Has the show lost it's heart?

[Getright]

I'm enjoying the TV show just like I loved the books.

But to be honest, the acting is good but it's lost its content and background quite hard.

It's kind of upsetting that the producers of the show just focus on just a few families when there is a wide range in westeros, the siege on Winterfell was so disappointing, just Baratheon men against Bolton, no allies and just a quick ass kicking.

What about the Umbers, Freys, Ryswells, Dustins, Cerwyns, Tallharts, Mormonts, Glovers...

Towards the first seasons, ok, the details like armour is odd due to budget, understandable. But they actually had banners of many individual houses and took into account their existence. I was really hoping to see a few Northern Mountain Clansmen in Stannis's Army with all different Banners with an epic siege, with their kind of budget it sucked ass to be honest.

[Borodin]

But how can they include any of those important nuances and details while at the same time setting up Trant as a pedophile and having Sansa raped? In other words, how can you remain faithful to the spirit of the novels while also including your own sensationalist BS to drive ratings? It must be hard for D&D to manage.

[imaGOTbluray]

No.

[Daske]

Nope, just watch a few snippets of reaction vids. There are an awful lot of people out there still seriously invested in the show.

Expect some focus on some other lords next season. The show was spread thin enough already, but suddenly some spaces have opened up!

I see Borodin is still trying to break his own record of how fast he can post something negative and/or derogatory in every single new thread. What was that 3.6 milliseconds?

[TheLeviathan73]

Nope, just watch a few snippets of reaction vids. There are an awful lot of people out there still seriously invested in the show.

Expect some focus on some other lords next season. The show was spread thin enough already, but suddenly some spaces have opened up!

I see Borodin is still trying to break his own record of how fast he can post something negative and/or derogatory in every single new thread. What was that 3.6 milliseconds?

In fairness, it's hard to be a troll without doing that.

[DarkAndFullOfTurnips]

The writing was really bad this year. Let's wait until S6 before we definitely say anything is lost, perhaps they just struggled adapting those two books knowing what was coming at the climax of the story. Obviously it doesn't excuse weak writing but I'm willing to wait one more season.

[Lord Freypie]

Agree that a big problem of the show is the portrayal of a feudal society with no vassals (out of the ones who only appear to betray).

Some northern lords, southron knights around Stannis, etc... would have really improved this season.

But about how the show lost its soul (heart ? was it supposed to have one ?) it's more related to the way they reset characterization every few episodes, and show no respect for source material.

[TheLeviathan73]

I think D+D just really had trouble trying to take the meandering fluff of the last two novels and condense it into the central narrative. In the two storylines they struggled with most (Sansa and Dorne) it is really evident.

[Stag_legion]

The show started out good, cause D&D were trying to make a good impression then and took things seriously, but after a couple of seasons and the huge popularity they got lazy and the show went down hill. Its especially apparent after season 3. Its seems like D&D want to just get through the series as soon as possible after the red wedding and they don't care about quality and consistency anymore.

[LordImp]

I still love the show. But im a little bit dissapointed now , no Northern vassals , no Davos- Rickon , no ironborn.

About the Boltons , i think Jon will come back and crush them , hopefully with the help of the Northern houses. Rickon will most likely be in next season . We know Oldtown is next season , so the ironborn will be back then.

[aFeastForDragons]

With 2 seasons left they are rushing towards the end game. I can imagine several more main characters getting offed next season like Stannis. At this stage the show is a shadow of its former self. They don't even care about all the plot holes, bad dialogue and awful fight scenes anymore.

[MountainThatSkates]

I think the problem is D&D have fallen victim to the shock value of the show. Some of their adaptations are just stupid or cartoonish. Brienne waiting outside for who knows how long waiting until Sansa lights the candle and then she turns her back literally the very minute Sansa lights it.... come on.

The burning of Shireen, sure its something they heard from Martin, but the build up will be entirely different. Instead they heard Martin say that Shireen burns and they decide to make that the focal point of Stannis's season. Even in the behind the episode thing they get all excited about how shocking that is. Then they build up his relationship with her just to make the moment even more shocking. Literally any other character would have been more believable than this one... instead its the guy who led a siege for over a year with people starving to death, eating horses, rats, and were saved by onions. But hey its not like the supplies on this march were important... let 20 men sneak in because "They know the land better". In a war situation like this there would be a larger amount of guards around the supplies to defend them from their own army never mind a sneak attack. But don't worry about details, can't wait to see the twitter reaction during that episode.

Dorne. The costumes. The fight scenes. The dialogue. They got the Viper so right... and now its so bad.

Edited to say: I still think its the best show on tv, but I think what makes book purists so upset is it should be better. Bash Dance and Feast all you want, but it should be better.

[SnowCastle]

Remember all the great scenes with the Greatjon, BwB, Blackfish? Some of the most moving scenes in the series were about the supporting characters and where their loyalties lay (lie? English is hard). We don't have that anymore. The bannermen that were the glue in the books are just gone and we're only getting these sparsely populated vignettes of the foreground characters with very little context.

Eta: yeah, even so, GoT is my all-time favorite along with Twin Peaks. But, apples and oranges.

[thehandwipes]

I actually think Dance and Feast are fantastic if you read all a characters POV's in order. If you're trying to keep track of 18 stories and remember details from 32 chapters ago, yeah, its a pain. But all the stories, yes even the ones everyone hates, are really good if read in order. Obviously, they can't film them that way but ADWD and AFFC are very unfairly maligned, especially on the show boards.

[Lady Darry]

I think it is because they had to cheat to give the ‘bad guys’ an edge. It used to be a show that didn't cheat to let the ‘good guys’ win, but now it cheats so that 'bad guys' can win. In books we had Manderly speech and other up lifting things, but in show everything is just depressed and hopeless.

[Ghosts Lunch]

I'm enjoying the TV show just like I loved the books.

But to be honest, the acting is good but it's lost its content and background quite hard.

It's kind of upsetting that the producers of the show just focus on just a few families when there is a wide range in westeros, the siege on Winterfell was so disappointing, just Baratheon men against Bolton, no allies and just a quick ass kicking.

What about the Umbers, Freys, Ryswells, Dustins, Cerwyns, Tallharts, Mormonts, Glovers...

Towards the first seasons, ok, the details like armour is odd due to budget, understandable. But they actually had banners of many individual houses and took into account their existence. I was really hoping to see a few Northern Mountain Clansmen in Stannis's Army with all different Banners with an epic siege, with their kind of budget it sucked ass to be honest.

I can understand for casting budget reasons and for TV viewers why things have to be simplified,

That said, it would be good to see reference to other bannerman, a way around that would be to have two flags on the one pole, eg Robbs army only ever had Wolf banners and same with Lannisters etc, but it would have been good perhaps to see the Stark banner on a standard so TV viewers know which side they belong to but here and there put a smaller banner underneath of the bannermans house for the sake of bookreaders, they may nto be able to cast the Lords but at least put easter egg references in

Didn't help themselves, they got the Mountains armour spot on in season 1, but for some reason season 2 Harrenhall Mountain was dressed up in standard Lannister armour rather than his own when he is not a Lannister

[Baron Bazunor the Twisted]

I see Borodin is still trying to break his own record of how fast he can post something negative and/or derogatory in every single new thread. What was that 3.6 milliseconds?

Yeah watch out though, you'll get permabanned talking bad to show-haters. That's just how this forum works, y'know?

I don't think it's lost anything, I think Season 5 (though being the worst season overall) still did it's job very well. It's creating a sense of hopelessness nearly every episode. It was well done, besides Dorne (which still had it's good parts). I think hating on every possible thing in the show has just become the "thing" to do.

[shaggy_rick]

The show started out good, cause D&D were trying to make a good impression then and took things seriously, but after a couple of seasons and the huge popularity they got lazy and the show went down hill. Its especially apparent after season 3. Its seems like D&D want to just get through the series as soon as possible after the red wedding and they don't care about quality and consistency anymore.

:agree:

It is very sad. But I think you are absolutely right. They are hopping from plot point to plot point, just to reach the end in season 7 and be done with it.

[Desert Fox]

I'd prefer more of the alliances and politics of the lower houses but the Game of Thrones TV show is a zero sum game. Anytime new stories added result in a another taken out.

The huge problem this season was with conflict and action seemingly having no build up. Stannis goes from triumphantly leaving CB ->two scenes->Mel "U gotta burn her bro"-->two scenes -> "OK" --> "two scenes" -> Stannis loses the battle. You get one scene each ep to show how bad the situation Stannis is in, but it has no impact. DIllane's acting is the only reason it works halfway decent.

And sand snakes, without the acting talent, look like a SkinMax parody of Game of Thrones. The sum total of characterization you get is "I'm the daughter of Oberyn Martell, and for some reason I wanna kill little girls despite that being his biggest pet peeve, also I like showing my tits."

The problem isn't that there isn't time to characterize the characters they got. There is no way to add news ones. GoT already has twice the cast the average prestige drama has. They'd have to go to a 16-20 episode season and hire a "B" team to write, produce, and film some of the less subplots. But that is hugely expensive. Like filming two shows.

I don't want to defend the show too much though, season 5 was filled with wasted opportunities.

[DaBurglar]

Whoa whoa, wait a second....I am new and just showed up to this sausage fest (forum), so I do not know the lay of the land and who is what, and what is what, and Who is who, etc. But I am dumbfounded that people are bitching about people....well, "bitching".....! This is what forums like this should entail, criticism and fault finding and expressing areas and opportunities for improvement. WTF else is there to do? How boring would it be for the vast majority of the posts in each thread to simply say "Boy I love this show!" and "Everything is great!" ??? We still have people saying a lot of good, positive, thoughtfully progressive things about the show, but the fact that people are also saying a lot of negative things and criticizing is also legit and important. It is possible to like (even love) the show yet still "BASH" it for the things each of us thinks it could do better (or mistakes and gaffs it commits!) It seems natural to find fault and pick apart something we are very fond of and involved with....again, that is what forums like this are for!

I think there is a lot of truth to the notion that, as the showrunners (Weiss and Benioff) became more secure and entrenched, and especially when they signed a contract guaranteeing the show would be funded thru season 6 (which essentially also guaranteed a Season 7 since that is still the official planned FINAL season.....no way they would crap out and cancel THIS series after 6 seasons) the incentive and pressure to do a "good job" waned and instead they allowed themselves to be distracted with other considerations.....the result being a definite and discernible DECLINE in the quality of the show's ebb n' flow, the storyline of the show has become disjointed and at times totally confusing, and the choice of content (i.e. what gets shown and what does not get shown) in any given episode has become more and more questionable, even reprehnsible. I would much rather have seen a better winterfell battle than the Sansa Rape/Mervyn Trant Pedo-fest/Melisandre tempting Jon Snow with her Boobs of Fire scenes, which they could have done. Cersei's walk of shame, while a good scene in and of itself, could have been done in HALF the time (or less) and those minutes used for something else......this has been a criticism of the show from day one, but it has really become a problem the last season and a half (since mid season 4 anyway.....too many gaps in the stories with too many characters disappearing for long periods....)

By us "beating these dead horses" on forums like these, hopefully the powers that "B" in charge of the show (mainly D&D) will see the overwhelming criticism of the faults in the show and somehow "fix' these issues (or take the BIG issues/problems and make them smaller and less of a distraction) so that the last 2 seasons (at least) are excellent and closer to the quality of the first 2-3 seasons! The show deserves that and owes it to itself and its fans/viewers (i.e. "US"!!!!)