[Spoilers] Rant and Rave without Reprecussions - Season 6 Edition

[Apathetic Onlooker]

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think the situation has become something akin to a Keynesian beauty contest.

The point of the contest isn't really to figure out who is the most beautiful, but to figure out what average opinion expects the average opinion to be about who is the most beautiful.

I think a lot of this critics don't want to be "wrong" or perceived to be wrong, maybe because it's a risk to professional reputations or something, so it's perceived safe to give reviews based on the average opinion that expects the average opinion will be positive.

This is the thing that disheartens me.  The fact that reviewing has become less about critiquing a piece of fiction to ensure quality and more about mining for approval.  The reviewer with the most popular opinion wins and profits.  Actually looking at a piece of work and legitimately examining it is rare, and those that are willing to stand against the common perception tend to fall underfoot that hacks that validate everyone's confirmation bias.  

Hell, there are many popular reviewers that aren't even well educated in regards to what constitutes good writing.  They take a relativistic point of view ("well can anything be considered badly written?  That's just your opinion..." ), or they look at something that is well-directed and think that means it must be well-written as well, by default.  It just boggles the mind that anyone working in this business can honestly think that way and have any credibility, yet they frequently do. 

What point is an industry built on analyzing art when its best thinkers are not respected or listened to, and its most popular are ignorant or are just going to play into everyone's already preconceived notions?  A reviewers job is to, by way of running of a work through the gauntlet of analysis, improve the industry as a whole.  A brutally honest and intelligent reviewer, if respected, is someone who can ensure quality is produced again and again.

 But what happens when that critical reviewer isn't respected and instead, the ones that everyone listens to are the panderers that will say anything to garner popularity?   Then art never improves and criticism as a whole, legitimate or otherwise, becomes entirely pointless.  They who levy fair criticism are never going to be a position to influence change-- which means their job is an exercise in futility.  And those who rise to the top by telling people what they already know or want to hear rather than giving them the truth are completely unnecessary or actively damaging.

[Aryya Stark]

I just feel like I am watching an entirely different story. The last episode was the worse...it's just getting worse.

 

[The Wull]

16 hours ago, SerMixalot said:

One of those little butterflies the show will have to resolve: House Bolton, Karstark and Umber are now poof. That is a whole lot of the north left leaderless.

 

That's why they invented House Mazin or w/e, so that when Sansa kills off all her brothers at Littlefinger's request, House Mazin can spew some book quotes, save the North from Darth Sansa, and rule from Winterfell henceforth.  It's not as crazy as it sounds.

13 hours ago, teej6 said:

Yeah didn't you know Sandra is Jean Grey so she can mind control the raven and telepathically communicate with her pimp wherever he is. 

He's just checking in on her.  Got to keep his working girls in line; wouldn't want them getting any ideas.  

13 hours ago, teej6 said:

For this season, I'd probably have to say Natalie Tena because she really fleshed out Osha's character in Season 1. The others, I really don't know how they would have developed their characters. I wasn't impressed at all with Ian McShane or Max Von Sydow on the show although I love them in everything else I've seen them in. Alexander Siddig might have been able to pull off the fire and blood speech had they given him a chance. In the entire show, I'd have to say that they really wasted the talents of Stephen Dillane. If D&D didn't hate the character of Stannis so much we would have had a perfect Stannis in Dillane. 

 

 

I'm not really a huge TV watcher, and haven't seen a lot of these actors/actresses that everyone else gushes over.  Sad to say, I would probably avoid everything these people are involved in based solely off GoT.  Most of them gave dreadful performances.  I know that's not fair, but I've got nothing else to base them off.  

[Prince of the North]

15 hours ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

The "people don't care about minor characters" is just more of their writing incompetence. What they're really saying is that we aren't good enough writers to make people care.

They just took a narrative shortcut, but they've taken so many shortcuts they're now heading in a different direction.

 

Yep, competent writers are easily capable of making their audience feel however they want them to feel.  And competent writers don't have to resort to cheap and extremely obvious emotional manipulation to tell their story.  

15 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

It's true, I was being quite scornful there, they are just making excuses for their poor writing skills, but also for their poor and quite questionable narrative choices. It was super important to them that Jeyne's story be given prominence. But not Rickon's story. Seems like a rather odd choice. Jeyne is a minor background character, who was there solely to show Ramsay's and Littlefinger's cruelty. Rickon is, in Bran's absence, the lord of Winterfell, he's a Stark, they are central to this series.

(And of course, it goes without saying, they had no concerns about dropping Sansa's own story, and she's a main character... It's all quite disingenuous.)

Yes!  And again, IF the Winterfell/North story line had been more about Theon then the audience would easily have cared about the "minor" character Jeyne Poole because Theon cared about her.  Also, so much more of that setting/story line could have been held more closely to the books and, thus, it would have actually made much more narrative sense than what GoT portrayed.   

14 hours ago, rosehustle1 said:

I always hate their bullshit justifications. People liked Karsi and she was only in one episode for 20 mins. When you know how to write a compelling minor character people will like them. Minor characters enrich stories and bring the world to life. Other shows are able to do this with much smaller budgets and more constraints. But somehow they can't? They're full of it.

Very much agreed!  People saw the potential in the Karsi character and wanted to see more.  But...it just turned out to be more ham-fisted, cheap, obvious emotional manipulation.  She was created only to have that utterly ridiculous death scene 

[The Knight in Motley]

16 hours ago, rosehustle1 said:

I always hate their bullshit justifications. People liked Karsi and she was only in one episode for 20 mins. When you know how to write a compelling minor character people will like them. Minor characters enrich stories and bring the world to life. Other shows are able to do this with much smaller budgets and more constraints. But somehow they can't? They're full of it.

Worse, when all the background characters start to become indistinguishable from the set, the world begins to feel small and empty.

I loved the first guy they had who played a Priest of the Drowned god and felt that scene with him blessing Theon was pretty well done.  He'd have been perfect to be Damphair, yet when they bring in the actual 'Damphair' the character was so mindnumbingly cardboard that it just compounded the uselessness of the entire Kingsmoot scene.

I feel too much of it is the writing and directing.  I don't think Tyrion is boring because Peter isn't a good actor, I think Tyrion is boring because Peter has nothing to work with.  He has boring characters to play off that don't support him as a character.  The one character that bridged the gap between all of the Mereenese characters was killed off in an act of seriously idiotic meta-writing.  Killing Barristan was a symbolic murder of the Mereenese story's depth, because he represented a link between any two of the other Mereenese characters except perhaps Dany and Missi.

I think Jamie is boring because his story is totally pointless and he has nothing to work with.

Littlefinger's entire job is to stand there and look smug.

Dany's entire job is to stand there and look powerfully smug, and its the only thing Clarke is good at.  Wait, no, she's terrible at it.

Jon is one of the worst offenses of the writers, because he should have plenty of character essence to work with, having died and been brought back, but no, he's the stepping stool for another boring and out of place character: Sansa.  I felt like Kit was good as the 'no-nothing' Snow, just trying to survive his education, but as  the 'adult' Jon he's hopeless AND given nothing to work with.

The death of characterizations and the focus of writing on events, not people, is what has killed the wonder of the first few seasons.  D&D have failed to see that the spectacle of the Red Wedding wasn't about the quantity of the people dying, it was about the quality of those characters: the investment the audience has with Robb and Cat over 3 seasons.

I predict that they expect the death of Walder Frey to have the same impact as the death of Joffery, without understanding that the audience they have built around the current show has no investment at all in Frey.  I expect there to be a lot of confusion surrounding why Arya 'shows up there to kill that guy'.  It might have been why they tried the disastrous/totally awesome dude murder of Trant, even going so far as to show him as a pedofile: but again that reflects on the quality of the audience they have built.  You don't have to give any reason at all for Arya to kill Trant, unless you know your audience isn't paying attention.

 

[Aryya Stark]

6 minutes ago, The Knight in Motley said:

Worse, when all the background characters start to become indistinguishable from the set, the world begins to feel small and empty.

I loved the first guy they had who played a Priest of the Drowned god and felt that scene with him blessing Theon was pretty well done.  He'd have been perfect to be Damphair, yet when they bring in the actual 'Damphair' the character was so mindnumbingly cardboard that it just compounded the uselessness of the entire Kingsmoot scene.

I feel too much of it is the writing and directing.  I don't think Tyrion is boring because Peter isn't a good actor, I think Tyrion is boring because Peter has nothing to work with.  He has boring characters to play off that don't support him as a character.  The one character that bridged the gap between all of the Mereenese characters was killed off in an act of seriously idiotic meta-writing.  Killing Barristan was a symbolic murder of the Mereenese story's depth, because he represented a link between any two of the other Mereenese characters except perhaps Dany and Missi.

I think Jamie is boring because his story is totally pointless and he has nothing to work with.

Littlefinger's entire job is to stand there and look smug.

Dany's entire job is to stand there and look powerfully smug, and its the only thing Clarke is good at.

Jon is one of the worst offenses of the writers, because he should have plenty of character essence to work with, having died and been brought back, but no, he's the stepping stool for another boring and out of place character: Sansa.

 

The death of characterizations and the focus of writing on events, not people, is what has killed the wonder of the first few seasons.  D&D have failed to see that the spectacle of the Red Wedding wasn't about the quantity of the people dying, it was about the quality of those characters: the investment the audience has with Robb and Cat over 3 seasons.

I predict that they expect the death of Walder Frey to have the same impact as the death of Joffery, without understanding that the audience they have built around the current show has no investment at all in Frey.  I expect there to be a lot of confusion surrounding why Arya 'shows up there to kill that guy'.  It might have been why they tried the disastrous/totally awesome dude murder of Trant, even going so far as to show him as a pedofile: but again that reflects on the quality of the audience they have built.  You don't have to give any reason at all for Arya to kill Trant, unless you know your audience isn't paying attention.

 

Totally agree with everything you said...except maybe the last part, we are also their audience but they don't seem to care.

[The Knight in Motley]

I meant audience in terms of who they are aiming the show at, not in terms of everyone who watches.  It almost feels like they forgot the show would have a huge book lover audience (even though they were banking on us selling it through word of mouth) so as soon as possible they started trying to shake off a critical audience for the 'tits and dragons' one.

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

Just in the train of thought about how the show hasn't made me feel anything all season.

If they had the last scene of the episode be one where Sansa hugs the body of dead Rickon's body and in tears, mourning for her lost baby brother. It would have made me feel something.  Because having characters that act in a human and relate-able way is how you make the audience connect and empathize with your characters.

But D&D don't ever bother writing about actual human beings, they only want to write about their boss ass bitch, who's able to kill people with a blank smug stare, or preferably with a hint of a smirk, because that's what badasses do.

[Lord Freypie]

28 minutes ago, The Knight in Motley said:

I predict that they expect the death of Walder Frey to have the same impact as the death of Joffery, without understanding that the audience they have built around the current show has no investment at all in Frey.  I expect there to be a lot of confusion surrounding why Arya 'shows up there to kill that guy'.  It might have been why they tried the disastrous/totally awesome dude murder of Trant, even going so far as to show him as a pedofile: but again that reflects on the quality of the audience they have built.  You don't have to give any reason at all for Arya to kill Trant, unless you know your audience isn't paying attention.

 

I trust them to include some pedo scene between Walder and his young new wife so attention deficient viewers may finally have a clue he is a bad guy;

[sweetsunray]

15 minutes ago, The Knight in Motley said:

Worse, when all the background characters start to become indistinguishable from the set, the world begins to feel small and empty.

I loved the first guy they had who played a Priest of the Drowned god and felt that scene with him blessing Theon was pretty well done.  He'd have been perfect to be Damphair, yet when they bring in the actual 'Damphair' the character was so mindnumbingly cardboard that it just compounded the uselessness of the entire Kingsmoot scene.

I feel too much of it is the writing and directing.  I don't think Tyrion is boring because Peter isn't a good actor, I think Tyrion is boring because Peter has nothing to work with.  He has boring characters to play off that don't support him as a character.  The one character that bridged the gap between all of the Mereenese characters was killed off in an act of seriously idiotic meta-writing.  Killing Barristan was a symbolic murder of the Mereenese story's depth, because he represented a link between any two of the other Mereenese characters except perhaps Dany and Missi.

I think Jamie is boring because his story is totally pointless and he has nothing to work with.

Littlefinger's entire job is to stand there and look smug.

Dany's entire job is to stand there and look powerfully smug, and its the only thing Clarke is good at.  Wait, no, she's terrible at it.

Jon is one of the worst offenses of the writers, because he should have plenty of character essence to work with, having died and been brought back, but no, he's the stepping stool for another boring and out of place character: Sansa.  I felt like Kit was good as the 'no-nothing' Snow, just trying to survive his education, but as  the 'adult' Jon he's hopeless AND given nothing to work with.

The death of characterizations and the focus of writing on events, not people, is what has killed the wonder of the first few seasons.  D&D have failed to see that the spectacle of the Red Wedding wasn't about the quantity of the people dying, it was about the quality of those characters: the investment the audience has with Robb and Cat over 3 seasons.

I predict that they expect the death of Walder Frey to have the same impact as the death of Joffery, without understanding that the audience they have built around the current show has no investment at all in Frey.  I expect there to be a lot of confusion surrounding why Arya 'shows up there to kill that guy'.  It might have been why they tried the disastrous/totally awesome dude murder of Trant, even going so far as to show him as a pedofile: but again that reflects on the quality of the audience they have built.  You don't have to give any reason at all for Arya to kill Trant, unless you know your audience isn't paying attention.

Totally agree... The whole of S6 I've been thinking - it's so empty. KL - empty. Mereen - empty. North - empty. Dorne - apart from some guard, empty. RL - empty. Vale -empty. Ross, Bronn, Osha, Luwin, Hodor, BwB characters, Lollys, and so many others work because they give character and a face to the background. They not only interact with the main characters, but also redshirt characters, but they still must remain backgrond characters with a background. And what they did is propping and re-using them too much, because they were liked (actually that's their main function - to be liked, because they are familiar without us knowing too much about them) and pull them away from the world they interact with. Bronn in Dorne makes no sense. Bronn in King's Landing in Flea Bottom makes a lot of sense. They may be fan favorites, but they only fully work as the in between for main and background people where the mains are, in a background setting that is their background world.

d$d don't even seem to understand the basic function of background characters. Either they kill them off, or they drop them in another world only as side-kick for the main. That makes it cartoonish, not real. 

There is one thing I must note about book-Arya. She does have a thing against sex-offenders. To her it seems the nail in the coffin so to speak. She gives Chyswyck's name to Jaquen for his rape story. While Arya says she killed Dareon for being a deserter, she kills him the night she observes him trying to charm the Sailor's Wife's daughter, and ponders a great deal on what a liar he is to women and girls (and then there's his story why he ended up with the NW). And Raff of course doesn't mind "raping" a girl of 11. Despite Raff being on her list, she checks whether he's still as bad a man as she thought he was initially - wanting to murder a dwarf, though he doesn't look like the Imp and having a thing for a very young girl, while the other guard is completely disgusted by the idea. So, it's there, but not with every person she kills or on her list, and subtler.

The show has had Arya kill pedophiles pretty much since S4. She kills Rorge after he threatens her to fuck her while she travels with Sandor. Polliver and Raff in the inn are pretty much raping the innkeep's daughters instead of having whores in their lap and one of them suggests that Arya is Sandor's fucktoy and wants to trade and try her too. And then they make Trant completely over the top pedo. They played that aspect up since the beginning.

 

[Tyche]

39 minutes ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

Just in the train of thought about how the show hasn't made me feel anything all season.

If they had the last scene of the episode be one where Sansa hugs the body of dead Rickon's body and in tears, mourning for her lost baby brother. It would have made me feel something.  Because having characters that act in a human and relate-able way is how you make the audience connect and empathize with your characters.

But D&D don't ever bother writing about actual human beings, they only want to write about their boss ass bitch, who's able to kill people with a blank smug stare, or preferably with a hint of a smirk, because that's what badasses do.

That bothers me a lot, too. There are those rare moments (e.g. Marg consoling Loras in his prison cell or the reunion of Jon and Sansa) that make me care for those characters more. That's what I liked about the Jon-Rickon scene; two brothers that care for each other. But they gave us this scene only for emotional manipulation because we didn't know how bad Ramsay was. After, what, 4-5 seasons of torture porn?

They only porcupined Rickon for shock value... Although I was feeling for those two brothers I didn't care for Rickon's death because it was obvious how it was going to end. The show is so depressing... "nothing is nothing"

[Le Cygne]

That's really sad. In the books, all the kids, including her, think of him as baby Rickon. And it's so tragic when someone young dies, and it was in such a cruel way. To not cry is just bizarre. There's no way someone who cared could bring herself to smile for days, much less minutes later.

We could tell Jon cared, that was the only human moment in the whole hour. But Sandra and her smirks, and that they so transparently used Rickon as a gruesome plot device to let Ramsay take yet one more thing from the Starks, while making Jon look stupid for caring, is disgusting.

And it backfired. None of it seemed real. And then when they let Ramsay take that final thing, and kill Wun Wun, and it seemed like everyone in the scene was just waiting for Ramsay to shoot him, it was like, yes, we get it, will you please stop already, at long last. Ramsay is bad.

[Apathetic Onlooker]

11 minutes ago, Tyche said:

That bothers me a lot, too. There are those rare moments (e.g. Marg consoling Loras in his prison cell or the reunion of Jon and Sansa) that make me care for those characters more. That's what I liked about the Jon-Rickon scene; two brothers that care for each other. But they gave us this scene only for emotional manipulation because we didn't know how bad Ramsay was. After, what, 4-5 seasons of torture porn?

They only porcupined Rickon for shock value... Although I was feeling for those two brothers I didn't care for Rickon's death because it was obvious how it was going to end. The show is so depressing... "nothing is nothing"

I hated that I couldn't feel anything from that scene.  Well, that's a lie.  I did feel something:  revulsion.  And disappointment of all the opportunity this show has wasted.  Rickon we last saw in season 3 and watching all the beautiful interaction and dialog then and now, it's just a hollowing experience.  Remember Bran, Osha, and Rickon's last conversation?  Ugh.  I feel worse than if a character died.  I feel like this story died.  

Getting three seasons of excellent story only for it to be so irrevocably altered beyond all recognition that it doesn't feel like the same story anymore, well you can't help but wonder what could have been and feel totally dispirited.  I hate that I couldn't care less about what happens to any of these characters.  I hate that I couldn't care how all this ends.  I want my story back, but for that to happen, they'd have to re-do everything from season 3 onward-- and we know that shit ain't happening.  So it really does feel over. Whatever that wonderful plot was, it's long gone and replaced with whatever this show is now. 

As I've stated before, The Winds of Winter can't come soon enough, so this whole bad fever dream can be put to rest.

[Tyche]

1 minute ago, Apathetic Onlooker said:

I hated that I couldn't feel anything from that scene.  Well, that's a lie.  I did feel something:  revulsion.  And disappointment of all the opportunity this show has wasted.  Rickon we last saw in season 3 and watching all the beautiful interaction and dialog then and now, it's just a hollowing experience.  Remember Bran, Osha, and Rickon's last conversation?  Ugh.  I feel worse than if a character died.  I feel like this story died.  

Getting three seasons of excellent story only for it to be so irrevocably altered beyond all recognition that it doesn't feel like the same story anymore, well you can't help but wonder what could have been and feel totally dispirited.  I hate that I couldn't care less about what happens to any of these characters.  I hate that I couldn't care how all this ends.  I want my story back, but for that to happen, they'd have to re-do everything from season 3 onward-- and we know that shit ain't happening.  So it really does feel over. Whatever that wonderful plot was, it's long gone and replaced with whatever this show is now. 

As I've stated before, The Winds of Winter can't come soon enough, so this whole bad fever dream can be put to rest.

There is always this bitter feeling behind positive interaction or characters caring for each other because we know they want us to care just to flip us off in the end. You don't scream "No!" at the screen anymore. Everything has become predictable... Though I must admit that I only cried a little when Hodor died. I didn't think he could die... But that's the negativity thread here so I'll say no more

I'm going to watch the last episode of this season because I'm in too deep now but I won't watch any further. I was so hopeful that it might get better, it could only have gone better after last season. Well that's what I though at least. There was always this hope that the show might become what it once was once again. They crushed it. I'll read the books and that comes from someone who started with the show.

[Le Cygne]

Also Sandra asking LF what he wants... it still doesn't matter what Sandra wants...

[OldGimletEye]

22 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Also Sandra asking LF what he wants... 

Well, I guess we know what next week's personality is going to be, which is clueless naive Sandra.  Last week it was cunning, shrewd and smirking Sandra.

[Mindwalker]

8 hours ago, lostcause said:

I've seen Pilou Asbæk in 5 or 6 different productions and liked him in every one of them, ranging from political drama, comedy to war movies.

 

He was good in "Borgen", where, btw, he played the boyfriend of "Karsi" victim-of-motherhood-at-hardhome. Oh, and a very lovely and funny host of an international show I won't mention because embarassing (but still better than GOT).

[lostcause]

30 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

He was good in "Borgen", where, btw, he played the boyfriend of "Karsi" victim-of-motherhood-at-hardhome. Oh, and a very lovely and funny host of an international show I won't mention because embarassing (but still better than GOT).

Oh man, I forgot he co-hosted the Eurovision. Yeah he was good in Borgen as was Birgitte Hjort Sørensen. Karsi looked promising as a 'show only' character. Sadly that meant she got the axe too soon of course.

[sweetsunray]

1 hour ago, Tyche said:

There is always this bitter feeling behind positive interaction or characters caring for each other because we know they want us to care just to flip us off in the end. You don't scream "No!" at the screen anymore. Everything has become predictable... Though I must admit that I only cried a little when Hodor died. I didn't think he could die... But that's the negativity thread here so I'll say no more

I'm going to watch the last episode of this season because I'm in too deep now but I won't watch any further. I was so hopeful that it might get better, it could only have gone better after last season. Well that's what I though at least. There was always this hope that the show might become what it once was once again. They crushed it. I'll read the books and that comes from someone who started with the show.

I had little hope they could salvage much after S5, because they jumped the shark for me in S5 in the first half already. That said, the show has become even more empty than it already was to me. The first half of S6 was not good imo, but there were some decent scenes here or there. And the episode of last Sunday the show did not do anything that I did not predict to happen or knew what was to happen, after that horrible episode of butthole sniffing, I watched clips of something flashy that I would neither hire nor pay for to watch. It's just complete devoid of story for me now. Truly nothing - just boobs and baubles. I've never been much of an action series/movies fan, unless it has a story for a backbone. It's like watching Alien (one of my all time favorite movies) and then Aliens (the one I skip, prefer III on the prison planet with Charles Dance). It's night and day in storytelling, in mystery, in characterization. 

I hope tWoW comes out before S7. If that happens I'm sure I won't watch GOT at all anymore.

[The Fattest Leech]

@sweetsunray I know for a fact that whatever ASOIAF related book comes out next, then I won't be watching this abysmal show anymore. 

I will take She Wolves of Winterfell if that is what I get... And that should be awesome.