Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Chimpy]

I had a brief glimmer of hope that I might get some nudity points during the scooby-doo Osha reveal.

[Merusk]

Well, that was one of the most inconsequential and dull episodes on the heels of one of the more consequential ones. Boring.

Yeah the cutoff of TOM was aggravating as hell.  While it was definitely boring the episode wasn't inconsequential. We discovered people can hear Bran, Ned lied about events at the tower for as yet unknown reasons, Tommen is getting manipulat d by the church now, we learned about the "little birds", Arya is confirmed badass, Rickon showed up for stupid plot reasons, and Jon quit the Wall. Most importantly; Fuck Olly.

So yeah, boring but important episode.

[K9]

I guess there must be a rider in Peter Dinklage's contract that he has to appear at least once an episode, because while I love the guy, that scene tonight was beyond pointless. Five minutes of not-even small talk 

[Slayerik]

My fantasy team is the worst. THE WORST. Varys can't even say anything witty. Bronn is off plowing whores or something...Grey Worm just giving hottie chick oral all day...and Rickon Stark has finally made an appearance.... My only hope is for Grey Worm to kill like 800 Sons by himself, ride a boat to King's Landing, where him and Bronn take the Iron Throne together. So, yeah.

[grebo]

Hey at least all your folks are still alive.

[Rendakor]

Scores are starting to update; none of the teams seem to be yet but I see certain characters getting new points.

[Merusk]

A drop to #4, brutal, but then nobody on my team appeared this week.

Jon Snow proving to be the #1 draft pick this season, raking-in MMMMMMMmulti-KILL *BRUTAL* with the execution of 2 drafted and 2 additional undrafted characters last night.  Stark's Sixth-Sense is taking a COMMANDING lead. Can anyone catch the Basterd of Winterfell?

[Rendakor]

Still holding at #2, thanks High Sparrow!

[grebo]

Woo you go and be important Bran.  I finally have points.

[calapine]

This is thread is stopping to make sense for people who don't do this fantasy league... 

[Rasix]

Welcome to the NFL. 

[eldaec]

I liked the Arya scene. In fact it would have been fine with just that and skipping the screen time spent on her in the last couple of episodes.

I didn't think much of anything else this episode.

The tower of joy scene really irritated me. Lots of good ideas ruined by mediocre piecemeal delivery. Doing the entire tower of joy, or the entire Tommen vs Jonathon Pryce, or anything worth a damn happening in Mereen, could have been a good episode.

[Rendakor]

Trying to cram too many characters into each episode has always been a problem with this show; this season might just feel worse to me because I actually want to know what's happening instead of just trying to see the cool bits on screen.

[Khaldun]

Especially when it's just dumb shit like the scene with Tyrion.

[HaemishM]

"Oh, sorry, did you want to see what really happened, Bran? It will have to wait. Now we need to look at the balance sheets kept by the Hand of the fourth Targaryen king, in specific, the purchase of wines from Pentos over a roughly ten-month period so we can determine the labor outputs of the Essos hinterland over a thirty-year interval."

It's the change in format. Rather than focusing on 2-4 story threads per episode, they are trying to show ALL of them every episode. None of them gets any weight or resolution. Bran's journey should be one long flashback episode immediately following a cliffhanger episode.

[Morat20]

Ned lied about events at the tower for as yet unknown reasons

As for why he lied. Fuck it, it was war, and Stark was young, and he had real secrets to keep. Better to let them all blab about how Stark and Reed took down Dayne (undoubtedly very honorable, even though they never spoke much of it) than wonder WTF happened up in the tower.

The Tyrion scene was pointless.

As for more spoiler stuff:

[Hoax]

Yeah the impact episodes have always been the ones that focus in mainly in one place. That's why my big hope is that you can see that this threads could be bundled up in 2-4 places without leaving much out if we could just get to that point already.

[HaemishM]

[Speedy Cerviche]

I liked the Arya scene. In fact it would have been fine with just that and skipping the screen time spent on her in the last couple of episodes.

I didn't think much of anything else this episode.

The tower of joy scene really irritated me. Lots of good ideas ruined by mediocre piecemeal delivery. Doing the entire tower of joy, or the entire Tommen vs Jonathon Pryce, or anything worth a damn happening in Mereen, could have been a good episode.

They also couldn't resist doing another stupid TV fake-out where it looks like Ned is fucked but oh look outta nowhere the guy who was run through comes back to save him. We all knew Ned lives, just like Jon, and we knew Reed lives, so why do this? This is WWF level direction/writing here, the only surprise was that Reed didn't come in swinging a folding metal chair into Dayne's back.

[Threash]

I liked the Arya scene. In fact it would have been fine with just that and skipping the screen time spent on her in the last couple of episodes.

I didn't think much of anything else this episode.

The tower of joy scene really irritated me. Lots of good ideas ruined by mediocre piecemeal delivery. Doing the entire tower of joy, or the entire Tommen vs Jonathon Pryce, or anything worth a damn happening in Mereen, could have been a good episode.

They also couldn't resist doing another stupid TV fake-out where it looks like Ned is fucked but oh look outta nowhere the guy who was run through comes back to save him. We all knew Ned lives, just like Jon, and we knew Reed lives, so why do this? This is WWF level direction/writing here, the only surprise was that Reed didn't come in swinging a folding metal chair into Dayne's back.

You completely misread that scene.  It wasn't a "fake out" it was a "Ned won by treachery".

[Merusk]

Yeah, treachery they keep hidden.

Ned lied about events at the tower for as yet unknown reasons

As for why he lied. Fuck it, it was war, and Stark was young, and he had real secrets to keep. Better to let them all blab about how Stark and Reed took down Dayne (undoubtedly very honorable, even though they never spoke much of it) than wonder WTF happened up in the tower.

Yeah, when I said, "for as yet unknown reasons" I meant to the viewers. Even book readers only have theories, not concrete reasons yet. I'm with you that it's to distract from the rest of the story. "Ned took out Dayne? Holy crap!" rather than, "Wait, they were Kingsguard and they stayed with some northern woman the King raped, why? Why throw their lives away protecting some bint when there were still two other Targaryens (Danerys and Viserys) who actually NEEDED protection?"

[MediumHigh]

Don't understand why the show went that route. Ned told everyone who bothers to listen that Reed saved his life. Repeatedly. He never took the credit for beating "Ser Arthur Dayne Sword of the Morning" and its highly against his character to even insinuate he did. In fact he remembers it, 15 years later, as a nightmarish encounter. 3 swords, 7 men, 2 survivors.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I was complaining more about the directing aesthetics. I'll add that having Dayne fight with 2 swords to make him look more badass was George Lucas levels of pandering too.

Plus any fight that starts with a 7:2 numerical advantage is by default dishonourable for the more numerous party (from a knightly perspective). The final blow coming from sneak dagger compared to a sword thrust when you have a guy surrounded 4 vs 1 doesn't change much.

[Chimpy]

Leather armor vs Plate though!

[Speedy Cerviche]

It's ok, it's balanced by spellcasting penalties.

[MediumHigh]

Also didn't get that. They should have been full plated.

[eldaec]

I can forgive the dual wield awfulness because the show needed some way to communicate to non book readers how Dayne was a badass.

But speedy is right, the show continues to have issues with weak fight scene direction.

The ideas here are fine.

Even Bran's reaction is well thought out. Ned didn't lie to him, Bran just projected because he was obsessed with knights and chivalry at the time. Ned saw such things as bullshit and said so repeatedly.

His attitude to this fight chimes with Ned's exchanges with Jamie and his refusal to get involved in tourneys. The theme of people not listening to what Ned actually said also stretches to Jon. I'd bet in GRRM's mind Ned never lied about Jon's parentage. The only relevant quotes are Ned referring to Jon as "his blood" and him coming back from the war and telling Catelyn "don't ask me about the kid".

Sadly the whole thing was undercut by providing only half a scene from the middle of a story where a non-book reader can't possibly follow the significance.

[MahrinSkel]

Spoilered because apparently fan theories based on the books are now spoilers even when it's obvious.

A little bit odd that the title of the episode was "Oathbreaker", the obvious is Jon Snow, but by the exact wording of the Oath, he's not:

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."

He died, his Oath is discharged. This isn't the kind of thematic error these writers make. So who was the oathbreaker in the episode?

--Dave

[Rasix]

Well, there were several parts of the episode that circled the concept of oathbreaking, intentional or not: Dany's interaction with the dosh khaleen, Umber's talk/defection to Ramsay, Ned's lies to his children, John's oath to the Night Watch being broken by his death, etc.  The term used may just be ironic instead of pejorative.

[Merusk]

That little shit Olly breaking his oath to Lord Snow. 

[calapine]

I was complaining more about the directing aesthetics. I'll add that having Dayne fight with 2 swords to make him look more badass was George Lucas levels of pandering too.

Plus any fight that starts with a 7:2 numerical advantage is by default dishonourable for the more numerous party (from a knightly perspective). The final blow coming from sneak dagger compared to a sword thrust when you have a guy surrounded 4 vs 1 doesn't change much.

Agree with Speedy on this. This wasn't a get-stabbed-in-the-back-in-a-Tavern situation. Neither some knightly tourney. What was he supposed to do it after being wounded? Sit out and wait until Ned is finished?

And on the aesthetics as well, the dual wielding swords crossed into the cartoony.


One thing the show still is good at is villains. Maybe it's a dislike of religious fundamentalists, but the High Septim is my new Ramsay Bolton. Hope Cersei has him strangled with is own guts.  

[HaemishM]

Jon Snow is definitely not an Oathbreaker, because hey, his watch ended when he died. I hope that means his next move is "I'm gon' go fuck me up some Boltons." I think the title Oathbreakers is kind of being ironic there, as in "Why would anyone expect these sworn Oaths to be worth two shits?"

[eldaec]

Oathbreakers breaking Oaths in this episode include Jon Snow, Dany, the guys who got hanged, the Umbers, Ned Stark and co, the Mereen whore, Sam, at a stretch Arya, and according to one theory that the scriptwriters consipicuously chose to indulge, Varys.

I waa a little surprised there wasn't any obvious oathbreaking going in in king's landing, unless you count Qyburn on general principles.

[Teleku]

Mahrin, we kept that talk about the tower in spoilers or very vague before for the non book readers.  Since it hasn't been confirmed yet (hopefully next god damn episode you cock-teases), maybe you should spoiler it.

I agree that the duel wield thing was pretty eye rolling.  But in the absence of a very good choreographed fight scene, it was a good cheep way to show non-book readers that Sir Dayne was indeed the greatest swordsman of the era, so it didn't bother me to much.

Considering how much more depth we have in the books on the situation of the northern houses and what will likely happen there, concerning the Umber thing:
 

Eldaec, what oathbreaking did Stark commit?

[eldaec]

I wouldn't regard Ned lying to his kids as oathbreaking - I'm not even convinced that happened. But the whole usurping the king thing probably does count.