Ran

176 votes... and a 5.31 average. Gosh.

What'd you think?

Non-spoiler discussion of the show goes here, for those who've not read the books or those who have but are happy to not actually reference them at all in discussion, taking each episode as it comes. This topic should open automatically when the show begins airing.

501 votes, 7.20 average, 8 median, 7.38 with top/bottom 5% removed.

Very odd. We do seem to be getting odd spikes in latency that I can't quite pin down. May be time to put us back into performance mode... ACtually, how common was it when we were in performance mode earlier in the week?

On the forum? Not seeing any such thing.

Thinking further, the minimum they needed to do was: Robb spots a woman in noble westerlands garb tending to the woman. He asks Lord Bolton who it is. "Jeyne Westerling, Lady of the Crag." She has no living father, no brothers, no uncles at hand when Lord Tywin called for the banners to defend the West, so she led her men here personally. We're told she was captured with other lords, and was given parole to help tend to the wounded. Conversation between Robb and Jeyne ensues (without needing her to sass him about killing men in his war, please), and sparks can fly. They wanted to retain a little of the Volantis business? Robb can remark at how she doesn't look like a westerman, not like the tall, fair Lannisters. "My grandmother was from Volantis," she could say. "And... ?" "And that's it." Oh, family history that's dark and scandalous? And come episode 1 of season 5, an old, dark crone muttering Valyrian to herself, a faded tattoo at her eye... Seriously, it sometimes feels like despite having so much of the show planned for them, they don't think very long term with some of these things. Oh well.

No one said they were. They existed. That's sufficient to accept the idea of Jeyne Westerling joining the defense of her seat when she lacks much of a garrison, just as women did in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. You're the one who felt it was very "Disney" to have the scenario, but I get the sense that you're now walking back from that and taking a different approach given what follows. Not really. They had scores of extras lying around on that battlefield. A day-for-night shoot with a wall and a parapet, a dozen men, and it could be done in a day or two. You don't need a giant siege, you just need close ups of Robb saying, "Follow me, the Crag's almost fallen!" and a few guys following him up a ladder as some arrows fly and there's shouts and cries and the like. A little bit of fighting and they surrender. Hell, make a nice visual parallel to Stannis's later fighting on the parapets of the city, while far smaller scale would emphasize the grandeur of what they achieved at Blackwater. But really, Jeyne could have appeared under other circumstances, too. Captured on the road, perhaps, having personally come with the Westerling banners (this, too, is known from history!) and now trying to escape, etc., etc. The whole "I'm a battlefield nurse with no rank or position, a foreigner no less, who grows up in a world where I can believe it's fine to criticize a victorious king on the battlefield about fighting battles and causing deaths" thing was uncannily similar to the very thing GRRM said shouldn't happen in Westeros. The excesses to which you go from this point forward make it feel like you've run out of steam and feel that now exaggeration is the way to win an argument, or at least make people stop taking you seriously enough to continue holding a conversation. Take a break when you feel that way, you'll enjoy things much more.

I take it you're not familiar with the many, many historical accounts of women actively defending the walls of besieged castles and cities in the Middle Ages. :( Simon de Montfort the elder was killed by a siege engine operated by women, according to accounts of the Siege of Tolouse, and that's just one of many examples you'll find in the literature. The TV show's already established that women might learn to use bows (see S1E1), in line with the series which has references to much the same. A lady joining defense of the walls of an undergarrisoned castle is not, frankly, strange at all.

Robb attacks the Crag. He takes an arrow in the shoulder from someone shooting from the walls. He gets to the wall... and finds Jeyne Westerling, the young Lady of the Crag, holding a crossbow, but forced to surrender the castle now that he and his men have gotten over the wall. She's bold, clever, fierce. She sees he's taken care of as he's honorable. They talk and get to know one another. He starts to find he wants her with him, and insists she's his guest when he returns to the riverlands. Everything can be exactly the same as in the show from that point on, to be honest with you. I'm not really sure why they felt they had to go so very far afield, to the point where they invented a character who fell into the very same trap of poorly conceived "Disney medievalism" that GRRM decried in a season 1 interview with TIME. It was very strange. Audience not caring is certainly a fair bar. Fairly low bar, as well, but still.

I think it's clear Robb was in love with Jeyne, but it was the love of a 15-year-old in the throes of great events and hormones. His grief and her comfort would combine to make him feel love for her. I think it's pretty plain that they're both in love when Robb departs Riverrun, for example, and of course he also establishes it earlier when he entraps his mother before revealing his marriage to her. So if the idea is, "Well, it's unrealistic to make the decision he did if he didn't love her," then I might agree, but it's clear enough that Robb understood himself to be in love with her. Even if it's "puppy love", for Robb it was love, and combined with everything else could explain his belief that he had to marry her, that it was the only proper choice. One of the observations that Barbara Tuchman makes in A Distant Mirror is that much of the feuding and violence and occasionally inexplicable decisions witnessed in the Middle Ages can be understood by the fact that so many of them were young, sometimes as young as modern-day teenagers with all the reduced judgment capacity, inexperience, and hormone-derived emotion that that entails. GRRM's quite familiar with that book, and many others besides. The fact that someone may find some of the behavior of the past alien is not surprising, but not any sort of indictment. Now, you say the Robb of the show is older, less hormonal, and so on. True enough. I'm not sure this necessitated their creating Talisa. They could have approached it in other, better ways, I think.

492 votes, 7.22 average, 8 median, 7.39 with top/bottom 5% removed.

476 votes, 7.24 average, 8 median, 7.42 with top/bottom 5% removed.

Yes, the headings thing... don't quite know why it's happening. I think Scafloc set up the whole front page, and fixing the headings has been fairly low priority.

444 votes, 7.35 average, 7.54 with top/bottom 5% removed, 8 median.

388 votes, 7.32 average, 8 median, 7.47 with top/bottom 5% removed.

What'd you think?

Book spoiler discussion of the show goes here, for those who want to discuss the episode in relation to the books, and with reference to spoilers from them. This topic should open automatically when the show begins airing.

Non-spoiler discussion of the show goes here, for those who've not read the books or those who have but are happy to not actually reference them at all in discussion, taking each episode as it comes. This topic should open automatically when the show begins airing.

369 votes, 6.84 average, 8 median, 6.97 with top/bottom 5% removed.

308 votes, 6.99 average, 8 median, 7.13 with top/bottom 5% removed.

Generic Arabia land with verdant green hills and fields rolling away into the distance...

179 votes in, 6.95 average, 7.08 with top/bottom 5% removed, 8 median.

Gave it an 8. Massive quibbles about some of the fudging they've done to get the story to where they have it, and just gravely disappointed with how they're handling Dorne, but there were some very good scenes, Stannis and Shireen foremost of all, and the whole Meereen segment was quite solid.

What'd you think of the episode?