[Book Spoilers] A Lengthy Analysis II: Why Meereen in 5.05 Fell Short

[AdmiralKyrd]

I. Preface

A lot of people enjoyed my analysis last week on the Sand Snakes' Introduction, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on 5.05 with Meereen. Bear in mind, I really have loved the show thus far, and Season 5 is the first season I'm watching having read the books. So while I might be negative at times on it, I still enjoy it.

A lot of stuff in this episode was quite interesting with positive divergences that work. Valyria comes to mind, although I think some VFX semi-active volcanoes in the background spewing a bit of ash into the air would have helped visually tie into how Jorah and Tyrion spoke about the Doom, but that's another topic.

I’m here to talk about Meereen. Meereen has been my favorite arc this season, and I absolutely loved what they did with it through the first four episodes. To me, it had been the perfect translation of why certain changes to the books need to be made, making effecting changes, yet still preserving the same essence of the material. But in 5.05...

Ugh.

II. Going back to 5.04 – The Harpies versus the Unsullied.

The lead in to Meereen comes from the episode-ending fight of 5.04 where the Harpies attack the Unsullied. At its conclusion, Barristan and Grey Worm have uncertain fates.

A. The Unsullied's Proficiency

A lot of people last week took issue with the show’s depiction of the Unsullied, and how terrible they looked in 5.04. On this point, I’d have to agree – but ultimately it’s not that bad, and I'll explain why. So what’s going on here?

Defenders of the execution of this scene point out several things that I’d like to address:

1. "The Unsullied weren’t built to be street troops."

The Unsullied trained for years and years for one purpose – to fight as soldiers. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t turn into pumpkins just because they have to fight in a room rather than on an open battlefield. They’d still be able to hold their own quite well. Missandei also mentions in the third season that they are trained with the short sword, so they do know more combat than just forming a spear wall. (Although one should question why Grey Worm didn’t arm them with some short swords for street combat in Meereen. They’d be much better weapons than spears. I guess he gave them all away to Mossador and his fellow slaves in S4 and they didn’t want to give them back. …Greedy Mossador.)

2. "The Books point out the Unsullied aren’t much better than any other soldier – it’s their discipline that makes them great."

This passage is meant to articulate the Unsullied aren’t gods, not that they are more inferior soldiers in 1v1 combat. Despite their lack of testosterone, they’re generally better at fighting in 1v1 because of their training.

3. "The Harpies weren’t just thugs with knives, they were nobles who had been trained like noblemen in Westeros."

Maybe, maybe not. Some of those Harpies looked an awful lot like they weren’t wearing tokars. Either way, even if they are trained, they aren’t trained day and night for years like the Unsullied. The idea the Unsullied could lose outright to the Harpies would be like saying the San Francisco 49’ers would lose outright to a junior varsity high school football team from Wyoming. It ain’t happening.

The thing about this fight though is all of this really doesn’t matter that much. The idea and premise behind the scene itself is fine – it’s plausible that the Harpies could jump the Unsullied in some way and defeat them. Maybe the Harpies should have caught the Unsullied in a back alley where some Harpies up on rooftops could feather them with arrows they couldn’t defend against easily. Maybe the Harpies should have dropped a bag filled with some kind of agent from the ceiling in that room to drug the Unsullied before blocking the exits and making them fight their way out.

The execution of it was a bit off, but I take no issue with the idea behind the scene and its purpose in the story. It could have been done better, but w/e. It's a small goof that could have been easily rectified.

B. Barristan’s Demise

It was pretty clear from the trailer for the next episode that Barristan was a goner. I was curious to see how Barristan’s demise would influence Dany and hopefully it would bring out a lot of good scenes with her inner torment and struggles for ruling. In the books, we get to feel a lot of her internal thoughts and the girl inside. Emilia Clarke is also best with Dany when she’s playing the real Dany, not the Dany putting on the queen persona for the throne room. Emilia was absolutely perfect with Ian McElhinney in their balcony scene in 5.04 – she even cracked a joke about Hizdahr, which might have been Daenery’s first joke of the entire series.

I was excited that maybe we’d get a more reclusive Dany turning away from ruling for a few scenes who searched for answers and had close personal scenes with Missandei. Who knows, maybe even Quaithe would show up to help guide her. So Sunday rolled around, and I tuned in front of the old boob tube for 5.05 and my only reaction to Meereen was…

"Oh."

II. Daenery's Immediate Decision for Brutal Vengeance

Barristan is done for. Dany orders all the leaders of the Great Families brought to her and burns the head of a Great Family alive via dragon fire, along with having him ripped to pieces and eaten. And while it's somewhat plausible that Dany could have made a highly important decision on a whim out of anger and resentment, it comes on the death of Barristan, who spoke out very specifically and directly against exactly this sort of "leadership."

And while I don't think honoring his memory is something entirely on her mind at this moment (she wants justice), it doesn't fit like the kind of decision she would make with a tear in her eye, seeing Barristan Selmy lying in state. If Daario was lying dead on the table, then I could see her making this type of a decision. She would see his death as the result of her not taking his harsh advice. Thus, she would turn to his old advice to rectify the situation and burn the Great Masters.

But her response to Barristan's death was to take a page directly from the first chapter in Mad King's playbook, Fire, Your Subjects, and You, and add her own unique flavor. Not only does she burn the guy alive, she gives a psychotic speech about being there for her vicious children, not giving up on them, all while caressing Reek’s back. Errr I mean, Hizdahr's. I get confused.

See, this is not something Daenerys would ever do; this is something Ramsay would do.

Had Barristan been alive to witness the Meereenese events of this episode and Dany’s form of justice, he would be absolutely, terribly horrified. The show version of Barristan might have even thrown down his sword at Daenery's feet and said he wouldn't serve another mad Targaeryn. In the end, the heroic death of Barristan only turned Dany into a completely unjust, outright murderer. While she did execute all those Great Masters for the deaths of the slave children on the road of Meereen back in S4, one could say it was some kind of obscure, misguided justice. However in this situation, she has no idea whether or not that Great Master was guilty of anything or not, even by association. She admits just as much to the Masters in the scene, saying maybe they are innocent.

It was a brutal murder that would make even Euron Greyjoy moist with jealously.

Now, I'm not against this scene entirely if that is what they want to do for Dany, but if it is included, it should be worked into the narrative of the show linearly. Here, it doesn’t, because it arrives on the heels of Barristan giving Dany the story of the Mad King and the inspiring tale of how her brother was kind, beloved man. The order of events in Meereen is off. It isn't A->B->C->D, it feels more like A->C->B->D.

This scene should have taken place earlier in the season, or at the end of the season when Daenerys undergoes a possible character transformation towards embracing fire and blood after exhausting all possible options post-Daznak. Here it just doesn’t fit at all, and it also has repercussions if she does eventually make some kind of transformation because she’s already, uncharacteristically done it on a whim. And if we get a hallucination cameo of Viserys at the season’s end it will also undercut his apparition’s transformative importance.

I wonder what the earlier drafts look like, because structurally the story surrounding Barristan and Dany’s burning of Great Master Eaton has the undertones of a classic tragedy, but without the tragedy. It feels like this scene was originally part of something much different, but this was left in after several different scenes were revised and rearranged. I’m not entirely sure how it originally looked, and this might be entirely wrong, but it feels like this is what they were originally going to do with this section of Meereen this season:

Earlier in S5, Barristan advocates a fair trial for the Harpy captured by Daario (and, sorta, Grey Worm), but Barristan never tells her about the Mad King. In 5.04, Barristan and Grey Worm are out on patrol. Barristan and Grey Worm are discussing Dany's rule. Grey Worm asks about serving for her father, and kind of questions why he didn't seek her out after her father was killed. Barry goes on about the Mad King and how he didn't like serving that kind of a ruler - he burned people alive and laughed as they screamed, but he heard about Dany and she is different. She is a just, honorable Queen. Suddenly, the Harpies attack. Barristan is killed, Grey Worm is incapacitated.

In 5.05, Dany lashes out at the Great Masters with fire and blood. She burns a Great Master alive. Eventually Grey Worm comes to, and he tells Dany what Barristan said. She is horrified at this revelation and her own actions. It tears her up inside and realizes she must find a different way. From Barristan's death, Dany seeks a hidden, better way, and comes up with a solution to marry Hizdahr.

I much prefer Barristan giving the advice on the Mad King to Daenerys, but leaving this old bone behind from what appears to be an earlier skeleton doesn't quite fit, and comes off as a square peg in a circular hole.

III. Missandei and Grey Worm

I really liked their scene back in 5.01 together, and they did a lot with that scene that I enjoyed. They showed a new room with a bunch of Unsullied getting prepared for patrol. We got faces put to the men that were going out to serve and we saw they weren’t just masked drones. It was cool imagery – way better than just having the two of them talk in Dany’s throne room like many of their scenes in S4. It was also short – a bit over a minute in length. It wasn’t intrusive to the story, and seemed to slide right into the event of Dany sending the Unsullied out on patrol to find the Harpies.

It was pretty much perfect for what it was.

But this scene came off stale, lengthy, and like a cheese flavored cornball. The cool imagery we got was – a brick wall in a dimly lit room. There was also a table, but unfortunately the table didn’t make it into most of the shots. I guess there isn’t much more they could do with this particular scene, but it was almost double the length of their previous. I hope there is an eventual payoff to their story, but I’m not going to dwell on it.

IV. Daenerys seeks counsel from Missandei

Afterwards, Missandei and Dany talk. Missandei is asked for her counsel, but she says she is not qualified and basically does nothing except praises Dany and her own ability to see the good choice.

• I’d like to point out here there is an underlying writing trick that the show uses when the writers want to have two characters interact, but they don't know what to write for them. They usually go with one character either berating the other, or praising the other. Brienne and Pod earlier this season was filled extensively with this, Varys talking to Tyrion earlier as well. Just think of how many times Varys gave Tyrion a self-esteem boost this season - practically every scene. Almost all of Shae’s scenes in prior seasons were about her berating Tyrion. These are generally the weakest scenes in any episode because their own formulaic design generally caps them off at only being much more than filler. They don’t cover a heck of a lot of new ground, they just regurgitate what we already know, they don’t really develop the characters, and they don’t really drive the plot. They’re just there.
  

After this scene, Dany goes to Hizdahr and kind of tries to retcon herself for the episode. She says she was wrong and also makes a decision seemingly out of nowhere to wed Hizdahr.

• I have to wonder what the heads of the other families will be thinking after this proposal. If I was a Great Master right now, scheming as a “Son of the Harpy” or not, Dany would scare the absolute crap out of me as a ruler. I realize the show has to make it understood why people in Meereen don’t like Dany, but there is a big difference between Mossador’s execution and this one. Mossador’s was about a rock and a hard place, which is why that story and the show’s execution of it was so good. Depending on your perspective, you would see Dany as somewhat tyrannical if you were one of her freedmen, but you’d also understand her decision if you were part of her counsel. With regards to the execution in 5.05, regardless of your perspective, even if you’re on her counsel it’s just very "wtf."
  

Going back to the Missandei/Dany scene itself, the problem with it is how bland it is, and doesn’t fully service the narrative. Several scenes in this season suffer from the same problem - one scene doesn't always really drive the next in a logical progression, whereby that scene has to occur to create the next. You could have just as well cut the Missandei/Dany scene and gone right to Dany giving the proposal to Hizdahr. You wouldn’t have lost much. Missandei just tells Dany to follow her own counsel - something even Missandei says in the scene Dany has done quite often anyway.

This scene should have been written with more meat to give a direct cause and effect to explain why Dany makes her choice to wed Hizdahr? How, well, here’s one example of creating a show only version of events that serves the story.

Dany asks Missandei for her counsel. Missandei says she's not qualified to give advice, but Dany becalms her by saying she's lived here most of her life and knows Slaver's Bay. Missandei says she was a slave in Astapor, trained in Yunaki - their cultures are similar in many respects, but also very different from Meereen. Each city keeps to its own in a way. Dany is intrigued and asks to know more.

Missandei says her master, Kraznys, was originally from a noble family in Yunkai. He purchased her from the auction blocks to take to Astapor where she would serve as translator after he became a master of Unsullied, but when he arrived he was shunned as an outsider. He sold pitfighters for several years, but it wasn’t until he married the daughter of one of Astapor’s good families that he was able deemed worthy enough to sell Unsullied.

This would:

• Fluidly lead from one scene to the next
  
• Develop Missandei’s backstory further
  
• Foreshadow the auction block stuff for Tyrion/Jorah
  
• Make Missandei more helpful to Daenerys
  
• Show Daenerys has a talent for getting the most out of her counselors, not only by listening to their advice, but that she has a talent for extracting useful information from their experiences to make better decisions.
  

From this, Dany could get the idea to wed Hizdahr for peace. Dany still gets to come up with the idea on her own, but we are witness to the origin of the idea, and why she chose it. In the show, instead of having a logical narrative cause and effect, she just creates this idea from nowhere because Missandei says "…there was a better choice. One that only you could see." A character like Dany might see a choice like this from nowhere, but it's not good, engaging storytelling for a television show.

• As much as D&D talk about not having internal dialogue making it difficult or impossible to translate stuff from the books, several times this season they have created new material that acts better if it had internal dialogue than from a third person perspective due to character inconsistencies or displaced connections between scenes. The more inconsistent characters are written and the more disconnected scenes are, the more you need to have internal dialogue to explain character actions. Instead of having internal dialogue, we just get different actions that seemingly don't make a lot of sense (Jaime talking about Tywin's legacy in 5.01 after not caring about it at all in S4, Cersei ignoring Margaery in the same 5.01 Sept scene, Cersei curling up inside when she confronts Margaery in 5.03, Cersei sending Tommen out to see the High Sparrow in 5.04 when she adamantly has tried to protect her sons from public ridicule for 4 previous seasons, etc.)
  

V. Summary & A Missed Opportunity

So what we end up with for Daenery's arc this episode are two, 180 degree turns. One towards murdering a Great Master and torturing the others with imminent, horrific death, and the next, a marriage proposal out of the blue and acquiescence to one of their largest wishes of the Great Masters. Flip-flops in shows aren't satisfying, especially when it suddenly turns one of your top three characters into a sadistic, ruthless murderer from irrationality.

There are many different things the show could do, like what I was hopeful for last week.

• Give us more scenes with Daenerys being utterly conflicted.
  
• If she wants to take action, let Daario go forward with his plan to clean the rats out of the city. We could have a few scenes where we get to see him and his Second Sons going door to door and taking people from their homes. It would be a very Skahaz thing to do, and visually show Dany was making further mistakes as a ruler without being a vicious murderer.
  
• Give us some more personal Missandei scenes with more importance. Have Daenerys talk to Missandei about a house with a red door.
  
• 
  

  Have Quaithe show up and say the glass candles are burning. Sam is going to Oldtown anyway, might as well give us some glass candle love now.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Or better than anything, why not use the fact the show has a much better communication network than the books to bring Daenerys a special letter that couldn't happen in the books?

  
  
  

Daenerys is in her chambers looking out at the city. She has had a scene with Missandei earlier, and a brief chat with Daario about his progress in cleaning out some of the rats, otherwise, she's been reclusive of ruling. Missandei comes up to bring her a letter. Dany says to give it to Daario, but Missandei says she thinks she should read this one. Daenerys opens it up and reads it. It’s from someone who says she doesn’t know him, but he has heard a lot about her. He is sorry her marriage to the Khal had an unfortunate end, but hopes she remarry. He wishes her well and wishes he could be there. He ends by saying he loves her very much and she reads the name: Maester Aemon Targaryen.

She realizes she really isn’t truly alone in the world as much as she thought, and sees advice in Aemon’s hope that she remarry. She uses it as an idea to try and save her rule in Meereen.