[BOOK SPOILERS] Nitpick Without Repercussion

[Northern Girl 30]

I forget what happen in the book. Did Jon leave the wall to go find Mance? Or was that a thing HBO did??

[Mark Antony]

I forget what happen in the book. Did Jon leave the wall to go find Mance? Or was that a thing HBO did??

He was sent to "treat" with Mance by Thorne and Slynt

[zaphodbrx]

Sometimes I feel like this entire forum has turned into D&D fanatics. Maybe it's the percolation of show-only viewers. Or it's just people who have made their internal peace with the show and just see it as different from the books.

Whatever the reason, it's clear that the show gets less and less criticism as time goes on, even though they make more and more deviations from the book and the quality is overall worse and has more and more filler. Let's be honest, practically no one outside these forums ( and nowadays just this thread ) even criticizes the show at all. Remember the days when D & D got flayed for making nonsense changes like 'Talisa' and you got endless threads about that? They are gone. Each episode now only gets a handful of threads/comments and most of them praise the episode anyway. I get the feeling that book readers are slowly giving up and stopping posting, because why bother at this point. D & D won't change anything.

Even you look at this website's reviewers, and the folks at 'A podcast of ice and fire', and such. They still criticize the show somwehat, but the venom is gone. All episodes get between 4-4.5 /5 these days. No table flipping or losing their shit.

But I'll still nitpick. Hell yeah. Over multiple posts, starting with this one.

The elevator

The elevator is something that really bothered me this episode.

I'll get a bit nerdy and go into the physics of this thing. Now the elevator is powered by a human. The precise arrangement of the pulleys and winch doesn't really matter, because what such a system effectively does is trade force for speed, let us say in the ratio 8:1. So to lift a 80 kg man, you'd have to exert a force equivalent to lifting 10 kg, but he would go up at 8 times less speed. Let us say that the dude is pushing the winch at the rate of 5km/hr ( a brisk walk ). Divide this by 8, and we get the elevator speed as 0.09 m/sec. To climb a 100 ft ( 33 m ) wall , it would take 11 minutes.

Note that I reduced the height of the wall from 700 ft to 100 ft ( which is still very impressive - the height of a 10 story building ), and neglected friction, and also assumed that the weight of the elevator is balanced by a counterweight. It still takes a good deal of time to get up and down the wall, and the guy manning the winch would be pretty much winded out after a short while of huffing and puffing - exerting a 10 kg force for long period of time is not a small thing. Even in the books the elevator is somewhat problematic but atleast Martin doesn't have his characters go up and down like it's nothing. Jon Snow has the wall, Donal Noye is holding the gate, they don't clamber up and down.

But in this episode, characters clamber up and down the elevator in seemingly no time whatsoever. It is really distracting and stupid, like they couldn't have any main character at the bottom, so first Thorne goes down, Slynt goes down, Grenn, Sam goes up, Jon goes down. it's just a mess. And they could have just left the operation of the winch as a plot-hole or hidden, but no no no. D & D couldn't leave that be.

They put THE KID in charge of the elevator.

Let me emphasize. The elevator is one of the most crucial components of the wall. It is the only link between the top and bottom. And they put the one dude in charge who a.) has no upper body strength and b.) would probably be the first one to flee at the first sign of dangers.

I guess they were thinking in the writers room; We need to stick the kid somewhere for until the time when he shoots Ygritte. Let's put him at the winch, cause why not. LOL.

Well done, Dumb & Dumber. Well done.

[The Prince of Newcastle]

This is my fault, but no Stannis.

Even though I knew this episode depicted the battle of castle black and that Stannis is not involved in that I though he would be in the episode.

But he wasn't and I was gutted.

Then I came here and read the endless whinging about it and it made me feel bad for thinking about whinging my self.

[The Prince of Newcastle]

Sometimes I feel like this entire forum has turned into D&D fanatics. Maybe it's the percolation of show-only viewers. Or it's just people who have made their internal peace with the show and just see it as different from the books.

Whatever the reason, it's clear that the show gets less and less criticism as time goes on, even though they make more and more deviations from the book and the quality is overall worse and has more and more filler. Let's be honest, practically no one outside these forums ( and nowadays just this thread ) even criticizes the show at all. Remember the days when D & D got flayed for making nonsense changes like 'Talisa' and you got endless threads about that? They are gone. Each episode now only gets a handful of threads/comments and most of them praise the episode anyway. I get the feeling that book readers are slowly giving up and stopping posting, because why bother at this point. D & D won't change anything.

Even you look at this website's reviewers, and the folks at 'A podcast of ice and fire', and such. They still criticize the show somwehat, but the venom is gone. All episodes get between 4-4.5 /5 these days. No table flipping or losing their shit.

.

You've read this site right? It's a none stop whinge fest about tiny details and big details.

[sj4iy]

With the nw having tormund does anyone think he will replace rattleshirts role next season.The scythe move was cool I liked it,but why would 5- 6 men be climbing the wall,did they think they could just pull thereselfs up at the top without getting hit with a arrow.

I think he's replacing Val because I don't see them burning Tormund in Mance's place. Tormund can be Jon's envoy to the Wildlings like he is in the book.

[Talleyrand]

The elevator

The elevator is something that really bothered me this episode.

I'll get a bit nerdy and go into the physics of this thing. Now the elevator is powered by a human. The precise arrangement of the pulleys and winch doesn't really matter, because what such a system effectively does is trade force for speed, let us say in the ratio 8:1. So to lift a 80 kg man, you'd have to exert a force equivalent to lifting 10 kg, but he would go up at 8 times less speed. Let us say that the dude is pushing the winch at the rate of 5km/hr ( a brisk walk ). Divide this by 8, and we get the elevator speed as 0.09 m/sec. To climb a 100 ft ( 33 m ) wall , it would take 11 minutes.

Note that I reduced the height of the wall from 700 ft to 100 ft ( which is still very impressive - the height of a 10 story building ), and neglected friction, and also assumed that the weight of the elevator is balanced by a counterweight. It still takes a good deal of time to get up and down the wall, and the guy manning the winch would be pretty much winded out after a short while of huffing and puffing - exerting a 10 kg force for long period of time is not a small thing. Even in the books the elevator is somewhat problematic but atleast Martin doesn't have his characters go up and down like it's nothing. Jon Snow has the wall, Donal Noye is holding the gate, they don't clamber up and down.

But in this episode, characters clamber up and down the elevator in seemingly no time whatsoever. It is really distracting and stupid, like they couldn't have any main character at the bottom, so first Thorne goes down, Slynt goes down, Grenn, Sam goes up, Jon goes down. it's just a mess. And they could have just left the operation of the winch as a plot-hole or hidden, but no no no. D & D couldn't leave that be.

They put THE KID in charge of the elevator.

Let me emphasize. The elevator is one of the most crucial components of the wall. It is the only link between the top and bottom. And they put the one dude in charge who a.) has no upper body strength and b.) would probably be the first one to flee at the first sign of dangers.

I guess they were thinking in the writers room; We need to stick the kid somewhere for until the time when he shoots Ygritte. Let's put him at the winch, cause why not. LOL.

Well done, Dumb & Dumber. Well done.

The kid isn't powering the lift he's putting the system into motion. Notice when Sam goes up the kid only pushes it in a half circle before going back to his hiding space

[zaphodbrx]

Part II

Samwell Tarly's stupidity and general incompetence

Samwell Tarly is not present at Castle Black during any of the wildling attacks in the novels. In hindsight this was very clever of GRRM. His character doesn't really lend itself to be very useful during a battle, and a lone wildling woman with a kid hanging around is a nightmare dilemma as well.

So given that they have Sam return so early to Castle black I was curious as to how they would go with his character. And as it turns out, what we see in this season is not only complete filler / D & D fanfiction, it is also tedious, banal and completely skippable. It is a good example of D & D's incompetence when they don't have any material from the books to adapt and I expect to see a lot more of it going forward.

First and foremost, we have the UGLY romance. I'm sorry but it's just.. BAD. The writing is terrible and results in about half an hour of filler scenes throughout the season that I found so painful that I just skipped most of the time. And this was not the episode for a romance. B-But.. we need to give Sam something to do so why not fast forward the romance that occurs in AFFC. Except, next season Sam and Gilly will be stuck on the boat anyway. What else is there for them to do? Let's face it, they didn't fast forward or adapt anything. They just created filler.

Then you have the really bad Mole's town subplot. Even if you accept the mindboggling stupidity of trying to prevent someone being raped by packing them off to the whorehouse, this doesn't explain why Sam never brought Gilly back when he had at least five episodes to do so. I mean he could have easily done it while Jon went off to Craster's Keep. But no, he just whines all the time and adds several minutes of unnecessary filler.

So, let's come to this episode.

First you have Sam & Jon talking about sex ( incredibly poor dialogue ). Then if that's not enough he talks to Master Aemon about sex. (LOL what?) Then another massive filler segment with Gilly, and then he locks her in the room. Like what, how does that help. You could have her reload crossbows or something. There's even a precedent in the books - two whores from Mole's town that come over ( Zoe and Mully ).

And he's reading. What's he reading? Wildling torture methods. What a great way to boost morale before a battle. God forbid you have him read anything useful. For comparison, Tyrion was reading 'The Great Sieges of Westeros'. He didn't read 'How to Sacrifice to the Lord of Light 101'.

And then let's go to the actual battle.

So when Pyp died, I thought. Hey! He's been shit whole season, but he will stand up to the plate now.

Except what followed was an astounding display of incompetence.

He doesn't understand the point of a ranged weapon, is to hide behind a wall and shoot at things from RANGE.

Instead, he runs right out there, like an idiot. And not with a loaded crossbow either. He takes the bolt out, and then starts loading it, right in front of the enemy.

What the flying fuck? Just drop the bolt and use the crossbow as melee weapon. Or pull out your sword/dagger.

But apparently the crossbow is magical and somehow loads itself in 1 sec and kills the Thenn. Then he runs back behind the wall.

Gee, you couldn't just have stayed behind the wall and aimed at people from there?

I could go on and on, but I think I've made the point. Show Sam is appalling. Every time he shows up in a filler scene, I get the urge to strangle him just for wasting my time. And this is coming from a big fan of Book Sam.

[zaphodbrx]

The kid isn't powering the lift he's putting the system into motion. Notice when Sam goes up the kid only pushes it in a half circle before going back to his hiding space

Excuse me this isn't an electrical system that you just have to 'put in motion'. And besides, we also see the kid do it a few other times.

[Talleyrand]

Excuse me this isn't an electrical system that you just have to 'put in motion'. And besides, we also see the kid do it a few other times.

Clockwork systems and the like (even a simple system where pushing the lever releases weights would work) still work and yes we see him do it several other times. But do we see him pushing it in circles over and over again as you would need to do to get the lift up to the top, no. We do however see him push it a little bit then running away

[WTF's a Lommy]

I think it would have been better if Thorne would have given the wall to Jon instead of Slynt like the blacksmith did in the book, it would have been a more powerful moment and fit in better with the moment they had just had with Thorne telling Jon he was right. It also would have been a nice "Fuck You Slynt" moment.

[David Selig]

Ygritte's death scene really made me laugh. First the little kid appearing out of nowhere and shooting her in the back, then suddenly all the noise of the battle disappeared for a minute and everyone around just ignored Jon Snow and let him have a nice quiet moment to mourn right in the middle of the battle. Nobody tried to attack him and take advantage of it, hell, suddenly nobody could even be seen anywhere near so Jon could have his few minutes of grief. Hilarious.

[Tadco26]

Sometimes I feel like this entire forum has turned into D&D fanatics. Maybe it's the percolation of show-only viewers. Or it's just people who have made their internal peace with the show and just see it as different from the books.

Whatever the reason, it's clear that the show gets less and less criticism as time goes on, even though they make more and more deviations from the book and the quality is overall worse and has more and more filler. Let's be honest, practically no one outside these forums ( and nowadays just this thread ) even criticizes the show at all. Remember the days when D & D got flayed for making nonsense changes like 'Talisa' and you got endless threads about that? They are gone. Each episode now only gets a handful of threads/comments and most of them praise the episode anyway. I get the feeling that book readers are slowly giving up and stopping posting, because why bother at this point. D & D won't change anything.

Pretty much. Even though there are still lots of things that bother me, I have significantly reduced how much time I will spend debating it with people. For one, we have come to expect them to butcher things, so it's not really a surprise that they do it, just how much and what they will butcher. And while I still do get caught up in debates on some things, for the most part if after a day of debating you haven't changed the other person's mind, you never will.

I prefer a purist style, though I am also realistic in knowing that some things have to be changed for a TV budget. So casting cuts, battles being cut, conversations being condensed, these are all things that I can personally be OK with even if I would love it if they were avoided. It's the random changes that are most annoying to me. Messendei and Greyworm romance. Biter and Rorge dieing in spectacularly underwhelming fashion to Arya and the Hound, leaving no established characters for Brienne to encounter prior to Lady Stoneheart. I suspect next week Brienne and the Hound will fight though.

I liked alot of stuff about this episode, but I certainly have my nitpicks. I didn't really get why the wildlings started a massive forest fire on their flank. I know they wanted to signal the "biggest fire the north has ever seen" to let their raiders know they were coming, but beyond that signal what was the purpose? It seems given the numbers the wildlings have and the numbers the watch has that the uncontrollable forest fire raging behind them would be more threat than the Night's Watch.

Jon went to kill Mance, but didn't appear to bring a weapon. Tormund isn't with Mance to speak on Jon's behalf that he should be allowed to speak with Mance. Of course answering my own complaint and introducing a new one;Tormund's relationship isn't friendly with Jon anyway, and frankly Jon didn't develope any relationship of consequence with any wildling outside of Ygritte. If they are going to have non-POV scenes, reintroducing Mance prior to the attack might have been a good idea.

If you are going to have wildling climbers during the attack on the wall, you might want to climb a mile or so on to the left or right of the gate, where there would be minimal guards. I had to pause the show as the non-readers watching with me asked, "Why aren't they attacking this mammoth right below them that is obviously trying to break down the gate?", and all I could say is this specific scene didn't happen in the books so I don't know. Dramatic effect?

And while I'm fine with delaying Stannis til next episode, I'm worried that they won't have the budget to do it, and we will get another cut to aftermath battle.

[sj4iy]

Sometimes I feel like this entire forum has turned into D&D fanatics. Maybe it's the percolation of show-only viewers. Or it's just people who have made their internal peace with the show and just see it as different from the books.

Whatever the reason, it's clear that the show gets less and less criticism as time goes on, even though they make more and more deviations from the book and the quality is overall worse and has more and more filler. Let's be honest, practically no one outside these forums ( and nowadays just this thread ) even criticizes the show at all. Remember the days when D & D got flayed for making nonsense changes like 'Talisa' and you got endless threads about that? They are gone. Each episode now only gets a handful of threads/comments and most of them praise the episode anyway. I get the feeling that book readers are slowly giving up and stopping posting, because why bother at this point. D & D won't change anything.

Or maybe the show has gotten much better over the years because many of those 'changes and deviations' aren't nearly as dramatic as book purists make them out to be, and the rest of us can see how they serve the larger storyline without getting blindsided by our own biases.

I like the show. I like the books. I don't require the show to be a carbon copy of the books...in fact, I enjoy and appreciate the changes when they enhance the story and criticize the show based on its own merits- not on what I think should be in there from the books. I'm not a "D&D fanatic" or a "show apologist"...I hate those terms because I make no apologies for liking an excellent show and I don't give a damn who the show runners are.

Honestly, I see more negativity in these threads than praise, because people act like the show is blaspheming a sacred text...but there's never been any show or movie that stayed completely and utterly faithful to its source material. And deviating from the source material isn't necessarily a bad thing...especially in the case of ASoIaF, where there are SOOOO many expendable characters and plot lines. Many book readers agree that Martin often has too much superfluous material, and that it's not all necessary to the overarching story. Yes, I have things I like in the story; but no, I'm not devastated when I don't see them on screen. And I would be the first to admit that many of the things I like in the story don't necessarily translate well onscreen. And when a moment that I love from the books DOES come onscreen, I don't mind if some things have been changed. Example: I loved Noye in the books...he was awesome, but he's not in the show. When I saw Grenn taking his place in the tunnel, I was really glad that we still got that moment, although with a different character. I can see the point in Grenn taking Noye's place in this situation, and the sacrifice still came off well...probably better than it did in the books, if I'm honest.

Book readers ≠ people who don't like the show, basically.

[The ~ Red ~ Viper]

I think he's replacing Val because I don't see them burning Tormund in Mance's place. Tormund can be Jon's envoy to the Wildlings like he is in the book.

I hope so I would love to see more scenes with them 2 than have Jon talking with davos.

[zaphodbrx]

Clockwork systems and the like (even a simple system where pushing the lever releases weights would work) still work and yes we see him do it several other times. But do we see him pushing it in circles over and over again as you would need to do to get the lift up to the top, no. We do however see him push it a little bit then running away

I don't mean to be rude, but can you spare more than one moment of thought about it.

For getting a man 100 ft up, you have to do an equivalent amount of work. No two ways about it or handwaving it away with 'clockwork mechanisms' . The entire winch and pulley system trades force against speed ( and consequently time ). You can't get something for nothing. Basic conservation of energy. You can lift an 80 kg man with a much smaller force, but have to exert that force for a much longer period of time.

In fact, the winch system pulled by human is not only described in the novels , but we actually see it in one of the season 1 episodes. Except that time the winch was at the top of the wall instead of the bottom- but then I don't expect that level of continuity from the show.

[Lady Fevre Dream]

I hope so I would love to see more scenes with them 2 than have Jon talking with davos.

I have to admit, I'm stuck pondering where they are going with the Mance and Tormund equation. Part of me thinks that somehow Tormund will escape captivity and wind up in charge of the great remainder of the Wilding Host, but part of me thinks that Mance may just die, and somehow Tormund will take the Mance part.......off to Winterfell with his stories and maybe even a harp? Or, I suppose that Tormund may do the negotiating on a release such as Val did. I guess we'll know once we see who winds up in Mance's tent and if Rattleshirt turns up as a prisoner of Stannis?

It's kind of a mess, everything in the vicinity of The Wall. I agree with previous opinions I've read........there is a reason that GRRM did not show Tormund murdering regular folk left and right, same with Ygritte and keeping her actions down to one throat slitting.

[Mark Antony]

Or maybe the show has gotten much better over the years.

Season 1 is still easily my favorite :P

[gvewolf243]

While also killing all the Crows, burning Jon Snow for being a traitor's brother, raping the Wildling women and castrating and enslaving the Wildling men and forcing them to rebuild the Walls castles. All the while Stannis is sitting around in the King's Tower contemplating an alliance with Roose Bolton and drinking wine. No joke watch S2E01 again. Stannis drinks wine in the show.

Also burning children, making more shadow babies, alliance with Freys and etc.

[WildBlood]

My main nit pick (i agree with a few listed here as well) is that it really seems to me that HBO could not afford the luxury of wasting an entire episode on one battle. Sure it made for decent TV, but at t he expense of the story IMO. And then, next week, the finale, will be marred by constant rushing to fit in what, 5 plot lines? Tyrion/Shae/Tywin, Arya/Hound, Bran/Jojen/Meera, Sansa, The Wall, Meereen, Ramsay/Theon (maybe?)... They should have tried to split the difference between the two epsiodes.