Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Teleku]

They kept foreshadowing it, but the problem was she never did anything remotely insane or evil every time they tried to hint she might go crazy.  She was still basically petting kittens and bunnies at the start of this season, and went full Evil in the space of two episodes.  It was like Anakin in the prequel trilogy.  Yes, we all knew what was going to happen and they kept foreshadowing his turn.  But he basically went from good guy in love to murdering children in a space of 5 minutes in the third film.  Come to think of it, Lucas has been involved with this season......


Anyways, predictions:
Jon is upset.
Grey Worm hates Jon for trying to stop everybody from raping the city, tells Dany he's betrayed her.
Dany kills Tyrion, making Jon more upset.
Jon tries to piss off with his Army, Dany catches up with her's and dragon.  Stand off ensues.  Agree to peace parlay.
Arya tries to kill Dany, but you can't fool a Dragons nose, and Drogon eats her.
This sends Jon over the edge, he kills Dany somehow.
The Onion night fights Drogon and kills him in some accidental comical way.
Jon declares the Iron Throne dead and fucks off to the north.  7 Kingdoms are 7 Kingdoms again.
Sansa gets dysentery and dies.

[Riggswolfe]

They kept foreshadowing it, but the problem was she never did anything remotely insane or evil every time they tried to hint she might go crazy.  She was still basically petting kittens and bunnies at the start of this season, and went full Evil in the space of two episodes.  It was like Anakin in the prequel trilogy.  Yes, we all knew what was going to happen and they kept foreshadowing his turn.  But he basically went from good guy in love to murdering children in a space of 5 minutes in the third film.  Come to think of it, Lucas has been involved with this season......

Anakin in the prequel trilogy is a good comparison. The turn to madness and/or evil is handled about as clumsily but in both cases you know it's coming.

[MediumHigh]

Literally anyone who thinks that Mad Queen Dany was an earned story beat is so far up the showrunners ass that the only daylight they see is a spinoff. The difference between Dany and Anakin is that with Anakin we already know that he is going to go to the darkside. We already know this because we watched 3 other star wars movies, the "how" could be better but we know its coming. Dany on the other has to earn that that darkside turn because nothing in this version of GOT gives us that build up. This literally came from the inner doubts of Dany herself in book 4 who was struggling with indecision in regards to the running her first city. The tv writers cherry picked that doubt and created a fanfic what-if scenario for season 8. That's it.

Granted seeing a dragon burn countless civilians was probably the most enjoyable piece of TV I've seen in years. I lept for joy when Dany went "fuck you, fuck you, and you and you". Future generations will live in my mercy. Fuck 

[Cyrrex]

As a stand-alone episode, this was one of the better ones.  I think most of my complaints are how some things led up to this.  Dany going cuckoo was fine on paper, just not entirely well executed on screen.  Lots of shit going south on her, people close to her dying and then getting scorned by Jon...it makes sense.  I mean, bitches Targaryens be crazy.  It was just ham-fisted.

Most of that episode was a dragon utterly destroying a city.  What's not to like?

[schild]

They kept foreshadowing it, but the problem was she never did anything remotely insane or evil every time they tried to hint she might go crazy.  She was still basically petting kittens and bunnies at the start of this season, and went full Evil in the space of two episodes.  It was like Anakin in the prequel trilogy.  Yes, we all knew what was going to happen and they kept foreshadowing his turn.  But he basically went from good guy in love to murdering children in a space of 5 minutes in the third film.  Come to think of it, Lucas has been involved with this season......


Anyways, predictions:
Jon is upset.
Grey Worm hates Jon for trying to stop everybody from raping the city, tells Dany he's betrayed her.
Dany kills Tyrion, making Jon more upset.
Jon tries to piss off with his Army, Dany catches up with her's and dragon.  Stand off ensues.  Agree to peace parlay.
Arya tries to kill Dany, but you can't fool a Dragons nose, and Drogon eats her.
This sends Jon over the edge, he kills Dany somehow.
The Onion night fights Drogon and kills him in some accidental comical way.
Jon declares the Iron Throne dead and fucks off to the north.  7 Kingdoms are 7 Kingdoms again.
Sansa gets dysentery and dies.

THE ONION KNIGHT

ya know what, I'm buying this

this is the worst possible story they could put forth, good job

[Riggswolfe]

Literally anyone who thinks that Mad Queen Dany was an earned story beat is so far up the showrunners ass that the only daylight they see is a spinoff. The difference between Dany and Anakin is that with Anakin we already know that he is going to go to the darkside. We already know this because we watched 3 other star wars movies, the "how" could be better but we know its coming. Dany on the other has to earn that that darkside turn because nothing in this version of GOT gives us that build up. This literally came from the inner doubts of Dany herself in book 4 who was struggling with indecision in regards to the running her first city. The tv writers cherry picked that doubt and created a fanfic what-if scenario for season 8. That's it.

I can only surmise this is your first season of the show.

[Teleku]

I try.  





Maybe that's the actual favor Tyrion asked him?

[Cyrrex]

The iron throne might be buried under a billion tons of stone by now.  If Jaime and Cersei are in the crypts and the entire thing has come down on their heads, I assume that could reasonably include the throne.

Of course, that said, we'll find the throne room miraculously untouched next episode no doubt.  Anyway, I maintain my earlier prediction that no one will take the iron throne.  And who would even want it now anyway, the city has been utterly destroyed.

[Teleku]

Yeah, I was laughing because she literally destroyed the building the throne is in.  Though I guess this scene of her vision has relevance again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gulVUWrADCM

[eldaec]

It is a cheap shot but this made me chuckle...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/14/latest-game-of-thrones-episode-sends-curveball-to-children-named-khaleesi

Apparently 3500 parents who named their child after Daenerys are pissed.

[Cyrrex]

I mean, anyone who names their child....I mean, it's quite fitting.  Crazy people name their little girl after pretend character who turns out to be crazy.  Perfect.  Fucking stupid hicks and/or soccer moms, no doubt.  Hopefully there will be a class action lawsuit or something absurd.

[eldaec]

They kept foreshadowing it, but the problem was she never did anything remotely insane or evil every time they tried to hint she might go crazy.  She was still basically petting kittens and bunnies at the start of this season, and went full Evil in the space of two episodes.  It was like Anakin in the prequel trilogy.  Yes, we all knew what was going to happen and they kept foreshadowing his turn.  But he basically went from good guy in love to murdering children in a space of 5 minutes in the third film.  Come to think of it, Lucas has been involved with this season......

I don't get the complaints about the amount of time Dany spent going crazy.

Aerys also went mad over the course of two episodes worth of plot.

I think fair to say the process started in episode 2, so more like 3 episodes. Two of which were extra long, and there are no cutaways to fucking Dorne any more so you are looking at half a season in normal GoT screen time.

Any competent writer ought to be able to do 'main character goes mad in an hour of screentime' so honestly that isn't the problem.

Did you not see the whole bit with Varys?

They are bad writers, this isn't news. But the cast and crew covered for the writers p well here, and for genre TV idk what you are watching that does this sort of thing better. Did anyone honestly expect something on this level when GoT was announced?

Still far far better than the previous 3 seasons.

[Cyrrex]

Honestly, if we want to look at Dany's entire body of work, there was some crazy shit going waaaaaay back.  Eating a heart to become one of the hoard.  All that stallion that'll mount the world shit (and other crazy speeches).  Blood magic and sacrificing her baby to make Zombie Drogo.  Stepping into a blazing fire.  Burning the shit out of the assembled Khals (who admittedly wanted to rape the shit out of her, but still).  Killing the fuck out of the Masters.

And so on and so on and so on.  She has been doing crazy shit from the start.  The difference is that she was also doing kinder, merciful stuff at the same time and had effective advisors tempering her actions.  It has become ham-fisted moustache twirling in the last couple of episodes, but even there she has had reason to crack.  Nobody in Westeros fucking likes her, despite a lifetime of being told they will love her.  Jon Snow went from Love of Her Life to a close relative who no longer wants to get nekky.  The person she trusted most was beheaded in front of her face by the woman she was trying to displace.  Varys betrayed her despite promising to tell her shit to her face.  Tyrion betrayed her several times.  Jon told Sansa, and Sansa reacted exactly as she predicted.  Two of her dragons have been butchered (her children).  She even said "Fear it is" right before the battle scene.  She has been fucking betrayed by almost everyone who has ever been close to her.

It makes sense.  I think the part I don't care for is that it is presented as if she has suddenly gone "mad" when they should have shown her being conflicted and simply deciding to act this way anyway.  These so called Lords of Westeros deserve a little dragon breath justice, honestly.


Edit to add:  by the way, it may have not been initially clear, but Varys was almost certainly trying to poison her.  The scene with the little spider girl from the kitchen.  Dany probably found out after Tyrion told her about him, so yeah, he kinda earned his execution.

[Cyrrex]

A detail I haven't yet seen discussed elsewhere, but I thought was an interesting and not random detail:  As Drogon is flying through, burning the city, it is clear that Wildfire (tm) is being ignited throughout many different spots throughout the city.  That's more than a little bit curious.  The only reason for that Wildfire to be there is that if someone (Cersei) was planning on destroying the entire city at some point.  I am guessing we are meant to believe that was the case, and of course she had no reason to actually enact the plan seeing as how Drogon was doing a fine job of it all by himself.

[eldaec]

There are tonnes of tiny details. On wildfire, I saw it as the caches that Aerys is regularly reported to have around KL, and that Cersei took some of to deal with the Sept.

The choice of the bells also seem significant and will probably have more meaning if we get a book. I think Dany was meant to be going all Dothraki when she hears them.

There was a lot of cute referencing going on.

[Cyrrex]

Either way, it was a good little detail.

Choice of bells?  I don't follow that one.

[Cyrrex]

And dammit, Teleku's hilarious picture aside, what did Ser Davos get sent off to smuggle in or out?  It couldn't really be the throne itself, because why would Tyrion think that so important?  And we see Ser Davos throughout the battle, at least I think so.  WTF.

[Ironwood]

Davos was supposed to get Jamie and Sarah Connor out, I thought.

[Tebonas]

Thats what I thought as well. So it wouldn't be relevent anymore, because that dream got crushed. 

[Cyrrex]

Except Ser Davos was never shown doing any such thing, nor would that really have been necessary as Jaime knew exactly where to go.  I mean, you might be right, but it seems like a pretty glaring miss for them to go out of their way to show that little whisper and not follow up on it.  Screen time is costly just now.

Man I wish they would have just done 10 episodes.

[IainC]

Except Ser Davos was never shown doing any such thing, nor would that really have been necessary as Jaime knew exactly where to go.  I mean, you might be right, but it seems like a pretty glaring miss for them to go out of their way to show that little whisper and not follow up on it.  Screen time is costly just now.

Man I wish they would have just done 10 episodes.

Jaime knew where to go to get out of the city, but Tyrion told him there'd be a boat waiting for him on the beach. I guess that Davos would be in charge of that boat and the subsequent flight over the water to Braavos or wherever.

[Chimpy]

Davos places the dinghy by the tunnel. I thought that was obvious?

[Cyrrex]

Davos places the dinghy by the tunnel. I thought that was obvious?

Maybe that's all it was, but it seems weird they had to go out of their way to show that bit.  It was sorta in the past presented as a super sekrit smuggler beach, except not really because guards patrolled it.

I guess we'll never get more, so your explanation wins by default.

[Teleku]

Honestly, if we want to look at Dany's entire body of work, there was some crazy shit going waaaaaay back.  Eating a heart to become one of the hoard.  All that stallion that'll mount the world shit (and other crazy speeches).  Blood magic and sacrificing her baby to make Zombie Drogo.  Stepping into a blazing fire.  Burning the shit out of the assembled Khals (who admittedly wanted to rape the shit out of her, but still).  Killing the fuck out of the Masters.

And so on and so on and so on.  She has been doing crazy shit from the start.  The difference is that she was also doing kinder, merciful stuff at the same time and had effective advisors tempering her actions.

I.....literally none of that is crazy.  All of it made total sense at the time she did it and I'm not sure what anybody else would have done different.  Arya was more crazy and off balance than her the entire series.

And she didn't just burn some lords.  She decided to burn down everything she fought for.  She burned Kings landing and the Red Keep down.  She literally destroyed her birthright for no reason.  She has nothing to actually claim now.  She was doing this because she likes watching people burn and that's her thing now.  Not to teach people a lesson or for any reason at all (at least that's the only logical explanation).

Davos is the one who left the Dingy at the beach for them to find.

The wild fire blowing up where the caches they kept talking about that Aerys hid around the city when he planned to blow it up.  Cersei just managed to find the one hidden below the sept and used it, but there were many others already sitting around the city ever since Aerys died.

I don't get the complaints about the amount of time Dany spent going crazy.

Aerys also went mad over the course of two episodes worth of plot.

Aery's was off his rocker since the start of his reign, just in a harmless non-violent way.  Tywin Lannister basically is the only reason the Kingdom held together as the hand, doing all the actual work.  But he started getting super paranoid and violent towards the last few years of his first decade.  Then Duskendale happened, and he took a harder turn towards crazy.  Where he then spent the next 5 years going more and more crazy until the rebellion.  The process took about 15 years with him.

They are bad writers, this isn't news. But the cast and crew covered for the writers p well here, and for genre TV idk what you are watching that does this sort of thing better. Did anyone honestly expect something on this level when GoT was announced?

The first half of the entire series did it way better.  Can we go back to that?  And I was honestly expecting something at a higher level than what we got the first season, but it grew on me.

[Teleku]

Also, the recap is up 

https://imgur.com/gallery/CoyWKMP

[MournelitheCalix]

Why is it that so many pieces of entertainment get the journey right but effe up the end?  Its really clear that this season has been off its rails since episode two and I am guessing thhat no one is happier than George R R Martin who can now finish it off properly and someone will pay him huge bucks to adapt it either for the big screen or again on the small screen and they will swoop in and claim the rewards.  Another observation, how would you like to be Disney right now knowing that you gave this pair of showrunners the keys to their own trilogy in your already struggling franchise.  Also consider what HBO must be thinking with their upcoming adaptions.  Seeing this trainwreck in real time makes me very sad.  The only death that I felt was actually a Game of Thrones one inspired by George R R Martin was Cersi.  A super interesting interpretation of the Maggie the Frog prophecy.

I am not sure what is more remarkable, the fact that the Avengers actually finished so well or that this season is actually the second coming of an assassination of an original IP not seen since Mass Effect 3 turned into a debacle that made people want to never play it again.  

[Teleku]

Actually, this is probably my favorite:

[Khaldun]

I think in this case basically you can see that the showrunners took their pacing and characterization from Martin and then improved some of the worst aspects of his plotting (Tyrion in a boat muttering to himself for hundreds of pages). Once they didn't have Martin to improve upon, they struggled. But also, the pacing from Martin meant that getting from the last of his written material to this point meant either a ten-season show (impossible in terms of actor contracts and costs) or it meant at some point a fast-forward. That's why I keep saying that a "one year later" where all the characters were stuck in place for a winter would have done the show a world of good. You could do two or three scenes with Daenerys stuck in Riverrun with Jon, Varys, Tyrion, Missandei, Grey Worm, Davos, Arya and the Hound with Dothraki and Unsullied troops for long winter months on low rations where she gets more and more volatile and despairing--the lords of Westeros won't accept her, everyone loves Jon better, Jon is being all mopey and weird about them being related and won't accept her proposal that they get married and only occasionally sexes her, she mistrusts all her advisors more and more, she sort of hates the entire look of Westerosi castles and she hates the long winter, she remembers that she swore to 'break the wheel', she hears reports that the people of KL are supporting Cersei voluntarily now, etc.  Just a couple of scenes, with Emelia Clarke doing her best to actually act moody, despairing, confused, and the whole attack on KL would make much more sense--she's had it with everyone, she can't trust anybody except Grey Worm, she's going to remake Westeros from the ground's up even if it takes genocide to do it. It doesn't take a whole season, but it does take something--a time jump is a classic narrative method for giving people a sense that something's happened.

Avengers: Endgame just did a master class in it--in just three scenes, you completely get what's happened to Thor, the Hulk and Tony Stark and you completely understand what that means for the characters going forward in the rest of the film.

[Jeff Kelly]

Why is it that so many pieces of entertainment get the journey right but effe up the end?

The way many writers approach their work means that they don't know how their work erds either. There's a very enlightening Twitter thread on that topic about the different approaches for writing. TL;DR GRR doesn't know how ASOIAF ends because everything in GoT flows from character motivations and he only discovers them through writing. Secondly the beginning and the middle of a work is much more interesting because of the character and world building and that's where many writers focus on. Making sure things come together in the end is hard. Thirdly the GoT showrunners only know how to adapt an existing work and are SOL now that they don't have books to work off.

I am not sure what is more remarkable, the fact that the Avengers actually finished so well.

Marvel has 50+ years of experience how to craft story arcs in multiple types of media. Also Kevin Feige.

[Phildo]

It might have also been interesting to have Tyrion get caught after freeing Jamie and having Dany execute him right before the battle.  I'm honestly surprised he either got away with it or no one cared enough to check in on Jamie the next morning.

Tyrion: *dismisses guards, immediately frees prisoner*
Everyone: *Jamie who?*

[Threash]

A detail I haven't yet seen discussed elsewhere, but I thought was an interesting and not random detail:  As Drogon is flying through, burning the city, it is clear that Wildfire (tm) is being ignited throughout many different spots throughout the city.  That's more than a little bit curious.  The only reason for that Wildfire to be there is that if someone (Cersei) was planning on destroying the entire city at some point.  I am guessing we are meant to believe that was the case, and of course she had no reason to actually enact the plan seeing as how Drogon was doing a fine job of it all by himself.

It was left over wildfire from the mad king, there was a theory that Dany would ignite it accidentally and blow up the entire city but it ended up being completely inconsequential compared to what she was doing. And Davos only put the dingy there for Jamie and Cersei to escape, which require smuggling himself past the iron fleet i guess.

[HaemishM]

She has been doing crazy shit from the start.  The difference is that she was also doing kinder, merciful stuff at the same time and had effective advisors tempering her actions.

There is a SIGNIFICANT difference between burning slavers while freeing slaves and torching a city including women and children indiscriminately. Both are brutal, but one is targeted and has a justification while the other is just wanton slaughter and collective punishment. I realize in medieval times (such as the story is based on), there was a whole lot of both types of killing done by rulers, but even in this setting, characters who are portrayed as moral and honorable like Jon or at least capable of understanding morality even if they often act immorally like Tyrion see this slaughter as beyond the pale.

Her madness doesn't completely come out of left field, this is true. She has always been merciless against her enemies and often her first impulse is to burninate, and only her advisors have talked her down from this. Unfortunately for us and the writers, this characterization of her has remained fairly consistent right up until the last two episodes, with little hint that the madness is coming. I realize that people can and do often snap at the drop of a hat, and there has certainly been plenty of justification for her snapping with the deaths of her beloved advisers. However, because of the really tight episode schedule, none of that change has been allowed to breathe for any acceptable length of time, thus it feels utterly out of left field.

[HaemishM]

Why is it that so many pieces of entertainment get the journey right but effe up the end?

The way many writers approach their work means that they don't know how their work erds either.

I'm not about to say that I'm some great writer or anything, but I literally cannot imagine starting a story without knowing where it's going to end (whether that ending will suck or not is a whole other thing). There's plenty of room in the middle of the story for improvisation and altering the course - one of my new books had a pretty significant character shift that I didn't even figure out until the chapter before it happened. Hell, I just finished a six-novella work that's around 180,000 words and I knew from the day I started writing it how the whole thing would end. It was the whole goddamn point of writing the books.

I'm not saying there can't be good work if you don't know the ending before you start, just that I cannot fathom how that would make for a good writing process.

[Riggswolfe]

She has been doing crazy shit from the start.  The difference is that she was also doing kinder, merciful stuff at the same time and had effective advisors tempering her actions.

There is a SIGNIFICANT difference between burning slavers while freeing slaves and torching a city including women and children indiscriminately. Both are brutal, but one is targeted and has a justification while the other is just wanton slaughter and collective punishment.

I'd have to rewatch the series but I seem to remember there was at least one time where a discussion similar to this happened:

Dany: Screw it, I'm going to burn their whole city down.
Advisor: Orrrr...we could, you know, take the city by other means and just kill their leaders.
Dany: FINE! Let's try that....

[calapine]

It actually was only 500k per episode, but the sentiment stands. o7