[Poll] How would you rate episode 605?

[Lady Flandrensis]

A 9, just because I think there are 10s yet to come...

[Faereth]

i gave it a 9, I've just finished watching it. 

a -1 because of  how Summer ended. 

I don't know if I'm more upset over Summer or Hodor.

But wow. First episode since Hardhome that I've been so stunned and involved in an episode. 

[fabrik1980]

2 hours ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Depends how much value an individual puts in production values. You're entitled to feel that production values can give something 5/10 by default. Personally, I think 5 is an awful lot of credit for something mostly technical and easy to achieve with considerable financial backing. Just take a look at Michael Bay or Zach Snyder movies. Fine production values but utterly dreadful movies as a general rule. By your rule of ratings these films are already half-decent before you even get into what they're about. I cannot agree with such an approach.

Actually production values are the only reason to watch Bay and Snyder movies. Nobody watches Transformers to see Shia LaBeouf (sp?) give an emotional speech. People watch it for brainless eye candy entertainment and that's exactly what they're getting. At least these movies *know* what they want to be. I don't know about you, but to me a 5/10 means "average". With Bay and Snyder movies you get what you expect, nothing more, nothing less.

And then there are movies like American Hustle. It's certainly more thought-provoking and better acted than Transformers. However, it's unfocused with too much emphasis on quirky characters and the storytelling suffered from it being too inconsistent and incoherent. Thus it ended up being a disappointment for me. I expected something decent and what I got was pretentious crap with too much untrimmed fat.

GoT at least knows what it wants to be. As GRRM said, "the books are the books and the show is the show". Love it or hate it, but the show can do what it wants because it's not the books.

Btw, last time I checked, GRRM was still listed as Executive Producer. I'm pretty sure he's aware of all changes made and every original non-books story arc. If he felt his work was getting butchered, he'd either put a stop to it or at the very least have his name pulled from the credits.

[DJSnow]

This show.

I'm a mess right now.

It kills me...

9/10.

[Valhalla Morghulis]

So the books were the problem all along!

Now we are free of their shackles the TV series can fly!

GRRM knew. RIP.

Edited May 23, 2016 by Valhalla Morghulis

[Dolorous Gabe]

16 minutes ago, fabrik1980 said:

Actually production values are the only reason to watch Bay and Snyder movies. Nobody watches Transformers to see Shia LaBeouf (sp?) give an emotional speech. People watch it for brainless eye candy entertainment and that's exactly what they're getting. At least these movies *know* what they want to be. I don't know about you, but to me a 5/10 means "average". With Bay and Snyder movies you get what you expect, nothing more, nothing less.

And that's fine. As I said, you're entitled to value good production values as you wish. I may disagree that it's worth that much to the overall quality of a film or a TV show, but I'm not going to dictate to you that your way is in any way wrong. I reserve the right to rate a film 1/10 even if it had great production values, because to me the content is vastly more important than the surface-level aesthetic.

Also, sheer entertainment movies don't have to be brainless. Hollywood will be delighted to hear they don't have to even attempt to be intelligent.

edited to add: to clarify, I didn't rate this episode a 1. I've only ever dished out one 1 rating of a GoT ep.

Edited May 23, 2016 by Dolorous Gabe

[Eddy1]

7/10

Sansa and LF: The scene made sense, but she's bound to change her mind and accept his help eventually.

Arya: Boring as usual, and the theatre scene was unfunny. 

Meereen: Didn't make sense. Just an excuse to have a showdown between Varys and a Red Priestess.

Iron Islands: Fine.

The Wall: Poor dialogue. Davos made Sansa seem so dumb when she began lecturing him about the North.

Bran: Moved the story on, but it was a cheesy unrealistic escape. The writers wanted me to think "Wow. That's how Hodor got his name", but I just rolled my eyes.

[Facebookless Man]

5/10

Embarassingly stupid as is now sadly the norm for this show, but most of it was at least entertaining, which is a first this season.

[fabrik1980]

17 minutes ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Also, sheer entertainment movies don't have to be brainless. Hollywood will be delighted to hear they don't have to even attempt to be intelligent.

Entertainment movies may not have to be brainless, but they pretty much all are. Even my two favorite action movies of recent years, Skyfall and The Dark Knight, are pretty dumb when you think about it, despite what everybody says. Seriously, how can you sit through either movie going, "it was all part of the main villain's plan" without feeling the writers were treating you like an idiot?

Maybe there were other sheer entertainment movies with more realistic storylines that I'm not aware of. I don't watch action movies that often. I haven't seen a Marvel movie since Spiderman 3, a Michael Bay movie since The Rock or a Zack Snyder movie since Watchmen. Maybe there's a particular smart popcorn movie I didn't know about?

[Florina Laufeyson]

Quote

Arya: Boring as usual, and the theatre scene was unfunny. 

the theatre scene wasnt meant to be funny, to the viewer. Its funny in-universe, but not to us, and not to Arya. That was the point. Its a little shocking how much stuff flies over people's heads. 

[Dolorous Gabe]

9 minutes ago, fabrik1980 said:

Entertainment movies may not have to be brainless, but they pretty much all are. Even my two favorite action movies of recent years, Skyfall and The Dark Knight, are pretty dumb when you think about it, despite what everybody says. Seriously, how can you sit through either movie going, "it was all part of the main villain's plan" without feeling the writers were treating you like an idiot?

Maybe there were other sheer entertainment movies with more realistic storylines that I'm not aware of. I don't watch action movies that often. I haven't seen a Marvel movie since Spiderman 3, a Michael Bay movie since The Rock or a Zack Snyder movie since Watchmen. Maybe there's a particular smart popcorn movie I didn't know about?

The Dark Knight isn't brainless. At its heart it explores the relationship between order and chaos in quite an interesting way.

We are way off topic here though.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

6. This episode kinda had a plot. Which is an improvement.

But little people care. Mostly people are worried and shocked by the death of... Hodor. It's not like the other characters dying were more important for the development of the story and their future absence can have consequenc---OMG HODOR NO!! That's the highlight of the episode, it seems. Another "shocking" shocking death.

I mean, do we need any more proof that people watch this like they watch a reality show? "ooh... who is dying next week!". Watchers want to be shocked by the death and rate the episodes accordingly to how this deaths shock them. Narrative? Argument? consistency? Development? Unless they are betrayed by Littlefinger and stabbed straight to the crotch, mostly of the audience is pretty much "meh" about these things.

Edited May 23, 2016 by JCRB's Honeypot

[Squall]

6/10

The Good

• Visuals: The weirwood helicopter shot, Vaes Dothrak panorama, location of the Kingsmoot with the banners on top of cliffs, they really upped the ante this time.
• Pacing: There's a lot of information in only one hour, during season 5 it was a crawl, but now it seems they're rushing for the final game. The Ironborn and the North plotlines are finally advancing.
• Hodor: His final significance is revealed and he seems to be one of the few purely good guys in the series. A rather tragic story.

The Bad

• Kingsmoot: My only gripe is Euron Greyjoy leaping into first place, that needed a bit more exposition. As a bookreader I liked that version of events, but the show is the show, so I'll discount it from my opinion.
• Origin of the Others: That seems rather standardized bad guy origin story, it's not my kinda thing and I expected better from GRRM and D&D.  I feel a bit like watching Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies. Something isn't entirely right about it.
• Time traveling and paradoxes: I'm not a big fan of it and like the previous point it seems a bit of a cop-out. It complicates matters and just raises a lot of other what-ifs. Bran can be responsible for everything that's gone wrong in Westeros or his (not entirely successful) attempts to fix it (and make it worse in the process).
• Arya: Is there anything more we learn than we know from the previous season? She's still someone and she's learning slower than Dany's learning Governance 101.

Conclusion

The production value is quite good and I like that we're going forward but D&D have butchered the story with this episode. I hope the later episodes will wash away this one or at least dilute the mess it created. I don't mark it down yet, it can still make sense in the broader arc. But if it really goes off the rails, well, let's not think about that for now...

[lancerman]

6 hours ago, Rhollo said:

We have a pretty good idea what's in the books. Not when it comes to plot, of course, but things like characters and world-building are pretty well established and we can still make comparisons in that department.

Although these things can change too as the story progresses, there won't be a sudden un-tabooing of king- and kinslaying all over Westeros or a revenge-crazy Ellaria in the future books, that's pretty much for sure.

How many people have to care that something stops being a nitpick and become a valid criticism ? And who is defining that threshold ?

When it's not inconsequential and it's something that has zero effect on the plot. 

[dannyk65]

5/10

Almost half the show was entertaining!  What a change!

Overall, I enjoyed the latter half of the episode.  It was somewhat gripping for the first time in ages.  However, there was just too much inexplicable stupidity for me to rate it higher.  

[Rhollo]

4 hours ago, Dolorous Gabe said:

Depends how much value an individual puts in production values. You're entitled to feel that production values can give something 5/10 by default. Personally, I think 5 is an awful lot of credit for something mostly technical and easy to achieve with considerable financial backing. Just take a look at Michael Bay or Zach Snyder movies. Fine production values but utterly dreadful movies as a general rule. By your rule of ratings these films are already half-decent before you even get into what they're about. I cannot agree with such an approach.

By the way, cinematography is not necessarily linked to production values. For example, Breaking Bad had much lower production values than GoT, yet its cinematography was infinitely superior.

That said, I think a 1 rating for any episode this season is harsh. But then, a 10 rating this season so far seems equally OTT to me, perhaps even more so.

To me the story takes precedence over everything else. For the most part the storytelling is woeful in GoT.

Well said.

The production value of GoT would be something to praise them for if they somehow managed to do it on a shoestring budget. But as they can throw tons of money at it, that's just meeting expectations.

I think, it is compareable to video game graphics. It's nice if they look really good but if of the story and gameplay are crap I will never touch it again after an hour. On the other hand, games with mediocre or simplistic graphics that can entertain for dozens of hours.

[The Fattest Leech]

I feel all shows should start neutral and either build or recede from there to get the end total. So I will start at a 5 and see where it goes.

Pro's- Summer, finally, for the first time all of season 6. Yara does seem to accept Theon back as her brother and son of Pyke. No Dorne. So that brings it to a 9 (I gave two points for no Dorne).

Con's- Summer... WTF? Thirty seconds all season and it is to kill himself??? Kingsmoot and Euron... seriously is kinslaying and kingslaying really a widely accepted thing now??? And HA-friggin'-HA to Euron trying to be super cool while a girl and a eunuch steel his stuff, but it still doesn't make sense why he was chosen. Sansa is now just a traitorous lying super C***T??? And the irony of Brienne lecturing her about lying when Brienne lied to her when they first met and Brienne still weilds a Lannister sword...... And where does Dany get fresh, season 6 Meereenese clothes from 24 hours after burning her wardrobe? And how can she command Jorah to find a cure for greyscale??? Doesn't she know that thousands of maesters have been trying that all these years? Bran and the time paradox thing started many more questions than it answered... especially for show-only audiences. Including the many, many theories on this forum and in general internet world that are debating which came first, the Bran chicken or the Hodor egg??? That adds up to 8 negatives for me.

Overall= 2, even though it should be 1 because I liked some of the aerial shots.

ADDING: Jeebus Christmas... I forgot Arya was even in this episode. What does that say?

Edited May 23, 2016 by The Fattest Leech

[Rhollo]

8 minutes ago, lancerman said:

When it's not inconsequential and it's something that has zero effect on the plot. 

A plot includes it's timeline. And timelines get messed up by teleporting characters, so the effect is there.

You might choose to willingly ignore those effects, but others might not.

[dannyk65]

10 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I feel all shows should start neutral and either build or recede from there to get the end total. So I will start at a 5 and see where it goes.

Pro's- Summer, finally, for the first time all of season 6. Yara does seem to accept Theon back as her brother and son of Pyke. No Dorne. So that brings it to a 9 (I gave two points for no Dorne).

Con's- Summer... WTF? Thirty seconds all season and it is to kill himself??? Kingsmoot and Euron... seriously is kinslaying and kingslaying really a widely accepted thing now??? And HA-friggin'-HA to Euron trying to be super cool while a girl and a eunuch steel his stuff, but it still doesn't make sense why he was chosen. Sansa is now just a traitorous lying super C***T??? And the irony of Brienne lecturing her about lying when Brienne lied to her when they first met and Brienne still weilds a Lannister sword...... And where does Dany get fresh, season 6 Meereenese clothes from 24 hours after burning her wardrobe? And how can she command Jorah to find a cure for greyscale??? Doesn't she know that thousands of maesters have been trying that all these years? Bran and the time paradox thing started many more questions than it answered... especially for show-only audiences. Including the many, many theories on this forum and in general internet world that are debating which came first, the Bran chicken or the Hodor egg??? That adds up to 8 negatives for me.

Overall= 2, even though it should be 1 because I liked some of the aerial shots.

ADDING: Jeebus Christmas... I forgot Arya was even in this episode. What does that say?

I'm starting to wonder if the show's title should be 'Fuck the Direwolves'

[The Fattest Leech]

1 minute ago, dannyk65 said:

I'm starting to wonder if the show's title should be 'Fuck the Direwolves'

There is a certain phrase that comes to mind when I think of this season so far, something about "tits and dragons". Yup, fuck the direwolves and any meaning they carry with them.