Francie

Arya’s end echoes the end of Season 4, where he is at the head of the ship from Westeros to Bravo. That sweeping music is on of my favorite moments. Still, a shame she didn’t want Gendry with her.

I felt like GRRM was too chicken shit to make Sansa queen of Westeros outright. Hence making the robot kid king instead.

Seriously! I wonder if Sansa might be rethinking Lysa’s offer of a marriage. “Yo, you don’t seem so sickly, anymore.”

My favorite part: Brienne writing Jaime’s good deeds in the White Book. At least one person found him honorable. And such penmanship!

Soooo .. No explanation of the Night King’s symbols. No explanation of lightbringer. (Arya?) No explanation of Azor Ahai (Kinda sorta Jon?) I’m left with more questions than answers.

Soooo .. No explanation of the Night King’s symbols. No explanation of lightbringer. (Arya?) No explanation of Azor Ahai (Kinda sorta Jon?) I’m left with more questions than answers.

So ... is Davos’s wife going to believe a word of this when Davos finally comes home?

Jon: “It doesn’t feel right.” Me: You said a lot, bro. You said it all.

Here’s my main take away: Old Nan seriously oversold the Long Night.

Yara: Aye. [To Bran being king] Sansa: Tens of thousands fell in the Great War defending all of Westeros. And those who survived fought too hard to ever kneel again. The North will remain an independent kingdom as it was for thousands of years. Yara: Wait, on second thought, the Iron Islands were an independent kingdom for thousand of years. In fact, Edmure’s lands belonged to us. Iron Islands will remain .... Bran and Tyrion: You said “aye.” No take backs!!

They’re talking about people like me. I cut the cable cord years ago, and I typically impose upon myself a rule of limiting my monthly subscriptions to 3, including Amazon Prime. So, typically, I choosing which to jettison: Hulu, Netflix, or HBO. My typical practice is to pick up HBO just prior to GoT premiering and ending it later. I typically wait until the DVDs come out, and I won’t be doing that in this instance (unless something dramatically changes, and I’m all “hell yes! I need to see this again and again!”). So, I get that HBO is already braced for this. I get that they get a ton of money through a lot of sources, including internationally, through merchandising, and DVD sales. Be that as it may, HBO was already bracing for the typical hit. And now, on top of that, they may be getting a sizeable protest cancellation. Maybe not. But if you’re already trying to figure out how to MAXIMIZE profits, and already recognizing that, if history tracks, you’re about to face a 76% decrease in newly added subscriptions, it has to make one’s stomach churn at least a little to know that that figure might go above 80%. Or that longstanding subscribers — the ones who aren’t just tuning in to watch the season and disappear into the wind like Keyser Soze — are going to actually pick up their remotes and cancel when inertia had kept them there for years, has got to hurt at least a little bit. It’s not make or break. But it’s at least something they need to be aware of. And, again, I say that without sanctioning any kind of protest action. I don’t think that’ll amount to a hill of beans. But this isn’t a totally black and white situation, because this isn’t about whether HBO is making tons of money. This is about just how much money they are making.

It was Vanessa Redgrave

Also, there’s some misinformation out there. Because of Euro/dollars conversion, blogs and even news sources are mistranslating and misunderstanding what the highest paid 5 actors were paid. I’ve seen something going around that says they got paid $1.2 million/episode. They were paid half that. Still a lot, I know, but not as much as what the Friends actors were making in their final season. And that amount was not the largest chunk of the pie. The production budget was enormous. HBO had pretty much an open wallet for this show.

Less cock jokes and short jokes and two season openers in a row that did nothing but move the “chess pieces” of characters into place. Good storytelling would have moved the pieces and advanced the storylines. No re-treading old jokes (“I want to die at 80 in bed with a mouth around my ...”) in the false name of “calling back.” So much of the time they did have was wasted these last two seasons. And what was with all the sharp edits? People thought there was more to scenes, like the sharp end to the Tyrion/Cersei scene in the Season 7 finale, and I thought there was something nefarious hidden in the sharp end to the Arya/Lannister soldiers (including Sheeran scene), etc.

Wow, so Benioff opens with an "Emilia is short" joke. It just never gets old, to them, does it? Edited because my quote didn't copy the link to the video. It's the one being quoted above. And, no, just in case I'm credited with spreading the sarcasm as truth, Emilia gushes about D&D being "ludicrously talented" and thanks them profusely for plucking her from the obscurity of cos-playing at children's birthday parties and giving her her career.

Love this article. It explains how the decline in quality wasn't just due to sloppy writing with plot holes, but because the show abandoned the type of story that it was telling: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/

It was *my* personal MacGuffin. 😉 Fair enough that they weren't a true MacGuffin. But they weren't red herring either. More like a dead-end teaser that went nowhere.

This is only anecdotal, I know, but I ended my subscription as well. I'm not one of those ripping my shirt or pulling my hair out demanding a different ending, so I'm not doing it to make a statement. My subscription will expire in the middle of next week. If this season had been great, I would have kept it going for at least another couple months, until the season or series DVDs came out, so that I could re-watch the episodes. I have the other seasons on DVD, so I would only get the series if the bells -- sorry, don't mean to trigger any one --and whistles were shiny and loud enough. But, this season has been disappointing, and the scenes I enjoyed so short and too far between, that I don't anticipate having any urge to re-watch. I have no interest in watching a 2-hour special next week that'll never touch on the backlash or writing failures, and in fact, it'll probably be an hour and a half of showing special effects and half an hour of people promoting the writing putting D&D on a pedestal. John Oliver mentioned on his weekly show, and this wasn't in response to the backlash but rather a comment on GoT ending in general, that HBO was nervous as hell about HBO's viewership dropping. He was more prescient than he knew.

I get the concept of “there’s no such thing as bad PR,” because attention is attention. GoT had a ton of attention, though, before the tidal wave of fan unhappiness (for a variety of reasons, there’s no unified voice or reason why seemingly the vast majorly of fans are upset). The official HBO twitter account doesn’t even have GoT on its banner right now — it’s promoting Big Little Lies. The account hasn’t tweeted about HBO in 4 days, and that was just to retweet info about The Last Watch documentary. HBO had been using GoT to promote 7-day free viewerships, and saying, “If you’ve never watched GoT before, now is the time!” is a perfect teaser to try to hook people without HBO. But, nope, radio silence of late. I have a real hard time imagining D&D laughing right now, just because they’ve made a lot of money and more accolades may come. They are being skewered in a way that has to be a huge ego-blow. Benioff’s been turned into a meme (“I guess we forgot...”) that may give the show a run for its money in terms of longevity. And then there is the fan experience. I’m not one that thinks fans “deserve” any particular ending. That’s up to the creator to tell *their* story. And I actually expected Dany to do something vile this season (I thought it would be burning Lyanna Mormont with her dragon for Lyanna not bending the knee), but I still absolutely, positively hate this season. I’m seeing it through because it’s been a multi-year commitment and I want closure. It’s sad when you look up the final installment with dread instead of anticipation. I just want the hope that the final episode will be satisfying to be squashed, so that I can come to peace with the ending and move on. I’m not alone, I know, and that can’t possibly be the feeling that HBO wants its subscribers to have. At least, it shouldn’t be. I have no reason to doubt GoTit1111’s spoilers. That person’s been dead on right all along. So, unless HBO planted this person all for a final episode fake out (if that’s the case, well played, HBO, well played), Bran is King, Jon stabs Dany, Tyrion rules as hand, Bronn is master of coin, and Arya, Jon, and Sansa move on with their lives, is the ending. And all those nuggets of mystery — why did the WW put people into elaborate shapes?, etc. — were just mcguffins.

It was shockingly immature, and I get that the cast and crew don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them, but I’m surprised more people haven’t called them out about that. I’m surprised more critics haven’t either. But 99% of the press GoT has gotten has been PR-like fluff pieces. Nearly all the criticism has been left to youtube and the rest of social media.

D&D’s interest in Jon Snow began and ended with “Kit is short” jokes.

The Iron Bank has the faceless men. I'd bet on them any day of the week. Even over a dragon.

Her reaction was one of superiority ("He is not a dragon" and implying that she is) and a high level of tolerance for extreme violence and the pain and suffering of another. That's what carried over to Season 8, Episode 5. Look, I think Dany becoming "mad" was a heel turn. But Dany capable of massive violence has been shown to be there, all along. Before King's Landing, though, she either got her way before that point came, someone talked her out of what her instincts were, or the person to whom she did "deserved it" in some viewers' eyes.

So ... never, huh?

Barristan did tell Dany that Aerys laughed as he burned men alive. We learned in the third episode of the season just how bad Aerys was. Our beloved hero Ned goes into the throne room and talks with Jaime Lannister, the latter of whom told Ned that this was the room where Aerys burned Ned's father and brother alive while hundreds of men stood by and watched. Sansa also talked about it with her septa. We've seen Bran flashback to Aerys, very mad-looking, shouting "Burn them all!" It's been spelled out about as much as it could be that the man known as the, checks my notes, Mad King was a horrible, horrible man who did horrible, horrible things.