W_Z wrote:
I know Cersei has that mindset. It just wasn't necessary for the false scare. Exactly, she didn't kill Tyrion so why would she kill Jaime. So don't give the order. It was a lame bluff. Didn't add anything.
I’m in agreement a lot with what TM is saying. I wouldn’t say that the writing is “bad”; it’s not incompetent. It’s just too easy. It’s giving everyone what they want. “A Song of Ice and Fire” was never about that. It was the opposite. So many times I’d hear people say, “I couldn’t get into the show” or “I stopped reading the books” because nothing was going anybody’s way. The good guys were killed, the bad guys won. You couldn’t trust anyone. The loyal fell, and the con artists prevailed.
This past season has given the audience everything they’ve wanted to see, and done it in a very lackadaisical way. It’s popcorn brain writing. It isn’t challenging. What made the books, and the first few seasons, so unique were that it really challenged your will to keep going. I think that feeling is lost now because we’re exactly at where the writers want us to be.
I don’t think it’s as bad as what the “Lost” writers did, but the style is similar. It’s arbitrary and predictable. Too many throw-away scenes and one-off redshirts when it’s clear a major character should die. That sort of thing.
The logic of the show is inconsistent and rickety. I think the Littlefinger plot should’ve been resolved more cleverly. He deserved to meet his end, but he didn’t need to be flopping all over the place like a dying fish. And I still didn’t see the point in trying to keep “us” in the dark about the eventual outcome, because it just came off as cheap.
I actually don’t have a big problem with the Theon stuff, even though it is coming off as fodder. He should be dead twice over by now anyway. Theon was never a worthy human being, so what is he “redeeming” in this little redemption subplot?
Finally got into this after years of not paying it any attention at all. Wrapped up all seasons over the course of two or so months. I haven't read any of the books. I even checked this thread from time to time to see reaction to previous seasons. I agree with those who say the writing has dropped off in later seasons, which is why I quoted WZ's post above. "Popcorn writing" is a great way to put it. I also thought the visit beyond the wall to abduct one of the undead soldiers was dumb. I get why they'd need to do that, but the execution as a plot was dumb. I cringed when the undead army surrounded everyone - because the results were so obvious (Jon at the very least will escape unharmed, people will fight bravely, someone will die or nearly die, and then, most obviously, the dragons will more or less save the day - the scene had no drama at all. I felt like fast forwarding it because I knew I wasn't going to miss anything. So from that angle, yeah, it was pretty dumb. I wish they found some other way to do that.
Also, it's not just about killing off major characters for the sake of killing them off, as if the point is to just achieve some sort of shock factor in the most arbitrary of ways. Ned's death fueled so many major and compelling plots and sub-plots over the course of 2-3 seasons, same for the Red Wedding. This is probably going to sound ignorant because I've got no background with the books, but the show has lost that as time has gone on. Maybe that's because there are no books to guide the writing but I can't think within that paradigm because again I haven't read the books. As a novice viewer, more broadly, the way GoT messed with your mind by having all these sympathetic characters die in the most emotionally painful ways is part of what made its stories and all the sub-stories so compelling. Nowadays everything is so formulaic - like the fight scene beyond the wall, we know what to expect. Wasn't always the case. The show subverted things like "good vs evil," not just by killing off the "good," but by even making you question over time whether the "evil" are really "evil" in the first place (Jamie).
Speaking of Jamie, I think he's probably the best written character on the show. There's an obvious redemption angle here that's still not complete, but it's been a thrill to see the transformation. I think it must end tragically though because he's still got to atone for Bran, and I don't think the sisters or Jon have realized what Jamie's role is in the Stark's tragedies. Bran obviously does know, and since Jamie is supposedly heading to Bran's crib, something's got to happen. Brienne has to be at the center of this confrontation I think, given her compassion for Jamie and her loyalty to the Stark sisters, who will be on opposing sides of course. Or it could go another way with Cersei being the one putting Jamie in a tight spot vis-a-vis Brienne - we already know something has to happen there since Cersei has made her distaste for Brienne well-known, mostly non-verbally I think. The last episode made sure we saw Cersei noticing Jamie and Brienne exchanging looks.
Minor point here: I disagree on Cersei and Tyrion - I do think she's willing to kill him. She had already put a bounty on his head after the Tywin thing, and she tried to sway the jurors or whatever against him during his trial. The confrontation at the summit in season 7 doesn't work for me because it's not clear why she abstained from killing him, especially the last time they meet prior to her changing her mind about joining the Great War. Maybe this uncertainty lends credence to theories which say Tyrion will turn his back on Daenerys. Not sure. The cliffhanger here, or at least one of them, is his realization that Cersei is pregnant. I'm not sure what that means for Tyrion unless I've missed something obvious. My uneducated guess is that this garners his sympathy, given that he truly loved her kids outside of Joffery. Clearly it will complicate Tyrion's allegiances if anything.
Lastly, it was really confusing at first to follow Bran's plot, and then when it started to make sense they basically put it on hold for an entire season before bringing his little crew back. So while there were some hiccups there, now that everything is clear, I think he's probably more dangerous to Cersei/Lannister loyalists than the Dragons are. So his trajectory could go a few different ways - either he becomes this super indispensable intelligence weapon that the Starks rely on during the Great War and/or to push back against Cersei in the south, in which case Bran becomes the target of assassins, etc. That assumes he cares enough to help his family out. We've already seen hints that he's got some sort of new complex that's neutered his compassion for things you'd assume he cares about, like family, his role in LF's death notwithstanding. So perhaps that's evidence of a heel turn, in which case his plot obviously takes an entirely different direction. Friend or foe, regardless, his powers probably make him the most dangerous person in the country. It'll be interesting to see what direction the writers take with respect to portraying how Bran chooses to leverage his powers, and to what end.
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