Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Khaldun]

I think one thing that's already in the books that the show simply wasn't prepared to do is for winter to be as overwhelming and despairing as it has already started to be, and for the Walkers to be much more "winter given form" and much less "death and darkness incarnate". What happens to Stannis on the road to Winterfell is way nastier in terms of weather than what appears in the show, and I think it's because visualizing that kind of extreme winter conditions and making them cover everything in Westeros is impossible for the show-runners--can't be done with either practical effects or CGI. That alone will make the Walkers mean something different in the books if he ever writes them.

[HaemishM]

So why anyone still gives a shit about what GRRM intends, is or is not doing....it makes no sense at all.  HBO has made this what it is, not Martin. 

See, as a writer, I think Martin got a great deal out of the series, royalty-wise. He had to have. Otherwise, he would have wrote the shit out of the last 2 or 3 books to make sure they got released while the show was on TV. What better form of marketing for selling your books is there than a popular TV or movie series? Book 6 and 7 would have flown off the shelves, even more than Book 5 did. So clearly the money he was getting from HBO just allowed him to do what the fuck ever (like buying an arthouse theater) and just not really worry about doing anything more strenuous than dick around with those last books.

If that's me, I'm writing the shit out of some books while that show is on, because the gravy train may not last past the end of the series.

[Riggswolfe]

As an expert on procrastination, I think GRRM has simply given up on the books but can't bring himself to admit to it for various reasons.

[MediumHigh]

GRRM can always say that "no no no I have the only true ending to this story." The fat fuck can say that to as many people that will listen but he will most likely die before he finishes game of thrones on his terms. And that is why no one cares if he does have a "final directors cut". Because if he had one he wasted so much time that diabetes will kill him before the winds of winter gets on amazon.

Regarding the spirally drop in quality and no one noticing and caring. Well I think game of thrones was accessible enough to attract people who normally don't watch high fantasy or think that all fantasy sounds like LotRs to watch it. A lot of those people aren't bothering to read the books and if you honestly never read the books you don't have that compare and contrast. And if your normally approaching this as a "smarter than average fantasy show" and throw around words like "deconstruction" to describe it than its already starting from a higher pedestal and it takes a literal shark to knock it off.

[eldaec]

What happens to Stannis on the road to Winterfell is way nastier in terms of weather than what appears in the show, and I think it's because visualizing that kind of extreme winter conditions and making them cover everything in Westeros is impossible for the show-runners--can't be done with either practical effects or CGI. That alone will make the Walkers mean something different in the books if he ever writes them.

Maybe, but the blizzard during the last episode seemed like what the books are aiming for.

But once you accept that the show is intentionally running a shorter story more focussed on the main characters, then I think what they've done overall makes sense for the show - and as you say it makes sense for the walkers to be something different.

[Velorath]

There is a huge drop in quality in the show right at the moment they ran out of book stuff. It is such a stark difference that I don't understand how people don't see it.

Because the books had a sharp drop in quality after the 3rd one and because it's a lot harder to resolve plot threads than it is to just keep throwing new ones in. Also because for all the talk about how GRRM is great at subverting tropes, really that mostly amounts to unexpectedly killing off major characters, which has since become a trope itself and becomes less subversive each time you rely on it.

[MediumHigh]

There is a huge drop in quality in the show right at the moment they ran out of book stuff. It is such a stark difference that I don't understand how people don't see it.

Because the books had a sharp drop in quality after the 3rd one and because it's a lot harder to resolve plot threads than it is to just keep throwing new ones in. Also because for all the talk about how GRRM is great at subverting tropes, really that mostly amounts to unexpectedly killing off major characters, which has since become a trope itself and becomes less subversive each time you rely on it.

The wobbles of book 4 doesn't account for the last 4 seasons of television. However book 4 is the weakest most meandering thrones book and gives me no faith that GRRM has any idea how to end this.

[Chimpy]

There is a huge drop in quality in the show right at the moment they ran out of book stuff. It is such a stark difference that I don't understand how people don't see it.

Because the books had a sharp drop in quality after the 3rd one and because it's a lot harder to resolve plot threads than it is to just keep throwing new ones in. Also because for all the talk about how GRRM is great at subverting tropes, really that mostly amounts to unexpectedly killing off major characters, which has since become a trope itself and becomes less subversive each time you rely on it.

There was a stark (harr) drop in quality after the first book, it was just not nearly as precipitous as the later one.

[Teleku]

I actually thought each book got better than the last, up through the third one.

[Chimpy]

Yeah, but you also like Sublime.  

[schild]

I actually thought each book got better than the last, up through the third one.

Yeah, but you also like Sublime. 

i'll allow it

[Khaldun]

I've said it before, but the fundamental thing here is that Martin's subversion of every trope etc. ran its course in the last book he wrote. He made a trap for himself and he can't go forward. It's really not that he's lazy or that he has writer's block or whatever. He knows he's got no way out. He can keep shifting the viewpoint characters to try and produce some sense of narrative surprise (look at the announced list for Winds of Winter) but he already knows he played that card in the last book with Quentyn Martell and it was a catastrophic storytelling turd that stank up the entire book. There's no escape: he's created a situation where Jon Snow has to resurrect, where Jon has to be revealed as a secret Targ, where Jon and Dany have to get together and fuck, where the Dead have to be beaten, where Bran has to reveal all the secrets, where Arya has to be an awesome little assassin and kill the Freys, etc.

He fought the tropes and the tropes won. Past a certain point in the whole saga and you either have to pay off some shit or you have to be a fucking asshole who just keeps multiplying viewpoint people who are trivial red herrings in order to pretend that anything can happen. He lost his mojo for writing this once he saw that he'd written himself into this hole.

[Velorath]

There is a huge drop in quality in the show right at the moment they ran out of book stuff. It is such a stark difference that I don't understand how people don't see it.

Because the books had a sharp drop in quality after the 3rd one and because it's a lot harder to resolve plot threads than it is to just keep throwing new ones in. Also because for all the talk about how GRRM is great at subverting tropes, really that mostly amounts to unexpectedly killing off major characters, which has since become a trope itself and becomes less subversive each time you rely on it.

The wobbles of book 4 doesn't account for the last 4 seasons of television. However book 4 is the weakest most meandering thrones book and gives me no faith that GRRM has any idea how to end this.

It's not just the wobbles of book 4 though. There are signs even early than that which suggest GRRM a) maybe isn't as good at the actual war stuff as he might think, and b) isn't great at resolving things.

Take a look at the War of the Five Kings. It's almost entirely resolved by surprise assassinations (Red Wedding, magical Vag Demon, "fell off a bridge", and most hated man in the world not having a food taster). Winterfell suffers with Robb gone, but aside from that most of the military action doesn't amount to much. The Battle of the Blackwater results in no notable casualties (for all those complaining about the lack of notable deaths this last episode), and the status quo being upheld (Lannisters still in control of King's Landing, and Stannis returns to Dragonstone).

Or look at the fact that it's GRRM and not the TV writers who came up with the plot of magicking people back from the dead. And while it hasn't been used to undo the most recent surprise death in the books, I'd be very surprised if Jon Snow being brought back was an idea original to the TV show. Unless you're writing a superhero comic, that's about as hacky as hack writing can get. That's an example of the direction the writing was going in when the show writers had to start making their own way.

In fact a large part of the problem with the series, and why the quality started suffering, is that by design magic started featuring more and more prominently as the story went along and there's no indication that GRRM knows exactly how to handle it. Melisandre and the Lord of Light, the White Walkers, and the Three Eyed Raven, all start to become more important to the plot, but their origins, powers, and ultimate motives are all still currently left mysterious in the books. It makes for a much less interesting story than the human drama that preceded it and drags the story kicking and screaming from "this was inspired by the War of the Roses", to "this was inspired by every generic Fantasy novel". Even going back to Renly's shadow vag demon death, that felt like a cheat to literally just magically eliminate one of the major factions in the war. Robb at least is partially at fault for his own fate but Renly was just the victim of an unstoppable magic spell.

I'm still entertained by the show, maybe because I don't really see this as a dramatic decline in quality. If anything I'm at least grateful they dramatically cut down on a lot of the superfluous plot threads GRRM had been adding lately, but aside from that it seems pretty consistent with where he's likely going with things.

[Teleku]

I've said it before, but the fundamental thing here is that Martin's subversion of every trope etc. ran its course in the last book he wrote. He made a trap for himself and he can't go forward. It's really not that he's lazy or that he has writer's block or whatever. He knows he's got no way out. He can keep shifting the viewpoint characters to try and produce some sense of narrative surprise (look at the announced list for Winds of Winter) but he already knows he played that card in the last book with Quentyn Martell and it was a catastrophic storytelling turd that stank up the entire book. There's no escape: he's created a situation where Jon Snow has to resurrect, where Jon has to be revealed as a secret Targ, where Jon and Dany have to get together and fuck, where the Dead have to be beaten, where Bran has to reveal all the secrets, where Arya has to be an awesome little assassin and kill the Freys, etc.

He fought the tropes and the tropes won. Past a certain point in the whole saga and you either have to pay off some shit or you have to be a fucking asshole who just keeps multiplying viewpoint people who are trivial red herrings in order to pretend that anything can happen. He lost his mojo for writing this once he saw that he'd written himself into this hole.

Eh, I always though from the beginning it was still going to end up following tropes (because only a psycho path likes reading 10,000 pages of people failing).  The first three books were about breaking tropes and surprises (good guys do everything good guys usually do, but end up fucking up everything and dying for it).  In the aftermath of that, the next three books were going to be the glorious return and play out more as expected.  We have the Stark kids who were all going to come back leveled up and awesome (Arya: Assassin, Bran: Wizard,  Sansa: Master of Intrigue).  Like, I was confident of that when I originally read the third book almost 20 years ago.  I guess maybe his U-turn away from the original idea (5 year gap or something in between the first three and second three) was caused because he wanted to avoid tropes, which would be a mistake.  But I don't think he's tied up on it.  Literally for 20 years ago he telegraphed exactly what would happen with each character.  I'll actually be pissed if it doesn't work out this way in the books.

Also, Jon being a Targ was already figured out by anybody paying attention in the books a long time ago.  It hasn't technically been revealed yet, but everybody reading the books knew it back in the 90's even, so of course they're going to have to come back to that.  He obviously had that planned as a big thing since book 1.

[Cyrrex]

I have a whole bunch of baseless points I was going to make, which I won't, but here is something to consider:  As a general rule, humans like the beginnings of things and get tired of, annoyed and downright hostile towards those same things as they reach their ending point.  Of course there are exceptions, but I think we tend to get tired of shit and maybe that colors our ability to be objective about what we are experiencing.  On the other hand, the writers, directors and actors also get tired of this shit, so maybe it impacts the product they create despite their best efforts.

[calapine]

Episode 4 Trailer

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTqLXLUvQ4


I can't stop thinking that the entire Dany part would work a lot better with different acting. Her lines are supposed to be badass but the delivery and her facial expressions just fails that.

[Cyrrex]

I don't really like movie trailers, no way I am going to watch a GoT trailer.  They are inherently spoilers by definition.

[Rendakor]

It's the same thing they showed at the end of the episode.

[IainC]

It's a lot of shots of Daenerys telling everyone how much she wants to smack Cersei. It's in no way a spoiler.

[Cyrrex]

I get this on HBO, and there is no pre-view at the end of the last episode.  And it is a spoiler on some level.  I don´t want to know ANYTHING. 

[Samwise]

It's a lot of shots of Daenerys telling everyone how much she wants to smack Cersei. It's in no way a spoiler.

Wait, you mean Dany and Cersei got beef with each other?  This changes everything!

[Chimpy]

I get this on HBO, and there is no pre-view at the end of the last episode.  And it is a spoiler on some level.  I don´t want to know ANYTHING.  

Your HBO must be different than other people’s HBO. I know people who watched it on the TV HBO and saw the preview clip.

I use HBONow and they show the “next time” stuff before the “behind our stupidity” segment with the show creators.

[eldaec]

Certainly varies by country.

I've never seen these spoiler trailers for any show anywhere outside the US. (or on the Internet if I go looking obv)

[eldaec]

I mean, they aren't really spoilers but some people seem to react like they are - which has always been my assumption of the reason why different markets use them or not.

That, or they think they're better off advertising something else if they are confident GoT viewers in their country are likely to remember they like watching GoT without the aid of the trailer.

[calapine]

 

[Polysorbate80]

Sadly she didn’t get the elephants she wanted.  Maybe Qyburn can build one for her? 

[Riggswolfe]

I'm still entertained by the show, maybe because I don't really see this as a dramatic decline in quality. If anything I'm at least grateful they dramatically cut down on a lot of the superfluous plot threads GRRM had been adding lately, but aside from that it seems pretty consistent with where he's likely going with things.

Amen. The first 3 books are great but if you want to talk about a decline in quality, you don't have to look at the show. Look at books 4 and 5 where the plot meanders with lots of new characters at least one of whom consumes several chapters only to die stupidly with all the indications that his chapters were nothing more than page fillers. Ugh. The last book especially felt like GRRM went to the Robert Jordan school of writing. "I'm going to throw in lots of pointless bullshit to pad this out because I have no idea where to take the story next."

[Setanta]

Sadly she didn’t get the elephants she wanted.  Maybe Qyburn can build one for her? 

Undead elephants would be awesome. Hell, right about now I'd pay money for Qyburn (sp) to sneak into Winterfell, raise the undead and WW and watch them slaughter every character with plot armor, then nuke them all Sept style leaving Cersei on the throne.

Cersei vs Dani - both are autocratic fuckups. Jon is a dithering idiot. Sansa is possibly the only remaining character who is even worthy, but fuck the Starks, if ever a bad decision was to be made, they would make it.

Actually, I really want Bran to be an avatar of the red god who has played the GoT at god level, allowed the stupid humans to achieve his goals by destroying the night king and will now make humanity pay. It would explain Mel's role in the Dothraki charge at least

[Threash]

Wonder what kind of bullshit plan they will come up with that's not "Arya easily sneaks into the red keep using assassin magic and murders Cersei" which would be the easy and obvious thing to do, but now can't happen since she already took down the NK.

[Chimpy]

Thank you for joining us for this week’s episode of the Young and the Restless. 

[Khaldun]

Man, you can REALLY feel how much the showrunners are like "We don't know what to do really, we just have this outline on a napkin with some pulled pork and wine stains on it, help".

[Brolan]

Yup, that was pretty lame. I almost dozed off twice.

[Rasix]

That was really awful. Character motivations brought to you by words "roll int check" and "failed".

So, they're just going to make Dany fucking crazy, I guess. Yay. Go team. 

[schild]

i have some alternative theories for why this season is eight episodes long

[Abagadro]

It's six episodes long.