[Spoilers] Episode 805 Discussion

[OldGimletEye]

9 minutes ago, SeanF said:

163 Slavers were crucified, but they weren't the only ones that suffered. In fact, their class weren't even the ones that suffered worst, as they were relatively safe in their pyramids.  Meereen was "savagely sacked" according to the author.  Much of this was due to slaves rising up against their masters, but much was down to Dany's sellswords and freedmen murdering, raping, and looting, after they broke into the city.  Dany gave them 24 hours of licence, before restoring order. 

Just to be clear. While I don't condemn Dany for the sack that happened after her taking Mereen, as I'm willing to make some allowance for the nature of medieval warfare, it doesn't follow that I shouldn't condemn her for committing wanton and willful destruction after a city clearly capitulated.

Edited May 14, 2019 by OldGimletEye

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

Just to be clear. While I don't condemn Dany for the sack that happened after her taking Mereen, as I'm willing to make some allowance for the nature of medieval warfare, it doesn't follow that I shouldn't condemn her for committing wanton and willful destruction after a city clearly capitulated.

In the Show, they chose to show Meereen falling to a slave uprising, rather than an external assault.  If they'd gone down a different route, and followed the books, and we'd seen Dany's soldiers being let off the leash, then it may have looked somewhat similar to the sack of Kings Landing.  Although, as her dragons were much smaller then, we wouldn't have seen her torching parts of the city. 

Although Kings Landing's defenders were prepared to surrender, they only did so after they had been clearly defeated.  That was sufficient justification, in Daenerys' eyes, to impose horrific punishment on the city, although obviously it's not justification in our eyes.   Also, it's clear that most people who served Daenerys agreed with her decision, although Tyrion, Jon, and Davos were appalled by it.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I wish Jaime didn’t go back to Cersei, but I don’t think it undid his improvement as a person either. He’s still the guy who saved and knighted Brienne, who saved the city from Aerys and protected Tyrion, and who came North to fight the army of the dead. He came to save Cersei, not to help her crush the invading army. In a way, Jaime and Cersei are the reverse of what we usually see in the depiction of abusive relationships: rather than the manipulated wife being unable to leave her spouse, Jaime is the time one who can’t break free from Cersei.

Ironically, I’ve liked this season a lot more than five, six, and seven.

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I wish Jaime didn’t go back to Cersei, but I don’t think it undid his improvement as a person either. He’s still the guy who saved and knighted Brienne, who saved the city from Aerys and protected Tyrion, and who came North to fight the army of the dead. He came to save Cersei, not to help her crush the invading army. In a way, Jaime and Cersei are the reverse of what we usually see in the depiction of abusive relationships: rather than the manipulated wife being unable to leave her spouse, Jaime is the time one who can’t break free from Cersei.

Ironically, I’ve liked this season a lot more than five, six, and seven.

I've found this series, and the last three, very much a curate's egg.  Some scenes and episodes are outstanding, others are poor.

The high points have always been outstanding filming, great music, and often excellent acting.  The low points are characters behaving in ways that sometimes make no sense, rushed plots, and absurd military tactics. 

But, I do credit them for this.  Daenerys' behaviour in this episode does flow quite logically from her development since Season 1, rather than being something that's an abrupt change.

[OldGimletEye]

14 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That was sufficient justification, in Daenerys' eyes, to impose horrific punishment on the city, although obviously it's not justification in our eyes.  

While I can make some allowance for the norms in the universe of ASOIAF, at the end of the day, I can't be a complete moral relativist. There is some stuff that just goes beyond the pale.

And I think, even though the norms in the universe of ASOIAF are different from our own, they aren't something that is completely foreign to us. Or our norms wouldn't be completely foreign to the people that inhabit the ASOIAF universe. The people in the universe of ASOIAF generally understand that killing, rape, etc. is bad.

Edited May 14, 2019 by OldGimletEye

[Nictarion]

26 minutes ago, Obsidian Knight said:

I liked the fight between the Mountain (Varysface) and the Hound. Really liked.

He did look a bit like Varys.

S1 Mountain was the best Mountain. 

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Noblesse oblige ain't modern, and traditional aristocrats have always understood what happens if the poor are treated too badly. 

And where exactly has noblesse oblige ever been introduced or depicted as a concept in Westeros? This is a serious question because I don't remember anything that could even be remotely be construed as being a version of that concept.

Sure, nobles usually care for their castle smallfolk and the smallfolk they live off/exploit. That's basically part of self-preservation. But no nobleman in Westeros ever gives any indication that being noble means to care to a greater degree for the common good or that being noble means you have a duty to your king or people, etc.

Not to mention that concept in the real world is also more or less just a smokescreen to justify your own privileges and wealth by virtue of birth.

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I would agree though that tyranny towards nobility in Westeros is treated rather differently from tyranny towards the peasantry. Aerys Targaryen is still remembered fondly by the smallfolk, because his shenanigans never reached them.

I'd also add that he would have never had any reason to target the smallfolk outside his inner circles (i.e. servants and midwives, etc. which he irrationally suspected of being responsible for the deaths of his many children). And if even he never had any reason to kill a lot of smallfolk - and he was literally an incoherent, raving madman in his last couple of years - then this entire scenario of Dany simply burning down thousands of Kingslanders makes simply no sense. We are never going to get that in the books.

[Kyll.Ing.]

I think my main problem with Daenerys's turn to madness was that she seemed to stop for a while. After torching the Iron Fleet, the scorpions on the walls and the city gates, she landed and watched the city surrender before starting to burn it again. If she had simply continued without that pause, burned the city without caring if it surrendered, the implication would have been that she had already snapped before they arrived at King's Landing. As it was shown, it's as if she had her moment of cracking just when her victory was assured and all that was left was the parade.

A far bigger problem I have with this episode (and for that matter, the preview for the next) is how Daenerys's armies have been shown to be destroyed several times this season, only for them to be fresh and battle ready in the next episode. We saw the Dothraki being slaughtered almost to the man at Winterfell, then suddenly the next episode tells us that half of them survived. Likewise, the battle of Winterfell saw the Unsullied being wiped out in front of the fire trench, Grey Worm barely escaped while the rest held firm and were slaughtered by the wights... yet half of them apparently survived too. And then the Unsullied traveled on ships to Dragonstone, where the fleet was suddenly and brutally sunk, with only a few men making it to shore... yet thousands were ready at the gates of King's Landing. A city they charged into while Daenerys was torching it. Yet the next episode preview shows the army fully intact after being seemingly obliterated three times. Sure, I could buy that there were survivors, but they keep showing us that everyone dies. Weren't the Unsullied almost wiped out at Casterly Rock too? This overuse of dramatic moments where everyone dies, yet huge masses of soldiers being available in the next episode, really stretches suspension of disbelief. I'm almost expecting the next episode to have ten thousand men of the Night's Watch appear at Winterfell to fight on Sansa's side in an eventual civil war.

Likewise, the Red Keep apparently collapses over Cersei and Jaime (sidenote: would Tyrion ever know their fate, or simply believe they got to Pentos?), yet in the next episode preview it still stands intact.

It seems like consequence has been thrown entirely out of the window this season. If one episode requires the entire Red Keep to collapse spectacularly, and the next one requires it to be intact when Daenerys takes it, they somehow do both those things. One episode shows the armies being slaughtered to a man for dramatic effect, the next shows the army as if the previous battle never took place.

At this point, I'm almost hoping it will end with it all being a dream. The next episode may very well be titled "A Dream of Spring", I guess that's the closest we get.

 

EDIT: One thing I liked, though, was Cersei's in-character arrogance remaining almost to the very end. For the past few seasons, she has been acting as if she was untouchable, as if she would always win. Her lines about "only needing one lucky shot", "At least we have the Iron Fleet" and "At least the Red Keep is holding" shows she believed in her own superiority, but eventually had to face the bitter truth and the hopelessness of her position. In the end, she was no genius, no grand overlord, and had she realized it sooner the war would have been a lot shorter (and she'd probably be happier). 

Edited May 14, 2019 by Kyll.Ing.

[Imp Beyond the Wall]

28 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

 but they keep showing us that everyone dies.

How many times did they "fake" kill Arya in the episode? 

And to paraphrase Fletcher from the Outlaw Josey Wales, "I don't want to hear Cersei dead, I want to see Cersei dead."

The demise of Cersei and Jaime was awful.  Are they going to be digging themselves out of rubble next week?

[Kyll.Ing.]

3 minutes ago, Imp Beyond the Wall said:

How many times did they "fake" kill Arya in the episode?

That, but with the armies we actually see them killed. It's as if they had shown Arya's crushed body lying there every time the scene cut to black... and then the next scene showed her unhurt and in clean clothes again.

[Imp Beyond the Wall]

12 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

That, but with the armies we actually see them killed. It's as if they had shown Arya's crushed body lying there every time the scene cut to black... and then the next scene showed her unhurt and in clean clothes again.

True.  I never really criticize the writers too much because I think that that is where "busted-fan-theories go to die, but the battles this season have been about as logically consistent as your average game of "green army men."   I won't say "realistic" because the blood, gore and charred flesh has been top notch.   

[Laughing Storm Reborn]

Maybe she goes mad in the books aswell but it willl be very well explained and with plenty of page time to understand such a fall.

Surely the show had to be 12 seasons long but with the directors quality of writing and lack of interest after so much time, it's better this way.

Jon being revived just to be the same is something i don't believe grrm is going to do, the character will experience significant change because otherwise his death and revival is just that, pointless

[Gendelsdottir]

For all those confused about Dany's scorched-earth policy, I say the answer is obvious. It was a public-health measure! The mortality & morbidity rates from flea- and rat-borne infectious diseases are going to plummet! Of course, the population as a whole has also plummeted rather drastically, but those who remain will be healthy as anything. That is, once the third-degree burns heal. Ahem. Oh, and tell the maesters to forget about White Walker lore and have them go full Search Engine on how burns units operated in Dance of the Dragons times. They'll need that info for as long as Drogon is still around.

And speaking of Drogon - getting out of the North clearly did him the world of good. The warmer temperatures helped him regain his lost mojo, his dracarys, and his ability to dodge incoming missiles (not that there were many of them).

Jaime/Cersei. Much as I dislike the way they were writer-forced into that last scene together, the actors sold the hell out of it. Well done, you two. I suppose there's a minuscule chance they'll crawl out from under tonnes of broken stone, but I doubt it. We're in contraction mode here - fewer characters, fewer locations, little or no magic, as little flesh on the plot skeleton as possible.

Cleganebowl - another checkbox cleared. Sandor went out like a boss, yo.

Arya. Oh, for the love of the gods, old & new. Slumped against the side of a building, regains consciousness bloody, dazed, covered in white dust. Anybody else get a strong "collapse of the Twin Towers" vibe off this? Only me? Okay. The fricken horse - oh, for the love of whatever other gods there be. I picture the scene in the writing room thus:

No. 1: ... And then, after Arya escapes certain death for the fifth time, a unicorn comes to her rescue.
No. 2: No, no, we can't do that! We agreed the dragons could stay in, since they're cool, but otherwise no more magic, remember?
No. 1: Oh, right. Guess it'll have to be just a horse, then.

Having said all of this, I actually *enjoyed* watching this ep, for two reasons. First, it looked fan-friggen-tastic. The billows of green smoke when Drogon lit up caches of wildfire placed by Aerys, or Cersei, or Qyburn, or who gives a toss. Second, the stupid was not quite so glaring this time, except for the moment involving a certain kraken-lord whose name rhymes with "moron." Plus you could actually see everything that happened! Bonus! Hell's bells, I may even re-watch it to catch those little moments with Varys mentioned by other posters - at his writing desk, Tyrion's arm-touching gesture, stuff like that.

One more to go!

Edited May 14, 2019 by Gendelsdottir
Added reason 2

[fairwarging]

22 hours ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

But the Seven Kingdoms technically weren't ruled by an absolute centralized monarchy. It was all decentralized and feudal. In a true absolute monarchy, the monarch's armies are the only armies. 

Oddly enough in a strong monarchy the peasants often have more rights as the king wishes to placate his Lords and his smallfolk. When lords cry 'Tyranny' they are often talking about less control over their underlings and their ancestral rights to do what they wish on their land. Caesar seized power for himself, but his popularity with and gestures towards the plebs really pushed the Senators over the edge. 

[BlackLightning]

3 minutes ago, fairwarging said:

Oddly enough in a strong monarchy the peasants often have more rights as the king wishes to placate his Lords and his smallfolk. When lords cry 'Tyranny' they are often talking about less control over their underlings and their ancestral rights to do what they wish on their land. Caesar seized power for himself, but his popularity with and gestures towards the plebs really pushed the Senators over the edge. 

Exactly. You're absolutely right. Hence the reason why Roose Bolton complains about Queen Alysanne so much...

This is what Show Joffrey wanted, what several Targaryens wished for, what both versions of Daenerys had in Meereen and what both versions of Daenerys are going to want to install

People are going to see Daenerys as tyrannical for moving Westeros away from a feudal system where everyone is a lord and a vassal of someone else into the Renaissance era where the monarch is the single most powerful person in the country and the government revolves around them.

But that's no more tyrannical than the United States federal government telling the individual southern states that they have to abide by the nation's tax and tariff policies, that they lord over their own lands, that they can't create policies for new territories.

Notice the slavery parallels (serfs, slaves, indentured servants, it doesn't matter). Notice how the antebellum South is described as feudal with its own knights, lords, heirs, dynastic marriages, and chivalric code. Notice how the lifestyle of the pre-Civil War southerners was blown away by the wind and how the winds of winter are coming to do the same.

That's what breaking the wheel always meant to me.

Ending the dynastic wars and intrigues of feudal powers and protecting the poor and the weak once and for all with a strong federal government.

All the good Targaryen kings and princes of the past would love Daenerys. Especially Aegon I, Visenya, Rhaenyra and both Daerons. Aegon V and Maester Aemon would be both rolling in their graves out of sheer enthusiasm and pride. Even Maegor would have a deep respect for her.

It's a shame that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are unimaginative, greedy morons who can't write their way into a paper bag. It would have been very interesting to see the lords of Westeros struggle against Queen Daenerys Stormborn, her toughness and her pretty damn good series of laws and reforms that focused on improving the condition of the commonfolk

It's Napoleon all over again.

[Pumpkin G. Snark]

Maybe you remember this interview with Kit Harington: “Who is/was Jon’s greatest love? – Ygritte”. Now we know it’s not only because of, you know, Rose Leslie. Now we can see it as a spoiler of sorts. Jon finally sees what Dany is capable of. And then no love will hold him from… what? Confronting her? (And her armies, and her dragon.)

I liked ep 5, it’s very spectacular. Many results (if not the scenes themselves) seem like fulfilled predictions and/or threats. Varys’s fire death, for example. (He had no reasons to love fire.) Can’t see what’s so special about these rings. All could see them on his fingers so they were not some secret sign. And they would be melted in the dragonflame anyway. Well at least he’s managed to send some of the letters, correct?

It was rather obvious that unGregor and Sandor both will die in their fight (it didn’t seem too long to me). And Jaime told Bronn in s5 about his (Jaime’s) wish to die in his woman’s arms. It’s a powerful scene. Maybe it will not be the same in the books where we have the valonqar element of the prophecy, hands about Cersei’s pale throat etc. But I think in the books they’ll leave this world together, too.

The scene with Tyrion releasing Jaime is very touching. Yes, it mirrors the famous final of season 4, but it creates some strong feelings. No Tysha – but her story was not fully disclosed in s4, so – no expectations ruined.

Arya is our agent in the field, through her we see the atrocities of war (like around the Red Wedding). Maybe now it’s time for her to sail across the Sunset Sea.

Jon’s behaviour is, well, moderately believable. Is he still one of the few people who is able to at least try to convince Dany to… to see reason?

Don’t even want to start to think about Dany. I agree with many posters who argue that the signs were here all along, that the proverbial coin was in the air etc. But now the coin has landed (showing the dragon side). Just a weird thought: maybe we’ll see not a murder but a suicide? The Breaker of Chains (and of the Wheel) realizes that it was all in vain, that people don’t love her (quite understandable), that now they know there’s someone with a better claim. This madness must have, well, stages. In the books we’ll (hopefully) read all these internal monologues, in the show we only hear these voices in the Previously On (well, it’s not enough, but it’s something). It would be great if in the end Dany (it’s strange to call her Dany after KL’s destruction)… Daenerys eventually sees the situation as it is.

Ep 6 will be around 80 min, but there are so many lines to conclude. Maybe we’ll not see Yara, Tormund, Hot Pie (terrible thought), even Gendry, but there should be Brienne (and Podrick), Bronn, Davos, Sam + Gilly. And of course Tyrion and all the Starks. And will we see some other locations besides KL. Winterfell and maybe the Wall (in passing)? Or it all revolves around the Iron Throne (if it survives as such after ep 5’s inferno) as the title sequence hints?

Anyway, ep 5 was stunning visually, but uneven plot-wise and character-wise (well, it’s not the first episode like this…). With some very touching scenes (Tyrion + Varys, Tyrion + Jaime, Cersei + Jaime) and one very powerful POV (Arya’s). And “The Light of the Seven” fusing into “The Rains (Reines) of Castamere” in the end. Ep 5 could be a good movie in itself.

[TNTW]

I thought the acting and music were great. Emilia has improved so much as an actress, as have many of the others who were young and inexperienced a decade ago.

My favorite shot of entire episode was right before Cleganebowl, when Drogon could be seen thru collapsed roof. Loved that.

[JonStarkIII]

On 5/12/2019 at 10:33 PM, Cas Stark said:

Dany and Drogon burning the city looked fantastic.

Jamie and Cersei's death, very, very underwhelming.  A ceiling fell on them and they hardly said anything to each other?  Whatever

I agree the way they died wasn't what anyone expected.  But have to admit the acting was awesome...the few words they said...mostly Cercie....Lena Heady really sold that scene.  Too bad the rubble ended it all so soon.

[JonStarkIII]

On 5/12/2019 at 10:57 PM, Jamie Lannister said:

Was the valonqar even on the table here? I thought the Maggy vision omitted it in the show.

You're right though. Jaime ultimately had no character development, he didn't change or grow as a person at all. It was just a character examination. We see that he's not quite as bad as he first seems, but is ultimately the exact same man he was in S1E1.

I'm so torn. It's awful, but I kind of buy it for the show. They made Jaime so much more detestable and Cersei so much nicer that it almost makes sense for these two characters. But it's not at all what I want or expect from the books. 

I thought that Jaime wasn't that same jerk he was in season 1////clearly he had to let Brienne down hard so she could move one...he never insulted her etc...he put it all on him...S 1 Jaime would never have done that.  I think he went to KL no knowing if he would find Cercie as the mad queen and try to stop her...or try to save her if she was losing.  I meant saving her body and child.  Maybe he was hoping for an exiled Cercie with no teeth and eventually they could have a normal life...who knows  but he had def become a better person/character.

[The Bard of Banefort]

Watching Dany comb through the streets, I got the impression that she was punishing the people for not loving her. It would match up with what else we’ve seen this season, with her being unable to cope with no longer being seen as a goddess.