Game of Thrones....

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun May 12, 2019 6:30 pm

This guy fixed the previous episode and added some history as to why it would be better:

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Sun May 12, 2019 6:53 pm

rass wrote: ↑Sun May 12, 2019 4:36 pm The episode where Tyrion killed Tywin aired on Father’s Day. One of the two mothers (of Dragons or of two dead Kings) is dead tonight. Big limb.

The episode where Stannis had the daughter-b-que was also on Father's Day. I remember because I posted this:

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun May 12, 2019 7:23 pm

Yes, this is a couple weeks old, but I'm just now seeing it.

And man, does it make me hate the show a bit more...

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sun May 12, 2019 7:29 pm

Repeating what I said after watching episode again: I don’t think that Rae gal is dead. Don’t @me.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:21 pm

Bruh. Holy fuck.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:21 pm

For fucks sake. I don’t even know any more. Just finish it. Put me out of my misery.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:35 pm

I’m mostly interested at this point in how the ringer justifies this shit. In their defense they have been critical of this season. But wtf. Just a shitshow. Wait, now the dragons are badass? Fuck off.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:41 pm

[+] spoiler: Daeny turning Mad King and Cersei & Jamie dying the way they did is kinda shitty. So now what? Jon kills Daeny? This episode at least have us a bad ass Clegane Bowl, but otherwise, what was the point?

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:43 pm

George RR Martin weeps. If he finishes the books I’m reading. Cause this shit ain’t it.

[+] spoiler: for fucks sake you set Cersei up like that then she goes out like a bitch? Dadgummit.

rass · Post by **rass** » Sun May 12, 2019 9:45 pm

I think if they had earned that, if they hadn’t rushed everything, if the only setup hadn’t been last week’s shitshow, that exact episode could have been something great.

Except Euron. Fuck that dude.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Sun May 12, 2019 10:16 pm

Now I get it...

duff · Post by **duff** » Sun May 12, 2019 10:29 pm

[+] spoiler: Fuck this show. What a terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible episode.

Ooh, we had an undead big brother fighting his resilient little brother. All they hype for a real battle for that shit. Sure the eyeball thing was a nice call back, but wholly fuck, that was just awful.

Why didn't Dany burn the Iron Fleet up last week, like she did this week? Those dragon killing crossbows didn't seem to shoot as fast this week either, or with as much accuracy. Bull shit I say, bull shit!

Jon should have cut the head off Greyworm right from the beginning. Would have stopped that sackless bastard from heading off in love lost induced rage.

And seriously, what was the arc for Arya. Wander around the city for a bit with The Hound and then run off and wander around the city amongst the charred and maimed. Only to cause that mother and daughter to burn off dragon's fire. But what beautiful shots of a blood streaked, ash covered Arya wondering around to find a bloodied white horse to ride off on. Seriously, fuck the show runners. The only good show this season was the second episode. Why? Because it built story and no fucking dragons and their fucking barren womb of a mother.

Maybe Tyrion will end up ruling them all as the bastard son of Aegon and Mrs. Tywin Lannister. At least there will be lots of booze.

TT2.0 · Post by **TT2.0** » Sun May 12, 2019 10:34 pm

fuck what yall say, that was fun for me. I enjoy both the mad queen and the torching of kings landing.

Rush2112 · Post by **Rush2112** » Mon May 13, 2019 1:36 am

Visually beautiful, but nowhere near satisfying. My wife is a show fangirl and was like "that wasn't a very good episode."

I also hate how D&D say "think" a lot when describing the characters in the Behind The Thrones...we know fuckface you wrote this crap.

The cinematography is great...the rest. meh.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon May 13, 2019 8:00 am

This twitter thread is a REALLY good explanation of the tension we are feeling as viewers in terms of story between what we got used to and what the show has become (w/out being spoilery if that's still a concern of yours):

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Mon May 13, 2019 8:52 am

The point was that even people with the best intentions can grow disillusioned or perhaps mad enough to gravitate towards tyranny.

The point of Arya, was to have a birdseye view to get the full extent of how these war crimes manifested themselves, AND perhaps motivate her to seek a new target.

The point of Cersei going out like that is that what Dany was doing made Cersei terrified and irrelevant, so why shouldn't she have cowardly, irrelevant death?

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon May 13, 2019 8:56 am

The actors knew it didn't make much sense.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon May 13, 2019 8:58 am

Jerloma wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 8:52 am The point was that even people with the best intentions can grow disillusioned or perhaps mad enough to gravitate towards tyranny.

The point of Arya, was to have a birdseye view to get the full extent of how these war crimes manifested themselves, AND perhaps motivate her to seek a new target.

The point of Cersei going out like that is that what Dany was doing made Cersei terrified and irrelevant, so why shouldn't she have cowardly, irrelevant death?

Sounds good. None of that was earned - or built into the story - in the rush to end it. ESPECIALLY the first one - about Danerys.

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Mon May 13, 2019 9:05 am

tennbengal wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 8:58 am
Jerloma wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 8:52 am The point was that even people with the best intentions can grow disillusioned or perhaps mad enough to gravitate towards tyranny.

The point of Arya, was to have a birdseye view to get the full extent of how these war crimes manifested themselves, AND perhaps motivate her to seek a new target.

The point of Cersei going out like that is that what Dany was doing made Cersei terrified and irrelevant, so why shouldn't she have cowardly, irrelevant death?
Sounds good. None of that was earned - or built into the story - in the rush to end it. ESPECIALLY the first one - about Danerys.

Really? I thought it was clearly going that way since she got to Winterfell and especially after finding out who Jon is. She just needed a good trigger which ended up being watching her best friend decapitated for no good reason.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon May 13, 2019 9:17 am

She spent six seasons and however many show years championing those who were powerless and promising to fight for them. And then turns around and murders tens of thousands of those same types of powerless people to get to the throne? Literally, just turns on a dime and becomes what she has fought against at that juncture? It makes not very much sense.

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Mon May 13, 2019 9:28 am

Well, yeah...once we found out there was only going to be one 6 episode season left, it was kind of a given that these arcs were going to be rushed but I'm just saying that I don't have a problem with her turning heel. I think it fits, despite being rushed.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Mon May 13, 2019 9:30 am

There was obvious lead up to her Mad Queen heel turn.

Learning Jon is the true heir. Losing Missandei and Jorah -- with them alive they stop her. Saying things like "the slaves freed themselves" and that "she has no love here." In the scene with the Starbucks cup it was everyone giving Jon the props and she got nothing. So the "turn on the dime" aspect seems correct, but that's because Benioff and Weiss only wanted 13 episodes for these last 2 seasons instead of 20 like HBO wanted to give them.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Mon May 13, 2019 10:04 am

This guy's rants in the last few episodes have been somewhat entertaining.

TT2.0 · Post by **TT2.0** » Mon May 13, 2019 11:39 am

its only a heel turn if you ever thought she cared more for the people than the throne. This entire arc has been an example of power corrupting people...

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon May 13, 2019 12:19 pm

A few Deadspin writers fixed the issue - pretty simply actually:

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-bet ... 1834720538

Here, my friends, is How It Should Have Gone.

Okay. So. Stay with me, here. Two (but not all) of this season’s hardest-to-swallow moments related to the war for the Iron Throne have been:

In “The Last of the Starks,” the fourth episode of the season, Bugs Bunny-ass Euron Greyjoy popping out of nowhere with a huge fleet of Big Crossbow-armed warships that nobody noticed in broad daylight, and somehow fatally shooting a flying dragon (Rhaegal) full of holes from like a mile away. Broadly, the show has not seemed to have much use for Euron beyond deploying him as the hand of the writers to make wild shit happen all of a sudden, and mostly that’s been a cartoonish kind of fun, but this moment was pretty stupid and felt like an undisguised contrivance, something that happened not because the events of the show led to it, but because Dany’s future heel turn demanded it.

Dany, at what she could have taken as her moment of triumph, or even as the moment to get angry revenge on Cersei by flying straight to the defenseless Red Keep and melting it with dragon fire, seeming to make the deliberate choice to slaughter hundreds of thousands of unarmed commoners. Again: I liked this episode and I think having Dany ultimately fall into villainy is actually a cool and good story development! But in the moment, it felt like the show left vast dramatic potential on the table by failing to set this up in a way that made her choice appear both awful and unforgivable and also legible and rooted in her character, rather than a sudden snap into total madness explained as “Uh, Jon Snow rejected her and her Targaryen Insanity Gene just activated right then I guess.”

A better way to do it, that avoided both of those, would have gone like this:

First of all, Euron does not shoot Rhaegal down in “The Last of the Starks.” He still wipes out Dany’s fleet and captures Missandei, and Missandei still gets executed atop the wall of King’s Landing in front of Dany and Grey Worm and Tyrion. (Since all of the characters’ battle plans and movements have been driven by narrative need rather than strategic goals this season, the show could have had Dany and Jon flying the dragons somewhere else at the moment of Euron’s ambush, to make an opening for him to wipe out her fleet and capture Missandei without the dragons roasting his boats.) Dany is still hollowed-out and pushed to the edge by the loss of Missandei and the final breakdown of her trust in the people around her, but she enters the battle of King’s Landing with two dragons, and with Jon riding Rhaegal.

This avoids the silly, temporary attribute buffs both Euron and the Big Crossbows needed in order to make Rhaegal’s death happen the way it did. This way, when Dany attacks King’s Landing and makes quick, short work of all the dozens and dozens of Big Crossbows along the outer walls of the city, it makes better sense: We saw a Big Crossbow wound Drogon, so we know they’re dangerous, but we never saw Big Crossbows make a frickin’ pincushion out of a flying, moving dragon a mile away, with shots fired from the rolling deck of a moving boat, so there’s no reason to think they’re capable of doing anything like that, which is good, since that ought to be completely impossible even with weapons much cooler and more sophisticated than Big Crossbows.

So, Dany’s got two dragons; her on one, and Jon on the other. And just like in “The Bells,” she trashes the Golden Company and the Iron Fleet; she and Jon circle King’s Landing, wiping out the wall-mounted Big Crossbows, and she blasts a huge hole in the wall of city for her army to pour through. It becomes shockingly apparent, right away, that for all of Cersei’s small-time victories in the lead-up to this final battle, there’s still nothing to match two full-grown dragons and she cannot possibly hold the capital.

The people of King’s Landing surrender, just like they did in “The Bells,” by ringing, uh, the bells. The Lannister soldiers drop their swords. Dany and Jon perch Drogon and Rhaegal on high points and look toward the Red Keep. Maybe they share a weary but guardedly affectionate glance. And then Euron skewers a stationary Rhaegal through the fuckin’ eyeball* with a Big Crossbow heretofore hidden on one of the rooftops of King’s Landing!!!!

*In his writing, George R. R. Martin has made clear that the only previous time in the history of this fictional world that a weapon that wasn’t a dragon itself has ever killed a dragon was when a Dornishman landed a million-to-one shot from a Big Crossbow straight through the eye of a dragon, one of the only places where it was not protected by scales as hard as steel. In fact no subsequent attempts to kill dragons with Big Crossbows ever yielded so much as a serious wound. So this would be both a good nod to the written text and a plausible way for Euron to kill a dragon.

Dany can only watch in brain-melting shock and grief as one of her two remaining children—the loves of her life, the sources of her identity—whom she’d nurtured back from the brink after the Battle of Winterfell, topples to the streets dead as hell, killed pointlessly and vindictively at what should have been the end of a battle she’d already won. His fall takes down and (as far as she can tell) kills the doofus she still kinda loves and relates to, the one dude in all of Westeros who still unquestioningly supported her claim to the throne. And—oh shit, there are still big arrows flying at her, from an untold number of Big Crossbows still out there on the rooftops of King’s Landing, camouflaged on the rooftops of civilian buildings; she can’t even really tell where the big arrows are coming from!

It’s where a wiser leader, one more suited to the awesome power she’s spent her life working to claim for herself, might withdraw, marshal her resources, and commit to some combination of a siege and a house-by-house clearing of the city by her infantry. But in her rage and pain and sorrow, and painfully out of reach of all the advisors who’ve helped her rein herself in over the years, Dany reacts—not making a conscious, deliberate decision to do genocide to innocent people, but lashing out as a wounded dragon, as the thing she always has had inside of her, at both the Big Crossbows and at the entire society that has taken so much from her—and just fuckin’ lays waste to King’s Landing.

Pushed beyond her breaking point and separated from the people who care about her, in the moment, Daenerys Targaryen fully becomes, finally and for all time, the Mother of Dragons—and in so doing not only categorically disqualifies herself from ever being accepted or loved as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, but also forsakes her humanity and destroys her own soul. From there, “The Bells” plays out the way it did—only this way, it’s tragic! It reaches back farther than just the previous handful of episodes to fulfill and resonate with what’s been happening to Dany over the course of the whole run of the show! It changes what came across last night as a frankly evil and inexplicable conscious choice (Now I shall melt thousands and thousands of frightened children) into an uncontrollable firestorm of grief and fury! It leads to all the same breathtaking carnage “The Bells” delivered last night! Frankly, it rules!

This is how it should have gone. It wouldn’t have been perfect, and it still would have left huge chunks of the show’s audience feeling angry and betrayed; that was always guaranteed from the moment the show-runners decided to wrap up six seasons of unmanageable narrative sprawl with 13 rushed episodes of frantic ending-making. But if you take the broad outline of this ending as a given, and the series-best visual spectacle of “The Bells” as a must (and I do), then this would have been a way to arrive there via minimal changes to the backstory—and, crucially, it wouldn’t ask the audience to buy the incel-ass idea that getting rejected by Jon Snow is enough to turn a relatable protagonist into frickin’ Hitler.

Oh well.

Post by **Shirley** » Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm

Just watched it and I liked it. I get folks not liking it, but I would think that's more for the awfulness of what happened - innocents getting burned, our protagonist turning evil, Cersei going out relatively benignly, Jaime turning back to Cersei instead of staying on his moral swing, etc. But all of that pretty much fit the plot as they've been setting up. Dany as a potential Mad King II has been hinted at since she burned that witch alive in season 1. She's always had it in her. She tried ruling peacefully in Mereen and it was a disaster - she doesn't know how to rule, only how to conquer.

At times it was hard to watch, but for me, it wasn't because the plotting was stupid (like the previous episode), but merely because nobody likes seeing the bad guy win. Or in this case, the good guy win and then become the bad guy. But that's pretty real to how power has always worked - and it's been a theme of A Song of Ice and Fire since the first few chapters.

I did really want Jaime to find Cersei and kill her though. I hated that he went out like a bitch. If indeed he did go out.

Rush2112 · Post by **Rush2112** » Mon May 13, 2019 4:39 pm

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Tue May 14, 2019 12:47 am

phxgators · Post by **phxgators** » Tue May 14, 2019 7:52 am

Shirley wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm I did really want Jaime to find Cersei and kill her though. I hated that he went out like a bitch. If indeed he did go out.

Yeah, that's what I was waiting for too... The episode was fun to watch, but I didn't really like it. There are just too many loose ends at this point, with just the finale left. They could have trimmed the dragons destroying the city in half and still had plenty of destruction, then spend that time on other characters.

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Tue May 14, 2019 8:50 am

Shirley wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm I did really want Jaime to find Cersei and kill her though. I hated that he went out like a bitch. If indeed he did go out.

I mean, if the stab wounds didn't kill him, the castle that fell on top of him probably did.

Post by **Shirley** » Tue May 14, 2019 10:36 am

Jerloma wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 8:50 am
Shirley wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm I did really want Jaime to find Cersei and kill her though. I hated that he went out like a bitch. If indeed he did go out.
I mean, if the stab wounds didn't kill him, the castle that fell on top of him probably did.

Fair point. He was on borrowed time already. I still just wanted him to kill Cersei. But, the way it actually went down was probably truer and more interesting.

Post by **Shirley** » Tue May 14, 2019 10:48 am

BTW, the more I've thought about the episode, particularly Dany's burning of the city, the more I like it.

So often in modern depictions of historical events (I know this is fiction, but stay with me), we sort of whitewash how awful wars and conquests really were. Cities are razed. Innocents are slaughtered. Even in this show, the Dothraki regular ransacked cities - and they killed all the men, raped and killed all the women, and sold whoever they didn't kill as slaves. It's brutal.

Bronn summed it up in the last episode. All the current great houses came to be because some ancestor killed everyone who opposed him.

For Dany, she tried ruling as a benevolent leader in Mereen and it didn't work. There, like in Westeros, she was not one of them. So, while the freed slaves loved her, everyone else didn't and she got The Sons of the Harpy as a result. I think she thought of that as she saw the Lannister red cloaks surrender. Sure, they'll lay down their swords now when they're facing death, but what about in a month after things have settled? They have no reason to love Dany, especially once they learn that John has the better claim.

Add to that that Dany recently lost two dragons - her children in her mind - her two most-trusted friends in Missandei and Jorah, and then her lover, John (who turned away from her kiss the day before and who betrayed her trust). She didn't feel she had anyone she truly trusted and didn't believe she could make people love her.

So, she chose to rule with fear. The way to make them fear her was to make the people fear her dragon. Remember, she'd had a dragon shot out of the sky very recently, so there's reason to believe that people might not really fear her last dragon as they should. It's reasonable to believe that if she just accepted surrender and assumed the throne that plots to kill her dragon and dethrone her would be formed immediately.

So she decided to kill them all and start fresh with a terrified populace. It'll probably get her killed as well (I'm hoping Arya gets her), but it's a reasonable choice. Or as reasonable as you'd expect of someone like Dany.

Nonlinear FC · Post by **Nonlinear FC** » Tue May 14, 2019 1:59 pm

Yeah, I had absolutely no issue with how things went down re: King's Landing getting torched. Dany's heel turn had been progressing down that path and culminated in all of what Dave, er Shirley stated above.

As stated after last week (and just in general), I'm not coming to each episode pissed off and hate watching. (not saying you guys are hate watching, just an overall comment about what I'm seeing online the last 3 or 4 weeks.)

Now, I will say this: The whole "dragons can just get shot out of the sky" pivot to "a single dragon can completely wreck an entire fleet and massive city fortifications and now the dragon's fire can pretty much hydrogen bomb an entire city" was a bit much to take. I liked watching it, but the shift of the dragons being taken out with relative ease to this week's episode was a bit head spinning.

The other thing that REALLY bugged me was Euron popping up on that beach to shiv Jaime. I mean, come the fuck on with that. Just in general, they used Euron as essentially the great plot fixer upper this season. I get why they had to do it on some level, but it was pretty fucking annoying.

Oh, and not really a quibble, because I get why The Hound would do it, but, man... Just letting Cersei walk by when one No Look Sword Thrust into the back of her neck would've been pretty easy to do. That said, I thought his battle and ultimately taking out The Mountain that way -- into the fire, no less -- was pretty epic.

rass · Post by **rass** » Tue May 14, 2019 2:20 pm

I think you guys in here (and various other articles) suggesting that the Mad Queen seeds have been out there to see for years are being way too accepting of the lurching inconsistency of the plot and character choices this season. The jump from anything she had done in the past (execute a couple of traitors, kill dozens of murderous slave holders, whatever) to straight up massacring tens of thousands of innocents is a fucking chasm. Then to do that when she had already won! Like I said on Sunday, I thought that full heel turn was completely unearned. She's Targayren and they can be nutty! Jon's friends think he's awesome! Jon won't bone her! C'mon...

Ignoring the bells and destroying the Keep I could have bought (and I loved a suggestion I read elsewhere that could have had the city rigged with wild fire set to go up if the Keep was compromised, which would have pretty much brought us to where we are now without completely botching Dany). I get just wanting to sit back and enjoy the tits and dragons show (and I agree the episode looked fucking awesome) but I can only hand wave away so much.

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Tue May 14, 2019 2:23 pm

I think Arya made it pretty clear to him that she wanted Cersei although I don't understand why they split up because obviously the Mountain and Cersei were going to be together.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue May 14, 2019 3:19 pm

"People love figuring out what Game of Thrones character they are but if you watch Game of Thrones you’re Samwell by default."

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Tue May 14, 2019 3:30 pm

Jerloma wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 2:23 pm I think Arya made it pretty clear to him that she wanted Cersei although I don't understand why they split up because obviously the Mountain and Cersei were going to be together.

Because the Hound convinced her that to go forward to find Cersei meant she would for sure die given what was happening with the attack on the city and told her that maybe she could reconsider if living her entire life bent to revenge like he had was really worth it. And that's when she thanked him and started looking for a way out of the city.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue May 14, 2019 3:38 pm

tennbengal wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 3:30 pm
Jerloma wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 2:23 pm I think Arya made it pretty clear to him that she wanted Cersei although I don't understand why they split up because obviously the Mountain and Cersei were going to be together.
Because the Hound convinced her that to go forward to find Cersei meant she would for sure die given what was happening with the attack on the city and told her that maybe she could reconsider if living her entire life bent to revenge like he had was really worth it. And that's when she thanked him and started looking for a way out of the city.

And now goes to Storm's End to BONE.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Tue May 14, 2019 3:52 pm

Kinda hoping that she and Gendry do the King and Queen co-ruling thing after Jon and Daenrys die in the finale...

Post by **Shirley** » Tue May 14, 2019 4:13 pm

tennbengal wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 3:52 pm Kinda hoping that she and Gendry do the King and Queen co-ruling thing after Jon and Daenrys die in the finale...

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I guess if Dany's claim of queen is accepted, then Gendry is legally the successor to Robert. Although, if Robert's line matters, I'm not sure that jibes with Dany being queen. It's complicated.

Either way, I don't think Arya would ever go for that. I think she's killing Dany next episode. And maybe John's going back north. Sansa is pretty much the only royal left and she takes the throne. Hell, maybe she marries Gendry!