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[BOOK SPOILERS] Nitpick Without Repercussion


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I thought Kit did well last night. I didn't know Iwan had auditioned for the part, he's a much better actor than Kit, I wonder why they didn't give it to him?



The episode itself wasn't bad, except for too much Sam and Gilly, but that's my personal preference, it's more that leaving out the actual culmination of the story, e.g. Mance and Stannis...knowing what HAS to happen next week, it's going to be impossible to do it justice.



And I know the show has been 10 minutes short all season allegedly due to budget, but perhaps that means they should reign in the location shoots a little so we can have a 60 minute show, it's bad enough it's only 10 episides, but losing all of this time amounts to loss of an entire episode's worth of time.


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They really failed this whole season to provide build up to this battle. I never liked that Thorne and Slint were already there when Jon returns. I disagree that there wouldn't have been enough for the NW to do all season. How about an evacuation of Mole's Town or the villages near The Gift? Or Jon and other NW's characters planning their defense strategies? In 8 episodes the only tactics discussed were getting pitch and sealing the gate. I would have liked to see the first attack from the South in an earlier episode and the main attack start before the 9th episode to show how long the siege was. Jon didn't look as heroic as he should have. I thought Thorne did more.



Other nitpicks:


-The Wildlings and Mance Rayder are completely unsympathetic characters. Hope they can make Tormund a believable ally in season 5.


-The defense of the gate was not nearly as epic as it could have been.


-I guess HBO couldn't afford more than one mammoth.


-Jon sending Grenn to his death.

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I thought Kit did well last night. I didn't know Iwan had auditioned for the part, he's a much better actor than Kit, I wonder why they didn't give it to him?

The episode itself wasn't bad, except for too much Sam and Gilly, but that's my personal preference, it's more that leaving out the actual culmination of the story, e.g. Mance and Stannis...knowing what HAS to happen next week, it's going to be impossible to do it justice.

And I know the show has been 10 minutes short all season allegedly due to budget, but perhaps that means they should reign in the location shoots a little so we can have a 60 minute show, it's bad enough it's only 10 episides, but losing all of this time amounts to loss of an entire episode's worth of time.

Season 3

Ep 1 55 min

Ep 2 57 min

Ep 3 53 min

Ep 4 54 min

Ep 5 58 min

Ep 6 53 min

Ep 7 59 min

Ep 8 58 min

Ep 9 52 min

Ep 10 64 min

Total: 563

Season 4

Ep 1 59 min

Ep 2 53 min

Ep 3 57 min

Ep 4 57 min

Ep 5 53 min

Ep 6 51 min

Ep 7 51 min

Ep 8 53 min

Ep 9 50 min

Ep 10 66 min

Total: 550

Compared to last year, there's only a 13 minute difference. It's not that disparate.

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the NW basically defeated the wildlings because Jon is harder then Styr, and Olly and Sam and the handful of men left to defend the Castle were better and harder and more effective than all those Thenns- crazy. At least organise a tactical withdrawal up the stairs and throw down some barrels of oil on them all. there wasn't even any need to give Thorne the credit for that plan as acting LC- thorne fell and Jon could have taken over and thought it up on the hoof- no preconceived stairs collapse needed- just oil and fire.



this solution was just dumb- the wildlings were winning until Jon killed Styr, Pyp shot a wildling, Sam shot a wildling, and Olly shot a wildling- is the mesage that if you get brave you can defeat a much larger force of better fighters without applying any real tactics or initiative? The wildlings were basically- not hard enough to win and never once looked to win the gate, and according to Jon, despite losing miserably to a few old men and boys with no tacticvs, still thought Castle Black was defended by 1,000 men. It doesn't make any sense. Why make Mance and wildlings tactically bereft? Why make the NW men amazing warriors without any plans?


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Episode 8 we find out that there are 103 men of the night's watch including people like Aemon. How many were killed? I'm waiting for some dedicated person to actually make a count of how many died.



Some good fight scenes but still some silly spins. C'mon we know better than that by now. Also a lot of unnecessary swinging that seemed to be purposefully not to hit any opponents.



Bad ending. I'm not a huge fan of the wall stuff anyway and I was hoping they would tie up ALL of the wall storyline in this episode. I'm now really worried that the last episode is going to be insanely rushed.



But main thing how many brothers of the nights watch are left? Can't be more than 20.


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The thing is, at this level, decent just isn't good enough. Not everyone is NCW, Stephen Dillane or Charles Dance but at least the rest of the cast is on average good (quite the accomplishment for the actors with these writers). With Kit and someone like Sybil we're already glad if they are 'decent', often we even have to twist ourselves to find them decent. They just fall short.

- snap -

Sibel Kikeli is actually well known here in Germany as a natural talent. She has won many prices as best actress for dramas and TV series, despite never having actually studied at an acting school. And I don't dislike her in GoT at all.

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Sibel Kikeli is actually well known here in Germany as a natural talent. She has won many prices as best actress for dramas and TV series, despite never having actually studied at an acting school. And I don't dislike her in GoT at all.

I saw her in Gegen die Wand before she was on GoT. She was great in that movie, but she's horrible on GoT.

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5 people climbing the wall, 50 at most with two giants and a Mammoth tackling the gate. 100 or so killed by arrows

Where were the other 99,845 wildlings?

Yes, the climbers are just f*cking stupid. They just had to climb the wall like 5 miles down the road, where no watchmen was looking, instead of directly at the gate. Then they could have attacked the battlement atop the wall just easily, or maybe just throwing rope ladders down for others to follow.

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Sibel Kikeli is actually well known here in Germany as a natural talent. She has won many prices as best actress for dramas and TV series, despite never having actually studied at an acting school. And I don't dislike her in GoT at all.

I've never seen her in anything else, but she annoys me to no end in GoT.

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5 people climbing the wall, 50 at most with two giants and a Mammoth tackling the gate. 100 or so killed by arrows

Where were the other 99,845 wildlings? No turtle or

There was just no tension on the other side of the wall. They should have spread this battle out over a few episodes having separate battles.

What was actually the point of those 5 climbers? Mance is supposed to think that there are a thousand men in Castle Black. Did he really believe that those 5 climbers could climb all the way up to the Wall and actually do something important.

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In truth the promo was suspicious already... But I was like Okay, whatever, the battle of the Wall will be highlight of the episode of course they put that into the promo. Well, I sat down to watch the episode, had a bowl of strawberry in my lap, my bruises still hurt, but the WiFi is working, so I was generally in a good and not at all nitpicky mood. Ten minutes into the episode I started to have a bad feeling. 18 minutes into the episode I paused it and fastforwarded a couple times to check if the fucking battle of the fucking Wall is TRULY taking up the entire fucking episode. And it was.



That was the time when I decided whatever happens, I won't rate it higher than 5. Because the whole notion is completely absurd and unfair and ridiculous. Give me ONE reason why this piece of the Wall storyline deserved an entire episode over any other piece of storyline. After all the ridiculous amount of screentime wasted on relocating Gilly to Moles Town the Wildlings attacking Moles Town, Sam crying over leaving Gilly in Moles Town, Jon and Ser Alliser's power/testosterone/IQ demonstration clashes, Jon going on about how Mance's army is sooooo clooose by now.... After all that... ONE ENTIRE episode on the bloody battle of the bloody Wall! This is not even the right battle! Even the notion of the battle is wrong, since the whole point of the Jon storyline is that the Night's Watch should team up with the Wildlings to fight the REAL enemy, so it's not even a long awaited climax battle between the good guys and the bad guys. And what's even far worse than all this... ONE ENTIRE episode wasted and we never took one step forward. No peace, no Stannis, no victory, no nothing. In fact, I'll just go back and rewrite my vote from 4 to 3.



Other than this, the episode was often boring. No cuts to different scenes with different people, just failed to maintain tension. Good fighting scenes and battle scenes, but too many and too long. Sam's scene with Maester Aemon was a complete waste of resources, who gives a shit about Maester Aemon and the girls he liked when he was young? I saw the Thenn boss die about three times. I know they look all the same, but how about some bloody distinction? Warg with a bird - that card had been played, plus, there was the fucking HORN who needed a bird to know it was time to attack. Wildlings camping and fighting each other - that card had been played and played and played. So much it's already torn. So Jon is the boss? How come? Ser Alliser grew some serious balls this episode, he was freaking awesome and far more of a leader than Jon. Jon didn't do anything.



I was sorry Pyp and Grenn died, but both were good scenes and something HAD to HAPPEN in this damn episode, because let's stop for a moment and list the things that actually happened?


- Stunts died


- Ygritte died


Did we get ahead with the plot by a single inch? No. So you need more characters people care about to die so the episode won't feel wasted. At least they got nice and realistic deaths, unlike Irri and Doreah.



I can't fucking believe they wasted an ENTIRE episode on NOT getting ahead with the plot. And the ending... goodness, that was absolutely horrible. So bad, so, SO bad. So pointless, so nonsense... I can't find words for how much I hated this episode.


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I'm going to list my nitpicks first, then try and catch up reading the thread.



Ahhhhhhh, where to begin?



I'm nitpicking that they killed off Pyp, even though I must nitpick that other than looking like him, this guy never was BookPyp to me anyway, LOL



Killing Grenn is MORE than a nitpick, and never having a Donal Noye to die at the gate is a nitpick. Pyp not being Pyp, really, and No Donal is the reason we lost a terrific Grenn, because ya know, they had to kill someone that they actually bothered to flesh out a bit.



Ghost....... not enough Ghost and my daughter wanted to know why.......did Ghost stop to eat at his first takedown in the battle, instead of getting up and killing someone else. Like my daughter said: Ghost, eat later......they'll be plenty, go kill someone else.



No sign of Mance out on the other side of the Wall? Kinda silly, just his fire and his giants and mammoths?



Jon doing the Ygritte goodbye while the battle still rages? I SWEAR......D&D live to make Jon look bad, but then again, at least he's not getting the Stannis treatment. That's my last nitpick, I can see they didn't leave enough time for the Stannis stuff, but......still, WTF?? I can't see as how they will have room for half of the things they need to get done next week.



I did like alot of the episode, but it also shows in some respects how little has truly been devoted to the storyline up at The Wall. That's it for now, I'm sure more will come to me soon, LOL


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