Colonel Green Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I think the overriding concern of the showrunners was keeping the Boltons' treachery concealed for as long as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
franko99 Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 One possibility would have just been to do away with the whole Reek disguise entirely. Just have Ser Rodrik capture Ramsay and have him ally with Theon, as Ramsay. Would have gotten rid of a pretty good twist but then the show did that anyway (And in my opinion failed to create a suitably compelling replacement twist/mystery.). They wanted to keep Bolton's involvement in the sack of Winterfell as dark as possible, in fear of spoiling the RW. In my opinion it was a mistake, and the only taint in Theon's perfect season 2 arc. And it also dragged his season 3 arc as well, the reveal wasn't that interesting or shocking as D&D wanted it to be ETA :ph34r: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hath4 Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Here is how I would have done it have ramsay captured by Rodrick early in the season and introduce him as reek. Then at the end of the season when the Bolton army shows up have him tell theon he can end the conflict if he is allowed to meet with the Bolton soldiers. Then once he is with his men he tells theon to open the gates , theon does and winterfell is sacked. And he tells theon who he really is before knocking him out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I think the entire decision came down to not be willing or able to cast Ramsay for S2. If that wasn't a problem, then I imagine they could have done the Reek thing more or less. Reek could have easily worked on TV because it's not like it's a character the audience knows and is trying to disguise himself as someone else. Reek is just Ramsay grubbed up. If they'd have left Dagmer out the amount of characters would have been exactly the same so I don't see why they would have been unable to cast Ramsay. I definitely think that they thought that the whole switching identities of people the audience had never met would be too confusing, but they still wanted a twist so they held Ramsay off until season 3. If they hadn't tried to have their cake and eat it too they could have jettisoned the entire confusing mess, and just had Ramsay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I think the overriding concern of the showrunners was keeping the Boltons' treachery concealed for as long as possible. A problem which was only really caused when (IIRC) they had Roose himself send Ramsay to Winterfell. Thanks to that little change it would have been obvious that Roose had something to do with any of Ramsay's shenanigans. But if they'd just let Ramsay be a wild card seemingly unconnected to his dad it would have been fine. I mean it's not like Tyrion is a bad guy because Tywin is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tommen Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I think the overriding concern of the showrunners was keeping the Boltons' treachery concealed for as long as possible. I think once they got to S3 and looked at it, that was the idea since they left the S2 finale so ambiguous. But I think the initial decision to delay Ramsay's introduction in S2 was a logistical/budgetary one that they had to write around. Remember that S2 introduced series regulars Stannis, Davos, Melisandre, Ygritte, Brienne, Margaery, Yara, Balon, Gilly, Roose, Karstark and Talisa. Not to mention Qhorin, Craster, Rattleshirt, Edd, Jaqen, Polliver, Amory Lorch, Tickler, Dontos, Matthos, Cressen, Salladhar Saan, Hallyne, Pod, Xaro, Pyat, Qaithe and the Spice King. They needed to delay some character introductions so Ramsay, the Reeds and the Tullys were chosen for whatever reason. Once you determine that, you have to figure out how to write around the delay. For instance, I don't think anyone ever said "It's dumb to have the Reeds come to Winterfell to meet Bran, let's have them run into each other in the forest instead." It's more like "well, we can finally introduce the Reeds, what's the best way to do so now that Bran is already on his way to the Wall?". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tommen Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 If they'd have left Dagmer out the amount of characters would have been exactly the same so I don't see why they would have been unable to cast Ramsay. I definitely think that they thought that the whole switching identities of people the audience had never met would be too confusing, but they still wanted a twist so they held Ramsay off until season 3. If they hadn't tried to have their cake and eat it too they could have jettisoned the entire confusing mess, and just had Ramsay. I believe there's a difference between casting a series regular that needs to be locked up for multiple seasons as Iwan Rheon was and bringing in an actor to be a recurring character for just 1 season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I believe there's a difference between casting a series regular that needs to be locked up for multiple seasons as Iwan Rheon was and bringing in an actor to be a recurring character for just 1 season. Maybe budget was an issue, as I expect a long term contract would have demanded more money. But I find it hard to believe that they were that stretched to the limit that they couldn't have afforded that if they'd wanted to. I'm much more inclined to think that they just didn't want the confusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonstoned Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Avoiding confusion does seem to be a preoccupation of the writers, and although I think it has its drawbacks I can sort of see where they're coming from given how difficult it already is for casual viewers to get their head round everything as it is, cf the forever-brought-up 'khaleesi' misnomer. The Ramsay twist in ACoK was so good because you remembered his backstory and notoriety and when he took of his helmet and said his name it was like 'aw shit.......', no guarantee that a television audience is going to process it fully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tommen Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Maybe budget was an issue, as I expect a long term contract would have demanded more money. But I find it hard to believe that they were that stretched to the limit that they couldn't have afforded that if they'd wanted to. I'm much more inclined to think that they just didn't want the confusion. I'm thinking it's less of a strictly budgetary thing (although that's always a consideration) but more of a "we are only able to contract x amount of actors to be series regulars at one time." I think this is also why some recurring actors are eventually moved into series regular roles after waiting around first (because some other series regular spots have been opened up by character deaths). The way they talked about Ramsay, the Reeds and the Tully's before S3, it was positioned in a "we had to delay putting these characters in when they were supposed to and now we're finally able to include them" way. I refuse to believe that the S2 Winterfell story was constructed the way it was for purely storyline reasons as the finale didn't make any sense at all. It was a combo of not being able to cast Ramsay and a decision to still include the sack of Winterfell that caused the writing to come up with what they thought was the best resolution given the constraints that they placed on themselves. I'm sure if you caught them in a candid moment off the record, D&D would ask for a mulligan on that particular decision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 I'm thinking it's less of a strictly budgetary thing (although that's always a consideration) but more of a "we are only able to contract x amount of actors to be series regulars at one time." I think this is also why some recurring actors are eventually moved into series regular roles after waiting around first (because some other series regular spots have been opened up by character deaths). The way they talked about Ramsay, the Reeds and the Tully's before S3, it was positioned in a "we had to delay putting these characters in when they were supposed to and now we're finally able to include them" way. I refuse to believe that the S2 Winterfell story was constructed the way it was for purely storyline reasons as the finale didn't make any sense at all. It was a combo of not being able to cast Ramsay and a decision to still include the sack of Winterfell that caused the writing to come up with what they thought was the best resolution given the constraints that they placed on themselves. I'm sure if you caught them in a candid moment off the record, D&D would ask for a mulligan on that particular decision. Is there any evidence or precedent for that sort of restriction? It seems somewhat arbitrary. To me it just sounded as though they were delaying characters purely to streamline things for the audience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tommen Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Is there any evidence or precedent for that sort of restriction? It seems somewhat arbitrary. To me it just sounded as though they were delaying characters purely to streamline things for the audience. It's possible because that type of stuff is never detailed but the delay in introducing characters always to me seemed like it was explained in terms of a logistical/production issue as opposed to a storytelling issue. Delaying Ramsay especially doesn't make sense as a storytelling issue because they're trying to still cover the same story but clearly work around the fact that the actor isn't cast. If you didn't want to do the Reek thing, that's fine but you still would include the character in the sack so that the arc makes sense. Everything about the Winterfell finale screamed "we can't show you this guy yet so I guess we'll just have to put everything off-screen and deal with the fallout next season". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annara Snow Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I don't think it would be very hard to get a few episodes out of the Eyrie, particularly since most plotlines outside of King's Landing average about 1 sequence per episode. Spreading a few sequences over several episodes and cramming every storyline into an episode with most of them getting just one scene, seems like a recipe for confusing and unsatisfying episodes. It makes a lot more sense to focus on 4-5 storylines in an episode and have substantial developments in them and then skip some of them next episode while focusing on others. Which seems to be what they're doing, based on the released synopses. Season finales are the exception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
go joff go Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I don't know I still think the storyline was a major reason for the way they constructed the ramsey scenes. Like Talisa I think they wanted to cut the convoluted portions of the story out. Having people pretend to be different people the way it happens in the book I don't think translates well on tv. Also I think they had an added incentive of having to work theon into the story and as much as some did not like that arc it would have been much worse without the mystery of it. And I do think the show pulled off the oh crap there is a family playing the game and we didn't even realize it effect they were going for Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annara Snow Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I don't know I still think the storyline was a major reason for the way they constructed the ramsey scenes. Like Talisa I think they wanted to cut the convoluted portions of the story out. Having people pretend to be different people the way it happens in the book I don't think translates well on tv.Why not? That's done all the time on TV. Did the audience react badly when "Henry Gale" was revealed to be Ben, the leader of Others on Lost? Nope, the character became super popular. Why is that all those things, like mysteries, flashbacks, background, internal thoughts, can be done to great effect on other shows, but when it comes to GoT, everyone is bending backwards to prove that you can't do this on TV? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinjonator Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Lost clearly demonstrates that TV viewers are totally unwilling to watch a show with anything convoluted for even a moment. :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Tommen Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Why not? That's done all the time on TV. Did the audience react badly when "Henry Gale" was revealed to be Ben, the leader of Others on Lost? Nope, the character became super popular. Why is that all those things, like mysteries, flashbacks, background, internal thoughts, can be done to great effect on other shows, but when it comes to GoT, everyone is bending backwards to prove that you can't do this on TV? I think GoT is about 10 levels above any other show that's been made with regards to complexity, number of storylines to follow, number of characters, things on the show that are happening concurrently that have little to no connection with each other, tons of backstory regarding characters who are long dead, intricate family trees, balancing realism and fantasy etc. So trying to shove a Lost comparison where a small core group of people all are in close quarters on an island together and we are allowed to have single episodes that delve into each person's backstory isn't really relevant. All this being said, I'm going to say again that the reason they didn't have Ramsay in season 2 is that they couldn't cast anyone for the role in S2. So all the writing had to move backwards to accommodate this reality. The "they didn't want to make it complicated or a mystery" excuse goes out the window when you consider how they left the S2 finale and what they had Ramsay doing with Theon for the better part of S3. There was plenty of opportunity to make that much more straightforward if that was their intention all along. There is no good storyline reason to have a character announced as being on an intercept course with Theon for the entire season, to have the encounter come to a head in the finale and for the show to never reveal the character or his actions unless you couldn't cast for the character in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Green Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Which seems to be what they're doing, based on the released synopses. The synopses never mention everything going on in an episode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
go joff go Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Is lost really a good example of complicated working,because most are pretty unsatisfied with lost. I mean I struggle to see a scenario where theon meets ramsey in winterfell incognito befriends him and then engineers his capture and then reveals himself to be Bolton in a way that an uninitiated tv watcher wouldn't balk. Even in the book it strained credulity with Roderick just accepting he was reek because he was covered in crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annara Snow Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Is lost really a good example of complicated working,because most are pretty unsatisfied with lost. I mean I struggle to see a scenario where theon meets ramsey in winterfell incognito befriends him and then engineers his capture and then reveals himself to be Bolton in a way that an uninitiated tv watcher wouldn't balk. Even in the book it strained credulity with Roderick just accepting he was reek because he was covered in crap.People disliked the *ending* of Lost, mainly because it didn't resolve all the mysteries the show had set up - not because they weren't able to follow all those mysteries, quite the opposite. Before that, it was one of the most popular shows in the world for 6 seasons, with its convoluted stories, mysteries, a huge cast of regulars and recurring characters with interwoven backstories, flashbacks, flashforwards, time travel and alternate reality, and several characters who were revealed to be someone else than who they pretended to be. The above mentioned Ben reveal was the big storyline of season 2, it worked wonderfully and was so well received that Ben became one of the show's most popular characters.How would it be unbelievable that Rodrik and Theon didn't know Ramsey? They had never seen him, and it's not like they had his photo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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