Game of Thrones (S8)

[mr grieves]

https://twitter.com/vkcoleartist/status/1128044516542382081

I get that and I kind of don't. Too tired to try and explain but I guess I just never felt she was truly a benevolent ruler. Absolute power corrupts absolutely yadda yadda.

I take this reaction to Dany's character development--as well as the compressed running time leading to nakedly plot-driven developments (one, of many, would be Euron washing up on shore just in time to fight Jaimie; another, the hidden fleet sharpshooting a dragon)--as pretty solid evidence that the show, despite good performances and extravagant production values (and even then, that coffee cup), is  really a pretty ramshackle affair. It's become increasingly so as it approaches its end, and the show runners turn down episodes so they can just wrap this thing up and get over to Disney. (imagine if David Milich had his extra season of Deadwood -- or Terence Winter another for Boardwalk Empire)

On Daenerys, I think it's ultimately the fault of the writing that so many viewers had her trajectory down to this hypothesis: is she a heroic slay queen or a crazy ex-girlfriend? Obviously the bigger question is the stuff Nik covered in his posts about rulers and absolute power, but those issues have not been foregrounded in writing her character for some time, so I don't think it can be put on viewers who "ingest their art" in ways we think sorta dumb. Good writing channels viewers interpretations, and it sure seems like a whole lotta people who were religiously watching this thing were completely unaware of the meditation on absolute power that we're supposed to see as fundamental to the character's turn.

 

[groundskeeper willie]

One thing I'll add that may be minor to some but I haven't seen mentioned yet is the comment near the beginning of the episode the Daenerys hadn't eaten for several days. As somebody who has had to endure this I'll say it absolutely messes with your head and causes you to make poorly thought out decisions. There's a reason why so many cultures' spiritual journeys or prophetic visions include fasting for lengthy periods of time.

She should have had a Snickers.

Lol well done! [emoji122]

 

[herman]

TIL: Pilou Asb?k babysat Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's kids

 

[Kin]

For all of the criticism, I think this is a very well put forth defense of this season:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/16/stop-the-nitpicking-this-season-of-game-of-thrones-is-miraculous-the-bells

 

[herman]

I take this reaction to Dany's character development--as well as the compressed running time leading to nakedly plot-driven developments (one, of many, would be Euron washing up on shore just in time to fight Jaimie; another, the hidden fleet sharpshooting a dragon)--as pretty solid evidence that the show, despite good performances and extravagant production values (and even then, that coffee cup), is  really a pretty ramshackle affair. It's become increasingly so as it approaches its end, and the show runners turn down episodes so they can just wrap this thing up and get over to Disney. (imagine if David Milich had his extra season of Deadwood -- or Terence Winter another for Boardwalk Empire)

On Daenerys, I think it's ultimately the fault of the writing that so many viewers had her trajectory down to this hypothesis: is she a heroic slay queen or a crazy ex-girlfriend? Obviously the bigger question is the stuff Nik covered in his posts about rulers and absolute power, but those issues have not been foregrounded in writing her character for some time, so I don't think it can be put on viewers who "ingest their art" in ways we think sorta dumb. Good writing channels viewers interpretations, and it sure seems like a whole lotta people who were religiously watching this thing were completely unaware of the meditation on absolute power that we're supposed to see as fundamental to the character's turn.

Book readers had an easier time with this because we could get into Dany's headspace and see the seeds sown from the beginning (unreliable narrators, woohoo). I understood that Dany was eventually going to make this turn as conqueror rather than saviour. I think you're absolutely right that the show runners phoned in the journeys (and the friends we made along the way) and just wanted to show off the highlights and rug pulls from season 6 on. Characters were written to do whatever out of character thing was required to get the story to the next explosion.

Here's Daniel Silvermint's twitter thread from earlier in article form:
https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pantsers/

A show that had been about our inability to escape the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency?all the more rope with which to hang themselves?became whatever the moment needed them to be. They took uncharacteristic actions and made uncharacteristically bad decisions so the required events could unfold with the appropriate stakes. Characters were spared the deaths they'd sown so they'd be available for later scenes. Organic consequences gave way to contrivance. Gone was the conflict between complicated people with incompatible goals. Grey morality turned black and white. Characters rushed through their foreshadowed arcs for the thinnest of reasons, or in some cases reversed their arcs entirely. The characters just weren't in charge anymore. The ending was.

They did manage to squeeze in some genuine (at least to me) character moments: Sansa + Theon, Brienne being knighted by Jaime, Davos and Gilly remembering Shireen, Jaime relapsing into Cersei (would've liked to see this descent play out a bit more). The acting has really kicked into a higher gear too. And if I shut off my brain, I am still entertained.

 

[mr grieves]

From Scientific American's blog, Not a great article, but it makes some decent points. I'd rather a film/tv critic competent in narratology make this argument -- in a less repetitive, basic way -- but Zeynep did graduate from a semi-humanities focus media studies program where such things are talked about (she clearly dimly recalls some grad seminars), and I think this does get at why the show has gotten worse.

The basic idea is that we've moved from sociological storytelling (world-building, institutions, embedded social actors) to psychological storytelling (prioritizing individual will, personality, and agency as determinative). That's the core problem, though, of course, it's not helped that the show runners aren't very good storytellers in the second, their natural, mode.  Some snippets:

That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.

[...]

Tellingly, season eight shocked many viewers by ? not initially killing off the main characters. It was the first big indicator of their shift?that they were putting the weight of the story on the individual and abandoning the sociological. In that vein, they had fan-favorite characters pull off stunts we could root and cheer for, like Arya Stark killing the Night King in a somewhat improbable fashion.

link: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/?redirect=1

 

[Phileas Fogg]

People seem to be very interested in trying to tie the events of a stab-happy zombie/dragon adventure show to an advanced relationship with humanities, gender studies, and feminist dance theory when it is overly likely very little was considered other then how to make it as exciting and unpredictable as possible in a wrapup.

I liked the part where the dragon blew shit up. Thesis upcoming.

 

[Kin]

People seem to be very interested in trying to tie the events of a stab-happy zombie/dragon adventure show

I don't think that's how most people ever saw the show. If it was, it wouldn't have won multiple Emmy awards for things like writing, acting and directing.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Yeah I really wasn't sure if that post was supposed to be sarcastic or something...

 

[Kin]

Well, I kind of liked the finale.

 

[bustaheims]

Well, I kind of liked the finale.

I dunno. I kind of found it unsatisfying. Not bad, just unsatisfying. Even though all the characters seemed to end up with logical, reasonable endings, it felt like it was missing something - I just can?t put my finger on what.

 

[Kin]

Well, I kind of liked the finale.

I dunno. I kind of found it unsatisfying. Not bad, just unsatisfying. Even though all the characters seemed to end up with logical, reasonable endings, it felt like it was missing something - I just can?t put my finger on what.

I get that. I think it was pretty understated and without any major twists or turns or anything particularly exciting happening. What I'm sure was intended as a big moment(the melting of the Iron Throne) kind of came off as silly and pointless and the big twist of Jon killing Danerys was basically assumed.

I liked it in a 7 or 7.5 out of 10 kind of way. I think it upheld some expectations in smart ways, subverted others in interesting ones.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Considering all the issues with the season leading up to the finale I had pretty low expectations. So I liked it, but in the sense that I was happy it wasn't just an all-out spectacle like most of the other episodes this season. I'm glad they got the killing Dany thing out of the way early and let most of the episode deal with the ramifications of that, even if some of it was dumb.

 

[bustaheims]

I get that. I think it was pretty understated and without any major twists or turns or anything particularly exciting happening. What I'm sure was intended as a big moment(the melting of the Iron Throne) kind of came off as silly and pointless and the big twist of Jon killing Danerys was basically assumed.

I liked it in a 7 or 7.5 out of 10 kind of way. I think it upheld some expectations in smart ways, subverted others in interesting ones.

Yeah, I think that sums things up nicely. They definitely misread what they thought would be powerful moments, but those moments were still fitting, like the last shot of Jon riding off into the north mirroring the first shot of the series was a miss, but was still somewhat fitting.

 

[Bender]

Well, I kind of liked the finale.

I dunno. I kind of found it unsatisfying. Not bad, just unsatisfying. Even though all the characters seemed to end up with logical, reasonable endings, it felt like it was missing something - I just can?t put my finger on what.

The ending felt so Disney-esque. I mean the dragon melting the throne and grabbing Dany and flying home? The Democracy bit, Arya deciding she's Christopher Columbus all of a sudden. And John having to be beat over the head before he understood what was right? Shouldn't he get it by now? And he's right back to where he started.

Anyway, it wasn't completely awful but it was ham fisted.

 

[Hobbes]

I liked it in a 7 or 7.5 out of 10 kind of way. I think it upheld some expectations in smart ways, subverted others in interesting ones.

That kind of sums it up for me.

I wonder if part of that "meh" response is that all series long they've thrown twists and surprises and moral crises at us so we were expecting some sort of "more of same" final bloodbath (like the end of Romeo & Juliette or Hamlet where anyone of any significance ends up a corpse) so we came into this episode expecting the demise of more than one of the remaining characters.

What might have been most surprising about this final episode is the utter lack of any significant surprises. Everyone ended up pretty much where they were telegraphed to end up since the beginning.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I can't believe we didn't see Arya face-swap, or Brann warg for any significant purpose once this season.

 

[Kin]

And John having to be beat over the head before he understood what was right? Shouldn't he get it by now?

See, but that was one of the things I thought was legit. Doing what he did required him to basically shatter every notion he had of what was right in the pursuit of the greater good. Remember, Jon grew up in an environment where eveyone called Jaime Lannister "Kingslayer" derisively despite Jaime basically just doing what Jon did in the finale in killing a terrible monarch. For the entire series nobody, except Jaime basically, bought into the "Yeah, what he did technically broke some vows but it was for the greater good" explanation. Jaime's actions basically made him scum in the eyes of everyone to whom those concepts of honor and fealty mattered and Jon was basically the world's most naive adherent to that philosophy.

Now, I'll fully admit, there's this whole other "Jon supposedly loved her" thing that didn't work but that always seemed to me to be more of a result  of some not-very-good performances from those two actors and them not really selling us on it but beyond that? Yeah, I buy that Jon did what he did only as the last possible resort and needed to be pushed basically every step of the way.

 

[Zee]

Well, I kind of liked the finale.

I dunno. I kind of found it unsatisfying. Not bad, just unsatisfying. Even though all the characters seemed to end up with logical, reasonable endings, it felt like it was missing something - I just can?t put my finger on what.

The ending felt so Disney-esque. I mean the dragon melting the throne and grabbing Dany and flying home? The Democracy bit, Arya deciding she's Christopher Columbus all of a sudden. And John having to be beat over the head before he understood what was right? Shouldn't he get it by now? And he's right back to where he started.

Anyway, it wasn't completely awful but it was ham fisted.

The bit with Arya is believable and she's mentioned before she wanted to see what was west of Westeros. She isn't one to sit still in one place after all she's been through.

 

[Kin]

The bit with Arya is believable and she's mentioned before she wanted to see what was west of Westeros. She isn't one to sit still in one place after all she's been through.

Yeah, also, Arya was always that sort of person. It's why she wanted to take swordfighting lessons in the first place. Absent all that she's been through she probably would have grown up to want to seek adventure and excitement. Once her quest for revenge was over, it makes perfect sense that she'd want to go back to being the person she was.