Season 4 Superlatives

[WhiteStumbler]

What were the BEST / WORST of S4 for you? Dialogue, character movement, action scene, piece of acting, battle, CGI wizardry - anything at all that rocked / sucked for you this season. I'll start...

 

Most Improved Storyline: The Wall

After the (IMHO) great E9 battle at Castle Black upped my interest at The Wall considerably (despite losing some good characters), I was totally unprepared for the electricity I felt seeing dour, sour Stannis + brooding, pouting Jon + proud, defeated Mance all together.

 

Worst Season 3 Callback: Yara Greyjoy
Yara: I picked the fastest ship in the Greyjoy fleet. I chose the 50 best killers on the Iron Islands. I sailed up the Narrow Sea all the way to the Weeping Water. I marched on the Dreadfort. I've found my little brother and now I'm... Uh oh. Dogs! RUN AWAY!!!

 

Best One-Liner: Lady Olenna Tyrell

Olenna: The world is overflowing with horrible things. But they're all a tray of cakes next to death.

 

Best Architecture (Interior): Dany's Meeting Room (Top of The Pyramid)

Not the Throne Room. The meeting room looks vaguely Deco, with some Fertile Crescent elements thrown in. I though it just seemed like the place where REAL power resides, like the Small Council meeting room in KL.

 

Who/what are your best and worst for this season?

Edited June 16, 2014 by WhiteStumbler

[stillshimpy]

WhiteStumbler was totally unprepared for the electricity I felt seeing dour, sour Stannis + brooding, pouting Jon + proud, defeated Mance all together.

 

Right?  It was like a negative + a negative = a positive.  Just like that, out of almost nowhere for me, Stannis became interesting and it seem due, in great part, to having a) men to lead b) someone like Cirian Hinds to bounce off of while his character stood on assured ground and then c) characters with which he had no history.  He was very...regal there.  Jon Snow actually came alive in a way I hadn't expected, because Kit Harrington is a decent enough actor, but sometimes he seems to have sort of energy-sucking impact on his fellow actors.  That or, basically, the spotlight very easily shifts to them....and not so in the Stannis scene. 

 

Plus, that was the first time, ever, why I understood at long last why they went to the trouble of casting Hinds who can really be commanding as hell, but I didn't get that from Mance until last night.

 

I have to admit, I'm also with you on Yara's story, except I don't think the story truly meant to imply that she ran away because of dogs...I think she ran away because Theon was truly not in the building, and she understood that.  Still, so thoroughly disappointing, because I'd really hoped that it would mean something to Theon that someone cared enough to come for him. 

 

Adding one:  Best unexpectedly light moment:  Everything having to do with Tommen.  That scene in his bedroom could have been so insanely creepy, but it was saved by Ser Pounce.  Due in no small part to Natalie Dormer hitting just the right blend of chummy vs. overly sexy.  

 

Best Done Fakeout:  The "I will triumph" vibe that Pedro Pascal pulled off as Oberyn.  He was so good in the part, I actually believed everything might be okay, for once.  On Game of Thrones, no less.  Foolish of me, but he was just that good. 

[DirewolfPup]

WS, I agree with your superlatives except for this:

 

Best One-Liner: Everyone at the Royal Wedding S02E02

Oberyn vs. Cersei. Olenna vs. Tywin. Loras vs. Jamie. They were all brilliant.

 

Best Fight: Tie. Oberyn vs Mountain and Brienne vs Hound

These were the best one-on-one fights of the season. Much better than Ned vs Jamie and Jamie vs Brienne!

 

Biggest Letdown: Poison Necklace

ugh....

 

Hardest Death: Oberyn

 

Best Death: Joffrey

Poisoned at his own wedding

 

Best Character Progression: Sansa

She's finally starting to play the game

 

Worst Character Progression: Cersei

She's regressed to whining about Tyrion and maintaining a toxic relationship with Jamie

[WhiteStumbler]

Worst Character Progression: Cersei

She's regressed to whining about Tyrion and maintaining a toxic relationship with Jamie

And drinking! As her character has spiraled down the drain, the actor who plays Cersei has been better and better! I got chills at this last night...

 

Cersei: When you marched into the throne room to tell me we'd won the Battle of Blackwater-- do you remember? I was sitting on the Iron Throne with Tommen.

I was about to give him essence of nightshade. That's how far I was willing to go when I thought someone awful had come to take my son away. Someone awful is coming to take him away.

Tywin: No.

C: Joffrey is dead. Myrcella's been sold like livestock, and now you want to ship me off to Highgarden and steal my boy. My last boy. Margaery will dig her claws in, you will dig your claws in and you'll fight over him like beasts until you rip him apart. I will burn our house to the ground before I let that happen.

[gingerella]

Such great observations one and all! I have such piss poor memory on details but here goes:

 

Most Improved Player - Jon Snow

I am giving this to Jon Snow because he didn't have to go back out to try to get to Mance, and if he hadn't been present when Stannis rode in, Stannis may well have killed Mance on the spot. And I really think that aligning with Mance and his allegedly ginormous army is going to be key to battling what's coming from North of The Wall. Stannis' men alone cannot do that, and they don't know the terrain like the Wildlings do. And as Mance pointed out, they aren't even dressed for the party correctly. Mance brings deep knowledge of how the WWs work and how to work to beat them. So Jon's chutzpah to go back out there makes him MIP to me because he may just have initiated a huge save for the NW, and the 7K by being out there with Mance when Stannis and Davos rode in to save the day.

 

Most Ferocious, Yet Entertaining Fight - Brienne and The Hound

I hate the fighting/bloody scenes but I watched most of this because it alternated between awesomeness and hilariousness. And the girl knight won, yeah!  Yeah, I know she's not a proper knight yet but she ought to be.

 

Best Death - A Tie between Joffrey and his granddad Tywin

Why? Because I find it infinitely more rewarding to see nasty, sick and twisted fuckers die a completely embarrassing and humiliating death, and both of these fit the bill perfectly. Joff's, because he died after eating pigeon pie and it looked like he choked on his own vomit...and in front of his entire KL kingdom, haha!  And Tywin, because he's always in control, always calling the shots, the King behind the King, and he got killed by his "deformed and inept" son while taking a shit on the pot. Awesome way for him to die!

 

Worst Death - Oberyn Martell

*sniff* I lerved him so very much.

 

Worst Plot Line - The Affair of the Necklace

That.Was.Just.Stupid.

 

Worst Special Effects - A Tie between White Walkers and the Skeleton Zombonies

I'm sorry, but both are just stupid-looking and childish and always take me out of the moment as a result. Someone needs to fire the current CGI crew and find another, STAT!

 

Creepiest and Most Perplexing Moment - Sansa Stark

Descending the Eyrie staircase dressed up like her dead Aunt Lyssa, and looking every inch "of age".

 

Best Yet Smallest Nod - The Little Kid Who Kills Ygritte

His oh-so-slight nod to Jon Snow was made of win.

 

Best Line of the Entire Series - Valar Morghulis!

It is known.

 

Best Moment of Season 4 - Valar Morghulis!

That? Was just awesome wrapped up in a ball of Goallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll !

 

Best Music - Theme Played as Arya Sails to Braavos

That was the best use of the theme song I've heard and I loved the vocals and when it went to just acoustic at the end, chilling yet uplifting!  I was getting tired of the Rains of Castamere and this fit the bill perfectly.

Edited June 16, 2014 by gingerella

[Pallas]

I was totally unprepared for the electricity I felt seeing dour, sour Stannis + brooding, pouting Jon + proud, defeated Mance all together. -- WhiteStumbler

Right?  It was like a negative + a negative = a positive.  Just like that, out of almost nowhere for me, Stannis became interesting and it seem due, in great part, to having a) men to lead b) someone like Cirian Hinds to bounce off of while his character stood on assured ground and then c) characters with which he had no history. -- stillshimpy

 

I know!  Electricity is exactly it.  Combustible.  Hinds was positively twinkling at Dillane, who in turn kept his dignity without an ounce of pretension, and went about his business like a gentleman.  Unseduce-able and yet susceptible, a breast-plated Gregory Peck.  And Harrington, still a little overcome by how much Hinds Showed Up for Work in the tent scene, somehow riding the current between the two Kings and finding his own stance as The Third: the Other Guy who grounds the charge between the two leads.  

 

Or is this just what happens when four (counting Davos) principled men of action finally get together in Westeros?   To paraphrase John Kennedy, of Thomas Jefferson: "Never has so much honor, so much courage, been assembled in one room -- since Ned Stark dined alone."   

[WhiteStumbler]

A nominee for Best Snark: Jaime Lannister
(To Brienne) Are you sure we're not related? Ever since I've returned, every Lannister I've seen has been a miserable pain in my ass. Maybe you're a Lannister, too. You've got the hair for it... not the looks.

 

ETA S4E1: Two Swords

Edited June 16, 2014 by WhiteStumbler

[stillshimpy]

And Harrington, still a little overcome by how much Hinds Showed Up for Work in the tent scene, somehow riding the current between the two Kings and finding his own stance as The Third: the Other Guy who grounds the charge between the two leads.

 

Yea, verily.  Hinds had -- and it almost seems obscene to say, because he is one of those actors who can play pretty much anything or anyone -- seemed woefully miscast the first time we met him.  I mean, this is the man who brought Julius Caesar to life, making him terrifying, impressive, or dignified by turns and brought that infamous stabbing scene to gut-wrenching life, in a production that had a character we nicknamed Biggus Dickus, with lines like, "A large penis is always welcome" and had Gaius Octavius as some sort of masochistic sister-fucker.  My point?  He's been known to elevate his material more often than not.  

 

So it was so weird that he just look sort of puffy, wild-eyed and unkempt in his original turn as Mance. Last night he looked fifteen pounds thinner and apparently he lost those fifteen pounds from around the talent muffler he had to have been sporting in his first turn.  

 

And yeah, I swear Kit Harrington looked like he was borderline terrified and hella impressed in that tent scene.  After which he shook off the Jon Snore nickname and decided to try and keep the hell up with the big dogs.  

Edited June 16, 2014 by stillshimpy