6x01: D & D cleaning up after themselves

[Clash]

1 minute ago, Cas Stark said:

Hasn't the show made it so the king is the only one who can legitimize a bastard?  Roose notes that he got a decree from Tommen legitimizing Ramsay, doesn't he?  

Not that it matters, the show doesn't sweat those kinds of details, I doubt they will ever explain how the kinslayers end up ruling Dorne, or even if they make it explicit somehow, we will just see Ellaria commanding people or talking smack or maybe not even that.  I still hold out hope all we see of them is in KL until they get killed at the end of the season.

Dorne seems to operate under different rules though. They seem to barely tolerate rule from Kings Landing and seem to hold themselves outside the general mores of the rest of the seven kingdoms. It may not even matter as you say. Her speech to the dying Doran Martell seemed to indicate that she had widespread support for action against the Lannisters and by extension the Iron Throne.

[Cas Stark]

14 minutes ago, Clash said:

Dorne seems to operate under different rules though. They seem to barely tolerate rule from Kings Landing and seem to hold themselves outside the general mores of the rest of the seven kingdoms. It may not even matter as you say. Her speech to the dying Doran Martell seemed to indicate that she had widespread support for action against the Lannisters and by extension the Iron Throne.

Does it?  Cause in the show there is no mention of women ascending the throne if they're the oldest, as I recall, and we know it's obviously false that they 'don't kill little girls' in Dorne since the Red Viper's own children and lover killed a 'little girl'....

We are given to understand Dorne is more promiscuous what with the fighting and fucking and the Red Viper and Ellaria being bisexual sex freaks who like orgies.  But, otherwise there isn't anything in the show that supports the idea they would be more willing to follow women than anyone else in Westeros.  Not that this will matter to the show, again, they make whatever they want to happen, happen.

[Clash]

38 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Does it?  Cause in the show there is no mention of women ascending the throne if they're the oldest, as I recall, and we know it's obviously false that they 'don't kill little girls' in Dorne since the Red Viper's own children and lover killed a 'little girl'....

I'm not sure why you're raising this, it wasn't anything I said.

There's nothing said either way about women ruling Dorne but on the other hand, they appear to hold positions of authority if nothing else.

[Ser Quork]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

Hasn't the show made it so the king is the only one who can legitimize a bastard?  Roose notes that he got a decree from Tommen legitimizing Ramsay, doesn't he?  

Not that it matters, the show doesn't sweat those kinds of details, I doubt they will ever explain how the kinslayers end up ruling Dorne, or even if they make it explicit somehow, we will just see Ellaria commanding people or talking smack or maybe not even that.  I still hold out hope all we see of them is in KL until they get killed at the end of the season.

I'm sure Littlefinger could be prevailed upon to legitimise someone.  After all, he managed to annul Sansa & Tyrion's marriage without so much as a by-your-leave.

 

[Clash]

Just now, Ser Quork said:

I'm sure Littlefinger could be prevailed upon to legitimise someone.  After all, he managed to annul Sansa & Tyrion's marriage without so much as a by-your-leave.

[Cas Stark]

11 minutes ago, Clash said:

I'm not sure why you're raising this, it wasn't anything I said.

There's nothing said either way about women ruling Dorne but on the other hand, they appear to hold positions of authority if nothing else.

What positions of authority do any women hold?  Neither Ellaria nor the sand snakes have any official positions.  Did Doran have women guards or something that I missed?

[Clash]

4 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

What positions of authority do any women hold?  Neither Ellaria nor the sand snakes have any official positions.  Did Doran have women guards or something that I missed?

What positions of authority does anyone hold in Dorne apart from Doran Martell? And obviously Oberyn before his untimely demise. Ellaria appears to have a great deal of influence with Doran; if only as someone he confides in.

[Cas Stark]

15 minutes ago, Clash said:

What positions of authority does anyone hold in Dorne apart from Doran Martell? And obviously Oberyn before his untimely demise. Ellaria appears to have a great deal of influence with Doran; if only as someone he confides in.

I'm not sure what your point is here other than to lay some kind of theoretical groundwork for whatever the show does as making sense.  If the show wants her to rule Dorne, she will, it won't matter that to date, there has been nothing in the show to support this, she hasn't even interacted with anyone outside of her own family, we've seen her talk to no lords, talk about no lords.

I don't care.  Dorne is terrible and it will continue to be terrible.  The only way they could have salvaged it, was to do the opposite of what they did, kill or remove the sand snakes and focus on Ellaria and Doran.

[Clash]

Just now, Cas Stark said:

I'm not sure what your point is here other than to lay some kind of theoretical groundwork for whatever the show does as making sense.  If the show wants her to rule Dorne, she will, it won't matter that to date, there has been nothing in the show to support this, she hasn't even interacted with anyone outside of her own family, we've seen her talk to no lords, talk about no lords.

I don't care.  Dorne is terrible and it will continue to be terrible.  The only way they could have salvaged it, was to do the opposite of what they did, kill or remove the sand snakes and focus on Ellaria and Doran.

So you've got nothing. You should just say so.

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Clash said:

So you've got nothing. You should just say so.

LMAO.  I just gave you a ton of examples.  You say Ellaria has "authority"  I say, it's not in the show.  I say there is nothing in the show that shows that WOMEN have any kind of different authority in Dorne, there are no women guards, Ellaria talks of no matriarchy rules in the show.  You say she has support in Dorne.  I say, again, it's not in the show, beyond Doran's guards.  There are no mentions of lords or support for her rule.  

I'm sorry to say, but it's you who have nothing because the show has not included anything that supports the idea you put forth about the Dorne story.

[Clash]

10 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

LMAO.  I just gave you a ton of examples.  You say Ellaria has "authority"  I say, it's not in the show.  I say there is nothing in the show that shows that WOMEN have any kind of different authority in Dorne, there are no women guards, Ellaria talks of no matriarchy rules in the show.  You say she has support in Dorne.  I say, again, it's not in the show, beyond Doran's guards.  There are no mentions of lords or support for her rule.  

I'm sorry to say, but it's you who have nothing because the show has not included anything that supports the idea you put forth about the Dorne story.

Nope, that was the posts before, which I answered. I asked you a reaasonable question and you replied with a rant about my motives and Dorne (yawn).

And if you think your previous examples add up to a ton, you need to take a weights and measures class.

If you don't want to continue the discussion that's fine.

[Ruhail]

53 minutes ago, Clash said:

Nope, that was the posts before, which I answered. I asked you a reaasonable question and you replied with a rant about my motives and Dorne (yawn).

And if you think your previous examples add up to a ton, you need to take a weights and measures class.

If you don't want to continue the discussion that's fine.

Show Dorne is equivalent to the iron islands

[Tixu Oty]

On 4/25/2016 at 3:32 PM, Mr Smith said:

After watching the season premiere for a second time, and giving it some serious thought, it really seems to me like they've used the first episode to scrub out a lot of the problems they gave themselves last season. Dorne is the obvious example standing out like a red thumb, but other back-peddling such as Sansa finally taking Brienne into her service and the ships being burnt in Mereen are others. Personally, I believe their claims about not having changed a single word of season 6 based on season 5 criticism is utter rubbish, and in actual fact they sat down and had a serious discussion about decisions made in previous episodes.

Personally, I'm OK with this kind of pruning and rehashing (even if it does mar the flow of an episode or two) as long as it gets the story back on track, and focusing on the areas that are most important. It's like pulling teeth: you have to endure a bit of pain, but it's much better than the long term pain that would come from leaving them in.

Anyone else get a similar impression, or am I being naively optimistic?

I don't know about cleaning up.

OK maybe about the ships in Mereen. It definitely made me wonder why Daario even had to mention them last season... Unless D&D needed to draw attention to Dany's mistake of not choosing to leave sooner, when she still could.... But imo, the show could have done without it. The other examples you mention though, I don't think they're cleanups at all.

Sansa and Brienne: I just don't see it. If she had gone with Brienne the first time, then there just wouldn't have been any Winterfell storyline at all last season. I'm not saying that Winterfell storyline was particularly good. But it was apparently needed in what D&D made of Sansa's arc.

Dorne: I hated that part of last episode but that's no cleanup either. How does killing off Doran and Trystane erase whatever problems were caused last season in any way? It just doesn't. On the contrary, it creates a new situation, paving the way for more Dorne this season imo. If they had decided to get rid of Dorne this season, they could've shown the Myrcella situation resolution solely from KL's point of view. Like a letter from Doran saying that the situation was handled and the traitors had been punished... bla blah. But instead, the traitors became the ones in control, which tells me that they are going to oppose the Lannisters this season or at least be a pain in their ass. Also, this choice sort of keeps the show somewhat in line with the books, since the Sand Snakes seem to have some role to play in WoW. I do wish they had gone about this differently though. The Dorne book storyline so far is a thousand times better than the show's. Once more, I found the Sand Snakes to be completely cartoonish. I also did wonder where the hell they were coming from and where Trystane even was. So imo that part of the episode was poor writing from a to z.

[Miley the Monstrous]

6 hours ago, Mr Smith said:

I'm not sure why they would though. The criticism of Dorne doesn't just come from the book readers. If they're doing what you're suggesting, they're going to end up turning a lot of people right off the show.

Well they've ignored the widespread criticism regarding sex and violence (and rape) for six seasons now, and last season it effectively turned a lot of people right off the show

[Miley the Monstrous]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

LMAO.  I just gave you a ton of examples.  You say Ellaria has "authority"  I say, it's not in the show.  I say there is nothing in the show that shows that WOMEN have any kind of different authority in Dorne, there are no women guards, Ellaria talks of no matriarchy rules in the show.  You say she has support in Dorne.  I say, again, it's not in the show, beyond Doran's guards.  There are no mentions of lords or support for her rule.  

I'm sorry to say, but it's you who have nothing because the show has not included anything that supports the idea you put forth about the Dorne story.

If anything the show has shown the opposite by turning Lady Blackmont (I think??) into Lord Blackmont for no reason back in season 4

[Clash]

13 minutes ago, Miley the Monstrous said:

Well they've ignored the widespread criticism regarding sex and violence (and rape) for six seasons now, and last season it effectively turned a lot of people right off the show

It must have turned some more people on because episode one viewing figures were a record for the show.

[Miley the Monstrous]

5 minutes ago, Clash said:

It must have turned some more people on because episode one viewing figures were a record for the show.

No doubt some people get turned on by that. *vomits*

As it's often the case, people who "abandon ship" so to speak or actively attempt to boycott something rarely become more than a blip on the radar when it comes to ratings and earnings, for better or worse (the stupid assholes who tried to boycott the force awakens didn't even make a dent on its profits), and yet it doesn't mean they don't exist. 

[wiredup]

On 4/26/2016 at 9:06 AM, hallam said:

Showrunners are not the same as producers. In film, the producer is mainly responsible for getting the rights to the screenplay etc. and getting the money together. When a film costs $200 million, that is a very big job. They also have to constantly reassure the backers that their money is not being wasted. The director is the person in control of artistic decisions.

In TV, the directors do not have the same role. And in game of thrones even more so. Do you really think that the directors travel to every different location and so Arya is being directed by one director for one scene then another for a different scene depending on which episode it is intended for? I don't. I think that they assign one director to each geographic location and then credit episodes so that each gets their due. The closest it will come is that when the episodes are being edited, the credited director may well have been the person who worked on that particular episode.

The showrunners act as producers before a series gets green lit. But after that, the money issue is determined by how many viewers they pull in. HBO is writing film budget sized checks but they are doing so on last season's viewer figures. D&D are the people in overall control and they are the people who are deciding the narrative flow of the series as a whole.

It is a very different job to movie producer and thus gets called something different. 

From Variety: showrunner — executive producer of a television series.

From other sources: "Showrunner is more a title and a set of responsibilities given to one of the executive producers, less a completely different job. This person may be credited as the executive producer, creator, or writer-producer; in any case, his or her duty is to maintain the integrity of the overall canon of the series and keep the writing staff on task and on message."

If that doesn't describe the main two gentlemen in charge of the series, I don't know what does. So, are you implying that D&D don't look at the dailies? Are they not approving the scripts and changes? Do they not go into the edit suite? They don't have to direct every episode or shoot at every location to be a showrunner. Which is probably why the poster that I quoted has ignored me   JK.

Either way, doesn't matter to me. I'm just mad at myself for watching. I love the books and was really looking forward to READING the big scenes coming. But I console myself with the fact that the show is not even filming the ASOIAF series anymore and is just a fan fiction spinoff series.

 

[Low Sparrow]

On 4/25/2016 at 0:51 PM, Good Guy Garlan said:

Dorne wasn't cleaning up after themselves. It was like getting rid of all the furniture in your living room, leaving only the glaring dog shit in the middle of the room, and then heaping even more shit on top of that. 

Perfectly summed up.

[Guest]

On 4/25/2016 at 8:32 AM, Mr Smith said:

After watching the season premiere for a second time, and giving it some serious thought, it really seems to me like they've used the first episode to scrub out a lot of the problems they gave themselves last season. Dorne is the obvious example standing out like a red thumb, but other back-peddling such as Sansa finally taking Brienne into her service and the ships being burnt in Mereen are others. Personally, I believe their claims about not having changed a single word of season 6 based on season 5 criticism is utter rubbish, and in actual fact they sat down and had a serious discussion about decisions made in previous episodes.

Personally, I'm OK with this kind of pruning and rehashing (even if it does mar the flow of an episode or two) as long as it gets the story back on track, and focusing on the areas that are most important. It's like pulling teeth: you have to endure a bit of pain, but it's much better than the long term pain that would come from leaving them in.

Anyone else get a similar impression, or am I being naively optimistic?

 Wh did they do it all in the first episode with zero meaningful transitions?  Just weird...