Game of Thrones post-mortem

[Topaz]

Quarantine has certainly been good for one thing; catching up on my backlog. So yeah, I'm a little late with this, but I managed to finally watch through the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones, and... yikes.

I can tell you the exact moment when the show jumped the shark, right down the specific frame in fact. Right here:

It's a little silly that the Night King is able to throw an ice spear with super strength and accuracy, and even ends up 1-shotting a dragon with it. But it's completely and utterly ridiculous that he, for some reason, only pulls this stunt after the dragons arrive.

Quick reminder; the protagonists were standing in the middle of a frozen lake, surrounded by undead, for hours if not days.

And the Night King was standing there with them the whole time. If he's able to play sniper and pick things off with his magical spears, WHY DIDN'T HE TARGET JON SNOW AND THE OTHERS WHILE THEY WERE STOOD THERE!?

This whole scene and premise left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I found it hard to take the show seriously from that moment onward. I dunno... did anyone else find this too?
I get that there have been lots of silly or unbelievable scenes before this, but this one was just beyond stupid. No amount of suspension-of-disbelief could help here.

On a more positive note, I liked how they essentially turned Daenerys into 'the mad queen' at the end. That was a nice touch.

 

[Breakdown]

It could have been a trap. The Night King needed a zombie dragon to blow up the wall. He didn't appear to have any other way of getting over it.

Season 7 was pretty stupid though.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Why you gotta open old wounds?

 

[Dalisclock]

It could have been a trap. The Night King needed a zombie dragon to blow up the wall. He didn't appear to have any other way of getting over it.

Season 7 was pretty stupid though.

I gave up after season 7. I couldn't take the stupid anymore. It wasn't just one thing but so many things that felt unexplained or inconsistent because apparently the writers were too high on blow and hookers....or something. Though the loss of Highgarden offscreen in a single episode with no explanation other then "Our defenses suck" was pretty bad.

I was also super annoyed when Cersai tries to offer Jon Snow a deal at the conference, he turns her down and everyone else chews him out for not taking it afterwards. So, seriously, you NEVER discussed this before the conference? This is part of her standard MO and something you should have known she would try, so the fact you never bothered to even talk about your response when she did try it baffles me.

After watching the chatter and reviews for season 8, it appears I made the right call.

 

[tippy2k2]

Had I not known that Season 8 was going to be the last one, I likely would have bowed out at Season 7

Everything that made Thrones so unique (no plot armor, complex characters, HODOR) was actively thrown away in Season 7. Especially the Plot Armor where I swear they were throwing the characters into situations that would have gotten them killed fifty times over if the source material were still in play just to specifically spite us. I think at some point, every fucking main character at some point in Season 7 was in a "Oh no, we'll never get out of this one gang!!!!" situation that needed to Deus Ex Machina there way out of.

Unlike many others, I was fine with how the show ultimately ended. It certainly didn't wow me or anything but it wasn't absolutely awful like many have said. Except maybe Bran, that was pretty friggin stupid. Other than that, it was an OK ending.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm glad I stopped weatching this show after season 4.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

I had read the books before watching the show so I was pretty happy with how things were going.

Then they ran out of source material and had to go free-hand, that's when it all went downhill.


Cute girl but horrible dialogue

 

[Samtemdo8]

All I can say is that I fucking called it that this show might have a botched conclusion.

When I first learned of the overall set up and plot I was like "there is no way they can solve all the plot points they have in this series in a satisfactory manner"

And ended up being worse then I thought with how rushed it all was.

This show definitely ended up like Mass Effect 3 in terms of disappointment.

Pray the books don't suffer the same fate.

Personally for me, the show went downhill after the Red Wedding, Season 4 had issues and it only went further down from there.

 

[gorfias]

I'm glad I stopped weatching this show after season 4.

Honestly, Book 4 and 5 were OK. I liked the lead up to Cercie's walk of shame but, the series peaked with book 3. That book, and the show's take on it, were spectacular and it never hit those highs again.

ITMT: They had a huge challenge. The show started with the threat "Winter is Coming". Ice Zombies are coming. And then it turned into a fascinating study of characters in a medieval type war. At some point, they had to get back to the ice zombies and it got short shrift.

Imagine if a show starts out about 1950s space invaders but the Russo-American cold war comes front and center. The audience loves the cold war but by the end of the series, we need space invaders. Uck.

BTW: My favorite things in all this fail? Gendry gets some. Good on him. And I rather loved Clegane Bowl.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Season 8 was such a hot mess that I kinda enjoyed it in that regard. Though the episode that is nothing but a battle was so boring to watch. I was kinda watching from the start to see the whole thing get burned down at the end and yeah, the whole thing got burned down in a much different sense.

And the Night King was standing there with them the whole time. If he's able to play sniper and pick things off with his magical spears, WHY DIDN'T HE TARGET JON SNOW AND THE OTHERS WHILE THEY WERE STOOD THERE!?

This whole scene and premise left such a bad taste in my mouth, that I found it hard to take the show seriously from that moment onward. I dunno... did anyone else find this too?
I get that there have been lots of silly or unbelievable scenes before this, but this one was just beyond stupid. No amount of suspension-of-disbelief could help here.

Don't you remember the scene where I think the black chick gets killed and there's the dragon sitting in the middle of the field and the castle walls have those dragon killing crossbow things? Cersai could've killed the dragon right there pretty easy...

Personally for me, the show went downhill after the Red Wedding, Season 4 had issues and it only went further down from there.

Same here, I wasn't really ever "into" the show after the Red Wedding, it was a trudge to get through to the fireworks basically.

 

[laggyteabag]

I enjoyed Game of Thrones, up until the big battle against the White Walkers in Season 8.

In Season 7, I started to see the cracks, but I still really enjoyed the season. My biggest issue then, was the emergence of plot-armour for some of the characters. GoT was a series that I really enjoyed, because it had proven itself time and time again, that this was a show where no one was safe, and every time someone got themselves into a risky situation, there was a real threat that this might be the end of this character. It was always tense.

Then Jaime Lanister charged Danny and her Dragon with a spear, and Bronn appeared out of nowhere, to dive him out of the way, and both into safey.

Or the time where Jon Snow and the boys went beyond the wall, and encountered a literal army of the dead and a bunch of white walkers, and the only casualties were a bunch of no-names, and a couple of side characters who had not been relevent for years.

Or when they "killed" The Hound in an earlier series, and then decided to bring him back.

But ultimately, I was still very satisfied with the show.

I started to realise that something was going to be very wrong with Season 8, when it was only going to have 6 episodes, yet we still had the entire literal army of the dead to deal with, and also Cersei and her bullshittery - so this series had to get on with it quick.

And it did not.

2 episodes in, and nothing of consequence had happened. Don't get me wrong, they were enjoyable episodes, but realising that now there were only 4 episodes left, and still nothing had happened... it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Or at least, it would have been like watching a car crash, if I could actually see what was on my screen. Im sure if I was watching on some 4K OLED TV in a perfectly dark room, I would have appreciated it more, but all I saw was smoke and a shaky cam.

The amount of plot armour and sheer stupidity that occured from this point, was just baffling. Here is what I can remember from the top of my head:
Why did the Dothraki horde charge blindly into the night?
Why did Sam survive?
Who thought it was a good idea to put literally anyone into the Crypt for protection? You mean this literal room of dead people?
Why is it that this Dragon has no problems melting the magically protected Wall of the North, but couldnt do anything against some random rock that Jon Snow hid behind?
What was Brann even doing?
Arya Stark is a literal 18 year old girl who spent at most a year or two training to be an assassin, and you are telling me that she can sneak past the literal army of the dead to kill a thousands of years old fucking embodiment of death with nothing but a "but what if I drop the knife and catch it in my free hand?" trick?

Complete bollocks.

The rest of the show just sort of continued on with that quality of writing, and let me tell you, once I stopped caring about the show, and was in it just to see this thing crash and burn... I was having a blast. Like, what do you mean Danny and the crew "just forgot" about the entire Iron Fleet? What do you mean you spent all that time discovering that Jon was actually next in-line to the throne, and you did nothing with it? Comdedy gold.

The sad consequence, though, is that I just cant watch the show anymore. Sure, the older seasons are still great, but knowing where all of this plotting and setup ends up - I just cant invest myself in this show anymore.

Its just a bit sad.

 

[BrawlMan]

Never saw the big deal with the show. My brother watched like seasons 1-5, and stopped. He nearly forgot the show existed.

 

[Gordon_4]

I keep wondering why anyone thought a show and book series who has revelled in pointing out everything stupid about destiny and chosen ones etc was ever going to end in any other way than all the epic players dead or departed and the scrappy bottom feeders divvying up the charred remains of the seven kingdoms.

I mean, my desired ending was just Tyrion, Bron, Arya, the Hound, Podrick and maybe Jamie sitting around a table in a tavern having a drink and Bron says “Well, on balance I think we did very well out of that” and cut to black as everyone nods and murmurs their agreement.

 

[happyninja42]

Never saw the big deal with the show. My brother watched like seasons 1-5, and stopped. He nearly forgot the show existed.

I never saw the huge draw of the books myself. I read I think the first...3 maybe? Maybe 4, I don't recall, but the books were so damn annoying, especially one book, I can't remember which one, but like half of the chapters were from the perspective of Cersei and Sansa. Both of which are terrible characters. One is an insane, power hungry ***** who constantly schemes and plots in everything she does, and the other is a vapid 14 year old girl who is still fluttering and being stupid, reacting like everything is a fairy tale, and not a brutal fucking world. And the part that galled me, was that their chapters...are written from their perspective. So i have to keep diving into the internal dialogue of an insane, homicidal tyrant, with an ego to fill an ocean, and the internal dialogue of a teen girl, who is specifically written as the most vapid teen girl stereotype that exists. And, it just broke me. I couldn't keep reading that shit. The book was almost entirely their viewpoints, rarely jumping to anyone else, and if they did, it was for chapters that were MAYBE 10 pages. Then it's back to a 75 page chapter of Sansa being an idiot! yay!! 2 pages about Aria or Jon, 100 pages of Cersei!!

Just, fuck that shit. It was terrible.

The show was fine, I enjoyed it for most of the run and watched to the end, but yeah the last season or 2 I was mostly just watching it to see how it ended. I had stopped really having any investment in the characters.

 

[BrawlMan]

Just, fuck that shit. It was terrible.

The show was fine, I enjoyed it for most of the run and watched to the end, but yeah the last season or 2 I was mostly just watching it to see how it ended. I had stopped really having any investment in the characters.

The problem with shows like GoT & Breaking Bad is people and the networks themselves over hype them too much. And at the end of the day, most of the characters ain't deep or complex, but just a bunch of unsympathetic assholes or sociopaths. And then you had the obnoxious fans or viewers doing things like this:


You know the saying from Public Enemy (they started it) or Snap: Don't Believe the Hype.

 

[Breakdown]

I feel the writers missed a great opportunity for a post credits sequence after the final episode. You have the small council sitting round, joking about Tyrion not being in that book. They hear screams outside, and look out the window to see King's Landing in flames once again. And then Bran wheels into the room and says "good news, guys. I found Drogon and brought him back!"

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I keep wondering why anyone thought a show and book series who has revelled in pointing out everything stupid about destiny and chosen ones etc was ever going to end in any other way than all the epic players dead or departed and the scrappy bottom feeders divvying up the charred remains of the seven kingdoms.

Oh, I was only watching to see the whole thing burn down from the 1st season (I'm like "oh, those dragons are gonna hatch, get big, and burn it all down, I can't wait"). I figured it would get all burned in like a good way vs getting burned down in a "so bad, it's good" kinda way. Too much plot armor in the last season too.

 

[happyninja42]

The problem with shows like GoT & Breaking Bad is people and the networks themselves over hype them too much. And at the end of the day, most of the characters ain't deep or complex, but just a bunch of unsympathetic assholes or sociopaths. And then you had the obnoxious fans or viewers doing things like this:


You know the saying from Public Enemy (they started it) or Snap: Don't Believe the Hype.

Yeah I've never had much interest in watching shows about assholes. Where the main drive of the show is "look at how much of an asshole they are." It's why I never got into Rick and Morty, or Breaking Bad. Never saw The Wire but I've never been a fan of political/spy/espionage stories so it wasn't something I planned to watch anyway.

The thing with GoT was that there were other, non-asshole characters you could root for, and while they did stick around until the end, the....bizarre clusterfuck of narrative decisions made with the various plots, just made the whole thing frustrating.

I'm fine with changing things to adapt it to a different medium, you just HAVE to do that in some ways when going from book to visual. But...yeah it just got weird near the end. I won't go into details, because frankly I don't remember the show well enough to do so, nor care about it enough to do so. Besides you can find DAYS worth of videos on the internet of people explaining at length what they did wrong.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Watched 2-3 series because people kept telling me "Keep at it, it gets good". IMHO, it didn't. I get that you've got zillions of dollars, lots of special effects and loads of legitimately good actors so things should be good, but no, doesn't work like that. Sticking more gratuitous rape in to up the grimdark does not improve your show.

 

[BrawlMan]

Yeah I've never had much interest in watching shows about assholes. Where the main drive of the show is "look at how much of an asshole they are." It's why I never got into Rick and Morty, or Breaking Bad. Never saw The Wire but I've never been a fan of political/spy/espionage stories so it wasn't something I planned to watch anyway.

I used to enjoy Rick and Morty, but then I saw how much of a douchebag Rick, and especially Beth (one of the most despicable mothers in animation history. Worse than Gothel, and almost as bad as Ragyo Kyurin) are. And I fot f@cking tired of it Rick screwing Morty, and by exention his family in increasingly stupid or contrived ways. If the show does not end with say, Morty and Summer becoming full adults and better than parents and grandfather, a la Morel Oral, I don't wanna bother. Speaking of a show nothing, but assholes, Black Lagoon is even worse. That show/manga is nothing but 95% nihilism from know-nothing-know-it-all criminals who gives speeches on nothing but how the world sucks or how what everyone does is pointless. If that's the case, why do any of the shit, you're doing matters. Even characters from other cynical settings, would tell most of the characters to grow the f#ck up or give them a huge wake up call. In fact, one fan fic I remember, someone did with the Punisher. Let's just say he shook up Ronpaur in ways the citizens never expected.