Game of Thrones

Just my opinion. I respect your opinion as well. On the other hand, if you said A Feast for Crows was best, then we could no longer be friends. Just kidding, mostly.

 

I would argue that this has plagued most shows. I can't really think of a show that has had every scene be just amazing and moving the plot forward at the same rate as another scene.

I mean look at shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Great shows with great scripts and wonderful acting and plots. The Wire, considered by some to be the best show ever, suffers too. I'm not going to get nitpicky here especially with SOO many characters.

 

Which is probably the last of the books where anything interesting happened until towards the end of A dance with dragons. The first book is my favourite as well though, and while it was probably more interesting plot-wise, if I remember correctly Storm of Swords nearly had me stop reading the novels entirely as you had to go through increasing amounts of names, banners, dresses, foods, more names, banners, dresses & food and Martin seemed almost obsessed with wine & whores. Feast for crows was worse, just meandering nowhere, while A dance with dragons at least set the stage for a hopefully more interesting sixth book (if such thing ever happens).

 

Where Breaking Bad was brilliant was in the way it was developing. I'm fine with a slow paced story, sometimes, as long as it still holds onto my interest somehow. BB stewed slowly, with action becoming more regular as the show went on. The inevitable end always growing closer.

GoT has a lot more action, but the action is interspersed with a lot of slow-moving moments, and too many subplots, many of which don't lead anywhere.

 

Yeah, I think everyone is pretty much in agreement that FFC/DWD was a drop off. I enjoyed them a lot more the second time I read them when I combined them chronologically, but there is a *lot* of traveloguing in those two.

 

OmegaSlayer isn't saying anything of value and clearly no amount of discussion will remotely sway his opinion, so who cares? I don't. If you don't like it don't watch it, and don't try to be insulting to people because they do like it. Nothing is perfect. Dany is boring 75% of the time, but that's my opinion. I'm not actively telling everyone that the show is objectively bad because I don't like it and then not explain my opinion, that's being immature.

So no arguing is coming from me because it's not worth it.

Anyway... I'm interested in seeing what Jaime does. I'm expecting an encounter between him and Brienne, and hopefully Tormund. Three way battle, love triangle GoT style.

 

Umm...no, it really wasn't, cause it featured a really major heel-turn from Margaery that led to basically a coup where the Sparrow now has control of the crown and the kingsguard, and it kicked a major character out of King's Landing entirely as a result. Whether you wanted a huge fight scene or not, you can't argue nothing happened there.

The Walder Frey thing contained some exciting info about the brotherhood without banners, for anyone who read the books. I still don't think they're going to introduce

Spoiler

Lady Stoneheart,

though. I'm thinking maybe we'll get the news that The Hound is still alive. He could end up in King's Landing too, though. I've seen a lot of predictions that the big trial by combat is going to be CLEGANE-BOWL. It's too bad The Hound would be on the side of the religious nuts.

 

Anticlimactic: adjective, Lacking climax, disappointing or ironically insignificant following of impressive foreshadowing.

The foreshadowing being that the soldiers were ready to attack, the sept was ready to stand ground and fight. We'd get to see Jamie in action again. We expected to see the annoying sept finally go away, but the actual climax was what? Tommen was revealed to be on the High Sparrow's side? That qualifies to me as disappointing and ironically insignificant following impressive foreshadowing. Also, it's not really a climax, because no issues on either side were resolved. I hold that it was anticlimactic.

What exciting info? I really didn't get excited. Maybe I missed something.

The other stuff you mentioned has not happened, and possibly won't happen on the show, so I hold that my "and then nothing else really happened" statement was accurate.

So yeah, I hold that all my statements were accurate.

 

Tommen was trying (and failing) repeatedly to stand up to them, and was still on his mother's side, and as the episode opened they were all gathering up their troops along with all of the Tyrell forces to have a violent confrontation with the religious nuts. Then we had the surprise where Margaery stopped resisting, and instead is (probably pretending to be) on their side too, which gets her out of prison. She's also used this heel-turn to manipulate Tommen into completely going over to their side and ditching his mother, thus kicking Jaime out of King's Landing entirely and further marginalizing Cersei. Instead of a huge division between the Lannisters/Kingsguard/Tyrells and the Sparrows, now all power is consolidated. That's quite a big change! This just leaves Cersei and her zombie mountain in their corner, basically. That's a pretty huge power shift in favor of the sparrows. It essentially creates the same change that would have resulted in a big fight scene in which the Tyrells/Kingsguard lost to the Sparrows, just without the violence.

 

I don't disagree with your predictions. Still, though, everything leading up to a big violent climax and then some political stuff happening that has subtler implications instead is anticlimactic. Margaery's "heel turn" was not a surprise, at all. Cersei's decline from power has been happening for two seasons of the show now, so there's not much exciting about another small failure for her politically.

It's not a bad scene, but it's not a riveting scene, either, and I still hold that it was anticlimactic. I'm really not getting a convincing argument from you (yet) that I was wrong in calling it such.

I mean, if I gathered together a huge army to invade the Vatican and take control of the Catholic Church, and on the steps of the Pope's house, President Obama came out with the Secret Service and told me to go home, and I said, "curses, I've been foiled," and called the whole thing off - it'd be anticlimactic. I'm not saying that backing down would be a bad idea (it would not), or that it wouldn't be a compelling story (I bet the news would be all over it), but it'd be about as anticlimactic as anticlimactic can get.

 

I'd still be suprised if she
a) is honest about it or
b) I (and apparently most other viewers) were entirely mistaken in thinking about her as manipulating, scheming and trying to gain more power when deep in her heart she was just a little princess that wanted to be loved.
The later would be a major dissappointment, at least to me, as that would make Margaery as boring and stupid as Sansa was at the beginning of the series...
I'm rather curious about how the Tyrells, namely Olenna, will take it. Same for the Lannisters. I don't think any of them will be particullarily loyal to King Sparrow.

 

It definitely feels like a ploy. Especially considering the scene where she meets with her brother and he says, "I don't care about winning, I just want it to stop." Seems like a natural follow up that she's mouthing the words to help her brother out. (EDIT: and to tag onto that, the High Sparrow put her in that room with her brother for exactly this reason. He doesn't care if she's sincere or not, he got exactly what he was after.)

But if that's the case, she's really jerking Tommen around with her. Siding with the Faith Militant could have some dire consequences for her and her house. Tommen dismissing Jaime is probably a win for Margaery, but outside of that, she may be getting in above her head.

 

Margaery has been up to her neck in trouble since she came into the narrative. I didn't see any of her actions so far as a surprise.

Since she married into House Baratheon, she's not officially part of house Tyrell anymore. Cersei is still very much in league with House Lannister, since, well, you know...

 

Glad to see my boy the Hound back. Felt bad for him. I liked this episode a lot. I think the next few are going to just be straight awesome.

 

Yeah, they just need to keep Dorne and Daenaerys off the screen. Lots of good stuff this episode. I'm not sure if we're going to see a Sandor Vs Mountain thing, though. Maybe he'll take out the brotherhood without banners instead. I'm kind of curious what's going to go on with the Blackfish and Jaime/Bronn, I don't really have any ideas there. I was expecting some kind of deal to be made when Jaime talked to him that would suggest they'd turn on the Freys and turn Walder into a pie, but nope.

Obviously Lyanna was the best part of the episode.

Arya still hasn't seemed to have learned anything since the end of season 4, jeez. No gained assassin skills, and now she gets stabbed in the stomach and reacts by walking around through the center of downtown in full sunlight while bleeding everywhere. I hope she gets out of dodge, unless she's going to hang out with the actors for a couple episodes and heal before having revenge on that tiresome waif.

 

The Hound is back, Theon might be back, Blackfish is back on screen,and Margaery apparently still has her own agenda, Arya still sucks at everything except stealing. If only she would have stayed with the Hound... well, Lyanna Mormont seems a bit like what I would think Arya would have wanted to be like in series 1.
I wonder who is responsible for the slaughtering of those people around the Hound. "The night is dark and full of terrors" would point at the Brotherhood, but the last time we heard of them they weren't exactly slaughtering innocent for sport. Now that I think about it, that is something I didn't understand about the Wildlings either. I can understand killing the men/fighters, stealing all their stuff, raping the women, maybe steal some children for slaves, but why kill everyone for no apparent reason?
It seems I am the only one interested in what the Dornish are going to do next

 

Liked it. Needed more mcshane. But still good.

 

Yeah when I saw Ian Mcshane was in this season I thought he would have a really big part. I was excited to see him on screen, but now, well we won't?

So much to figure out in 3 episodes.

 

I quite enjoyed the episode. Yes Arya is still weak, but she's very young and has a lot to learn. She's obviously not going to be able to rely on physical prowess.

There was a lot of sizing up going on in the episode, which, to me, acts as foreshadowing.

The scene with the Queen of Thorns delivered well on what I expected from the character. She's proven to be quite witty, but it also served it's own foreshadowing. Hopefully we can see this trial by combat before too long.

There seems to be a lot more tension, to me, than pretty much everything since season one.

Everything seems to point at Cersei's downfall becoming complete soon, but I would not be too surprised if she had another trick or two up her sleeves. In the past, though, she's relied more on her position as the Queen, and as the Mother of the King, and on her associates, than on her own wits. Now it seems she has no associates aside from the Zombie-Mountain, and her position as the Mother of the King means a lot less than it used to.

The Ramsay thing, I believe, will come to a head before the season finale. At this point, Rickon is so undeveloped as a character, I don't see him being anything more than a McGuffin from here out, if he even survives.

Maybe, and this is a shot in the dark, but I'll spoiler tag it just in case it gives anything away:

Spoiler

I think the Hound's return might be important to Sansa, since he was so infatuated with her, and he's geographically close to Blackfish, and both of them are being suddenly reintroduced at the time when Sansa's in desperate need of help. I just can't parse how the distance between her and them would be resolved. Maybe it's set up for something next season.

I think maybe you are. Certainly there is a role to play in the bigger picture, but who knows.

 

The showrunners apparently confirmed the guy who said that was Lem Lemoncloak.