Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Ok! Now we're getting somewhere!

They blew up half the secondary characters in King's Landing.

Tommen took a flying leap. Did not see that coming!!!

Arya is crossing names off her list and is probably hot on Jaime's heels.

Dany's on a boat, on a boat on a motherfucking boat. (Lonely Island reference.)

Jon = R + L confirmed.

And King in the North.

I miss anything? If they're doing a shorter season next year, they must do longer episodes like this one.

We were cracking teleportation jokes all night. Cersei at the end of the episode was wearing her outfit that she painstakingly put on at the beginning of the episode. The part that had us just cracking up was when they showed the Spider on Dany’s boat headed west.

Falconer wrote:The part that had us just cracking up was when they showed the Spider on Dany’s boat headed west.

I thought he sailed away two episodes ago? There was even a scene where he and Tyrion said their goodbyes at the docks. Maybe it was someone who looked like him? If it was actually him, I think that was a blooper, like footage from an alternate storyline that they needed but couldn't be refilmed or something.

Overall, I thought it was a decent enough season finale. Let's get on with it. We all know how this ends - dragons flaming the undead.

Chainsaw wrote:

Falconer wrote:The part that had us just cracking up was when they showed the Spider on Dany’s boat headed west.

I thought he sailed away two episodes ago? There was even a scene where he and Tyrion said their goodbyes at the docks. Maybe it was someone who looked like him? If it was actually him, I think that was a blooper, like footage from an alternate storyline that they needed but couldn't be refilmed or something.

Overall, I thought it was a decent enough season finale. Let's get on with it. We all know how this ends - dragons flaming the undead.

He had previously headed to Westeros to secure allies, as you noted. The problem is that mid-show last night, he shows up in Dorne, then at the end of the show, he shows up on the ship sailing from Meereen. How the hell did he do that? IMO, that's terrible writing. (I guess one of them could be a faceless man.)

francisca wrote:

Chainsaw wrote:I thought [the Spider] sailed away two episodes ago? There was even a scene where he and Tyrion said their goodbyes at the docks. Maybe it was someone who looked like him? If it was actually him, I think that was a blooper, like footage from an alternate storyline that they needed but couldn't be refilmed or something.

He had previously headed to Westeros to secure allies, as you noted. The problem is that mid-show last night, he shows up in Dorne, then at the end of the show, he shows up on the ship sailing from Meereen. How the hell did he do that? IMO, that's terrible writing. (I guess one of them could be a faceless man.)

OK, I missed that then. That's bad. I will have to watch it again.

Chainsaw wrote:

francisca wrote:

Chainsaw wrote:I thought [the Spider] sailed away two episodes ago? There was even a scene where he and Tyrion said their goodbyes at the docks. Maybe it was someone who looked like him? If it was actually him, I think that was a blooper, like footage from an alternate storyline that they needed but couldn't be refilmed or something.

He had previously headed to Westeros to secure allies, as you noted. The problem is that mid-show last night, he shows up in Dorne, then at the end of the show, he shows up on the ship sailing from Meereen. How the hell did he do that? IMO, that's terrible writing. (I guess one of them could be a faceless man.)

OK, I missed that then. That's bad. I will have to watch it again.

Did you catch the parts where Cersei set Kings' Landing on fire, and Arya marked a name off her list?

Blackadder23 wrote:Did you catch the parts where Cersei set Kings' Landing on fire, and Arya marked a name off her list?

Who is Cersei? Is that the red-haired one up in the snowy area?

Chainsaw wrote:

Blackadder23 wrote:Did you catch the parts where Cersei set Kings' Landing on fire, and Arya marked a name off her list?

Who is Cersei? Is that the red-haired one up in the snowy area?

Chainsaw

francisca wrote:He had previously headed to Westeros to secure allies, as you noted. The problem is that mid-show last night, he shows up in Dorne, then at the end of the show, he shows up on the ship sailing from Meereen. How the hell did he do that? IMO, that's terrible writing. (I guess one of them could be a faceless man.)

Varys in Dorne took place near the scene where Dany makes Tyrion officially the Hand of the Queen and they are still in Meeren. Then at the end of the show Dany is sailing along with her fleet out of sight of land.

My impression is not so much we are seeing lazy writing in teleportation but rather that since we are way past book that we are getting the greatest highlights of the story GRRM is going to write. Outside of the show changes to the book, we are seeing them sorted in the roughly same chronological order as they would appear in the book.

To me that their biggest challenge now. From Game of Thrones to Dance of Dragons, they had not only the greatest highlights (Ned Stark's Beheading, Red Wedding, Walk of Shame, etc) but all the little moment to choose from in order to craft the show and to order the events.

But now all they have are the big events. Which in the books are spaced apart well apart timewise.

Not sure how they could do it otherwise without the completed book series in hand. And I suspect we won't be able to know how well or badly they handled it until we have GRRM last two books in hand.

Damn, Martin needs to get his shit in gear about the last two books. If show really did the major events as Martin envisioned them I don't see what his problem is. It all flows out of the setup of the five books out there and in some respects should just write itself.

One book prediction I have is that we are going to have Jon and Sansa wind up exactly where they are in the show. Except in the book Sansa will hear of Jon troubles while paling around with Littlefinger in the Vale, and somehow get him and the Vale to march to help Jon out in the book's version of the Battle of the Bastards. And that 'somehow' might be a dark twist for Sansa.

I thought the Varys teleportation was fairly hilarious, too, but just figured they were taking some poetic license because they wanted all of Team Dany on a boat in the final shot of the season.

We also had Jaime getting from the Twins to King's Landing in the course of an episode, while it took Sam half a season to get from Horn Hill to Oldtown. We can argue that travel verasimilitude is for nerds and we should just ignore it, except we've spent the greater part of 5 seasons with one of the main plot points being how to get Dany and her army from point A to point B. We can ignore how the Knights of Arryn got past the Neck without anyone noticing, but we have to belabor for season after season about Dany making a trip that Arya and Varys accomplish in an episode?

robertsconley wrote: My impression is not so much we are seeing lazy writing in teleportation but rather that since we are way past book that we are getting the greatest highlights of the story GRRM is going to write. Outside of the show changes to the book, we are seeing them sorted in the roughly same chronological order as they would appear in the book.

Well, I haven't read the books, and I'm not going to.

So from my POV, I don't care what the books are doing. It just looks like a bad time gaff to me.

I think a fair amount of time had passed and I read (though didn't see personally) that there are Dornish and Tyrell ships (or at least banners) in her Armada so basically it makes sense timewise if you think it has taken place a month or two after Vary's surprise appearance in Mereen. That would give him time to return with a few more ships and for Dany to finish preparations to cast off with her massive army. The show could really use a timestamp when it changes scenes!

I just figured that the team they had working on the CGI for the scene with the ships didn’t get an update from the team working on the script about Varys’s whereabouts. But if there were Dornish ships there, I guess we’re meant to understand that time is passing at different rates for different storylines and is not synched up.

The thing is, the opening credits, with its stylized map, is such a brilliant and iconic way to help keep the audiences aware of the distances and directions between the scenes. They *wanted* you to “be a nerd” and really understand what was going on in the Game. And now they’re just hoping you don’t notice and don’t care.

Anyway, all that said, I thought it was a great episode. They composed new music for the whole thing, which raises the artistry hugely, for me. The explosion was a cool effect, especially with the bell falling. I really dug that. No shock that Tommen died, but HOW he died was a great surprise. Edge-of-the-seat pacing for the whole beginning sequence, and plenty of excitement throughout the whole episode. Davos’s rant was out of the blue, as was Jon’s quick judgment, but, whatever.

I have read that the next two seasons are going to be half-seasons, and I think that’s good. This season would have been better as a half-season. Epic episodes like this are IMO the only way to go now that they’ve sucked the books dry and winnowed the characters down to a movie-sized cast.

Interesting book difference:

The burning of Barlor's Sept was completely in character for Cersei in the book. If anything, it's more foreshadowed in the books. (The burning of Maegor's Holdfast as a funeral pyre for Tywin, for example.) I don't doubt that it's going to happen in the books more or less as it did in the show.

Big difference though - Loras Tyrell isn't in King's Landing. Last we heard he was gravely wounded laying siege to Dragonstone and was recuperating from his injuries. Also of note, the Tyrell family is bigger in the books, with Mace having two more sons, at least one of which would not have been there. (Willas is serving in his father's stead at High Garden, while Mace sits the Small Council.)

Not that losing "just" her son and granddaughter would make the Queen of Thorns any less furious.

Another book difference to note - I think we can assume Sansa is still in the Vale when the battle of Winterfell happens. It just makes more sense, the way that arc is going. In that case, it would make the Northern Lords' proclaiming Jon "King in the North" make that much more sense, when there would be literally no other option. It also create a more realistic opportunity for Littlefinger to drive a wedge between them, with Sansa separated from Jon. He could go all Grima Wormtongue, "The bastard is stealing your inheritance," on her. Or more likely, assuming he does marry Sansa off to Harry the Heir, he'd be saying those things to Harry.

We thought we'd lost Clegane-bowl at the end of episode 9, but it totally looks back on after episode 10.

Last thing:

How about Jon giving Longclaw back to little lady Mormont as a reward for her loyalty at some point? Maybe shortly after Brienne says, "Oh! By the way, I've got a chunk of your dad's sword here."