[Spoilers] EP601

[RadSam]

7 hours ago, dbunting said:

I can't believe so many people get butt hurt over characters dying. OMG Areo is dead, killed by a girl no less!!! Funny, last time I read the books the Sand Snakes were fearsome and known killers. So a guard unexpectedly got killed by one, big deal.

This is the television adaptation, in this adaptation Areo was never built up to be anything special and he died exactly like that, nothing special, killed by the people we have been shown are special at killing.

If you want to have expansive details on every person, every place, every piece of food, read the books. You cannot expect to get that kind of depth or detail in a tv series from 1000 page books, just can't do it. It has taken GRRM years and years just to write one book, in tv you don't have that luxury.

Thank you 

Once I started seeing the books and show as two separate things, life became a lot easier 

[Marada78]

They are becoming separate not only in media or details but in the main storyline also. Soon they will be completely different stories considering that they are probably already scripting season 7 and TWOW is nowhere near to publication. 

And PROBABLY the show finale will influence GRRM when writing the last book.

That is IF the last book will ever come into light. 

[RadSam]

4 hours ago, Marada78 said:

They are becoming separate not only in media or details but in the main storyline also. Soon they will be completely different stories considering that they are probably already scripting season 7 and TWOW is nowhere near to publication. 

And PROBABLY the show finale will influence GRRM when writing the last book.

That is IF the last book will ever come into light. 

D&D know the endgame. I don't mind that they're getting there differently. It means less spoilers when the books come out.

[dbunting]

14 hours ago, DarkSister1001 said:

Not "butt hurt", disappointed.  I would say him putting his weapon at Jaime's throat and saying "it would have been a great contest if Jaime was still whole" sets Areo up as being an excellent fighter.  And isn't this the place to air those likes and dislikes? 

Well plenty of people think they are great fighters, until you fight them so no, what he did was just be cocky. Connor McGregor thought Nate Diaz would be an easy fight, until he got his ass kicked. 

And yes it is a place to air issues but damn, realistic expectations should be used and understand that not everyone will make it. I have seen people ranting before because Walder Freys court jester wasn't in the show, and I mean ranting and raving. 

[Ludo Kressh]

On 4/26/2016 at 10:32 PM, Dracarys Snow said:

Dorne. Dorne, Dorne, Dorne, Dorne, Dorne. 

Completely nonsensical. I can't even put together words to explain how I feel about it. 

Regarding the blood stain. At first, I thought that there was some pattern to be seen, but I honeslty think that Davos just wanted to assess the damage, cause, there was quite a lot of blood there. I couldn't really make out anything except that, it almost looks like ashes (the really dark stains, but it could just be dirty and wishful thinking on my part) 

Also, I feel like Ghost knows something. He's watching over Jon, not in the "my owner is dead and I'm mourning him" kinda way, but like, protecting him. A bit like when your dog sleeps next to you when your sick. Again, it may be wishful thinking on my part.

Well, I get that Ghost is protecting him but he definitely looked like he was sad(nudging his hand and then whimpering a little and lying down next to his body). And Ghost does know something, he smells that those around him are friends and could probably smell or sense that those pounding on the door killed Jon(if their scents lingered on Jon's body).

And people can make patterns out of almost any random thing, I can see where they say it's this or that but it's basically an outline of Jon's torso in blood and perhaps Davos was shocked by how much blood there was.

[Dizzy Walker]

IMHO, when character Davos was looking at the blood,  it was more of taking a moment to get a grip on how Jon's death changed the circumstances of the Watch, the people around him, and what it means for himself and watch was going to happen next. Davos didn't miss a beat through the rest of the scene, he kept his head through it all, the mutton comment showed that. But he needed that moment to take it in, and go from there.

      But I think D&D put it in just to mess with us knowing people would ponder on it, just like that image in the clouds at Hardhome had people thinking an ice dragon was coming....still could be..that cloud was pretty convincing...

Did anyone catch when Davos called himself a "learned man",  I took this as a reminder of Shireen, he would not be able to call himself a "learned man" if she had not taught him to read...or did I misunderstand what he was saying?

Edited April 27, 2016 by Dizzy Walker
clarification

[Fisch]

17 hours ago, dbunting said:

I can't believe so many people get butt hurt over characters dying. OMG Areo is dead, killed by a girl no less!!! Funny, last time I read the books the Sand Snakes were fearsome and known killers. So a guard unexpectedly got killed by one, big deal.

This is the television adaptation, in this adaptation Areo was never built up to be anything special and he died exactly like that, nothing special, killed by the people we have been shown are special at killing.

If you want to have expansive details on every person, every place, every piece of food, read the books. You cannot expect to get that kind of depth or detail in a tv series from 1000 page books, just can't do it. It has taken GRRM years and years just to write one book, in tv you don't have that luxury.

The issue is not characters dying in the show that didn't die in the books. The show handled the death of Pyp and Grenn, and of Robb's wife, and others, extremely well IMO. And I frankly could've done without Dorne, or at least without most of it, in AFfC.

The issue is that the Dornish plot in the show is poorly written, something even many non-book readers felt after last season. The Sand Snakes' revenge plot is nonsensical given the man they're trying to avenge, the Snakes themselves are overly sexualized and gimmicky (with terrible dialogue to boot), the timeline of their story (and where characters are geographically at certain points in that timeline) is sloppy even if this plot were self-contained and clashes badly with the timeline of all the other plots in the show, the Lord Paramount of the most independent of the Seven Kingdoms is rendered an ignorant fool with little resemblance to his book counterpart (and GRRM has asked characters who similarly stray from the source to be renamed in the past), and to top it all off, this plot has seen horrible fight choreography and inconsistent (at best) acting.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Fisch

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, Fisch said:

The issue is not characters dying in the show that didn't die in the books. The show handled the death of Pyp and Grenn, and of Robb's wife, and others, extremely well IMO. And I frankly could've done without Dorne, or at least without most of it, in AFfC.

The issue is that the Dornish plot in the show is poorly written, something even many non-book readers felt after last season. The Sand Snakes' revenge plot is nonsensical given the man they're trying to avenge, the Snakes themselves are overly sexualized and gimmicky (with terrible dialogue to boot), the timeline of their story (and where characters are geographically at certain points in that timeline) is sloppy even if this plot were self-contained and clashes badly with the timeline of all the other plots in the show, the Lord Paramount of the most independent of the Seven Kingdoms is rendered an ignorant fool with little resemblance to his book counterpart (and GRRM has asked characters who similarly stray from the source to be renamed in the past), and to top it all off, this plot has seen horrible fight choreography and inconsistent (at best) acting.

No one disagrees about Dorne, it sucks big hairy balls! I didn't care for it in the books either.

[Dracarys Snow]

10 hours ago, Ludo Kressh said:

Well, I get that Ghost is protecting him but he definitely looked like he was sad(nudging his hand and then whimpering a little and lying down next to his body). And Ghost does know something, he smells that those around him are friends and could probably smell or sense that those pounding on the door killed Jon(if their scents lingered on Jon's body).

And people can make patterns out of almost any random thing, I can see where they say it's this or that but it's basically an outline of Jon's torso in blood and perhaps Davos was shocked by how much blood there was.

For sure, but it's just that we didn't get to see much of the direwolves throughout the seasons. I'm sure Ghost is like "these mofo's kiled my master", but there's more to it IMO. 

 

[lancerman]

On ‎4‎/‎26‎/‎2016 at 4:21 PM, House Southwell said:

That's what I concluded after watching the episode. The Aegon storyline is going to happen without Aegon. Woopty doo...

I think the issue is that Dorne going to war against the IT and the Lannister's is crucial to the plot and the set up for destabilizing the kingdom for  Dany and the army of the undead.

Aegon was probably an incidental red herring to accomplish that, and D&D didn't feel like devoting the screen time to setting up what amounted to misdirection. Which is understandable. It's another segment of actors, it relies on history (and we know because of Tyrion and his wife that D&D don't have too much faith in the audience  keeping up with that), and it probably requires it's own location.

You need Dorne and they have a reason to want a war without Aegon. You can just make it a straight up conquest as opposed to rallying behind a false king.

It's a similar deal with LSH. Her exclusion, left Brienne and Jamie without direction. So they figured "hey lets send Jamie to Dorne so we have a named character there for the audience to latch onto, since he's not really primed up for the next phase of where his story goes yet. Then he can come to KL at the end and be ready for whatever goes on there.

It's far from ideal. But a battle between the hose that holds the throne and the most independent part of the country who have despised them for years is a hard storypoint to break. The detail of a (most likely) fake prince used as their rallying point is easier.

I'll give them a solid and say the Dorne plot in the books was Arianne acting like moron and a bunch of posturing as her plan resulted in nothing, until the very end when Doran revealed his secret plan. Dorne in the show was a bunch of people acting like morons and a bunch of posturing until Ellaria revealed her coup and her plan to take out the Lannisters. Obviously the book was more nuanced and has more pay off, but it's not all so dissimilar.

[hallam]

17 hours ago, RadSam said:

D&D know the endgame. I don't mind that they're getting there differently. It means less spoilers when the books come out.

No, they knew the endgame GRRM planned when they had the talk. It may have changed significantly. It may change again. 

4 hours ago, Dracarys Snow said:

For sure, but it's just that we didn't get to see much of the direwolves throughout the seasons. I'm sure Ghost is like "these mofo's kiled my master", but there's more to it IMO. 

 

Apparently the direwolves and dragons are very very expensive. Dragons also lose effect unless used in small, small doses. Problem with the wolves is that they have to used trained dogs and also post process. So its probably not a dollar cost but adding 30% to the cost of any scene they are in. So using a direwolf in a crowd scene might mean hiring the extras for an extra day while getting the mechanics right.

3 hours ago, lancerman said:

I think the issue is that Dorne going to war against the IT and the Lannister's is crucial to the plot and the set up for destabilizing the kingdom for  Dany and the army of the undead.

Aegon was probably an incidental red herring to accomplish that, and D&D didn't feel like devoting the screen time to setting up what amounted to misdirection. Which is understandable. It's another segment of actors, it relies on history (and we know because of Tyrion and his wife that D&D don't have too much faith in the audience  keeping up with that), and it probably requires it's own location.

You need Dorne and they have a reason to want a war without Aegon. You can just make it a straight up conquest as opposed to rallying behind a false king.

It's a similar deal with LSH. Her exclusion, left Brienne and Jamie without direction. So they figured "hey lets send Jamie to Dorne so we have a named character there for the audience to latch onto, since he's not really primed up for the next phase of where his story goes yet. Then he can come to KL at the end and be ready for whatever goes on there.

It's far from ideal. But a battle between the hose that holds the throne and the most independent part of the country who have despised them for years is a hard storypoint to break. The detail of a (most likely) fake prince used as their rallying point is easier.

I'll give them a solid and say the Dorne plot in the books was Arianne acting like moron and a bunch of posturing as her plan resulted in nothing, until the very end when Doran revealed his secret plan. Dorne in the show was a bunch of people acting like morons and a bunch of posturing until Ellaria revealed her coup and her plan to take out the Lannisters. Obviously the book was more nuanced and has more pay off, but it's not all so dissimilar.

I think fake Aegon is cut because in the books he is going to turn out to be a byproduct of magic and not be Targarean at all. And LSH has been cut because D&D know they have to resurrect Jon and that is a trick they really don't want to do more than is absolutely necessary.

A large part of the attraction of GoT is that they kill off major characters and nobody is safe. They killed Ned and Robb and Catelyn and they are obviously up to kill pretty much anyone apart from Tyrion and Arya. Bringing back LSH would have damaged their brand.

I agree that the plots are very similar. The main difference is that in the books, the whole Dornish plot is going on without a major character on hand. That really wouldn't work the same on TV. It is a similar problem with the Sansa/fake Arya plot. The books also rest characters that are major characters in the show, leaving them with nothing to do.

The Dorne situation means the Lannisters are at war with the entire kingdom and the mines have run out of gold.

[Lord Syv Aldlark]

I am just over here waiting for them to address the Immortal Bandit running around.. 

[RadSam]

5 hours ago, hallam said:

No, they knew the endgame GRRM planned when they had the talk. It may have changed significantly. It may change again. 

Or it may not have changed at all. 

[~DarkHorse~]

20 hours ago, Dizzy Walker said:

IMHO, when character Davos was looking at the blood,  it was more of taking a moment to get a grip on how Jon's death changed the circumstances of the Watch, the people around him, and what it means for himself and watch was going to happen next. Davos didn't miss a beat through the rest of the scene, he kept his head through it all, the mutton comment showed that. But he needed that moment to take it in, and go from there.

      But I think D&D put it in just to mess with us knowing people would ponder on it, just like that image in the clouds at Hardhome had people thinking an ice dragon was coming....still could be..that cloud was pretty convincing...

Did anyone catch when Davos called himself a "learned man",  I took this as a reminder of Shireen, he would not be able to call himself a "learned man" if she had not taught him to read...or did I misunderstand what he was saying?

Well, if it hadn't been for Shireen, he would not have been able to read the 'TRAITOR' sign and get a full grasp of the situation. 

[dornishdame]

Interesting thought regarding Davos - he is not a brother of the Night's Watch, but a guest at Castle Black (albeit one that appears to Thorne to have sided with those opposed to him and his decision to kill Jon).  Accordingly, Thorne states that he is willing to allow Davos to leave Castle Black, and will even provide him with a horse to enable him to travel southwards. I may be reading far too much into this, but as I have recently re-read the books in preparation for the start of the season, Thorne's offer of a horse sounded very much like a guest gift.  

In Dance, Wyman Manderly speaks at Winterfell of guest giving, the ancient practice of a host providing his departing guests with a gift to signify that their host-guest relationship had come to an end (and thus the departing guest was no longer protected by guest right).  Similarly, were Davos to be given such a gift, he would no longer have the same protection and Thorne could kill him (and prevent him taking south full details of what happened at Castle Black) without violating guest right. 

Thorne is not a northerner, but he is a man wholly loyal to the history and traditions of the Night's Watch - histories and traditions he says he believes he was defending by murdering Jon.  The Story of the Rat Cook, set at the Nightfort and mentioned in the show when Bran and co. passed through there, is one that Thorne should know, if he is as knowledgeable about the Watch as he claims to be.  

[hallam]

22 minutes ago, dornishdame said:

Interesting thought regarding Davos - he is not a brother of the Night's Watch, but a guest at Castle Black (albeit one that appears to Thorne to have sided with those opposed to him and his decision to kill Jon).  Accordingly, Thorne states that he is willing to allow Davos to leave Castle Black, and will even provide him with a horse to enable him to travel southwards. I may be reading far too much into this, but as I have recently re-read the books in preparation for the start of the season, Thorne's offer of a horse sounded very much like a guest gift.  

In Dance, Wyman Manderly speaks at Winterfell of guest giving, the ancient practice of a host providing his departing guests with a gift to signify that their host-guest relationship had come to an end (and thus the departing guest was no longer protected by guest right).  Similarly, were Davos to be given such a gift, he would no longer have the same protection and Thorne could kill him (and prevent him taking south full details of what happened at Castle Black) without violating guest right. 

Thorne is not a northerner, but he is a man wholly loyal to the history and traditions of the Night's Watch - histories and traditions he says he believes he was defending by murdering Jon.  The Story of the Rat Cook, set at the Nightfort and mentioned in the show when Bran and co. passed through there, is one that Thorne should know, if he is as knowledgeable about the Watch as he claims to be.  

I don't think men who have just murdered their commanders are likely to stand on niceties such as guest right. But it might have been intended to make Davos think that was the situation.

 

[dornishdame]

48 minutes ago, hallam said:

I don't think men who have just murdered their commanders are likely to stand on niceties such as guest right. But it might have been intended to make Davos think that was the situation.

The thought mostly came to me as a result of the thematic parallels between Jon's stabbing and the Red Wedding (and it was an episode or two after the RW that Bran told Meera and Jojen this story) - for example, the howling of trapped direwolves, the concept of oathbreaking (Thorne believing Jon was an oathbreaker for saving the wildlings and Walder Frey believing the same of Robb for marrying Talisa) and the traitorous behavior (Roose stabbing Robb and Olly stabbing Jon).

I'm probably looking far too much into it!! 

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, hallam said:

I don't think men who have just murdered their commanders are likely to stand on niceties such as guest right. But it might have been intended to make Davos think that was the situation.

 

But you are looking at what they did as murder, they don't see it that way and neither do a lot of the other brothers. They see that they are actually upholding the Nights Watch and protecting it. They saw Jon as a traitor who sold them out to their enemy, the wildlings. They looked at the act as being done to prevent more harm. So if they believed in guest rites they would still believe in it and hold themselves to their laws and such.

[dbunting]

So I do have one lingering thought. Why did they take Jons body and barricade themselves in a room? I can understand wanting revenge or justice or whatever, but why lock yourself in a room with the dead body? Wouldn't you gather your forces(if you even have any) and stay under the radar? This part of it doesn't make sense to me. It's not like they know he will be brought back to life and need to preserve his body, as far as they know he is done for.

Add to that the fact that Thorne gives two shits about them. It's over, Jon is dead, at some point they come out and bury/burn his body and we move on. Making the threats against them does nothing but make Thorne look worse in the brothers eyes and screams of power hungry mutiny instead of doing right by the watch.

[talvikorppi]

All in all, I quite liked the episode. The show's the show and the books are the books and I love both, and I'm not expecting the show to be a faithful illustration of the books. Different mediums call for different approaches, etc. etc. Plus the show is now moving past GRRM's published work, D&D are working from an outline from GRRM and writing their own story to reach the same general end point. I'm fine with that.

I watched the episode straight through once, then immediately rewatched it with pausing a rewinding at a couple of points (mainly to catch some dialogue - English isn't my native language and I watch it with subtitles turned off because I find them distracting).

Only then I hit the internet to see what other people thought. I was surprised that many commenters moaned that nothing much happened in the episode! There were major things like one of the great houses of Westeros assassinated into extinction and the Mel reveal, but also lots and lots of more subtle things.

I'll go through this geographically.

The Wall - by far the strongest part. I love, love, love Davos (which means he'll die). And Dolorous Edd, and the few other friends Jon had left. They're not actually protecting Jon's body (they have no idea Jon has to and will come back, lol!), they're protecting themselves, and maybe thinking of avenging their friend's death. Jon's body just ends up in the same room. But we wievers are glad it's there!

Alliser Thorne did a good job of explaining his actions and the reasons for them, and taking the NW in hand. I can understand his reasoning, and also that he has a code of honour and he thinks he's doing the right thing. We know he isn't, but the nightswatchmen don't (Though I find it a bit odd that Hardhome survivors haven't spread the word.) My, Olly's grown a lot overnight :-D And looked sooo smug, that little shit.:-D. Also, anybody else notice the focus on that dark-haired nightswatchman who seemed kind of grumbling but accepted Alliser Thorne's leadership. I wonder if that's a sign that Ser Alliser's hold on the NW isn't all that strong? Even Othell Yarwyck seemed less than enthusiastic, he hung his head in shame when Alliser called his name as one of the killers.

The Jon Snow bloodblot test - I didn't see dragons or tableaux of people there, but clearly there's something there. The showrunners and director went out of their way to show us Davos looking at the blood stains and taking a moment.

The Alliser/Davos parley, one knigh (or ker-nigget) to another. On first watch "And some mutton" was just some levity, but on second watch, that was Davos testing Ser Alliser. Davos is a smart cookie. He got the direwolf with them, send Edd for the wildlings, and even contemplates using the Red Woman...

Mel visits Jon Snow's dead body. "I saw him fighting at Winterfell in the flames." It's all come horribly crashing down for Mel. The Shireen sacrifice didn't work, Stannis is dead, and now Jon. That final scene was so beautiful, Carice's and the body double's acting was so great, the cinematography was beautiful. To me, it seemed that Mel's faith is at such a low ebb that taking off that choker is the equivalent of a devout Christian nun/monk/bishop taking off her cross. Just crawling into bed, perhance to die, give up. Obviously something makes her to not completely give up, we've seen a trailer and set photos of her in her young guise.

OK, this post is getting so long, I'll continue in another.