Game of Thrones, Season 8 (spoilers allowed)

I totally agree that burning the city to the ground doesn't make the most sense. But then again, she's supposed to be crazy at this point, so making tactical sense isn't going to be her strong suit.

 

Poor writing this entire season. The epic events all went pretty well, with the exception of the darkness of the Winterfell battle. Events have been far too rushed. Instead of a plot point coming to light and being given time to breathe and expand a bit, it comes to light and ten minutes later the consequences have already happened. The pacing has been all wrong. I also have issues with character arcs which have been developed over six or seven seasons being completely abandoned, i.e. Jaime's journey toward redemption, Danys entire arc from season one forward, the entire Night King/Winter is coming plotline, Jaime and Brianne, Arya's vow to kill Cersei being written off by a few words from Clegane. Killing off both Jaime and Cersei in the least satisfying way possible. (It's GoT and we have not seen the bodies!)

I would have absolutely bought Dany perched on the wall listening to the bells and then flattening the Red Keep. Instead she lights up the whole damn city. What happened to "I didn't come here to be Queen of the Ashes"?

 

I think it was certainly the best episode of the season, and I'd put it in the top handful of the series. USA Today killed the episode. I don't agree with that at all.
I don't buy that Cersei is dead. We didn't see a body, and that was certainly unsatisfying. There needs to be some comeuppance, even if it would have been Jamie simply saying, "This is your fault" right before the cave in. That would have been fine.
Before he was nabbed, Varys seemed to have written multiple scrolls for ravens. My bet is he got the word out.
I think Arya kills Dany. If she doesn't, and some folks are right with it ending in a hint of her on the throne and the next competitor starting to make waves, it'll be Gendry. Robert's Rebellion II.

 

Just wait until Lady Stoneheart comes back.

 

This is Game of Thrones. I doubt a high percentage of the committed viewers *expect* a happy ending. Cersei winning was believable, if highly unpalatable. As things stand, Danerys winning and then being killed by Jon, who loves her even if he can't get past incest being icky, is believable and about as close to a happy ending as we're likely to see. Arya knifing her is completely believable as well, and it is very likely that if either of those happen that Sansa winds up on the throne.

I never thought this would end happily. There are more good guys left alive than I expected at this point.

Dany on the throne and ganking everyone she feels is a threat is still a viable ending, Mad Queen or not.

 

I stopped right there.

 

Totally valid. Although I will say that fresh eyes sometimes help in seeing when something make zero sense, like Dany's decision to burn down the city. Doesn't matter who she was or is. Makes zero sense.

 

So I've been thinking about this much of the day, and the problems with this season are multi-faceted, but some of them are outside the creators control and some of them are completely legitimate:

1. It's obvious that D&D are weary of doing this show. And that's totally understandable, because they've been doing it for 12 years. That's when it went into development for HBO, so this has been their only project since then. HBO offered them more time and more money to finish out the story however they wanted, and they said no. They wanted two more seasons with 6-7 episodes each.

2. The problem here was HBO couldn't, in this moment, have foreseen how rushed the ending was going to feel because up until about Season 5, D&D had done a pretty good job adapting the material. The reason that so many people love(d) this show is because of how richly drawn the characters are, and how they gradually change over the course of the story. Arya, Jamie, Sansa, Tyrion, Dany, Sandor Clegane, etc. So at that point, there was no reason for HBO to have any worries.

3. Realistically, to finish out the series with the same kind of textured storytelling and character development, GOT probably needed three full seasons. Something like 30 episodes. Maybe 20, but definitely not 13. But let's say they'd wanted 30, because the seasons used to be 10 episodes per season, back when the show was great. That's, at minimum, another four years of shooting and post-production. So you're looking at Kit Harrington and Emila Clarke and others being under contract until 2022 or 2023. I think there is zero chance they were going to go for that without a revolt. Remember what ended the Sopranos was essentially Gandolfini demanding an end date. He didn't want to do more seasons. He was dooooooonnnnnne playing arguably the greatest TV character of all time, despite (or perhaps because of) how popular he was.

4. So now with everyone kind of wanting this to be over (despite HBO saying hell we'd love for this to run for five more seasons if you're up for it) we're trying to finish a sprawling complicated story in 13 episodes despite everyone's expectations being set based on the beats from the first five seasons.

5. Some of this is George Martin's fault. That dude is a ditherer. He cannot bear down and write. And you know why? Because he created such a sprawling epic, he doesn't know how to get there. It's too big. The story was a victim of its own ambition. Remember, in the books, THE NIGHT KING DOESN'T EVEN EXIST YET in the minds of the readers. He's got so much shit to unpack, and the dude is so paralyzed by it, he's writing other goddamn books just to avoid finishing the series. The pressure is enormous, and it's not just sci-fi dorks, it's NFL players and Presidential candidates and Kardashians and millions of other people hanging on the story (thanks to the show).

6. Obviously he gave them a rough outline, perhaps even reluctantly. But they didn't have the episodes to get there with the same rhythms they used to. So there are times when the actors still give us emotional moments (like Dinklage and Coster-Waldau when Tyrion freed Jamie) but the circumstances of putting the actors together in the same room to get those moments feel like it's on fast forward. It feels rushed because it is.

7. In retrospect, HBO should have said "We're going to let D&D move on to do Star Wars and we're very grateful for their effort together and realize this was a massive undertaking and we thank them for all they did" and handed the reigns to someone else. And if actors revolted, they could have been killed off or given time in their contracts to work on other projects until the story was done.

Martin is never, ever going to finish this series. He's had eight years to work on Winds of Winter and he can't finish it. Eight years! It might be another 10 years after that before he's done with A Dream of Spring, if he lives that long and has no debilitating health problems. And he might not be able to finish without adding *another* book, despite having said the last two books will be about 3,000 pages total! This is the only ending we're ever going to get, and maybe that's ok (because at least it's an ending at all) but there is no way it wasn't going to feel rushed considering the real life constraints, and no way it was ever going to be satisfactory unless HBO gave the project to someone else like the way ABC gave LOST to Lindeloff and Cuse after JJ Abrams left to shoot Mission Impossible III.

 

Awesome post, DD.

And I've enjoyed reading all the stories about the show, whether folks like it or criticize it or loathe it. Liked Burneko's because instead of just a normal Twitter bitch-fest (which can also be enjoyable) it offered a pretty solid alternative.

That said, I have really enjoyed this season. And damn it if I haven't been reading at least one critic who feels the same. Sean Collins, who writes for a bunch of places, including Rolling Stone.

‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: For Whom the Bell Tolls – Rolling Stone

He also updated his old story about best episodes and put last night's No. 1. I don't agree with that but I still enjoyed the rankings overall and agree with him on a lot about Season 8.

https://www.vulture.com/2016/06/game-of-thrones-episodes-ranked.html

 

On the other hand, Martin has the Targaryan prequel out, and up to three more HBO series cooking. He's working, he's just not working on what 99% the fans would prefer he was.

I think that you're on point re the next two books. He's got this huge sprawling story that continues to grow and expand, and while he may know it ends in broad strokes he faces an enormous slog to get it all down on paper. At the same time he's being offered all sorts of opportunities and distractions, and the only way that he can finish is to put his head down, stay at his desk, and grind. We all know which is more fun.

I follow John Ringo, who writes military SF, and he calls this kind of problem "writing his way up on a ridge". He's referring to having the unit he's writing about get caught under fire, having to scramble and retreat and escape repeatedly under fire. They fight and hide and run and wind up on a ridge somewhere with nowhere to go - which means that he has to ditch two or three chapters of finished work that wound up getting them stuck up there with nowhere to go. GRRM has done this on an epic scale, and I think that the sheer intimidating quantity of pages he has yet to write has shut him down.

 

I know this is a GOT thread, but seeing all of this really makes you appreciate what Marvel Studios just pulled off.

 

I can't imagine having GRRM's money, at his age, and submitting to years of work that I don't have the heart for. He has one life.