SPOILERS: Rant and Rave

[kissdbyfire]

18 minutes ago, joaozinm said:

Dude, she kills the person, grabs the dead body and take to the kitchen, chooses what parts to chop while the human body is there bleeding dry, you follow some kind of recipe using the human parts you have, cook it and smell the human flesh flavor as it gets ready, put it into a pie, serve it to someone, watch him eat the human body pie with a creepy look then she killed the "customer" too.

 

She cooked the pie herself as we know she asked how to do it with Hot Pie.

Things we don't know: did she taste it? did she used the brain? dick? heart?

 

But yeah... thats pretty Ramsey level.

 

Motivation is irrelevant.

1. Please don’t call me “dude”. Cheers.

2. I’m sorry, I got distracted; I was specifically talking about the books. My bad. I think I never even saw Arya’s scenes regarding the Frey pies. 

[now I'm gonna insert a random rant into my reply here. Nothing to do w/ what you said]

The Show’s version of the Frey pies, from what I’ve read about it, is exactly like the killing of Trant. The show wants Arya to be as ruthless, cold, hard, unforgiving as possible. Because that’s “badass” (I’ve come to hate the word “badass”, btw; whenever I hear/read it now I wanna retch). But at the same time, they don’t want the audience to dislike her... Arya is one of the show’s “darlings”. So the make Trant a sadist paedo, and they have her take out the weasly despicable Freys. Another favourite, another formula). 

3. Motivation is everything.

 

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

On 4/21/2019 at 11:28 PM, Rockroi said:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!!!!!!

HA! HA! HA !!!!!! 

That was LITERALLY 55 minutes of filler.  That was the most empty, vacant 55 useless, vapid, soulless minutes of TV I have ever watched and as a kid, I used to watch test patterns.  And even those were better written than this.  

HAHAhAHA!!!!  Oh, My FUCKING GOD WE SUCK!   

We suck HARD!  We suck so hard for watching this shit.  See, if you are on this thread right now its because you still- for reasons I am still uncertain of - watch this show.  The show stopped being good three seasons ago.  Okay?  And I have evidence of this.  Anyway, we still watch it.  Why?  Because for some of us its an investment thing- we invested so much into the show that we have to watch it play out - like when a family member dies.   But some of us are still watching because we hope SOMETHING will be good.  It's not, but we hope it will be. 

If you are still watching this show in the hopes that some of it will be good, DEAR GOD  I feel for you!  And tonight right before all of our very eyes we watched 1 hour of listless, meandering, flacid foreplay.  We were all here to watch a battle; instead, we watched a whole bunch of people WAIT for a battle.  

And it was worse than that sounded.  

This show has FOUR (1-2-3-4) episodes left and they just wasted 2 whole episodes doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! ! ! ! ! 

Oh my God, we are terrible.  

Anyway, let me discuss stuff:

What I Liked: 

A Fire Burns In Winterfell: Watching 2-8 characters I once cared about sitting around the fire and shooting the shit was good.  Okay, it still kinda sucked because nobody but Tyrion was discussing anything worthwhile, but I liked the characters- Brienne, Giantsbane, Davos, Pod, Tyrion and Jaime are pretty much up there in my favorite characters,  They all rock.  And watching them use the fire as a device was worthwhile.  

It should have happened in the first 20 minutes of the show and then the hirn should have blown, but instead, we meandered like stool through a  constipated whale.  Anyway, this was decent, 

I Would Have, In No Particular Order, Still Killed Your Fucking Crazy Father; I Still Would Have Attacked Your Stone-Headed Father in the Streets After Your Idiot Mother Kidnapped My Brother; I Still Would Have Tried To Kill Your Brother At Whispering Wood; I still Would Have Escaped; I still Would Have Done Pretty Much Everything I Did Until Now Because I was Right In Every One Of Those Cases And Your Relatives All Sucked.  Jaime Lannister is the Fucking Boss.  I loved how they were all just laying into him about all that he did and he said- to their smug, faces, "Yeah, ah, I would have done it all over and over again."  A perfect moment; Jaime is the best character left in the show next to maybe Sansa.  I hope he dies soon so I can stop watching him be tortured by this terribly written, glacially paced disaster.  Oh, and I am cool with Brienne's defense, even if she could have mentioned the wildfire... I'm sort of glad she didn't.  Its as if Brienne knows that Jaime told her that in confidence so its not hers to sahre (but if necessary cooberate).  

Oh, Thank God, She's 22!: It was a perfectly acceptable scene watching Arya and Gendry do it.  It was fine; I thought it was passably tender and not horribly uncomfortable when I learned that Williams is 22 so it was not as icky as I first thought. 

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Look, every now and then, something happens on the show that just feels right.  And this week the CLOSEST the show came was when Jaime knighted Brienne (guaranteeing that AT LEAST one of them dies next week; otherwise you would just knight her AFTER the battle).  Regardless, the two actors were utter nails and you could see the true emotion from both of them.  A terrific scene that should have happened at about the 12-minute mark; instead it happened at like the 40-minute mark and wasted all of our time.  

What I Am On the Fence On

So... She Dies In the First 45 Seconds of the Battle, Right?  I get that, by law, we all have to like Lady Mormont.  If we don't it because of misogyny or something.  I don't know.  I get- to a degree - her desire to fight (maybe, sort of).  I also get that being in the North requires a showing of martial ability (not true for any Manderly).  So some of this is true.  She's what, 12?  Maybe?  And she has no battle experience at all and has been trained in some manner.  Okay.  So if you take a 12-year-old and you put them in the middle of the battle against undead, and she has MINIMAL experience (training in a yard) then that person dies at close to first contact, right?  Add that they are fighting in a mish-mash army without any cohesive experience - disassociated parts fighting under disparate command.  I'm just saying, if the show wants ANY credibility to their battles and villains, she can't live because she made a dangerous decision.  That has to have consequences.  

Epsidoe 1.2: Most of this episode was a continuation of the prior episode, namely REUNITING various players together.  I was OKAY with Sansa and Theon when you think about what they went through together; I was okay with Arya and the Hound and ... I forget which BwoB guy that it because it does not matter at all; I liked that Davis saw a girl with Grayscale and thought of Stannis' daughter; I actually LIKED the scene with Edd, Sam and the-Lifesize-Cardboard-Cut-Out of Kit Harrington (he's not even trying to act at this point); and while I DID NOT like the Messandi Grey Worm scenes (Nobody. Cares), I think they tried to use that time wisely and give it its own voice ("I'm Leaving As Soon as I Can").  Even Sam-Jorah was decent. 

But we Can't Have It.  We do not have time.  You fucked this all up, assholes.  You wasted 1/3 of the season of boring exposition.  You cannot take this long with stuff you should have either a) stuffed into last week or 2) Unsullied (cut out altogether).  Instead, E 2 feels like just spill-over from episode 1.  What a waste.

Limited Engagement- Jon and Dany: No need to have these characters take up any more dead time.  I liked that; I liked that we did not see more of them then we absolutely needed to.  And I liked that the show had Jon tell Dany and let it lie there.  Good move.  Just get it done.  But could iit have been any more lifeless?  Could it have been any more tone deaf and empty?  OKay, I know, Its Emilia Clark and she's ... she; no Meryl Streep; is that too harsh?  Anyway, she reacts ... and we believe for a couple of seconds that she has human emotions.  Okay.  And then the writers did a wise thing- they started the battle!  Why did that take 55 minutes? No clue!  But it did end that awkward scene so... win?  Anyway, I liked that they got it over and I liked that it was done, but it was poorly done.  

What I Did Not Like:

Let's Reminisce About Seasons 1-4: So, here is how you know the show has sucked for a long ... long time.  Most of this episode was spent with characters who have been on the show since AT LEAST the second season.  And they have a host of conversations:

"Hey, remember that time I killed a white walker?" (Season 4)

"Hey, remember that time I lost a hand?" (Season 3)

"Hey, remember that time we were all here with Robert?" (Season 1)

"Hey, remember that time I almost killed the Hound?" (Season 4)

"Hey, remember that time I left you for dead when Brienne almost killed you?" (season 4)

"Hey, remember that time we had a father?" (Season1 for Starks; Season 4 for Lannisters) 

"Hey, remember that time you sold Gendry for gold after you swore all this bullshit but you have never paid the consequences because this show has no continuity? (Season 3) 

"Hey, remember that time a smoking hot red-head bled me with leeches? (Season 3...4... something like that).  

"Hey, remember that time I used to whore all the time and was funny and had great dialog when the writers of this show just copied the dialog from the books, but now that I am no longer taken from the books, the writers have no fucking idea what to do with me because they are terrible at this?" (seasons 1-4) 

"Hey, remember that time you threw me out a window?  I mean, I get it now,m but, come on man? Still shitty." (Season 1) 

All of that.  What did all those discussions have in common?  Well, they involved memories from, you know, a show that wasn't terrible; when the show was- basically - "copy/paste" from George RR Martin.  Good times.  

And you know what they did not talk about?  ANYTHING ELSE!  Why?  Because Seasons 5 onward were virtually meaningless and had nothing worthwhile to remember!  Nobody gives a shit because they were not worthy of our memory.  Sure, Sam mentions, briefly, getting the sword from his family and that Davos was at the Battle of the Bastards.  But otherwise?  Why bother!?  Nothing worth talking about has happened IN YEARS! ! !!  This show JUST PROVED that it's been a waste of our time since AT LEAST season 5.  If not longer.  And the show JUST ADMITTED THAT!  

God this is a waste of time.

Which Bring Me to...

ONE-THIRD PORTION!!!!! It's not like this is a 10-episode season; its a truncated 6 episode season (one where we were promised episodes would go over an hour; neither so far has).   And in these two epsidoes, nothing has actually happened.  And its an insult to us because this show only has 4 more episodes total.  And nothing has happened.  We have wasted one-third of the show on NOTHING!  We had empty dialog; we had DEAD AIR (there were long stretches where there was no dialog); we had time spent on characters that are third-level or worse (ie: Messandri and Grey Worm).

Its an insult to the viewer to take this long to tell us nothing.  I will say that if it turns out the Battle at Winterfell takes 2-or-more episodes, then I can see the investment (if done well).  But this show spent 56 minutes to show us nothing.  The whole time ALL the audience is thinking is "When will they show us the battle?"  And if the show was done well, the writers would have found a way to either increase the tension OR give the audience what they want. They did neither.  So, the whole time we are watching something WE DO NOT WANT TO WATCH!  we want to watch a battle; we want to see the tension resolved.  We don't want to see filler or dead-time.  Especially given we have no time left. 

So, of course, we get nothing.  Because the writers do not have enough to actually say.  

And that's what we are listening to at this point.  

We have nobody to blame but ourselves.  

You, Sir/Madam are brilliant & hilarious besides. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your rant & couldn't agree more. Thanks for that. 

[kissdbyfire]

On 4/22/2019 at 12:04 AM, Mystical said:

So is there anything in terms of battle Arya is NOT an expert in? She became a sword fighter able to hold her own against Brienne without training, last Season we learned she became a bullseye hitting bow woman in one day and now she could have a knife throwing act in a circus with that accuracy.

The show (runners, writers, etc) looooove Arya. Almost as much as they loooove Cersei & Tyrion. So, to answer your question, no. She’s awesome in every possible way because she is a show fave, an audience fave, and a super duper bad ass empowered woman.

ETA: and she shares a name w/ book Arya, and little else. 

[darmody]

1 hour ago, Ice Queen said:

The gods sanctioned it. That's what the story of the Rat Cook was about. In the north, guest right is sacred and inviolate just as it was in northern Europe. Only kinslaying was considered as bad and was dealt with harshly. 

And Manderly didn't break guest right as he was not the Lord of Winterfell. He was re-enacting the Rat Cook and such an act would have been seen as justice. 

Arya is bent on revenge, not justice. She may be conflicted but that doesn't stop her from killing. The only reason she hasn't gone over completely is Nymeria. That is her link to her self.

I assume that story is based on the Tantalus myth. He chopped up his own son and fed him to the gods who came to dine at his house. For that crime he was sent to hell to suffer and cursed his bloodline for eternity. 

Point being it was a really bad thing to trick people into eating people. I'm guessing George Martin wouldn't twist the myth to be the right thing to do. 

[Le Cygne]

9 hours ago, Nami said:

Did the rules change or what? I thought this thread was for us to rant and rave not debate with people who disagree with our rant? at least it has been this way for years

 

By the way,

 

That was good! So many key points are wrong, continuity and just plain logic seems to be so difficult for this show for some odd reason. It's like they write the thing on a cocktail napkin.

Dany idolized her brother Rhaegar, so to have her think the worst is bizarre. There was a scene with Barristan where he spoke highly of Rhaegar, again, how easily they forget their own show.

And I'd have known this was a Cogman episode just by the endless Tyrion praise throughout. And how he turns "Sansa" into someone else at the expense of her own story, which doesn't exist anymore.

[lakin1013]

Not sure if this is a rant but if the battle in ep 3 goes off and Sansa does not kill anyone, I am going to have to write a letter of complaint.  Has she killed anyone, at all, in the previous 7 seasons?  And what is her plan now - to hide in the crypts as her way of protecting her homeland?  Sheesh...

[darmody]

9 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

Not sure if this is a rant but if the battle in ep 3 goes off and Sansa does not kill anyone, I am going to have to write a letter of complaint.  Has she killed anyone, at all, in the previous 7 seasons?  And what is her plan now - to hide in the crypts as her way of protecting her homeland?  Sheesh...

She was complicit in the murder of her aunt, by concocting an elaborate lie afterwards. She sorta oversaw Little Finger's execution. 

Not everybody has to be a killer. The Hound informed Sansa she would be surrounded by killers, and so she is. 

My guess is she'll be on the battlements in one of her thinking spots. Give a few orders. But I don't want her fighting unless necessary. Meaning I don't want her dressed like a Valkyrie leading men on the field. 

[lakin1013]

2 minutes ago, darmody said:

She was complicit in the murder of her aunt, by concocting an elaborate lie afterwards. She sorta oversaw Little Finger's execution. 

Not everybody has to be a killer. The Hound informed Sansa she would be surrounded by killers, and so she is. 

My guess is she'll be on the battlements in one of her thinking spots. Give a few orders. But I don't want her fighting unless necessary. Meaning I don't want her dressed like a Valkyrie leading men on the field. 

Littlefinger killed her aunt. Arya killed Littlefinger.  If everybody has been training to protect and fight for Winterfell, what exactly has Sansa been doing with this time.  Not much of a leader, more of a mid-level manager. 

[darmody]

On 4/22/2019 at 9:22 AM, Lord Varys said:

We were told. Back

Davos is one of the best cases to exemplify the fact that they just like to show off actors they like (as @The Dragon Demands really lays out in long and quite mad rants on his youtube channel). There is a very clear point in the show where you can see when the character from George the role the actor played disappeared and what's left is basically the actor himself, a guy the writers like to show off. Granted, the show Davos was always different from the real Davos due to him being much older and all, but the basic story and his relationship to Stannis were done in a similar and fitting manner. He also had pretty much the same story as book Davos up until they went north. But afterwards there is pretty much nothing of the character left. And in his case it is so obvious because Davos Seaworth has literally nothing to do with any of the characters he later interacts with. If Stannis were to die he would likely either die with him, fall into a deep depression, or perhaps decide to go try to get back home. He would not continue as if nothing had happened, becoming basically everybody's friend. That's just completely silly and shows that the writer don't care about either the characters or the story they are telling.

Well, there is one thing about Davos. He liked Jon, Jon died, and he saw Jon resurrected. Now he believes in Jon. And that's pretty much it. 

It's not much, but it is something to motivate him. Unlike many of the rest of the characters. 

[darmody]

11 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

Littlefinger killed her aunt. Arya killed Littlefinger.  If everybody has been training to protect and fight for Winterfell, what exactly has Sansa been doing with this time.  Not much of a leader, more of a mid-level manager. 

If she went on trial for killing Aunt Lysa in our society, she'd be just as guilty of murder as Little Finger. 

During the time Arya was learning to be a psycho killer and Jon was failing at everything yet moving upwards, Sansa was held hostage and married off.

Arya's badassery, Brienne's strength and skill, and Danny's superhuman fireproofness aside, women in Sansa's situation aren't supposed to fight in the same way Jon does. She's been middled by a bastard being elevated over her for no reason. Not much she can do about that, but she is Lady of Winterfell. 

I suppose she could have trained better in intrigue, courtship, and feminine wiles. But she's just Sansa. Not so clever as the show would have us believe. 

Oh, and I forgot she murdered Ramsay directly. 

[teej6]

1 hour ago, darmody said:

The acting certainly makes her look like a psycho. I swear she might have shown her "o" face when she slit Walder Frey's throat. And she's always smirking at everyone like she's gonna eat their livers. 

She's able to empathize with Lannister soldiers, huh? By which you mean she sat next to them for a while without killing them. You know psychos don't have to kill literally everyone they meet, right?

Suspense and intrigue? The show built that between Arya and Sansa in season One with foodfights and lies about sword practice. I think we could find a way with human adult characters that don't involve assuming a person's identity by cutting off their face. Even Faceless Men probably don't tell people that's what they're going to do when they do it. 

I have no idea what you are going on about. D&D makes every character look bad and inconsistent across episodes and seasons, Arya being no exception. Their intent is to show her as a badass Stark revenge machine (which is not what book Arya is about), not a psychopath as you put it. If that’s the way it comes across to you, that’s because of their sloppy writing and inability to create proper characters.

As to the bolded part, I don’t know what the hell you mean. The first season Arya and Sansa were true to their book counterparts and were shown as two bickering sisters who were very different from each other. No suspense there, just very natural family dynamics. As to the last season, D&D built a faux fight between Arya and Sansa since they ran out of book material and couldn’t write a decent plot for their WF storyline. The only shit plot the two could come up with was faux tension and suspense, which btw made no narrative sense and had holes the size of a continent.

And if you want to disss Arya (show or book) and not the show, this is not the thread for it. I see you already have created a thread for it. 

[darmody]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:50 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

It's not even that "Book Davos" disappeared...."TV Davos", distinct from book Davos, disappeared.

From trying to write up coherent wiki articles on things like "TV Cersei" - there IS NO "TV Cersei", as a coherent fictional character.  Otherwise we wouldn't also have TV-only viewers turning on the show.  She randomly does stuff from one episode to the next to show off the actor.

For a while, I thought it was that simple: "wow, Cersei can make a worried face" etc.  And that is true, but it's a bit more than that...as we know from Bryan Cogman's repeated rants about The Faces on video.

The nonsense Benioff filled his head with is that "We should try to write scenes with no dialogue to show off the actors, but they can convey all this "subtext" through their eyes and facial expressions".

If you guys haven't seen my more recent video on the script reports that recently came out, please go over them:  their scripts are filled with bizarre...paragraph long descriptions of the characters internal thought monologues.  Much like a book.  They're filled with book prose.

Benioff never "learned" screenwriting, which he has no training or experience in.  Instead his scripts are filled with this....beautifully written internal thought monologues.  Which Cogman has repeatedly said "the actors can convey with their eyes!"....when it's...INFORMATIONAL CONTENT.  

So much from prior seasons I'm seeing in a new light now.  It's not purely "camera lingers on Sophie Turner's face while she makes a sad face"....that it part of it, and the core of it, but the.....way they mentally process or rationalize this, is that the scripts actually have like a paragraph long description of "this is what Sansa is thinking now".  Like a book.  

But this isn't a valid "ideology" - it's specifically why the first pilot failed.  They forgot to mention in spoken dialogue that Cersei is Jaime's sister!  It says it repeatedly in the scene descriptions.  Because it's like writing a book to them.

Thus a lot of scene which seemed to be lacking basic exposition....they felt this was conveyed through facial expressions.

Which comes around to the core issue, though:  "Wow, actors can emote with their faces!" - "So let's play favorites with the actors and randomly give ones we like more big emotive scenes!"

Cogman just a few days ago gave a podcast with Vanity Fair, I'm going over it now, and he....he repeats ALL of that silly stuff he said in that writer's school video interview from Season 7!

He....he quotes off Arya's internal monologue during her sex scene.  Some even wondered if it was consensual sex (only a few, but given her age, they wondered how she got into it)…..and he's saying her thoughts are "this is me embracing being a woman, embracing life" or something like that - actually fine but....he's insisting, word for word, "I am capable of writing a scene in which the actors don't talk, and all of this paragraph-long 'subtext' is conveyed through the actor's eyes because they're so amazing".

Vanity Fair's podcast hosts HAVE criticized the Sansa rape, and other stuff, in the past.  Why the heck doesn't anyone challenge when Cogman says these absurdities in live interviews?  Not even accusingly, just "uh, Bryan....I don't understand how the actor could convey that much specific info with just their facial expressions, please explain more".   They're just too stunned.  

This isn't going to fade, the end result will be making a special wiki writeup page just gathering together all of their quotes on this to explain their...mentality, towards "writing":  Cogman has laid it out very consistently.  

1 - we're showing off the actors' nonverbal emoting

2 - We can convey a paragraph of informational "subtext" from the script through a look from the actor's face (directly stated this in as many words)

my god...Emilia Clarke DOES NOT BLINK during her confrontation scene with Sansa in episode 2.  It's FOUR MINUTES LONG.  She never blinks.  Wide-eyed, well-lit face, showing off Emilia Clarke emoting "messiah face" (even though there's actual dialogue in this)

I'm still going over info.

 

While they're busy writing dialogue-less scenes about characters' feelings, could they write excerpts from non-existent novels about the PLOT? You know, that thing that keeps stories moving. 

About being able to convey internal information through an actor's face, okay, Game of Thrones has a lot of worldclass actors. But more is required. Like a coherent story. And some idea what the character actually is. And good direction, and so forth. 

Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad is one example where I thought I could literally read his thoughts through his facial expressions and bodily movements. But that was generally a much better-written show and a match made in heaven between actor and role. 

[teej6]

39 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

Not sure if this is a rant but if the battle in ep 3 goes off and Sansa does not kill anyone, I am going to have to write a letter of complaint.  Has she killed anyone, at all, in the previous 7 seasons?  And what is her plan now - to hide in the crypts as her way of protecting her homeland?  Sheesh...

She killed Ramsay.  D&D had her feed him to his dogs, and had her stand and watch the dogs devour him with a smirk on her face. They thought this was a remarkable scene of vengeance and just comeuppance. Book Sansa, I suspect will get more ruthless but I don’t know if she’ll stand and watch while animals eat a live person. 

[darmody]

14 minutes ago, teej6 said:

I have no idea what you ate going on about. D&D makes every character look bad and inconsistent across episodes and seasons, Arya being no exception. Their intent is to show her as a badass Stark revenge machine (which is not what book Arya is about), not a psychopath as you put it. If that’s the way it comes across to you, that’s because of their sloppy writing and inability to create proper characters.

As to the bolded part, I don’t know what the hell you mean. The first season Arya and Sansa were true to their book counterparts and were shown as two bickering sisters who were very different from each other. No suspense there, just very natural family dynamics. As to the last season, D&D built a faux fight between Arya and Sansa since they ran out of book material and couldn’t write a decent plot for their WF storyline. The only shit plot the two could come up with was faux tension and suspense, which btw made no narrative sense and had holes the size of a continent.

And if you want to disss Arya (show or book) and not the show, this is not the thread for it. I see you already have created a thread for it. 

There absolutely was suspense back in season One. Rewatch the episode where Arya's direwolf bites Joffrey. Sansa chooses Joffrey over Arya and gives false testimony to King Robert, resulting in the murder of the butcher's boy and the death of Sansa's wolf. Arya vows never to forgive her. 

That bit of drama between two little girls was full of more intrigue and pathos than the high stakes games played by the Lady of Winterfell and the international assassin last season. 

[Lord Varys]

24 minutes ago, darmody said:

Well, there is one thing about Davos. He liked Jon, Jon died, and he saw Jon resurrected. Now he believes in Jon. And that's pretty much it. 

It's not much, but it is something to motivate him. Unlike many of the rest of the characters. 

Jon and Davos don't have a properly established relationship of any kind. They had nothing in common, nothing to do with each other, not even a reason to like or interact with each other a lot.

The very fact that FUCKING DAVOS suggested that Melisandre should try TO FUCKING RESURRECT Jon for no reason aside from it apparently being stuff Cunningham had to read from the script shows how fucked up this is.

Or am I mistaken there? Is there some great Davos-Jon bonding scene I forgot? All I recall right now are Davos suddenly being in the thick of things and interacting with people he neither cares no gives a damn.

[teej6]

Just now, darmody said:

That bit of drama between two little girls was full of more intrigue and pathos than the high stakes games played by the Lady of Winterfell and the international assassin last season. 

Not arguing with you here. In fact, exactly the point I was making. The fight and tension between the sisters in Season 1 was natural and organic, although I wouldn’t characterize it as suspenseful. The tension and fight in the last season between Arya and Sansa was anything but  natural or believable. It made no sense and was purely to create artificial suspense and tension without any regard for logical storytelling or character  progression.

[darmody]

11 hours ago, The Scabbard Of the Morning said:

Getting back to this episode, I think in the end it doesn't work because Brienne in the show didn't earn the knighting.  She's a good fighter but she's not a true knight.  She broke her vow to persue personal vendetta, she inflicted torture, she was a jerk to Podrick, she's just another bully full of cynicism and disdain.   There is none of the idealism and innate kindness that makes the Brienne character one of my favorites in the books.  

You mean she stopped watching for a candle for 15 minutes? Sansa rejected her multiple times. She went beyond what would be expected to hang around and save her later. 

In any case, Zombie Mountain is a knight. 

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

The Jon resurrection scene is one of the primary reasons I gave up on the show, it was so rediculous that Davos would even believe such a thing possible, nevermind he would ask Melisandre, someone he hates, to do it, for someone he barely knows, was the last straw for me, after the Dorne foolishness, the Sansa/Ramsay marriage, the 20 good men, the Stannis burning his daughter one hour away from Winterfell, I was mostly done, but wanted to give season 6 a chance, after that scene the show was dead to me.

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

Just now, darmody said:

You mean she stopped watching for a candle for 15 minutes? Sansa rejected her multiple times. She went beyond what would be expected to hang around and save her later. 

In any case, Zombie Mountain is a knight. 

She send a message to Sansa that the candle would be her signal, if she wasn't going to watch for it then don't send the message.  

And we haven't even addressed how she got to KL and proceed to do nothing about freeing Sansa.

[darmody]

10 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Jon and Davos don't have a properly established relationship of any kind. They had nothing in common, nothing to do with each other, not even a reason to like or interact with each other a lot.

The very fact that FUCKING DAVOS suggested that Melisandre should try TO FUCKING RESURRECT Jon for no reason aside from it apparently being stuff Cunningham had to read from the script shows how fucked up this is.

Or am I mistaken there? Is there some great Davos-Jon bonding scene I forgot? All I recall right now are Davos suddenly being in the thick of things and interacting with people he neither cares no gives a damn.

Season Five was in many ways too boring for me to remember, but Davos spent most of it with Jon at castle black. He watched Jon shoot Mance against Stannis' wishes, then helped convince him to invite the Wildlings in. I specifically recall Davos trying to convince Jon to accept Stannis' offer to legitimize him, because Stannis saw something inside Jon. Something I assume Davos saw also. 

So there's that.