"A Game of Thrones" Spoiler-Ridden Catch-All of Doom - books and HBO show

onewild wrote:

It's not even in the same league of out of character actions as Season 5 of The Wire turned up.

No, it's more like if you tried to do season 4 of The Wire in only 4 episodes.

The plot and character arcs aren't the problem, it's that what happens is missing a lot of nuance and context. And in place of spending the time to build those things, we get some jarring scenes that do the work of ramming the plot forward instead.

Yeah, the plot is mostly fine, it's just that the writers don't know how to tell it. Like Jamie ending up with Cersei is certainly a valid place for his character arc to end up, but it's not really expressed why he made that choice. Like, I guess his discussion with Tyrion put it as an inevitable character flaw or something, but they didn't really dive into it. Likewise, Danys burning the city certainly can fit, it's just that they didn't really explain how it fits and instead assumed that Tyrion acting worried is enough to sell her motivation for going against the plan.

The show really needs more monologues. It used to have monologues: that's how we knew Littlefinger's motivations, after all. Chaos is a ladder and all that. I can extrapolate a motivation from Danys anger and tears at the start of the episode, but the throne room scene is after that and she never gives a reason to burn a surrendered city after that point.

Maybe she'll explain her motivation better tomorrow.

Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

The Scrubs final season too. The show matured into something quirky and funny and then fan service fought it back on for that last dismal season.

Gremlin wrote:

I can extrapolate a motivation

Basically this. Almost every time I've read someone defending one of the various questionable happenings in this season, it has been exactly that: extrapolation, filling in the blanks with things that are never actually shown on screen, and not particularly well implied, either. It's just people looking to fill the void, and finding that, yeah, you can come up with perfectly good explanations that fit the sequence of events, but those explanations aren't actually part of the show.

Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

Imagine going back in time 3 years and telling GoT fans, "well, the ending is better than Dexter!". The sheer panic at that name even coming up at all in a conversation about how GoT turns out.

BlackSheep wrote:
Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

The Scrubs final season too. The show matured into something quirky and funny and then fan service fought it back on for that last dismal season.

There was no season 9. Season 8 ended great.

Stele wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

The Scrubs final season too. The show matured into something quirky and funny and then fan service fought it back on for that last dismal season.

There was no season 9. Season 8 ended great.

I'm with Stele. Season 9 wasn't season 9, it was a spinoff season 1. Doesn't count.

Grenn wrote:
Stele wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

The Scrubs final season too. The show matured into something quirky and funny and then fan service fought it back on for that last dismal season.

There was no season 9. Season 8 ended great.

I'm with Stele. Season 9 wasn't season 9, it was a spinoff season 1. Doesn't count.

I appreciate the justification.

Also would like to see a similar graph for BSG. There's another bar for terrible endings.

Edit: people are weird, the finale has 8-9 avg for the two parts on IMDb. Last season has similar 7-9 ratings per episode just like previous. WTF

It's a free country. Sometimes people like to exercise their freedom to be wrong. (-:

I can understand people who didn't like BSG's ending. I was fine with it.

GoT seems to be handling the ending opposite to how BSG, Lost and maybe some other shows that I can't remember. The GoT creators know the ending and they're just fast tracking towards it, even if it means characters having unexpected/contradictory actions, while the BSG/Lost creators clearly didn't have an ending in mind so they just focused on the characters themselves with the story just fizzling out.

slazev wrote:

I can understand people who didn't like BSG's ending. I was fine with it.

GoT seems to be handling the ending opposite to how BSG, Lost and maybe some other shows that I can't remember. The GoT creators know the ending and they're just fast tracking towards it, even if it means characters having unexpected/contradictory actions, while the BSG/Lost creators clearly didn't have an ending in mind so they just focused on the characters themselves with the story just fizzling out.

What GoT really needs is some neanderthal f*cking to finish it off.

Just leaving this here.

slazev wrote:

GoT seems to be handling the ending opposite to how BSG, Lost and maybe some other shows that I can't remember. The GoT creators know the ending and they're just fast tracking towards it, even if it means characters having unexpected/contradictory actions, while the BSG/Lost creators clearly didn't have an ending in mind so they just focused on the characters themselves with the story just fizzling out.

Agreed. And while the latter is worse, the former is more disappointing because of how unnecessary it is.

Lost and BSG leaned heavily on mystery and mysticism, and took themselves to a place where they were never going to be able to come up with satisfying answers.

Interestingly, GoT has a little bit of this: the gods. You've got old gods and new, and we've seen various things done seemingly through the gods. What's the deal with the gods, who is real and isn't? Is there only one true god? And it seems like GoT's answer is going to be to ignore the question entirely (as I doubt there's going to be some big reveal on the topic tonight). And GoT gets to get away with that because it wasn't made into the most central of plot points. In the end, though, GoT mined that same topic for story points as BSG did, while ultimately (likely) also having no satisfying resolution to offer on the mysteries injected into the story.

Stele wrote:

Dexter with a more severe drop than GoT. I don't think people realize how much worse this could be

See also: the last 2 seasons of House of Cards

The TwistedDoodles take:

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D69CWmsW4AEq1Xy.jpg)
(twitter, instagram, FB)

Show Finale Predictions! Get your show finale predictions right here!

Spoiler:

1. The Game of Thrones is won by...
A. Dany, ruling Westeros with an iron fist (20% odds)
B. Jon Snow (35%)
C. Drogon (15%)
D. Sansa (20%)
E. Tyrion (10%)
F. Nobody (40%)
G. Bran (25%)
H. Cthulhu (10%)

2. Daenerys dies in the episode by...
A. Assassination by Arya (40%)
B. Decapitated by Jon Snow (30%)
C. Poisoned by Tyrion (10%)
D. Dragon fire (15%)
E. Doesn't die (35%)

I lol'ed:

As Sunday night’s Game of Thrones finale nears, the show’s cast and crew are closing the book on an important chapter in their lives, and emotions are running high. Actress Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, posted a sweet thank you to her fans on Instagram, explaining what the show and her character has meant to her over the years

...

Yes, that’s actor Pilou “Euron Greyjoy “ Asbæk, noodling around on an acoustic guitar at a party while Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei) looks unimpressed and Conleth Hill (Varys) is unimpressed. Given that Euron Greyjoy, the only character in Game of Thrones who’d be equally at home on Eastbound and Down, is exactly the guy who would pick up that acoustic guitar at the party, we can probably count this photo as Game of Thrones canon.

It's done. I'm glad.

Well that episode seemed more on pace with previous seasons. Dialog, silence, room to breathe. They sure rushed the last few weeks to get there. Oh well.

Certainly one way to end it. Need to dwell on it for a bit.

My immediate question is how all the gambling pools pay out? Technically no one was on the iron throne because it was melted (RAWR DROGON). But probably Bran gets the money. Although Sansa is Queen of the North. So both pay or neither because no throne? Gambling on TV shows is dumb.

Patch Notes 5/19/19 - GoT Season 8 - You can now pet the dog.

oilypenguin wrote:

It's done. I'm glad.

Yeah, this lol. I feel satisfied with the ending. It's closure on a long journey, I read the first four books in 2005. And considering what a boring slog A Dance With Dragons was, this really finished up the story for me, I have no interest in reading the subsequent books if they ever come out, it's time to put A Song of Ice and Fire in the rearview and move on.

That...was amazing. Maybe I was just in the right mood or something, but somehow...that's an ending (edit) that works for me.

I think it's the way Bran sold that line about 'why do you think I came all this way?' or whatever the exact words were.

Samwell: "How about democracy?"

The other lords: "How about a weird teenager in a wheelchair?"

That was about as satisfying and end as I could hope for, given how they botched the prior 3 episodes.

I thought it wrapped up well.

And how about that Westworld trailer?

*Legion* wrote:

Samwell: "How about democracy?"

The other lords: "How about a weird teenager in a wheelchair?"

They didn't unlock that Civics technology yet and instead chose Replaceable Parts

Nevin73 wrote:

I thought it wrapped up well.

And how about that Westworld trailer?

I don’t watch other shows

Meant to comment about that earlier. I can’t compare my disappointment with this season to the late season Wire, BSG, True Blood, etc., because I just generally don’t watch TV shows. Basketball and the occasional animated series.

I think it's the symmetry of it, that makes it feel like there was a payoff for all the lore of the series. Bran needed someone to knife both the King of Ice and the Queen of Fire, in the right order.

I wonder who knifes Dany if Jon doesn't tell Sansa and Arya the secret in the Godswood. Bran said it was Jon's choice. Maybe that's what's so good about this ending--combine it with that scene in the Godswood, it gives just enough of a hint that there was more than one way to for this all to get where it needed to go, which makes all the lore feel like there's some weight to it.

I really dug how Drogon reacted. Tyrion mentioned earlier in the series that dragons may be more intelligent than humans. They demonstrated that by showing Drogon destroying the Iron Throne. He realized that the lust for the throne (and thus power) is what doomed his mother. Then he simply left.