HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

the original plan was to end it with peter falk reading to fred savage, but peter falk's passing threw a wrench, and this season has been a clumsy attempt to change course.

xp
Arya outside trying (with little success) to tie up her horse.

ends with an airplane flying overhead, and it turns out that have been living in the present all along.

Probably covered already but were those bursts of wildfire we saw around Kings Landing during the rampage just random hidden barrels going off that no-one knew about? Weird detail to chuck in.

winter is coming, because their entire universe is in a snow globe on Sean Bean's desk.

I think they're just what was left over from the Mad King that didn't get used to sink the Sept.

Neighbours show up at the park and ask if the LARPers can keep the noise down.

"Forget it, Jon. It's Westeros."

Still shaking my head that the man who managed to stave off hordes of the undead with one hand got chumped by a cartoon pirate who conveniently washed up on shore just in time (seems like no one ever drowns in Westeros). I suppose the writers' argument would be that a major character getting an ignoble end is in keeping with the show, but for me it felt more like when the AI cheats in a video game. You'd also think a metal hand would be more useful in a fist fight...

Jon Snow wakes up from a nightmare in bed with Suzanne Pleshette.

The main characters gather at the Winterfell courtyard, snowflakes fall gently upon them, camera zooms back, then we see Winterfell is actually inside a snowglobe held by Rickon.

(Snow globe joke made above)

Jaquen and Melisandre walk through modern-day Times Square.

Jon Snow rides far north of the wall, to the realm of early people (or whatever), where he discovers the disembodied torso of the Statue of Liberty. "You fools!" he cries. "I ... don't know what this is, but couldn't you have told me about it earlier? It seems important."

The Statue of Liberty opens its eyes and speaks (voiced by Cate Blanchett). "Because I *am* important, Jon Snow. Yes, Jon Snow. I have been watching you. You look like you have many questions."

"I do" says Jon Snow.

"Then by all means, Jon Snow. Approach me and my knowledge will be your knowledge!"

"Thank you, Lady Liberty." Jon Snow slowly walks to the Statue and climbs to her ear.

"So what is it you wish to know?" asks the Statue of Liberty.

Jon Snow leans into her ear and whispers.

"Ah!" says the Statue, her eyes going wide. "A question for the ages! Those wise enough to ask have earned the right to know. Listen, Jon Snow. Listen to my truth!"

With a rumble the knowledge of the universe rushes through him like a gust of wind, illuminating all that he does not know and heightening all that he does know. He's left breathless, eyes wide with shock.

"What now, Jon Snow?" asks Lady Liberty. "You are possessor of all the wisdom in the universe! What will you do with your newfound power!?"

"This!" cries Jon Snow. And the last Dragon, hidden behind a hill, rises up at Jon Snow's psychic command, spreads its wings and shoots a blast of liquid flame to the statue.

"No!" cries Lady Liberty, dissolving into a pile of steaming, molten metal.

"Why did you do that?" ask Tor, stepping out from behind a tree.

"Why?" asks Jon Snow, taking a drag from his cigarette. "Because I fucking hate talking statues."

He flicks his cigarette into the snow.

"Fuck this place," he says. "Let's get out of here."

"To where?" asks Tor.

Jon Snow turns and looks him directly in the eyes.

"I have no idea, my friend," he says. "I have no idea. But wherever we go, we're going to get there ... together."

Tor smiles. "Together."

"Together," says Jon.

"So then what are we waiting for?" asks Tor, with a chuckle. "Lead the way!"

Jon smiles, turns to toward the sunset, and strides forward. Tor, chuckling, follows.

Camera pulls back and up on a crane. "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits plays.

The End

Dany: "And I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow."

Picture fades to black & white; She wakes up in her bed in Kansas.

Rosebud was a sleigh(er)

sub-westercustos

so we can't watch it until Monday night which means I have to effectively stay off the entire internet for all of Monday

^^me, every week. I live in Asia, which means GoT airs on Monday mornings for me when I'm at work.

I've accepted that I won't be able to completely avoid spoilers - I work in news so not being on Twitter isn't an option, and it's impossible to mute every single word/hashtag related to the show. (I knew about the coffee cup way before I saw the episode).

I'm in Aus, the only proper way to get this show is on Foxtel and fuck that so yeah I have to wait too.

*bcs fuk foxtel

https://entertainment.theonion.com/game-of-thrones-showrunners-disappointed-with-how-qua-1834843021

OTM. Show’s been dead in the water for a while now and the fact that this last episode which actually, finally showed the spark of what made the show compelling in the first place pissed off the current fan base shows what’s left.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/17/upshot/game-of-thrones-imdb-ratings.html

https://i.imgur.com/Ue49FBQ.png

i kind of assumed this is how fans feel about most shows, but they have a lot of counterexamples in the article (e.g. mad men and sopranos were both steady, office and veep had really popular final seasons, etc.)

The only issue I have with what this previous episode means for the story left to tell is I kinda wish this had gone down in the last episode of S7 and then they’d have had a mad queen + an undead army to deal with for S8, which might have led to an actually compelling war of three armies.

I have to wait 5 or 6 days each week to see the newest episode and have managed to avoid spoilers so far because I only use internet at weekends. This week I may have to avoid the newspaper section at supermarkets.

I suspect the people most disappointed who jumped on later are soap opera fans who are really into Harrington and Clarke as celebrities?

Counterpoint: Game of Thrones *is* a soap opera, just not a very good one, and as the fantasy elements have faded and fans have faced that reality, it turns out the central soapy conflicts are just not that compelling or convincing without the magic stuff as a distraction. Which might work in a silly never-ending soap opera narrative - it's Jon Snow's evil brother, with a mustache! - but doesn't necessarily work in a story with a developed start to finish narrative. Or at least, not as it's been rushed out. Crazy overnight heel turns are what you do in soaps to keep the story going when you've run out of stuff to do, it shouldn't be a story aim in itself.

Has there ever been a good soap opera? I meant the type that airs at least once a week or more.

Coronation Street

I don't know about *good* soap operas, but obviously people were really into Dallas, or LA Law, or ER and stuff like that.

When was Coronation Street good? It definitely wasn't good late 90s/early 00s when I watched it at dinner time with family.

Many people said Eastenders was genuinely good at one time (including David Bowie) but I'm very skeptical.

Soap opera is one of my least favorite things about superhero comics.

I bet George Martin only called it Game of Thrones because Dynasty was taken.

Corrie rises and falls over the decades but pisses all over this and has (or has had RIP) much better quality dragons. Lol @ Bowie in authentocrat mode and taking a break from talking risible bollox about Damien Hirst to feign a liking for Eastenders.

mad men was a soap opera, basically.

coronation street was p good imo.

xpost

I mainly saw it in the Fred Elliot/Les Battersby era and it was pretty awful.

Didn't Mad Men have broader themes?

I'd never label GoT a soap opera. It isn't realist enough. Isn't the point of soap opera you can connect with the characters? The setting is more often as not familiar? Except Dynasty or Dallas. GoT is fantasy. It does take cues from soap opera.

My point was that a lot of the fantasy elements maybe drew people in, but the same fantasy elements have been dispatched with ruthless efficiency.

eastenders was plenty enjoyable in the early dirty den days up through his disappearance.

Josh- Dunno, initially the show drew people in for the roughly historical elements, some used that awful tag "fantasy for people who hate fantasy"*, the show didn't have as much dragons early on. Some viewers really didn't want it to go into dragon/white walker territory too much and would have preferred it without.

*Should have been "fantasy for people who don't know how common this mode of fantasy actually is"

I honestly don’t mind this season at all. I get that it’s not as good as the first four, but don’t really care, as there’s still loads to enjoy. It’s certainly nowhere near the big mess that BSG or Lost were at this point. Probably closer to the Wire - underwhelming but fine.

I get and agree with most of the complaints but the big moments are still totally thrilling for me, probably because of the earlier seasons.

Like, I do keep going "this scene is dragging", "that could have been much better" and "not his shoulders, why aren't you stabbing him in the eyes?" but most of the suspense is still working on me.

Any of you feeling "meh" the entirety of the last few episodes?

Josh, I agree and it's actually a good point. Actually the "soapiness" drew me in, not the fantasy.

Not really 'meh' as much as 'FUCK THIS SHIT'

No frission at all?

The fact that Lost's final season IMDB rating does not completely plummet basically invalidates the whole exercise.

TBH most of the people most vocally hating on the last episode are so annoying it actually makes me want to defend it on principle.

I've been thinking a bit about how 'nuanced' everything has gotten in criticism, focused on 'explainers' rather than critique per se. Yeah, there's been moments I liked, like Ghost and Thormund going off to live beyond the wall, but on the whole, this has just been abysmally bad, a complete collapse, a failure on every level. Every battle has been idiotic, but for a few moments, which then hasn't been followed up on. All the characters are behaving nonsensically, and the resolutions to the long running plots, which might have made sense on some level, has been handled awfully. It's just a 0/10, like the end of Dexter, or How I Met Your Mother.

BSG and Lost are different. That's really weird and complex narratives that strained under too many mysteries. But GoT got rid of everything mysterious a while back, and they've just failed because nothing made sense anyway.

When was How I Met Your Mother good?

But it was supposed to become good when they met the mother!

I'm just an armchair observer at this point, but so much of GoT seemed to be about portent and prophecies and the like that it was able to kind of skimp on character development. That is, when the character is defined by what he or she is going to do, you don't need to know much else. Why does Jon Snow come back from the dead? Because he has to do the thing. Why does it have to be him to do the thing? Because the Gods favor him. Or something. But then you get rid of all the magic stuff and reach the end and there's no more time for prophecies, just the people, but the people largely remain ciphers, which makes the magic stuff seem in retrospect all the more superfluous, devices in service of not much.

BSG, its problem was sort of the opposite. It was very much about characters and people and their relationships in a stressful situation, but then it increasingly became about prophecies. But what made even its ending tolerable were the characters, which we had grown to like and know.

the show has had plenty of well-realized characters but as the show has gone along the nuance and character-based plotting has been replaced by spectacle and shocks, both of which can work on their own as entertainment but they wind up feeling emptier. The Lannisters were all vv interesting up to a point, Ned was cool, Catelyn was imo a phenomenal character elevated by the best performance in the series, Daenerys was actually fine for awhile and her ultimate character denouement is great except for the fact that they didn't want to do the hard work of making it believable.

It's not what it could have been but the show remains on its present terms entertaining but the disappointment stemming from what it once was makes it seem even worse than it probably is.