[SPOILERS thru S7] Where did the show go wrong?

[hewman]

23 hours ago, btfu806 said:

That's probably going to be how the show ends. Just a close up of a cock, for 15 minutes. No music, no dialog. Just a cock.

I haven’t laughed that hard for years. Thank you!

[Tagganaro]

9 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

To answer seriously, I'd actually say the show 'went wrong' by simply trading away its integrity.

HBO (who is now a person for the purposes of this) looked at D&D one day and said, 'Hey, that Terry guy, really short, he makes lots of funny one-liners, right? MARKETING GUYS, GET ME FIFTEEN MUGS WITH TERRY'S CATCHPHRASES ON THEM!'

And D&D said 'Uh, actually his name is Tyrion, and uh...'

'Oh, speaking of which, that villain, the Joker, right? Shit, no, it's a medievally name, coming to me, Gordon Ramsey?'

'Ramsay Bolton?'

'Yeah, people think he's badass so can you just, you know, make him the main villain who does everything right now?'

'Yeah, I mean Ramsay's kind of a badass, he... uh... fights...' (actual quote from D&D for authenticity)

'So we got it, right? Make sure Terry keeps getting out the one-liners for the mugs and the Joker stays immune for a couple more seasons. Oh, and Sissy, that character played by Lena Headey?'

'Yeah?'

'People want more of her.'

'Oh, uh, sure, but the books make it look like she's gonna bite the dust soon.'

HBO then gives D&D a condescending raise of the eyebrow. 'If I read books, I wouldn't be head of a multi-million dollar entertainment company. This is America, people, not... tea-and-biscuit land, Americans don't want to read, they want action! Tits, dragons, dwarf one-liners, cock jokes! That's what sells, D&D, and you ain't getting paid unless you do as I say, so whaddya gonna do?'

'Do as you say?'

'Great! I'll have 50,000 'I drink and I know things' mugs made by the start of March.'

 

2 hours ago, btfu806 said:

It would be interesting to find out (if we ever can) that after the show started getting mainstream popular, how much HBO started to chime in on things. Like is Cersei staying alive this long a D&D thing or an HBO thing? I usually pass the blame to D&D first but in the end, maybe HBO is pulling the strings more than I think.

I'd still maintain that the biggest culprit in the decline in quality in the show is not D & D nor is it HBO- It's GRRM and his inability to finish these books on time.  I don't think D & D or HBO traded in their integrity or anything like that- they simply lost the narrative they were adapting the show from and are stuck making up shit to try and fill in the blanks of the narrative endgame they were handed by GRRM.  

[Beardy the Wildling]

10 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

and are stuck making up shit to try and fill in the blanks of the narrative endgame they were handed by GRRM.  

This is to an extent true. GRRM's 'gardener' style of writing is great, but it's not good at gravitating towards a pre-set ending, not in the slightest. So GRRM handing them an ending and being like 'good luck lol' is a dick move, but when fans of the books can come up with better shit than D&D half the time, you've got to ask if maybe D&D and HBO are a little overrated as well.

[Apoplexy]

On 11/21/2017 at 0:28 PM, Beardy the Wildling said:

This is to an extent true. GRRM's 'gardener' style of writing is great, but it's not good at gravitating towards a pre-set ending, not in the slightest. So GRRM handing them an ending and being like 'good luck lol' is a dick move, but when fans of the books can come up with better shit than D&D half the time, you've got to ask if maybe D&D and HBO are a little overrated as well.

I agree that the show has made some bad decisions. But the show has limitations that a book format does not. And the show runners probably were not expecting to have to make up so much material at this stage. It is probably easier to reflect on the mistakes in hindsight and think about solutions as compared to trying to finish a season in a given timeframe without any source material. And this is my personal opinion, but GoT is still one of the best shows out there. Having more source material would have made a big difference towards the overall quality of the show.

[Zapho]

I just googled that quote about gardeners and architects from GRRM. Interesting take on it. The plot in the books started moving sideways instead of ahead after book 3 is my opinion. I'd say GRRM forgot that pruning is an important part of gardening and he's still struggling with it. 

[Beardy the Wildling]

3 hours ago, Zapho said:

I'd say GRRM forgot that pruning is an important part of gardening and he's still struggling with it. 

Absolutely. Without a doubt the biggest issue with aSoIaF is the exponentially growing POVs required to cover how much shit is going on.

[jcmontea]

The ratio of new POVs to established POVs in feast dance was way out of whack

[btfu806]

On 11/21/2017 at 1:16 PM, Tagganaro said:

I'd still maintain that the biggest culprit in the decline in quality in the show is not D & D nor is it HBO- It's GRRM and his inability to finish these books on time.  I don't think D & D or HBO traded in their integrity or anything like that- they simply lost the narrative they were adapting the show from and are stuck making up shit to try and fill in the blanks of the narrative endgame they were handed by GRRM. 

This is very true. A huge fault is GRRM. I think (and this is just me personally) that HBO should have realized that GRRM had been saying for years that he would finish the books by a certain time and never did. But assuming GRRM was in a meeting with them he was probably very convincing that he could actually get it done.

But yes, I agree, GRRM definitely has his fair share of the blame.

[btfu806]

On 11/21/2017 at 11:53 AM, hewman said:

I haven’t laughed that hard for years. Thank you!

I live to serve. Ha.

[Tagganaro]

On 11/23/2017 at 0:23 PM, Apoplexy said:

I agree that the show has made some bad decisions. But the show has limitations that a book format does not. And the show runners probably were not expecting to have to make up so much material at this stage. It is probably easier to reflect on the mistakes in hindsight and think about solutions as compared to trying to finish a season in a given timeframe without any source material. And this is my personal opinion, but GoT is still one of the best shows out there. Having more source material would have made a big difference towards the overall quality of the show.

Yeah, I think people, especially on this forum, are incredibly harsh and nit-picky with D & D.  Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of stupid stuff they do that should be easily avoidable, but I'd still say overall they are good showrunners and some of the non-book stuff they've done has been incredible (I'd put Hardhome and The Winds of Winter up there with the best GOT episodes ever personally).

On 11/24/2017 at 10:19 AM, Beardy the Wildling said:

Absolutely. Without a doubt the biggest issue with aSoIaF is the exponentially growing POVs required to cover how much shit is going on.

 

On 11/24/2017 at 11:33 AM, jcmontea said:

The ratio of new POVs to established POVs in feast dance was way out of whack

I mean, at a certain point what was happening in those 2 books just got crazy.  I mean, just think about the sheer number of Greyjoy and Dorne POVs (you have Aeron, Theon, Asha, and Victarion for the Greyjoys and Areo, Arriane, Quentyn and Arys for Dorne).  To me, that's a story that has gotten out of control when you have to resort to creating all these new POVs.

46 minutes ago, btfu806 said:

This is very true. A huge fault is GRRM. I think (and this is just me personally) that HBO should have realized that GRRM had been saying for years that he would finish the books by a certain time and never did. But assuming GRRM was in a meeting with them he was probably very convincing that he could actually get it done.

But yes, I agree, GRRM definitely has his fair share of the blame.

This goes back to my first point, but HBO are the winners of this deal...they got one of the most viewed TV series they've ever had out of it.  

[Apoplexy]

1 hour ago, Tagganaro said:

Yeah, I think people, especially on this forum, are incredibly harsh and nit-picky with D & D.  Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of stupid stuff they do that should be easily avoidable, but I'd still say overall they are good showrunners and some of the non-book stuff they've done has been incredible (I'd put Hardhome and The Winds of Winter up there with the best GOT episodes ever personally).

Hardhome was fantastic to watch. And I found the sequence with the dothraki, the dragons and the Lannister army in Spoils of War to be enthralling. Yes, it can be argued that the Jaime almost drowning scene seemed incredible. The show has made a lot of such strange decisions. But I was on the edge of my seat watching that episode, I didn't know which way it was going to go.

As far as the new POVs in feast and dance, I had a lot of fun reading them. I find the Greyjoys a boring bunch, but the chapters were fun nonetheless. But I'm not sure I would want to watch all of that on screen. The showrunners probably felt the same and cut out a lot of those POVs. And then having no new source material must've made their job so much harder.

[Tagganaro]

Just now, Apoplexy said:

Hardhome was fantastic to watch. And I found the sequence with the dothraki, the dragons and the Lannister army in Spoils of War to be enthralling. Yes, it can be argued that the Jaime almost drowning scene seemed incredible. The show has made a lot of such strange decisions. But I was on the edge of my seat watching that episode, I didn't know which way it was going to go.

As far as the new POVs in feast and dance, I had a lot of fun reading them. I find the Greyjoys a boring bunch, but the chapters were fun nonetheless. But I'm not sure I would want to watch all of that on screen. The showrunners probably felt the same and cut out a lot of those POVs. And then having no new source material must've made their job so much harder.

Spoils of War was also fantastic but the Jaime Lannister stuff was really stupid.  Strange is right as I feel they could have had him be captured, Dany wants to kill him, but Tyrion talks her out of it and sends Jaime back to KL to treat with Cersei.  They basically did that anyway but had that silly "Davos and Tyrion sneak into KL" storyline instead, and you could have gotten great scenes with Jaime, Dany, Tyrion, and Jon.

I enjoyed certain of the Pyke and Dorne POVs, but overall just was a chore to get through most of them for me (Aeron and Areo were really boring to me) and beyond that, just seemed so unnecessary.  In books that you are struggling to finish because you have so much, I don't understand how you have Quentyn and Aeron chapters but you spend all ADWD building up to Battle of Winterfell and don't even include it?  That's where these POVs really annoyed me, because I honestly did enjoy some of them like Victarion and Quentyn.

I don't know the full details about what happened with Show Dorne, but IIRC I had thought D & D initially were going to cut it out, then suddenly changed their mind (maybe GRRM talked to them?) then completely botched everything with Dorne despite hyping up the Sandsnakes bigtime leading up to Season 5.  Really sort of mind-boggling that you have a good actor like Alexander Siddig doing nothing while the Sandsnakes are flailing.

[btfu806]

8 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

Hardhome was fantastic to watch. And I found the sequence with the dothraki, the dragons and the Lannister army in Spoils of War to be enthralling. Yes, it can be argued that the Jaime almost drowning scene seemed incredible. The show has made a lot of such strange decisions. But I was on the edge of my seat watching that episode, I didn't know which way it was going to go.

As far as the new POVs in feast and dance, I had a lot of fun reading them. I find the Greyjoys a boring bunch, but the chapters were fun nonetheless. But I'm not sure I would want to watch all of that on screen. The showrunners probably felt the same and cut out a lot of those POVs. And then having no new source material must've made their job so much harder.

See that's the thing for me personally, that scene was really good for what it was and I really enjoyed it. Till the Jamie drowning scene, that spoiled that entire sequence of events for me. If they didn't end the episode that way, I would have loved it and thought D&D did a great job with the entire episode. But because they HAD to put in a "fake death" it ruined the whole thing for me. That's really what my issue with D&D has become. I don't mind some of the creative directions they have gone, and some of it I like. But stuff like that, is so amateur and so played out, that it's embarrassing to see in a show that is supposed to be as high of a caliber that Game of Thrones is.

Also, I get that this is totally my opinion and others could disagree, but stuff like that really taints my viewing experience.

[Apoplexy]

29 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

Spoils of War was also fantastic but the Jaime Lannister stuff was really stupid.  Strange is right as I feel they could have had him be captured, Dany wants to kill him, but Tyrion talks her out of it and sends Jaime back to KL to treat with Cersei.  They basically did that anyway but had that silly "Davos and Tyrion sneak into KL" storyline instead, and you could have gotten great scenes with Jaime, Dany, Tyrion, and Jon.

I enjoyed certain of the Pyke and Dorne POVs, but overall just was a chore to get through most of them for me (Aeron and Areo were really boring to me) and beyond that, just seemed so unnecessary.  In books that you are struggling to finish because you have so much, I don't understand how you have Quentyn and Aeron chapters but you spend all ADWD building up to Battle of Winterfell and don't even include it?  That's where these POVs really annoyed me, because I honestly did enjoy some of them like Victarion and Quentyn.

I don't know the full details about what happened with Show Dorne, but IIRC I had thought D & D initially were going to cut it out, then suddenly changed their mind (maybe GRRM talked to them?) then completely botched everything with Dorne despite hyping up the Sandsnakes bigtime leading up to Season 5.  Really sort of mind-boggling that you have a good actor like Alexander Siddig doing nothing while the Sandsnakes are flailing.

I think the reason the show chose to have Davos sneak Tyrion to KL was to find a way to re-introduce Gendry. I agree, there could have been better ways to achieve the same thing. But I think that's why that whole sequence was added. Also, they sowed the first seeds of discord between Jaime and Cersei when she claims Jaime betrayed her by meeting Tyrion.

I agree, having Alexander Siddig do nothing was just baffling. Unless Dorne has some role to play in the end game, I'm sure why the show bothered with so much screen time for Dorne. Myrcella could've been killed just as easily without making the audiences endure the Sandsnakes.

[Apoplexy]

33 minutes ago, btfu806 said:

See that's the thing for me personally, that scene was really good for what it was and I really enjoyed it. Till the Jamie drowning scene, that spoiled that entire sequence of events for me. If they didn't end the episode that way, I would have loved it and thought D&D did a great job with the entire episode. But because they HAD to put in a "fake death" it ruined the whole thing for me. That's really what my issue with D&D has become. I don't mind some of the creative directions they have gone, and some of it I like. But stuff like that, is so amateur and so played out, that it's embarrassing to see in a show that is supposed to be as high of a caliber that Game of Thrones is.

Also, I get that this is totally my opinion and others could disagree, but stuff like that really taints my viewing experience.

For me personally, the fake drowning didn't matter to me. The dothraki didn't know who Jaime was, and Tyrion probably didn't want to see him captured. And with the smoke and the dust, I just thought Bronn and Jaime got lucky and escaped. The same with the frozen lake sequence. When I was watching it, I thought in the back of my mind that the NK was trying to lure the dragons there. I'm not sure if that's what the show intended, it is possible they just wanted a suspension of disbelief from their viewers. But I tend to overlook these things.

But yes, I can see how some viewers might find such things jarring.

[Tagganaro]

10 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

For me personally, the fake drowning didn't matter to me. The dothraki didn't know who Jaime was, and Tyrion probably didn't want to see him captured. And with the smoke and the dust, I just thought Bronn and Jaime got lucky and escaped. The same with the frozen lake sequence. When I was watching it, I thought in the back of my mind that the NK was trying to lure the dragons there. I'm not sure if that's what the show intended, it is possible they just wanted a suspension of disbelief from their viewers. But I tend to overlook these things.

But yes, I can see how some viewers might find such things jarring.

I'm hopeful the show will address the whole Frozen Lake thing again...as you said the only way it makes sense is if the NK was trying to lure the dragons there.  It would do a lot to answer the lingering questions I have over that whole episode and why it seemed so amateurish, rushed, and made not a lick of sense. 

[Apoplexy]

20 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

I'm hopeful the show will address the whole Frozen Lake thing again...as you said the only way it makes sense is if the NK was trying to lure the dragons there.  It would do a lot to answer the lingering questions I have over that whole episode and why it seemed so amateurish, rushed, and made not a lick of sense. 

I agree, if there isn't more to the frozen lake, it would probably be one of the stupidest things the show has ever done.

[Zapho]

19 hours ago, Tagganaro said:

I don't know the full details about what happened with Show Dorne, but IIRC I had thought D & D initially were going to cut it out, then suddenly changed their mind (maybe GRRM talked to them?) then completely botched everything with Dorne despite hyping up the Sandsnakes bigtime leading up to Season 5.  Really sort of mind-boggling that you have a good actor like Alexander Siddig doing nothing while the Sandsnakes are flailing.

I'm wondering how much of the stupid stuff in the last seasons is due to the show runners having to include plot points they are not comfortable with. I mean, they are not completely free to end the series in the way they want. They have to include the things GRRM told them were important. That could be worse than having no source material at all.

If the rumours are true that GRRM is not happy with what D&D have done lately, the bitter feelings could well be mutual. Nobody will say anything in public until GoT is TV history, though. There's too much money at stake.

[jcmontea]

43 minutes ago, Zapho said:

I'm wondering how much of the stupid stuff in the last seasons is due to the show runners having to include plot points they are not comfortable with. I mean, they are not completely free to end the series in the way they want. They have to include the things GRRM told them were important. That could be worse than having no source material at all.

If the rumours are true that GRRM is not happy with what D&D have done lately, the bitter feelings could well be mutual. Nobody will say anything in public until GoT is TV history, though. There's too much money at stake.

I think its possible people over think this stuff and look for over arching reasons for things when the truth might just be more mundane: they tried something and it just did not work for some people and that is it. 

With the famous original pilot, they apaprently fucked up the production to the point they had to make another one and no one knew in the first one that jaime and cersei were brother and sister. 

Its very possible stuff like that happened once the show went live as well. Between conceiving an idea, writing a script and it appearing on tv there are many many steps. Some error along the way could lead to the finished product just not being quite right. Some delay in the schedule might force a scene to be done differently and it just doesn’t work, they try and fix in editing and its just not quite right. 

Or sometimes decisions made in a bubble might not play to the audience. You might decide we can cut that dialogue establishing dorne would desend into civil war or varys saying his spy network is not what is was (things that were in the original outline) thinking the audience can just intuit it when it fact you were wrong and it doesn’t come across that way. 

[jcmontea]

19 hours ago, Apoplexy said:

I agree, if there isn't more to the frozen lake, it would probably be one of the stupidest things the show has ever done.

The original outline suggests as well their is something more because they had written something to the effect of the NK seemed to smile at them indiciating he was always one step ahead or something along those lines