Game of Thrones

[Dr. Insomniac]

Addam getting his Tommy Oliver moment was pretty fun. Anyway, how many more episodes until Daemon becomes sober again?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, the season finale leaked recently and Preston and Carmine watched the leaks and discussed them: https://youtu.be/fXtidrpFuE8?si=0F52GrCOSk1swhQV

Spoiler

So while I do find that Preston can at times be overly harsh on the show, I was fully on board with his rant here. Granted, I have not seen the leaks and there is always the chance that I interpret the actual episode differently, but given the track record from these writers I sincerely doubt it.

I'm not one of those people who sucks GRRM's dick and pretends like he's some perfect writer (I have also given up hope on him even writing an ending to his series), but you have to admit it really shows a difference in quality when the showrunners have been left to their own devices. There's a reason that the first four seasons of GOT are still widely considered to be the best. Even if you prefer watching the show over reading the books, the benefit of having Martin's carefully crafted narrative as the backbone of early seasons really can't be overstated.

As Preston alluded to, cutting out Nettles was a clear misunderstanding on the part of the writers as to the very nature of this story. Let's have all dragonriders have some form of Targaryen heritage and make sure that the BS propaganda of only the elite or those tangentially related to the elite being able to ride dragons, basically be proven right.

And Daemon's meandering story-line at Harrenhal has been a facade of a character arc, badly disguising the notion that the writers just had no clue what to do with him. It doesn't even lead to his revelation and face turn if the leaks are as described. He just gets a vision as the choice is made for him. Whatever he went through at Harrenhal (which wasn't much) basically amounted to nothing. The outcome would have been the same no matter what because of contrived divine intervention BS.

[close]

The worst part is that a bunch of online critics will probably be all over this shit like it's peak fiction, just like with GOT season six.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

Yeah, I'm very confused by the exclusion of Nettles in the show. Especially when HOTD's been very open in diversifying the cast like the Velaryons, Mysaria, and Orwyle. I'd get it if it was for the sake of simplifying the plot, but you don't really need to simplify it in the first place when most of this season's had obnoxious levels of padding despite having 2 less episodes than the last season. Frankly, this season could use a lot more spice. This year of HOTD reminds me a lot of Season 2 of GOT, the time when the most derided aspect of the show was Daenerys chasing after her dragons almost all her screentime, but without a Blackwater to make most of the other plots worth it.

[close]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Having seen the full episode myself, now, yeah: I still agree with Preston's rant. Also, the need for this show to continually try to tie this series in with GOT's near universally reviled Night's King plot-line genuinely perplexes me. Like, these writers actively WANT to remind people of that?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Corly spent the last 2 months doing this.

And why did they even pretend the ending we got didn't exist? Sure is convenient that Daemon didn't get prophecies of a Stark girl stabbing the Night King or King's Landing in flames. Even beyond that, it's too much undermining characterization in the name of some stupid master plan. It's kinda why whenever a TV show abuses the whole Xanatos gambit shit, I just get annoyed now instead of impressed. The trick was cool in Gargoyles because it wasn't so much a plan there as Xanatos just having a "make lemonade out of lemons" approach to his schemes, but then you see other shows do it in a way where no main character has agency. They're all chess pieces to "the plan", and "the plan" is never interesting enough to justify these characters acting like this. When they're rebelling against it only to ironically fulfill it anyway, that's all right. But scenes like this where they see the prophecy and kowtow to it? Come on.

This didn't even feel like a season finale either. Even when GOT got bad, they still knew when to go "Here are the stakes. This is what the last 8 or 9 episodes have been leading up to". Here, it's just so disconnected.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Another irritation is they haven't even started production on Season 3 yet.

[Dr. Insomniac]

One thing that's gotten my attention lately is how the GOT fandom now seems to be growing nostalgic to D&D, even for their bad seasons. I saw Preston talk about it on his podcast, while vehemently denying it'll ever happen, insisting Season 8 will never receive the nostalgia re-evaluation the SW prequels got because Season 8 was watched by adults, but I've seen a couple sprouts show up. Notably, I'm seeing a few critics hop on Kit Harington's recent interview to explain why Season 8 couldn't work no matter who was in charge, and the fact it got made at all was a miracle.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Preston underestimates how many idiots are out there. People will look at anything from their past through rose-colored glasses and call it great if what they are currently seeing rubs them the wrong way.

I will say that HOTD suffers from many of the same writing issues as the later GOT seasons, so it's rather ironic that people are bashing one and praising the other. From what I can see it's mainly the anti-woke crowd that seems to out later GOT in a higher regard.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'd argue the big difference in writing/adapting is the HOTD writers are stuck figuring out how to expand all of the Dance of the Dragon events into 4 seasons of show when you can probably tell the story in two, two and a half seasons if you really wanted to. While GOT's problem was cutting out too many pieces of ASOIAF and ended up running through the ending GRRM gave them but without all the right directions. And as recent interviews have suggested, it's getting harder to really blame D&D for everything wrong when everyone in the cast and crew was already out of energy by season 8 and just wanted it over with already instead of expanding the show into more seasons. I still think they fucked up in the last few years, but looking at HOTD, it makes you wonder who wouldn't have fucked it up. Pretty sure GRRM hasn't released Winds yet is because even he's scared that he'll fuck it up. Even all those "Here's how I would end Game of Thrones" videos only resolve half the plot threads instead of all of them.

[Dr. Insomniac]

At long last, here's GRRM's review of HOTD season 2.



He's displeased to say the least.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It was a pretty tame post, all things considered. I'm with what Preston said about this, though: Of all the things that he could complain about, cutting Maelor is a pretty silly thing to have such a big grievance with compared to some of the more face-palm worthy decisions.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I've seen a flurry of reactions to his review. Some people championing him for trying to exert some kind of creative control from Warner execs, while others are mocking him due to that nitpicky Maelor comment and for not going full Alan Moore and giving away his royalties. And I see things were charged enough that he deleted the original blog entry only a couple hours after posting it.