Yeah Jamie was way too calm around Cersei at this point of the season because for fuck's sake Cersei is responsible for killing their Uncle Kevan Lannister (and there have been points where Jaime shown some care for his Uncle) and her actions drove Tomman to suicide.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said:
Game of Thrones Season 7 discussion thread. (SPOILERS ABOUND)
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As someone who generally hates what the show has become and thinks the writers are abominable hacks, it was a reasonably entertaining episode. Some solid scenes. Some reasonably restrained writing. I generally went in for the "slower" episodes though. Season One was by far the best, and there was a lot of whining about "not enough happening".
Doesn't mean there wasn't some stupid stuff though.
Doesn't mean there wasn't some stupid stuff though.
1. Arya's assassination of House Frey. A continuation of last season's "stupid money shot", with the girl assassin being all COOL and BAD ASS and GETTIN' VENGEANCE. This kind of hollow fan-wankery is everything A Song of Ice and Fire was written to be the anti-thesis of. The show began losing its way when it abandoned complex political scheming and grey-grey morality for HEROIC MOMENTS and BADASS ACTION. Often personified in the trainwreck Arya has turned into.
2. This Euron. I cannot say enough bad things about how badly this show bungled the Iron Born right from the get-go, but this Euron is the reeking cherry on top of the cake. Theon was good, and well cast. Everything else has been a calamity. The Iron Born were often problematic in later ASOIAF volumes, often given to boggy chapters and an introduction of ancillary characters when the books needed to be tightening their scope. Alas, as with Dorne, the show scuttles this opportunity to lean things up by reimagining them as something ridiculously stupid. I know there are a few people out there who legitimately believe the show improves on the books. I point to the Iron Born as exhibit A and ask "What the fuck are you talking about".
3. Jaime's blithe acceptance of Cersei's obvious lunacy is bizarrely out of character and kind of dashes his entire arc against the floor, but I'm kind of used to it by now.
4. Abandoned Dragonstone is silly. Even if Stannis packed up his entire household right down to the cooks and maids to go to the Wall, I'd have imagined Kings Landing would have dispatched a force to take the empty keep. It has significant strategic value. Oh well.
HOWEVER...
All is forgiven as the Sandford Chief of Police has joined the cast. A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD.
2. This Euron. I cannot say enough bad things about how badly this show bungled the Iron Born right from the get-go, but this Euron is the reeking cherry on top of the cake. Theon was good, and well cast. Everything else has been a calamity. The Iron Born were often problematic in later ASOIAF volumes, often given to boggy chapters and an introduction of ancillary characters when the books needed to be tightening their scope. Alas, as with Dorne, the show scuttles this opportunity to lean things up by reimagining them as something ridiculously stupid. I know there are a few people out there who legitimately believe the show improves on the books. I point to the Iron Born as exhibit A and ask "What the fuck are you talking about".
3. Jaime's blithe acceptance of Cersei's obvious lunacy is bizarrely out of character and kind of dashes his entire arc against the floor, but I'm kind of used to it by now.
4. Abandoned Dragonstone is silly. Even if Stannis packed up his entire household right down to the cooks and maids to go to the Wall, I'd have imagined Kings Landing would have dispatched a force to take the empty keep. It has significant strategic value. Oh well.
HOWEVER...
All is forgiven as the Sandford Chief of Police has joined the cast. A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD.
I'm fine with extrapolating that, but just like the the absence of any visible reactions to Cersei blowing up the biggest cathedral on the continent, it's one of those things that I would want to see happening. It wouldn't take much; a couple of establishing shots at the start of both scenes, a minute or so long at most. Considering how much screentime was spent on Daenaerys' very slow walk up into the castle, they could've afforded that.Laughing Man said:
It isn't tactically worthless. They mention in that very episode that Dragonstone is a vital strategic point guarding the entrance to Blackwater Bay [http://i.imgur.com/QFMQ1ux.jpg?1] and therefore all maritime trade entering King's Landing. It just doesn't produce any food, because it's a castle on a rock in the middle of the ocean.Laughing Man said:
I can understand Cersei not having the forces to retake it - in the books, the Tyrells are still on her good side when she sends Loras off to go capture it - but if it's empty, she wouldn't need any forces to retake it. She could retake it with twelve guys and a boat.
I mean, even if every other power player in the series decided to ignore it, I would expect some pirates to be holed up in there, at least. It'd be an ideal location for raiding shipping routes. Shit, why didn't the Ironborn think of that? They could park their entire fleet there and hold the whole kingdom for ransom.
Dorne was a colossal failure on the showrunner's part and the absolute nadir of the entire series, and the writers knew it. But as to what caused it, it was a combination of two things. Firstly, they'd made the conscious decision to break from the books at that point because the books themselves have atrocious pacing during that period and they knew they were about to outrun the plot. Secondly, their shooting schedule was terrible; they found themselves rushing to film all the Dorne scenes while they still had summer, writing the entire arc basically as they went and struggling to negotiate what parts of some ancient medieval Spanish palace they were allowed to film in.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said:
The end result was that the writers didn't have time to write a decent plot, they didn't know what the set was going to look like when writing a scene, and the actors had no time to train fight choreography to make the fights look convincing. The end result was one of the dumbest time-wasting story arcs in the entire series, where every character was bloodthirsty and/or stupid and the entire point of the arc was undone at the end of it by some gratuitous murder. They'd have done better cutting Dorne entirely and sending Jaime and Bronn off to the Riverlands early, because that part of Jaime's character arc is actually interesting.
As for Stannis, well...I have no idea what the showrunners wanted to do with Stannis and I have no idea what GRR was planning to do with Stannis. Stannis had been written into a corner where he either did something stupid - like attack Winterfell in winter - and died, or he just hung around the Wall diverting attention from other characters.
Really, I'd just advise that anyone watching the show skip season five entirely. Season six is way better.
BloatedGuppy said:
What grated on me about that scene was that we'd already had our moment of cathartic vengeance. She'd fed Walder his sons and cut his throat at the end of the last season. Having a scene where she just kills every remaining member of his extended family seemed gratuitous.
It's exactly that kind of predictable plotting that the book was infamous for ignoring. GRR Martin doesn't care about your catharsis. He'll kill your favourite character, then have all the characters seeking revenge stabbed to death at a wedding by their friends. There's no destiny in ASOIAF, there's just people fucking over other people because of the fucking those people did and sometimes getting fucked themselves before they can accomplish an emotionally satisfying level of fuckery.
Classic case in point: Arya's kill list. So far, in the show she's killed a grand total of two people on her dozen-or-so-long hit list, and about half of them have been killed for her by other characters in completely unrelated schemes that Arya was not involved with at all. In the books, she doesn't even kill those two; Walder Frey is still alive and Meryn Trant just kinda disappeared. The whole point of Arya's kill list is that she isn't destined to go on some murder rampage like John Wick; she's just fantasising about it while all those people get killed in unrelated situations through a confluence of dumb luck and blind scheming.
It's exactly that kind of predictable plotting that the book was infamous for ignoring. GRR Martin doesn't care about your catharsis. He'll kill your favourite character, then have all the characters seeking revenge stabbed to death at a wedding by their friends. There's no destiny in ASOIAF, there's just people fucking over other people because of the fucking those people did and sometimes getting fucked themselves before they can accomplish an emotionally satisfying level of fuckery.
Classic case in point: Arya's kill list. So far, in the show she's killed a grand total of two people on her dozen-or-so-long hit list, and about half of them have been killed for her by other characters in completely unrelated schemes that Arya was not involved with at all. In the books, she doesn't even kill those two; Walder Frey is still alive and Meryn Trant just kinda disappeared. The whole point of Arya's kill list is that she isn't destined to go on some murder rampage like John Wick; she's just fantasising about it while all those people get killed in unrelated situations through a confluence of dumb luck and blind scheming.
^ The thing is the writers are now trying to make Arya more and more like Lady Stoneheart from the books.
She's so revenge hungry she's killing everyone even remotely responsible for wronging her.
She's so revenge hungry she's killing everyone even remotely responsible for wronging her.
Northern Kingdoms Arc: Jon Snow got Sam's message and news of Dany's summons. So he rides for Dragonstone to negotiate with Dany and the preview to the next episode shows he arrives there without struggle. Arya is now heading directly to Winterfell after hearing what happened in the North and Jon Snow is King.
King's Landing Arc: Cersei gathers remaining Lords to join against Dany's army. That creepy preist guy that serves her constructs a giant Ballista at the weapon to kill the Dragons. Jaime convinces Lord Tarly to join him as his general despite misgivings since the Tarlys have close realtions with the Tyrells.
Samwell Tarly is helping Jorah Mormont in possibly curing or stopping his Grey Scale permenantly.
And the climax is Theon/Yara's fleet is destroyed by Euron's army with Yara and the Dorne lady that killed Cersei's daughter got captured.
Now I am most curious about the Dany/Jon alliance because the Northern Lords are very concerned and mistrusts the fact that Jon is asking help from a Targaryan, and that a Lannister is Dany's hand.
The obvious outcome is Dany agrees to help Jon with the North (and with the insistance of Melisandre) to deal with the White Walkers, but first has to bend the knee and deal with Cersei which means mustering Northern Armies to the South.
Sadly no update on Bran Stark's story.
King's Landing Arc: Cersei gathers remaining Lords to join against Dany's army. That creepy preist guy that serves her constructs a giant Ballista at the weapon to kill the Dragons. Jaime convinces Lord Tarly to join him as his general despite misgivings since the Tarlys have close realtions with the Tyrells.
Samwell Tarly is helping Jorah Mormont in possibly curing or stopping his Grey Scale permenantly.
And the climax is Theon/Yara's fleet is destroyed by Euron's army with Yara and the Dorne lady that killed Cersei's daughter got captured.
Now I am most curious about the Dany/Jon alliance because the Northern Lords are very concerned and mistrusts the fact that Jon is asking help from a Targaryan, and that a Lannister is Dany's hand.
The obvious outcome is Dany agrees to help Jon with the North (and with the insistance of Melisandre) to deal with the White Walkers, but first has to bend the knee and deal with Cersei which means mustering Northern Armies to the South.
Sadly no update on Bran Stark's story.
And alsoSamtemdo8 said:
Arya stopped in and had mead and some Hot Pie. Skipping from Mormont's treatment to chicken pot pie was brilliant editing. Hot Pie tells Arya about John's good fortune so rather than heading straight to King's Landing, she heads home. Along the way, she gets surrounded by a pack of wolves, led by Nymeria! The dire wolf doesn't join her but doesn't eat her either. Whether we see the wolf and her pack again is anyone's guess.
Well the only logical thing he can do now is make his way back to Dany and Tyrion to report what happened to the Fleet.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said:
But I feel this is setting up his reunion with Jon Snow, Arya, and Bran.
Probably because the showrunners are doing with this show is a vanity experiment by making scenes to show off the actor's emotive facial expressions.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said:
But anyways to be fair I feel this perticular instance is not that poorly handled.
I mean look at the situation, the fleet is lost, he is outnumbered, his sisters is held hostage by their Uncle. He attacks him their both dead, he kills him, the soldiers still loyal to Euron will kill them both.
He's basically living to fight another day.
Funny thing is the book Theon/Reek looks like he will meet his end through execution by Stannis who is still alive at the moment.
Well I'm glad things aren't going to be a cakewalk for Dany, and I'm super glad that we're down two Sand Snakes. I like Euron if only for killing those two. Still salty about the lack of Victarion Greyjoy though.
Overall it was a decent episode, though I have a couple of problems. That a ballista is apparently the anti-dragon weapon of choice, when in the books it was established that that only works if you can get them in the eye, something that's a wee bit tricky to do. I also think Tyrion should've been more pissed about his niece being killed, and Sansa SERIOUSLY needs to stop contradicting Jon in front of the other lords, I thought it was established way back in season 3 that that was a no no. And the Sand Snakes and their mommy continue to be walking, talking cringe. Thank fuck two of them are dead now.
The rest was pretty good though.
Overall it was a decent episode, though I have a couple of problems. That a ballista is apparently the anti-dragon weapon of choice, when in the books it was established that that only works if you can get them in the eye, something that's a wee bit tricky to do. I also think Tyrion should've been more pissed about his niece being killed, and Sansa SERIOUSLY needs to stop contradicting Jon in front of the other lords, I thought it was established way back in season 3 that that was a no no. And the Sand Snakes and their mommy continue to be walking, talking cringe. Thank fuck two of them are dead now.
The rest was pretty good though.
Hoo boy we saw what she was like with that sister who gave here the beat down at the behest of the Grand Sparrow god only knows what she is going to do to the women who killed her daughter.
Like what? I mean it's great to sit at the side lines and call the writing crap but so far they seem to have done a fairly ok job of showing someone who is clearly suffering from extreme PTSD as for his sister treating him like crap, well they've been like that from the very first scene in which we see them together.
I'd call being able to keep it together in an ambush and only cracking when all is lost a pretty big step taken on the road to recovery. And you'd watch a drama? Game of Thrones IS a drama.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said:
As for Asha, she's an iron born. Tough love is the norm.
Overall, it was an a'ight episode. Kind of the norm for Thrones, a lot of setup that will (hopefully) payoff later. They've been VERY good at rewarding the setups in each season so far. I'm a touch worried that without Martin's writing, HBO is going to go into "Plot Armor" mode to make sure all the fan favorites survive to some climatic battle at the end of the series but I'll hold that judgment until we get the rest of the season.
Although I do agree that i really don't like what they've done with Theon/Reek. If they were meant to show him fleeing because the battle was lost, they did a poor job of conveying that as he basically went into a "Saving Private Ryan" shell-shocked moment. If they were meant to show his PTSD popping back up, they did a poor job of conveying that as having him fight and slaughter a bunch of soldiers right before it wouldn't make sense. It feels like they're trying to keep him useful but still want him to be able to turn into a blubbering coward when they need one.
To keep with SPR, I wish they'd have actually had him act like Opum. That would have made WAY more sense in my mind.
Basically have him hide on the ship, too afraid to help until his uncle calls him out, in which case then he bolts for the side of the ship.
Although I do agree that i really don't like what they've done with Theon/Reek. If they were meant to show him fleeing because the battle was lost, they did a poor job of conveying that as he basically went into a "Saving Private Ryan" shell-shocked moment. If they were meant to show his PTSD popping back up, they did a poor job of conveying that as having him fight and slaughter a bunch of soldiers right before it wouldn't make sense. It feels like they're trying to keep him useful but still want him to be able to turn into a blubbering coward when they need one.
To keep with SPR, I wish they'd have actually had him act like Opum. That would have made WAY more sense in my mind.
Basically have him hide on the ship, too afraid to help until his uncle calls him out, in which case then he bolts for the side of the ship.
Because GOT isn't a drama?
Ahhh so in one post you believe you know what they are trying to do with Theon's character while then saying that they clearly don't know what they want to do with his character... really?
Lol typical I can complain about it but fuck if I can come up with a better solution. The great thing is if he suddenly turned round and became super Theon destroyer of white walkers, savour of Westeros, rider of Dragons and managed to some how regrow his cock, guess what you'd be sitting there complaining about how he doesn't seem to have struggled much with the trauma he went through at the hands of Ramsay Bolton.
Just remember you clearly said these folk that write him are 'inept' but when asked what YOU think they should do your answer is 'fuck, anything' their is a small difference between complaining that you don't like the direction something is going and full on calling someone inept at their job, the former doesn't require you to come up with any suggestion beyond stating that you don't like said direction the latter implies that since you believe these writers are inept you have at least some experience or basis on which to judge this so called level of ineptitude 'fuck, anything' isn't exactly the prime example of how he should be written I was expecting.
I am sure someone who remembers the previous episodes better than I do can no doubt recall some sort of call back, situation or statement that was made during that last scene where Euron had the axe to Asha's neck that matches something that Bolton said or did to Theon. The way it was shown was like whatever Euron said or did acted as a trigger to Theon.
No one said that, and you're getting awfully personal and hostile over people having differing opinions over a gorram TV show.RiseOfTheWhiteWolf said: