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How would you rate episode 501?


Ran
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How would rate episode 501?  

603 members have voted

  1. 1. What's your rating from 1-10, with 10 being the highest/best

    • 1
      8
    • 2
      8
    • 3
      23
    • 4
      27
    • 5
      60
    • 6
      92
    • 7
      131
    • 8
      155
    • 9
      57
    • 10
      42


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He is the original Lancel actor.

http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/game_of_thrones_season_5_lancel_lannister_return_hair-2015-04

They originally approached Dominic West for Mance, but he turned it down, not having any knowledge of ASOIAF. To this day, when I read Mance, I see Mr. West's face.

Mance became king by defeating the some of the leaders of the Free Folk in battle. Put tv Mance and tv Tormund side by side, and it becomes puzzling as to how that would happen. I can't see tvMance taking on tvAlliser in last season the way tvTormund did, imo.

I seem to remember hearing something about James Purefoy too. He is much closer to how I picture Mance.

ETA: I completely agree with your point in the spoiler tag. That's part of why I didn't like Hinds in the role.

Edited by Nictarion
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You are mistaken. When Jon first meets Mance (and Tormund, the Thenn, Val, Dalla, etc), he thinks the Magnar is the KBtW. And then we get his physical description, which is totally unremarkable: middling height, slender, brown hair almost completely grey now.

Typo

Just read the description of him in ASOS, and you are correct. For some reason I had the mistaken belief that he was described as tall in the books.

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Thought it was awful, probably the worst of any of the seasons. They've completely butchered the books now. The TV versions of the characters are almost 2 dimensional and comic like. And with every passing change it's obvious that those characters aren't important to the overall story so that also ruins the books. Where they haven't followed the books we are now starting to see continuation screw ups too, e.g. the prophecy makes no sense at all thanks to the show going off-book in the first season.



GRRM will be happy rolling around in his money and basking in his new found fame I am sure but deep down I am sure he knows it was a colossal screw up allowing HBO to make this into series before he finished the last book.


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Thought it was awful, probably the worst of any of the seasons. They've completely butchered the books now. The TV versions of the characters are almost 2 dimensional and comic like. And with every passing change it's obvious that those characters aren't important to the overall story so that also ruins the books. Where they haven't followed the books we are now starting to see continuation screw ups too, e.g. the prophecy makes no sense at all thanks to the show going off-book in the first season.

GRRM will be happy rolling around in his money and basking in his new found fame I am sure but deep down I am sure he knows it was a colossal screw up allowing HBO to make this into series before he finished the last book.

You are really upset with them not sticking exactly to the books huh?

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I gave it a 5. It could possibly go up with a rewatch, but that's my initial reaction.

What I Liked

The acting, pretty much across the board. Even people like Dany and Mance, who I don't usually enjoy, were doing great this episode.

The Unsullied/Harpy scene. It was nice to get a peek into something that is only ever talked about in the books.

Varys and Tyrion. Loved the camera shots through the crate holes. Not wild about the Varys change, but those two work really well together. I do wonder if he'll be sticking with Tyrion for the duration or heading back to Westeros at some point. Tyrion throwing up and then immediately pouring more wine was awesome.

Jon training with Olly at Castle Black. Loved the banter between the two of them about the shield. Jon is really developing a commanding and confident presence, which is great.

Dany and the dragons. The dragons look awesome. Really enjoyed the lighting in this scene.

Jon shooting Mance with the arrow. Seeing as it looks as if it was actually Mance and not Rattleshirt, I think this was a good addition. Putting him out of misery before he starts screaming in front of all the wildings made sense, and having him do it while not even Lord Commander makes the act that much more defiant and powerful.

What I Didn't Like

The Maggy scene seemed rushed. I also wasn't a fan of the young Cersei. The omissions bothered me, as well.

Jaime and Cersei in the sept. The acting in this scene wasn't great, nor was the dialogue. This felt like a completely different pair of characters to me.

Mossador. He seems less like a character than a lazy way of explaining things about Mereen. I had completely forgotten that in the books he (or a character with the same name) is an Unsullied and Missandei's brother.

The whole Sansa/Littlefinger storyline. Dropping the Vale like a hot rock doesn't make any sense to me. Littlefinger has gone through all of this trouble in order to gain power there and now he's just leaving? And leaving Robin with Royce is funny, but it seems to make no sense, seeing as in the book this is exactly what Royce suggested and what LF was against. I also quite liked the relationship between Sansa and Sweetrobin in the books, it was a nice way of showing how she could competently control a situation.

Brienne and Pod. Usually I like their scenes, but Brienne's downer attitude seemed very much out of character.

Loras in general. I hate what they're doing with him on the show. He's just an excuse for some man on man action, which is a admittedly a nice change from some of the gratuitous female nudity, but it's still just as pointless. Also, why would Loras EVER want to go to Dorne? He's a Tyrell for crying out loud. They freaking HATE Dorne and the Martells. I also hate how calculating they have made Marge, even though I really like Natalie Dormer.

Lancel. It's nice having him back, but like Mossador, it feels as if he's more of a lazy way to bring in the whole sparrow storyline. The whole thing felt abrupt and unsubtle. It's also weird to me that he looks so much stronger than he did previously considering how wounded he was supposed to be.

The Yunkai mission. It was just laughably successful. They immediately agree to a council of elders that are both freeborn and former slaves. This makes no sense. They're asking Dany to reopen the fighting pits? Why not just do it themselves? How is it that Dany has so much sway over Yunkai when she can't even control things in Mereen, where her army is actually located? Also the scene change from the council to Dany in bed was really abrupt and disorienting.

Jon and Mance scene. Loved the acting, didn't love the dialogue. Mance's reasoning isn't really compelling to me.




I guess that sums it up. Mainly what worries me about this season and the future of the show in general is how many storylines have been cut and how many of the remaining ones have been significantly altered (and not usually for the better.)

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You are really upset with them not sticking exactly to the books huh?

I'm annoyed as a lot of the changes simply didn't have to be made. We've had needless characters inserted just so that the audience can be startled when they're killed (Roz), we've had great dialogue from the books completely cut from the show and needless scenes with needless dialogue inserted in its place. We've had TV characters personalities change from series to series simply because the show started off trying to have them like the book characters and then change them during the course of the series etc.

No doubt the show has been a huge commercial success but it pales into insignificance compared to the books (well, at least the first three books) and is now also going to ruin those books.

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Gave it a fairly generous 7. I enjoyed it generally and I understand the difficulties of a season opener.

A few points.

I'm not too bothered that it appeared to be the real Mance who was burned. Hinds is a good actor but the character isn't as interesting as he is in the books (simililarly to The Halfhand). Also, the glamouring stuff feels like a bit too much weird deception anyway.

Brienne constantly complaining about Pod is just annoying. Something needs to happen to make their dynamic more interesting. It felt like they went back in time in their arc development.

Is Illyrio even going to appear in his own manse?

Not sure what TV LF's game is!

Looking forward to Arya meeting The Kindly Man next week. And hopefully Dorne will spice things up a bit.

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There were some positives and negatives that served to put this as mid range of my favorites for openers. There were a few jarring scene changes that I had to rewind through a few times, but overall everything worked.



I think they are eliminating the whole "Rattleshirt/Mance" story line, given the final scene. It would be hard to rework it in, but maybe they have a substitute story that will be in its place.



LF/Sansa freaks me out, no way around it. If Lord Royce wasn't in on the ruse, he would have been freaked out too. Poor Robin stuck with Royce and his sword master.



Haven't watched the leaked episodes nor will I. Each week I muse on the previous episode and I enjoy that time.


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I gave it an eight.



Some of the highlights. Loras being gay. I would forget if they didn't remind us of this everytime he has a scene. For the first time in the series a male character told a female to put her clothes back on. The male character was a eunech but still an interesting development. Also for the first time the gratuitous male nudity was greater than the female. Its a change, I think there still not quite getting it but there trying and maybe by season 7 they'll figure things out.


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Thought it was awful, probably the worst of any of the seasons. They've completely butchered the books now. The TV versions of the characters are almost 2 dimensional and comic like. And with every passing change it's obvious that those characters aren't important to the overall story so that also ruins the books. Where they haven't followed the books we are now starting to see continuation screw ups too, e.g. the prophecy makes no sense at all thanks to the show going off-book in the first season.

GRRM will be happy rolling around in his money and basking in his new found fame I am sure but deep down I am sure he knows it was a colossal screw up allowing HBO to make this into series before he finished the last book.

lmao

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And a character cannot be all those things if he's played by an actor who is older than 30? 40?

I think Ciaran Hinds is a perfect casting for Mance Rayder. It is not his fault that writers did not give him a lute and incorporated it in the dialogue. It is also not his fault that the costume department didn't provide him with his his black cloak with three red silk thread and a helmet with raven wings. But, he does play a charismatic leader who managed unmanageable - to unite all the clans. I agree that whole aspects of Mance never made it to a single dialogue while his screen time had been remarkably short. Ciaran is Irish. I'm sure he could have handled a bit of song and humour in the script.

Edited by Modesty Lannister
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Why do you think Hinds was miscast? I always thought he was terrific as Mance. Why do you think not?

Agreed. Ciaran Hinds is a terrific actor and he showed that off in his scenes as Mance (his face alone after being told he'll burn to death is proof), but Mance needed to be more vivacious and more charismatic. Mance on the show felt too beaten down and kind of hard to buy as some super inspiring leader.

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They did it all wrong. In the show, he is some old dude sitting in a cave on a throne of roots. Imagine how awesome it would have been if he was made to look like he did in the book? It has been the casting and/or the execution of the minor cast members that have been rather disappointing.

I wouldn't say Bloodraven was miscast, rather the VFX, costume, and art departments got the look/vibe wrong.

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I'm a huge fan of Hinds work on Rome. He was brilliant. I just don't think he was right for Mance. Nothing about him says roguish bad boy musician. The writing was also party to blame, but I think they wrote show Mance to suit Hinds.

I won't miss him. He was great in this last episode, but its kind of too little too late for me.

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Straight off the bat? 5.



The show's lost a considerable portion of its magic with this episode. I can't imagine episode 2's ratings being very high after this rather duff start to the new season.



However, it's still GoT, so because of the virtual solidity of the world and its characters, and the high production values, there's still lots of elbow-room for good stuff to happen, and it's still watchable at the very least. B&W do have some leeway to make mistakes, so here's hoping the rest of the season improves.



But it would have to improve quite considerably from this rather poor start.



I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed. I've defended the show up till now in terms of them doing a good adaptation of the books, with understandable foreshortening and truncation, and the occasional addition of a made-up character to bridge p.o.v. gaps. I thought they'd done pretty well so far.



But with this episode, I'm starting to get the feeling there's too much made-up-shit in proportion to good-stuff-adapted-from-the-books, and after such a meh season start, I've lost confidence that B&W have a grasp of what they're actually doing. Even the dialogue isn't that hot (e.g. we could have had another "roadshow" with Tyrion and Varris, and that's no doubt what they intended, but it falls flat because the dialogue just isn't that witty).



Note to B&W: anything GRRM writes is bound to be a ton better than anything you two can write, so use his stuff whenever you can, don't just make stuff up because you've got a successful show and you think that makes you good writers. It's a successful show because the material its based on is pure gold. Forget that at your peril.

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8/10.



It wasn't the most awe inspiring season opener we've had, but it did a good job of setting the board for what's to come. Yes, there are more pronounced changes with this season but I can see why they've been made - I'm not having a hissy fit about them.



I loved the Varys and Tyrion scenes.



Ciarin Hinds - I love this actor. It's a shame to see him go, his scene was another episode highlight.



Littlefingers plans continue along nicely.



I can't warm to the whole Missandei/Grey worm plot, but there wasn't much of it this week, so that was fine.

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I haven't answered the poll yet. I wanted to take the time to watch it a few times to figure out how I would rate everything on a scene by scene basis. Going through metrics of comparison. I'd give it a solid 7.5, but I'm torn between rounding up and rounding down.



They've missed two fairly obvious things I feel would greatly improve the episode:



#1: Allocation of storylines. I think that Tyrion/Varys gets about 50% more time than it needs to get. Jokes are funny and all, but there is not that much plot substance in these areas in a season pressed for time, and you can add funny lines in elsewhere to make up for it. Tyrion and Varys have the 4th and 5th longest scenes in the episode, and it really doesn't merit that much time. Varys needs to get four points across in both scenes.



1. Illyrio and I were working to restore the Targaryens.


2. Every ruler in Westeros sucks.


3. You can help.


4. Come with me to Meereen.



That doesn't need to take up nearly 7 minutes of a 49 minute episode. Now, yes, Dinklage is the prime star, but it would improve the episode to cut that 7 minutes down to 3 and give the rest to King's Landing to let existing scenes breathe (Cersei/Kevan/Lancel) and enhance the narrative. Also doubling the screentime of Daenery's small council would have helped. There is a lot of information presented there in the span of 1 minute, which could make way more use out of another minute than one.



1. The Harpies haven't killed before.


2. The city is declining into chaos.


3. White Rat will be buried with honor in the temple of the graces.


4. Dany wants them to lash out to find them.


5. Dany enlists her assets to locate the Sons of the Harpy.



Also, Meereen is coming off as a surprisingly very strong arc. Enhance your strengths, correct your deficiencies where possible, minimize dead weight.



#2: Cersei/Jaime/Meryn/Qyburn/DeadTywin would have made a better scene following the death of Tywin. There might be logistical concerns to this, and maybe they had to strike that set at the end of S4 to make more room, but that would have been a way more powerful scene than Jaime and Cersei standing in a Sept. It would allow way more range of emotion, be more exciting, and dramatic in general to have Cersei waking up to Meryn telling her to come to the Tower of the Hand - or her waking up to the toll of bells with no one informing her. Also I can imagine an exchange between Cersei and Qyburn:



MERYN: What should we do with the girl?


CERSEI: That whore wasn't here! Dispose of her.


QYBURN: If I may, your Grace, I might have some use of her.


CERSEI: What use would you have with a dead whore?


QYBURN: Dead, yes, but-


*Qyburn smiles*


QYBURN: -still fresh.



It would be insanely creepy to know Qyburn was meddling with the corpse of a character we've known in ample scenes for four seasons. Furthermore, the dialogue between Jaime/Cersei doesn't really fit itself in the Sept Scene. Jaime's early lines feel like they should be Cersei's. Jaime never had an interest in Tywin's legacy. Maybe you can throw it out there that he's so hurt by Tywin's death that he starts thinking about trying to serve Tywin's memory since it's his fault in his mind - but meh.



It would have made more sense to have Cersei/Tommen enter the Sept, and have Cersei ask Jaime to leave. Jaime says he takes orders from the king, and then Tommen requests "Uncle Jaime" to leave, which shows Cersei shunning him by proxy. Then you can have Cersei give Tommen a lecture about everyone coming to take their power away from them, etc.



----



There are other things beyond these two points, but I think fixing those two would raise it from a 7.5 up to somewhere around the med-low 8's. Adjusting about five other sticking points I have would probably bump it up to a 9. I'm not sure you can pull off a 10 in a premiere episode IMO.



PS: I am glad I was able to contribute early to a possible understand of correlation between granting single storylines heavy screentime and ratings. Thank you for following up with that, Ran. It was interesting to hear that correlation exists, considering I hadn't contributed here back in those days - I didn't realize I could look them up. I might look into some correlations a bit more.


Edited by AdmiralKyrd
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