A Man Has Said

My bad. I was looking at the opening of another episode by mistake. :blushing:

As Ramsay Snow said, "If you think this is going to turn out well, you haven't been paying attention." The whole season has been a crock of shit. And I've always been more fond of the books than the show, but seriously, I blame GRRM more than I do D&D. He wrote himself into a corner in the first three novels, and after two false starts and 11 years, AFfC and ADwD were in many respects not nearly as good as the first three. Thus, harder for Benioff and Weiss to adapt. Attending EVERY Comicon in the WORLD hasn't given Martin much time to work on TWoW, either. Add to that his penchant for editing every anthology that comes along* and the Jean Cocteau, I seriously doubt that he will ever finish the series, though I would love to have him prove me wrong. And no, I don't mind at all that he watches the odd NFL football game. But as someone who has been in the position of avoiding working on something myself, I know the signs. Taking on other projects (the anthologies) and assigning them a higher priority is the best way to screw the pooch and not feel TOO guilty about it. The fact that GRRM referred to AFfC as "a real bitch" and ADwD as "Two bitches and a bastard" should give you some indication of his mindset. * - (is that really necessary? There's no-one else in the field of fantasy and science fiction who could do that? Really?)

For the most part, I agree. D&D are constantly trying to correct what they see (sometimes with very good reason) to be problems that GRRM created, and end up creating even worse problems. At least GRRM is far more consistent when it comes to characters' motivations. Any time you can't understand WHY someone is doing something is a huge problem for me. I'm pretty sure D&D understand that Sansa's identity/location are supposed to be secret, because the mentioned it explicitly in ep. 5.1. Which only makes your complaint about it that much more valid. It's an egregious error demonstrating that there are times that D&D put no thought into their plotting decisions. Sansa's being an asshole to Brienne is exactly what I meant about not understanding a character's motives. A glaring example. Well chosen. "Jaime never gave a crap about Cersei's kids in the books " - on that point I have to disagree. There is a chapter in AFfC where Jaime is so longing to be the children's father that he strongly contemplates going public with the twincest - even knowing that that would bring down the House of Lannister and probably the realm. It seems to me that Selyse and Shireen get far too much air time in comparison to the books, and it has no bearing on the plot. Like a lot of D&D's variations, this is a case of servicing the actors instead of the story, which is never likely to end well. The worst cases of this, IMnsHO, are with Varys and Littlefinger. Especially true of Aiden Gillan, who is highly overrated. D&D seem to like him because he had a part in "The Wire" which was one of HBO's most highly acclaimed series. But Gillan's Baltimore mayor was far from being one of the compelling characters or performances in that drama. It's like the show's well-deserved reputation rubbed off on Gillan, who didn't earn it. What kind of professional actor changes the way the character speaks from one episode to the next? At one point he was talking in a raspy voice worthy of Batman. And over time he has adopted a quasi-Irish accent that wasn't there at the beginning of the show. I know, they shoot in Northern Ireland, but as an actor he should be immune to that influence. When he gets to Winterfell (which is where he and Sansa seem to be heading) is he going to adopt a Scottish brogue? Gawd help us if D&D take him north of the Wall, he'll be speaking an Inuit dialect.

But the parallelism should be obvious - it's an exact duplicate of Robb beheading Karstark for killing the two Lannister boys who were prisoners. ETA: I see I was ninja'd by Hide and Seek Champion on that observation.

Pedro Pascal was at times channeling Ricardo Montalban in "The Wrath of Khan." (Cue crane shot) "LANNisTERRRR! From the heart of perdition I spit at thee."

Nice short analysis. Very insightful and literate. A+ :agree:

I haven't read this whole thread yet - it's growing faster than I can keep up (while multi-tasking at other things, of course.) Did anyone mention that Melisandre is depicted in the bath WITHOUT her customary red ruby choker? That could be the end of theories that here appearance is a glamour. That would be disappointing for me. :frown5: I really liked the theory that she was either hundreds of years old or even a re-animated corpse like Beric. But the fact that she's talking about her powders and potions and the use of deception in that very scene.. .. well, it looks like they 'hung a lantern' on that one.

It would sure be better than Podrick Payne's "How to cook rabbits with the fur on." Epic culinary fail, LOL. :lol:

Nicely foreshadowed a couple of episodes in the scene where Oberyn tells the Lannister guards that a longsword is a poor choice of weapon in close quarters.

I ended up giving it a three. The worst episode of the series so far, IMO. I didn't mind the small deviations from the books that occurred in King's Landing. I really liked the scene with Margaery in Tommen's bedroom. Ser Pounce was nice, but I'd have liked the scene without seeing him. I even thought that the changes to the Mereen plot added quite a bit. Getting the slaves to assist in their own liberation was a tactically sound thing to do. Up to the last 10 minutes or so I'd have given it an 8 or so. I hated, hated, hated all the changes that they made at and north of the wall. The show just crossed the Rubicon there and torched the bridge behind it. SO MANY desperately negative negatives there, I don't even know where to begin. I just think they made some very bad choices that they're going to regret sooner rather than later. It bodes ill for the rest of the season, and the rest of the TV series in total. They're going to have to perform a miracle to pull this one out of the fire.

:cheers: :rofl: :lmao:

LOLOLOLOL! You DO realize that GRRM wrote this episode, don't you? It's HIS character, and if you and he differ on the nature of that character, who do you think is more likely to be right? Anyway, I think the scene demonizes Melisandre and Selyse far more than it does Stannis. He mostly just lurks in the background grinding his teeth. You could easily interpret his actions to mean that he disapproves of the burnings. It cuts to the dinner table scene, where he feels that the meat is off, but Mel and Selyse are chowing down happily. I would interpret that to mean that the human sacrifices turned his stomach. Take some solace in that. He's at least not so utterly depraved as are his wife and concubine.

Could Tywin have only been considering how many allies were killed - Lannisters, Freys and Bolton? I <3 your insight on the pronunciation of Frey, which I must admit I have been rhyming with day. Now it leads into a great pun considering Manderley's pies.. .."Would you like Freys with that?" Yes please, and a supersized Coca Cola. :P

First of all, I wish everyone would cool it over the non-appearance of Lady Stoneheart in this episode. That happens at the END of "Storm of Swords," and we haven't got even close to that yet. It would have been too soon anyway - barely enough time has passed for her body to have floated down the river. And yeah, the final 'crowd serfing*' scene with Dany at the end was atrocious. It reminded me of one of those over-the-top dance numbers from a post war Hollywood musical. (* - see what I did there?) ;) But - and I haven't read all the comments yet - am I the first one to mention the BIG REVEAL at the wall? It's HUGE!!! Jojen tells Sam right out, "The Black Watch can't stop the White Walkers. All the armies of men can't stop them," and it is HEAVILY implied that it will be BRAN to conquer the Others. Now the question is, is this something that is in sync with D & D's 'special knowledge' of the books' outcome, or is it yet another point where the two media stories diverge?

There's no reason to assume that the Red Wedding wouldn't have happened if Robb had honoured his betrothal to the Frey girl. Old Walder is a devious little shit, and it would only have impacted how big a reward Tywin would have had to offer for his betrayal. If the Frey's were to hang out a shingle it would read, "Betrayals-R-Us." OMG, what happened to Tysha is nowhere NEAR the most horrific act that the Lannisters do in the books. Tywin ordered Gregor, Vargo Hoath and their thugs into the Riverlands to commit rape, murder, and pillage - and to burn all the crops and food stores, knowing that Winter is Coming. That will ultimately lead to far more deaths, leaving the whole region an unpopulated wasteland by springtime. At which point I'll assume Tywin was planning to annex the region to his own, because there'd be no-one to defend it. If anything, I think I agree with the Hound more than with you on the mercy and honour thing. "Your mercy is going to get you killed someday." Sounds about right, considering what we've seen so far.