Dolorous Gabe

By far the worst episode of the show yet. Cheap emotional manipulation through inconsistent characterisations. Myriad gaps in logic. It's just bad storytelling on every level.

There was literally zero reason for the decision to burn Shireen. None whatsoever. If it were to happen, the situation should be in extreme desperation and have absolutely no alternative. They had an alternative, which they even established. Turn back for CB along with Davos. Added to this, having any scene after it was insulting both to the viewer and to Shireen, whose elevation as a character compared to her book counterpart has been a major positive for the show previously. It was like they were telling us "yeah that was horrific and sad, wasn't it. Now here's some fighting and a dragon and a khaleesi riding a dragon to finish on. That's better, right?". They're treating their audience like morons, their story with complete disregard and their characters with disdain.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on how lacking the rest of the episode was in narrative sense. No reason given as to why Jon and co. decided to abandon ship and walk through the haunted forest to the wrong side of the wall at CB, halfway along said wall no less. Dorne's rapid resolution rendered the whole thing even more ridiculous and pointless than it already seemed. The Meereen pit sequence was clumsy and senseless. I guess marrying a Meereenese noble and opening the fighting pits didn't work after all. So many questions linger over wtf has been going on in Meereen.

My previous worst rating was a 4. This one gets a well deserved 1/10 from me.

I've never been close to being a Stannis fan and I gave last week's good episode an 8.

I hope Brienne doesn't kill Stannis....

....I hope Davos does.

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e2:

You mean the Rant threads? But the Rant threads are designed specifically to be circlejerking cesspools, given how no discussion is allowed there. Why should anyone take what's posted in them seriously?

No.

Discussion is allowed in the rant threads, just within the confines of criticism. It means there is a safe haven for such opinions to be discussed, just like the positive nitpicking threads are a safe haven for discussion within the confines of what people like about the show.

A post is a post, wherever it is posted. To claim the whereabouts of a post is indicative of its value is ridiculous. Why should you take my post seriously? You shouldn't. At least not until you've read it.

Is Jon a wildling? I find the notion baffling that all the characters who never have met should have all the same knowledge in the show that the viewers have. I mean it's possible that Hardhome has HBO and the wildlings watched the Othor The Other episode but somehow I doubt it.

I agree.

It's amazing how everyone seems to know that Roose Bolton stabbed Robb.

I actually disagree and Winterfell plot this season is quite the proof what happens when they have no material to lean into. Benioff made such hilarious lapse this week with that infamous line "creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen." They both lack the subtlety, the nuance in their writing. Their female characters are cliched version of their book counterparts and they have all been transformed into something seen countless time. Dany into Warrior Princess, Cersei into Evil Queen for modern ages, Sansa into victim, Arya in regular tomboy, Catelyn in just a mother. This season they have 6 storylines and two are catastrophic (Winterfell and Dorne), two are lowering IQ (Meereen and KL) and only two are working so far (Braavos and Wall). Furthermore, it seems they are lost in what they actually try to do, what message their work has. That doesn't mean they are the worst people out there, there are far worse shows than GoT, but simply, Martin's work thematically, artistically and lastly character-wise is superior than theirs. Because when left alone, we have idiocies like Winterfell this season.

:agree:

Over and over and over :P

I voted nine,

Because I hate fuckin tens.

Nicely done :lol:

Easily the best episode of the season so far. I gave it an 8 mostly for entertainment value.

The lack of the 1/10 Dorne story meant it wasn't dragged down too much.

I can't forgive the dreadfully handled Sansa in Winterhell story line and it shouldn't take the situation she has been put in for Sansa to finally attempt to take control of her life. The change we're finally seeing in Sophie's performance shouldn't have required rape and a ridiculous marriage to Ramsay to facilitate it.

Arya in Braavos is generally pretty good, but she should have been on this assignment sooner than ep8.

I'm not sure about the Sam/Gilly/Olly sequence. I will need to re-evaluate it on a second viewing.

I'm not sure about how they've handled King's Landing. I'm not keen that we're already supposed to have sympathy for Cersei and getting to this postion has been very dubiously handled. The whole point of the punishment we have got so far is the challenge it brings to our sense of what justice is. If we already sympathise before it happens, the point of the punishment in the story is somewhat lost.

The Hardhome battle was an impressive piece of entertainment and I was very much on the edge of my seat, not knowing how it would play out, particularly when Edd went missing (even though it's a crime how un-dolorous he is in the show). The difference here is that this mission to Hardhome feels quite a logical result of how the show has changed things. The reasons for it were established and built up and it made sense for Tormund to ask Jon to go with him.

Braavos and the Night's Watch stories have been relatively well handled this season, even if Braavos/THoBaW could have developed quicker. The rest leaves a huge amount to be desired.

Looks like Ghost is no longer mute.

I'm not sure TV-Ghost ever was, was he? I thought they had neglected that element of Book-Ghost from the start.

Will you stop making so much sense???

And not sure why the R&R thread got locked. It didn't look like there was any beef. Did D&D lock it becuase creatively, it made sense to them because they wanted it to be locked?

I'm guessing they just locked it because the new episode is on the way and for the length of it.

That said, I had just written a huge post and when I tried to post it I couldn't :pirate:

Give it a 7. Best of the season so far but that's not saying much. Enjoyed the wall parts the best. Glad they included ' egg, I dreamed I was a boy' but sad to see Aemon go :( wondered why ghost turned up to save the day- shouldn't he be hunting or with Jon snow? Guess Jon snow was worried ghost would get seasick didn't like Tyrion beating up the slaver, just seemed untyrion like, he'd use his wit to be baught by jorahs slaver instead of resorting to beat up the puny slaver with a chain, as if the others would stand by and watch anyway? And let's not forget the Bronn/Tyene scene - lovely to look at cant deny that but seemed utterly pointless other than to get the boob count up, my unsullied other half actually burst out laughing and said wtf?! Wish that some of these pointless additions to the story could have instead of been used to give better character building or story progress, looking forward to next episode though ,fingers crossed it's a good 'un

I watched this episode with my dad and my sister and their reaction to the Bronn/Tyene was pretty much the same.

Cersei could be arrested for incest with Jaime since, while married to the King, Lancel knows about that. Pretty sure it was also stated that she instructed Lancel to give Robert too much wine. Oh, and she was having sex with Lancel also.

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Where would be the proof though? They must surely require something more than someone's word? And if she's arrested for that, then surely they'll start questioning Tommen's right to the throne.

On the other hand, it was pretty much someone's word that got Loras and Margaery put in a cell. All these incriminations feel entirely too easy even in a world so devoid of lawful fairness as Westeros is.

The wine thing I agree, Lancel's admission of his own role in that is enough to seize Cersei.

When do any of those - except arguably (but not in my opinion) uneven pace - happen in Feast and Dance?

They don't.

The only legitimate criticism of Feast and Dance is that a few chapters should have been combined with others to say what needed to be said in less words and less POVs and Quentyn probably didn't need to be a POV. We could have learned about him and his relevance to the Dornish story in Arianne's POV and then he just shows up in Dany's POV in Meereen to fulfil his dragon-'taming' duty.

Brienne's story is problematic because we know she's on a fruitless expedition, and perhaps we could have had less chapters of hers, but they do serve a purpose to the themes of Feast.

Question:

Why was show-Cersei arrested? They made it quite clear in the book, but the HS gave no direct reason. What info did Lancel give him? (didn't they pork at one point in S2?)

I don't think a charge was stated. I guess it'll be the conspiracy to murder Robert unless she was having sex with Lancel whilst married to Robert. They should certainly explain it at some point anyway.

There is no evidence of this on the show. If she didn't trust him, she wouldn't have believed what he was saying. She didn't want to go through with it. He convinced her. She absolutely trusts him.

"Better to gamble on the man you know than the strangers you don't" (season 4 episode 8)

To the second paragraph: It's a teenager trying to present herself as tough. She also believes she's tough to do the avenge plot. In many ways, she is tough. But not tough enough for Ramsay.

To the third paragraph, isn't that same advice what made her decide to marry Harry the Heir? I think D & D might be taking that same mission he put Sansa on in Feast of Crows and saying what if Harry was a monster? In a way to combine stories. Littlefinger gave her false information by saying that Ramsay had fallen for her. Her decision was made based on a lie because she trusted Littlefinger.

Little you say here is false, but none of it makes the choices of the show any better. There's a difference between the allegedly dashing Harry being her next suitor and a Bolton being her next suitor (the Starks' long term enemies in Northern feudal history and well know in-world to have played a considerable part in RW). The fundamentals upon which this story has grown are ludicrous at best.

Just a few things points though. LF said he didn't know anything about Ramsay, so how could he know he had fallen for her? And how could Ramsay have fallen for her when he has never seen her?

Finally, I've said this numerous times before but Sansa does NOT trust LF. He is simply the devil she knows as opposed to the devil she doesn't know.

Whatever way you swing it, Sansa is made to look completely moronic by the events leading to this story line.

5 seasons? How about 5 books and Danny and Tyrion still haven't met. This is Game of Thrones. Most things we want take a long ass time if they even come at all.

Character development is different to story development. Sansa has made many mistakes but in the show she doesn't appear to have learned from them.

That change of attire and style you referred to previously. Your comment said exactly why it was stupid to use that as a means to swiftly suggest a learning curve without writing it organically, but if it wasn't there to suggest said learning curve then what on Planetos was the point of it?

Sansa accepting a marriage to a Bolton with the advice "make him yours" ringing in her ears was beyond moronic. However little character development she has gone through, she would have to be Lollys-level dimwitted to even consider it. Jeyne didn't have a choice. Sansa did.

As if Jeyne's rape was not used to develop Theon's saving of Jeyne, which is even worse when you think about it.

The difference is that the circumstances that led to Jeyne playing the fake Arya to marry Ramsay came out of logical story developments and character motivations. Put any female in that situation and she's going to get raped unless there's a miraculous rescue mission before it happens.

Context makes a difference. There was something deeply moving about Theon and Jeyne 'bonding' (can't think of a better word at the moment) over the shared experience of being 'broken' by Ramsay. That's what was used to develop Theon's redemptive arc, not the rape itself.

Gave it a 5 and felt generous doing so.

The lack of narrative and character sense is overwhelming.

Dorne is beyond dreadful. The WF story line is horrible in almost every way (Alfie Allen is doing his best to redeem it but it's impossible). Meereen feels half baked. King's Landing lacks narrative sense and moral complexity. Tyrion's journey has been a mixed bag. Castle Black and Braavos have been the best done sections this season and both still fall somewhat short.

Much of the dialogue is simply terrible now.

They do get it. You don't like her show arc. That's it. The accusations of contrivance, lack of logic, degradation of character are just an opinion. One I don't agree with.

The difference petal is that everyone else is giving reasons for their opinions. Extremely good reasons, which have been formed from a critical thought process. You give an opinion, you should be able to back it up because a thought process must have taken place for you to come to that particular conclusion.

You've given no reasons and not once made the effort to explain your point of view. Nor have you ever offered a proper counter argument to those being presented that you "disagree" with.

The issue seems to be that you think you know how the rest of the story will play out before it's even aired. I wouldn't be so confident if I was you. Bet you didn't see last weeks episode coming.

Of course I did. It was obvious as soon as they contrived to have Sansa in Jeyne Poole's position beyond all realms of narrative sense.

I don't see how else they can play it. She's either a victim, treated with honesty and realism. Or she's 'empowered' by the experience and seeks revenge.

As I explained, it's either a terrible narrative choice for the story or a terrible narrative choice for Sansa's character development. Both ways it's a bad choice.

I've answered it endlessly. Yes I think her show arc is better than her book arc, including getting raped.

Yet still not responding to my points.

Sounds like you're confusing Westeros with wherever you live in the real world. Height of presentist stupidity. Come on haters, you can do better than this shit.

Haters? I loved the show, when it was good. It introduced me to the books.

This is critical analysis. What you're doing here is flat-out denying that critical analysis should even exist.

They don't need to defend their choices. Sansa's book story is just too slow and internalised for tv or film. Ok, you don't like the alternate D & D have come up with but I still maintain they were right to accelerate/change her arc. Book Sansa just doesn't do anything.

Oh well then. Let's have Sansa wake a stone dragon from the depths of Winterfell's crypts and ride it across the north killing all Bolton sympathisers.

No? That's okay. I don't have to defend my choice.

It's okay, in a couple episodes she'll be over it...

ETA: Dolorous Gabe thoroughly ninjaed my quip...

:lol:

My apologies. Quip on, good Ser. They are always enjoyable.

They had to get that character out of the Vale and away from LF. They just don't have the luxury of taking 6 huge novels worth of time to do it. Sansa's arc, as it is written in the books, is just unfilmable. All sitting around and internal monologue. Fine in a novel, boring on film.

That's not a defence for the choices D&D have made.