Wow. I cannot believe this is actually a television show & not a major summer blockbuster sometimes. High level stuff once again here. Shit goes DOWN. Only one area that annoyed me (you'll know). 66 minutes!
Wow. I cannot believe this is actually a television show & not a major summer blockbuster sometimes. High level stuff once again here. Shit goes DOWN. Only one area that annoyed me (you'll know). 66 minutes!
I love Tormond.
Gentle reminder: NO FUCKIN SPOILERS
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I knew it! Totally called what the White Walkers were gonna do!
Arya has officially become that creepy character. Her eyebrows don't help.
No great feat there though; it's just logical. Bran the Hodor killer can have all the visions he wants but people (Dany) are going to need more than that to believe Jon is Targaryen. Now Sam needs to pay attention to what Gilly was saying about "Rigger"'s annulment.
"All hail Jon of the Houses Targaryen and Stark, the Resurrected, the First of His Name, the White Wolf, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, King in the North, Beater of Bastards, Friend of the Free Folk, and 'Knower of Nothing'!"
Also: it was an awesome episode of The Walking Dead!
And damn is Arya creepy. And fantastic.
I get that we don't need whole episodes devoted to travel time but there has got to be a happy medium between hour-long shots of walking horses and ravens magically getting from the Wall to Dragonstone within minutes/hours and dragons somehow getting from there to across the entire continent and across the Wall within an instant, right?
It's also awesome that Benjen exists solely to save any Stark north of the Wall the moment they're done for and not a moment too soon
Ugh I need to stop commenting if I don't have anything nice to say I shouldn't say it all but good Christ this show is so different from how it once was, and not in a good way. It's gone from a show focused on character arcs, motivations and histories and political webs of power, intrigue and logic games with hints at mysticism and impending doom to a big dumb flashy blockbuster show more interested in getting to the next big action set piece than if it makes any real sense narratively.
I agree to a point and I blame this entirely on G.R.R. Martin, master procrastinator. The writers of the show are now working on resolving characters arc stories by skipping on what makes the books great. They want to tell us "how the story ends" but what do they have to work on: notes from Martin? My greatest concern is that the show has shifted so much from the books that I fear I'm going to be disappointed by those books if they ever come out, because the tv show will now have become canon.
Oh the shift definitely began the moment they started running thin on book material, and I totally understand that they were given a terrible situation and likely were terrified of getting it wrong and so have largely just done with the majority of their audience will want. I am just unfortunately not in that majority, I guess. I also think their decision to have less episodes but higher budgets have resulted in a lot of my frustrations this season, but then again, 5 and 6 had a lot I had problems with, also.
5 was a low point for me, but this has been disappointing all around. I think HBO choosing to begin adapting the series before they had all the source material wasn't the best thing creatively, but it's made them a fortune and every episode shatters records so none of my opinions matter in their eyes anyway, and I don't really see why they should.
In regards to ravens...
"Flights as long as 1,100 miles have been recorded by birds in competitive pigeon racing. Their average flying speed over moderate distances (about 500 miles) is around 50 mph, but speeds of up to 58.7 mphhave been observed in top racers for short distances (99 miles)."
Also, I imagine a bit of time passed with them on that rock judging by the water freezing back over. It definitely wasn't just hours, but possibly days.
In a show about walking dead people, dragons, and midgets in a seat of power, everyone is concerned about travel time and distance.
Can't bend the rules of reality on that now.
That kind of defense is the weakest shit in the entire world.
As far as we know, everybody in that universe eats, pees, breathes, shits, sleeps, etc. Fantastical elements introduced into a world don't suddenly invalidate everything else logical about it. An internal consistency and logic is nothing major to ask for from a fictional universe, and it makes the wild shit more acceptable/special. There have been constant talks in the show about "running out of time" to get armies to where they need to go and yet suddenly anybody that needs to be anywhere can get there overnight with no penalty and be right back at home in the very next scene. It's cheap, lazy writing avoiding consequences, basic reason and pacing and simply doing whatever is most convenient for the plot at any given time.
Just because there are fantasy creatures in Westeros doesn't mean they don't have gravity, but by your argument, it would make total sense and people would be wrong to criticize it if The Hound started to randomly fly around whenever he felt like it with no dialogue addressing it and Sansa should be able to shoot laser beams out of her eyes when she sees somebody that she doesn't like and Arya should be able to sneeze out baked apple pie because, hey, a dwarf has a position of power.
But there is no need to emphasis on time here. I think the episode did a good job on letting you know how long they were in the spot. To me it seemed a few days has passed.
I can say your argument as far as buddy running back is valid. But as far as everything else it felt fine.
That one excuse is not a reason to bash an otherwise exciting episode.
Honestly, I don't think she got the raven. I think Dany got tired of sitting idly, like she said, and she knew they were going north of the wall, so she could have just gone looking for them. With a dragon she could cover ground pretty quickly, but it would have been hours and hours at the least.
When Tyrion was trying to convince her to stay at Dragonstone, wouldn't she have mentioned receiving something from Jon at some point?
If she was shown reading something, I must have missed it.
"Send a raven."
I simply disliked the whole thing. The Arya v. Sansa stuff is weak at best, the wight hunting was a bad idea to begin with, the tensions between Tyrion and Dany feel forced as all fuck and Tyrion has become a bumbling idiot after being a clever, wise pariah the entire series, and I couldn't get over the fact that three dragons who are all intelligent never thought "Maybe we should toast the guys on horseback very slowly aiming and readying spears" and that Jon never felt the need to point in their direction to tell them to kill them, or the fact that Benjen appears magically wherever he is needed only to disappear again, or the fact that Bran at no point says "Hey Arya that guy's playing you," or the fact that ... I could go on, but I won't, because I'm being the kind of person I hate but then again, you condescended to me for not liking it to begin with, so eh.
There's zero point in you getting defensive over it. What felt fine to you felt off to me. Both of our feelings are valid. To you, it seemed a few days passed; to me, it seemed a bunch of guys got stuck on a rock suddenly with little supplies and within minutes, a fight broke out and dragons swooped in to save them. No night/day cycle was displayed, brief lines of dialogue passed before it cut to other characters talking in other places and then back a couple of times and suddenly, everyone was busy stabbing skeletons. If it was days, they would've frozen to death to begin with.
It's not a show that I ever watched for big action sequences and faceless hordes of nameless characters getting killed. It's exciting to some people but it's a far cry from the first 4 seasons to me and I'm more or less watching it simply because I've watched six seasons of it already and may as well finish it. It just runs on action movie logic now, which has its place and is fine, but it's different from what it used to operate on.
Although, we did get things like this out of it all:
Last edited by implanted_microchip; 08-20-2017 at 11:24 PM.
“There was one javelin in the target. There was no one around, just like now. No one to stop me. So I started throwing. And every throw I had to go up there and get my one javelin and walk back and throw it again. I wasn't very good. Finally I hit the bullseye. Could've been the 20th throw, or the 50th, I don't remember. But I hit the bullseye.”
-Night King
I definitely noticed the rushed feel of the show lately post-GRRM novels and with the shorter season but I'm still really into it, I still get hardcore feels. I mean come on... don't tell me those of you that have been there from the beginning haven't had some wild EMOTIONS over recent story developments.
The characters folks have come to love or hate have become so established and have had such development throughout the show, haven't they kinda earned some gratuitous moments by now? Isn't it worth it to see this stuff play out after so long? To me it always seemed like the show was gradually building to these huge moments anyhow. I don't really have much to complain about.
While I of course agree that things started to trend downward somewhat once we got past the books, I think the biggest mistake has been shortening the seasons. The biggest complaint amongst fans seems to be the ridiculous off-camera time lapses/distance covered. That alone could be solved if we stuck to 10 episode seasons, nevermind the overall rapid speed-up of the stoylines themselves.
That being said, that episode was bananas and just the fact that there is no TV like this is still enough to power through our complaints. At least it is for me still.
***SPOILERS***
Older GoT seasons would have had MANY more members of the Wight Fellowship die in that episode, but it could be argued that the one larger "good guy" that was felled by the Night King cancels out those other non-deaths.
Sansa & Arya better iron out their differences positively if they don't want the character progression of Sansa they've built for the last two seasons to be null & void.
Read the books and been watching since the first season. No emotions here. I'm in it for the backstabbing, the twists, and the gratuitous violence. I laugh about the impending death of characters.
Other shows? I'll get emotional. This show? I just plan on everyone being dead sooner or later and laugh at the reactions people have when it finally happens.
The last episode was a bit too predictable for my taste, but I still enjoyed it.
Characters and ravens seem to teleport from one place to another? Meh, I can live with that. But there are inconsistencies that are bothering me a bit.
How did they know Gendry was the fastest runner? Because he's young? Jon Snow is young too but he was needed for the plot. Maybe it's because he's got all that training from rowing for a couple seasons?
Why didn't Dany react when Jon petted Drogon? That dragon was almost purring. That should have raised red flags for her. Us, the viewers who know better, were all BLOOD OF THE DRAGON, HELL YEAH!!!
So killing a White Walker automatically makes all the dead he reanimated drop dead for good? How convenient. Such a novelty! Especially since Jon and Beric have it all figured out: kill the Night King and it's game over man, game over! Jon finally learned something useful. All he has to do is stop his staring contest with the big bad undead King and cut him in half.
And aren't the writers subtle about reminding us past fact? You had to really pay attention if you wanted to hear that Dany is barren. That was not heavily discussed twice last night. Especially while Dany and Jon were holding hand and eye fucking each other. Yeah, nobody can see for a thousand miles how this is going to end.
But there are still great moments. The banting between Tormund and the Hound was priceless. The exchange between Beric and Jon about the meaning of life was to the point. After Sansa has her scene with Brienne, she sat back in her chair and took a pose that remind me so much of Ned it hurt. Sansa and Arya are trying to learn to live with how much they have changed since they last met.
But Littlefinger and Tyrion have lost everything that made them great. What a shame.
But I'm not ready to give up on the show yet. I'm still hoping for the Clegane Bowl. I want to see Jon's face when he finally learns who his parents were. And I want Lady Mormont on the Iron Throne, darn it.!
Solid episode. Very predictable, but can we have a show with just The Hound and Tormund as roommates? Tormund almost dying had me screaming at the television, but that Cold Hands shit was weak and has me infinitely pissed. But at the same time... I feel like he knew what his destiny was. He saved Bran and friends, and then Jon. He cannot go past the wall either. But it still felt insanely cheap.
What bothers me, and I'm hoping I'm just missing some ludicrous plot point, but WHY did they need to risk all of this to catch an example of the undead?! I thought before, it was HARD to keep them away from even manifesting within the keep if they were slain outside. Couldn't they execute a prisoner outside of the wall, tie him up, wait for him to resurrect, and that be enough proof?
This plot point, while not a hole, is really nagging at me. I feel like if the end goal was the dragon causality drama, they could have come up with a better reason for this scenario.
I feel like it will all play out eventually but I have so many questions....
Is Arya trying to get Sansa to kill Littlefinger? If Sansa does kill Littlefinger, can Arya take his face?
Jon should probably propose to Dany. Technically, he wouldn't be taking the knee - he could still be King in the North and pledge loyalty to her without pissing off all the North folk.
Well, the Knight king can fly right over the wall now, eh? (Closing shot of the season?)
Are Jon and Beric Dondarrion kind of like the Fire version of a wight? They were reborn from fire where the walkers north of the wall were born of ice.
Talla is heir to Horn Hill now, right? So can we assume that once Sam gets a chance to regroup, they'll move to Dany's side?
And forgive me if it's been suggested before, but Bran is now Lucas from Empire Records.
So what's the deal with Jon's sword? Its eyes definitely changed colour when he crawled out of the water, or was that just an optical illusion?
If I remember correctly, the dead don't wake up automatically once they die; they have to be revived by a White Walker. Jon has them burning the corpse to prevent that. Remember Hardhome? And Viserion didn't come back by himself; it was the Night King who brought him back.
So I think that's why they had to go fetch a dead/undead.
That's in the series, by the way. It's been too long since I've read the books to remember how it happens in them.