TV: Game of Thrones | Season 8 (Final) | Part XIII -TV talk ONLY -NO Books, Spoilers, NO LEAKS

[Osprey]

As for the idea that this middle ground exists. Go read the three largest subs on reddit. They are all salt mines. Anyone who even attempts to make an intelligent defense of he season gets downvoted into oblivion.

Two or three posters are just bringing that crap here. They know who they are and they know what they are doing. It’s your prerogative to pretend we don’t have trolls in our midst right now.

The acknowledgment that only "two or three posters" here are from the bad extreme appears to contradict the notion that there is no middle ground. You're posting on the middle ground and don't seem to see it because you're so focused on characterizing the majority of the fan base by what's happening on Reddit.

We're not the ones personally insulting others' taste or intelligence.

The worst thing I've said is some of the criticisms are silly and folks focus on "plot holes" way too much. We've been called sheep, don't know what bad writing is, popcorn eaters, and many other things. In this thread and the last.

A person's opinion on a show can't be wrong.

When you mock, laugh at or roll your eyes at people, you're insulting them just as if you'd called them a name. You're also implying that their opinion is wrong.

 

[NyQuil]

While the show certainly deserves criticism, who cares that Missandei is a person of colour and Yara is a lesbian? What does that have to do with anything? Does a medieval fantasy show have to follow 2019's inclusion standards? If so, Jon should be a full-figured black trans-woman who don't need no man or cis-gender woman by her side to be the real Queen of the Seven Kingdoms!

This conversation is not going to be productive.

 

[NyQuil]

Scenario #4 has Arya running around killing everyone in their way and Sansa then as Queen. This is possible if Daenerys dies in battle and Jon says no... or Jon is dead.

Or, perhaps she marries the newly titled Gendry and manipulates him to gain control of the throne. That would be easy. Maybe a Tyrion whom she can send off on his drunken ways and then rule in his stead.

Now that you think of it, I guess that wouldn't be so bad. Then Arya wouldn't have to kill everyone left.

I’ve said Sansa on the throne before this season started.

She was the most unlikeliest person from Book 1 aside from maybe Moon Boy.

 

[NyQuil]

Just be careful out there with people going with their theories for the final 2 eps. For some reason a guy on 4Chan and Reddit leaked some key plot points for ep4-5-6 before last week's ep and he was spot on for ep4. Which leads people to believe his ep5 and 6 key plot points are going to be true.

That’s why I avoid the crazy fan sites.

Hopefully people here are more casual.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

I’ve said Sansa on the throne before this season started.

She was the most unlikeliest person from Book 1 aside from maybe Moon Boy.

She could easily turn in to Cersei 2.0. Right down to the innocent beginnings, etc.

I really could see her new rule as being a spin-off series as women in power has been in full Hollywood swing for a while.

I'm sure there would be plenty of people trying to topple her and her descent in to cruelty would be enjoyable to watch. Arya dancing around the kingdom killing and torturing people. Very GRIM like.

All in the name of family! lol

 

[discostu]

If they really want to commit to the story arc of Sansa learning everything from Littlefinger, they should have her take over his brothel business in Kings Landing.

 

[Richard]

People forget that the Starks are descendant from the first men= the early Starks were more like Ramsey Bolton than Ned Stark....

 

[NyQuil]

Jon might be a good King but he’d be a very short-lived one.

Ned tried to do the right thing and ended up looking naive and incompetent.

I’d say Tywin would have been the strongest ruler of Westeros. Machiavellian but not cruel for its own sake.

Underestimated his son in the end I guess.

We are often blind to our children’s strengths or flaws.

Sansa might be the closest thing left to Tywin.

 

[Shareefruck]

There are folks who conflate "criticism" with "personally insulting the showrunners and nitpicking the smallest, most mundane aspects of television in general."

It also doesn't help that whenever the few of us that are enjoying this final season "defend" something about it, we get insulted in some fashion subtly or otherwise.

This show, like every other show, has a cavalcade of problems. I was seething at the Hound/Sansa exhange. I don't like how Brienne became a sad housewife after one night with Jaime. They tore her down to prop up Jaime and finish his character arc. Missandei was killed unceremoniously despite being one of two people of color on the show. The only queer character "took back the Iron Islands" and has disappeared entirely in Yara. These are things I don't like about the show. Roll your eyes if you want. It's more impactful to me than poor battle strategy.

I try to focus on the good. There's a lot of good, in my opinion. A lot of folks want to say they are doing good and being critical, but they're really just poisoning the well. The discourse is so toxic.

Personally, I've found your reactionary behavior/compulsion to dismiss those who you've disagree with, and your attempt to paint them a certain way to be much more toxic than people simply pointing out legitimate gripes that they have and having a low opinion of the creators abilities, no matter how harshly (or seemingly nitpicky to you) that they do that.

You can try to focus on the good if you want, but I don't see that as being any more sensible than those who have no interest in softening their views in the same way. Personally, I sincerely dislike the idea of having that attitude, myself, and would never subscribe to that.

As mentioned, people have all kinds of attitudes and opinions about these kinds of things, and they should be able to co-exist and argued without this tribalistic narrative-building crap. Saying "I can respect people having SOME gripes like I do, but I don't respect people who have NOTHING but gripes-- It's too nitpicky and negative and goes too far!" is really no better than outright insulting someone for liking something or for choosing to ignore flaws that they see. The fact that you've encountered people from the other side who behave even worse and have similarly crossed the lines of mere disagreement is no justification for you to do the same.

I would also argue that you seem to be appealing to neutrality in a way that is a fallacious. An opinion isn't inherently more fair, level-headed, or respectful just because it's closer to a neutral/ambivalent position with equal parts praise/criticism, and an opinion isn't less fair or respectful just because it's positioned at either extreme (either seeing zero redeeming qualities in something/having nothing but complaints or thinking that something legitimately does everything perfectly).

The acknowledgment that only "two or three posters" here are from the bad extreme appears to contradict the notion that there is no middle ground. You're posting on the middle ground and don't seem to see it because you're so focused on characterizing the majority of the fan base by what's happening on Reddit.



When you mock, laugh at or roll your eyes at people, you're insulting them just as if you'd called them a name. You're also implying that their opinion is wrong.

Exactly.

 

[discostu]

Jon might be a good King but he’d be a very short-lived one.

Ned tried to do the right thing and ended up looking naive and incompetent.

I’d say Tywin would have been the strongest ruler of Westeros. Machiavellian but not cruel for its own sake.

Underestimated his son in the end I guess.

We are often blind to our children’s strengths or flaws.

Sansa might be the closest thing left to Tywin.

What makes a good leader has been one of the most central themes on this show, and my biggest fear with the ending is that it gives us something that doesn't feel true to the series. I have trouble seeing anyone being able to rule Westeros for any significant length of time.

My one hope for this series has always been that the finale brings with it a sense of some stability, even if it isn't a happy ending per se. I would feel let down if the show ends, but you can sense unresolved conflict around the corner that would lead to another lengthy period of unrest.

I've always struggled to think of a way that they can do that though, and with two episodes left, not feeling super confident.

 

[Blender]

What makes a good leader has been one of the most central themes on this show, and my biggest fear with the ending is that it gives us something that doesn't feel true to the series. I have trouble seeing anyone being able to rule Westeros for any significant length of time.

My one hope for this series has always been that the finale brings with it a sense of some stability, even if it isn't a happy ending per se. I would feel let down if the show ends, but you can sense unresolved conflict around the corner that would lead to another lengthy period of unrest.

I've always struggled to think of a way that they can do that though, and with two episodes left, not feeling super confident.

I hope we legitimately see the wheel get broken and have a completely different set up than just a new person on the Iron Throne controlling the Sever Kingdoms through their feudal vassals. Part of Daenerys' ongoing failure right now is that although she preached a ton about breaking the wheel, she seems determined to just replace it with her own.

 

[Blender]

 

[Ainec]

I read those ep 4-6 leaks because I cbf with this show and am only watching to see if my bets pay off

 

[Osprey]

I’d say Tywin would have been the strongest ruler of Westeros. Machiavellian but not cruel for its own sake.

Underestimated his son in the end I guess.

He underestimated his son's respect for his privacy. It's getting to be that you can't even answer the call of nature these days without being interrupted.

This show invents fleet-destroying wildfire and dragon-sniping ballista when they suit the plot, but can't invent a simple locking mechanism for the commode .

 

[McDNicks17]

I actually had a similar thought, but with Jon playing the Green Ranger's knife-flute thingie and Rhaegal coming out of the water.

 

[Emperoreddy]

He's easily my least favorite character on the show.

George commented once his chapters are the hardest to write. I don’t think even he knows what to do with Bran. He is too powerful.

If he wasn’t so aloof he could solve every problem instantly.

 

[JetsFan815]

Actually not really, or at least in the context we're looking at. Rapid evolutionist and sophistication of weaponry and tactics is a relatively modern thing from the past few centuries, for most of human history while you have milestones here and there things tended to change very little - in fact you often had periods of decline. And even when things did advance it doesn't really put them in a different league, like I'm not sure what the army numbers would be but that aside Julius Caesar and his Roman legions could arguably still take King Richard the Lionheart and his Crusaders 1200 years later.

But not going any further down that topic we're talking about Westeros here, a 300 year time span that's been relatively static and again in these era's things changed very little and could even regress. More importantly, we're talking about a type of ballista here, there's only so much a ballista can do but lets not get too much into that. Now it was pretty bad ass when the Night King took down a dragon, but Euron Greyjoy getting a perfect bullseye on his first shot before they even see him, followed by two (?) more direct hits, and then they freaking machine gun fire the fleet destroying it even better renaissance era cannon fire could, it was all just completely ridiculous.

The Ironborn writing and usage since season 5/6/7 is just as bad as the Dorne plotline was, except they've continued to be a factor and will be in use right down to the very end.

We went from fighting in the trenches with rifles to having planet destroying weapons in the space of 30 years between WW1 and the end of WW2. We went from soldiers fighting on horseback with swords and wearing armor to having planet destroying weapons in 300 years. Even in human history we have examples of rapid military technological advancement in a small period of time. Given that, it should be fairly easy to swallow that in a fictitious fantasy world a genius mad scientist (Qyburn) was able to perfect a paradigm changing weapon. Criticism on that front starts to look like people just looking for reasons to nit pick.

 

[JetsFan815]

The show would be much better if they spent their 50% of their visual budget on better writers.

Ever since season 5 or 6 they started to stop introducing new characters. This in my opinion, was a big mistake. Now they are stuck with the characters they do have and are too afraid of killing them off and filling their screen time. They use the golden company but where is Young Griff? Euron Greyjoy doesn't show up in the show, the atrocity that is in the show is not Euron. No Victarion Greyjoy. Where is Dorne? Who knows after the Sand Snakes disaster nobody knows where they are, basically left as a footnote in show.

They stopped including characters, now they are too afraid to kill of new ones because there are no replacements. This has been the case for multiple seasons now. Remember when they went North of the Wall with a bunch of main characters and nobody died because Danny teleported to them. What a ****ing disaster the show has become. Such a fall from grace.

Wait a second, so your criticism is that they cut out characters and storylines introduced in book 4 and 5 which in part contributed to the scope creep that is making the series a hell of a beast for even the original author to complete? If they had slavishly adapted season 5 or 6 as they are in the books, they would likely be in the same boat as Martin is and having a hell of a time closing the loops on all these storylines and characters.

 

[Vex]

Restarted the series.

I love how Winterfell looks before winter comes. What sucks is how they built up the direwolves. "If they die, you will bury them yourselves." "One for each child of House Stark." I don't particularly care about Ghost specifically, but that's unfortunate.

Can't believe the teleporting in this show. Robert Baratheon comes from King's Landing to Winterfell.

The Cat List

1. "You can always say no."
2. "No climbing."

 

[Osprey]

We went from fighting in the trenches with rifles to having planet destroying weapons in the space of 30 years between WW1 and the end of WW2. We went from soldiers fighting on horseback with swords and wearing armor to having planet destroying weapons in 300 years. Even in human history we have examples of rapid military technological advancement in a small period of time. Given that, it should be fairly easy to swallow that in a fictitious fantasy world a genius mad scientist (Qyburn) was able to perfect a paradigm changing weapon. Criticism on that front starts to look like people just looking for reasons to nit pick.

You overlooked a lot of what he said. He noted that rapid advancement has been a "relatively modern thing from the past few centuries" and that, "in the context we're looking at," advancement has been "relatively static" for the last few hundred years (at least). Westeros is very much based on medieval history, when human progress was very slow, almost static and sometimes even regressing, so RandV is right. It doesn't make sense to list examples of advancements in the last 100 years since Westeros is nowhere near that level of advancement. You'd have a better argument if you were to compare Qyburn to, say, Archimedes or Da Vinci, though they weren't successful at everything and their inventions didn't change paradigms practically overnight.

 

[Garo]

I mean, progress is all well and good, but ballistas that have modern warfare power and accuracy is still a little hard to believe, it's still "mechanical" technology.

... Not to mention that a paradigm changing weapon already exists in that universe, and it's magic and dragons. In a world that is explicitly static in technology, and in several points even backward compared to its past.

 

[Lshap]

Ultimately I think both sides have cases to be made, but they are arguing past each other.

-The quality of the show HAS gone downhill. I don't blame anyone in particular - it could be GRRM, it could be D&D, or it could be just too sprawling to resolve appropriately in the time available.

-The dialogue IS forced because every conversation has a specific key objective and they have to get there and move on as fast as possible. The subtlety of someone like Olenna Tyrell is long gone.

-A lot of people ARE overly critical because of their fanboy/girl relationships with their favourite characters.

-A lot of people ARE spending way too much time analyzing medieval tactics and technology at this point. We're in the endgame here - there's no time to spend 20-30 minutes lining people up and having these big setpiece battles between rival armies in historically accurate fashion. Again, I can understand some frustrations given the earlier battles in the series but everything about this season is about resolution within the time available.

-Personally, I don't think anyone here would really do much better. And I know I'll get tons of abuse because it would be SO SIMPLE to fix Game of Thrones but in reality, every decision you make just creates another group of people who hate that decision. It's death by a thousand cuts.

With Daenerys, it's a bit interesting, because this episode is really shaving down the possibilities:

1. She's been through the emotional wringer - she's lost two of her dragons, her best friend and advisor and her protector and bodyguard. This is further reinforced with the scene in the dining hall which highlighted her isolation from the Northerners and by proxy Westeros.

2. She's found out that her entire reason for being, the destiny complex that has essentially kept her going through innumerable challenges across the sea, the death of her family, of her brother, her husband, to unite the Seven Kingdoms, is technically not her legal right.

So the episode has gone out of its way to essentially paint her as a complementary figure to Cersei, as a tyrant, who is willing to do anything for the throne. To force her love to keep a secret from his family.

Either:

(a) With rather clumsy foreshadowing, she's determined to burn the city to the ground in revenge and destroy Cersei, possibly requiring some former friend or lover to put her down to save thousands of people.

OR

(b) That despite everything, despite what she's been put through by Cersei and others, she still manages to stay true to her original purpose of not being a tyrant. That she sacrifices herself to save the people or some such.

In either case, however, I don't see her on the Iron Throne.

Unfortunately, this development has not been slow, but rather rapid, over the course of one or (maybe?) two episodes. Again, I think the victim of expediency due to time constraints but you do have to acknowledge that the past few weeks have been pretty overwhelming for anyone.

This is as lucid a summary of the show as I've read anywhere. Excellent read.

 

[Gee Wally]

So. Do they kill off Mother of Dragons on Mother’s Day?

 

[Lshap]

What makes a good leader has been one of the most central themes on this show, and my biggest fear with the ending is that it gives us something that doesn't feel true to the series. I have trouble seeing anyone being able to rule Westeros for any significant length of time.

My one hope for this series has always been that the finale brings with it a sense of some stability, even if it isn't a happy ending per se. I would feel let down if the show ends, but you can sense unresolved conflict around the corner that would lead to another lengthy period of unrest.

I've always struggled to think of a way that they can do that though, and with two episodes left, not feeling super confident.

I'm hoping this overarching theme of leadership doesn't get lost, because I'd prefer to be left with a deeper message than 'Last Ass on the Throne Wins'. Give me political philosophy over special effects any day.

My guess (and my hope) is the entire monarchy is rendered obsolete. Turn the series into a polemic against lust for power. The various factions refuse to recognize whomever ends up on the throne, each group declares sovereignty, and the Iron Throne is either left an empty vessel or -- more likely -- melted down into a paperweight.

 

[Lshap]

So. Do they kill off Mother of Dragons on Mother’s Day?

If Independence Day can be reframed as an epic movie battle, I vote for Mothers Day becoming the ultimate showdown between Dragon-Mom and Incest-Mom.

Just don't be in the same restaurant as they face off waiting for the last table for brunch...