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!

[Le Cygne]

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, SeanF said:

Even if you were an HBO executive thinking "D & D can't write credible plots, or good characterisation, but they can pull off brilliant action sequences, and we'll rely on the actors and composer to bridge the gaps" - you'd think alarm bells would be rung about Episode 3.  They've got the Battle of Helms Deep, and the Battle of Blackwater to compare it with, after all.

Indeed. HBO made money, but look at the disastrous fallout. Just the sheer numbers of people everywhere saying how much they hated it, and how it made them not want to ever rewatch the show again. The show is a joke when it's remembered at all.

They could have run those scripts by just about anyone on the outside and they'd have pointed out the problems instantly. It was that obvious. That was always the case when "the boys" blundered, but HBO would throw money around to cover it up.

But they ran out of time. They couldn't gaslight everyone in the offseason with retcons and distractions in expensive advertising and puff pieces (the media made lots of money promoting the show, so it was in their interest to play the game, too).

And they relied on the audience filling in all the holes for them and making up the story themselves, and sticking around to see it play out, but the ending ruled that out. Characters did stupid things, died stupid deaths, and it was all for nothing.

They left the audience empty-handed. So the audience did the only thing they could do, and threw it back in their faces.

It was like a Ponzi scheme blowing up, it was inevitable that it would catch up to them, and it did.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Indeed. HBO made money, but look at the disastrous fallout. Just the sheer numbers of people everywhere saying how much they hated it, and how it made them not want to ever rewatch the show again. The show is a joke when it's remembered at all.

They could have run those scripts by just about anyone on the outside and they'd have pointed out the problems instantly. It was that obvious. That was always the case when "the boys" blundered, but HBO would throw money around to cover it up.

But they ran out of time. They couldn't gaslight everyone in the offseason with retcons and distractions in expensive advertising and puff pieces (the media made lots of money promoting the show, so it was in their interest to play the game, too).

And they relied on the audience filling in all the holes for them and making up the story themselves, and sticking around to see it play out, but the ending ruled that out. Characters did stupid things, died stupid deaths, and it was all for nothing.

They left the audience empty-handed. So the audience did the only thing they could do, and threw it back in their faces.

It was like a Ponzi scheme blowing up, it was inevitable that it would catch up to them, and it did.

And as always happens when a Ponzi scheme collapses, everyone says "How did I fall for it?"

And, that was exactly it, for me.  I can look back, and see how I was constructing arguments to cover the plotholes, to justify the stupidities, rolling my eyes at the things that could not be justified, but still thinking that surely, they'd want to end on a high note and that Season 8 would come good.

[kissdbyfire]

Yup, when you play the game of spin, you win or you get called out on your incompetence and . David, Dan, HBO (and the rest of them) got called out. 

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Count Balerion]

Meanwhile, we've been having an ... interesting time going through the Hibberd book. One minute you're laughing your head off, the next you're saying "Wait, why were they messing around with horses near the edge of a cliff?" There's so much damning material that I have a theory that the Dragon chap tied up Mr. Hibberd and wrote the book himself!

Most recent episode here:

 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

Funny thing about all the talk about prostitutes liking their jobs, none of the prostitutes in the books appear to dislike their lot. Look at Bella.

My point throughout this thread: the books had a lot of problems (weird sex scenes, rewarding swindling and psychopathy, etc.), but the show made them worse.

The bed slave in Selhorys hated what was being done to her.

[Angel Eyes]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

The bed slave in Selhorys hated what was being done to her.

I forgot about her.

[Le Cygne]

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

The bed slave in Selhorys hated what was being done to her.

So did Shae. And others as well. The devil is in the detail.

What people say and do in moments of bravado is not what they really think and feel. With the writing surrounding such words, we see what's really going on inside.

Showing the difference is fully possible in film, in ways that are equally as powerful to the tools an author has at his or her disposal. The visual medium is very compelling.

The showrunners are so morally bereft, they just used the characters to reflect their own rotten insides. Maybe they shouldn't have skipped 8th grade. Who needs themes? They did.

[SeanF]

55 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

So did Shae. And others as well. The devil is in the detail.

What people say and do in moments of bravado is not what they really think and feel. With the writing surrounding such words, we see what's really going on inside.

Showing the difference is fully possible in film, in ways that are equally as powerful to the tools an author has at his or her disposal. The visual medium is very compelling.

The showrunners are so morally bereft, they just used the characters to reflect their own rotten insides. Maybe they shouldn't have skipped 8th grade. Who needs themes? They did.

True as well.

Once you think about it, I find Chataya’s treatment of her daughter pretty disturbing, too.  A client can pay Chataya to do anything he or she wants, to her daughter, short of killing or maiming her.

Even someone as powerful as Melisandre plainly has very troubling memories about her time as a sex slave.

[SeanF]

6 minutes ago, Dalinar said:

There is nothing that happend in the show as bad as the Ramsay/Jayne Pool/Theon scene in the book. After I read that, i threw the book away for a week. Since then, I have a very distancing opinion about GRRM. In the show we had the Sansa rape scene. But that was a childrens cartoon in comparison to the book counterpart with Jayne Pool. 

All kinds of nasty stuff was hinted at in relation to Sansa, on the show, such as "cutting", her reference to brothel owners having a pretty good idea about the kinds of things that were done to her, and her keeping herself covered up from the neck down.  Had there not been such criticism of the rape, I think D & D would have been a lot more explicit.

[SeanF]

5 minutes ago, Dalinar said:

But they weren't more explicit, were they? You are just assuming, with no evidence. 

Well, they did devote about 5% of Season 3 to Theon's being abused in various ways. They liked to portray sexual slavery in a positive light. We had Ros shot full of arrows, naked.  They were not usually so reticent.

[Le Cygne]

Just thinking about good endings, and how possible they are. Think of all the movies you've seen, and how many ended well. It's the moment you've been waiting for...

I watched a movie recently, Harper. Screenplay by William Goldman. A so-so movie. But the ending was just right. That's what a good writer can do.

Ends this way: Harper (a private eye) says to his friend who he just found out murdered a bad guy: I have to turn you in. His friend says: I can't let you do that.

His friend pulls out his gun, as Harper walks away. His friend realizes he can't shoot him. And Harper realizes he can't turn him in.

So instead of saying nothing at all, which would be too little, or saying too much, which would ruin the moment, they both say at the same time, "Oh, hell."

It fit perfectly. I can't even imagine Benioff and Weiss remotely getting something this right.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Dalinar said:

Regarding Theon: Visualy a bit to much. I agree. But they had to show to the audience the reason for Theons transformation to Reek. The most important rule on TV and Cinema is: Show, don't tell. While in a book you can describe it, the worst thing you can do on television is exposition. Since Theon is such an inportant role, the audience needs to see how and why Theon changed. In my opinion, it would have been enough to show just half of the stuff though. 

Prostitution: I disagree. They showed both sides. Only if you are a prude Christian you can see the prostitution as solely something bad. If you have ever been to a brothel, you would know that as a costumer, you never see the downsides of that Job. It is not like the prostitutes start to cry or show their suffering. Their job is to make you happy. We mostly see the brothels in Kings Landing through the eyes of costumers or visitors, very rarely from the perspective of the prostitutes. We do however see some very big downsides of that job:  may I remember you the conversation between Littlefinger and Ross after the killing of the babys. You even described yourself what happend to Ross, and yet "kind of forgot" that she is a prostitute. Also let me remind you of what happend to the one prostitute that Joffrey got from Tyrion. And let me remind you of what happend to the one prostitute of whom Cersei thought was Shae. Those were all downsides of being a prostitute. And the show runners showed them clearly and explicitly. But they also showed the other side: the costumer side and the charade. You are pretty much contradicting yourself with the arguments. You can't demand the downsides and criticize when they do it. 

@Le Cygne, @Cas Stark and others have already covered this at length, but I'll give some examples of the glamorising of prostitution and sexual slavery in the show, as compared to the books.  Those are not the same thing, although there's plainly a big overlap between the two.

Shae.  In the books, Tyrion's treatment of her is appalling.  She is (probably) kidnapped by Bronn;  Tyrion never gives her the money he promised, takes her jewels from her, and puts her in danger.  Eventually, he murders her very brutally - an act which George Martin has described as the worst thing that Tyrion has done.  Shae is not a nice person, but she is victimised by Tyrion.  Nor does she love Tyrion, in the slightest.  In the show, she falls in love with him, but ultimately turns against him, because he won't return her love.  She's offered a lot of money to go to Pentos and refuses.  Her murder is portrayed as something much closer to self-defence than the heinous act we read in the corresponding book scene.

Podrick, in the show, is so good at sex, that the prostitutes waive their fee.  A juvenile fantasy.  Any prostitute who did that would get a punch in the face from her pimp. There is no corresponding scene in the books.

In Selhorys, in ADWD, Tyrion twice rapes a bed slave.  He does it, despite seeing the whip marks on her back, and noticing that she's dead-eyed.  The corresponding scene in the show has her offer him sex for free, because he's so damned awesome.  As if a slave who has to earn money for her master would do such a thing!  She would get a whipping.

Martin depicts a lot of horrible things in the series, but they are rarely glamorised, or included for the sake of titillation, IMHO. 

[Angel Eyes]

4 hours ago, Dalinar said:

Regarding Theon: Visualy a bit to much. I agree. But they had to show to the audience the reason for Theons transformation to Reek. The most important rule on TV and Cinema is: Show, don't tell. While in a book you can describe it, the worst thing you can do on television is exposition. Since Theon is such an inportant role, the audience needs to see how and why Theon changed. In my opinion, it would have been enough to show just half of the stuff though. 

 

And unfortunately the show runners did the opposite in the last two seasons. They talked about how great some characters were (ie Sansa being the “smartest person [Arya] knows”) but didn’t really have any payoff from that. To give another example the White Walkers were wiped out in a stroke. My thread on Informed Attributes.

[Dalinar]

9 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

And unfortunately the show runners did the opposite in the last two seasons. They talked about how great some characters were (ie Sansa being the “smartest person [Arya] knows”) but didn’t really have any payoff from that. To give another example the White Walkers were wiped out in a stroke. My thread on Informed Attributes.

I don't think we have to argue that the showrunners screwed up the show after season 6 completely and nothing made sense at the end 

[Angel Eyes]

8 minutes ago, Dalinar said:

I don't think we have to argue that the showrunners screwed up the show after season 6 completely and nothing made sense at the end 

I was focusing on a singular issue. Heck, even Peter Dinklage expresses annoyance at Tyrion’s supposed intelligence (or lack thereof) when talking about putting all the civilians in a crypt.

[Dalinar]

1 minute ago, Angel Eyes said:

I was focusing on a singular issue. Heck, even Peter Dinklage expresses annoyance at Tyrion’s supposed intelligence (or lack thereof) when talking about putting all the civilians in a crypt.

Yeah...who knew that blowing up the sept would reduce the IQ of everyone on that planet for at least about 30 points 

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Dalinar said:

Yeah...who knew that blowing up the sept would reduce the IQ of everyone on that planet for at least about 30 points 

The wrong Queen died.  Dany v Margaery/Tommen would have been a finely balanced contest, morally and militarily, without any need to dumb characters down

[Cas Stark]

43 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The wrong Queen died.  Dany v Margaery/Tommen would have been a finely balanced contest, morally and militarily, without any need to dumb characters down

Yes, and then the audience would have been conflicted, since Marg gave every appearance that she was going to be a great queen, the show would then not have to work nearly as hard for Dany's turn toward desperation and villainy to be believable, a good number would already be rooting for Marg and her boy toy.  

[SeanF]

20 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Yes, and then the audience would have been conflicted, since Marg gave every appearance that she was going to be a great queen, the show would then not have to work nearly as hard for Dany's turn toward desperation and villainy to be believable, a good number would already be rooting for Marg and her boy toy.  

Margaery and Tommen would naturally be adored by the people of Kings Landing, the Reach, and the Westerlands.  I would envisage a scenario in which wicked old Olenna gets wind of Cersei's plot to blow up the Great Sept, and lets it go ahead, even at the expense of her "unsatisfactory" grandson Loras.  Margaery is gobsmacked, when Olenna tells her that they can honour Loras' sacrifice, but the needs of the family outweigh the needs of any individual member.  Weak Lord Mace acquiesces.  

The Tyrells arrest Cersei, and force her to write out an outrageous confession of her crimes, before she "commits suicide."

Ellaria Sand and the Dornish would be fixated on vengeance.  Instead of having Jon go to Dragonstone, send Sansa.  She hates the Tyrells, having worked out that they framed her for Joffrey's murder, and works out an alliance of convenience with Daenerys.  Northern support is pledged in return for Daenerys recognising Jon as King.  Both sides bid for the support of Littlefinger in the Vale, but he concludes that Daenerys is likely to win, and sides with her.

The sides try for peace, and come close to working out a settlement.  But, Olenna and Lord Tarly attempt to assassinate Daenerys and her closest supporters, unknown to Margaery and Tommen, and then the shit goes down.