Red Mosquito

Monkey_Driven wrote:

@SkitchP wrote:And talk about Obvious Red Shirts are obvious. jesus.

Yeah, that was ridiculous. I agree with the Ringer article posted earlier. This has become like other fantasy stories.

A few red shirts should have lived, while one of the other mains should have died. Way too many close calls this season.

malice wrote:

Simple Torture wrote:I've got more thoughts on this, but I'm on board with this take (i.e. that the show has morphed into conventional fantasy instead of subverting the genre): https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thron ... d-the-wall

this article makes a good point about crossing into straight up fantasyland this episode, and by sacrificing the depth of storytelling that's been so great throughout the series.

they should have just done two full seasons, this is pissing me off now

Monkey_Driven wrote:I get they weren't far from Eastwatch, but Dragonstone is like half a continent away from Eastwatch. A raven would have taken several days to get there. You spend season after season building the scope and size of the world, then throw it away when it is convenient.

Biff Pocoroba wrote:To echo everyone else the time/distance inconsistencies really stood out in the episode. Gendry's "I have never seen snow before" run, sending the raven and then Dany's arrival all while the gang is isolated against the zombie army. John Snow was literally saved out of the blue not once but twice. From a narrative view having two key characters in three weeks seemingly drown only to pop up again was weak. The battle scene was pretty cool but the whole mission sequence felt out of place.
I too thought the last 60 seconds would have been a great way to wrap the season so I wonder if they have something bigger in mind.

Simple Torture wrote:I've got more thoughts on this, but I'm on board with this take (i.e. that the show has morphed into conventional fantasy instead of subverting the genre): https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thron ... d-the-wall

It’s not that we’re not accustomed to seeing similar storytelling choices in pop culture. It’s that we’re not accustomed to seeing them on Game of Thrones in particular, a show whose distance from the rest of pop culture—in style if not in viewership numbers—is rapidly diminishing. “Beyond the Wall” will likely go down in Thrones history as the precise moment when they merge

We’re almost at the end of Game of Thrones Season 7, and it looks like the main drive for showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff has been to rebalance the game. They eventually reached a point where their big showdown wasn’t much of a showdown at all. Daenerys had three dragons, an army, a fleet, and the support of House Tyrell as well as Dorne. Meanwhile, Cersei was on the outs, and while the White Walkers were a threat, it stood to reason that ice zombies wouldn’t be too fond of dragons that breathe fire.

So season 7 has been all about rebalancing an overpowered character. Gamers are familiar with this kind of situation when a certain character turns out to be overpowered, and developers issue a software patch that weakens them in order to make the game more fair and interesting. While that’s a great solution in a video game, for Game of Thrones, it’s turned season 7 largely into a reset where Weiss and Benioff seem more concerned about the pieces rather than the story or characters. The show has become about more about trying to balance out the coming conflict rather than figuring out how to tell the most compelling narrative possible.

We’ve seen this all season. In the second episode, Daenerys lost her fleet and the Dornish army. In the third episode, she lost the Tyrells and the Unsullied were stranded at Casterly Rock. She made a bit of a comeback by toasting the Lannister army at Highgarden in the fourth episode, so with her dragons, she still had the advantage. So we had two episodes based around the dumbest possible idea that’s a betrayal of what we know about the characters all to get Daenerys losing a dragon to the Night King.

On the one hand, I understand that Weiss and Benioff, looking at the big picture, are trying to create a compelling narrative where we’re not wondering why Daenerys doesn’t win outright. If she has the most powerful weapons, then she should have no trouble defeating both Cersei and the Army of the Dead. The problem is that in their effort to rebalance the game, Weiss and Benioff have created a new series of cheats and sacrifices that make Game of Thrones a weaker show overall.

Think about all the things that have happened this season and how little it matters in terms of the character relationships. While it’s been neat to see Game of Thrones really use its CGI budget and bring out the dragons in full force, the show didn’t make its name on special effects. It made its name on character interactions, and while we got a good meeting between Daenerys and Jon Snow, some nice reunions with the Starks (that have now gone down the toilet), not much has changed overall. No ideas have really been explored, characters haven’t really given themselves any self-evaluation, and everything is being swept forward to an almost comical degree.


Nowhere is this clearer than in the teleportation across Westeros. While the first few episodes simply skipped the journey aspect (whereas previous seasons were all about traveling), last night’s “Beyond the Wall” used it to cheapen the narrative all so that the writers could get to where they wanted to be. It takes weeks for the group to travel from the Wall to their destination, but when necessary, Gendry can run back to the Wall in a matter of hours. Then, a raven can get to Daenerys and she can fly her dragons (taking all three with her for some inexplicable reason) over the wall, find the exact spot where her allies are, and rescue them in less than a day, but not before the Night King shows he got a college scholarship for his javelin skills and takes out a dragon. Everything gives way to the end result, which is that “The Night King needs a dragon,” and Benioff and Weiss threw everything else out the window to make that happen.

That’s bad storytelling, it doesn’t help us learn anything new about our characters, and it’s all in service to simply giving one side more power but not telling us what that power means. Yes, you could argue that this makes the threat more immediate to Daenerys or that it deepens the icky bond between Daenerys and Jon Snow (never forget: she’s his aunt), but ultimately it’s clear that what Benioff and Weiss are prizing above all else right now is rebalancing the conflict rather than telling us more about the character or making them behave in realistic ways.

You could see that last night in the subplot dealing with the tension between Arya and Sansa. In their desperation to create conflict, Weiss and Benioff betrayed both characters. Yes, Arya probably has become a bit of a sociopath over the years with her focus on killing and revenge, but she ultimately made the choice to return to Winterfell rather than go to King’s Landing. That choice has to mean something, but it’s quickly been thrown out the window so Littlefinger can make the most obvious manipulation by turning Arya against her sister. Sansa isn’t doing much better as her nerves are getting frayed, and in her desperation, she’s turning to Littlefinger despite treating him like the garbage that he is in the first few episodes.

Right now, everything in Game of Thrones is turning on convenience. The creators need to depower Daenerys, so they do. The creators need to turn Sansa and Arya against each other, so they do. The accelerated timetable has resulted in the inability for the showrunners to give the story time to breathe and the characters to make convincing decisions. The weight of past actions or even past designs no longer seems to matter. This is a show where every episode opens with a goddamn map to show you how big the world is, but that size is now getting in the way, so they just ignore it.

I can kind of sympathize with Beinoff and Weiss because their show started one way—based on books and largely dealing with character interactions—and will end another—leaving the books behind and dealing with set pieces. However, it looks like they no longer have a grasp on how to do what the show did best: make us care about the characters and the weight of their decisions. They’ve become enslaved to the upcoming conflict, and while that conflict may pay off, we’ve wasted almost an entire season to make it happen.

Bi_3 wrote:That's kinda off too, more 'zig zag' complaints and 'I would be a better writer' whining. The only real issue right now is the time/distance thing is making dramatic violent conflict to easy to achieve. But This isn't a Ken Burns documentary, so hours of dialogue based character development in the 7th season of a show is kind of a ridiculous complaint.

doone wrote:I think Arya knows Littlefinger is trying to play her and the scene with Sansa was just her way of finding out whether Sansa is his puppet. The fact that Sansa did not follow his advice is a good sign.

Monkey_Driven wrote:The Benjen save can easily be explained by Bran sending him there. Benjen has the ability to communicate with ravens. I would like that a lot. Bran has to wield some of his powers.

Bi_3 wrote:That's kinda off too, more 'zig zag' complaints and 'I would be a better writer' whining. The only real issue right now is the time/distance thing is making dramatic violent conflict to easy to achieve. But This isn't a Ken Burns documentary, so hours of dialogue based character development in the 7th season of a show is kind of a ridiculous complaint.

BurtReynolds wrote:I already forgot, but what was her motivation for flying up there anyway? They already told her they were going into almost certain death. She didn't care enough to go before, why did she care now?

BurtReynolds wrote:I already forgot, but what was her motivation for flying up there anyway? They already told her they were going into almost certain death. She didn't care enough to go before, why did she care now?

stip wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I already forgot, but what was her motivation for flying up there anyway? They already told her they were going into almost certain death. She didn't care enough to go before, why did she care now?

that's a fairer critique.

stip wrote:who did something that was particularly out of character? If anything I think the show took steps to ensure there were proper character motivations. Maybe Dany flying north to save Jon could be a stretch, but they had Jorah return and take that journey to provide further motivation.

BurtReynolds wrote:

stip wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I already forgot, but what was her motivation for flying up there anyway? They already told her they were going into almost certain death. She didn't care enough to go before, why did she care now?

that's a fairer critique.

They might have been able to rearrange some scenes to give her something to do instead of waiting around with Tyrion. Maybe she could be too busy killing Lannisters to help right away.

Anders wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

stip wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I already forgot, but what was her motivation for flying up there anyway? They already told her they were going into almost certain death. She didn't care enough to go before, why did she care now?

that's a fairer critique.

They might have been able to rearrange some scenes to give her something to do instead of waiting around with Tyrion. Maybe she could be too busy killing Lannisters to help right away.

Absolutely. There are a few ways they could have done this in a much better way, including her being busy with fighting, or going along in the first place.