Game of Thrones season 5 - Your thoughts now that it's over

[irishda]

The books and the show could never meld properly. The show's at its peak when its focused and can let its many talented actors flex their muscles. The books are at their peak with the rich history of the world and the expansive characters. But the problem with that is a TV show can't handle the weight of so many characters and sidetracking back stories without seeming aimless or wandering. Lost is about as close as I can think to a show with so many important characters, but that was mainly balanced well by having them in one location, not thrown all over the world, and with more episodes (GoT is far too expensive to have an extended season). So they have to cut a lot of fat from the books in order to streamline the show. I can agree with this. We lose Victarion and Euron and Strong Belwas and Maester Marwyn (so far) and so on and so on, but we get more time with the more important characters and the story moves faster.

OT: This season I was hugely disappointed with how slow the story moved. A good season requires resolution to feel like a complete chapter, with just enough open endings to keep the audience asking for more. But we got almost nothing but loose threads with very few resolutions because very little actually happened. The North is the only place where things are progressing reasonably. Stannis saw his character arc completed (maybe?), the Boltons have secured Winterfell, but now must find Sansa (the Manderlys cometh?), Davos finds himself without a king, Jon Snow needs help again, and Brienne remains bad at keeping promises.

The only other positives were the rise of the High Sparrow, and Varys and Tyrion set up to recreate Season 2 magic in Mereen. Dorne could still come out as a positive if my hope that Doran is actually more similar to his book counterpart proves true. After all, he didn't explicitly state what he was referring to when he said "I don't believe in third chances." But if not, he's about as interesting as his chair.

And, as with everything else I talk about in GoT, Dany remains the worst character in book and in show.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

But the problem with that is a TV show can't handle the weight of so many characters and sidetracking back stories without seeming aimless or wandering.

While I do agree that the books have a ridiculous number of ancillary characters and it was a heavy load for any show to handle, this IS something of an excuse. HBO had another show called The Wire, which also had a stupendous number of characters to keep track of along with byzantine political plotting and a lot of high level procedural mumbo jumbo to keep straight. Not only did they manage, but it was widely considered the best show in the history of the medium.

There are inescapable issues of pacing and budget that will haunt a show like GoT, but SO many of their wounds are self-inflicted. They're not casualties of the medium, they are casualties of stupid decision making and bad writing.

 

[the_dramatica]

Glad John Snow is finally dead.

 

[Terminal Blue]

You've got downright amazing things like the battle of hardhome, following up by Stannis sacrificing his daughter for nothing and his entire campaign falling apart because Ramsay is such a Gary Stu he can set the food stories for an entire fucking army on fire without anyone noticing, and then the woman who was practically begging Stannis to sacrifice their daughter gets cold feet at the last second? NO!

Apologies to Frankster, who I initially quoted. I botched the quotation.

I feel there's a lot of subtext and interesting possibilities for Stannis plot which just wasn't addressed very well in the show.

The thing is, he's spent his entire plotline basically being hyped. His army literally believes he is the messiah come to save the world, Melisandre has told him he's the messiah come to save the world, and despite initially being a cynic it's obvious that Stannis has increasingly bought his own hype. When news came about the impending wildling invasion, the smart, cynical thing to do would have been to do what everyone else did and say "nah, fuck it.. I'm not going to waste my army when it could be winning the throne." The old Stannis would have done that, but Stannis' hype says he has to save the world so off he goes.

But as I argued when I predicted that Stannis would kill Shireen, the problem with being a hero is that it's not just about you and what you want any more. If the world is at stake, would a hero do anything less than required to save it? The point is, we all love our heroes in fantasy fiction but in reality being a hero is a terrible curse, it's being called on to sacrifice everything, if needs be, for a greater cause. There are real heroes out there right now, they're all getting their limbs blown off by IEDs or developing PTSD from having to stitch car crash victims together. It isn't fair that someone has to do that, but sadly they do.

The nasty little twist in the tale is that, in the end, barring some enormous twist, it turns out Stannis wasn't even the hero he was hyped up to be, just a guy who would have lived far longer and more happily if he'd just stayed on Dragonstone, accepted that his brother was going to be king and made the best of what he had. As it turns out, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.

Honestly, I like that.. It's probably the most subversive thing either game of thrones or song of ice and fire has actually done and I hope it was GRRM's intention, so we can have a more developed and well explained version in the books. The fact that Stannis was getting so much IRL hype from the fans as well, with this whole "Stannis the Mannis" thing, kind of made it even more perfect.

As for Meli, you have to remember that Meli is a hero too (I'm pretty sure R'hlor is basically the god of dramatic heroism). She's fighting a war, and it's not even Stannis' War for the throne, it's the ultimate battle between good and evil. If she loses, the world dies. She wasn't there because she really likes Stannis and wants him to win, she was there because she believed he was the hero who alone could save the world.. and she suddenly realized what he didn't seem to until right at the end, that he wasn't and he couldn't. Sure, she abandoned him, but that's who she is. She'd sacrifice anyone or anything, because again that's what heroes do when they need to do it.

I could be reading a lot into stupidity, but it's not because I'm a fanboy. I'll happily criticize stuff I think is genuinely stupid, like that Dorne bollocks. But honestly, the Stannis thing was kind of brilliant and the fact that it pissed people off is actually kind of part of why.

 

[Remus]

Glad John Snow is finally dead.

"Oh you think he's dead do you?"

These were his exact words. There are ways that Jon could survive death right there at the camp, not the least of which walked in shortly before he was stabbed.

 

[OhNoYouDidnt]

Snippersnapper

Well, I guess. It's just that I was under the (not terribly unreasonable) impression that the show was meant to be an adaptation of the books, instead of what is basically televised fanfiction.

 

[sky14kemea]

Watch out, the guy's (Minnyb) comment above mine contains a malicious link.

Good spot! I'll deal with it from here. :3

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It was mediocre. It had a hard act to follow because I feel like season 4 was one of the strongest seasons. That season also tied up many of the plots which began in season 1. In many ways, season 5 was like totally starting over and starting to really shift the focus of the show. Unfortunately, it felt rushed but at the same time, not much really seemed to happen. The things that did happen, happened in a way that felt rushed and awkward.

I've heard they only want the show to be 7 seasons and if that means dropping half the plots and tearing through stuff, that makes me kind of sad. Of course, if you are worried about wasting screen time, why so much wasted plot in Dorne? This season also had a lot of really cringeworthy action and acting. It also began to strain credibility in several spots due to coincidences, especially with Brienne.

It had its moments but we'll see. I knew season 5 was going to be a shaky season compared to the rest so I'll hold back judgement until season 6. I should also mention I am not a book reader and I don't really care if the show is 'defiling' the books. The books will always be there, just let the show be whatever it wants to be and then decide which you prefer or enjoy both.

PS: Why did we waste so much screen time on Dorne and the sand snakes again? What a waste.

 

[freaper]

I thought it was rather slow compared to the other seasons. Nothing happened during the first six episodes, only to dump everything at the end. The only episode I really liked was the one where they go and gather all the Free Folk up north and the zombie battle ensues -on a side note, has anyone else noticed that this series has MORE zombies than the Walking Dead? You've got the magic zombies (walkers), the disease zombies (dragonscale) and now the Mountain has become the science zombie.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

If you thought a series like 'A Song of Ice and Fire' would make it largely verbatim into a televised format, you haven't been paying attention to the history of cinematic adaptation.

I don't think this is the complaint, though. I hesitate to use the word "straw man", but a person would have to be a fucking idiot to think the books were going to make it to the screen unchanged. It's not that they change things. It's what they change, and why. Or rather, the lack of any plausible or rational explanation as to why.

I used to say ASOIAF was fundamentally unfilmable. Too many characters, too many CHILD characters, too much world building complexity, elapses over too large a window of time. And for a couple of seasons, they managed to show me up. It was hardly the books intact, but it was a pretty reasonable cinematic adaptation.

However, as time has gone on, the show has been suffering from an inexplicably pronounced degree of adaptation decay. There is no "translation from book to screen" that demands the changing of character identities or the introduction of plot lines made entirely from whole cloth (such as S5's Dorne). That showrunner inventions from S2 onward have been amongst the most ridiculed and despised aspects of the show (amongst book readers and the unspoiled alike) and the most popular moments and speeches were almost all lifted from the books verbatim raises the question of "What are they doing?" and "Why are they doing it?". Harsher critics than me have speculated that its the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action, but I'd like to think the guys who came up with Hardhome are capable of better things than Karl Fookin' Tanner or "De Bad Pussy".

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Again, on one hand you're dismissing the expectation and desire for GOT to be ASOIAF, and on the other you're ignoring the reality that as soon as the showrunners had fan feedback, it started to change.

Yeah, again...I'm not "complaining that it had to change". I'm asking how you defend the quality/intelligence of the changes that were made as the inevitable result of the translation from book to screen.

It's TV, which is a fundamentally pandering medium.

How so? That's quite a claim. Why is television "fundamentally pandering" in a way that other mediums are not?

 

[Silvanus]

Did Darkstar appear in the 5th season? Remember the character being pretty silly with a meteorite sword (or something, though I might be mistaken).

Nope, no Darkstar.

Ellaria Sand did play a semi similar role in the season finale, though...

Spoiler: S5E10 Spoiler

... Poisoning Myrcella.

Overall, the Dorne plot was probably the most significantly changed. It bore almost no relation to that in the book.

 

[OhNoYouDidnt]

If you thought a series like 'A Song of Ice and Fire' would make it largely verbatim into a televised format, you haven't been paying attention to the history of cinematic adaptation.

There's a world of difference between pruning the source material to make it more compatible for television as medium and making completely unnecessary changes that are, as I said, about the same quality as fanfiction. Okay, as much as I dislike their decision to do it, I can understand leaving out the Iron Islands plot. There's only so much you can cram into ten 50-minute-episodes.

But the whole business with swapping Jeyne Poole with Sansa? Karl "Fookin' Legend" Tanner? Special Agents Jaime and Bronn traipsing around Dorne? You can't justify those changes with "You can't adapt A Song of Fire and Ice verbatim to television". You just can't. Let's be honest: They're creative decisions made by the showrunners because (presumably) they thought it would be cool, and we book fundamentalists universally feel that these changes are atrocious. It's as simple as that.

(On an unrelated note... Apparently, this new Captcha format demands you answer a simple question correctly. I'm slightly saddened that answering "Elephant" to the question "Which one of these is math?" results in a Captcha error.)