Okay, NOW Have We Seen The Most Wildly Unrealistic Thing Ever on GoT???

[El Guapo]

I don't have a problem with the "teleporting" on the show as it is understood that a certain amount of time has passed between scenes. The issue to me is that they do a very poor job at explaining that passage of time. As mentioned a few pages back in the very episode of the series the entire king's entourage travels from Kings Landing to Winterfell in the span of about 5 minutes of show time. However we are told by Cersei that they have been traveling for months. So no issue there. All they had to do this episode was have a line of dialogue from one of the magnificent seven saying that they have been out on this damn island for five days or whatever and that is it. We are talking about 10 seconds to establish this. 

[storm.131]

34 minutes ago, Ser Hyle said:

What i find more infuriating is the people on other forums who reply to people complaining about the violations of space/time with comments like "you suspend disbelief for dragons and shadow assassins, but you can't believe that Gendry/raven/dragon can save them in time." These people just don't get it.

I agree, but I would add another thing that frustrates me and that is the lamest of lame responses:  "can you do better?", as if to say that only film makers have the right to an opinion of film, only writers have the right to an opinion of scripts, etc, etc.  Anyone with the senses of sight and hearing has the right to an opinion of a tv show AND the right to express it online.  Also, there is no right or wrong in most of these storylines.  If a scene or dialogue doesn't ring true for the individual viewer, it doesn't mean his or her opinion is wrong.

[Khorkalba]

1 hour ago, Being Daenerys Targaryen said:

Yeah ... The show was good from season 1 to season 5... Season 6 it started changing... and this season is just too much

The decline started far earlier than season 6.

Season 3 was an abomination of bad writing and deviations from the books.

[Ser Hyle]

28 minutes ago, Cron said:

 Actually, with VERY minor changes in the script, a LOT of this could have been avoided), but each person has their own threshold for what is or is not acceptable in terms of "realism."

Would an example of this be, The Frozen 7 (and their 7 redshirts) taking ravens with them on their nonsensical kamikaze mission, and/or Dany flying to Eastwatch to be on standby for an extraction mission? 

[3sm1r]

17 minutes ago, El Guapo said:

I don't have a problem with the "teleporting" on the show as it is understood that a certain amount of time has passed between scenes. The issue to me is that they do a very poor job at explaining that passage of time. As mentioned a few pages back in the very episode of the series the entire king's entourage travels from Kings Landing to Winterfell in the span of about 5 minutes of show time. However we are told by Cersei that they have been traveling for months. So no issue there. All they had to do this episode was have a line of dialogue from one of the magnificent seven saying that they have been out on this damn island for five days or whatever and that is it. We are talking about 10 seconds to establish this. 

I disagree, a line of dialogue wouldn't have been enough: they should have changed the whole structure of the episode. Indeed, it doesn't make sense to send Gendry to ask for Dany's help before they know that the very convenient breaking of the ice would happen giving them a bit of time. If you are in an immediate danger (as they thought they were), it's useless to look for an help that can arrive at best in three days.

[Ser Hyle]

19 minutes ago, Khorkalba said:

The decline started far earlier than season 6.

Season 3 was an abomination of bad writing and deviations from the books.

Yes. The decline clearly began when the show no longer paralleled the books as closely as it did in the first couple seasons. That being said, if it were to continue on that path, the show would need to be 12 seasons long and there would be too many characters and subplots for normal TV viewers to handle. As much as I would love to see a true adaptation all the way through, I don't think it was feasible. That being said, this doesn't excuse the show from doing terrible things like turning the Dorne subplot into a Michael Bay movie. 

[El Guapo]

15 minutes ago, 3sm1r said:

I disagree, a line of dialogue wouldn't have been enough: they should have changed the whole structure of the episode. Indeed, it doesn't make sense to send Gendry to ask for Dany's help before they know that the very convenient breaking of the ice would happen giving them a bit of time. If you are in an immediate danger (as they thought they were), it's useless to look for an help that can arrive at best in three days.

Well I was only talking about the timing issue not the logic of the plot.

[Cas Stark]

39 minutes ago, Khorkalba said:

The decline started far earlier than season 6.

Season 3 was an abomination of bad writing and deviations from the books.

I don't know if I would go so far as to say either seasons 3 or 4 were abominations.  I had a lot of issues with Cat and Robb's stories in season 3, and that is when I had my epiphany that the showrunners really only cared about shock and awe and were not very good at developing their own storylines....this carried through in season 4, which had many high points, the opener of season 4 is among my favorite episodes of the show....but where they injected more of their own filler and more of their own plotlines, which almost uniformly are poorly constructed.

The show simply went off the rails in season 5, and as far as I can see there have been only a handful of good episodes since then.  

[Tywinelle]

I lost faith in the writers when Baelish delivered Sansa into the hands of the Boltons.  That made zero sense.  Call me an optimist for overlooking the silly scenes that came before that.

[Tagganaro]

43 minutes ago, Ser Hyle said:

Yes. The decline clearly began when the show no longer paralleled the books as closely as it did in the first couple seasons. That being said, if it were to continue on that path, the show would need to be 12 seasons long and there would be too many characters and subplots for normal TV viewers to handle. As much as I would love to see a true adaptation all the way through, I don't think it was feasible. That being said, this doesn't excuse the show from doing terrible things like turning the Dorne subplot into a Michael Bay movie. 

Yes pretty much this.  Like I have said many times on here, I generally tend to feel bad for D & D.  They signed up to do a proper adaptation, which is their strength, then were sort of blindsided by GRRM's ballooning world in AFFC/ADWD, then had nothing but bullet points to even work off of for this year and next.  They are out of their element and being hung out to dry here.

That being said, nothing excuses things like Dorne, these 2 most recent episodes not making a bit of sense, and their need to rush this finish at the expense of plot.  They are sort of buckling under their own self-imposed time constraints now and I'm not sure why.

53 minutes ago, 3sm1r said:

I disagree, a line of dialogue wouldn't have been enough: they should have changed the whole structure of the episode. Indeed, it doesn't make sense to send Gendry to ask for Dany's help before they know that the very convenient breaking of the ice would happen giving them a bit of time. If you are in an immediate danger (as they thought they were), it's useless to look for an help that can arrive at best in three days.

Again, it's been mentioned here many many times, but to fix the structure of the episode is SO EASY.  It doesn't make sense to me why they decided on doing it this way.  You already have established an extremely anxious and worried Dany sitting on Dragonstone worrying about Jorah and Jon- you've done all the work necessary at this point to have Dany show up in the nick of time.  There is no need for this stupid Gendry scenario which added nothing narratively to the episode.  

You can literally cut out every bit of nonsense here by simply cutting out the Gendry stuff.  No need to stall the battle with the ice because time doesn't matter at this point- You've already established Dany leaving shortly after Jon because she is worried about him.

[3sm1r]

22 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

Again, it's been mentioned here many many times, but to fix the structure of the episode is SO EASY.  It doesn't make sense to me why they decided on doing it this way.  You already have established an extremely anxious and worried Dany sitting on Dragonstone worrying about Jorah and Jon- you've done all the work necessary at this point to have Dany show up in the nick of time.  There is no need for this stupid Gendry scenario which added nothing narratively to the episode.  

You can literally cut out every bit of nonsense here by simply cutting out the Gendry stuff.  No need to stall the battle with the ice because time doesn't matter at this point- You've already established Dany leaving shortly after Jon because she is worried about him.

Correct. But in this way Dany would have implicitly acknowledged that the mission was dumb from the beginning. 

[Lord Okra]

27 minutes ago, Tywinelle said:

I lost faith in the writers when Baelish delivered Sansa into the hands of the Boltons.  That made zero sense.  Call me an optimist for overlooking the silly scenes that came before that.

How does it not make sense.  This is laid out in the show pretty clearly.

LF gives Sansa to the Bolton's so he can.....

Then go get the Vale to and gather the army to "rescue" her.  So that he can have the North and the Vale under his thumb via controlling/manipulating SweetRobin and Sansa.

It was a power grab plot by LF.

Only he didn't know that Ramsey was a psycho to the point that giving Sansa to him would cost him Sansa's trust.

Still, it made perfect sense for LF to do it given his goals.

[Cas Stark]

7 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

How does it not make sense.  This is laid out in the show pretty clearly.

LF gives Sansa to the Bolton's so he can.....

Then go get the Vale to and gather the army to "rescue" her.  So that he can have the North and the Vale under his thumb via controlling/manipulating SweetRobin and Sansa.

It was a power grab plot by LF.

Only he didn't know that Ramsey was a psycho to the point that giving Sansa to him would cost him Sansa's trust.

Still, it made perfect sense for LF to do it given his goals.

Um, yeah no, not really.  If you recall, Sansa goes to WF before Stannis is dead.  So there was a strong chance that Stannis would win the battle, and then LF has nothing and no more control. This is part of what makes it so stupid.  Not only is he risking losing Sansa to Stannis, or getting killed, for no reason at all, but he literally gets NOTHING in return for her from the Boltons.  And, even if we credit LF with greenseeing and he knew for a total fact that Stannis would lose, he still gets nothing in return because now Sansa is a Bolton.  He cannot have foreseen that both Roose and Ramsay would die leaving her a widow and free again.  And then there is the issue that marrying Sansa for the Boltons meant a public break with the Lannisters and they would be considered again in rebellion for marrying a woman wanted for regicide, LOL.
 

So, yes, it may even be stupider than the wight hunt, I would really have to think about it.

ETA...the idea that he intended to use the Vale army to "rescue" her is also pretty stupid, since it's been stated in the show that WF could withstand a massive siege.  And of course, if Ramsay had already gotten a child on her, then she's dead anyway.  And then there is the fact that people would have seen him arrive with Sansa at WF.....so it would be easy to show that she was not stolen out of the Vale.  This continues to be a dangling plot hole in the show and one more reason that LF should be dead.

[sweetsunray]

9 hours ago, Yoren Luck said:

I'm sorry for bringing book plot points into a show forum and i guess inadvertently making you read some of the source material.  I won't quote the books again, didn't realize that was an issue.

It isn't an issue, except a personal one of a poster who is not the OP trying to censure criticism and moderate whether who watches the show. Unless you post in a thread that says spoiler free in its title, you are allowed to bring and discuss book stuff including quotes. It's the TV- section in a dedicated book forum, where most participants have read the books through and through. You are not posting on an Unsullied website.

It is an adaptation of the books and its story, period, and yes comparing things is perfectly valid for those who have read the books. And your opinion is valid, as much as anyone else's, despite the fact that the books are the books and the show the show, where a large part of the show-story deviates more and more from the books, and even the show's finale season or ultimate episode will not completely match the book one. I've come to regard GOT as an alt-fanfic.

I also totally agree with @The Fattest Leech that they are actually still using book material, and up until S6 they had plot narratives of aDwD, such as the scene you cited and the kingsmoot of hte Ironborn, and the RR siege. At present they still use imagery and base part of their dialogue on book scenes in a plotzee and keyword way. I recommend reading the chapter of aSoS, Arya IV for example and aCoK, Arya II, in particular the scene where Arya challenges Gendry to a sword fight and the scene at the smithy in Acorn Hall for half the dialogue with Gendry in it. Jorah's conversation with Thoros about Pyke comes from that chapter, including the "brave" and "drunk" ideas. Both innocent duel/tumble scenes revolve around each individual's strengths: one is stronger, Arya's quicker. A character can only win a play-fight of Arya if they're "faster" than her. Tormund is a freefolk version of Ser Hyle in aFfC. The cave scene of tWoW, Arianne II was used at Dragonstone, and Dany is put in white and have her hair braided like Val in aDwD in this episode.

As for the speculation on "who's to blame":

Why they write plotzee alt-fanfic can only be speculated about, and I personally think it's a combination of various reasons.

• streamlining for production reasons
• budget. For example I think they knew from S2 onward that they could never do the Vale tWoW arc for budget reasons. They didn't get their polar bear for example until this season, while it's a feature of the attack on the Fist beyond the Wall (should be S3 stuff)
• an agreement with George not to spoil certain fates and major twists of tWoW, and moved up deadline and delay each season (evidence from S4 on):
  • hence Jaime on a tangent in Dorne, then getting his RL plot sort of and returning to a Cersei that even Unsullied expect Jaime to abandon at the start of S7. His fate in aDwD hangs on a cliffhanger. Brienne has been on a tangent ever since.
  • hence Stannis gets a fate if you take the Pink Letter at face value
  • hence Edmure's fate is shelved and BF killed, as tWoW prologue has Jeyne Westerling in it
  • hence they somewhat confirmed in broad lines that Sansa and the Vale army will end up at WF, Rickon likely dies, Jon will end up as KitN, R+L=J, Hodor, Dany sails for Westeros, that Sandor is the gravedigger and get back into the action as will Gendry, Arya will return to Westeros, House Frey, House Tyrell, House Martell and House Bolton will be decimated somehow, Euron's gonna be trouble, Cersei will blow something up.
  • this may be the reason why the writing team is so small and not expanded: keep what they know whether they do it differently or not within a small circle. And this puts enormous strain and weariness. It's completely not done in the industry to micro-manage the writing for this long, because you have less time and need insight from fresh eyes on flaws.
• their inexperience at production
• their fanboyism of and catering to certain actors and personal vision
• they're not George

The more they went off-the books, even when they still had books, the poorer the writing, even if the acting chemistry made it a riveting watch. Arya's Harrenhal plot is definitely poorer than the book one (especially the resolution of it), but Charles Dance and Maisie save it. They try to come up with twists of their own, without betraying George's tWoW twists he has already, but as architects and weary writers the how-to gives it away and just comes across as faux-tension, and they make huge mistakes against logic. Their inside the episode for this episode makes that clear.

Personally, I would have preferred a version that remains truer to George's plans and characterization. I don't care about being spoiled: I'm one of those who reads the end of a novel, after the first few chapters and then reads the path in between. But the negative response to D&D's inside the episode balloons of "When George told us" Shyreen's fate and how Hodor got his name makes clear that they would have greatly angered book-readers who don't want to be spoiled about tWoW and endgame. Ultimately it is the most responsible choice to not spoil whatever George has in store for us in tWoW and aDoS. Non book reading audience wouldn't care either way, and the majority of book-readers wouldn't want to be spoiled. And as the show got so big and everywhere in the media it would be near impossible for an individual to completely avoid being spoiled, even if you don't watch it. At present most can learn some show event and think "that's just the show". And I can admit that even if they had tried to be truer to the path to the endgame from S4 onwards, they'd have still diappointed.  But they knew this when they started to pitch it for HBO, when they began the first season. They hoped and George tried, but there never was a guarantee in that regard.

So, they had S6 written with Dany coming for Westeros with her Dothraki, Unsullied and Ironborn and super-alliance with Dorne and the Reach. Meanwhile they had written Cersei so that they possibly could have Jaime turn on her by the start of S7. Then they have to start on S7 and realize that Dany's too powerful and Jaime must be kept in KL for another season, try to write it so that Dany's alliances and armies are more leveled. They also have to prepare for S8 so that the confrontation with the NK's army isn't just lets have the 3 dragons put them all on fire, and thus decide to give the NK a dragon, a twist, but requiring massive jumps through hoops to make it happen, and using characters where Jorah, Jon, Sandor, Gendry and wildlings are endgame. Tormund's the sole established wildling character. That pretty much only leaves Thoros, Beric and Benjen-Coldhands to die. Beric would be the least twist in this, because he's actually dead since aSoS. The faux-near-death plots work in other more generic shows. In this show viewers think: George would have killed this or that one, without pardon, and if they were to come back they'd be total different, very disturbing characters. So, they had to put them in danger without killing them, and they worked out a plot that rankles on all sides.

And I find it an enormous pity, because they had to do something, they put effort into it, in details, build up reveals, travelogue and WF dialogue, more than in other episodes of this season imo, and semblance of time passing. But it's treading on rotten ice (characterization of the sisters, framework logic of LF still being alive and going on a mad wight hunt, timeframe really not working out) and fell in icy water. 

[ramla]

The show's writing declined after the show outran the books. BUT, there was definitly bad writing and plotting prior. Mostly due to D&Ds story deviations like Sansa marrying Ramsy Bolton... The hacking up of Stannis Character... the 20 good men...Varys leaving KL and Qyburn taking his birds.... The absense of the Direwolves and the Warging.

i so wanted to see Stannis and jon interact. Very similar type characters in the books and theres a scene in the books i would have loved to see.

[Lord Okra]

7 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Um, yeah no, not really.  If you recall, Sansa goes to WF before Stannis is dead.  So there was a strong chance that Stannis would win the battle, and then LF has nothing and no more control. This is part of what makes it so stupid.  Not only is he risking losing Sansa to Stannis, or getting killed, for no reason at all, but he literally gets NOTHING in return for her from the Boltons.  And, even if we credit LF with greenseeing and he knew for a total fact that Stannis would lose, he still gets nothing in return because now Sansa is a Bolton.  He cannot have foreseen that both Roose and Ramsay would die leaving her a widow and free again.  And then there is the issue that marrying Sansa for the Boltons meant a public break with the Lannisters and they would be considered again in rebellion for marrying a woman wanted for regicide, LOL.
 

So, yes, it may even be stupider than the wight hunt, I would really have to think about it.

ETA...the idea that he intended to use the Vale army to "rescue" her is also pretty stupid, since it's been stated in the show that WF could withstand a massive siege.  And of course, if Ramsay had already gotten a child on her, then she's dead anyway.  And then there is the fact that people would have seen him arrive with Sansa at WF.....so it would be easy to show that she was not stolen out of the Vale.  This continues to be a dangling plot hole in the show and one more reason that LF should be dead.

Uh, they had a conversation about all this.

LF gets Cersie to hand him the north if he'll take the Vale to defeat the winner of the Boltons/Stannis battle.

LF has multiple outs in this scenario.  If Stannis wins, he can attack Stannis and take the North.....with the crown's approval.

If the Bolton's win.....he can attack them because they "betrayed" Cersie and then he rules the North....with the crown's approval.

If somehow neither win.......he can convince the Lords of the Vale to attack to save Sansa and he gains control of the North.

It was a great plan by an outstanding schemer.

Chaos.....he was creating it so he could take the North for himself either directly or via a proxy.....Sansa.  He is still working this plan in show.....trying to rule via establishing a proxy.....Sansa......she just isn't going along.

And LF isn't dead because Sansa feels she has control over him.  She belittles him constantly.  She feels he is no threat to HER really plus she feels she needs his Vale forces.  Otherwise, he'd be dead.

And he will be very soon after she discovers the game he's been playing with the sisters.

[Tagganaro]

19 minutes ago, 3sm1r said:

Correct. But in this way Dany would have implicitly acknowledged that the mission was dumb from the beginning. 

I think the show would have been MUCH better off immediately acknowledging from the start how stupid this mission was.  I mean, like I can very much understand the really base logic at the center of it- you need something to show Cersei to hopefully get her to agree to a cease-fire.  But the idea you could just send 7 guys into a vast expanse in sub-zero weather against an unknown multitude of enemies to kidnap one of them is insane.  And the show would have been better off having multiple characters point this out and at least pay lip service to the idea that there are no other alternatives (even if there are lol).  

But yeah...it seems as if the show is in such a rush that it doesn't have time for basic logic behind its plots anymore.  

[Cas Stark]

8 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

Uh, they had a conversation about all this.

LF gets Cersie to hand him the north if he'll take the Vale to defeat the winner of the Boltons/Stannis battle.

LF has multiple outs in this scenario.  If Stannis wins, he can attack Stannis and take the North.....with the crown's approval.

If the Bolton's win.....he can attack them because they "betrayed" Cersie and then he rules the North....with the crown's approval.

If somehow neither win.......he can convince the Lords of the Vale to attack to save Sansa and he gains control of the North.

It was a great plan by an outstanding schemer.

Chaos.....he was creating it so he could take the North for himself either directly or via a proxy.....Sansa.  He is still working this plan in show.....trying to rule via establishing a proxy.....Sansa......she just isn't going along.

And LF isn't dead because Sansa feels she has control over him.  She belittles him constantly.  She feels he is no threat to HER really plus she feels she needs his Vale forces.  Otherwise, he'd be dead.

And he will be very soon after she discovers the game he's been playing with the sisters.

It has also you know, been established in the show that no Southern army can ever hold or take the North, so his plan is again stupid and worthless from the word go.  He might get the Vale lords to agree to go North to save the daughter of Ned Stark from turncloaks like the Boltons, but to fight against Stannis, doubtful. 

It was a brutally stupid plan that would end in disaster 9 out of 10 times except that the show makes everyone forget things that have already happened....which is why no one in WF knows that Sansa rode in with LF, which would turn the Vale lords against him....so Sansa doesn't need him at all.  All she has ever had to do is say that LF forced her to go North and marry Ramsay against her will.  Who is going to contradict her?  No one.  So it is more BS plot holes that Sansa thinks she needs LF for any reason other than the show wants him to stay alive as long as possible.

[sweetsunray]

5 hours ago, Being Daenerys Targaryen said:

When That coward was playing with the water he was meant to give to Ghost at Craster's... That water became ice within seconds because a WW was approaching... Assuming the WW were there even before dawn, then that icy ground should have become hard a long before Clegane threw that shit stone... Just thinking and saying... 

I know. I just think it was writing convenience to hae the ice breka because D&D admitted in the inside-the-episode they wanted the NK to have a dragon and Dany to lose one, get some deadly adventure going without killing them, except for the spares they could do away with. They had to get them in a confrontation where the wights are halted by a barrier, and have time pass enough to fudge with Dany saving them. The WWs and NKs can freeze stuff, but here they didn't, because then D&D don't have a stand-off. It's got nothing to do with some super plan by the NK. If the NK's a greenseer who can see into the future (something Bran hasn't been shown to do) and could see which dragon he'd be able to take down, then he also knows he's gonna lose. So, then that means he's trying to change the future, and thus no reason for him to get all of them killed once Gendry's sent running. The whole NK-set-up-trap-because-he-knows-hes-getting-a-dragon is full of foreknowledge paradoxes,and doesn't explain him not freezing the lake to kill them, and throwing a spear at Viserion before Drogon.

 

[Lord Okra]

6 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

I think the show would have been MUCH better off immediately acknowledging from the start how stupid this mission was.  I mean, like I can very much understand the really base logic at the center of it- you need something to show Cersei to hopefully get her to agree to a cease-fire.  But the idea you could just send 7 guys into a vast expanse in sub-zero weather against an unknown multitude of enemies to kidnap one of them is insane.  And the show would have been better off having multiple characters point this out and at least pay lip service to the idea that there are no other alternatives (even if there are lol).  

But yeah...it seems as if the show is in such a rush that it doesn't have time for basic logic behind its plots anymore.  

The show does acknowledge it is a stupid idea repeatedly.

How many on screen conversations do we have to ignore in order to say the characters don't think it is stupid?  A half dozen or so?

This post is like many others.....it basically ignores half of what has been presented on screen in order to complain about the show.

7 guys didn't go.  How many went?  Not 7.  I guess we just ignore that it was twice that.

Just like we ignore every other character calling it stupid.  Thormund calls it stupid a half dozen times.  They even explain why they are doing the stupid mission to him.....over the two stupid Queens that they need.  Even Dany calls it stupid.  She has a whole conversation about how these heros out stupid each other.....