GOT Hot Take

[LonghornSean 4022]

Disappointing ending.  Still a great show.

 

And other than the finale I still enjoyed watching most of the final season, despite many poor story choices.

[Mileslong 4728]

Did someone say that?

[TriStone 1724]

Quote

His argument was that the first 7 seasons were so good that the ending couldn't tarnish it.  I had the exact opposite take that the ending was so poorly written, thought out rushed and lame that it rendered any re-watch and previous greatness neutered and the entire thing is nothing more than a colossal waste of time.  What say you, surly tv aficionados?

He's talking about the final season.  No one said a single episode ruined the series.

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by TriStone

[High Plains Drifter 11052]

 

I had a great three course meal, then found out the chocolate mousse was actually liquid shit. Do y'all think the meal was ruined or not? Would y'all eat that same meal again?

 

[Goo Punch 4275]

well, yeah, but i'm into that kind of thing. 

[Mileslong 4728]

His argument was that the first 7 seasons were so good that the ending couldn't tarnish it.  I had the exact opposite take that the ending was so poorly written, thought out rushed and lame that it rendered any re-watch and previous greatness neutered and the entire thing is nothing more than a colossal waste of time.  What say you, surly tv aficionados?

He's talking about the final season.  No one said a single episode ruined the series.
 

So a single episode ruined a season?

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

10 hours ago, Mileslong said:

He's talking about the final season.  No one said a single episode ruined the series.
 

So a single episode ruined a season?

None of the final season episodes were good, and not most of season 7 was of the same caliber.  

[TriStone 1724]

3 minutes ago, Gene Parmesan said:

None of the final season episodes were good, and not most of season 7 was of the same caliber.  

So a single episode ruined TWO seasons?  /Mileslong

[Mileslong 4728]

None of the final season episodes were good, and not most of season 7 was of the same caliber.  

You should write novels, magnificent word play

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

10 minutes ago, Mileslong said:

You should write novels, magnificent word play

Is this where you want to be when Jesus comes back?   Making fun of poor Gene Parmesan?

[Mileslong 4728]

Is this where you want to be when Jesus comes back?   Making fun of poor Gene Parmesan?

Here or Bangkok...

[RamjetFDO 10577]

4 minutes ago, Mileslong said:

Here or Bangkok...

[yoladu 4094]

winter really never came.

[High Plains Drifter 11052]

 

If by the end of the season you really want the bad guys to go scorched frozen earth on the good guys, you know the show sucks.

[crash_davis 23115]

imagine this were a series of books instead of a television series. 3/4 of the books were amazing, incredible storytelling, dialogue, complex character development, intricate plots intertwining, surprises around every page, and complex world building. then the last 1/4 were written as if the author had a stroke, became regarded, and wrote cliffs to finish out the series. dialogue was shit, there was no storytelling, and all of the plots and character development built in the first 3/4 were completely forgotten or undone with the weakest of justifications in the last 2 chapters of a 8 book series.

would you read the books again?

fuck no i wouldn't. 

[Junior Miller 1502]

The show peaked at the Battle of the Bastards. If you wanted to re-watch just stop with that episode. It was all downhill immediately after that one although I still think it was a good show just not to the lofty standards. 

[Horn80 6131]

18 hours ago, Junior Miller said:

The show peaked at the Battle of the Bastards. If you wanted to re-watch just stop with that episode. It was all downhill immediately after that one although I still think it was a good show just not to the lofty standards. 

Good point

[Goo Punch 4275]

the show got shitty well before the Battle of the Bastards, they just were able to still drop in a great episode or two such as BoB. still, seasons 5 and 6 were not on par with 1-4, then 7 fell off even more (save a couple of episodes), and then S8 was just like a cruel joke that completely undid everything that had come before it. still, this idea that the show maintained greatness and then fell off a cliff is just plain wrong. it started going downhill years before S8.

[bschoolprof 6272]

32 minutes ago, Goo Punch said:

the show got shitty well before the Battle of the Bastards, they just were able to still drop in a great episode or two such as BoB. still, seasons 5 and 6 were not on par with 1-4, then 7 fell off even more (save a couple of episodes), and then S8 was just like a cruel joke that completely undid everything that had come before it. still, this idea that the show maintained greatness and then fell off a cliff is just plain wrong. it started going downhill years before S8.

Yep.  5-6 were, on average, significantly worse than 1-4, despite some fantastic episodes, like Hardhome and Winds of Winter.  This coincides with the the showrunners starting to run out of book material and the book material being lower quality as well.  

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

When they passed the books did Martin provide any direction to the showrunners, or does he not even know how he plans on wrapping it up?  Hopefully he doesn't write a chapter where Dany is flying with her dragon and just happened to miss an armada hiding behind a rock in the ocean.

[Junior Miller 1502]

It's all a matter of preferences but I disagree. I don't think it had fallen off a lot other than the moment of pure soap opera cheesiness when they killed off Jon Snow as a season finale cliffhanger only to have a minor character bring him back to life the next season. That was horrificly bad and at the time I thought that was the shark moment but I think it rebounded nicely from then up until battle of the Bastards. The next episode where they had every story line they had worked and built up just wiped clean with a Cersi reversal was the beginning of the consistently sharp downward slide IMO. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

Yeah, Jon Snow dying was the signal plot armor had gone from 0-100 in a show that chopped the main character’s head off in season one. Even after that I was surprised how bad it got with everyone not imminently disposable surviving impossible situations at the battle of winterfell. 

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

I didn't find Ned's death that shocking.  I mean yeah his POV was the main focus of season 1, so I guess you call him the main character but I never really thought of him as the protagonist of anything bigger.

[Goo Punch 4275]

Too many great characters either died, had their roles reduced, or were sent off into these long, uninteresting story lines. think about these characters and their roles from seasons 1-4, and then after:

Tywin Lannister

Tyrion

Khaleesi

Jon Snow

Arya

Littlefinger

Cersei

Oberyn Martell

Lady Olenna

Stannis Baratheon

Reinli Baratheon

to name a few. 

Those characters, and their gravitas, and their ability to carry a scene, and GRRM's amazing writing got replaced with dragons, zombies, zombie dragons, and the most hackneyed, lazy, trite writing imaginable. for me the noticeable decline started around season five, and it only got worse from there on out. 

[bschoolprof 6272]

2 hours ago, Gene Parmesan said:

When they passed the books did Martin provide any direction to the showrunners, or does he not even know how he plans on wrapping it up?  Hopefully he doesn't write a chapter where Dany is flying with her dragon and just happened to miss an armada hiding behind a rock in the ocean.

yes.  He told them the broad plot plans.  But they were too incompetent to pull any of it off well without a detailed roadmap in the form of a novel.  

 

1 hour ago, Gene Parmesan said:

I didn't find Ned's death that shocking.  I mean yeah his POV was the main focus of season 1, so I guess you call him the main character but I never really thought of him as the protagonist of anything bigger.

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

14 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

yes.  He told them the broad plot plans.  But they were too incompetent to pull any of it off well without a detailed roadmap in the form of a novel.  

 

I mean people refer to that as some shocking moment.  But when watching I wasn't shocked.  His whole time in KL was pretty much him vs the establishment and it wasn't shocking that the establishment crushed him.  He was just the only character we really knew anything about at the moment, but to me that doesn't necessarily mean he's the main character.

[Junior Miller 1502]

I think you have to go back to that time and see that HBO had Ned/Sean Bean front and center in promotions during the first season and he got top billing in the opening credits. He was presented as THE man the show would focus on. 

Of course that was done intentionally to make more of a shock value but at the time any person unaware of the book story never saw that coming due to how prominent he was. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Junior Miller

[Yev Kassem 1031]

I’ve always thought of the ending of the series like this. When Benioff and Weiss were chosen to do the show (back in 2005) I bet they thought the 5th book would be out by the time the last season of the show, so they would only have one or two seasons without source material to draw from. Instead, they ended up doing the last three seasons on their own and we all found out that they’re nowhere near the writer that GRRM is.

I wish they had kept their focus on GoT instead of branching out to other projects (which no doubt diluted the quality of the final few seasons), but I suppose in Hollywood you need to strike while the iron is hot since you never know when your days are numbered. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Yev Kassem

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

1 hour ago, Junior Miller said:

I think you have to go back to that time and see that HBO had Ned/Sean Bean front and center in promotions during the first season and he got top billing in the opening credits. He was presented as THE man the show would focus on. 

Of course that was done intentionally to make more of a shock value but at the time any person unaware of the book story never saw that coming due to how prominent he was. 

That may be the case.  I didn't watch the show live from the beginning.  I started streaming season 1 when season 3 was airing and it was getting good buzz.

[PRONG HORN 3156]

Emelia Clark wanted to quit.  Other actors sided with her maybe because of her brain thing.  I remember seeing an interview with a group of actors when they were doing promo in Australia before the start of 8.  The reporter asked the group about it and  peter Dinklage got this sad look on his face and said "don't .. just don't".  No one else said anything.  It looks like all the actors are a united front on this for now anyway.  HBO caved and guaranteed fewer and shortened seasons toward the end.  There probably would have been 10 seasons 10 episodes each.  It wasn't just the lack of books to go by that made the last few seasons suck.  It was rushed because they didn't want to replace Clark with a different actor.  When I try to find the news reports about it online from Fox or CNN they seem to have vanished.  Hopefully HBO learned it's lesson.  

[hayden_horn 11365]

3 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

Too many great characters either died, had their roles reduced, or were sent off into these long, uninteresting story lines. think about these characters and their roles from seasons 1-4, and then after:

Tywin Lannister

Tyrion

Khaleesi

Jon Snow

Arya

Littlefinger

Cersei

Oberyn Martell

Lady Olenna

Stannis Baratheon

Reinli Baratheon

to name a few. 

Those characters, and their gravitas, and their ability to carry a scene, and GRRM's amazing writing got replaced with dragons, zombies, zombie dragons, and the most hackneyed, lazy, trite writing imaginable. for me the noticeable decline started around season five, and it only got worse from there on out. 

yeah, but you see, much of this was done by martin in the books.

i've transitioned from blaming benioff and weiss to blaming martin. he has no idea how to finish his own story. he branched out too far in his narrative and there are now too many threads for him to tie off. he is the one that lost the plot with those characters, then he stopped publishing material. even his last couple of novels are vastly inferior to the first three, because he had the narrative too big to fit in between the covers of the books. shit, he had so many stories that he had to split one novel into two novels that ran concurrently in different geographies. that actually happened. 

and benioff and weiss found themselves trapped in the same manner, and had to really start taking shortcuts to make the tv episodes work. the narrative was plenty fucked before they even ran out of material, imo.

[Iceman 2725]

On 2/27/2020 at 5:08 PM, elfenix said:

battle of the bastards and battle of winterfell episodes are still great.

was gonna post this.  After that, fuck it.

[Prepuce of Doom 21102]

4 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

Too many great boobs either died, had their roles reduced, or were sent off into these long, uninteresting story lines.

Nothing was incorrect about the original post, but I fixed it anyway. 

Edited March 6, 2020 by Prepuce of Doom