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Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!


The Fattest Leech

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The show didn't work, because there are ways of telling stories, even esoteric ones (and this was certainly not, it was the most pedestrian mess ever), and the audience was left unsatisfied.

An ending doesn't have to be happy for the audience to be satisfied, but there has to be truth, to the story that came before, and to the characters. There has to be a point, and there was none here.

If you can, as we and others have done, find boulder-sized holes in it so easily, it's just a jumbled mess. I think no matter what happens in the books, it won't be that. We may not like it, but it will be a real story.

Ultimately, the show can't even be called a story.

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2 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

The show didn't work, because there are ways of telling stories, even esoteric ones (and this was certainly not, it was the most pedestrian mess ever), and the audience was left unsatisfied.

An ending doesn't have to be happy for the audience to be satisfied, but there has to be truth, to the story that came before, and to the characters. There has to be a point, and there was none here.

If you can, as we and others have done, find boulder-sized holes in it so easily, it's just a jumbled mess. I think no matter what happens in the books, it won't be that. We may not like it, but it will be a real story.

Ultimately, the show can't even be called a story.

In the books my favourite character is probably Cersei, because I find her chapters so entertaining.  I love her really nasty sense of humour.  But, I know she has to get her comeuppance, so I won't be upset when it happens, so long as it's not some lurid account of rape and torture (which I don't expect).

I like Daenerys, but if she does become a self-righteous maniac, I'm sure there will be a logical progression to that destination.  It won't be sprung on us, fifty pages from the end of ADOS.

I like Arianne, but I'm pretty sure she's heading for a fiery end, because of her ambitions.

So, as you say, it's not the fact that characters you like get killed that's problematic.  There just has to be a point to it.

 

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39 minutes ago, SeanF said:

In the end, no character emerged better in the Show than in the books.

Unfortunately, I think Jon killing Dany at Tyrion's instigation, is a thing.  I can't believe they'd come up with that on their own.  I think it remains very much an open question whether it's because Dany's a tyrant, or simply the victim of Tyrion's malice. I can see Dany's story taking a darker turn in TWOW.  But darker turn does not been ranting genocidal maniac.

I think the burning of Kings Landing is a thing.  The wildfire caches are Chekhov's gun.  I expect they ignite as Dany fights her way into the city.  I'm sure that she does not deliberately incinerate civilians because Jon turned her down.

I think the crucial battle against the Others will be on the Trident (in line with Dany's dream at Astapor) not Winterfell.  This will be after the burning of Kings Landing.

Sansa may never end up in the North at all.  The Vale plot was largely removed from the Show.  I'm not convinced Northern independence is a thing.  The North is already self-governing.

It's said that Bran becoming King is a thing.  I can't see how it makes sense, given where he is now, and he's 10.

I doubt if Arya sails into the Sunset.  That's Elissa Farman's story.

Bronn is not Master of Coin.

Jaime's redemption arc will be meaningful, and Cersei will die well before the end.

If Tyrion is "the villain" (as Martin has stated) than it's hard to imagine that Dany will also be one.

 

Good points. The fire could be Jon Connington/fAegon, not Dany at all.

If Jon is a kinslayer, it's over for that character. I don't expect him to frolic in the snow with Ghost after that. It could be Tyrion kills Dany, or she dies another way, after making mistakes.

I hope that is another plotzee thing (to use @The Fattest Leech's term).

Ultimately, the show just plain failed as a story. They didn't make anything work.

Also the story really does call for some resolution with Drogo for Dany. All the talk of the afterlife and what he meant to her needed to be acknowledged in the end, and I think it will in the books.

That's what was missing for everyone. Everything that made the characters who they are was stripped from them, and in the end, there was just a nonsense plot instead of genuine resolution.

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38 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Good points. The fire could be Jon Connington/fAegon, not Dany at all.

If Jon is a kinslayer, it's over for that character. I don't expect him to frolic in the snow with Ghost after that. It could be Tyrion kills Dany, or she dies another way, after making mistakes.

I hope that is another plotzee thing (to use @The Fattest Leech's term).

Ultimately, the show just plain failed as a story. They didn't make anything work.

Also the story really does call for some resolution with Drogo for Dany. All the talk of the afterlife and what he meant to her needed to be acknowledged in the end, and I think it will in the books.

That's what was missing for everyone. Everything that made the characters who they are was stripped from them, and in the end, there was just a nonsense plot instead of genuine resolution.

That does cheer me up, after reading endless gloating on Quora from someone who used to post very frequently here, how the ending of the show proved that she was right that Dany was a complete monster (you can probably guess who I'm referring to).

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Tyrion's a villain. He has to be. The 'bad person best ruler' is at hand. So to spea.

There is no 'single bad guy' everyone bands together to fight. There is no single Oz behind the curtain. This story isn't D&D's uplifting morale of 'rape empowers you and you must thank your abusers for the strong character you've become'. Insert vomit break here.

Trauma ia trauma because it damages, warps even the kindest into deformed versions of who was before. There is no upside to abuse. Tyrion, who was a mostly harmless whoremonger (if there is such a thing) is headed straight to become a real piece of work.

If indeed we get to see the greater good factually favoring the undeserving and objectively unkind, immoral and violent Lannister? If he even proves to be a competent administrator and counsel? The most Lannister of Tywin's progeny, the one he hated so.

Well why the hell not?! We'll love to hate him, cheer as he underhandedly scrapes by, spreading chaos and misery in his wake.

Instead of sanctifying a moron who got everything wrong and blabbed a bunch of facts and lies interspaced enough to have the generic ken doll kill dragon barbie. Ugh.

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Regarding the abysmal script, I just can’t get over Arya saying: I know a killer when I see one. Err... Dany just torched thousands of people, and this is meant to be some sort of astute profound revelation on Arya’s part? This is laughable - it’s like an 8 year old stringing ‘cool’ dialogue together that is completely nonsensical. Doesn’t hold up to the briefest of scrutiny. 

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I'm reading some comments from season 2 threads and it's so horribly funny how much people defended stupid decisions back in the day. For example, Jaime killing Cleos Frey while he is still Robb's prison.

Quote

I think they are doing this to enhance his redemption in the later seasons. They need to enphisize the peoples trates like changing joffery from being an cruel idiot to being a monster and then also making more unlikable. - said someone

 
Quote

Exactly. We have thousands of pages to build up these characters personalities over. The show creators have 10 hours for like 15-25 characters. They have to overdo some traits to get the point across to people who don't read the book. - said someone else

Oh dear how wrong were those guys. I think finding excuses and more excuses was the mistake, if people had shown a little outrage or discontent towards the changes, then maybe D&D wouldn't have been so fucking careless. But no, all D&D heard for 8 years was how big a geniuses they are and then suddenly everyone hated them.

 

edit: the guy's name wasn't Cleos in the show, but was still Jaime's relative

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59 minutes ago, miyuki said:

I'm reading some comments from season 2 threads and it's so horribly funny how much people defended stupid decisions back in the day. For example, Jaime killing Cleos Frey while he is still Robb's prison.

Oh dear how wrong were those guys. I think finding excuses and more excuses was the mistake, if people had shown a little outrage or discontent towards the changes, then maybe D&D wouldn't have been so fucking careless. But no, all D&D heard for 8 years was how big a geniuses they are and then suddenly everyone hated them.

 

edit: the guy's name wasn't Cleos in the show, but was still Jaime's relative

Lets not forget that, since they couldn't be bothered to simply follow the books, in order to have the Karstark drama, they made Torrhen Karstark, son of a powerful lord of the North, be a glorified prison guard so Jaime could kill him. None of the thousands of same-dressed soldiers could be bothered to stand guard.

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Re the villification of Daenerys, the other argument that the producers seem to be running with is that she always was a villain, but somehow, we the viewers, , and her followers in the series, were too gullible to see it (leave aside all their Inside the Episodes, where they were saying how wonderful she was).

She took some morally questionable decisions, and gave a couple of fiery speeches, but never once did she seem a villain to me, at least by the moral standards established in the Showverse (where it's cool to feed people to dogs, feed children to their parents etc.).

I think, if you want to portray a person as Timur the Lame at the end, you have to show that person becoming Timur the Lame.  Killing slave traders doesn't really do that.

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8 hours ago, miyuki said:

I'm reading some comments from season 2 threads and it's so horribly funny how much people defended stupid decisions back in the day. For example, Jaime killing Cleos Frey while he is still Robb's prison.

Oh dear how wrong were those guys. I think finding excuses and more excuses was the mistake, if people had shown a little outrage or discontent towards the changes, then maybe D&D wouldn't have been so fucking careless. But no, all D&D heard for 8 years was how big a geniuses they are and then suddenly everyone hated them.

 

edit: the guy's name wasn't Cleos in the show, but was still Jaime's relative

You're absolutely right.  Linda Antonsson was correct when she said that the House of the Undying was the point at which the show began going off the rails.

Lindsey Ellis describes it as an example of the sunk cost fallacy.  Once you invest heavily in a show or book series, you keep defending it long past the point where it's jumped the shark.

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6 hours ago, SeanF said:

You're absolutely right.  Linda Antonsson was correct when she said that the House of the Undying was the point at which the show began going off the rails.

Lindsey Ellis describes it as an example of the sunk cost fallacy.  Once you invest heavily in a show or book series, you keep defending it long past the point where it's jumped the shark.

You can actually take any moment from season 2 and say that this is when they started going off rails. I just recently re-read the books and re-watched the series and season 2 is so butchered I find it surprising it never bothered me before. Season 3 is much better adapted, because they split ASOS into two seasons. They should have done the same with ACOC. About 1/3 of ACOC is not adapted at all. I'm not saying one third of the book is changed during adaption, I'm saying 21 out of 70 chapters in ACOC are just left out completely. And the rest is heavily modified for the show. But I do admit that I enjoyed rewatching season 2 as a good television series even now after everything.

Personally, what bothered me in the show the most was Robb not becoming the king in the North AND Riverlands. Riverrun, Edmure and Blackfish should have all been introduced in season 1. Instead, Robb spent the first two seasons as a romantic freedom-fighting king (don't even get me started on the war strategies or the war at all) who suddenly in season 3 had to go to his mom's place because grandpa was dead. And now he was suddenly the king to the Riverlands as well. I'm quite sure D&D would have left the Tullys and Riverlands completely out if they didn't like the red wedding so much. But basically yea, I didn't like how they adapted Robb's and Catelyn's storys at all, so for me it started going off the rails in S01E10, I seriously started doubting in it after Jaime raped Cercei and by the middle of season 5 there was no hope left. So when season 8 failed after another fail I was already used to it and it didn't bother me as much as it seemed to bother everyone else who considered season 7 a masterpiece.

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9 minutes ago, miyuki said:

You can actually take any moment from season 2 and say that this is when they started going off rails. I just recently re-read the books and re-watched the series and season 2 is so butchered I find it surprising it never bothered me before. Season 3 is much better adapted, because they split ASOS into two seasons. They should have done the same with ACOC. About 1/3 of ACOC is not adapted at all. I'm not saying one third of the book is changed during adaption, I'm saying 21 out of 70 chapters in ACOC are just left out completely. And the rest is heavily modified for the show. But I do admit that I enjoyed rewatching season 2 as a good television series even now after everything.

Personally, what bothered me in the show the most was Robb not becoming the king in the North AND Riverlands. Riverrun, Edmure and Blackfish should have all been introduced in season 1. Instead, Robb spent the first two seasons as a romantic freedom-fighting king (don't even get me started on the war strategies or the war at all) who suddenly in season 3 had to go to his mom's place because grandpa was dead. And now he was suddenly the king to the Riverlands as well. I'm quite sure D&D would have left the Tullys and Riverlands completely out if they didn't like the red wedding so much. But basically yea, I didn't like how they adapted Robb's and Catelyn's storys at all, so for me it started going off the rails in S01E10, I seriously started doubting in it after Jaime raped Cercei and by the middle of season 5 there was no hope left. So when season 8 failed after another fail I was already used to it and it didn't bother me as much as it seemed to bother everyone else who considered season 7 a masterpiece.

I'm not sure when exactly, the series jumped the shark.  I thought the Porne plot in Season 5 was terrible.  I thought Sansa marrying Ramsay was implausible, but (if you accepted the implausibility) done well.  I enjoyed the storylines at the Wall and Meereen, and Volantis (bar a sex slave offering it for free to Tyrion).  I remember thinking that Daenerys was turning towards tyranny in Season 5, but then her turn towards tyranny never went anywhere for three seasons (save for one part of Season 6).  I admired the way the role of the High Septon was played, but thought parts of the story in Kings Landing were very implausible (eg Sparrows simply arresting Loras in a castle full of guards and armed nobles).

On the whole, I enjoyed Season 6.  It was implausible that the Dothraki would all follow Daenerys after she killed their leaders, but okay.  I mostly enjoyed the Kings Landing plot and the North (even if the Battle of the Bastards was a bit ropey).  It ended on a high note with Cersei blowing up the Sept, Dany sailing for Westeros, Arya feeding Walder Frey his children, and Sansa turning Ramsay into dogfood.   Dany gave her "pillage and burn" speech to the Dothraki.  I thought that this might mean the Dothraki would pillage and burn, but instead, they rode off to rescue a city under siege. It convinced me that Dany's fiery speeches were mostly piss and wind, and her bark was worse than her bite.

Season 7 is when we really started to hit problems. With 7 episodes, armies had to teleport around Westeros.  Tyrion came up with stupid military strategies, in order to even the odds with Cersei.  Cersei faced no consequences, for destroying the Sept.  The Wight Hunt was ridiculous.  Tyrion decided to trust Cersei, who had repeatedly proved herself untrustworthy.   The secret annulment was a very lame device. But, to its credit, we had the final confrontation between Ellaria Sand and the battle on the Goldroad.  The show was in decline, but I thought they'd pull off something special for Season 8.  With hindsight, I see that the show's ethical values suddenly shifted, in order to vilify Daenerys.  In any earlier Season, executing the Tarlys would have been unexceptional.  Now, it suddenly became the worst imaginable atrocity, causing Varys and Tyrion to have their faith in her shaken.

And then we got Season 8.  It had its moments.  But, the fight against the Night's King was underwhelming, we had Sansa admitting she was empowered by rape, we had three villains in three successive episodes, Jaime's redemption arc went nowhere, Dany turned into the love child of Unity Mitford and Satan, and the final episode ended with lots of random stuff. 

I certainly thought , prior to the Season, that there was a good chance that Jon and Dany would become antagonists, once Jon's ancestry became known. But, you can make people antagonists, without making one of them batshit evil in the last two episodes, after presenting that person as a (flawed ) heroine for 70 episodes.   It's not so much that the burning of Kings Landing came out of nowhere.  It's the fact that it would serve no military purpose whatsoever that came out of nowhere. 

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I'm not sure when exactly, the series jumped the shark.  I thought the Porne plot in Season 5 was terrible.  I thought Sansa marrying Ramsay was implausible, but (if you accepted the implausibility) done well.  I enjoyed the storylines at the Wall and Meereen, and Volantis (bar a sex slave offering it for free to Tyrion).  I remember thinking that Daenerys was turning towards tyranny in Season 5, but then her turn towards tyranny never went anywhere for three seasons (save for one part of Season 6).  I admired the way the role of the High Septon was played, but thought parts of the story in Kings Landing were very implausible (eg Sparrows simply arresting Loras in a castle full of guards and armed nobles).

On the whole, I enjoyed Season 6.  It was implausible that the Dothraki would all follow Daenerys after she killed their leaders, but okay.  I mostly enjoyed the Kings Landing plot and the North (even if the Battle of the Bastards was a bit ropey).  It ended on a high note with Cersei blowing up the Sept, Dany sailing for Westeros, Arya feeding Walder Frey his children, and Sansa turning Ramsay into dogfood.   Dany gave her "pillage and burn" speech to the Dothraki.  I thought that this might mean the Dothraki would pillage and burn, but instead, they rode off to rescue a city under siege. It convinced me that Dany's fiery speeches were mostly piss and wind, and her bark was worse than her bite.

Season 7 is when we really started to hit problems. With 7 episodes, armies had to teleport around Westeros.  Tyrion came up with stupid military strategies, in order to even the odds with Cersei.  Cersei faced no consequences, for destroying the Sept.  The Wight Hunt was ridiculous.  Tyrion decided to trust Cersei, who had repeatedly proved herself untrustworthy.   The secret annulment was a very lame device. But, to its credit, we had the final confrontation between Ellaria Sand and the battle on the Goldroad.  The show was in decline, but I thought they'd pull off something special for Season 8.  With hindsight, I see that the show's ethical values suddenly shifted, in order to vilify Daenerys.  In any earlier Season, executing the Tarlys would have been unexceptional.  Now, it suddenly became the worst imaginable atrocity, causing Varys and Tyrion to have their faith in her shaken.

And then we got Season 8.  It had its moments.  But, the fight against the Night's King was underwhelming, we had Sansa admitting she was empowered by rape, we had three villains in three successive episodes, Jaime's redemption arc went nowhere, Dany turned into the love child of Unity Mitford and Satan, and the final episode ended with lots of random stuff. 

I certainly thought , prior to the Season, that there was a good chance that Jon and Dany would become antagonists, once Jon's ancestry became known. But, you can make people antagonists, without making one of them batshit evil in the last two episodes, after presenting that person as a (flawed ) heroine for 70 episodes.   It's not so much that the burning of Kings Landing came out of nowhere.  It's the fact that it would serve no military purpose whatsoever that came out of nowhere. 

The show always had its moments.  Unlike most, I liked season 2 overall.  I started to feel unsatisfied during season 3, when they gutted the story of the North....no Northern lords, and the "Talisa" story changed Robb's motivation's too much.  But, it was still a very good show, with good writing, through seasons 3 and 4, even to 5.

The plotting started to get very, very shaky in season 5, there was some dumb stuff that happened in season 4..."Yara" and her trip to free Theon ending in a flight from dogs, Ramsay with no shirt and pj's fighting off people in chainmail....Arya and the Hound announcing their true names and walking away....but the highs of season 4 were really well done.  By season 5, and Sansa going to Winterfell, everyone's motivations and the plots became brutally stupid.  The writing was still okay, but the plot was dumb.

I honestly don't remember anything about season 6 off the top of my head.

Seasons 7 and 8 were bad, rushed, this is when the show stopped writing dialogue and decided to go for long close ups of faces and swelling music, so not only was the plot stupid, and characters doing insanely stupid stuff, but the quality of the 'set pieces' also precipitously declined.  Sure, the visuals were great, but by season 7/8, outside of a handful of scenes, that was all there was.  The writing, gone. Plot, gone. Characterization, gone. Big scenes, gone also.  Nothing there but impressive production values and CGI.

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18 hours ago, miyuki said:

I'm reading some comments from season 2 threads and it's so horribly funny how much people defended stupid decisions back in the day. For example, Jaime killing Cleos Frey while he is still Robb's prison.

Oh dear how wrong were those guys. I think finding excuses and more excuses was the mistake, if people had shown a little outrage or discontent towards the changes, then maybe D&D wouldn't have been so fucking careless. But no, all D&D heard for 8 years was how big a geniuses they are and then suddenly everyone hated them.

 

edit: the guy's name wasn't Cleos in the show, but was still Jaime's relative

This. I was so disappointed when they didn't let him break out honorably, with a swordfight.

Jaime already did the worst thing, pushing a little boy out the window to cover up screwing his sister. That is plenty to explore and should be the focus. There's a nice passage in the books where he says he lost the hand that pushed Bran out the window, the hand that pleasured his sister.

It was his time apart from Cersei that was the catalyst for change, he had all that time to reflect upon his life. There was a nice subtle progression in the books. In book 3 he thought the wind through his hair felt like Cersei's fingers. Then in book 5, he thought it felt like a woman's fingers.

His growing awareness of her evil, and his complicity in it, was such a great story! And he did the opposite of the show, at every turn, they deliberately WENT IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Whenever anyone says they did a good job before, I'm like, no, it was always a bad show.

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Cersei never loved Robert, she planned from the start to never have his babies, but they turned it into a poor Carol moment, and promptly forgot the blackhaired baby. Jaime saying no to Cersei then turning a page in the white book was a huge turning point, but they had him do the opposite, and grovel for the rest of the series.

Dany's wedding night to Drogo was about setting up her choice to embrace her inner dragon, but they turned it into just another rape scene. Sandor telling Sansa his story was about her growing awareness of the world around her as well as her blossoming sexuality, but they gave it to the sex trafficker pimp who destroyed her life.

At every turn, they took away choice from these characters. All of these stories that readers loved were about the characters making thematic choices. The only magic came from the source material they didn't destroy. Their one remarkable "achievement" was consistently failing to appreciate the source material, and trampling on it.

(fixed typo)

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9 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Cersei never loved Robert, she planned from the start to never have his babies, but they turned it into a poor Carol moment, and promptly forgot the blackhaired baby. Jaime saying no to Cersei then turning a page in the white book was a huge turning point, but they had him do the opposite, and grovel for the rest of the series.

Dany's wedding night to Drogo was about setting up her choice embrace her inner dragon, but they turned it into just another rape scene. Sandor telling Sansa his story was about her growing awareness of the world around her as well as her blossoming sexuality, but they gave it to the sex trafficker pimp who destroyed her life.

At every turn, they took away choice from these characters. All of these stories that readers loved were about the characters making thematic choices. The only magic came from the source material they didn't destroy. Their one remarkable "achievement" was consistently failing to appreciate the source material, and trampling on it.

I was watching another Lindsey Ellis video in which she said that they kept a lot of the main plot elements from the books, but by changing characters' motivations, stories,  and behaviour, those plot elements no longer made any sense.  The Pink Letter in Season 6, for example, is quite underwhelming, given that Stannis had been converted into a villain (and been killed) and Jon had come back from the dead.

 

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2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

The show always had its moments.  Unlike most, I liked season 2 overall.  I started to feel unsatisfied during season 3, when they gutted the story of the North....no Northern lords, and the "Talisa" story changed Robb's motivation's too much.  But, it was still a very good show, with good writing, through seasons 3 and 4, even to 5.

The plotting started to get very, very shaky in season 5, there was some dumb stuff that happened in season 4..."Yara" and her trip to free Theon ending in a flight from dogs, Ramsay with no shirt and pj's fighting off people in chainmail....Arya and the Hound announcing their true names and walking away....but the highs of season 4 were really well done.  By season 5, and Sansa going to Winterfell, everyone's motivations and the plots became brutally stupid.  The writing was still okay, but the plot was dumb.

I honestly don't remember anything about season 6 off the top of my head.

Seasons 7 and 8 were bad, rushed, this is when the show stopped writing dialogue and decided to go for long close ups of faces and swelling music, so not only was the plot stupid, and characters doing insanely stupid stuff, but the quality of the 'set pieces' also precipitously declined.  Sure, the visuals were great, but by season 7/8, outside of a handful of scenes, that was all there was.  The writing, gone. Plot, gone. Characterization, gone. Big scenes, gone also.  Nothing there but impressive production values and CGI.

I think in s5 they tried for the first time to be original and still be loyal to the books. However their original ideas are awfull...

In s6 the characters lost their personalities and the story became flat… Like tyrion and jorah became super good guys, elaria and the sand snakes super bad that killed even doran, jon lost all his personality this season, sansa became a bitch, no idea what I am suposed to think about danny, arya became Wolverine… This season was when the show died.

Even a lot of problems of s7/8 come from what they did in s6... People stoped being grey so the story in the latter season is one dimensional… It is basically a shame what they did with their budget in the last seasons… A lot of shows could do much better if they had the Money...

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