HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

This is prob the worst ep of the show so far

The past 3 have been so boring

It did feel pretty creaky a few scenes but I think it's getting pretty good.

cerseis situation is p dicey and fascinating, kings landing politics are always the best part of the show

dunno what littlefinger is up to seems like if cersei has offered him the north upon receipt of sansas head thats a p good incentive for him to do it

cersei fucking over the tyrells good lord what is she thinking!

maybe littlefinger will go to them looking for a better offer

cersei fucking over the tyrells good lord what is she thinking!

Clearly she is not. #disappointeddeaddad

I've been trying to give this season the benefit of the doubt, but it's really not as good is it? Even the better storylines lack the same heft as before, and the Dorne stuff is a joke pretty much. Hopefully they'll bring it round for the home stretch.

May have to tolerate the horrific Sansa plotline as the idea of Winterfell being simultaneously besieged by Stannis Kru, the supposed hardmen of the Vale and Team Yara plus Brienne is just about tantalising enough. If at least half a dozen major characters die in the finale it'll be worth it.

Also team Dany and Tyrion will hopefully be good.

They must have a problem because by this point the books are all ramble and colour and very little plot, so they've had to firm up the bits of plot and change an awul lot to try to construct something with narrative thrust.

i really hate the dorne stuff! sand snakes are really bad and grating (and the fight choreography is not helping) and meanwhile alexander siddig has... nothing to do. chap and ithappens otm. was hoping that theyd be able to rescue post-storm of swords asoiaf but im not sure they are

The general aimlessness of the last two books were somewhat redeemed by some nuanced political scheming and power balancing which they seem to have more or less eschewed here.

Also Crows in particular has some compelling portraits of how the war has affected the small folk, none of which is evident this season. Though they did touch on that a bit in s4.

If I were just tuning in this season I would be pretty confused about why this show is supposed to be any good. It's a tremendous fall-off, not just in terms of plotting—everything outside King's Landing looks so cheap.

It seems like in seasons past they've been able to take two characters on the road together w/ some humor & pathos (Arya/Hound, Brienne/Jaime, Bran/Hodor+, Samwell/Gilly etc) but the Jaime/Bronn stuff has this cardboard lazy Hope-Crosby feel (Like when they lift up their snake masks? "Uh-oh, look what we've gotten ourselves into now!") Even the Tyrion/Jorah scenes seem sort of aimless.

the sprawl of the show kind of sucks. It was at its best in ssn 2/3 when Tyrion was playing against a whole bunch of characters in King's Landing

yeah and I get that there's a need for a certain amount of exposition because of that sprawl but they're halfway through the season already and no real momentum

i was fairly critical of it upthread but i thought the most recent ep had a bit more sense of momentum, at least a battle is on the way.

btw was that stuff with arya meant to imply that "becoming someone else" equals becoming an assassin as per her introduction to these guys? whereas "becoming no one" was some other process?

everything outside King's Landing looks so cheap

Only applies to the Dorne stuff really - the recent shots for the crumbling stoneface ruins were superb. I want to live in whatever countryside Tyrion and Jorah were travelling through.

Jamie and Bronn's plan was up there with Luke's idea of rescuing Han in Return of the Jedi - 'yea, let's just stroll right up there in broad daylight and see what happens - o snap, we've been caught :/'

Apparently they are way 'off book' with this series, and it looks as if generating their own new plot ideas isn't their strongest suite. In fact, the writing in this was pretty cynical and lazy, imo.

i'm finding the arya stuff utterly interminable, which she is too so hey maybe it's a very very clever way of attuning the viewer to her experience.

Nah the Arya bits are cool, really atmospheric.

i do also have the problem that on my laptop screen it just looks like a bunch of vaguely defined figures moving around in pitch darkness

this was definitely the weakest episode of the season and one of the weaker installments overall, although i really liked the tyrion, cersei and arya scenes. also ADEBISI LIVES

that said i've really enjoyed this season, mostly bc i've stopped caring overmuch about where it all ends up, being overly concerned with "sticking the landing" or w/e is one of the biggest problems w/ how we (royal we) watch serialized television imo

well, bronn did say "this song is all about the ending," so maybe they're acknowledging the place holding going on this season.

Arya scenes are a little cliche Karate Kid though right? Instructor fucks with student via vague "tests" and pranks, then whether it is clear or not suddenly the student is ready for the next phase of mild psychological abuse etc. repeat until they become an amazing ninja assassin.

the authoritative ratings from the world's #1 expert who still can't remember the names of major characters
tyrion scenes: A
arya scenes: A-
kings landing scenes: A
the wall/north of the wall/winter is coming: B+
stannis/bolten/winterfell: B
daenerys: D-
dorne: F (oberyn was A+)

dorne is so bad
the casting was done in the parking lot behind tj maxx

xxp would not surprise me at all if karate kid was a semi-inspiration for that, after all GRRM has said a zillion times that oberyn martell is...was (sob)...more or less inigo montoya

mostly agree with you karl although i remain a daenerys partisan and am only now starting to feel the feet dragging with those scenes (as seems to be true of many surrounding her!), i did not mind that stuff in seasons 3 and 4

Doesn't help that Obara's "tough face" is the same one I see 6 year olds make when they're dressed up like little super heroes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlL56OCPEaw

i want to enjoy the daenerys stuff, but the acting is pretty bad and the set design and look and feel of it just seems very 2nd unit-y

Wonder if that guy has given up on Arya being a full fledged nobody and realised that she won't let go of the past, but will train her in a limited way so he wasn't completely wasting his time on her.

netw3rk's weekly explainer/context-giver for watchers who are not book readers http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/ask-the-maester-sansas-horrific-wedding-the-bolton-stark-alliance-and-the-sand-snakes/

this part in particular made me lol/is how i want to answer a lot of nitpicky shit about the show:

Michael asks, “Is there any canon explanation for why there seems to have been like no technological advancement in the world of GoT for the past 8,000 years or so? I mean, I know the doom of Valyria set things back a bit, but 8,000 years and they haven’t invented the steam engine, discovered electricity, or anything?”

This hasn’t been dealt with directly but (as with everything else) there are numerous fan theories, some of which are quite involved, none of which are really worth talking about, because the answer is, “That’s the genre.”

We've never seen anyone even wearing spectacles or the equivalent have we? Qyburn maybe, or another Maester as they are supposed to be tech gatekeepers as much as anything. But maybe there's just enough 'magic' and fear of eerie powers apparent in GoT world to keep the pursuit of technology out of most inhabitants reach or intellectual curiosity.

i just go with "its the equivalent of the dark ages in most ways" and leave it at that

There are definitely nitpicky questions that are relevant to the story or the general world building but that isn't one of them. It also seems to get brought up all the time across the fantasy genre but I don't get why it bothers anybody enough to need an answer. Just rationalize it somehow and move on.

xxp

i'm still hopeful that at some point the police from monty python/holy grail will bust into westeros and arrest everyone

I think the real question is why our world hasn't developed magic or dragons yet.

This hasn’t been dealt with directly but (as with everything else) there are numerous fan theories, some of which are quite involved, none of which are really worth talking about, because the answer is, “That’s the genre.”

idk, considering they have winters that last years where loads of people starve to death and they have to spend years on survival - doesn't seem that difficult to reconcile to me. how can they plan or invest when they don't know when winter will end?

The winter thing makes no sense either tbf

Like how would life even evolve under those conditions

series should end with all the different kings pledging money for R&D into inventing the light bulb

The true answer is that the people and only the people are the driving force in the creation of world history, to paraphrase Mao Zedong. So since the big houses have all the power, and the people has none, progression is halted. The good ending for the series would be the smallfolk finally realizing their class interests, and rising up.

Most of season seven consists of Loach'ian discussions amongst the Brotherhood of the Banners about the true way to achieve an uprising amongst the peasants. Then there's some boobs, then some more discussion.

it was posted (i think here) a looong time ago – but someone shared a link that went into how all knowledge is basically intrusted to the Maesters. and that they have an interest in keeping that to themselves, it makes advancement incredibly difficult to achieve.

Peasant uprising would be amazing. It seems like GRRM hints at something like that, or at least he seems pretty cynical about the typical fantasy trope of the "chosen one." Obviously he uses it to some extent, but so far, the chosen ones get their heads chopped off at some point.

this seems kind of similar to the Helliconia series by Brian Aldiss-winters that last a super long time and destroy progress, a priesthood that keeps knowledge from the people etc.