YOVMO

Reading through the posts here is odd. Every time I read someone saying the episode was more than 3/10 I have to re-read because I assume they are being sarcastic. I literally read one positive review like 4 times before I realized the poster actually liked it and wasn't joking. This is how bad it is. I think scores of 2 or 3 are generous and 4 and above are totally sarcastic or tongue in cheek.

He should have said "I'm gonna drain the chicken"

Uhm....man bun as for sansa I disagree on the whole "rape" thing but I can leave that to the side for now. What is important is exactly what you point out...that there is no meaning

If only you had a row boat. Not only do they have stealth cloaking but also time travel

BUT CHICKEN MAN CHICKEN Seriously though, dick punches make much more sense than this episode. Yup. I am willing to say it (Dick Punch) > (No One)

They manage to avoid having plot holes by not bothering to have a cohesive plot. No plot, no plot holes. Viola!

Why are people talking about Arya escaping the FM? Escaping? She travelled half the world to get there. Impatiently tried to push herself through training. On 100 occasions refused to leave and said she was no one. Then she finally gets what she wants and, totally out of character, totally changes her story arc. At no point prior to her totally dicking over the Faceless Men for the third time did she not have the ability to just say "peace" and walk out the door. She fought tooth and nail to stay and then, despite them housing her, feeding her and training her, consistently screwed them over every chance she got. Then we are shocked when, after screwing over an assassins guild over and over again, they decide to kill her and we root for her to escape. dafuq is going on on this show?

my inclination is to say "no, that's not true" but as I think it through I have to admit that this comment is, sad though it might be, perfectly accurate. CHICKEN!

See this isn't the problem though. I am all for suspending disbelief. If I wanted realistic I would watch the news. Well, not the news, but ya know, real life. I love fantasy. The problem is not an ability to suspend disbelief. Nor is the problem the show not being faithful to the books. Anyone with a brain can see that that simply wouldn't be possible and, for the most part, probably wouldn't be interesting to anyone except super die hard fans. I have no problem with suspending disbelief and no problem with acknowledging two entirely separate universes. Further, misteps happen. As you mentioned...dorne, over use of brothels, dany speeches. But ok, these things happen too. They are more frustrating than the first two simply because this isn't some underground show, it is huge with a huge budget and big team and loads of people who see this script and then perform it, but ok, some misteps that are annoying....I can let that go too. Here is where my absolute hared comes from. I won't speak for others who dislike this season (maybe for the same or maybe for different reasons) nor will I defend the people who have problems with the show that are shallow and that you point our and (correctly) call invalid. The show simply does not follow an internal logical pattern. Look at things like Jamie talking to Edmure. A good scene. RIght. But why is he there? By the shows own logic he should not be helping the frey's get riverrun back he should be avenging the princess/daughter/neice that was killed like yesterday. Or the blackfish? Where was his motivation? What drives this character? What was the point of having him on the show? What did his death give us? It was nothing. It was like they threw him in there to see how he would play to an audience and when it was meh they gave him a meaningless off screen death. What about arya? What drives her? in the first 5 seasons she slowly had everything she knew and loved stripped away from her and wound up at the doorstep of a death cult / assassin guild where they strip your identity...Arya's identity having become too much of a burden for her to bear? Only what? Fuck that lets just scrap 5 seasons of character arc and turn her in to lady stark, northern avenger? And J'quen? What is the story with the faceless men anyway? She fails out of assassin school. The assasins decide she will die. They fail in their first attempt to kill her and then high five her and send her on her way? It simply doesn't make sense. Meanwhile, back in the north you have sansa complaining that ramsey likes to be kinky in bed to jon. jon who has been resurrected from the dead after being killed by his own men, after fighting a zombie army after fighting the Night's King? Yeah, sorry about the doggy style? And what of Sansa? Proper Lady + Hard Fucking = military strategist? The show wants to go that way? Also, while we are on Jon what does resurrection mean? Just a new hair do? If someone dies and is brought back from the dead there really needs to be some kind of overarching change. That is just how writing works. Otherwise he could have just been bonked on the head by Allister Thorne and the NW high command and come to his senses the next day and got a new hair cut. Ned has more character growth from breaking his leg in season one than Jon has from freaking dying and coming back to life, being resurrected by a priestess of a strange religion. Meanwhile in Mereen, what was the point of Varys? 6 seasons of one of the most mysterious and interesting characters and the entire point of those 6 seasons was to do a laurel and hardy routine with Tyrion for a few episodes and then go off into the sunset? Meanwhile, Dany ex Machine? She quite literally dropped out of the sky. That is the definition of bad writing. At the same time, back in Kings Landing, it seems like characters are just given personalities and motives without a story leading up to it. Tommen is a mammas boy. Quick talk with the High Sparrow and now he is baelor the blessed? Why? It is nonsense like this, the addition of characters and arcs to make political points with feminists, the meme culture of having the hound be all about kickin' ass and eatin' chicken, the senselessness, the lack of logic the total uselessness of characters and multi season long stories, the inconsequential nature of things like death and rebirth and change and passion all in the favor of "lets throw in some more Tyrion drinking and the hound eating chickens, people seem to like that stuff" that makes this season not just bad but down right depressing. Bad because the writing is just awful and depressing because the heavy lifting of creating interesting characters has already been done in seasons 1-5. They have actively dismantled one of the most wonderful stories every put on television. So yeah, back to the original point...it isn't a problem suspending disbelief in scenes like arya being stabbed and having it be no problem after sleeping it off...that's fine...whatever...a bit lazy but fine.....it isn't a problem with the shows not following book canon...that is expected, that is how it should be....it isn't even a problem with missteps like the whole dornish plot or stupid "kill the men in their stone tents" speeches by dany which is annoying but not fatal...the problem is that the authors seem to pay no mind to the fact that a story, any story, from an internet board post to Shakespeare himself, creates an encapsulated world with an internal logic which needs to be cohesive in order for the story to be good and have consistently taken excellent characters, excellent actors, a huge budget, a world wide audience and everything that a writer could possibly dream of having at his disposal and done, at best, nothing with it and, more often than not, really fucked it up.

Thank you for saying this in such a clear and level headed way.

Leave him voting hugh. I read and re-read his comment and can only assume that "voting hugh" is a way in which someone votes sarcastically elevated rankings (such as a 7.5) for such mindbogglingly bad writing that it is impossible to take a voting scale seriously at all.

Milk of poppy was mixed with essence of girl power. I mean, the faceless men have a potion that makes a person temporarily blind and they use it just to train one person. I have to assume there are all sorts of crazy potions out there.

Compared to fighting the king of snow zombies I don't even think it can be considered all that rough.

Uhm, Darkstream, I've noticed that both here and wrt asoiaf we tend to have a lot of intersecting points of agreement, but I think you are really getting down on this show. Easy 10/10. More like 20/10. I mean, did you hear the hound mention chicken? wtf do these geniuses need to do to impress you book readers? I mean...he said chicken.....CHICKEN MAN CHICKEN

you hit the nail right on the head. I don't know how a big tv show writing room works but I imagine at some point someone said something like "hey this chicken thing is really popular, we need to work it in." The hound's character arc has been changed from a story of childhood cruelty both physical and mental reiterating itself in adult brutality coming full circle to self recognition and redemption to "Bustin' ass and eati'n chicken" Just like Dany's entire plot arc has been stripped of meaning and turned to "girl power, tits and dragons" So much here. So much to be ashamed of. It is really summed up well in Sansa shaming Jon and telling him that he doesn't understand just how bad Ramsey is. Yes, by all means, tell your brother who has just returned from the dead after being killed by his own men after coming home from being north of the wall where he fought an army of undead and the king of the snow zombies that he has no idea how bad a guy like Ramsey is because he dicked you doggy style on your wedding night......NIghts King? fuck that. This guy liked rough sex.

right. I will admit that the Clegane "every fucking chicken in this place was well delivered. Last season was hit and miss but when it was on it was on really well. I mean a lot of people on this board, myself included, have been joking about Clegane bowl and the possibility of chicken being the deciding factor...but come on...I mean really? Also, I get what you are saying about riffing on the show. I think "riffing" is too nice a word. "defecating" might be a good substitute.

In the words of the late, great radio DJ Casey Kasem "ponderous man, fucking ponderous." I felt violated by last nights episode. I mean, this whole season has been like being married to Ramsey Bolton but this went way too far. I rated last episode a 2/10 (best episode this season) and thought maybe we might even get a 3 this week but wow. Just wow. I will probably make a few comments in this thread today once I decompress but I really have to lead with this one. There was an episode of Family Guy, don't know which one, where Peter says that he loves it when they mention the title of the movie in the movie. They show a cut away to him watching A Perfect Storm and when they say "it's a perfect storm" he gets irrationally excited. D$D just did this with chicken. When the hound mentioned chicken I imagine there was only two reactions. The first, which was mine, was to facepalm, groan and feel physically ill. The other is to, like Special Ed on Crack Yankers, scream YAYYYYYYYYYY CHICKEN The fact that they shoe horned multiple chicken comments into this episode was mind boggling. I am dumbfounded. In season one when they beheaded Ned I knew it was coming. I haven't been with this series from the start, but I got involved long before the HBO show. Still, they way they built up to the beheading and how they shot the sept of balor it was really moving. That they have gone from that scene to this in 6 years is, quite frankly, scary and barring some form of serious illness I honestly don't understand how it is possible.

Best episode this season. 2/10

It isn't Tywin's death that interests me it is what makes Tyrion. Tyrion loved and hated and feared his father. Killing him basically destroyed him. He still loves Tysha and the Jamie reveal broke his heart both about her and about the brother he worshipped. He loved Shae and he killed her for breaking his heart. Now he is in Essos with this deep depression, guilt, love sickness, drinking himself nearly to death, smart but afraid...but on the show what is he doing? Ruling Meeren in Dany's absence by getting prostitutes for former slavers and making deals with them. Yeah, ok, being a diplomat. So all of a sudden tyrion isn't fighting between being nearly suicidal and being a life long surviver? He is just "i drink and i make decision" boring. And the worst part was they set it up perfectly but they needed to tell the beetle story instead. I have always found Jamie fascinating. Like Tyrion and even like Tywin with Tytos he had a ton of issues that he had to work out for himself. He did what he thought was right in his own way and made some impossible decisions and best of all let everyone just think of him as the king slayer because screw them that's why. The Lannisters all fascinate me in the books. They bore the shit out of me post season 3 in the show. There is no way that Kevan's being pro tommen would take away his hatred for the zealots that took cancel way from him and made him a lunatic. Forget even the books, in the show cannon it was only 2 episodes ago that Kevan wanted to kill the high sparrow (in the book not so much lol) Arya's transformation to "no one" to me was much more interesting than her transformation back to her stark identity. That just seems like something audiences like. Arya is an incredibly sad character with an incredibly sad story. GRRM doesn't shy away from that and I think it is great. d&d run in the other direction much to the shows downfall. I can't deny that books 4-5 would have been hard to shoot because of how they were designed. The biggest problem with d&d is that it seems they decided to pander to mass appeal and basically write a sitcom rather than tell this amazing and engrossing story.

I don't find a problem with the necklace. As you say, that isn't important. I mean, it is annoying and shows a certain carelessness, but still fine I will let it go. How about how Arya's entire plot arc was just totally destroyed by adding compassion to her character that defies her very reason for being. How about having 5 minutes of talking about cousin orson and smashing beetles but not adding Tyrion's whole motivation towards nihilism in the "where do whores go" plot despite the fact it was already set up by him telling the tysha story to shae and bronn. Benjen is insane. The children saved him by performing the same ritual that created the nights king? And ok, I kid about Gendry...but here is what bothers me. GRRM has given d&d source material that dreams are made of and d&d has basically turned it into shallow crapola. The character motivation for Tyrion, for Arya, for the tyrells, for tommen, for Jamie freaking lannister has been robbed. When is the last time on the show that Jamie showed the kind of depth he did when he was speaking with Cat or even when he was in the bath with Brienne. Now he is just a characature. Why is kevan all of a sudden pro sparrows? Who is the lord of Casterly Rock? Why is Arya making a return to Arya stark when becoming nothing was literally the most interesting thing. And don't start me on Dany. Wtf? They took a genuinely interesting character, took away all the interesting parts and replaced it with guuuuurrrrrllll power. d&d are like kids who were left a fortune in a will and wound up going broke anyway, They have a huge budget, a huge following and source material for days. What do we get? 10 minutes of Braavosi theater recreating the red wedding and an arya who all of a sudden isn't dead inside despite that being her whole character arc.

I enjoyed it quite a bit right up until this season. Even with it's imperfections it was pretty great which accounts for my devotion to all things arcane. But at this point all the good stuff is being stripped away from the characters and the plot holes are getting to the level of the Shazam live action show from the 70's where bill baton and some old guy called the mentor would travel to towns in an RV and solve absurd crimes from the elders somehow managing to keep billy's identity a secret despite him always showing up to town on the same day as captain marvel and having the lightning bolt emblem on the from of the RV.

But see, that's the problem. You say it is an opinion, but it is a fact. The fact that society has been dumbed down to the point where 1) it can accept this tripe and 2) it will make a fortune is really serious. There are 10 miles wide plot holes. That isn't an opinion. Logic needs to mean something. I will leave it at that. Maybe one day when bran cares that hodor died, Benjen makes any sense whatsoever and Gendry finally gets to kinds landing we can figure it out.

It isn't about opinions though. There are serious plot issues, the logic is all skewed and d&d have essentially taken the richest tapestry of characters in the last 100 years and turned it into pop culture nonsense. Yes, millions of people like it. Millions of people like the kardashians. Not sure which one is worse.

Yes....some people are wrong. What d&d are doing to this story is an abomination and an affront on intelligence.

I have come to the conclusion that he can't be serious and is just having a go at trolling and driving me nuts. That is the most charitable way I can look at this. It is either that or he is cousin orson.