S05.E10: Mother's Mercy

lucindabelle · June 18, 2015

Maybe tmi but even with waxing and shaving it really doesn't take very long before you,,l wouldn't need a merkin.

At Least it wasn't as ridiculous as he ones on true blood last year.

WearyTraveler · June 18, 2015

Maybe tmi but even with waxing and shaving it really doesn't take very long before you,,l wouldn't need a merkin.

At Least it wasn't as ridiculous as he ones on true blood last year.

But some women do this procedure with laser or pulsating lights, effectively eradicating the hair forever.

Edited June 18, 2015 by WearyTraveler

lucindabelle · June 18, 2015

Ow!!!!!

Avaleigh · June 18, 2015

I know the Baratheons are stags but I really got the impression that Stannis was like a defeated lion or maybe even a bear when he was hobbling along using his sword as a cane after the battle.

I love how dangerous he was even when he was wounded. Those guys were thinking this wounded older guy would be easy pickings only not so much.

The way he growls and groans is what reminds me of a tired and wounded animal.

I also liked the explanation from one of the showrunners that Stannis had plenty of final thoughts but that he certainly wasn't going to share them with some stranger in his final moments. I get that even though I wanted to know what he was thinking about at the very end. It seemed true to his character. Also his respect for Brienne doing her duty. There was a time when Stannis might have argued with her about the righteousness of his claim but I think he ultimately knows that he was wrong for killing Renly the way that he did and that it would have been very different if he'd defeated Renly in battle. There's a reason for why Stannis felt so guilty over Renly's death and it's because he knows he took out Renly in a shady way. Now that he knows that he was wrong to trust in Melisandre it only makes that truth all the worse.

Brienne was doing him a favor and her presence after that battle was really a mercy and she was almost angelic. Imagine if he'd been found by Ramsay.

Maybe tmi but even with waxing and shaving it really doesn't take very long before you,,l wouldn't need a merkin.
At Least it wasn't as ridiculous as he ones on true blood last year.

Was it last year or the year before last when that show was inundated with merkins? I remember Merkin!Lilith sucking the life out of that show I just feel like I didn't suffer through it as recently as last year.

Elkins · June 18, 2015

I guess I am once again going against the grain here, but I thought this season was fantastic.

You're not as alone as you might fear. Negative criticism is usually louder than appreciation, probably because -- let's be honest here -- kvetching is just plain fun. Nobody sits down with a collection of Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert and giddily anticipates the positive reviews, you know? Pans are always more fun to read than picks -- and usually they're a lot more fun to write as well.

But I also thought this was a good season. It had its share of flaws, certainly, but not as deadly ones as Season 3 had, IMO. And yet, back when that season was airing, I don't remember seeing the same sort of... Well, Digital Count probably put it best:

I mean, this is like last week when people said Stannis' men were so blase about Shireen's burning when the show actually took the time to pan over the faces of guys looking super uncomfortable. I've been enjoying the show, and it's kind of depressing to get here and read people slagging on it, especially when those things being said aren't even accurate.

Yes, precisely. Co-signed.

Lately I've been wondering if the rise of smartphones and tablets and the popularity of Twitter have resulted in people paying less attention when they watch TV. Specifically, it seems to me that it is those things which are only conveyed visually that are the things most often missed. It's hard for me not to wonder if it might not be because people are looking away from the screen more often to type out tweets or check their facebook or whatever.

And if you call Melisandre unfazed...

Case in point. That's a perfect example, actually, because it's an interpretation that I can easily imagine someone reaching if they were only listening to the show, or if they kept looking away from the screen at all the wrong moments. Carice van Houton's Melisandre doesn't show her doubts in her voice. She shows them in her face, and then only subtly. As she does here, the precise moment when she realizes that she's made a huge mistake:

Given the Walk of Shame sequence, I guess that was never going to be the performance everyone would be talking about come Monday, but I thought it was just sublime. You can almost hear the car crash sound effect.

I've read all the books, but frankly, I never was wed to them--I thought that this episode was mind blowing--I'm sure that a lot of it was confusing to non book readers (like do they know that it is a faction of the Dothraki surrounding Dany?) We didn't see Stannis die did we? What will book readers make of Jon Snow's "death" I wonder?

I believe that all book readers should try to watch this show with at least one unsullied friend if they can possibly manage to swing it. It really can be eye-opening at times. Although actually, I guess after this season, there's no need as there's no longer going to be all that much difference. I find that so exciting!

Anyway, my unsullied husband had no problem recognizing those guys as Dothraki. He was, however, convinced that Theon and Sansa had leapt to their deaths from those battlements. If the show-runners intended that scene to be read as Butch and Sundance, rather than as Thelma and Louise, then I think they needed to make it more clear. I don't even remember seeing any snow drifts, although it's possible that I just missed them. (As I, too, have been known to look away from the screen at just the wrong moment!)

None of the non-readers I know were too concerned about Jon Snow's death though. They had all noticed Mel's ever-so-well-timed return to Castle Black, and they also remembered Beric's resurrections, so they concluded that she's just going to conjure him back to life ('like that Robin Hood guy Arya met'). I was, however, then witness to a debate over whether if they really had killed Jon Snow off for realzies no backsies, that would be a brilliant genre subversion, or an idiotic hamstringing of the narrative. (Me: "C'mon, guys. It can be more than one thing! Can't it be both?" Them: "You mean both brilliant and idiotic? No.")

Lena absolutely SLAYED the walk. SLAYED it. When she looked up at the Red Keep, I saw the literal thought bubble above her head "Just a bit more" "one step at a time" etc.

Yes! They nailed it, Lena and the director both. I've been stressing over that scene all year long, expecting the worst (because come on, it's a literal slut-shaming sequence in a show that hasn't had the best track record when it comes to handling such material with grace), but holy cow, they really knocked that one out of the park. Every detail of how it was filmed kept the viewer firmly anchored to Cersei's perspective. When she looked up at the Red Keep, the viewer was looking up at the Red Keep. Her thoughts were completely transparent. There was just never any question that Cersei was the subject of that scene, not its object. And there was also never any doubt that no matter what her crimes, what was happening there was totally gross -- something else I was afraid they might fail to land. Overall it succeeded in being an incredibly powerful sequence without ever once dipping into exploitation.

And Lena Headey, holy shit. Give that woman an Emmy.

(And give something nice to her body double, too, okay? Because those three days of filming could not have been fun.)

LH had a body double for the walk scene? Seriously, no sarcasm, I had no idea.

Me either! I noticed not a thing. Someone here even said that it looked "uncanny valley" to them, which...yeah, wow, I must just have no eye for that sort of thing at all because I didn't notice anything even slightly amiss. I would never have guessed that there was any computer fakery going on there. I wonder if this could in part be a generational thing? I'm an old fogey too. :)

Given that things in the Uncanny Valley tend to seriously freak me out, though, I think that I'm actually quite glad to be (apparently) blind to such effects.

I thought it was supposed to make our blood run cold. Cersei is basically one of Qyburn's pet projects now. IMO we just witnessed a monstrous demon being born. She was washed, shorn, cleansed, purified, whatever--then she begins the walk and it's like she's collecting the filth and sins of the world as she goes to her destination. As she continues to essentially be born again she's picking up cruelty, vice, and a lot of the underbelly of humanity. When she finally slithers through the mess that is King's Landing she's wrapped up and taken into the protective arms of a disgusting monster who is giving her an instrument to refine her cruelty. He looks after her like the nanny looks after Damien in The Omen.

I am hopelessly in love with this gloss, Avaleigh. Seriously, totally in love with it. For a supposed act of atonement to actually serve as a kind of reverse baptism due to the scapegoat effect... That's just brilliant. And that steely-eyed look of pure hatred on Cersei's face at the end reminds us all of why after you pass your entire community's sins onto the scapegoat, you're then supposed to get rid of the goat. Good lord, and she hasn't even heard about Myrcella yet. She is going to burn that place to the ground, and I can't even pretend that I'm not gleefully looking forward to it.

Qyburn really was rather terrifying in that scene, I thought. Anton Lesser is terrific. He hit that perfect note of tenderness and compassion with Cersei, yet without ever quite letting you forget that he's a mad scientist who does messed up things to people back at his lab. As with so many other smaller parts in this show, he's turning in a great performance.

(Funny thing about Qyburn. So far, the show has only shown him messing about with rats and dead people. Well, and Gregorstein. We've seen no evidence of him doing anything horrific with living human victims in that lab. And yet, every last one of my non-reader friends has already gone there. They're convinced that he's the creepiest sadist ever to creep and that he must be vivisecting peasants right and left in those chambers somewhere. It's as if the show doesn't even need to take any time to allude to such activities, because they're already fully implied by the performance. Very cool.)

BlackberryJam · June 18, 2015

You don't know how wonderful it is to check back in and see that other people loved the episode and thought it was amazing.

Yes, it is easier to bitch about that tiny scratch by the back passenger wheel well on your brand new Aston Martin Vanquish that it is to say JESUS FUCK HOLY HELL I'M DRIVING AN ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH.

There were issues, as there are with everything everywhere that ever existed, but over all, this episode kicked the ass of almost every other television show I have seen this past year, except Hardhome, and that was a closer call.

Edited June 18, 2015 by BlackberryJam

penelope79 · June 18, 2015

Elkins, 100% agree with your post. I loved this season too, but sometimes I feel like I'm alone. ;)

Also, I second the bit about Lena Headey: she MUST win the Emmy this year!

tennisgurl · June 18, 2015

This was my least favorite season, but I still love this show, and will always love it. Even my least favorite season is better than most all the other stuff out there. I have complained about it a lot, but that's just because I want this show to be its best, and I hold it to a higher standard. Like, as much as I complain about the Dorne story, its just because I know this show can create better characters and worlds than that. And, I agree, its easier to complain than talk about what you loved.

Like, I thought the Wall story was amazing, one of the series best. I also, unpopular opinion time, liked all of the Arya stuff. Yeah, it had nothing to really do with anything, but I thought it was fascinating, and I liked the setting. Plus, I do feel like its going somewhere interesting, eventually.

It sucks to love something everyone else if complaining about, so I sympathize. Its been, to me, a season of high high, and low lows. I hope that, when I do my inevitable re-watch, the highs can get the love they deserve.

Edited June 18, 2015 by tennisgurl

Alapaki · June 18, 2015

I've started re-reading the series of books to hold me over until the new book comes out, and to read it having now been through the whole series of books as well as the show.

In re: how "dead" Jon is, I'd forgotten this portion of Bran's first three-eyed-crow vision:

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. . . . . North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid.

The crow then tells Bran that's why he must live, because "winter is coming". He finally awakes from his unconsciousness (after his fall) and announces that he's naming his Dire Wolf "Summer".

I'm sure I originally assumed that portion referred to Jon simply getting used to life at the Wall. But now I believe it refers to Jon after he'd been stabbed. Obviously there's a lot of room for ambiguity in that passage. But I think it leaves open the possibility that Jon is not the one who can defeat Winter, but only Bran can. (it could also mean that Bran is necessary to revive Jon so that the two of them can defeat Winter). But I'm starting to lean more towards Jon either being truly dead, or at least having his role in the final endgame greatly diminished in favor of Bran's re-emergence.

that one guy · June 18, 2015

In a story full of magic, dragons, wargs and zombies, the less realistic thing to me was the Walk of Shame. Westeros is too Middle Age. I just can't believe a Queen Mother would be humilliated like this. And while the Lannisters are in a weak position, they're still the ruling House. Tommen could make the Sparrows ilegal in a second. Besides, I said it before: I don't want Cersei to pay for her sex life. I want her to pay for her crimes.

The punishment is mostly a real thing from the middle ages, but the crowd response is not. This whole story is loosely based on the War of the Roses, and Cersei's walk mirrors the treatment of rival Jane Shore by Richard III. Shore was wearing her undergarments, however, but she was barefoot and it probably was just as hard on her feet. http://time.com/3921066/cersei-game-of-thrones-history/

But in the modern world, when people are sentenced to public shaming, the public is mostly sympathetic: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/game-of-thrones-cersei-shaming. It's only in the anonymity of the Internet that people are so cruel and vile. In public, people are actually concerned about what others will think of them. The crowd in King's Landing sounded more like the comments section of a Yahoo! news article than an actual public crowd. I guess the behavior of the crowd is to show how hungry, angry and desperate the working classes have become.

nksarmi · June 18, 2015

As for enjoying this season, I think it's just an echo of where we are in the books. The source material for this season was the least enjoyable to date and it's not surprising it would produce the weakest season. The fact that the show runners might have taken said source material and made things worse is a matter for debate, but I don't think it was possible for them to make this season come out as well as earlier ones.

I do think D&D failed the story this year where I have never thought that before. I think you can judge that by the unsullied posts. I have been wrong on a number of counts this year - most of all when I thought D&D would make Sansa's story different than JP's and when I honestly believed Dorne would have some interesting twist at the end of the season. In truth, Dorne was largely pointless and the only good thing to come of Sansa's story is that she knows that Rickon and Bran are alive. And honestly, since Stannis' army has been defeated, I am not 100% sure she and Theon aren't going to get hunted down and killed by Ramsey in episode 2 of season 6.

But it's more than just the differences from book to show, it's little things like Dany's dress switching from white to blue, it's LF and Olenna having a cryptic conversation three or four episodes ago and not a single mention of what happens to Loras and Marg after that (Cersei has her walk but we have no idea what is going on with the other two at all???), it's not giving the Watch an understandable reason to kill Jon Snow (why let the Wildlings through and THEN stab him?), it's not making things dire enough for Stannis to agree to burn Shireen (he burned his daughter to win WF - what the hell does he do to win KL?), it's the stupidity of putting Brie watching that candle just to turn away at the moment Sansa gets it up to the window, it's Loras not saying "well of course my squire has seen my birthmark, but I didn't know he was staring at it THAT much!"

I do watch with an unsullied viewer and he has said this season has dragged and is the worst season to date. I think it's not just a matter of the choices the show runners made when they converted the material from book to show this season, but I think something has been lacking in the execution and pacing as well. I really hope they fix that for season six.

proserpina65 · June 18, 2015

The punishment is mostly a real thing from the middle ages, but the crowd response is not. This whole story is loosely based on the War of the Roses, and Cersei's walk mirrors the treatment of rival Jane Shore by Richard III. Shore was wearing her undergarments, however, but she was barefoot and it probably was just as hard on her feet. http://time.com/3921066/cersei-game-of-thrones-history/

But in the modern world, when people are sentenced to public shaming, the public is mostly sympathetic: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/game-of-thrones-cersei-shaming. It's only in the anonymity of the Internet that people are so cruel and vile. In public, people are actually concerned about what others will think of them. The crowd in King's Landing sounded more like the comments section of a Yahoo! news article than an actual public crowd. I guess the behavior of the crowd is to show how hungry, angry and desperate the working classes have become.

Mobs also offer a certain kind of anonymity. There have been many studies of why people do things in a riot that they'd never do under other circumstances, seemingly completely unconcerned with how others might perceive their behavior. One need only have watched the coverage of the recent riots in Baltimore to see that. And the actions of the crowd in this episode were not out of line with the behavior of mobs in the Middle Ages; accounts of public executions, where large numbers of common folk were present, detail similar sorts of taunting of the condemned.

Edited June 18, 2015 by proserpina65

benteen · June 18, 2015

For me, I thought the first half of Season 5 was really good and I thought the second half, save for the excellent Hardhome, wasn't that good. A mixed bag, which is how I often refer to D&D when they go off the reservation with their writing. I could always find something to like in just about every episode (The Dance of Dragons was awful the last 15 minutes was great) but I think overall this was the weakest season. A good part of that has to do with the source material but D&D are, as stated, mixed when they do original material for the show.

This episode certainly had its moments. The Walk of Shame and Lena's performance was excelle. I think both she and Jonathan Pryce should receive serious Emmy consideration.

Avaleigh · June 18, 2015

I do wonder why they changed it so that Dany wasn't eating one of Drogon's kills. One of the things that I liked when the Dothraki come upon her is the way that she's next to Drogon sharing one of his kills and she has blood on her hands and around her mouth (IIRC) and I her gown is maybe a little charred looking and not just dirty. The point is that she looks like a savage even to the Dothraki and we're uncertain as to how the Dothraki are going to respond. The fact that they've essentially taken Drogon out of the equation for now makes me wonder if Dany is going to be in for any sort of ordeal or if in episode one of next season we're going to see Drogon decimate this khalasar in order to let everyone know who is in charge.

The fact that she drops the ring so that someone will find her suggests that Drogon isn't going to solve her problem right away.

I am hopelessly in love with this gloss, Avaleigh. Seriously, totally in love with it. For a supposed act of atonement to actually serve as a kind of reverse baptism due to the scapegoat effect... That's just brilliant. And that steely-eyed look of pure hatred on Cersei's face at the end reminds us all of why after you pass your entire community's sins onto the scapegoat, you're then supposed to get rid of the goat. Good lord, and she hasn't even heard about Myrcella yet. She is going to burn that place to the ground, and I can't even pretend that I'm not gleefully looking forward to it.

Qyburn really was rather terrifying in that scene, I thought. Anton Lesser is terrific. He hit that perfect note of tenderness and compassion with Cersei, yet without ever quite letting you forget that he's a mad scientist who does messed up things to people back at his lab. As with so many other smaller parts in this show, he's turning in a great performance.

(Funny thing about Qyburn. So far, the show has only shown him messing about with rats and dead people. Well, and Gregorstein. We've seen no evidence of him doing anything horrific with living human victims in that lab. And yet, every last one of my non-reader friends has already gone there. They're convinced that he's the creepiest sadist ever to creep and that he must be vivisecting peasants right and left in those chambers somewhere. It's as if the show doesn't even need to take any time to allude to such activities, because they're already fully implied by the performance. Very cool.)

I agree with all of your post. I thought they did a great job with the material and I wasn't expecting to have the interpretation that I had because I didn't pick up any of this when I read the scene in the book. It was really the whole Qyburn factor that made me think about what his deal is as far as being her only supporter that led me down the path of seeing the walk as this weird reverse baptism from hell. Then it occurred to me that she's another kind of experiment for him and not just because he owes his current position to her but because in some sick way they are on the same page and they understand each other. (Not implying anything sexual.)

When Jaime was asking Myrcella if she's ever known Cersei to like anyone I was thinking 'Don't forget that she likes that creepy dude Qyburn.' What's funny is that Jaime actually knows this already because he voices his surprise that she lets this guy touch her when she would never let Pycelle do so.

I also think that her resemblance to Joffrey when she's wrapped up is unsettling and that just made me think 'well, that definitely can't be good.'

Lately I've been wondering if the rise of smartphones and tablets and the popularity of Twitter have resulted in people paying less attention when they watch TV. Specifically, it seems to me that it is those things which are only conveyed visually that are the things most often missed. It's hard for me not to wonder if it might not be because people are looking away from the screen more often to type out tweets or check their facebook or whatever.

I know that I'm personally guilty of multi tasking during most viewings unless I'm watching with more than one person. In this episode for example, I knew Sansa was going to light the candle but I looked away at some point around when Brienne did and didn't catch the candle shot until the second viewing.

I caught Melisandre's facial expressions though. I don't know that I agree with the interpretation that she spent her ride to Castle Black crying but I do think that her faith has been shaken in a way that she hadn't anticipated. It's a much more gruesome equivalent but I think this is her period of where she's asking for a sign of Azor Ahai and all she sees is Snow. She's confused or getting her signals crossed or something worse.

Obviously her power is real and she's tapped into something but what if it isn't the "good" religion she thinks it is? What if she's serving something dark and evil that isn't "light" at all?

polyhymnia · June 18, 2015

I must say, my fav bit of the episode was Myranda taking a header over the balcony and the five second beat of Sansa and Theon leaning over and staring at her corpse.

I need to watch the episode again (I usually watch it once, anxious to see what will actually happen and then again to check the detail) but I swear she did almost an "eeeeeek" kind of a scream before the splat and I am ashamed to say that I chuckled a little.

I thought it was supposed to make our blood run cold. Cersei is basically one of Qyburn's pet projects now. IMO we just witnessed a monstrous demon being born. She was washed, shorn, cleansed, purified, whatever--then she begins the walk and it's like she's collecting the filth and sins of the world as she goes to her destination. As she continues to essentially be born again she's picking up cruelty, vice, and a lot of the underbelly of humanity. When she finally slithers through the mess that is King's Landing she's wrapped up and taken into the protective arms of a disgusting monster who is giving her an instrument to refine her cruelty. He looks after her like the nanny looks after Damien in The Omen.

I don't know, I thought the show did a pretty good job of how chilling and unsettling it was. When Qyburn is the mother hen of King's Landing you know the world of ASOIAF is a pretty fucked up place.

I am going to have to check with my unsullied viewer about how he views Qyburn. I think the actor is doing a good job of portraying all of this but I think without the backstory you could get the impression that Q is a little quirky. His stuff in the books was chilling on the same level that the awful Ramsay/Reek stuff was. Dark and horrid.

One thing I like about this story as a whole is how it turns people's natural need/desire for vengeance on its head. There is a lot of reason to hate Theon and want him dead for what he did in Winterfell, more than for betraying Robb, but when the vengeance is actualized through a third party it is just terrible. Same with Cersei's walk. I don't feel sympathy for her at all but still think that what happens to her is just wrong, and that it is just going to further perpetuate the cycle of violence because of course she is going to try to get some of her own back.

My husband made the comment that Sam was just going to get his associates degree in Old Town. As an unsullied, he has no idea of how far that trip actually is (short of Littlefinger magic travel agency device).

ulkis · June 18, 2015

This. Every time Arya brutally kills someone, so many viewers yell, "Yay!" and I'm so torn, because... I'm watching a little girl become an unrepentant murderer. There is NO coming back from who Arya has become, faceless or not. Even if she survives, I don't think she will live a normal life or rejoin Westeros or what little family remains.

Yeah. Honestly, Arya becoming an assassin bums me out more than Jon being possibly killed.

FemmyV · June 19, 2015

The crowd in King's Landing sounded more like the comments section of a Yahoo! news article than an actual public crowd. I guess the behavior of the crowd is to show how hungry, angry and desperate the working classes have become.

This is the same KL that attacked Joffrey's progress as they were returning to the keep, tore off a guard's limb, and nearly raped Sansa. And the same KL that did a 180 for Marge. No surprise here.

Portia4844 · June 19, 2015

I think it's possible to enjoy this episode without deciding those who didn't must have been twittering or doing something else while not watching every facial expression to catch what supposedly made this episode more understandable.

My issue is cramming so much into one episode that we get a brief glance at Stannis men looking disturbed the previous week. Or Stannis looking beaten down to the point that Brienne might or might not have killed him. Or Jon Snow's men stabbing him in such a way that made no sense to the story and so on. It's in the story telling and having so many different characters with only a brief set-up so that they can cram as much shit into one epic finale annoyed the hell out of me. I understand that there are only 10 episodes a season and it's a lot of book to cover but for Christ sakes, they couldn't have planned it out better?

It just had the feel of being more about setting up as many cliffhangers as possible with shocking moments to leave the viewer wondering....did they jump to their deaths....is Stannis alive or dead....will Jon be brought back....did Cersei get some sympathy....has Arya gone completely mad.....did Mel come back to save Jon? Where was Ghost? Why did Dany drop her ring? Who will Jorah infect? What about Lancel and Margaery? What is LF doing? Was Doran involved? How can we create as much buzz as possible to keep fans coming up with endless theories to explain what is going on? How can we piss off book readers? How can we make non-book readers interested enough to come back next season? Aren't we clever?

proserpina65 · June 19, 2015

Quote

Lately I've been wondering if the rise of smartphones and tablets and the popularity of Twitter have resulted in people paying less attention when they watch TV. Specifically, it seems to me that it is those things which are only conveyed visually that are the things most often missed. It's hard for me not to wonder if it might not be because people are looking away from the screen more often to type out tweets or check their facebook or whatever.

I know that I'm personally guilty of multi tasking during most viewings unless I'm watching with more than one person.

I never multitask while watching GOT; it's always been one of the very few shows on tv which deserved my undivided attention. But this season was so uneven and, quite frankly, mediocre for the most part, that now I kind of wish I had been doing something else at the same time. With the exception of two episodes (Hardhome and The Dance of Dragons) and a few scenes here and there, it's been a pretty weak season. The showrunners did a poor job of adapting large portions of the last two books, which is saying a lot given the, at best, uneven quality of those books, and when they've gone off book, it's been rather disastrous. That whole Dorne storyline was utter crap, despite the best efforts of NCW, Jerome and Alexander Siddig (whose talent was completely wasted). Hopefully next season will be a vast improvement, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yes, it is easier to bitch about that tiny scratch by the back passenger wheel well on your brand new Aston Martin Vanquish that it is to say JESUS FUCK HOLY HELL I'M DRIVING AN ASTON MARTIN VANQUISH.

More like "Holy fucking hell, somebody just sideswipped my brand-new Aston Martin Vanquish!!!" for me.

Ottis · June 19, 2015

If the show-runners intended that scene to be read as Butch and Sundance, rather than as Thelma and Louise, then I think they needed to make it more clear. I don't even remember seeing any snow drifts, although it's possible that I just missed them. (As I, too, have been known to look away from the screen at just the wrong moment!)

They did indeed include a brief shot of the snow from Theon and Sansa's perspective, and I took it that was supposed to show a large snow bank for them to land on. But it wasn't very clear how deep it was.

I've watched almost every moment of this season, visuals included, and thought it was meh. The pacing was off, for starters. It was a slow build up with no real plot movement until Hardhomme. Several plot lines lagged, and I agree and have posted before, the lagging matches where the books lagged. Arya's story, most of Tyrion's journey, Dany's evolution ... all very slow. The Dorne stuff was bolluxed up, and the Sandsnakes were a disappointment. The rise of the religious fanatics dragged on and on, as did their actions. And for me personally, the White Walkers in their leather uniforms were a bit of a disappointment vs. what I had in my head, which was much more mysterious and menacing.

The most interesting parts if the season to me were the parts that deviated from the books (or perhaps the books haven't made it there). Tyrion meeting Dany was a highlight. Poor Shireen was emotionally devastating.

I discuss every episode with a group of friends who also watch, and all of us were underwhelmed until very late in the season. That said, GoT kicks ass.

Wulfsige · June 19, 2015

I used to multitask while watching but have gotten to the point where I pay strict attention. That’s because although I’m invested enough in the show to want to follow the plot - I don’t want to have to rewatch any of the depressing episodes over again to get details. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but it’s what I got.

I suppose there are people watching and thinking. ‘...Boobs! Yay!...Beheading! Yay!...Old bearded guy died...boring...people talking…boring stupid show...Torture! YAY!… BOOBS! YAY! What a great show! It has BOOBS! AND TORTURE!’ And then there are people watching and thinking, ‘the viewers are complete morons, the answers to all these questions were all right there in the facial expressions, and how sad that they weren’t able to get the symbology of the sun glinting off Khal’s horse’s harness in Season 1, let alone the constant references to the Great Mother inherent in the many naked breasts.’ I suppose I'm somewhere in the great, vast middle. I agree with those who said the season was uneven; it felt like it was all a lot of work - all those spinning and broken tires going in circles - just so we could have a ridiculous amount of cliff-hangers in the finale.

It reminds me of a toddler making up a story. Know what I mean? Their stories will have absolutely great stuff that just trails off. “There’s this beeeaautiful princess, she has loooong blonde hair, she’s so beautiful and she has a little kitten, no, a really big cat, no...a dragon! And there’s this guy and he’s really mean and this other guy and he’s really mean and this mean old queen and she’s really mean and she hates this other girl who’s really nice and then this bad guy dies and this other guy...I donno what happens to him, I forget, he’s boring anyway. Maybe his mommy lost him like that time mommy lost me at Wal-Mart. And the princess has a beautiful white dress, no! Not white - blue! And there’s this other guy and he’s really cute but everybody hates him but he’s really a long lost prince. Boy, are they going to be sorry they hated him. But then he dies. NO! Wait! He can't die, he's cuuute! And everybody goes on a really long trip and they meet this mean guy and then the cookie monster comes from outer space and ates them all up! The END!’

Pogojoco · June 20, 2015

I need to watch the episode again (I usually watch it once, anxious to see what will actually happen and then again to check the detail) but I swear she did almost an "eeeeeek" kind of a scream before the splat and I am ashamed to say that I chuckled a little.

I think she actually squealed "Reeeeeeek" before she went over. I've watched that scene a few times....it was very satisfying.

benteen · June 20, 2015

Speaking of Reek, I'm pretty sure we never got a "Reek, reek, it rhymes with meek" line once in the past three years.

gwhh · June 20, 2015

Is the term "blood magic" in the books?

From where does that "priest" get his power to do things like that to the queen and live?

Did they say in the tv show that the "Sand Snakes" are the infamous bastard daughters of Prince Oberyn Martell by various women, or did they leave that issue open to debate??

Edited June 20, 2015 by gwhh

SeanC · June 20, 2015

From where does that "priest" get his power to do things like that to the queen and live?

Did they say in the tv show that the "Sand Snakes" are the infamous bastard daughters of Prince Oberyn Martell by various women, or did they leave that issue open to debate??

From the king (at said queen's instigation).

Obara's monologue makes it clear that her mother isn't Ellaria. Nym was basically an extra, so they don't say anything about her either way.

FemmyV · June 20, 2015

Speaking of Reek, aren't victorious warriors supposed to find the body of their dead opponent before they ride home for dinner? That's the ONE thing that gives me some pause before completely accepting Stannis is 100% dead.

Elkins · June 20, 2015

More stuff, because the software keeps telling me that my posts are overly long and full of boxquotes.

I've seen A LOT of people posting about how exciting they've found the Winterfell storyline and how Sansa is interesting for the first time and etc. Than they are book walkers who go "this derails the character, they are making her a victim, blah blah blah yakity smakity."

I think the Winterfell storyline definitely deserves to win the Golden Banana of Discord this season, as the plotline whose reception shows the highest standard deviation. It's been extremely polarizing, to be sure. I'm not sure if I think that it's necessarily an Unsullied vs Bookwalker schism, though. The Unsullied at the Spitball Wall on this very site seemed quite down on it, for example, while all of the book readers I know in my so-called "Real Life" loved it. As did I, although I would have liked it better had there been a lot more of it. While I enjoyed it, I also agree with Shanna Marie here:

I was looking forward to seeing it filmed because I think they could have done a lot with it in the series -- the deep snow, the Winterfell that wasn't entirely rebuilt after the burning, the close quarters among the wedding guests stuck there, and people dying one by one.

I too regret some of the lost potential of snowed-in Winterfell. I was expecting them to make a lot more hay out of the creepy, snowed-in cabin fever atmosphere. It started well, but I was hoping we'd eventually be seeing the Overlook Hotel of Westeros, and it never got there. It never really had the time to get there.

But then, that's the case with nearly all of the plotlines. My biggest criticism not only of this season but of the show in general, is that with the exception of the very first season, there's rarely enough time for the storylines and the characters within them to develop in a way that feels organic. Nearly all of them would be so much better, IMO, if they had a bit more room to breathe and stretch out and find their own rhythm. As things stand, a lot of the show winds up feeling a bit like a Cliff's Notes version. The scenes that wind up packing the biggest emotional punches in this show are nearly always those from the storylines that haven't been rushed all to hell and back.

Then, I think I'm at an extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to pacing preference. I appreciate a very leisurely pace (which is one of the reasons that I've come to prefer television drama to film, actually). Arya's plotline was one of the more effective ones for me this season, for the very reason that it didn't seem overly rushed like nearly all the others. It seems that what I consider proper pacing, however, is often viewed by many others as intolerably slow, so it's probably for the best that I'm not the one writing these scripts. I'd bore the audience half to death, I'm sure.

Just BTW - when did Sansa ever learn to pick a lock with a corkscrew? Seems more like something Arya would know.

Picking locks at Westeros's tech level isn't really all that difficult, so long as one has a narrow metal something (like the end of an augur) to use as a pick. There's no athletic ability required. What is required is fine motor coordination and a good deal of patience -- which also just happen to be the very skills required to excel at embroidery and other types of needlework. Fancy that.

She freed herself from her confinement, waited as long as possible to get rescued using the agreed upon plan and then faced down her attacker who had a weapon pointed at her thereby causing Theon to snap out of his Reek funk. What more do you want from her?

Well sure, Oscirus, but she didn't grow wings, now, did she? A character with agency would have grown wings. But I guess that would just be too EMPOWERED for misogynists like D&D, who have obviously always hated Sansa. I'll bet they wrote her without wings just to make sure that the audience wouldn't care if she died. Because that's totally something that a writer would want to do.

Tennisgurl, I liked Arya's story as well, and I quite agree that Dorne was rather hopeless. I'm not even sure I understand what they were aiming for with Dorne, which is unusual for me with this show. Usually even with scenes that don't work all that well for me, I still feel as if I get what they were trying for. Dorne, though... Yeah, I've no idea. I can't even begin to imagine where it's going, either.

Sour note for me was Dany because I was sure her dress was white last episode and then it looked blue.

I saw it as white with gold stripes. I have no idea what you blue dress people are on about.

Yeah, that was surprising, wasn't it? Usually if there's on thing that's solid on this show, it's the visual continuity of the costuming and set design. I wonder what happened there.

It wasn't the sourest note for me, though. The sourest note for me was the way they handled Meryn Fucking Trant.

Trant's a bad guy in the books but there's a difference between beating a girl because your king demands it and diddling kids. And they created the scene basically because they think the audience are simpletons and need their hand held, "It's okay that Arya's killing this guy, he's a child molester."

Ugh, yes. The worst part of the episode for me, no question. Did we really need Meryn Fucking Trant to turn out to be both a homophobe and some kind of sadistic pedophile? Was that really necessary? Isn't it enough that he's an unpleasant thug who follows brutal orders without hesitation and killed someone Arya loved? I mean, we're supposed to be finding Arya's passion for vengeful violence a bit disturbing at this point, correct? Everything else in this story is pulling out all the stops to indicate that we're supposed to feel saddened by and worried for her. So why bend so far over backwards to make us want to see Trant suffer?

It's just...just so cheesy, you know? So banal. It's trite and played out and 'Hollywood' in all the worst senses of that term to pull that hoary old "now we will make you hate the villain so you will cheer when he gets killed" move. As a viewer, I actually felt insulted by it. Because seriously, that shit? There's just no humble way to say this: It's beneath me.

I really enjoyed this interview with Ian Beattie, who played Meryn Fucking Trant (and who seems just lovely). I was particularly amused by this passage:

"It was strange, because whenever we did those things in season one and season two, when I beat Sansa under the orders of King Joffrey, the justification I found for the way I treated Sansa, long before I knew what we were going to learn about his private side in season five, was that some Stark, whether it had been Ned, or Ned's father, or Ned's brother, that maybe one of them caused Ser Meryn a grievous insult in the past, which is why he enjoyed abusing Sansa. Little did I know that the truth behind why Ser Meryn enjoyed beating young girls, that it was a personal pleasure that we only see this season."

Somehow that just totally cracks me up. "Yeah, I had to figure out why my guy was such a creep, so I came up with this entire backstory in my head about why he hates the Starks so much...and then I got this season's scripts and was like 'Oh. Sooo....he's just a pervert? Well. Alrighty, then!'"

OR.... They made Trant a pedo because this scene was the show version of the "Mercy" chapter were Arya kills Raff the Sweetling, who is a pedophile

Eh, I'm not willing to put all the blame on George for this one. Benioff and Weiss have shown themselves perfectly willing to omit or repair Martin's more boneheaded authorial decisions in the past. Doing so is, in fact, an important part of their job. There's no reason they had to make Trant a sadopedobear just because Martin wrote Raff as one.

Where I am willing to put some of the blame on George, though, is the overall unstructured nature of the narrative. That's just the nature of the beast, as far as I'm concerned. The source material has pretty much become a big sprawling sloppy structureless soap opera at this point, so I guess I just take it as read that the show will follow suit. It's somewhat baked into my expectations that nothing's ever going to be particularly narratively tight in ASOIAF land.

Or, as Wulfsige put it:

It reminds me of a toddler making up a story. Know what I mean? Their stories will have absolutely great stuff that just trails off. “There’s this beeeaautiful princess, she has loooong blonde hair, she’s so beautiful and she has a little kitten, no, a really big cat, no...a dragon! And...

[cut for space, but read the whole thing. Seriously.]

Hee! Not at all a bad description, that. Especially of the later volumes.

Although for me, one of the really important bits comes from the fact that this particular toddler used to work in television, so the monologue must always end with: "And I'm sick of working in television, so everything will sprawl all over the place and be nothing like television. NOTHING AT ALL LIKE TELEVISION, YOU HEAR? Oh, well, apart from the stings, of course. I mean, who doesn't love stings? Everyone loves stings! I can't live without my stings! So every chapter shall end either with a fake-out character death, or a 'Dun-dun-DUN! CLOSE UP ON CHARACTER'S FACE. SMASH CUT TO COMMERCIAL BREAK' moment."

Seriously, I found it really difficult when reading the books not to crack up at the end of each chapter, because they were all just so obviously written by a guy who worked in TV in the late '80s. I kept reaching for my VCR remote, to fast-forward through all the commercials and the coming attraction spot for the next episode of Alien Nation.

Really, though, I think when it comes to this particular criticism of the story, I can do no better than to repeat this little gem:

Over in the Show vs Book thread, someone posted a comment from his editor stating that it'll take her about 2 weeks to edit it.

Two. Weeks.

That...certainly does explain much. Much and more, even. Where do editors go?

Edited June 20, 2015 by Elkins

BlackberryJam · June 20, 2015

Well sure, Oscirus, but she didn't grow wings, now, did she? A character with agency would have grown wings. But I guess that would just be too EMPOWERED for misogynists like D&D, who have obviously always hated Sansa. I'll bet they wrote her without wings just to make sure that the audience wouldn't care if she died. Because that's totally something that a writer would want to do.

I love this. It's perfect.

Hecate7 · June 20, 2015

Isn't it enough that he's an unpleasant thug who follows brutal orders without hesitation and killed someone Arya loved?

No, because that description also fits the Hound, and we love the Hound. Half that description---"unpleasant thug who follows brutal orders without hesitation," fits pretty much every soldier or guard in the story. So yeah, we do need a little bit more if Meryn Trant is to be special enough to draw Arya off-track and deserve preferment over the clearly unpleasant Thin Man.

lucindabelle · June 20, 2015

The punishment is mostly a real thing from the middle ages, but the crowd response is not. This whole story is loosely based on the War of the Roses, and Cersei's walk mirrors the treatment of rival Jane Shore by Richard III. Shore was wearing her undergarments, however, but she was barefoot and it probably was just as hard on her feet. http://time.com/3921066/cersei-game-of-thrones-history/

She was kind hearted and not at all hated by the public so I doubt it, she married and moved to the country and lived to be in her 80s.

Dantis dress didn't turn blue, it was white with a blue undertone and then it was dirty,

Why does everyone keep saying butch and sun dance? Didn't they die in that leap? (It's been a long time since I've seen the movie)

I just say I am loving how all the recappers acknowledge that unless a new book comes out before next season were all unsullied going forward....

rallymantis · June 20, 2015

Ha! on equating the crowd to the Yahoo! comments section...I would've said, the Twitterverse, but eh, water seeks its own level.

Why does everyone keep saying Butch and Sundance? Didn't they die in that leap?

Nope. They were carried downstream, out of harm's way. Which is one of the reasons* it's wayyyyy more satisfying than the end of Thelma & Louise, and a much more fan-gratifying way to have two characters escape.

*the other being that pre-jump dialogue exchange: Sundance: "I can't swim!" Butch: "[guffaws]..the fall'll kill ya!"

J----av · June 20, 2015

Eh, I'm not willing to put all the blame on George for this one. Benioff and Weiss have shown themselves perfectly willing to omit or repair Martin's more boneheaded authorial decisions in the past. Doing so is, in fact, an important part of their job. There's no reason they had to make Trant a sadopedobear just because Martin wrote Raff as one.

There is no blame to be put on anyone. Its a brutal world were rapist pedo's and sadistic fucks like Ramsay are all over. People need to stop calling out D and D or GRRM every time someone terrible does something terrible. Thats the world they live in

Elkins · June 20, 2015

No, because that description also fits the Hound, and we love the Hound. Half that description---"unpleasant thug who follows brutal orders without hesitation," fits pretty much every soldier or guard in the story. So yeah, we do need a little bit more if Meryn Trant is to be special enough to draw Arya off-track and deserve preferment over the clearly unpleasant Thin Man.

Arya was drawn off-track before she knew of Trant's predilections, though. She passed on poisoning her assigned target in favor of following him through the city. Eventually she did follow him to the brothel, but by then she'd already made it clear that a name on her list took precedence over her assignment.

I guess the question I'm asking is: in what way does it serve the narrative for Trant not to be exactly the same sort of thug as "pretty much every soldier or guard in the story?" What makes him special to Arya is that his particular brutal-order-following resulted in the death of someone she cared about. That's why he's on her list, and that's why she wants him dead. Anything else about him is extraneous. So what is the function of heaping extraneous vices on this particular character's head?

The function is to simplify the emotional and moral landscape of the story. That's the purpose it serves. I don't see how Arya's story benefits from being made less complex in that way. In my opinion, it makes it a significantly less interesting and meaningful story.

There is no blame to be put on anyone. Its a brutal world were rapist pedo's and sadistic fucks like Ramsay are all over. People need to stop calling out D and D or GRRM every time someone terrible does something terrible. Thats the world they live in

Huh? I...don't think you understood the nature of my complaint. My own fault, I'm sure - I must not have been writing as clearly as I would have liked. I'm not calling anyone out for depicting terrible characters doing terrible things. I'm calling them out for dodging moral complexity. It's all very convenient for certain characters to be wearing pitch black hats so we all know whom to boo and hiss, but it's also rather childish, and it belies this franchise's claim to be serving up high fantasy without the simplistic morality commonly associated with that genre.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Elkins

Hecate7 · June 20, 2015

Arya was drawn off-track before she knew of Trant's predilections, though. She passed on poisoning her assigned target in favor of following him through the city. Eventually she did follow him to the brothel, but by then she'd already made it clear that a name on her list took precedence over her assignment.

I guess the question I'm asking is: in what way does it serve the narrative for Trant not to be exactly the same sort of thug as "pretty much every soldier or guard in the story?" What makes him special to Arya is that his particular brutal-order-following resulted in the death of someone she cared about. That's why he's on her list, and that's why she wants him dead. Anything else about him is extraneous. So what is the function of heaping extraneous vices on this particular character's head?

The function is to simplify the emotional and moral landscape of the story. That's the purpose it serves. I don't see how Arya's story benefits from being made less complex in that way. In my opinion, it makes it a significantly less interesting and meaningful story.

Her killing of him is brutal and cruel. She blinded him first. I wasn't sure what she flicked off of his beard--he seemed to be trying to say something when she said "I can't hear you."

Wouldn't it be awful if what he was trying to say was "I didn't kill him?" Or "He got away" or something of that nature? At least this way Arya didn't kill him for nothing--Trant was scum regardless. And if Syrio surfaces later, we will not have to feel bad that Arya killed Trant in a spectacularly gruesome manner.

benteen · June 20, 2015

As stated, Trant being a pedophile came from GRRM's chaper with Ralf the Sweetling. I do wonder if they decided to make Trant so over-the-top to justify Arya's over-the-top reaction, with does make things much more simplistic.

ElizaD · June 20, 2015

Well sure, Oscirus, but she didn't grow wings, now, did she? A character with agency would have grown wings. But I guess that would just be too EMPOWERED for misogynists like D&D, who have obviously always hated Sansa. I'll bet they wrote her without wings just to make sure that the audience wouldn't care if she died. Because that's totally something that a writer would want to do.

The way Ramsay has been written, if he had been the character in trouble wings wouldn't have been out of the question. Sansa agreed to go to Winterfell to avenge her family and she didn't even try. Her supposed talent is people skills, yet she spent her time sulking and making a couple of sassy comments that had no followup. Her great achievement was picking a lock after she gave up on the idea that she could do anything to the Boltons. Then she got caught by Myranda and had to admit that she had been wrong when she'd tried to act brave before the wedding and called Winterfell her home: Sansa had been so thoroughly beaten that she accepted being mutilated or killed by Myranda as the best she could hope for.

If the showrunners hadn't tried to sell this story as empowerment and had just admitted that Sansa was going to be Jeyne, a victim of horrible abuse locked in her room to wait for the next rape and denied all interaction with people other her rapist and his broken pet, they wouldn't receive the same kind of criticism. The suckiness of the storyline would be judged, sure, but the showrunners decided to spin this as Sansa making a choice, and so both they and Sansa are going to be judged for the utter failure she turned out to be after making grand claims about revenge and being a Stark. If shirtless Ramsay can send the best Ironborn killers running and defeat the great commander even Tywin considered his most dangerous enemy, it would not have been impossible to give Sansa just the tiniest bit of success messing with the minds of the Boltons. But no, she was absolutely worthless as a player and accepted death when her escape attempt didn't work out. That's how thoroughly she failed and how the Boltons and even Myranda succeeded at beating her.

I wasn't asking for Sansa to single-handedly beat Ramsay and Roose to death after she'd convinced them to murder Walda and Myranda and then turn on each other. But something, anything other than being locked in her room, begging to be rescued from a situation the showrunners had her choose to enter to avenge her family even though it turned out she had no interest in searching for ways to work against the Boltons. It's season 5 of 7 or 8 and Sansa, a POV character, is still so useless on the show that she's tricked by random henchwoman Myranda and later forced to admit defeat to her. She's not learning any skills or growing as a person, and even hearing that her brothers are alive didn't keep her from being more suicidal and less savvy than she was in season 2, the first time she was waiting for Stannis to show up. If she's this stupid and passive as we're starting to approach the end of the story, she's never going to be useful for reasons other than her name, and it's frustrating that so much time has been wasted on repeating the same storyline season after season: Sansa is abused and then rescued by someone else. Dontos drags her from the Purple Wedding, Theon kills Myranda as Sansa waits to be shot. The decisions are made for her and her greatest contribution is picking a lock, a ridiculous non-event compared to the stuff constantly being done by other major characters in their plots.

Avaleigh · June 20, 2015

As stated, Trant being a pedophile came from GRRM's chaper with Ralf the Sweetling. I do wonder if they decided to make Trant so over-the-top to justify Arya's over-the-top reaction, with does make things much more simplistic.

I think that's exactly what it was about.

Elkins, I think I too misunderstood your initial post and feel like I have a better understanding of where you're coming from with regard to how you think complexity was taken away.

I will say though that I think there's still a certain sort of complexity to knowing what a monster Trant is and still managing to be disturbed by what Arya has done and don't think this necessarily bodes well for her future considering how crazed and OTT she was with this kill. I get that the bastard had more than earned a nasty death but having Arya be the one to take him out in such a way is disturbing and I feel like there is something sort of complex in all that.

gwhh · June 20, 2015

A nice video on all the unanswered questions of this season:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/06/19/white_walkers_melisandre_and_the_faceless_men_answering_your_remaining_questions.html

The Mormegil · June 20, 2015

Did they say in the tv show that the "Sand Snakes" are the infamous bastard daughters of Prince Oberyn Martell by various women, or did they leave that issue open to debate??

Oberyn said he had 8 daughters, Doran said Elleria was the mother of 4 of them.

Not sure if it was ever stated on screen but casting notes did say (unlike the book) Tyene was one of those 4.

When Obara talked about her mother she didn't mention any full sisters so it's likely that as in the book she was the only child of that union.

So that makes at least Three Mothers.

Elleria - Tyene + 3 others (probably inc Elia)

Obara's Mother - Obara

Other Mother(s) - remaining Three Sand Snakes.

SeanC · June 20, 2015

Not sure if it was ever stated on screen but casting notes did say (unlike the book) Tyene was one of those 4.

Tyene addressed Ellaria as "Mama" in their first scene.

Elkins · June 20, 2015

I will say though that I think there's still a certain sort of complexity to knowing what a monster Trant is and still managing to be disturbed by what Arya has done and don't think this necessarily bodes well for her future considering how crazed and OTT she was with this kill.

Yes, I suppose you're right. It was a brutal enough attack to give viewers pause, even with all of the over-the-top villainizing of Trant. I guess we'll have to see where Arya's story goes from here.

Even leaving aside high falutin' concerns like moral simplicity, though, Show!Trant the sadopedobear also struck me as a deep step down from Book!Raff the pedobear, because ...uggghhhh, now I'm trying to think of how to explain my reasons for feeling that way. Hmmm.

Okay. It reminds me a bit of the Star Wars universe (just stick with me for a little while on this one, okay? I promise it will be relevant). By 1987 or so, Star Wars fans had pretty much finished every last scrap of meat on the original trilogy, so they turned to sucking the marrow out of the bones. As a result, every last extra who had a line of dialogue--or even some notable body language--in the original movies now has a name, a biography, and at least one appearance in an authorized spin-off novel. But of course, their personalities and histories are always still deduced from their one film appearace. Because, you know, fans.

The end result is that you wind up with "characters" like the completely unimportant Imperial Officer who says "What are you doing with that...thing?" in a scornful tone of voice while looking at Chewbacca in the first movie. You remember that guy? No? Well, someone must have, because he has a name by now. And a history. And a personality. And because the only thing anyone had to go on for him was that he seemed to be kinda racist (or speciesist, or whatever) against Wookies, that is now the entirety of his character in the expanded universe. His personality is that he's the racistist racist to ever be racist, especially against Wookies. His history? Well, he was a member of a human supremicist movement, see, and then after he joined the Imperial Navy he committed horrible war crimes against the Wookies. Wanna hear a story about him? Okay, it starts like this: "Because Extra #4 hated Wookies so much..." And so forth.

I feel like the show did very much the same thing with Trant. What do we know about this guy? Well, he's a Kingsguard thug, and he killed Syrio and beat up Sansa. There's not much else to go on. So, huh, he beat up Sansa, did he? Okay, we can work with that! So...beating little girls must just be Ser Meryn's thing, right? He's all about the beating up of little girls. I'll bet he's got a fetish for it. Hey, in fact, I'll bet when he goes to a whorehouse, he doesn't even care about getting laid! All he wants to do is beat up little girls! Yeah, that's the ticket!

I dunno. It just strikes me as exactly the same sort of goofy extrapolation of a single trait into an entire character that you see in the Star Wars universe with characters like Third Stormtrooper From the Left. And I'm sorry, but it's...well, it's just sort of ridiculous, you know? IMO, of course. All IMO.

MrWhyt · June 20, 2015

If shirtless Ramsay can send the best Ironborn killers running and defeat the great commander even Tywin considered his most dangerous enemy

When did this happen?

Umbelina · June 21, 2015

I thought I was going to hate the Trant thing, because I assumed he was going to have sex with those newly pubescent girls. Thank God for once the show didn't go there. Anyway, it ended up working for me for two reasons. It's been a LONG time since he beat Sansa and killed Syrio, so I actually can understand why they gave him a more recent crime, or reason to hate him. The other reason it worked, and I haven't heard anyone else say this, but I read that scene a bit differently.

When watching I felt that he'd found unexpected sexual gratification from beating Sansa, which of course he was ordered to do. So now he goes to whore houses to pay for the privilege of enjoying that fetish. Luckily, we didn't find out if that was a precursor to then having sex with the girl, or if the beatings alone were enough for him. In my head though, the beatings were enough, and I don't think he had that prediction until Joffrey gave that order.

screamin · June 21, 2015

Well sure, Oscirus, but she didn't grow wings, now, did she? A character with agency would have grown wings. But I guess that would just be too EMPOWERED for misogynists like D&D, who have obviously always hated Sansa. I'll bet they wrote her without wings just to make sure that the audience wouldn't care if she died. Because that's totally something that a writer would want to do.

Speaking strictly for myself, I was dismayed that even within the last five minutes of her appearance in the season, they again wrote Sansa as leaving her fate in the hands of her enemy...physically, literally. I don't recall ever asking for Sansa to sprout wings and fly. But when Myranda was calmly threatening to either kill her or cripple her, Sansa verbally chose suicide...and when Myranda then explained to her that she might not kill her, just maybe cripple her horribly while leaving her reproductive capacity intact for Ramsey to exploit...Sansa just stands still. She very considerately stays a stationary target for Myranda to leisurely decide whether she wants a torso shot or to go for the more difficult but life-preserving knee destroyer (which is the more likely outcome, since Ramsey would peel Myranda if she killed his valuable wife). Sansa passively leaves the decision in Myranda's hands - so obviously that Myranda even gloatingly remarks on it.

Sansa wants to die rather than fall back into Ramsey's hands...but she stays still in a way that allows for Myranda to aim at her leisure for the crippling shot that WILL put her alive back in Ramsey's hands. Wings are not required for Sansa to take an action. Why doesn't she rush Myranda to try to escape, or at least to force the death she wants instead of the crippling Myranda will choose? What has she got to lose at that point?

They could have had Theon attack Myranda simultaneously with Sansa rushing Myranda. Why didn't they? The answer, IMO, is that they wanted this moment of glory to be wholly Theon's. Which bugs me.

gwhh · June 21, 2015

You are correct sir!

Speaking of Reek, aren't victorious warriors supposed to find the body of their dead opponent before they ride home for dinner? That's the ONE thing that gives me some pause before completely accepting Stannis is 100% dead.

paramitch · June 21, 2015

There are 15 people credited as some kind of producer on that episode, what evidence do you have that it was either Benioff or Weiss?

True. And it's unfair of me to assume it's D or D. But while they do a lot of good and occasionally brilliant work on this show, I do think they continue to be shockingly tone-deaf when it comes to the show's misogyny, and further, their "inside the episode" discussions are often so disappointingly simplistic that it wouldn't surprise me. (I will never get over Benioff saying that Dany and Tyrion have a bond because "they both had terrible fathers." Right. The father Dany (1) never met and (2) actually idolized until about a month ago in show terms. It was just silly, but I find D&D often do that -- they seem to create new and much less interesting character motivations (Tyrion's final scene with Tywin, Jon's non-departure/stabbing, Ellaria's whole S5 character, Jaime since basically forever, etc.) instead of using the rich ones already existing in GRRM's text. It annoys me.

Yeah, I seriously doubt that either of these two guys with literature degrees and MFAs in creative writing would've said, "Everybody else is the serious drama side. I represent the perv side of the audience."

As someone with longtime friends in academia, I can definitely say that it is quite possible for a person to be both a scholar and a perv. Just sayin'. Interestingly, BoingBoing actually discussed the issue again recently, and it's interesting because it was someone hands-on enough to literally change or overrule the blocking and shooting of a scene (http://boingboing.net/2015/05/12/the-naked-hypocrisy-of-game-of.html):

The weirdest part was when you have one of the executive producers leaning over your shoulders going, ‘You can go full frontal, you know! This is television, you can do whatever you want. And do it. I urge you to do it’…This particular exec took me to the side and said ‘I represent the pervert side of the audience. Everybody else is on the serious drama side. I represent the perv side of the audience. And I’m saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene. So go ahead and do it.’

But of course, apologies to D&D if they are not, in fact, the perv in question. It's probably some HBO exec.

If she'd been passive and meek after being beaten and raped on a daily basis, I certainly wouldn't criticize her. The problem for me is the show didn't write that story. Instead they had her do "strong" things like call Ramsay a bastard, which amounts to posturing, nothing more. To me this just made her look like she had a death wish, and in a world where Ramsay was not written as the remarkably self-assured, super fine, super calm and collected stud and warrior of Westeros (who takes a little time out of his schedule for sexual and physical abuse), she would have been flayed and displayed, not the Septa Mordane wannabe.

I don't agree. Sansa knew she had a certain worth to Ramsay, so I think she walked the line pretty well there. In that scene, she knows she needs to be kept alive and relatively (outwardly) unharmed for a number of reasons -- to bear him an heir and to continue in her role as a living Stark figurehead. In addition, Ramsay has flat-out been told by his father that he can't go too far with her -- a father he's desperate to placate and who may or may not replace him with the new potentially legitimate heir if he survives. (But I do agree that the showrunners seem to have some weird crush on Ramsay, FWIW.)

re: Brienne and Stannis: I see it as plausible reasoning that Brienne can choose to spare Stannis' life and use him to fulfill her oath to protect Sansa; there often is a clause that if you legally could have killed someone, you can compel them to your service instead. As far as I'm concerned, you ain't dead on this show until your head rolls off or your throat is slit, so I'm headcanoning that she redirected her swing into the tree by his head for now.

That's where I'm at on this as well. I admit that my Stephen Dillane admiration may also be clouding my judgment -- he's just been fantastic in this role, and he continues to somehow make me care about Stannis despite all the horrible things he's done. I don't forgive him for Shireen, but I feel like neither does he. It's like her death finished him in some essential way: Look at his face when they find Selyse -- when Mel leaves -- when the army deserts -- when he prepares to charge. Catastrophe after catastrophe, he simply looks, accepts, and moves forward. If Brienne did kill him, it would almost be a mercy. But I just think it's not going to be that simple an ending for him... we'll see.

I do agree that that's why they wrote Jon's last scene to line up with the book's cliffhanger. But what happens after Season 6? GRRM will never have the next book done by Season 7. The show is going to end up spoiling the books -- or going off on its own trajectory -- eventually anyway.

I'm really frustrated with GRRM on this front. He's had ample time to finish this series. And ample money. But to me, he indulges himself in these huge amounts of padding that (as we can see from the show's efficient paring-down) have little to do with the real core storyline at all. ADWD added what, a dozen new heavily featured characters? It's just too much. So I'm kind of with the producers on this one -- at least the keep writing and get the job done. My poor Dad, like many others, meanwhile, has been reading these damn things for NINETEEN YEARS. That's just a ridiculously long time to wait to see how a story ends, and I feel like it's now at a point where GRRM's doing a disservice to his readers.

I also really missed Jaime's book storyline because it was a great redemption story as we saw him realizing just how screwy everything really was. I don't feel like he got any character development at all in Dorne. He was changed after his stint in the Riverlands, but I don't think he's changed at all after Dorne.

I agree -- I really missed the sly retribution at Winterfell, and hugely missed Jaime's Riverlands arc. But then, D&D just don't seem to understand the character of Jaime at all. I'm very disappointed with where he ended this season -- it's not remotely where he ended the last book in any way. And NCW is such a good actor -- he's perfectly capable of playing what was written, but instead we just get more Jaime mooning over Cersei -- which, bookwise, he'd pretty much stopped doing in AFFC.

I do like the wildlings, I'd say, all in all, they really are the most modern characters in the show. They elect leaders, and have a great deal of freedom.

I'd like them a lot more, except for their pesky habit of slaughtering (and eating, Thenn-wise) whole villages of innocent men, women and children.

Dev F · June 21, 2015

As someone with longtime friends in academia, I can definitely say that it is quite possible for a person to be both a scholar and a perv. Just sayin'..

Oh, no doubt. But this particular producer seems to indicate that he's a perv but not a scholar -- that everyone else represents the "serious drama side" of the show and he doesn't. If he'd just been less absolute about it -- say, arguing that there's a time for serious drama and a time to give the audience some eye candy -- I'd be less likely to rule out Benioff and Weiss. After all, they're clearly not averse to such things, but I don't think either of them would consider them the be-all and end-all of the show.

Hecate7 · June 21, 2015

I thought I was going to hate the Trant thing, because I assumed he was going to have sex with those newly pubescent girls. Thank God for once the show didn't go there. Anyway, it ended up working for me for two reasons. It's been a LONG time since he beat Sansa and killed Syrio, so I actually can understand why they gave him a more recent crime, or reason to hate him. The other reason it worked, and I haven't heard anyone else say this, but I read that scene a bit differently.

When watching I felt that he'd found unexpected sexual gratification from beating Sansa, which of course he was ordered to do. So now he goes to whore houses to pay for the privilege of enjoying that fetish. Luckily, we didn't find out if that was a precursor to then having sex with the girl, or if the beatings alone were enough for him. In my head though, the beatings were enough, and I don't think he had that prediction until Joffrey gave that order.

The beatings might have been AFTER sex, because the girls have been "bad."

Edited June 21, 2015 by Hecate7

Oscirus · June 21, 2015

The way I always saw Sansa was as a teenage girl who was in over her head yet didn't realize it because Littlefinger did a decent enough job pumping her up with false bravado and false information. She thought that she could pull it off until her wedding night came around and she realized the situation she was actually in. She tried everything she could to extricate herself from the situation and once the opportunity presented itself, she got away. Saying that she just opened a door severely understates what she did. Her standing there while the bow was on her was more a case of the fact that the clothing she was wearing didn't really favor movement. Relying on Theon was her only move at that point.

I love that the show writers somehow managed to combine Return of the Jedi and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the same scene.

I liked the Macbethian spin of Stannis. I have no idea why people think Staniis is still alive. If you think this, you obviously don't know Brienne. That being said, what kind of army leaves the head of the army that they just decimated alive? Stannis should've been on his way to a flaying at Winterfell by the time that Brienne got to him.

I finally get Ellaria's plan. I doubt she cares if she lives or dies, she just wants revenge on Cersei by any means necessary. In her mind, Doran will be too busy with war to really pay attention to her. Of course she doesn't realize that Robert Strong's about to come to Dorne and he will likely perform some combination of rape/murder on her and the snakes ( actually, they'll probs avoid the first thing since I can only imagine that they're tired of the protests already. But you never know with the mountain).

Arya's blindness was due to the fact that she illegally used a face to murder Trant. I think they made Trant a pedo who gets off on beating girls for logistical purposes. It gives Arya a reasonable motive to be alone with Trant and they have him whip the girls when they're alone so the audience doesn't have to deal with any questionable pedo scenes.

So now that Dany has her dragons, and is likely going to get back her Dotraki army and has the best live hand of the king in her employ, what else does she need to start marching towards Westoros?

Finally either James Nguyen was the special guess director for the Mereen scene or they were trying to tell us something with that final hanging shot. I can't imagine the placement of everybody in that scene was a mistake.

Edited June 21, 2015 by Oscirus

Pete Martell · June 21, 2015

I don't agree. Sansa knew she had a certain worth to Ramsay, so I think she walked the line pretty well there. In that scene, she knows she needs to be kept alive and relatively (outwardly) unharmed for a number of reasons -- to bear him an heir and to continue in her role as a living Stark figurehead. In addition, Ramsay has flat-out been told by his father that he can't go too far with her -- a father he's desperate to placate and who may or may not replace him with the new potentially legitimate heir if he survives. (But I do agree that the showrunners seem to have some weird crush on Ramsay, FWIW.)

In spite of what his father told him, Ramsay was beating and raping her on a frequent basis (which could have easily killed her), when we saw that he could have consensual, mutually pleasurable sex with women. If there had been something established that he was unable to not be violent and abusive toward women, as we saw with Joffrey, then I think the material would have been clearer. Instead, he could be something else, and he chose not to be. Which is why I had a difficult time believing he was interested in preserving her welfare or life.

I also have no idea if we were supposed to see Sansa calling him a bastard as some type of strong moment or just her being desperate and reckless.

I think they wanted the basic constraints of this story - a woman raped and beaten by a depraved man, a woman rescued when she is close to death - and twisted themselves into a pretzel to try to make it seem less sexist and demeaning (Sansa "stands up" to Ramsay in between assaults, a woman is the one who wants to kill her, so they can't say it's all about men victimizing women, etc.).

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