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How Would You Rate Episode 109?


Ran
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  1. 1. What's your rating from 1-10, with 10 being the highest/best

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Terrible terrible. I was hoping for an epic battle at the Green Forks, but I only saw the aftermath. If there was thing I was looking forward to the most this season, it had to be this battle, and they cut it. Why spend money on pointless sex scenes and extra scenes not from the book? They could've used this money to depict the battle. I'm also disappointed how Grey Wind got no screen time, Roose Bolton and Karstark are absent. Where the hell is the Blackfish? They could've at least mentioned Karstark's sons getting cut down. That means Karstark is cut from the show, and his whole mutiny thing is absent from the 3rd book. I wouldn't be surprised if Bolton is cut out from the show, bc they could just get the Freys to mastermind the whole Red Wedding scene. I had such high hopes for this episode, and this last part of the series. Now i know better, lower expectations are needed to enjoy this show.

I agree it would have been nice for a big battle scene, just for the fun of it. The reality, though, is that big battles isn't what the books are about, and isn't what the show should be about. On the issue of money, it's not as if they could cut out 5 minutes of Shae and add 5 minutes of battle. That's not really how it works, and even a 50 million dollar budget only goes so far; there's a reason the Hobbit films have a 500 million dollar price tag--big, epic, computerized battles cost big, epic sums of money.

I definitely agree with you about Greywind. I'm missing all the wolves. We haven't really seen much of Summer (has he even been named, yet?), we've seen very little of Rickon or Shaggydog, and it seems like they only brought Ghost back because there was no better way to deal with the wights.

On Roose Bolton and Karstark. I agree that Bolton might be out completely, but I'm not too worried. They can make anyone a turncoat in AFFC, or as you say just have the Freys do it all. Similarly, just because they don't mention Karstark NOW doesn't mean they can't do it later. Maybe one of his sons dies in a future battle. Maybe they contrive some feud between Houses Lannister and Karstark that makes Karstark want to kill Jaime. Just because they don't do it exactly as it was in the books doesn't mean it won't happen.

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I agree it would have been nice for a big battle scene, just for the fun of it. The reality, though, is that big battles isn't what the books are about, and isn't what the show should be about.

How many times in the past two months have they talked about the Starks and the Lannisters going to war? The lion and the wolf at each other's throats? Troops mobilizing, armies on the move, peace fleeing, war upon the realm... But it's not important and we shouldn't see any of it.

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I gave this episode a 7, though I actually wish I had given episode 3 a lower mark than I believe I did at the time so that I could score this one a little lower too and still be consistent. I didn't dislike it much but I did feel it missed the boat in terms of building flow and drama within the episode unit. I liked individual elements but the whole was perhaps lacking compared to the potential, I would have liked it more if the dramatic end felt like it had more build up throughout the episode. Off the top of my head I feel like it would've benefited from cutting between the different arcs more, so that each arc could make some use of some convenient cuts and the different dramatic peaks could play off each other.

Going in to the finale, GRRM's episode, #8 (The Pointy End) is still my favorite.

Edited by Lady Blackfish
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The show is a visual medium whereas the books are a collection of third person povs. Robb wasn't a pov in the books but in the show he happens to be far more important because we're actually seeing his actions compared to hearing about from Bran's or Catelyn's pov. Point is, it's redundant for the show to be follow a pov arc during battle scenes because the drama of the show isn't pov centric but rather shows us everything in an ominiscient manner. For example, the show isn't pov centric like the books because we get additional scenes of other characters i.e Littlefinger, Joffrey, Cersei, Varys, Loras, Renly etc.

Honestly, I understand what you're saying except for the bolded part, but I can't make the correlation between this post and my first one.

I think you missed a point in my first post. The expenses of producing such large-scale battles as GRRM has written would make the price of creating the show rise dramatically. Maybe later you'll get to see a huge battle such as the Battle of the Blackwater, because of it's significance to the development of certain characters (i.e. Davos's experience in the battle, the attempted assassination of Tyrion or even what it forced Sandor to do), but spending such significant cash and time on something that doesn't actually advance the story in a essential way that isn't sort of superficial just isn't rational from anyone's point of view.

A person can argue all they want about how too much airtime may have been spent with Tyrion in his tent or with Ned in his cell etc. etc. but to have a fully logical argument you need logical consistency. Saying less time should have been spent in Tyrion's tent then argue for precious time to be spent on a battle that is unnecessary to advance the plot and characterization falls utterly short of convincing. I understand that many of you wanted to see a battle, but why exactly? Besides just "wanting to see the battle" what reason for including it is there? Saying that it's important in the advancement of the plot is a useless and baseless argument because I still don't see how. There's virtually no actual explaining going on for the Pro-Battle Argument besides a primeval "b/c I said so" attitude.

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I gave this episode a 7, though I actually wish I had given episode 3 a lower mark than I believe I did at the time so that I could score this one a little lower too and still be consistent.

You can delete and recast poll votes.

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i was going to rate this episode much lower (like a 5), but then I remembered all the awesome stuff that happened in the first half such as Varys/Ned and the Aemon speech and the Twin scenes and the Mormont fight.

So 7.

The last twenty minutes or so were pretty bad though. No battles, not enough Ned, and the most WTF out of place scene in the whole show (drinking game?? Tyrion sob story?? that stuff belongs in season 2, NOT the climax of this one). Very disappointing.

Edited by sadfascist
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The lack of battles dont really bother me. THey were never a huge part of the series to me I guess, esp since we never even got RObbs POV. I liked the episode and woulda gave it an 8.

However, the horrible actress, and horrible changes they seem to have made to Shaes character drop it down like a whole point or two to me. Its like bugging me way more than it should.

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How many times in the past two months have they talked about the Starks and the Lannisters going to war? The lion and the wolf at each other's throats? Troops mobilizing, armies on the move, peace fleeing, war upon the realm... But it's not important and we shouldn't see any of it.

Very valid point. I thought they handled Tryion's scene pretty well if they were going to cut that battle scene out (I really liked the camera shot of him on his back).

What I didn't like was after that scene it cut to Robb's army in the woods and it was pretty hard to tell what was even going on. That wasn't handled very well at all and seemed very rushed. It was much, much better in the book, much more descriptive and it showed what an ass kicker Jaime is. That is another scene that people that haven't read the books are really missing out on.

Honestly, I find it hard to believe that people that haven't read the books even understand half of what is going on in relation to Robb's army vs. the Lannisters. There's no map for reference and details are either glossed over or scenes involving the build up are rushed through.

It was definitely anti-climatic the way it was handled in this episode.

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Lots of things had to be changed for budgetary reasons. Huge battles between armies of 10,000+ men each is clearly beyond the scope of the budget.

If you want to compare this to big budget movies like the Lord of the Rings movies go ahead, they had 285 million to spend on approximately the same amount of footage (across 3 movies). So for 50 million at LotR quality (cg, battles, sets, costumes, actors) we get approximately half of a single LotR movie. Clearly not enough to tell the story of 'A Game of Thrones'. Instead we got some great actors (feature quality), amazing costumes (feature quality), some terrific sets and locations (feature quality), no "epic" battles but more than a few well choreographed fights (good not great), and cg so far has been light mostly compositing and matte work (good not great, fingers crossed for next episode). All considered, the money they had was put to use where it had impact over the entire season and not just one "kick ass" episode.

Aside from all that... I really liked the episode, gave it an 8. I'm actually a fan of the decision to knock out Tyrion, and not have him turn into some super warrior like he often does in the books. I never could accept the scenes where Tyrion becomes even somewhat capable at combat, but that's just me.

Only one scene bothered me, somebody called it the "sleepover" scene, and I can't think of a better name for it. I would be able to live with it, if they got the Tysha backstory right, but tragic "golden ending" was omitted for some reason.

Nitpicks, a comment about Long Claw being a bastard (hand-and-a-half) sword, and Frey's throne's back wasn't two tall towers connected by a bridge (like their sigil.. for some reason I remembered that description). Shea was meaner, than I recall.

Oh and for the record.. The Varys & Ned dungeon scenes are some of my favourite scenes. Go Go Eunuch Power!

Edited by Bowl o' Brown
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How many times in the past two months have they talked about the Starks and the Lannisters going to war? The lion and the wolf at each other's throats? Troops mobilizing, armies on the move, peace fleeing, war upon the realm... But it's not important and we shouldn't see any of it.

The lion and the wolf are at each other's throats. We know that Robb just sacrificed 2000 men to Tywin's host. Jaime's just been captured. Ned's had his head chopped off. Sansa is captive. All of Ned's guard and other staff in KL have already been killed.

How does showing us a massive, computerized battle add anything to THE STORY. Yes, I'm aware that battles are great to watch--I love them. But generally they don't add anything to THE STORY.

Anyways, we never saw either battle in the book. The Whispering Wood was detailed to us after the fact, and we only saw an extremely small fraction of the battle on the Green Fork, because everything we saw was from Tyrion's perspective. Really, all we missed was Tyrion killing a few people. That's what, a battle that would end up being 40 stunt guys? Hardly the epic battle that people are complaining was left out of the show...

Incidentally, I AM disappointed they left out the battle from Tyrion's perspective, because I've always thought that the fact that Tyrion involves himself in the battles he's at (whether by his own choice or not) is a great part of his character.

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Honestly, I understand what you're saying except for the bolded part, but I can't make the correlation between this post and my first one.

I think you missed a point in my first post. The expenses of producing such large-scale battles as GRRM has written would make the price of creating the show rise dramatically. Maybe later you'll get to see a huge battle such as the Battle of the Blackwater, because of it's significance to the development of certain characters (i.e. Davos's experience in the battle, the attempted assassination of Tyrion or even what it forced Sandor to do), but spending such significant cash and time on something that doesn't actually advance the story in a essential way that isn't sort of superficial just isn't rational from anyone's point of view.

A person can argue all they want about how too much airtime may have been spent with Tyrion in his tent or with Ned in his cell etc. etc. but to have a fully logical argument you need logical consistency. Saying less time should have been spent in Tyrion's tent then argue for precious time to be spent on a battle that is unnecessary to advance the plot and characterization falls utterly short of convincing. I understand that many of you wanted to see a battle, but why exactly? Besides just "wanting to see the battle" what reason for including it is there? Saying that it's important in the advancement of the plot is a useless and baseless argument because I still don't see how. There's virtually no actual explaining going on for the Pro-Battle Argument besides a primeval "b/c I said so" attitude.

You just said everything I was thinking, but better. :cheers: :bowdown:

You icon still gives me nightmares though.

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I think that many don't understand how much time other than cost that battles would cause. At this stage I think that they are focused on character development maybe as the series progresses we'll be seeing more and more battle scenes. I admit I wasn't as happy with this episode as the last one but I did enjoy it all the same.

The actress that played Shae was fine but I just didn't think how she treated Tyrion really fit how she was in the books at all. She was also more deceptive and acted like she loved him all the time. Sorry I am just rather frustrated with this character lol

Edited by Elrick
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While we are at it, we must condemn that worthless good-for-nothing bastard Shakespeare. How dare he tell the story of Henry V without actually showing Agincourt. I feel robbed. If he actually existed and if not for the fact he's been dead for 500+ years, I'd kick him in the trousers.

Except that both of the film adaptions of Henry V (by those incompetent hacks Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Oliver) did in fact show the battle of Agincourt. As they should have. Seriously, this was about the worst example you could have picked.

I think that many don't understand how much time other than cost that battles would cause. At this stage I think that they are focused on character development maybe as the series progresses we'll be seeing more and more battle scenes.

To be blunt, that's nonsense. In this very episode there was a SEVEN MINUTE LONG drinking game scene. Seven. Minutes. The entire Arya/Syrio/Trant/stableboy sequence in the last episode (the one GRRM wrote) was five minutes. Dany's total screentime was six minutes, including the introduction of Mirri Maz Duur and the Mago/Drogo fight. And guess how much time you would have had if you added up all of the scenes at the Wall in that episode together? Seven. Minutes.

It's legitimate to talk about budget issues. Fine. But don't scold about time constraints when the show itself pisses away time like a drunken frat boy.

Cut out the Tyrion drinking game and they could have shown Green Forks AND Whispering Wood AND still have time left over for one more Ned scene.

TERRIBLE. So far I've thought that every episode except for #8 (only one written by GRRM himself) has sucked compared to what it could've been... Bottom line: I hate these arrogant tv writers and wish them all the worst. Stop messing around with GRRM's story, you suck!

Snake from Dorne: I don't agree with everything you said but this was a righteous rant. Well done ser.

Edited by sadfascist
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10/10. Loved it, basically perfect. Yeah, a battle scene would be nice, but they are in the end just fluff. Guys bashing swords into one another isn't the part that's interesting, I can get that by playing Shogun 2 or watching 300 or LotR. It's a really nice background for character development and story, but it's just that - a background. Even GRRM decided not to show certain battles and his only real constraint is the page count. However, I'm disappointed that Tyrion didn't get to be a bit of a badass during the battle.

Loved the scene at the Twins, loved the scene between Jon and Mormont and Aemon (though the Bastard sword thing would have been nice to hear). Really like Shae, but I adored the actress before (not for her hardcore porn stuff, but for "Head On"). The slumber party scene was great, the bromance between Tyrion and Bronn is wonderful. Should satisfy the people who missed the Tysha-reveal (except the "made me go last a n pay her a gold piece"-thing missing).

The things moved a bit too fast on the Dothraki front, but the fight between Mormont and one of the bloodriders was badass (even if scaled back a lot from the books).

The whole Baelor scene was perfect, down to using Ice for the beheading and Varys running to Joffrey to make him reconsider in the background. Joffrey is such a smug, hateable bunghole.

Edited by Decius
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I've rated the show, if you cared enough to read the earlier pages you would see that. And yeah, the show is lacking without battles. We have 8 episodes of build up for a battle between Starks and Lannisters. Then it happens off-camera. Is that not a legitimate enough gripe?

No, it's not a legitimate enough gripe. You're complaining that the TV series didn't show the Whispering Wood battle, even though in the books the battle is only heard, not seen. So really your complaints are ridiculous. And then you scoff at the notion of budgetary constraints like a petulant child who wants a new toy. How could you possibly expect to be taken seriously?

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I gave it a 9. I was glad they didn't show the battle scenes as they would have been crap anyway.

Not sure what to make of Shae, we'll see how her character develops. I think they've basically made her smarter and more inscrutable because if she was played like she is in the books, it'd be incredibly obvious she doesn't love Tyrion. They want to make the audience wonder. That's my guess anyway.

They lose a point in the aftermath to the Whispering Wood being too quick. They didn't really give any explanation. It just seemed like Robb and a few dudes rode off then came back with Jaime Lannister.

The final scene was handled very well. I really liked The Twins and Lord Frey.

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"It's legitimate to talk about budget issues. Fine. But don't scold about time constraints when the show itself pisses away time like a drunken frat boy."

"Cut out the Tyrion drinking game and they could have shown Green Forks AND Whispering Wood AND still have time left over for one more Ned scene."

The time constraints the original poster was talking about are not screen time, but filming time. Battles take a very long time to film and edit. And as everyone knows, time is also money.

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But the battle was not there in the book either, they are being very faithful to his work by not including it, it is a fair point that they could have explained the capturing of Jaime better, that could definitely have used more time, but not showing the battle was the right decision.

"Cut out the Tyrion drinking game and they could have shown Green Forks AND Whispering Wood AND still have time left over for one more Ned scene."

I really liked that scene, it was very well done, and we got to see Shae, I was waiting for that.

Btw, I give the episode 10/10 (the edit was to include this)

Edited by Rodgex
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I gave this episode 7 out of 10.

It was all right, I think, with those things I always seem to be bugged about in any show. For instance, whereas I liked the fighting scene including Ser Jorah, I didn't like that his sword - after cutting a man in the face - was completely clean when he shoved the blade back in the scabbard. (Same thing in episode 8: the man next to Bran at the table - after Grey Wind's fingerbiting - puts his dagger away in one clip, but in the next he's holding the dagger in his hand. Hm.)

If the producers don't have the budget for epic battle scenes, that's fine by me. There are a few battles mentioned in the books too, that are not exactly explicitly written.

What I didn't like was the editing when Tyrion was off for battle. His own mountain "bannermen" (of course, a manly man like Shagga is no one's bannerman, I know - he'd most likely cut off my balls and feed them to a goat if I claimed as much, right?) knocked him out - CUT, NEXT SCENE ...

... and Tyrion's floating about after the entire battle's done. What was that? Did I blink?

I interpret him being knocked out and him floating about (that is, him lying on a wagon) as two separate ... what I'm trying to say is: Do you think Tyrion actually fought anything at all (which I happen to believe), or do you think he was knocked out by his own "bannerman" and stayed on the ground throughout the battle?

Tyrion staying low, as Bronn put suggested, was indeed literal in these scenes.

Anyway, minor complaints, really, as you might have noticed.

Loved the Arya-Ned-sequence. Lot's of tension and emotions there.

(No Tower of Joy, though, no Lyanna, no "promise me, Ned". Do you think they'll leave it out entirely? But how could they, I wonder. How could they?)

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