WSmith84

Why were Ellaria and the SS even allowed near Myrcella? I'd have thought Doran, Jaime and Trystane would all have been against letting those 4 anywhere near her.

The bit that didn't work for me was Cersei's justifications for arming the Faith. Now, I am against hand-holding, but I do think the audience needed more reasons for Cersei to make that call. Like them being a potential use against Stannis and his Red Witch, or by cancelling the Faith's loan. Cersei arming them just to take down Margaery is a bit like burning down your house to kill a spider. And of course the Dornish birthmark being the bit of evidence that apparently swayed them was just... funny.

Jesus, and people say book readers spew bile... If you had actually read my post, you would see it said 'until she was arrested.' Obviously there was a descent from there. But the prophecy played no part in that descent. Unlike her book counterpart, she isn't descending into madness. That's the descent I was talking about. By the way, I actually preferred Show!Cersei to her book counterpart; I thought she was more well-rounded. Same with Ser Alliser (until this episode at least). But I can see no justification for keeping the prophecy in the show. It should have been cut.

But they never showed us a descent. Cersei's character hasn't descended into anything. Until she was arrested, she was pretty much the same from the beginning of the season. You're laughing, but perhaps I simply value realistic character behaviour over cool TV shots. And the show could have given us both, if they had perhaps simply shown her nose start to bleed immediately after Doran left the dock.

Someone asked me today why I bother watching the show if I think it's so bad. Well, the show brought me to the books. I watched S1E1 at my girlfriend's insistence and fell in love with the thing. I watched the whole of season 1 that day and borrowed a copy of AGoT, to see what they were like. I read about a third of it during the night and the next day I went and bought books 1-5. So I'm eternally grateful to the show for bringing me to the books. And I genuinely thought that it was some of the best stuff on TV. I watched seasons 2 and 3, and although they had flaws, I thought that they were still pretty great. Season 4 was when I thought things started going wobbly. But I still enjoyed it and afterwards I looked to season 5 with anticipation. I was looking forward to some of the changes that they would make. But this season has been poor. It left in stuff that should have been cut, it removed stuff that should have been left in. The writing got sloppy and, at times, bad. The leaps of logic required to justify certain narratives became too much. The failures in continuity happened more and more often. Even the acting took a hit this year. But I've never been a hate watcher. I watch each episode hoping for it to be the great show that it once was. Every episode this year I hoped against the increasingly unlikely outcome that the episode would be great, or even good. I want this show to be great. And that means criticising it when it makes mistakes. And this year there were plenty.

What was the point of the Cersei flashback in episode 1? It was never referenced or expanded upon, and, as far as I can tell, played no part in the story. I didn't like it in the books, so I was hoping they would cut it out, especially as they haven't gone with the crazy Cersei route. I rewatched the episode because I wanted to give the Arya scenes another lookover and my God, Dorne is actually worse on a second viewing. Why the hell does Ellaria wait until her nose starts to bleed before taking the antidote? I'll tell you why: because they wanted a cool TV shot, even though its a very stupid thing to do. I don't care how knowledgable you are about poison, you don't wait until things almost get to the point of no-return before taking the antidote. And no military commander, no matter how stupid, would do what Stannis did in this episode. Greatest military commander of Westeros my arse.

I thought it was a strange but brilliant choice to recast Benjen as a piece of wood. Never saw that coming, amazing twist.

But why? Jon kept him locked up in S4 when Alliser was in charge, but we've seen Ghost free this season twice at least. Why would Jon lock him up? And if he did, they should give us a line of dialogue telling us.

Hey what happened to Ghost? I can't believe I forgot about this, but why was Ghost not with Jon? Did he go South with Sam or something?

Why on Earth would Jon be less popular after coming back since he had been proven right? Did Jon simply not tell everyone about the army of the dead at Hardhome? Did all 15? NW men, including Ser Alliser (bye bye my praise for how they wrote his character), think Jon and the other NW members who came back from HH were fretting needlessly? Jon went to HH and killed a White Walker in single combat, discovering another of their weaknesses. Jon should be a bloody legend amongst even the men who hated the wildlings the most.

Feast and Dance may have been weak books, but they also had some truly fantastic material in them. The Winterfell arc is probably George's best writing, with a plot full of tension, mystery, great characters, great lines and emotion. The show reduced this to sheer shock value and it came at the cost of all the characters' characterisations. Littlefinger, Roose, Sansa, Theon... All of their characters suffered because of the decision to put Sansa in Winterfell. And the show Winterfell arc isn't even very good on its own.

Ah the old budget excuse. How does a budget excuse generally poor writing? And I might accept that argument easier if they hadn't spent so much on 600 face models that nobody could actually see. Or Dorne? All those fancy european shots which were worthless, because everything surrounding it was poor.

Wow. That may just have been the worst episode ever, in terms of how disappointing it was. For those of you who think 'hey, it hit all the plot points from the books, what's to complain about?' you clearly do not understand our frustrations. Simply hitting a plot point without sufficient emotional backing or narrative tension is meaningless. Jon's stabbing was so lacking in the necessary tension that I just couldn't bring myself to care. And they managed to ruin one of the few characters, Alliser Thorne, that they had been doing a good job of characterising. And what did Jon do to earn this stabbing? If it was for siding with the Wildlings, why did they even let him cross in the first place? Just let him and the Wildlings starve on the Northern side of the Wall. Did Jon even tell them about Hardhome? If he did, then all of the officers are idiots. If he didn't, Jon is an idiot. And why is Olly saying 'For the Watch'? He doesn't give a shit about what Jon's decisions mean for the NW, he just cares about his dead family. If they wanted us to think Olly cared about the NW, they should have given us some scenes with that sentiment being expressed. Ah Stannis... the most experienced and finest military commander in Westeros, and yet he is surprised that the Boltons might attack him. And he is surprised that people might desert him after burning his only daughter alive. And Stannis apparently dies. You know, I think nearly everybody, even Stannis' biggest fans, accepted that Stannis would die. What was important is how, and why. The show confirming it doesn't really affect us book readers. But the painfully contrived manner of it all just made it so disappointing and, worse, nobody cared that he died. Stannis wasn't a Joffrey or Ramsey, so I doubt anybody really felt much joy that he died. It's just a 'meh' and we're ready to move on. Dorne... what a waste of time this has been all season. Tell me again, how this is better than either book Dorne or Jaime in the Riverlands? Also, the 'bad pussy' line genuinely made me laugh out loud at how shit that writing was. Arya's stuff was alright, though I've never been crazy about the character. Theon and Sansa escaping was so lacking in everything. I stopped caring about that story because I couldn't get past how utterly contrived the whole 'Sansa being there' scenario was. But the decision to put Sansa there cost everyone; Theon, Roose, LF, Sansa... There isn't a character that didn't suffer due to that decision. Considering the source material that they had available for Theon, the Northern plot is a travesty. Cersei's stuff was genuinely great. Lena Headey killed it, and the Walk of Shame made me feel as uncomfortable as it did in the book. Great job on that. That was actually my biggest concern at the beginning of the season: that D&D might make the thing gratuitous. I long for the days when I thought that would be the worst thing they could do. Wasn't impressed that Qyburn could name a new member to the KG despite the fact that as far as everyone is aware, there are seven already. This seems like a small nitpick, but considering how often these kinds of things have happened this season, I no longer give a pass on it. Danaerys' stuff just came across as meh to me. I was very disappointed we got no imaginary Viserys. It was alright, but again, considering the source material (Dany's final chapter) they should have done much better. Tyrion and the others was OK, but Jesus they really lay on the 'Tyrion is great thing' so fricking heavy. And their justification for Tyrion being accepted as a ruler fell short to me, but whatever. Varys turning up was a genuine surprise. So plot points were hit and certain lines from the books were uttered, but without the necessary build-up or context, everything fell flat. It was just a bad hour of TV.

Ah the Blackwater... One of the best hours of TV of my life.

Right..... Explain to me again why Jon and the wildlings got off of the ships at Eastwatch on the North side of the Wall and walked without supplies to Castle Black? What detail do I need spelling out to me?

It certainly was an interesting thing for me in the books: an atheist being partnered with someone who does show supernatural powers.

It does make their decision to cut Arianne in favour of keeping the SS and Trystane look rather odd. Seeing as Trys gets some of the SS' plot and some of Arianne's, it's not like Arianne couldn't have filled that role. Unless of course Professor X is planning to marry Trys to Dany.

That's the other thing; with this decision, Stannis is no longer a morally complex guy you can maybe root for, he's now a straight-up villain. And straight-up villains can be great, but Stannis isn't interesting or charismatic or clever enough to be a great, or even mediocre, villain.

Thing is, Stannis proved himself a kinslayer in front of his entire army and now has no heir. Noone would join this madman. He's not charismatic, or well-liked and he just proved himself to be an insane follower of a foreign religion. What Lord in Westeros would ever back this guy? Unless R'hllor himself pops down and crushes everyone inbetween Stannis and the IT, there is no way in hell Stannis will ever sit on it. And that's the most frustrating part; Stannis never f***ing asks what the hell burning Shireen will do! Achieve victory? What does that mean? Will it lift the snow, kill all the Boltons, kill everyone in Stannis' path, give him a feckin' dragon? We don't know, because it apparently never occurs to anyone to ask. And Melisandre has, at best, a 67% success rate! That's BS.

I'm just going to quote A_Cornered_Wolf's post as to why Ramsey's raid was ridiculous.

Even if I accepted that Ramsey and his 20 men managed to burn the stores of a ?6000 man army, they literally said in the episode that they had 100 horses to eat (at the least).Why not actually send Davos to CB with a request for food and wait? Why not wait and see if the snows clear? Why not butcher some more horses now and eat them, saving on having to feed them as well? All of this could have been done by Stannis, but wasn't. The whole situation surrounding the burning was stupid.

Thank you. It's been difficult to put how I felt about their decision to confirm this into words. I've taken Talisa's death in the show to mean that Jeyne Westerling isn't pregnant in the books, but it's not 100% and I like the small uncertainty. I don't know about other book-readers, but I've been extremely good at not spoiling anything for my Unsullied friends. I'd hoped that D&D would extend that courtesy to book readers. Edit: Woohoo! Just remembered Talisa's no longer in the show!

If this is how Shireen is burned in the books, it will still be bad writing. Because it is bad writing, plain and simple. Melisandre offing Shireen without Stannis' permission would actually be wonderfully poetic and far superior to Stannis doing it because he's a bit cold and hungry.

But how is a battle between two sides, where we care about neither side (anymore), good writing? Or even remotely interesting? If we don't care about the characters on either side, what investment do we have in the outcome?

I actually completely forgot about the taboo of kinslaying (now I feel embarrassed). I was just thinking that he would look like a religious nutjob who will kill literally anybody in the name of victory.