Game Of Thrones

I think many of the flaws of this season have their roots in structural problems that have been present from the start of the show, namely that it's trying to tell two different types of story at the same time and never quite resolves the conflict between them.

On the one hand, there is the entire plotline with the white walkers, looming over the rest of the story from the very first scene. Following the typical fantasy pattern, the threat is initially taken seriously only by our protagonists, led by a brooding hero with mysterious parentage, who must convince everyone else before it's too late. You know all along that this is going to be the endgame of the show. Similarly, you know that Daenerys and her dragons are going to invade at some point. So you have two plot strands that are building to something quite specific (and taking forever to get there).

Then there is the war for the kingdom. This part of the story has no real structure at all - indeed, its unpredictability has been one of the show's main selling points. Characters scheme and fight and die and you keep watching simply because you want to know what happens next. Unlike the stories of Jon Snow and Daenerys, though, it doesn't naturally build towards any particular conclusion. There's no reason why the struggle for the Iron Throne can't go on indefinitely, as politics do. The only reason why it can't is that, inevitably, viewers will eventually tire of it all. Speaking for myself, I think that by season five it was starting to feel rather repetitive.

What's happening now is that after six seasons of focusing mostly on the political soap opera (and for good reason, that's where the fun has been), the writers find themselves having to actually provide the endgame they've promised from the start, except Daenerys has only just now reached Westeros and most of the characters still have no clue about the white walkers. So they have to tell a ton of story in only a few episodes and there's no way to do it without taking some massive narrative shortcuts.
 
Shadow said:
I think many of the flaws of this season have their roots in structural problems that have been present from the start of the show, namely that it's trying to tell two different types of story at the same time and never quite resolves the conflict between them.

On the one hand, there is the entire plotline with the white walkers, looming over the rest of the story from the very first scene. Following the typical fantasy pattern, the threat is initially taken seriously only by our protagonists, led by a brooding hero with mysterious parentage, who must convince everyone else before it's too late. You know all along that this is going to be the endgame of the show. Similarly, you know that Daenerys and her dragons are going to invade at some point. So you have two plot strands that are building to something quite specific (and taking forever to get there).

Then there is the war for the kingdom. This part of the story has no real structure at all - indeed, its unpredictability has been one of the show's main selling points. Characters scheme and fight and die and you keep watching simply because you want to know what happens next. Unlike the stories of Jon Snow and Daenerys, though, it doesn't naturally build towards any particular conclusion. There's no reason why the struggle for the Iron Throne can't go on indefinitely, as politics do. The only reason why it can't is that, inevitably, viewers will eventually tire of it all. Speaking for myself, I think that by season five it was starting to feel rather repetitive.

What's happening now is that after six seasons of focusing mostly on the political soap opera (and for good reason, that's where the fun has been), the writers find themselves having to actually provide the endgame they've promised from the start, except Daenerys has only just now reached Westeros and most of the characters still have no clue about the white walkers. So they have to tell a ton of story in only a few episodes and there's no way to do it without taking some massive narrative shortcuts.
Click to expand...

Great post.

My wife equated the divergent/delayed GOT plot points to "If George Lucas spent 110 minutes on Luke on Tattooine and only 15 minutes of him on the Death Star rescue". Suspense is great, but they're not leaving much room for an adequate pay off...unless the plan is simply to culminate in a 'Helm's Deep' style battle with zombies and dragons with the winner as last-person standing (which would be disappointing).
 
Shadow said:
I think many of the flaws of this season have their roots in structural problems that have been present from the start of the show, namely that it's trying to tell two different types of story at the same time and never quite resolves the conflict between them.

On the one hand, there is the entire plotline with the white walkers, looming over the rest of the story from the very first scene. Following the typical fantasy pattern, the threat is initially taken seriously only by our protagonists, led by a brooding hero with mysterious parentage, who must convince everyone else before it's too late. You know all along that this is going to be the endgame of the show. Similarly, you know that Daenerys and her dragons are going to invade at some point. So you have two plot strands that are building to something quite specific (and taking forever to get there).

Then there is the war for the kingdom. This part of the story has no real structure at all - indeed, its unpredictability has been one of the show's main selling points. Characters scheme and fight and die and you keep watching simply because you want to know what happens next. Unlike the stories of Jon Snow and Daenerys, though, it doesn't naturally build towards any particular conclusion. There's no reason why the struggle for the Iron Throne can't go on indefinitely, as politics do. The only reason why it can't is that, inevitably, viewers will eventually tire of it all. Speaking for myself, I think that by season five it was starting to feel rather repetitive.

What's happening now is that after six seasons of focusing mostly on the political soap opera (and for good reason, that's where the fun has been), the writers find themselves having to actually provide the endgame they've promised from the start, except Daenerys has only just now reached Westeros and most of the characters still have no clue about the white walkers. So they have to tell a ton of story in only a few episodes and there's no way to do it without taking some massive narrative shortcuts.
Click to expand...

Well put. These issues were present much, much earlier in the books, but the series managed to deal with them better just because they knew it was going to be longer than three seasons if they were going to follow the books. The subplots have been much better written in the series as a result. Fans will probably take offense at calling it a soap opera in a fantasy setting, but in reality it might as well be Emmerdale with dragons. The narrative techniques of building suspense with little affecting the conclusion (or lack thereof) are about the same.

I believe Game of Thrones would be equally succesful without the overarching generic fantasy plot (which was never done that well in either books or series and which has never been used as one of the main selling points - it's been so obvious fans 'solved' what mysteries there were way, way back).

It is also the reason why I can't see this series standing the test of time, even if I enjoy watching it.
 
Just watched the penultimate episode and, man, the ending might just be the most awesome moment in the series so far, IMHO. I really needed that. Especially with
the rest of the episode being so-so and with Daenerys turning megalomaniac and even more blindly arrogant, Tormund turning into a comic relief, Tyrion turning creepy, Stannis turning in his grave and Arya turning into Rorscharch, I was getting kinda concerned.

But otherwise, honestly, the more I think about it, the less I like it (the episode). Not only it's so rushed it's getting laughable at this point, but there are some serious WTF moments there.
I think I might accept the fucking teleporting everywhere and taking it as a necessary evil. But the knee-bending, the absolutely absurd fight between Arya and Sansa that made no fucking sense at all, the fact D & J are so lovey-dovey despite knowing each other for, like, a week at most...
 
Last edited:
I know I'm late to the party, but I just finished watching all seven seasons. I basically treated everything GoT related on the internet with indifference over the last eight years, so while I probably saw thousands of spoilers before, I didn't bother to remember any. So when I started, I knew precisely two things about the series:

1. You shouldn't get too attached to any of the characters
2. Winter is coming

My overall verdict: I enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to season 8.

With that overall premise, let's make a tl;dr review of some of my thoughts on the series. Some of them read rather negatively, but I'd like to stress that they are against the backdrop of me liking the series a lot.

1. Unlike most people, I largely enjoyed Daenerys' storyline. I agree it plodded for too long, and in many places, it was obvious that they were struggling to keep her relevant. Also, it would have helped if they fleshed out her character a bit more instead of making her look like a high hippy for most of the time; but if you look at it in a condensed fashion, it's a pretty good and interesting development. I liked Jorah's character a lot, but I couldn't help thinking most of the time how out of place he looked; something about him looked more like a suburban dad in a midlife crisis than a warrior in a distant fantasy world.

2. Stannis' entire story didn't keep me involved for one moment until the very end when the burned Shireen; that was the only time I actually cared for his character. The only interesting bit in that subplot was the relationship between Davos and Shireen. I really hated Melisandre, I thought Stannis was just dull, and nothing kept me involved. Ironically, I actually started liking Melisandre after she burned Shireen because that's when we actually got conflict in her character. It wouldn't have worked this well without the long buildup, of course, but still. Meh.

3. Arya's plot was very inconsistent in the way it kept me interested. It was at it's best when it became apparent that she and the Hound reluctantly started to like each other, but the whole Faceless People thing completely threw me off. I'm still not sure what the point of that subplot was. It may have become interesting had she actually had to flee from them and they would have pursued them all the way to Winterfell.

4. My biggest gripe, looking back, was the way the whole sparrow plot was resolved. This was probably the most engaging and complex conflict of the entire series. It affected and transformed the most characters and if we had gotten to see how it affected the entire kingdom, it would have made for some truly epic drama. But looking back, blowing up the Sept was the easy way to dispose of a conflict and a bunch of characters that probably would have made the last two seasons too difficult to write. Don't get me wrong; the scene itself was a great, shocking moment, but it just leaves a bitter taste in hindsight. I thought Margaery was the most interesting character of the series at the time, and she was clearly up to something - it would have been great to know what that was. The High Sparrow was an amazing villain, and just imagine it would have been him in the end who would face Daenerys. It would have made for much more interesting drama had the plot failed and been discovered, for example.

5. I could never care for Bran Stark even the slightest bit. His plot really dragged and went absolutely nowhere. All this only for a single revelation in the end? I always thought "visions" were the laziest way of having plot twists revealed, and just because you spent seven seasons developing this doesn't redeem that. It's telling that Hodor was a much more interesting character than Bran; I also couldn't get over the fact how silly it looked to have Max von Sydow sit in a tree the whole time.

6. One of the best aspects of the series was how it basically had characters all over the spectre of likeability. There were some I just liked (Robb and Cat Stark, Jon Snow), some I straight-out hated (Joffrey, Ramsay Bolton), some I disliked but admired (Cersei, Baelish for most of the time) and some I'm still not sure whether I should like or not (the Tyrells, Tywin Lannister, Bronn, Varys). By and large, the character development was surprisingly strong, with just a few negative outbreaks, which could hardly be avoided with such a large cast.

7. Having said the above, it's obvious that the Lannisters are where most of the passion of the writers and actors went. With the exception of Joffrey, all members of the family were so multi-layered, complex and conflicted that my opinion on them changed all the time. Sometimes I wanted to see Cersei burn in hell, at other times I rooted for her. Tywin was plain awesome, Jaime could have fucked his mother and his daughter and I'd still have somehow liked him, and Tyrion was of course an instant favourite. It's good that Joffrey and Tommen were both not so well-developed, since they were children anyway. It often breaches my suspense of disbelief when I see children who are written way more complex than any child could possibly be in reality. This was handled pretty well with all the child characters here.

8. The sex and gore really annoyed me in the beginning. There was too much of it for no obvious purpose. Was it necessary to have a brothel as a main backdrop if you get to see boobs all the time anyway? I'm glad this was largely toned down later for instances when it actually made sense for the plot. Also, did we really need two guys who fuck their own daughters?

9. The White Walker thing was set up quite well throughout the series; but there is something that bothers me. I realise that it's just fantasy fiction, and you need some bullies who are just evil for the sake of evil. I get that the White Walkers are supposed to be the looming threat that everyone is afraid of, and it works jut fine. However, with a plot and series as complex as this, I can't help but think, what would happen suppose the zombies win. Suppose the Night King leads his army to victory over everyone, they conquer all of Westeros - and then? Are they just going to stand at the shore staring in the direction of Essos dramatically for all eternity? The White Walkers are obviously some sort of culture with a hierarchy, but their zombie soldiers are just that - zombies who will roam the world forever for no purpose. I guess that's a scary outlook, but someone who is as ostensibly intelligent as the Night King must have some sort of plan for what he would do then. It would help making him a scarier opponent if he actually had something that could make people consider joining his ranks and becoming White Walkers themselves. Maybe he will have that in the next season, but I somehow doubt it.
 
Thoughts

Was a bit disappointed with the episode but I think it will get much better. I feel it was too rushed and cliche, similar to last season, with cheesy scenes that made me wonder if I was watching a BBC fantasy drama. I also felt the scene where Sam told Jon about his heritage could have been far better, although they may have been because I would have been far more shouty and excitable if I was Sam in that situation. However, the final scene with the screaming dead corpse of Lord Umber really made me jump because I wasn't expecting it and it set up something more freakish than I expected, so I'm now looking forward to the next episodes, and it's possible they made the first episode all happy to set us up for later, but we'll have to see. Thought the scene with Jaime at the end was cool too, and I'm excited to see where that goes.
 
phantomoftheicarus said:
I also felt the scene where Sam told Jon about his heritage could have been far better, although they may have been because I would have been far more shouty and excitable if I was Sam in that situation.
Click to expand...

Even if you just learned two minutes ago that your whole family is dead? I think everyone was looking forward to the revelation towards Jon the most, and I think this is about the only way we could have had out expectations subverted. Jon didn't just learn that he was the rightful heir of the iron throne and that he was shagging his aunt. He heard first-hand why he would have to end up fighting Daenerys, and we get a whole new perspective on her character. This puts a lot more weight into the revelation than if, say, Sam had told him who he is and then Jon would have just looked pondering into the distance until the next episode.
 
phantomoftheicarus said:
I feel it was too rushed and cliche, similar to last season, with cheesy scenes that made me wonder if I was watching a BBC fantasy drama. I also felt the scene where Sam told Jon about his heritage could have been far better...
Click to expand...

I felt the same way. I also disagree with Perun, there didn't seem to be any weight in that scene. The episode didn't give enough time for any to develop, within a minute or two we were onto the next scene. That could be said for the whole episode, really. My biggest question regarding that was...

"What are Jon and Daenerys going to say/do when they find out?"

...and that still hasn't been answered. I really didn't get anything else out of it, we already knew what was said.

In all, the episode done its job, which is get me excited for the rest of the series, very well. I just wish there had been a bit more substance to it.
 
I was satisfied with the episode, given that it was primarily to catch us up and tee up the events of the final chapter. The one thing that was alarming, though, was
the outdated special effects. When Jon and Danerys were riding the dragons, it looked really, really fake and cheesy, which is disappointing given modern technological SFX advancements.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
I was satisfied with the episode, given that it was primarily to catch us up and tee up the events of the final chapter. The one thing that was alarming, though, was
the outdated special effects. When Jon and Danerys were riding the dragons, it looked really, really fake and cheesy, which is disappointing given modern technological SFX advancements.
Click to expand...

I didn't think they looked that bad myself, but they weren't as much improved as I expected, given this series had an increased budget. I guess that all went on the longer episodes.
 
Despite the fact that the episode was basically entirely buildup with not a ton happening,
Other than Jon revealing the truth of his parents to Daenerys, of course
I enjoyed tonight's episode quite a bit.

Every single character of importance, other than Cersei, is now all together in one place. It was really cool to see all the reunions and interactions and whatnot in the moments leading up to whats sure to be an epic battle for the ages. I loved seeing Brienne getting knighted by Jaime.

However, I must say that the Arya sex scene was pretty awkward. Isn't she supposed to be like only 14ish years old at this point? o_O

Suffice it to say, I can't wait for next week!
 
Another good episode. The next one will be the one we’re waiting for though!

Since GoT came back my weeks have gone by slower..
 
I had the feeling they were all on summer camp this episode. Well, winter camp. :D
I wasn't sure if Jon would tell Dany about his real identity before the battle. Now that he did, I'm certain one of them will not come out of it alive.

Let's bet on who dies or lives after the battle.
I think Dany is going to die, so Jon can get the Iron Throne and the Starks won't fight him.
Theon is dead meat, nobody needs him anyway.
Either Brienne or Tormund will kick the bucket too. Maybe both. Ser Jorah's gone. So is Gendry.
Not sure about Arya. I think Jaime will survive so that he could face Cersei afterwards.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top