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[Poll] How would you rate episode 706?


Ran
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How would you rate episode 706?  

371 members have voted

  1. 1. What's your rating from 1-10, with 10 being the highest/best?

    • 1
      45
    • 2
      28
    • 3
      37
    • 4
      32
    • 5
      38
    • 6
      28
    • 7
      31
    • 8
      41
    • 9
      43
    • 10
      48


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I wavered between a 7 and an 8, went with 8 as I did enjoy the banter.

The logistics of folk getting around so quickly don't bother me anymore. They could write the show in a way that the logistics were more realistic but that would involve having to put in lots of filler so the timing worked. With infinite budgets they could pull it off but even then we'd have to watch lots of filler (some of which could be interesting world building but by this stage of the story even interesting world building would be annoying).

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6/10

Just too many f-ing clichés in one episode. People being thrown from point A to point B, fanfiction-esque interaction between characters, fan service in general, repeating plot points (the Arya-Sansa tension and LF being creepy and enjoying it), deus ex machina styled plot resolve x2, and Dany and Jon's budding romance that has no grounding whatsoever.

What kept this episode from scoring even lower was the yet again amazing CGI work with dragons as well as superb acting by certain actors (Iain Glenn, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner).

edit.
I guess I'm getting more critical of the show towards the end. I don't think I would rate the previous episodes this low, but my expectations seem to grow more as the endgame approaches.

Edited by Aderyn
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I'll rate it a 7.

For those talking about the "big chains" obviously it would have been from the giants. Reference back to the mammoth chains trying to take down the entrance of the wall. 

I didn't like the Arya/Sansa scenes, why is Arya even wasting her time stirring sh!t up? Hasn't she got better things to be doing.. umm like killing people on her list?

I'm hoping there's something happening here like Arya is setting up Little finger? 

But does she even have to do that? Just kill him and be done with it. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue between the magnificent seven. Tormund and the Hound are always good for a laugh. 

Not so thrilled at Dany and Jon wanting to both compromised now. I mean she already said she'd help him, he didn't have to suddenly bend the knee, the Northerners will be pissed. Maybe he thought he'd get to at least to first base if he did? He held on to that hand pretty tightly.. ;)

 

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Guardian review in the UK:

 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/aug/21/game-of-thrones-the-best-show-on-tv-just-became-the-silliest

 

Quote

 

Game of Thrones: the best show on TV just became the silliest

Yes, this season may be thrilling but it’s too rushed – so much so, in fact, that little things like ‘logic’ and ‘character’ have all but disappeared

 

 

I completely agree with this reviewer.

There appears to be a growing, near-unanimous consensus that the Rubicon of silliness has been crossed this season.

D&D are doing a great disservice to the story, reducing a once complex, character-driven, internally coherent fantasy political drama to mere popcorn spectacle.

I still find the show fun but I'm also incensed by how predictable and silly it has become.

Edited by Krishtotter
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5.  There were so many issues.  I listed the few things I liked. 

-Fellowship dialog on their way to catch a wight

-flaming sword - KEWL - I want one! 

-Polar Bear Zombie thing

-Jon and Dany being vulnerable to each other in a believable way

Edited by lakin1013
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59 minutes ago, Krishtotter said:

The trouble is it has not "just" become the silliest; it's been on a downward trajectory since season 5.  The more viewers hand-waved away the character inconsistencies and plot contrivances, the more the writers felt justified in doling those things out in greater measure. I expect it will only get worse.

 

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Modified McShane Scoring System (MMSS)

Dragons?  YES.  Tits?  NO (though we did see Kit Harrington topless and technically that means nipple-age, and the MMSS team does endeavor to represent and respect all orientations and preferences, and does aim to recognize tit-equivalents for other perspectives. Hmm.)

Okay we'll start at 6 out of 10 on the promise that topless dudes may count as tits for some audience segments.  So let's get to the bonuses and penalties.

No Alfie Allen in the opening credits.  Show, we have talked about this.  -1.  (5)

Seven Samurai In The Snow.  We cut back to this team several times to get in all the interaction and reaction to each other.  Some of it is interesting, some of it is amusing, some of it seems like conversations that maybe we should've had before they wandered into enemy territory with vastly reduced visibility, but whatever.  Gendry hasn't forgotten he hates the brotherhood and why -- he wanted to join them -- and they don't apologize because after all they're dedicated to Fire Jesus and the ends justify the means.  Good.  Jon addresses the Longclaw issue with Jorah and they give Jorah a believable motive for not taking it back, i.e. his respect for his father and his decision.  Good.  Thoros doesn't remember the Battle of Pyke because he was drunk.  Okay that's funny.  Tormund telling Sandor how he wants to make babies with Brienne, okay that's funny, ran a little long though.  And finally we get revenant chat with Jon and Beric.  "You don't look like your father" HO HO HO here's another reminder for the audience of Jon's true lineage.  Beric referencing the one time he met Ned was good, although remember when it was a relevant point that Jon looks VERY MUCH LIKE NED?  Guess Beric forgot this one of the 6 times he came back from the dead.  Anyway Beric drops a line I personally enjoy about "death is the enemy, the enemy always wins, but we fight him anyway."  Jon references the Night's Watch oath.  Does Beric's eyepatch symbolize tunnel vision?  Is it still tunnel vision if it's focused on the thing that actually IS most important?  I guess I'll give the preamble +.5 over all.  (5.5)

Sansa and Arya have an asshole contest.  I think Arya wins.  Hey, remember when Robb and Catelyn got that letter from Sansa and immediately knew it was horse shit because Sansa was a prisoner?  Neither do I, neither does anyone else.  Season 1 feels like a completely different show now.  Anyway, Arya's story about having to retrieve her one arrow over and over after each shot with Ned watching and applauding when she finally hit the target was enjoyable.  Rest of it kinda wasn't.  Arya walks up to her sister, the acting lord, threatens the fuck out of her, then walks away?  Guess she is Ned's daughter after all. -.5 (5)

ZOMBIE BEAR!  Okay that's fucking cool.  A redshirt dies, we establish Sandor is still pyrophobic, Thoros gets munched by a bear and Beric cauterizes the wound with his very handy flaming sword.  Remember this later.  +1 point for HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE BEAR. (6)

Sansa and Littlefinger establish that hey maybe keeping Brienne around for insurance is a good idea.  And it is.  REMEMBER THIS LATER.  WASH.

The Inglorious Basterds jump a small wight scouting party with one White Walker, who Jon busts with Longclaw [Jon WW Kill Count:  2] and all the wights save one collapse immediately.  Well that's convenient.  So they've figured out that White Walkers work like head vampires or whatever, except this one guy's gang had a transfer from another horde in it.  Whatever okay lets just get on with this.  They bound and gag the wight like a regular prisoner so they don't have to spend money on proesthetic stumps for for the extra I guess.  Not at least chopping the arms and legs off seems dumb here.  Gendry is dispatched sans hammer as a runner because "he's the fastest."  Not sure how they'd know this, I assume they're actually just being tactful about him being the weakest fighter of the gang.  Maybe we should've thought about this raven sending idea BEFORE we got to this point?  -.5 for letting us see the bolts of the plot rail. (5.5)

Tyrion addresses some logical concerns with Dany w.r.t. her not being able to have a successor thing, and her plan realistically requiring more than one generation.  Dany tells a smalldick joke w.r.t. Jon before apologizing to Tyrion for the "little" pun.  Really, show?  Scene recovers as Dany correctly establishes she doesn't want to put the succession cart before the taking the throne horse.  She also gets understandably heated at Tyrion and gets kinda paranoid about how much he seems to be thinking about her death.  Dany doesn't totally trust Tyrion and with how crap his plans have worked out for her, she honestly shouldn't.  +.5 because it's always nice when the director lets Emilia Clarke put an emotion besides The Badass Lack Of Emotion into the character. (6)

Remember when Sansa was talking shit about Ned and Robb being dumb a few episodes back?  IMMEDIATELY AFTER WE ESTABLISH KEEPING BRIENNE AROUND IS A GOOD IDEA AND SANSA ACCEPTS THE LOGIC SHE SENDS BRIENNE AWAY AS AN ENVOY TO KING'S LANDING JUST BECAUSE CERSEI WRITES TO THEM.  Now this is a dumb remove your protection move that is worthy of standing alongside classic Stark blunders of seasons past.  And Sansa should know better than anyone not to trust Cersei for a second.  And we JUST ESTABLISHED THE OPPOSITE OF DOING THIS IS A GOOD IDEA.  Minus a point and a half, because it's one thing to have a stupid plot contrivance in a show, it's another thing to imply something is stupid in a previous scene and then do it anyway.  (4.5)

Team Suicide Mission runs away, gets stuck on some thin ice and then has to run across it anyway, towards a convenient island of proper land in the middle.  Now, I'm not going to complain about how the ice holds for our heroes and not for the horde since there is, after all, a vast difference in weight between 8 dudes and THOUSANDS.  But man.  "Hey if we take out that leader they'll all drop."  "No!  We need to keep this one animated so we can show it as proof."  FIRST OF ALL, how the fuck you gonna get to the Night's King from here.  Second of all, if you could, you wouldn't need to prove shit to Cersei because you'd have dealt with this whole undead menace on your own.  So they're surrounded by a big ass horde and we get a standoff.  Thoros eventually either freezes to death or he's finally heard one too many dumb lines of dialogue and his brain peaces the fuck out.  Gendry, and coherent writing, have escaped clean.  Beric's super convenient omnitool sword which cauterized Thoros earlier now easily burns him.  Sandor kicking the wight POW at one point during the standoff because it won't shut up is funny, but otherwise this is pretty terrible.  We know SOMEHOW they're getting out of this but this show used to not put characters it means/needs to survive in situations where their survival is completely illogical.  minus 1 point (3.5)

Gendry collapses right before the Eastwatch Gate but close enough to be seen and dragged in because of course he does.  WASH.

Hey, you know who'd have been useful in relaying information from the Suicide Squad to Dany and also would be able to act far enough in advance to make it more plausible she could actually arrive in time?  BRAN.  Where the fuck is he and why isn't he tailing these guys with a crow all the while?  And come to think of it why is he letting Sansa and Arya misunderstand each other?  This is the problem with omniscient characters.  You have to come up with a reason WHY they don't act, or at least acknowledge that it's WEIRD they don't intervene and let the audience wonder why that is, and establish teasers and hints that we'll eventually figure it our or see why.  But no Bran this week.  -.5 (3)

Dany gets the message remarkably quickly Tyrion tells her to buckle her seatbelt or whatever but Dany's done listening to Tyrion because she's a strong woman who don't need a man and well actually Tyrion's kinda been full of bad advice for her so far, which she points out, so she should blow him off at this point.  Also clearly she gives a fuck about Jon and that's part of her motive here.  Then again, if she was worried enough about Jon to fly off and back him up.  Why.  Didn't.  She.  Leave.  Earlier.  Whatever.  WASH.  (3)

Sandor throws a rock and hits a jawless wight in the face and then calls it a dumb cunt.  Okay that's fucking hilarious.  He throws another rock and it lands short, which establishes the ice isn't all the fragile (somehow) so now the wights rush across the lake and we get an epic battle in which 7 stand against thousands and only take a redshirt casualty.  Jon shouts "fall back" at one point and everyone watching the world over immediately sasses their TV/computer screen "LOL TO WHERE?" Honestly at this point I'm FFWing to when Dany shows up only stopping if it looks like a named character is in the process of biting it, so I may have cheated myself out of the effect of the Tormund death fake out.  But then didn't they do a Tormund death fake out during Battle Of The Bastards?  Anyway Dany rides in and roasts some fools, and every body piles on Drogon's back without buckling up (Sandor, however, wisely skewers the POW Wight on a convenient spike on Drogon's back).  Oh but what's this Jon is playing hero ball for some reason, and that reason is so we can do another heroic sacrifice that ends up not actually being a sacrifice because Death Fakeouts Are Cool.  Drogon flies away with everybody except Jon, who gets dragged under and then left alone by the horde.  Jon holds his breath in freezing ass water for like 10 minutes or whatever and drags himself out after everyone has sadly flown away.  Visually fun but man is this show's downturn in writing showing.  -1.5 (1.5)

Okay with that out of the way, the cool bits about this segment.  THE NIGHT'S KING GIVES NO FUCKS ABOUT YOUR DRAGONS.  There's a little detail that I really enjoyed, and that is there is, at one point, a line/wall of fire on the ground from burning wights.  Now, this time, mind you, it's actual dragon fire, not regular fire.  And again, we see the Night's King walk towards it and automatically snuff it out with his presence.  Even dragonfire isn't Walker Proof.  Taking these guys out won't be so easy after all :)  Anyway, as you'd expect from a completely alien intellect like The One True King of Westeros and Beyond, the Night's King is unemotional and unphased by the arrival of the dragons and their laying waste to his army.  He calls for an ice spear from one of his associates and grounds Viserion with one javelin throw that would put artillery fire to shame, let alone an olympian.  Which would be more ridiculous except we've firmly established this guy is super magical so why the fuck not.  Night's King flexing, I will always reward. +1 (2.5)

Jon resurfaces and the horde notices.  BENJEN STARK TO THE RESCUE.  Okay I didn't think to see that coming.  Anyway Benjen ends up making the heroic sacrifice because fuck it he's technically dead anyway, giving up his horse and drawing aggro while Jon runs way.  There you go Jon, you found your uncle.  Hah.  +.5 for actually surprising me. (3)

Sansa breaks into Arya's room and holy shit is this terrible.  First of all Arya keeps her faces in a messenger bag we've never seen on her in previous scenes.  Second of all the messenger bag is modern looking as fuck and I'm surprised they even remembered to make it out of leather (although to be fair the props department has generally done a really good job on this show even when the writing hasn't).  Third of all Arya does this "let's play a game" shit.  Then Arya peels off her mask to reveal it was really Ramsay all along.  And again Arya basically tells Sansa I am going to fucking kill you and then...doesn't.  And hands over Sansa the valyrian dagger Chekov.  What a wet fart of a scene. If Arya were actually going to go evil this might work better.  But it seems like they're trying to make Littlefinger's death "shocking" by not doing any set up to have make any sense.  In the meantime, Arya and Sansa should be literally getting ready to kill each other in self-defense.  Which would be tremendously powerful and tragic if they did it (much as I would hate to see it).  But they won't. -1.5 (1.5)

LOVE, however, the Dany/Jon scene. Tangent time:  Emilia Clarke's performance in the Dany role has gotten a lot of criticism over the years, here and elsewhere.  Her Dany has often been called wooden, and worse.  I've never thought the criticism has been completely fair.  Especially now, in later seasons, where I think it's more clear that there's a director/writer problem than an actor problem with several characters on the show.  TL;DR Clarke does bring a decent amount of believable emotion to the role, it's just that she is rarely asked to do so.  So I like scenes where Dany lets her public mask of stoicism slip and loses some composure; Clarke does these moments on the show really well, actually, they're just scarce moments.  I still don't really feel LOVERS chemistry from the Jon and Dany characters yet but I finally got to see FRIENDS from them this week, and much of that is due to an all-too-rare (i.m.o.) scene with Dany showing someone the real her.  Also, due to the circumstances of the scene Dany has seen Jon's scars.  She doesn't ask him about them yet but that's coming, I'm sure, since she can see "stabbed in the heart" isn't just hyperbole after all.  +1 (2.5)

Okay where the fuck did the army of the dead get those big ass chains?  -.5 (2)

HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE ICE DRAGON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Knew this was coming, of course, but the scene was well timed as far as giving the audience time to have anticipation and anxiety build up before the final payoff, of that giant dragon eye springing open bright blue.  +1 (3)

3 out of 10 overall.

Much like last week the show is good visually and musically and is consistently delivering on cathartic big moments and amusing character interactions, but the path it takes to get to those moments is terrible, as the writing is actively harmful to suspension of disbelief.  Once again the show is FUN without necessarily being GOOD, and it's painfully noticeable in relation to previous seasons.  This show isn't as good as it used to be and perhaps the most frustrating thing about that is it isn't too far away from being almost as good as it was, and yet that final step towards cohesion is no longer being taken.  Stuff like Jon forgetting that bringing a wight to Cersei is the means to an end (dumb as it is) and not the actual end itself.  Ugh.  Anyway this show used to reward the audience for paying close attention to detail and now it punishes the audience for it with glaring inconsistencies in internal logic.  I don't mind a show I have to turn my brain off to enjoy.  It's just weird and jarring to watch a show turn into that kind of show after making so much hay in early seasons by not being that kind of show. 

Whatever fucking zombie ice dragon \m/ \m/

 

 

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8/10. I didn't like Gendry teleporting, nor Dany, that could have been done better.

Still, the CGI and production values this Show has are simply too extraordinary. This looked better than any fantasy movie/show of the past 15 years.

And I'll say something else: I really like how Kit Harington has grown into the role. He is quite better than Emilia at this point.

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2 hours ago, Ser Quork said:

The trouble is it has not "just" become the silliest; it's been on a downward trajectory since season 5.  The more viewers hand-waved away the character inconsistencies and plot contrivances, the more the writers felt justified in doling those things out in greater measure. I expect it will only get worse.

 

At this rate, if the show was the same quality as it was season 5 (which wasn't as good as the previous seasons but is better than it is now..) I would take that over this .... whatever this season 7 is, any day. haha.

 

1 hour ago, Ingelheim said:

8/10. I didn't like Gendry teleporting, nor Dany, that could have been done better.

Still, the CGI and production values this Show has are simply too extraordinary. This looked better than any fantasy movie/show of the past 15 years.

And I'll say something else: I really like how Kit Harington has grown into the role. He is quite better than Emilia at this point.

I am not going to lie, I didn't like Kit and Emilia at first. I didn't like their acting or really anything. Kit I now like, he has done a pretty good job with the role and grown into it. Emilia is an awful actress. It's painful to watch her scenes. Also, their love scenes are just so forced, IMO, it's like watching a train wreck.

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32 minutes ago, btfu806 said:

I am not going to lie, I didn't like Kit and Emilia at first. I didn't like their acting or really anything. Kit I now like, he has done a pretty good job with the role and grown into it. Emilia is an awful actress. It's painful to watch her scenes. Also, their love scenes are just so forced, IMO, it's like watching a train wreck.

Kit is like 28457229484 times better now than he was in Season 1. He's become my Jon Snow, and that's a lot coming from me.

Emilia...actually the opposite. She's grown worse with every year that passes and it doesn't seem like she'll improve for Season 8. It's actually a shame, I think she was fantastic in earlier seasons but now she is just average.

Edited by Ingelheim
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I had to give it a 5.  Visually - it was a 10+.  Mad props to everyone from the concept artists, to the set builders, to the directors and coordinators to the visual effects people for making it a beautiful episode to watch.  My issue was with the large gaps in logic - and I'm guessing that the culprit is there is still so much story left to tell, with almost no time left before the grand finale of the show.  If there was not this self inflicted "end" date - they could take time to establish how fast a raven and a dragon can fly, how you keep from freezing to death sitting on a rock past the Wall, how Jon escaped drowning and freezing to death wearing such heavy, then later wet clothes, where Benjen has been and what he's been up to and the purpose behind the dead  carrying such large chains  (I'm sure there are other things - but those spring to mind first). 

Yes - some would have hated the explanations anyway - but at least in the past there was some attempt to throw some kind of logic - or at least clues behind an otherwise seemingly impossible event.  So - I'm not calling "lazy writing" like others - I'm calling "running out of time".

I'll watch until the very last fade out of the end credits next year and cut them a mile of slack in the process, but I do hope they try to inject more "The gold arrived safely at King's Landing" moments next year.  Little things like a line of dialog or a quick visual clue that we can all point to as helping explain why something happened - or didn't happen, rather than watching a scene (even a very beautifully shot scene) and have it tainted by then thinking "seriously guys - where did that come from?". 

Ten seconds.  Tyrion says "You don't where they are, or even if they are still alive" and Dany responds "Drogon will have me there before the sun sets, and HE will find them!" just before they leap off of the cliff.  I would have been satisfied.

And to end on a positive note - I did appreciate them using the hike north to clear up some things like Longclaw and Gendry's feelings about the Brotherhood,  and almost every word out of Tormund's mouth was gold.  And yeah - the Dany/Jon thing had a certain amount of feels going on.

 

Edited by Damitol
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i got to be honest with you guys, this was a 3. it was wrong on almost all levels. usually i wouldnt go lower than a 5 or 6 for the general high quality of this show but the destruction of consistency and sense was a new low.

- i never liked the character benjen (helping bran should be a death sentence on its own, oh wait, it is!) but seeing his potential and mystery cheaply wasted and at the same time getting jon saved in such a miserable way, was weakest sauce.

- the whole idiotic idea to catch a damn zombie cersei wont give a      about, killed tyrion in passing.

- this crappy "i would if i could" cheese and with it all the failed jonny romance.

- running back to the wall? and if that wasnt enough, riding back soaked wet through ice? and dany taking spaceship dragonprise to warp 9? And all of it happening in one episode? Total chaos. 

- though not on the same level as the other failed elements, these        chains! and the obvious fish zombie necessary to attach it...

- the sansa and arya storyline along with the whole LF drag.

if it wasnt for tormund and hound talking about brienne, this episode would have completely failed. that way its simply a disaster. 3, never thought i had to be that hard to my favourite show. somehow i am afraid to watch next episode. lets just hope they had to mess up one episode for whatever reason and this was an ugly exception. it left a very foul taste in my mouth. 

frances called it seven samurai in the snow, i cant leave it that way because seven samurai is cinamatic pinnacle. this episode was the complete prometheus experience. a slap into the face of brainowners. 

Edited by GilletteMace
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14 minutes ago, GilletteMace said:

if it wasnt for tormund and hound talking about brienne, this episode would have completely failed. that way its simply a disaster. 3, never thought i had to be that hard to my favourite show. somehow i am afraid to watch next episode. lets just hope they had to mess up one episode for whatever reason and this was an ugly exception. it left a very foul taste in my mouth. 

You're right, that was literally the only good point in the entire episode. 

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