HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

Meera's still alive

I'm terrible with faces in a lot of these complex plot shows. With S5 having been so long ago, I was confusing all the middle aged men with grey beards. I keep mixing up Stannis, Davos, Jorah (to a lesser ext), and Alliser.

i wasn't sure if the ppl in jon snow's rooms were wildlings or nightwatch

watch men

i've read all the books and watched all the eps but honestly idk if i care how the story concludes anymore

Yeah I'm starting to find the whole thing a bit of a mess to follow. Someone upthread mentioned burning ships... hein!? Wasnt that burning buildings?

Nah it was the harbor

Dead @ Karl Malone ranking post

maybe I need 2 b less drunk when watching this show lol

No I think you're on the right track.

Finally caught up with this (the episode, not the thread). I'm glad to see that it's gotten back to being a bit self consciously campy again - the Dothraki Spanish Inquisition skit throwback was cute, and so was the negotiating through the door scene - but as I was reminding my wife who everyone was and why we (in theory) care, it was pretty rough going. "Oh, she is sworn to her because her master was killed by a mysterious vagina ghost assassin." "That guy, he used magic to ..." etc.

One thing I couldn't answer/remember is what happened to the dragons. The best I could come up with is that she flew one of them to Scotland with a broken engine and then crash-landed it in a field before she was captured by Dothraki?

BTW, if this ends with dragons vs. zombies - or zombies riding dragons? or zombie dragons? - I will be highly entertained and also drunk.

the others she locked in a cave because the one who is actually loose was behaving badly..

I think tyrion is gonna go check on them in the next ep due to the preview.

Are we mayb all struggling cos its been too long since the last season? I should have rewatched at least S5 again.

those sandworm girls are so annoying, dorne is stupid & looks like a myst add-on

i am nostalgc for the days of a mere 3 storylines

also did everyone always swear so modernly and casually in this

Yeah, there was a flurry of "fucks" in one bit that really stood out for me!

this wasn't very good was it

whenever I see the sandsnakes I regret watching the TMNT parody video last year because thats all I hear in my head

I didn't really see much similarity between them and Ninja Turtles. They have weapons and they're young.

have even wondered about rickon.

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Tuesday, April 26, 2016 8:26 AM (14 hours ago)

I think Rickon might be back this season!!! He's like my favorite character after Dolorous Ed and the hippie red priest

this wasn't very good was it

― ulysses, Tuesday, April 26, 2016 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh cmon its flawed af but its not *bad*

whenever I see the sandsnakes I regret watching the TMNT parody video last year because thats all I hear in my head

And yeah, this was pretty silly, i.e. bad enough. We are at the point in the story where it is dangerously close to totally teetering over with the weight of all its not-terribly-compelling contrivances. Like, this far along and I still don't give a fuck about the Red Witch, and neither do I ever remotely understand her powers/role. Dorn stuff is stupid and cheap-looking, massive perils like Ice Zombies and dragons constantly vanish or get sidelined/ignored, 5/6 seasons in and magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined, and so on. I don't get how shows, especially shows with huge budgets and huger audiences like this and Walking Dead (RIP to me) just can't manage 10 or 13 totally good episodes in a row. Better Call Saul did it. Hell, Veep has done it. And neither of these has the literally unlimited resources of imagination at their service.

And as far as the show's momentum goes, strictly as an entertainment and not as, like, a fake history of an ancient pretend land, it's just constantly hitting the reset button, like playing some maddening kids game that sends you back to the beginning when you're almost at the end. Makes it all feel padded, which maybe it is!

Show/story/Martin made a strategic narrative error by first) systematically killing off (temporarily or no) its most compelling characters and second) scattering the rest across the sidetrack gulag. I presume this season is already on track to remedying the latter problem; for once we have a whole bunch of related characters in the same place(s), talking to one another. As for the former, I think we'll have to wait and see, but it's happened so often now that it's tough to get totally invested in anyone's specific plight, and even when you do, expectations subvert drama, i.e. no one thinks Jon Snow is dead, no one thinks the Mother of Dragons is in any real danger.

Well, I guess she could be, and I guess they could all be killed at any moment, but that would be pretty shitty storytelling. This ep alone seemed largely about aggressively tying up a few loose ends lest they become more dead ends.

Khaleesi Widows Spa Retreat just felt like Bad TV Writing

so did the melisandre reveal

http://i.imgur.com/WEl2uHD.jpg

Lol

I giggled at it as an intentional subversion of boobs. OK, we made it to the episode of the season premiere with no nudity, so here is this person disrobing, just for you, and ... ha, now her boobs are old! Fooled you!

Are people out there really stoked for another dose of Bran and his loser mates? It's like looking forward to a Lost episode about Rose and Bernard.

the problem the show faces right here:

Are people out there really stoked for another dose of Bran and his loser mates?

magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined

there was a ton of explicit two person dialogue exposition and a desperate need to make sure we hit every storyline for about four minutes... basically the two sins they've been good at avoiding until now

want at least two seasons of tmns and splintelaria biding their time in the sewers of kings landing

robberies mysteriously foiled, angry pizza maesters etc

after defeating mutant mountain, a stray canister of wildfire leads to a final showdown with super cersei. go snakey go snakey go

maybe the police from monty python + holy grail will show up and arrest dorne

This episode was basically the same as every season opener for the last couple of seasons, basically just the show going "remember this dude? Also these two are pretty important also, and don't forget about what's happening over here! There's also this happening even though nobody cares about this storyline, but maybe we'll make it work this season, etc."

I guess it's ok to complain about it, but it seems like most people would be completely lost if they didn't do it.

New Dothraki guy reminds me of Hari Kunzru

remind me, what happened to the dothraki when daenerys first met the unsullied? did they just ride away somewhere? do some of them still think that daenerys is the unburned mother of dragons etc etc etc etc etc etc? or was that a different band of dothraki that's unconnected to the new crew?

i can't fucking BELIEVE the dothraki are involved again, btw

i went from hating the whole S1 dothraki storyline to being sort of ok with it, but when they disappeared i assumed that we would never see them again and i was totally fine with that

"magic powers present since the start have still not been explained/outlined"

That's a feature, not a bug.

For sure. But when you start bringing characters back from the dead (like the Mountain), it'd be nice to know how or why they can't do that for everyone. See also: Red Witch's vagina shadow demon assassin, creation of wildfire, going full-wart (and why), etc. It would be helpful, this far along, to know why some people can do stuff and some people can't, and why those that can usually don't, and so on. And that's just stuff in the abstract. More specifically missing among many characters: motive. Or at least motive beyond merely generic "power." What does the Red Witch want and why? The asshole in charge of the Night's Watch now, what does he want?

Man, I just remembered all the other shit going on that we haven't even got a reminder of. Sam studying to be a book ninja, Littlefinger farting around in Cloudymountainland. Wyldling Stallions off somewhere (or were they all killed?). Vast army of unkillable Ice Zombies just ... chilling somewhere.

i think there are a bunch of dothraki clans or tribes or whatever that luv 2 fight each other

Also, the show's CGI crowd budget seems to have waned precipitously. Every scene is like huge establishing shot followed by 5 people hanging in the corner of a room/small set. Maybe they're saving their cash for dragons and zombies?

i want to see a comparison of the direwolves throughout the series

You mean the quality of CGI?

How many are left alive? A couple?

The asshole in charge of the Night's Watch now, what does he want?

most burning question of all imo

i think there are a bunch of dothraki clans or tribes or whatever that luv 2 fight each other

so like they married her off to a chieftain of one particular clan w/ the idea that would somehow gain the targaryans an army of dothrakis? feel like maybe they didn't think this one through.

i thought the night watch head's motivations were the most obvious -- he's the old guard who resented jon snow and resents his decisions and he wants to be in charge and rid the guard of its progressive elements.

All I really want at this point is

a) awesome extended dialogue like Littlefinger & Varys that one time, Cersei & Oberyn that one time, excerpts from Brienne's old diary etc.
b) an entire episode from the white walkers pov, mostly working on dragonglass immunity spells and playing jenga with human remains
c) kill off a third of the remaining characters by season end

The whole myth-arc of John Snow is the most tedious bullshit.

xpost i know lol. I had no idea anyone was having trouble with that dude's motives

was trystane killed before doran tho we see it the other way around?

Oh, I mean, I get it re: Night Watch guy. But I thought the whole point of the Night's Watch was to protect everyone south of the wall from bad things. So this dude Jon Snow comes to lead the Night Watch with a special vantage into what exactly they need protecting from - the White Walkers and not the Wildlings - aaaand they kill him. Like "OK, now that we've killed the guy who knows just what we're up against, let's get back to the business of protecting everyone from this mysterious threat."

It's part and parcel I suppose with so many characters refusing to see the long view. Re: White Walkers, dragons, magic, etc.

The flip side of this is characters playing such a long game I have no idea what it is (Red Witch, Littlefinger, even Aria - is she still training for revenge? I can't even remember if everyone she wanted to kill is still alive or not). At least Mother of Dragons has a clear goal, even if it's slow going.

Not sure Arya knows who's died by other hands recently so think her list is something like:

Joffrey
Cersei
Walder Frey
Tywin
Melisandre
Those Bannerless Brodudes
Ilyn Payne (not coming back presumably)
Artist Formerley Known As The Mountain
The Boltons (if she's done the math)

You mean the quality of CGI?

How many are left alive? A couple?

They seem to vary in size too