[Poll] How would you rate episode 509?

[Lockdown]

*Drogon/Fighting Pits: My favourite part of the episode here. Loved watching the Sons of the Harpy getting roasted. What exactly is it about the CGI that people don't like? I genuinely want to know.

Her flying on Drogon's back.

[AlpenglowMemories]

I settled on a 6. Possibly the weakest episode 9 of the show so far.

Dorne is almost offensive in how bad it is. Everything from the acting, the direction, the writing, the characters, the action scenes. It's been progressively worse with each passing appearance. Bronn/Tyene's last interaction made me want to punch the screen it was so cheesy.

Ramsay's attack on the camp - what was that? A 30 second sequence of miscellaneous extras running around and tents somehow just bursting into flames in a CG wideshot? And this all happened because Ramsay knows the geography?

Arya was...fine, I guess? Nothing too interesting there. It was cool that Mace had some more screentime. Not sure what the purpose of making Trant such a pervert was. He murdered Syrio, abused Sansa, is a general jerk. I think that's motivation enough. Or it would be is B&W credited their audience with any kind of intelligence.

Shireen burning...I can see Stannis doing it. I just don't think it worked particularly well. It seemed underwhelming to me, as if it was mostly thrown in there. Undeserved, as someone said, is a good word.

Jon's List...meh. Why are they on the North of the Wall? For false drama, of course! Otherwise the scene was just sort of there...not doing much. Could have just taken them along the South side.

Nutter's direction is mostly just competent. Granted, he shot the fight choreography in Daznak's better than most of the other action this season, but holy smokes was it a disappointment. The random Sons of the Harpy attack, Hizdhar's death just randomly thrown in and forgotten about, Dany somehow feeling for Jorah again. And Drogon; they managed to make a dragon lame. That's talent. He flies in, burns a few guys, gets hit by a few spears. I don't know. It lacked spectacle for me. It lacked emotion. Dany riding him didn't feel like a huge character moment, it just felt like something that happened. And the shots of her flying looked really mediocre.

:dunno:

[abacabb]

I thought the CGI was quite good for being an HBO show. Throughout the episode there was plenty of raw emotion, intensity and animosity. It had a very dark feel to it and everything that is going on is going on without any certainty of what is going to happen next in regards to the overall state of this world everyone is living in.. or dying in.

At this point in the show though the whole story is a mess.. who are we rooting for? What do we hope for? What do we want to see happen? How does this story end with only 2 seasons left?

When this show ends what do I hope for to happen?

In short, WTF are we watching for lol Im so lost now.

[Baron Bazunor the Twisted]

7. Good followup to Hardhome, but the Drogon scene was underwhelming.

[jacksonbrowne]

I thought the CGI was quite good for being an HBO show. Throughout the episode there was plenty of raw emotion, intensity and animosity. It had a very dark feel to it and everything that is going on is going on without any certainty of what is going to happen next in regards to the overall state of this world everyone is living in.. or dying in.

At this point in the show though the whole story is a mess.. who are we rooting for? What do we hope for? What do we want to see happen? How does this story end with only 2 seasons left?

When this show ends what do I hope for to happen?

In short, WTF are we watching for lol Im so lost now.

Why is it a bad thing that the show isn't spoonfeeding you the good guys in white shirts and bad guys in black hats? Isn't that the whole point of GRRM's storytelling?

I find it brilliant that with one scene they made me hate Stannis more than Ramsay. If that is not great writing and storytelling (kudos GRRM for the idea) then I don't know what is. Right now I am trying to figure out what death for Melisandre would be painful enough for me.

Edited June 8, 2015 by jacksonbrowne

[Nihlus]

Ramsay's commando raid alone gets it a 1/10 from me. So fucking stupid.

Stannis's character assassination, Jon landing on the wrong side of the Wall for no reason, Doran being an idiot, the pit scene being laughable and robbed of any context and meaning, and the whole Dorne story being completely pointless are just icing on the cake.

Edited June 8, 2015 by Nihlus

[Casso, King of the Seals]

What do you mean the writing needs improvement?? Wasn't the Shireen burning scene written before it was shot? Wasn't every scene there written at some point?

I meant that in my opinion the show has gotten to a point where dialogues could be better, characters consistent and some story arcs more logical and complex (e.g. Dorne). When I compare the quality of writing from season 1 and this season, I see a considerable decrease in quality. It is not like people aren't intelligent enough to understand complex story development and character motivations or even remember a few more characters (I am talking about cutting storylines). The show, at this point, seems oversimplified to me.

I realise that everything is written before being shot and I wasn't talking about Shireen's scene, that one was perfect and a highlight of the episode in my opinion. I am sorry if I wasn't clear enough/caused confusion. :)

[Gaz0680]

Show Stannis was given a total character assassination this episode. It was dreadful.

Just a few episodes ago we had Stannis telling Shireen how everyone told him she was going to die from the greyscale but he told them all to go to hell and called in every apocethary, every maester, essentially every resource he could muster to save his daughter's life. This was a man who loved his daughter fiercely, even though he didn't show it.

The Stannis of episode 9 was a religious zealot convinced by the red woman's promise that sacrificing his daughter is necessary to achieve his destiny. There was no build up or gradual proof being even shown to Stannis that if he didn't sacrifice his daughter he would lose. We are expected to believe that Stannis Baratheon simply took the words of Melissandre at face value and willingly set his daughter to the flame. It is just so unrealistic that his character would do a total 180 like this without anything at all shown in the show that could have caused him to do this.

Stannis will be hated now and most viewers will see him as as big a monster as Ramsay/Roose, if not moreso.

That was fucked.

[The Killer Snark]

I gave it a 9, though I partly have my tongue in cheek there. This episode had a few great moments, but did not cohere as well as previous episodes in the season. And stretches of it were downright bad and aesthetically disastrous. I gave it a point over the 8 it probably deserves on the basis it was compulsively entertaining, in much the same way that the best episodes of Spartacus were. But I do have an ironclad stomach for high kitsch. The Stannis scenes I don't really have a problem with; I got spoilered beforehand, but I guessed that this was coming and resigned myself to it happening; at least they were fairly well handled. Shireen's makeup job looked ridiculous, though, and was incredibly distracting. The Dornish and Wall scenes were watchable without being anything special. The Arya scenes were really good, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Dany stuff, but in the latter case for slightly different reasons than was intended by the people behind them. Emilia Clarke through this season has been a fairly rotten actress, but in this episode she hits new heights of woodenness. The Harpy revolt in the fighting pit was hilariously mishandled. You've got to love the terrible acting of the extras being massacred and burned, and the way the Harpy's Men all stand around doing nothing or let themselves be killed offhand while obviously waiting for cues at strategic points in the action, to allow Drogon to appear and allow the main characters to survive long enough for Dany to get away on her dragon. That hilariously Disneyesque scene where Dany flies away against an obvious green screen background was surely lifted directly from a How to Tame Your Dragon film. And how about Jorah coming into hand to hand contact with Dany without any risk of her catching greyscale? The last 10 minutes of this episode were so bad they were hypnotically good. So for reasons of pure entertainment I'm giving this a mark more than in relation to other episodes it actually deserves.

[Gaz0680]

Just watching season 1 again this week, the writing in the show has definitely deteriorated. Season 5, in the slow moments, has just felt completely pointless and aimless.

Season 1 and even season 2, the slow moments were far more interesting and moved the plot along better than seasons 4 and 5.

The consistency of the storytelling has declined dramatically.

I hope next season they focus on consistent, believable, intriguing storytelling, rather than most of the episodes being really slow and mostly aimless, then a few *shock* moments in the final episodes. It's terrible.

Seasons 1-3 are so vastly superior to season 5 it isn't funny.

[DireWolfSpirit]

10/10 very entertaining and packed with excitement.

I thought last week was great but this was even better for me.

I know it's differed from the books so i'm not baseing my rating on the changes. I consider the

show now to be its own stand alone entity that I can enjoy for very different aesthetics

and images.

-Wun-wun (the wildling giant) is a joy just to see walking next to everyone else.

-Dany riding Drogon.

-Missandei's beauty, i'm certain Nathalie Emmanuel will be a film fixture for years.

-Bravos has an amazing ambience, such a vibrant setting. I

found myself thinking of tasteing those clams lol.

-For the first time I was able to appreciate Doran, he was much more interesting when he "laid down the law", so to speak.

There was so much happening that this episode fealt almost like 2 shows. Loved it.

[jacksonbrowne]

I meant that in my opinion the show has gotten to a point where dialogues could be better, characters consistent and some story arcs more logical and complex (e.g. Dorne). When I compare the quality of writing from season 1 and this season, I see a considerable decrease in quality. It is not like people aren't intelligent enough to understand complex story development and character motivations or even remember a few more characters (I am talking about cutting storylines). The show, at this point, seems oversimplified to me.

I realise that everything is written before being shot and I wasn't talking about Shireen's scene, that one was perfect and a highlight of the episode in my opinion. I am sorry if I wasn't clear enough/caused confusion. :)

My beef with the constant complaints about the writing is that they are usually just a paraphrase of "it's not in the books so it sucks". Cutting storylines like Gendry rowing? They have not that much of screentime realestate to play with so a pointless scene where Gendry goes somewhere to become someone of no significance just falls to the wayside. There are important bits to show.

I started to understand just why they had to send Jaime and Bronn to Dorne. Without them nobody would give a flying fuck what happens to anybody in Dorne. Not a flying fuck, we are to far into the show to introduce such an important player to the game screentime realestate wise and have it have nothing to do with the rest of the show. So the error for Dorne is mostly... Dorne and it's storyline existing at all. That's not "bad writing", the problem is rooted much deeper in the source material.

Everything can be seen as illogical or out of character if you want to see it out of character. And the dialogue has been brilliant throughout the show, be it chickens or fewer (to think I liked the guy back there) or stripping away the fineries. It just mostly bugs people because there are not enough lines lifted from the books.

[abacabb]

Seasons 1-3 are so vastly superior to season 5 it isn't funny.

These past few days I've had too much time on my hands so I started watching GOT from the beginning again and once I got to Season 4 I realized that Season 3 was this shows peak.

I don't know if Shireens sacrifice will payoff or not but I like the whole "Lord of light" thing they have and I would only be disappointed if her sacrifice was in vein.

Somehow I believe that burning people in the story is going to someday lead to a reveal of another Targaryen but IDK I haven't read the books.

The show isn't as gripping as it once was but it's still good enough to keep me tuned in every Sunday to see what happens. Hit or miss, each episode is still better than everything else on TV at the moment.

[jacksonbrowne]

These past few days I've had too much time on my hands so I started watching GOT from the beginning again and once I got to Season 4 I realized that Season 3 was this shows peak.

I don't know if Shireens sacrifice will payoff or not but I like the whole "Lord of light" thing they have and I would only be disappointed if her sacrifice was in vein.

Somehow I believe that burning people in the story is going to someday lead to a reveal of another Targaryen but IDK I haven't read the books.

The show isn't as gripping as it once was but it's still good enough to keep me tuned in every Sunday to see what happens. Hit or miss, each episode is still better than everything else on TV at the moment.

Shireen's sacrifice has already paid off. It stripped the fineries off Stannis. It showed us that even if Stannis could win there is nobody alive watching the show wanting him to win now. They probably would prefer sending him to meat grinder right about now.

[Rise Above]

I gave it a 9, though I partly have my tongue in cheek there. This episode had a few great moments, but did not cohere as well as previous episodes in the season. And stretches of it were downright bad and aesthetically disastrous. I gave it a point over the 8 it probably deserves on the basis it was compulsively entertaining, in much the same way that the best episodes of Spartacus were. But I do have an ironclad stomach for high kitsch. The Stannis scenes I don't really have a problem with; I got spoilered beforehand, but I guessed that this was coming and resigned myself to it happening; at least they were fairly well handled. Shireen's makeup job looked ridiculous, though, and was incredibly distracting. The Dornish and Wall scenes were watchable without being anything special. The Arya scenes were really good, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Dany stuff, but in the latter case for slightly different reasons than was intended by the people behind them. Emilia Clarke through this season has been a fairly rotten actress, but in this episode she hits new heights of woodenness. The Harpy revolt in the fighting pit was hilariously mishandled. You've got to love the terrible acting of the extras being massacred and burned, and the way the Harpy's Men all stand around doing nothing or let themselves be killed offhand while obviously waiting for cues at strategic points in the action, to allow Drogon to appear and allow the main characters to survive long enough for Dany to get away on her dragon. That hilariously Disneyesque scene where Dany flies away against an obvious green screen background was surely lifted directly from a How to Tame Your Dragon film. And how about Jorah coming into hand to hand contact with Dany without any risk of her catching greyscale? The last 10 minutes of this episode were so bad they were hypnotically good. So for reasons of pure entertainment I'm giving this a mark more than in relation to other episodes it actually deserves.

:lol:

Dany's side of the story has mostly been Xena levels of cheesy since season 2. Entertaining but cheesy nonetheless.

[JonSnowed]

Never going to live up to Hardholme but overall a decent episode. I found the Shireen death incredibly hard to watch and the Daznak pit ending a little cheesy (why are they all just stood around watching? Also Hizdar dying, could Dario be leading the Sons of Harpy or is someone else behind it?

[abacabb]

The way I look at it is the poor girl had a miserable life. Always alone. She said she wanted to help her father.. be careful what you wish for.. although I wouldn't bet on Stannis becoming king I do hope for it to happen. He's just not strong enough though.. Lord of light prophecy or not..

[Stonelands]

Her flying on Drogon's back.

I thought the camera tracking there/the way it moved upwards felt a little odd but not unforgivably so. Watching the Sons get roasted was so satisfying as well.

[Casso, King of the Seals]

My beef with the constant complaints about the writing is that they are usually just a paraphrase of "it's not in the books so it sucks". Cutting storylines like Gendry rowing? They have not that much of screentime realestate to play with so a pointless scene where Gendry goes somewhere to become someone of no significance just falls to the wayside. There are important bits to show.

I started to understand just why they had to send Jaime and Bronn to Dorne. Without them nobody would give a flying fuck what happens to anybody in Dorne. Not a flying fuck, we are to far into the show to introduce such an important player to the game screentime realestate wise and have it have nothing to do with the rest of the show. So the error for Dorne is mostly... Dorne and it's storyline existing at all. That's not "bad writing", the problem is rooted much deeper in the source material.

Everything can be seen as illogical or out of character if you want to see it out of character. And the dialogue has been brilliant throughout the show, be it chickens or fewer (to think I liked the guy back there) or stripping away the fineries. It just mostly bugs people because there are not enough lines lifted from the books.

I didn't mean Gendry, I meant relevant storylines such as Dorne, Iron Islands, Griff and Young Griff, a more complex Meereen, and this could easily be solved by cutting countless pointless scenes in this season (Grey Worm and Missandei; Olly; Sand Snakes). I do not aim to look for the bad things in the show, nor do I expect a 100% adaptation of the books, but there is no doubt the show has had a drop in quality compared to season 1's almost cinematic quality. What made the show so popular - complexity and heavy characters' moments - is so sparse now. I understand that there are much more people watching the show now, but is it a reason to drop the quality? Truly, can Loras be more than a generic gay knight? (I hope you get my point.) This is what I meant when I mentioned the quality of writing.

Edited June 8, 2015 by RadoLukacs

[Cayrouse]

And now the books are ended.

We will never see their like on screen.