Ho ho holy shit. That was bad. I give the season credit for having 2 or 3 spectacle moments that I genuinely enjoyed, but the finale was back to the writing, and the writing was extremely bad. I used to hack on the show by saying without the source material it was like a grimmer Xena Warrior Princess but I begin to feel that's unfair to Xena, which I assume at least had some solid Warrior Princessing.
THE BAD
1. Opens with yet another long, cock-centric bit of dialogue. The writers are obsessed with cocks. Cock this, cock that. Can't think of a line for a character? Have him comment on cocks. It's hilarious, and gritty!
2. I see the Unsullied have teleported across Westeros. Such an inconvenience having that fleet of theirs burned. Although it totally wasn't, and made absolutely no difference to the plot whatsoever.
3. The Hound facing down his undead brother was a damp squib of a scene that amounted to nothing.
4. The point is driven home again and again that Daenerys controls the much larger, more dangerous, more capable force. And also has the dragons. Why on earth was all this globetrotting even necessary to enlist the help of the Lannisters? It's just SO badly written and poorly conceived. It's like something out of a really shaky YA series where verisimilitude takes a complete back seat to plot convenience.
5. Euron Greyjoy...no offense to Pilou Asbaek, but this is probably the worst portrayal of the most poorly written character in the entire series, and that's including the abominable Sand Snakes. He absolutely DESTROYS every scene he's in, and not in the colloquial sense. Just sneering and prancing around like a pantomime villain from a bad 80's direct to video movie. It's actually kind of staggering how terrible he is.
6. Heady's wig looked worse than usual this episode.
7. Brienne: "Fuck loyalty". You've got a real handle on the character of Brienne, writers.
8. Why did Tyrion need to go talk to his sister? Forget what happened, think about the logic of even making the suggestion. Why him? Why would that make a difference? Ludicrous.
9. The writers had absolutely no idea what to do with Littlefinger. The character and his scheming required defter plot manipulation than they were capable of, and it's clear that George's broad outline did not account for the character's full arc. So instead, we get this Shaggy Dog nonsense and another opportunity for Arya to be a TOTAL FOOKIN BADASS LOOK HOW COOL U GUYZ.
10. On that point, let's just admire how mid-teens Arya became a super saiyan ninja assassain with one year of training. SO COOL OMG. I've seen anime more grounded than this horseshit.
11. Cersei did a betrayal! What a surprise! Wow! Such writing! A betrayal! From Maleficent!
12. Theon wins a fight with his magic power of not having a cock! I'm serious guys the writers are absolutely obsessed with cocks there's at least one scene about them in every episode.
13. The imminent rescue of "Yara" marks the end of a whole sidebar plot that was a wholesale invention of the show, was never good, and has ultimately amounted to abhorrent stupidity. Well done show.
14. Bran's only supposed to see things that occur in front of Weirwoods. Wedding of Rhaegar? Ok. Baelish holding a knife to Ned's throat? NOPE. He's not Professor X, idiots.
15. Speaking of Bran, could his character be even MARGINALLY useful? Does he do anything other than sit around acting weird and aloof and then spouting out random factoids whenever the plot requires it?
16. CGI Ice Dragon was moving too quickly on his strafes and looked VERY CGI as a result. The show usually does an above average job with their CGI and this should have been a cool spectacle so it was a bit disappointing.
17. Shut up Beric you're not even supposed to be alive.
THE GOOD
1. Some nice scenic shots.
2. Cersei's line drop on "It would probably be an improvement for most of them" was awesome.
Here's hoping the final 7 episodes have more large scale CGI spectacles and less talking. Zero talking would be okay.
