Game of Thrones

[Dr. Insomniac]

Damn it, Jaime.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, after letting it stew in my mind for some time, I have to admit that there are a lot more flaws in this episode than just Dorne. I mean, Dorne is garbage: Ellaria and the Sand Snakes plan to avenge Oberyn's death by....killing his only brother and nephew; way to go guys, I'm sure that the Lannisters are shaking in their boots. I mean, it's not like using Trystane's betrothal to Myrcella to give the Martells a claim to the throne would be a good idea. Only an idiot would come up with that.

However, that shit story aside, while not horrible, I'm noticing a lot of holes and issues in the other story-lines.

For one thing, Davos's state of mind makes absolutely no sense. He has devoted his life to Stannis, and he should either be trying to kill Milisandre for revenge (who he has always hated) or at least be in a state of grief or depression at the deaths of Stannis and Shireen. Also, It's far too convenient that the men most loyal to John happened to come across his body before Thorne and the others came back to collect it. Furthermore, out of all of the reasons that Thorne gave for justifying John's assassination, why didn't he just go with the most obvious and sensible one? Jon allied himself with Stannis, Stannis and all of his men are dead, so the Boltons will demand retribution for The Watch playing a part in the war (which is completely against their vows), and thus killing Jon was the best way to make clear their neutral stance in opposition to his.

Meanwhile, Tyrion and Varys walking around Mereen without guards is fucking stupid. Where did the dogs run off to during Brienne's attack on the Bolton instead of fighting back or trying to kill Sansa and Theon? The logical thing for Jaime to do would be to hold Trystane hostage in King's Landing to ensure Doran's compliance with his demands. Yes, Ellaria kills Doran, but there's no way that Jaime would know about that at that time. And how come Melisandre's glamour wears off when she takes off her necklace in this episode, when she looked completely normal with it off back in season four?

I could go into a lot more issues which I picked up on, but to be fair it's more nit-picky stuff. Even so, while I still enjoy the series, it does feel like its biggest flaws are in trying to tie into the books, even loosely. I honestly wish that they'd just go completely off book and make up their own ending instead of tethering their plot to where GRRM wants to end it. The ending that he's going for takes years of planning and far more content to get to. Trying to do that in just two and a half seasons will lead to some pretty messy results, IMO.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Sigh, more Ramsay shenanigans.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

OK....this episode sucked. The script was awful (say what you will about Dan and Dave, but they at least come up with interesting dialogue; too bad that they didn't handle this one). The direction was sporadic. The acting was underwhelming. And it was the most fan-service pandering thing that I've ever seen out of this show. I honestly felt that I was watching bad fan-fiction at times.

Ramsay killing Roose was so telegraphed that there's no way that it wouldn't have happened, but did it have to be in the most idiotic set-up ever? I refuse to believe that the same Roose who played a part in planning the Red Wedding was stupid enough to not expect his son to make an attempt on his life. Ramsay having his dogs kill Walda and his brother was one of the most unintentionally funny scenes that I've seen from a show like this.

Tyrion risking his life on a whim that the dragons would be friendly with him is one of the most out of character moments that I've seen in this series. The Tyrion of past seasons would be able to outsmart other people into doing his dirty work for him. What if the dragons weren't friendly? He could have died. A calm and collected Tyrion would think about these things. He wouldn't just impulsively do it and only retrospectively realize how stupid it was to do that.

And despite it being the worst kept secret in TV history that Jon would be resurrected, I at least wished that it would have been executed in a better episode, with better writing and directing.

For the record, I blame the writer and director of this episode. It doesn't sour my opinion of the whole season, and I still look forward to future episodes. This episode was just ass, though, and it has nothing to do with being wildly different from the books. It was just bad TV. Though, also for the record, yes, I fully expect the future books to be better.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, speaking of Jon Snow's resurrection, the entire scene plays out like a bad rip-off of Buffy's resurrection scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The resemblance is so uncanny that it's kind of hilarious. They even both happen at the very end of their respective episodes, with a red-haired witch casting a resurrection spell on the deceased character, believing that they have failed after nothing happens and leaving along with the group, and then having the main character wake up when nobody is around to see it. Both also happen during each show's sixth season.

[Dr. Insomniac]

One of my biggest gripes with Game of Thrones is how characters are so easily willing to ally with openly monstrous people without questioning a potential betrayal or fallout from such a pact. I can understand when Cersei did it when she got Joffrey to become the king, but not when the half the cast do it. Unless Roose had a death wish for himself and his own House.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While there have been other shaky alliances in the past, who else besides Cersei and Roose have unquestioningly allied themselves with monsters? I certainly can't apply that to half of the cast, myself.

As for characters making questionable decisions, that has always been more of a product of the show. In the books, there are a lot less one-dimensionally evil characters, and a lot more rationale is given to weighty decisions and alliances. In that version, Roose never mentions anything about having another son, and even if he was going to, he'd never be stupid enough to gloat to Ramsay about it. Furthermore, Ramsay is not nearly the biggest threat to his life. That honor would have to go to House Manderly, who has yet to appear on the show.

To be fair, though, I've always understood that the show doesn't have the time and luxury of explaining every little detail with great care, so I've always let it slide when characters make rather questionable decisions so long as they don't idiotically let their guards down. So my gripe with Roose's death has less to do with who killed him and more to do with how it happened. A better scenario would be him finding out that his son was born, trying to send someone to kill Ramsay since he would know that Ramsay will try the same on him, and then being double-crossed by his own men who have become more loyal to Ramsay lately. It's far from perfect reasoning, but it's better than what the show came up with. At least that version of Roose would have died from being outsmarted like he should have, rather than from being a trusting moron.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm kind of taken aback by how many people seem to genuinely like this episode. This is the only video which I found that points out all of the problems on display, here: https://youtu.be/IjFrn4S1H4k

[Dr. Insomniac]

I sort of liked Bran's scene with the Three-Eyed Raven, and Euron's entrance was all right. I guess people were relieved to get a Dorneless episode this week.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My dislike for this episode has more to do with numerous major characters being uncharacteristically stupid. It had a few good scenes, but way more that pissed me off.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'm still wondering why Thorne even let Jon and the Wildlings into Castle Black in the first place if he was just going to kill one and try to exile the others.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Probably because if he did, then some men loyal to Jon would have overthrown him and opened the gate in his place. If he instead killed Jon along with a number of other Brothers, then much like Julius Caesar's assassination, the blame would be shared and other men would be more reluctant to retaliate.

Here's a better question: Why did Thorne even need to wait for Davos and the others to come out in the first place? He could have either sent in other men to kill them all, or he could have just let them starve there since there's really no need for him to retrieve Jon's body. Well, technically the reason could be that they need to burn his body for ceremonies reasons and select a new Lord Commander after that, but it's not like he was following tradition by killing Jon in the first place.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Despite my negative feelings about the previous episode, I'm obviously still a fan of this show, but one thing that troubles me is the clear Hollywood-ication of the story and characters. It's making people think that this story is about the "True Rulers" like Jon and Daenerys uniting forces, vanquishing the evil Whitewalkers, and having the rest of the surviving cast living happily ever after. However, this is definitely not the case, at least in the books.

The bottom line of this entire story is that things like magic, prophecy, religious zealots, royal blood-lines, and true good and evil are complete bull-shit, and if you've ever read or watched an interview with GRRM, you'd probably get that out of what he says. Yes, Jon Snow probably belongs to a royal lineage, but most of the story so far is how the idea of a feudal monarchy is almost always a terrible form of government, as evidenced by people like Aerys, Robert, and Joffrey. Furthermore, some of the smartest people on the show like Tyrion, Varys, and Littlefinger have no royal lineage behind them, yet would arguably be more effective rulers than most schmucks who inherit that position as a birthright, regardless of whether they are good people or not. And while Jon Snow being resurrected is exciting for the story, I don't believe that it's for the reasons that people think. If you see what Martin did with Lady Stoneheart, I'm similarly expecting a lot of negative consequences to Jon's resurrection.

It's also very telling that people liked Mellisandre because she was with Stannis, hated her after sacrificing Shireen, and now love her again for reviving Jon. People like when she's doing awesome things for the characters that they like, but never stopped to realize that she was exactly as bad as the High Sparrow the whole time: a religious zealot who sees herself as justified by following her religion, and thus is behind the loss of tons of lives in the name of her god. If you think that killing Shireen was somehow any worse or different from what she was already doing, then clearly you missed the whole point. What she and Stannis did in the name of religion was always wrong, regardless of whether it negatively affected characters that you like or not.

Similarly, people tend to assume that the Whitewalkers are the Armies of Mordor of this story and that characters like Bloodraven and the Children of the Forest are complete good. In the show, this might be the case, however keep in mind that Martin has made it clear that he hates one-dimensionally good or evil characters, and in the novels there is actually no hard evidence to suggest that the Whitewalkers are actually pure evil; meanwhile several clues point to Bloodraven and the Children of the Forest having some ulterior motives that they're hiding from Bran.

My overall point being that the overarching themes of this story have either been severely downplayed, highly manipulated, or even completely removed from the show. Now, don't get me wrong, Game of Thrones is still great television for the most part. I just wanted to point out, though, how the product that we are getting as it is now does very much seem to be pro-Hollywood-fiction-entertainment-values rather than what Martin originally intended for it to be.

Of course, this could easily just be me blowing steam out of my ass and being a pretentious prick, so take my words with a grain of salt.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So they're going the cock-tease route with the whole Ned and Lyanna Stark flashbacks, eh? Not really a fan of that approach, but I do kind of understand why they need to do it in order to build up dramatic effect.

On the whole, I liked this episode much better than the previous one; though seeing as how a lot of people loved that episode simply because shit happened, even if it was stupid shit, I expect a lot of people to complain about this episode being "too slow and boring." Honestly, I've always preferred the more somber and character development-heavy episodes myself, as opposed to ones just trying to force the plot forward, myself.

I do still have a number of problems here, though, mostly due to the more Hollywood approach of this season. For one thing, why does Gilly's child apparently never age? Clearly a few years have passed over the course of the show, but Gilly's child has always been in the cradling phase since season two, apparently.

As for Jon, if he's going the loophole route of having his watch end because he technically died and thus fulfilled his vows, what exactly gave him the authority to execute the perpetrators of his murder in the first place? You can't exactly have it both ways. Either you give up your Lord Commander status from the start or you're stuck with it, I believe. Of course, this is really just a nitpick since I'm sure that whoever took his place as Lord Commander would have started out by doing the same, anyways. Still, do the writers realize that Jon can't just give the command of the Night's Watch to whoever he wants to run it? The new Lord Commander is always decided by an election.

While it's not really a flaw or anything in terms of the show, it's worth pointing out that the Umbers turning over Rickon Stark to the Boltons would never happen in the books. Not simply because Rickon isn't even with the Umbers in the books, but because the Umbers fucking hate the Boltons, being that one of their own Lords was killed at the Red Wedding, including several of their men. The popular theory is that Rickon Stark will be one of the flayed bodies that we see during the battle which will presumably take place by the end of the season. I wouldn't be surprised by it, since he's always been a pretty useless character, even in the books, but it does feel odd that the show would bring the character back just to be killed off immediately.

Putting those and other minor gripes aside, though, I found the rest of the episode to be fairly enjoyable. It's not the great television that the first four seasons of the show were, IMO, but it's well above average entertainment for what it is.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Wondering where they're going with Daenery's arc. Some of it just feels like a retread of the worst she went through back in season 1, it's hard to imagine an end that doesn't involve either Daario sacrificing himself, Jorah succumbing to Grayscale, or both somehow surviving and bringing her back to Meereen.