biggest cause of dispute between him and D&D. They must have known the problems it would cause and yet they did nothing to alter the repercussions accordingly. I love the show - It's what made me interested in reading the books so I'm very grateful - but I can't help the feeling that they've messed up one of the best sections of the books.

I'd be fine with a carbon copy, but really I just want it to be consistent with how they change it. When they change it, they should take the change into consideration further down the line. My main problem with the show is that they've changed things and then taken the same route with characters whose motivations and personality don't completely match up. Next season could be very interesting if they've learned from this and decide to take their own route and follow through with it. I'd rather they do that now, especially if they do end up catching up with the books.

The trouble is, we can't judge the Missandei/Grey Worm stuff yet because we don't know where D&D are going to take the story. If it turns out to be important, then fine, but if it's just there because D&D wanted to put an unusual love story between them into the story, I'm not convinced it was time well spent. I'm guessing they're building it up so they can kill off Grey Worm and have Missandei get all emotional about it, or perhaps vice-versa.

It's perhaps not "illogical", but it doesn't make as much sense. Book-Shae and TV-Shae are different. Book-Shae was an opportunist playing Tyrion for a decadent lifestyle, and Tyrion was happy to have such a willing player of the role of his sex kitten so had his blinkers on. TV-Shae actually cares about Tyrion and Sansa. Condemning them to death just because he sent her away for her own protection simply doesn't makes sense for TV-Shae. Having changed her, they should also have changed how the whole situation unfolds. It's not a problem with there being changes to characters or story, it's a problem with changes that they don't keep to. If you change one thing, you should change other things down the line that make less sense because of the change. Cause and effect plays a big part in ASoIaF and Martin meticulously built the story around his characters' decisions, which were often based on their life experiences. Tyrion gets a chance at freedom. It has to be something monumental that causes him to confront Tywin, otherwise he's sensible enough to realise he needs to get out of KL. The Tysha reveal is monumental because it's an episode he has been dealing with all his life and arguably shapes his personality and character. To find out that his family betrayed him in such a despicable and brutal fashion does something terrible to his psyche. If it was condemning him to death that made him want to confront and kill someone surely it would be Cersei he would want to kill, who accused him and desperately wanted him dead. Tywin disliked Tyrion but he was forced into his position as judge as Hand Of The King, and it was Tyrion who eventually asked for a Trial By Combat, which Tywin had no control over. I have argued what they should have done is change it so Shae doesn't give her testimony against Tyrion, is caught before she makes the ship and hanged by Tywin as he promised he would. If their love was truly real as the show had us believe, Tyrion might then have sought vengeance for the killing of the Shae he loved. Also, the show did NOT make it look as though Shae was coerced into testifying against Tyrion. She looked in complete control of what she was doing. She had not been built up to be spiteful in the preceding seasons.

I love Blade Runner. Read the book later and wasn't keen on it.

TV-Shae and book-Shae are very different. You're right to question Shae's motivations for her actions because TV-Shae seemed to genuinely care about Tyrion and Sansa. Book-Shae never did really care; she was an opportunist living as resplendent a life as she could get. Tyrion is fooled in the book by the fact that an extremely beautiful woman played perfectly the part of his personal sex kitten. The TV Tyrion-Shae relationship was portrayed as genuine up until he emotionally sends her away to save her. Then she suddenly turns, inexplicably in my opinion, into the one-dimensional lover scorned trope. Sansa's change is perhaps too sudden but her arc allows for it. Her lengthy experience of being a piece in the King's Landing Game allied with Littlefinger's lessons in playing the game are supposed to be rubbing off on her. The "young boy" was meant to be one of the Children Of The Forest, who were said to have died out long ago. Bran used to love Old Nan's stories about them, which made his indifference to the fact that one had just saved them quite disappointing. In the book they're not meant to look like human children. Not sure where the idea of fireballs came from. As to Arya, her arc is filled with tragedy and horror which are quickly desensitising her. She is a wonderful character that life's injustices are turning into a vengeance driven automaton. The interesting thing will be how she comes back from that, but also how much vengeance she takes beforehand.