How would you rate episode 503?

[Fez]

But by this logic, if the next episode had Dany, Tyrion, Stannis, Jon, Mel, Cersei, Jaime, Tommen, Marg, Brienne, Sansa, Pod and Arya all suddenly die from food poisoning, and the remainder of the episode was Pycelle naked in a brothel, you would still give it at least a 6.... :dunno:

I somehow doubt that a bottle episode exclusively featuring Pycelle's brothel adventures would have the same production values that the show has had up to this point. On the other hand, Julian Glover really is a fantastic actor, so it would be great to see him showcase that.

But yes, I truly don't consider the writing to be worth more than 30% of the show's value and I don't consider fidelity to the novels to be worth any of that 30%; only fidelity to the show's internal characterizations. Its nice when the show follows the novels, at the least on the big stuff, but I don't care at all when it doesn't.

[Modesty Lannister]

I somehow doubt that a bottle episode exclusively featuring Pycelle's brothel adventures would have the same production values that the show has had up to this point. On the other hand, Julian Glover really is a fantastic actor, so it would be great to see him showcase that.

But yes, I truly don't consider the writing to be worth more than 30% of the show's value and I don't consider fidelity to the novels to be worth any of that 30%; only fidelity to the show's internal characterizations. Its nice when the show follows the novels, at the least on the big stuff, but I don't care at all when it doesn't.

A show can be done without a glamorous production, but if actors have no words to say, there is no show. So, I would give writing 50%, production 10% (remember "I, Claudius" from 1980? From today's POV, the production is basic, but the show is awesome. Why? Due to great script and excellent acting), acting 20%, direction 20%. Also, remember that the quality of acting depends on the quality of a script. Any actor will tell you this. If an actor does not know who his character is supposed to be, no amount of talent can save him.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Modesty Lannister

[Modesty Lannister]

Yeah it is super weird that LF doesn't know anything about Ramsay. Makes no sense.

But my original point: Show Ramsay was acting. He was being polite and he was lying to LF so he would think he is a good match.

We can only assume that. It is not coming from the script, direction and acting. Ramsey looks totally sincere. And that is precisely why the show is bad. Poor script confuses directors and actors.

[Fez]

A show can be done without a glamorous production, but if actors have no words to say, there is no show. So, I would give writing 50%, production 10% (remember "I, Claudius" from 1980? From today's POV, the production is basic, but the show is awesome. Why? Due to great script and excellent acting), acting 20%, direction 20%. Also, remember that the quality of acting depends on the quality of a script. Any actor will tell you this. If an actor does not know who his character is supposed to be, no amount of talent can save him.

Firstly, your last point, I strong disagree. John Malkovich has said several times that he has no idea what his character was actually doing in ConAir, and yet he was still fantastic. Good and great acting can elevate writing far beyond what it otherwise is; and the original Star Wars trilogy is another perfect example of that.

Shows can be done without a glamorous production and be great, sure. All the outdoor shots that GoT has are a luxury that few other shows can afford; but its not just that sort of thing. Its the nuts and bolts stuff of costuming, set design, prop departments, lighting, sound design, etc. that pull shows together. All of that is important.

BBC dramas from the era before they spent money can be delightfully good, but they are never great. I, Claudius sure did have wonderful writing and acting (and Brian Blessed just doing his thing, which worked); it also took place in about five rooms and never captured the scope and grandeur of what was going on. So I'd probably give it an 8/10 (3/3 for acting, 3/3 for writing, and 2/4 for production values because I'm willing to grade on a scale for different eras of TV and at least the costumes were pretty good).

[Cas Stark]

Firstly, your last point, I strong disagree. John Malkovich has said several times that he has no idea what his character was actually doing in ConAir, and yet he was still fantastic. Good and great acting can elevate writing far beyond what it otherwise is; and the original Star Wars trilogy is another perfect example of that.

Shows can be done without a glamorous production and be great, sure. All the outdoor shots that GoT has are a luxury that few other shows can afford; but its not just that sort of thing. Its the nuts and bolts stuff of costuming, set design, prop departments, lighting, sound design, etc. that pull shows together. All of that is important.

BBC dramas from the era before they spent money can be delightfully good, but they are never great. I, Claudius sure did have wonderful writing and acting (and Brian Blessed just doing his thing, which worked); it also took place in about five rooms and never captured the scope and grandeur of what was going on. So I'd probably give it an 8/10 (3/3 for acting, 3/3 for writing, and 2/4 for production values because I'm willing to grade on a scale for different eras of TV and at least the costumes were pretty good).

So you give more points for production values than for acting and writing? Interesting. I'd score it the other way around, acting and writing are much more important to the success of any project than it's production values, there are a gazillion beautifully produced films with good actors that were terrible because of bad writing, but you have to look hard to find something that had great writing, great acting but was ruined by poor production values. In my opinion.

[Modesty Lannister]

Firstly, your last point, I strong disagree. John Malkovich has said several times that he has no idea what his character was actually doing in ConAir, and yet he was still fantastic. Good and great acting can elevate writing far beyond what it otherwise is; and the original Star Wars trilogy is another perfect example of that.

Shows can be done without a glamorous production and be great, sure. All the outdoor shots that GoT has are a luxury that few other shows can afford; but its not just that sort of thing. Its the nuts and bolts stuff of costuming, set design, prop departments, lighting, sound design, etc. that pull shows together. All of that is important.

BBC dramas from the era before they spent money can be delightfully good, but they are never great. I, Claudius sure did have wonderful writing and acting (and Brian Blessed just doing his thing, which worked); it also took place in about five rooms and never captured the scope and grandeur of what was going on. So I'd probably give it an 8/10 (3/3 for acting, 3/3 for writing, and 2/4 for production values because I'm willing to grade on a scale for different eras of TV and at least the costumes were pretty good).

John Malkovich saying this is your example? Lol. :laugh:

[Fez]

So you give more points for production values than for acting and writing? Interesting. I'd score it the other way around, acting and writing are much more important to the success of any project than it's production values, there are a gazillion beautifully produced films with good actors that were terrible because of bad writing, but you have to look hard to find something that had great writing, great acting but was ruined by poor production values. In my opinion.

Well, firstly there's a difference between good actors and good acting. There's a gazillion beautifully produced films with good actors that are because of bad writing AND bad acting. When they are beautifully produced with good acting and bad writing, you get something like Pirates of the Caribbean, which is perfectly fine entertainment. And when the acting and writing is bad, but the production values are great, there's still something worth seeing for spectacle usually.

Secondly, I think there's tons of examples of things with great writing and acting that are ruined by terrible production values. The first thing that springs to mind for me is Babylon 5; everyone says its great but the CGI and sets are so terrible that I can't watch more than 15 minutes.

John Malkovich saying this is your example? Lol. :laugh:

I just listened to the the How Did This Get Made about ConAir, so its on my mind. But there's plenty of other examples. Take Daniel Day Lewis in Nine; he was great as always, the writing was not.

[dannyk65]

Con Air?

Really?

[Davrum]

Yeah it is super weird that LF doesn't know anything about Ramsay. Makes no sense.

But my original point: Show Ramsay was acting. He was being polite and he was lying to LF so he would think he is a good match.

Show Ramsay was acting but so was LF. There's no way Ramsay's rep for bloodthirsty acts hasn't spread far and wide by now. Especially since Roose has made it clear several times that just because the flayed man is on their sigil, it's far from standard operating procedure for the "modern" House Bolton.

The fact that Ramsay leaves whole armies worth of skinless men in his wake would be far from secret. And someone as smart as LF knows someone who does that in public probably isn't the nicest guy in private either.

[StepStark]

A show can be done without a glamorous production, but if actors have no words to say, there is no show. So, I would give writing 50%, production 10% (remember "I, Claudius" from 1980? From today's POV, the production is basic, but the show is awesome. Why? Due to great script and excellent acting), acting 20%, direction 20%. Also, remember that the quality of acting depends on the quality of a script. Any actor will tell you this. If an actor does not know who his character is supposed to be, no amount of talent can save him.

I completely agree and just to add that because of your formula television became bigger and better then the movies. In the movies writing is probably on 10% and that is why many good writers now rather want to work for television and not in the movies (unless for money of course). In fact that boom of television is what made GOT possible because Martin would never sell the rights to movie companies.

[boojam]

Even if you hate absolutely everything else, the production values alone are impressive enough that no episode of the show should be rated below '4'. Then there's the acting, which is usually good for another 2-3 points, meaning that only 3 out of 10 points should really be about the writing; which is the primary issue that some people here have with the show. So even if you despise everything D&D have written, I don't think its defensible to rate the show below a '6' unless you legitimately dislike the acting as well, and then maybe a 4 or 5 could be given.

Yes I like that its the way I rate the episodes. In not that the production values are great its that they are extraordinary for a TV production. There is an attention to detail that's amazing. I give a point also for cinematography , HBO has always been good at this but it's been particularly strong all five seasons now. Even tho it is a parallel universe it's 'medieval' setting is the best I have seen for TV , maybe even in film too , at least for the scope. So I agree no lower than 6 right out of gate.

[PatrickStormborn]

I somehow doubt that a bottle episode exclusively featuring Pycelle's brothel adventures would have the same production values that the show has had up to this point. On the other hand, Julian Glover really is a fantastic actor, so it would be great to see him showcase that.

But yes, I truly don't consider the writing to be worth more than 30% of the show's value and I don't consider fidelity to the novels to be worth any of that 30%; only fidelity to the show's internal characterizations. Its nice when the show follows the novels, at the least on the big stuff, but I don't care at all when it doesn't.

Well obviously other people think differently...

For me, the writing is at least 50% of the show. If it wasn't, I'd go and watch terrible expensive action movies full of A-List celebs and have to rate them highly.

Yeah, the production values are amazing and improving every season. But I'd argue that in some places they're absolutely beginning to hurt the show. King's Landing, for example, looks just as warm as it has since season 2, despite the fact that winter is coming. Essentially, I feel like the show is sacrificing tone, mood and suspense in favour of pretty scenery.

[Jdawg Laurence]

Best episode of the season so far. Really, this is where I felt it started to get good again. 9/10

The wall scenes were fantastic. King's Landing was good, other than Tommen suddenly being older, but the rest of the scene was well done to show Margy's manipulation in action. Braavos was very interesting, and the rest was quite good as well.

[ladyprudence03]

The whole Sansa marrying Ramsey annoyed me terribly, but I thought the scenes with Arya were intriguing.

Furthermore, the High Sparrow is a great character. I'm glad they casted Jonathan Pryce for it. Love that guy!

[Øivind Snø]

I gave this episode an 8. A solid one at that, lurking towards a 9.

It really engaged me, which the previous two did not do to the same extent.

Though many here felt the execution scene at the wall was underwhelming, I felt it justified a whole lot, and I liked it. I got a flashback to the very first execution scene of the series from season 1, with Ned, and I felt like Kit really nailed it as far as the whole "he who passes the sentence should swing the sword"-vibe. Just from his facial expression and bodylanguage it told me his whole story from the books. "Fetch me a block" or not.

[Fez]

Con Air?

Really?

Sure. I didn't say it was a good movie, I said John Malkovich was good. Movie itself gets a 4 out of 10 (writing 0/3, acting 1/3, production values 3/4).

Well obviously other people think differently...

Obviously. But I maintain that not factoring how great the show looks into a rating ignores a lot about what the show is. The exact percentage can change, but people who are giving the show the 1s, 2s, 3s (and I argue, all the way up to 6, but that's my preference) are saying that nothing matters but the writing (and likely that the problem is that writing isn't like the books anymore).

[AdmiralKyrd]

So I've settled on giving this one an 8, my same rating for the last episode - it would be higher but the drags really hit it hard. While this episode had some amazing scenes, there was a lot of dead weight and some missed moments. I could go into a total wall of text but I'll keep it condensed as possible with just complaints. Everything else in the episode is great. And there really is a lot of great in this episode. Most scenes I'd give 9's and 10's, but there were also quite a few a 1, 2, 3's.


Tommen/Margaery stuff:

- Unnecessary characterization, whether Tommen is 4 or 14 - he's still not ruling. These show added scenes could be cut/condensed to have more interesting AFFC/ADWD material elsewhere. It's a blackhole in the narrative because it's removing high quality stuff for "meh" stuff that doesn't really need to have screentime.

- Messes up the "younger, more beautiful Queen" prophecy because Margaery actually is the queen who takes Tommen from Cersei and her power. Margaery's consummation of marriage with Tommen removes Cersei regency in the show and she clearly controls Tommen. I always thought the fallacy here in the books was Cersei guessed the wrong queen, whether the person who takes her power is Daenerys, Arianne, Sansa, Myrcella, etc.

- Messed up characterization of Cersei. Blackwater 2.09 Cersei is best Cersei, best Lena. Cutting the crazed Cersei for a cool, calm, sympathetic Cersei is unrewarding and missing opportunity for truly great scenes. It's why King's Landing in the later part of the episode is so much better than the Margaery stuff at the beginning. I wanted to see Cersei rage on Margaery and scare her like she did with Sansa in Blackwater. Instead Cersei goes to Margaery and she's... hurt. She's just hurt and crushed. Where is Best-Cersei? One minute of Cersei drunkenly, smilingly ripping on Margaery with the teeth of the regency would be more entertaining than 7 minutes of this arc.

Janos' execution

-The tone is off. Jon's already killed the boy in the show. Considering "Kill the Boy" is the title of 5.05, this line is going to be fairly meaningless since Jon had almost no real hesitation with doing what he couldn't do with Ygritte. It would have been better if Jon showed excessive hesitation with executing Janos, or gave him a week to prepare to leave and expected him to go. Janos' execution could then take place in 5.05 after the "Kill the Boy" lines when Janos refuses him yet again and insults him.

- It's too Hollywood-like with soldiers lining up outside forming a path for Jon, Jon slamming his drink down in the mess hall alone like it "ain't no thang" - just another day at the office. There's no subtlety or torment for Jon in this scene where he's conflicted in his heart about what to do.

- The Jon/Olly/Davos/Stannis scene could have butted right up against this one no problem. The Wall didn't need to be segmented into two sections in this episode with how it was written and shot. It's messed up execution, literally and figuratively.

Jon/Davos

- Scene to give Davos screentime. When they don't have anything to write, D&D tend to write scenes where one person just gives uplifting words or advice to the other. There might be some future payoff from this scene, but we'll see. Maybe it encourages Jon to tell Davos he needs to sail to White Harbor (highly, highly doubtful) and even so it wouldn't need this scene to happen. There's just not much for Davos to do. This goes back to my earlier comments about how Tommen/Margaery sucks up too much time as a blackhole. If Reek only has three scenes so far of a few minutes with no dialogue, then Margaery doesn't have to have her plot expanded. Cutting this stuff would allow 10 minutes to do have Davos sail off to White Harbor and they could do Wyman Manderly in 5 minutes apiece between two episodes.

Varys/Tyrion

- Another box scene where old ground is revisted again.

Littlefinger/Roose/Ramsay

- LF'ers reason to Roose for allying with him - "I'm a gambling man" is pretty poor. It's overall an interesting scene. It's not fair to judge it until we actually understand Littlefinger's real plan. Hopefully there is a real plan here

Arya/Needle

- Arya's connection with needle isn't made clear within the episode. There was also no "previously on" reminder that Jon gave it to her. Good scenes, but poor setups in this regard. It would only take a line or two of Arya telling the Waif or the Kindly Man what the sword means to her when the two confront her with "The Game of Faces." Jaqen could then scold her for hanging onto her past, and that the sword doesn't mean anything to "no one."

Edited May 1, 2015 by AdmiralKyrd

[dannyk65]

Sure. I didn't say it was a good movie, I said John Malkovich was good. Movie itself gets a 4 out of 10 (writing 0/3, acting 1/3, production values 3/4).

Obviously. But I maintain that not factoring how great the show looks into a rating ignores a lot about what the show is. The exact percentage can change, but people who are giving the show the 1s, 2s, 3s (and I argue, all the way up to 6, but that's my preference) are saying that nothing matters but the writing (and likely that the problem is that writing isn't like the books anymore).

Fair Enough....and Malkovich is definitely a stallion...

I think ep3 was far better than the previous 2, and gave it a 5. I won't ever fault anybody else's rating system, but IMO defaulting to a baseline of 6 without any actual critique of the episode isn't really a 10 point scale at all. I've seen a bunch of ratings here with plenty of complaints/criticism that still give it 7-9. To me, those are excellent scores and 8-9 especially should represent a profoundly good episode since the bar for GoT was set really, really high from the outset. The first couple seasons were extremely well done so it's tough to watch this season's episodes (which are lacking pretty badly in attention to detail) and rate them as 'stellar'.

But your replies are much appreciated and, to me, it's really interesting to discuss and get peoples' takes on it.

[Hour of the Wolf]

This has got to be the first scene where I liked Brienne. She is supposed to be as humble as she was there.

High Sparrow is going to be great. Not sure of Cersei's reason to like him so quickly though.

I kind of like the new Sansa. She is obviously going to be Manderly I'm not sure about the pie though.

First time I enjoyed a Tyrion scene this season. I wonder how it will play out from here.

The Wall got a bit better after they F'd up the election. I think it weakens Jon's resolve to make up his mind after he is voted LC. Having Davos and Jon conversations are a little bit of fan fic I actually want to hear.

9/10 from me, it has been up and down so far this season.

[Ran]

People who argue that Littlefinger is "pretending" he knows nothing about Ramsay, my question is... why? Why would he pretend to be clueless to Ramsay? Why does he even need to remark on it at all? What purpose does it serve him?

None. At all. He could tell Ramsay, "Quit the act, kid. I know you're a brute. I don't care, I want the alliance, doesn't matter to me if you're a monster or not" and they would be left in the exact same place as they are presently: allied, with Sansa set to marry Ramsay.

The only reason this notion that he's lying has come about is that it would be for the benefit of audience members who want to believe that Benioff and Weiss are not perfectly capable of making Littlefinger an idiot when it suits them (see S2, EP1), so far as I can tell, or to bend the plot out of shape to get it where they want it. I mean, think about it: you take it as obvious that of course a guy who's flayed dozens of men at Moat Cailin, and flayed and murdered more up and down the North, would be well-known... well, wouldn't Ramsay know this? Wouldn't he have cause to think Littlefinger is blatantly lying to him? Wouldn't that make him question why Littlefinger is pretending to not know an "obvious" fact? In fact, wouldn't his alleged notoriety preclude his "I'm sweet and nice" act with Littlefinger?

Makes no sense. The reason Ramsay is acting the way he is, and the reason Littlefinger doesn't know anything about him, are the same: because in the world of HBO's GAME OF THRONES, Ramsay's actions are unknown. Littlefinger hasn't heard of them because all the witnesses are dead, are refusing to speak -- yes, even that army of men who saw what he did at Moat Cailin, the people of Castle Cerwyn, the servants at Winterfell, all somehow keeping their mouths shut -- or Littlefinger is failing to do his due diligence and people are willing to speak but he's not bothered to look at them.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Ran