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

I liked how Tyrion spent all that time confirming that the dragons were cool with Missandei and then decided to go in alone with only a terrified Varys as backup.

And why did he ask to be punched in the face if he had an idea like that again? It went fine!

He's so going to get punched in the face.

It was a really stupid risk.

needed to go down like that to maybe support ~a theory~ i guess?

yup

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/game-of-thrones-confirmed-tyrion-theory_us_5726f98ae4b0b49df6ababa8

Ah yeah a workmate floated that theory y'day, it hadnt at all occurred to me (but I havent read the books). Makes hella lot of sense tho.

Tyrion would make an excellent dragon jockey

it would be kinda sweet if daenerys, jon snow, and tyrion all ended up being dragon heroes at the end because it would add some additional mystery and suspense to the ending - would they turn on each other in a last-minute bid for power, or cooperate together in power, or dismantle the power structure together entirely (ie the "breaking the wheel" that daenerys mentioned at some point in season 5)

as one of the millions of people who correctly predicted (inside their head, not publicly) that the final shot of the episode featuring jon snow's revival would end with him opening his eyes in terror followed closely by a blackout and the credits, i just want to note at this early point that i hope the last shot of the last episode of game of thrones is a non sequitur cut to the red woman exposing her boobs one last time for no reason

Withered or still in the flush of hottness?

imho "breaking the wheel" will involve the end of magic / supernatural stuff, like the elves & wizards leaving Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age

xpost doesn't really matter, just one last flash of any sort would be appropriate

whats confusing to me that these characters are all children of some seriously fucked up people that we're supposed to like? or something? I guess the key is theyre all breaking with the past and making something new..

Jon's parents aren't bad!

depends on who you think his parents are!

Yeah and the Starks were all decent people werent they?

Relatively

I miss the Hound now. Would be great if he came back but his last scene was great.

Thought this episode was a lot better at Getting Things Going, though there is still so much character juggling happening that there is no easy way to fit everything into each episode. You can tell they really need to tie up a lot of loose ends to get everyone facing the right direction for whatever they have in mind, but that's not a bad thing, as long as they keep the pace up.

I thought this and the last one seemed a little more TV-y, in terms of pace, beats and punchlines, which is probably for the best, since it is TV.

depends on who you think his parents are!

I was trying to be coy here, but whoever his parents are, none of them were sociopaths or psychopaths on the order or Aerys or Tywin.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Maisie_Williams%2C_Sophie_Turner%2C_Alfie_Allen%2C_Richard_Madden_and_Kit_Harington_%28cropped%29.jpg

I just recently learned that Theon is Lily Allen's brother.

they all look years younger than they ever did on the show, did reading the books as preparation rob them of their youthful innocence

Who is the guy on the far right?

kit Harrington innit?

Yeah totally

http://youtu.be/Sr2Grfi3lFg

That's so weird.

noooooo shaggydog!

In the flashbacks, it's sorta come back to bite them that they've aged everyone up. The young man who plays young Ned seems many years off from becoming Sean Bean. Also, way to stop before the good part :(

I'm watching this again, and it's pretty good, but honestly GoT ahead of GRRM feels more zombie-like than Veep without Arnucci. The language is off, the details are off. They're probably better than GRRM on plot, though, so that's why I'm watching. And for a couple of the characters. Which is fine. But I'm also reading A Clash of Kings at the moment, and man, when GRRM is at his best he can make up an anecdote that makes you want to waste hours digging into backhistory.

Wasn't he only writing like an episode a season before anyway?

I hardly feel like this show's dialogue has fallen off a cliff - you can't fall off a cliff when you're already dying at the bottom of it.

i was curious how they would work in that background material--and i suppose this way is as good as any since all options i can think of seem clumsy--but i have a feeling a lot of viewers are confused about the significance of what/who Bran is seeing.

it almost feel like a limitation of cinematic/tv fantasy since the deepest pleasure of the genre (imo) is finding yourself obsessed with the world-building deep fake-historical stuff and im just not sure how you can pull that off in a satisfying way on tv.

though i guess at this point we might assume bran touring the past could have been part of martin's plan but eh

loving max von sydow. he oozes dignity in a show that isn't exactly brimming with it.

he plays the same character in all his films

young ned stark was really poorly cast imo

definitely.

fair enough on von sydow, though that's a p common crime with actors. he's still good at it.

we sure learned a lot about howland reed. def worth the wait

who were they fighting? what's in the tower? i forgot from hte books

arthur dayne. lyanna is in the tower giving birth to jon snow presumably

baby ned seemed v young to have already fathered rob tho

The scene with Samwell and Gilly on the boat was likely the worst single scene I've seen in modern TV

And there was an actual scene where Tyrion Lannister is talking about how nothing is happening and how boring everything is

What makes it so significantly bad to you / how does it stand out? Isn't it just (arguably) one of many occasional clumsily written and acted scenes?

Baby Ned is supposed to be 20, which: hm. And the scene is supposed to take place just 15 years before the main events of the series.

And there was an actual scene where Tyrion Lannister is talking about how nothing is happening and how boring everything is

otm. the scene was almost admirable in its honesty because it's basically the writers admitting that the characters in the daenerys storyline are one-dimensional and incapable of interesting conversations. they have no interior lives. so tyrion is forced to sit around and wait for another well-developed white actor to show up so that he can relax.

xpost at this point I'm just glad they aren't recasting all the characters each episode

To be fair I guess it's tough to justify someone like Grey Worm having a ton of personality based on his programmed upbringing as a mindless super-soldier.

i find myself only really engaged in the stark plots as they stand right now, and reintroducing bran and rickon this season means there's more of those. i hope that the flashbacks actually lead to some kind of resolution of some historical question but i could see it easily being dragged out for at least the remainder of the season. some positive motion in aryas plot line was also encouraging. Im really glad we didn't have to go to dorne this week and i hope for many happy returns