Game of Thrones Season 8 (NO BOOKSPOILERS) thread

[MoJames 8,256]

56 minutes ago, kevwun said:

He wrote plenty fast.  It's just that he wrote 27 other books instead of working on the last 2 of the series.  GoT is gonna be an all timer in the category of great shows that crashed and burned.

Nothing is fucking close.

Dexter Series Finale was awful (prior to upcoming reboot) but the entire season 8 clusterfuck was unbelievable bad.

[tbone_ 14,202]

Yea nothing ever went from that good to that bad

[shadow_operative 15,932]

man, haven't thought about this thread in a while. fun read. i gotta be honest, being right about everything all the time can be burdensome, but every forum needs a voice of reason. it's my cross to bear, and i accept that responsibility.

[futureman 22,559]

9 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

being right about everything all the time can be burdensome

you magnificent son of a bitch

[MoJames 8,256]

14 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

man, haven't thought about this thread in a while. fun read. i gotta be honest, being right about everything all the time can be burdensome, but every forum needs a voice of reason. it's my cross to bear, and i accept that responsibility.

Well...

Quote

It's going to be so funny when you guys actually see Xhaka play and realize how wrong you are.
Granit Xhaka = next Xabi Alonso
N'Golo Kante = if he's lucky Blaise Matuidi

Quote

And you'd be wrong. Xhaka was linked very very heavily with Arsenal for months before he signed, and I got to watch many of his Bundesliga games (not to mention endless highlights) between January and the Euros. He's a box to box MF who gets his fair share of yellows, but he's also probably the passing equal of Ozil and Cazorla. He's as aggressive as Coquelin, and physically bigger than the rest of our midfield. He's been one of the best young MFs in Germany for a couple of years now, as evidenced by his spot in the Bundesliga TOTS.

Now stop projecting your own watching now habits onto me. It's dumb.

Quote

Not really. But you are hearing me say that he's a "BPL first-XI" type player just like Cazorla and Ozil. Xhaka is the real deal. Believe it or not I actually had to come around on the idea of signing him, and it's the research that I did watching his games and highlights that has me so hyped about him. All I knew about him when the rumors started was that he was known for having a hot temper and accruing lots of cards. I've always liked that Arsenal don't have a ton of players like that (besides my boys Wilshere and Coquelin), and I didn't want to add another guy like that to our midfield.

But, I spent time watching him, I watched his highlights, and I talked to Bundesliga fans on reddit about him, and it became clear- Xhaka is legit. In fact, I'd liken the entire experience to the same situation as when we signed Santi. I'd never heard of him, so I did some research on him, and after talking with La Liga fans it became clear what kind of player he was. Hell, I think even JNip (it was definitely someone here who'd seen him at Malaga) came to the Arsenal thread to sing his praises and let us know what a player we'd gotten.

So, I've done a full 180 on the idea of even signing him, and after checking him out more I've seen the light. He's only 23, he was the captain at Munchengladbach, he's 6'1", 185 lbs, he's great defensively, and his passing from the deep-lying CM spot seems to be near Ozil and Cazorla levels. Add to that his performance in the Euros (He was MOTM in his first two games), and you'll see why I'm so high on him.

Link

[WBT 20,677]

Bailed after Season 4 of the show after it was obvious they were starting to stray too much from the books and that the new shit they were making up sucked.  I regret nothing.

[kingkoopa6 8,382]

started a rewatch recently. 

on Season 2 Episode 9 

[AUS-97HORN 11,824]

3 hours ago, kevwun said:

He wrote plenty fast.  It's just that he wrote 27 other books instead of working on the last 2 4 of the series. 

FIFY

1 hour ago, kingkoopa6 said:

started a rewatch recently. 

on Season 2 Episode 9 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2,100]

now the only value of the show is the fewer.gif to use on this board.  went from biggest thing ever to erased from cultural relevance over night.  

[kingkoopa6 8,382]

1 hour ago, AUS-97HORN said:

FIFY

Im a jonny snow fan boi

 

 

[Chewbacca 7,787]

4 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Yea nothing ever went from that good to that bad

Ugh.  And when it was good, it was so good.  Fuck that fat man for letting D&D ruin his life's work.  Sure, he got paid, but at what price?  Lots of his fans (including me) fucking hate him now.

[elguapo 4,586]

The first 3 seasons of GOT are in the conversation for the greatest 3 year run of TV ever, it's amazing to me how far the show fell from that high. I think it I tried to rewatch it now I'd just be pissed off about what could/should have been.

[shadow_operative 15,932]

On 4/3/2019 at 5:28 PM, henrygandorf said:

so is there any way for the finale to be universally praised, adored, and considered a "win" for the storytellers?

if it has a "happy" ending (jon or dany on the throne) then people will say it betrayed what the show is actually about (if you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention).  people will say that it's not how the books would've ended, and it was all sanitized for mass consumption.

if it has a "bummer" ending (night king, nobody, cersei on the throne) then the die-hards may love it if it's done well, but the general public might be pissed they invested all this time not to see one of the heroes win.

rarely has there been a universally loved finale.  personally, i'm more about the journey, and not expecting the finale to solve all of life's problems.  (yeah, i loved lost, despite the ending).  breaking bad was pretty awesome, but with an anti-hero, you can kinda predict how you need to wrap things up.  the sopranos - i won't even get into it here.  i thought mad men had some missteps near the end, but was fairly satisfied.  the shield had a solid finale.  i may need to watch that one again.

oof. 

[Hozz 1,020]

I was a bookfag but not a diehard.  I stumbled on the series when the first 3 had been published and read them all in a ridiculously short period of time.  And then the wait began for the 4th book.  Which fucking sucked, compared to the first 3.  Then the wait for 5 was even longer and the book was not much better than 4.  lol 10 years later and we still don't have book 6?  Unbelievable.  

The TV show blew my mind.  I had high expectations and the series exceeded them.  I honestly thought the first 5-6 seasons were great.  They run together for me and I'm not going to revisit them in detail.  Season 7 had some serious issues.  Season 8 though...no way that should have been approved by HBO.  They should have fired those guys when they read the scripts and paid someone for a rewrite, whatever the cost.  The fucked up every major storyline and flat out ruined the legacy of the show.  I can't believe those dipshits got another gig.

[ChickenSandwich 9,856]

15 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

oof. 

Shield finally was brilliant. 

[henrygandorf 29,197]

24 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

oof. 

yeah, i explored the options i thought were reasonable:

option 1 - make half the people happy

option 2 - make the other half of the people happy

i should've considered option 3 - make everybody miserable

[Murfdogg21 4,432]

It’s been long enough that I don’t care, but after that abortion I would have accepted well done fan fiction as a valid do over starting about halfway through the Battle of Winterfell episode. Never got my Zombie Ned Stark. Never got anything out of the Night King. Bran’s powers did dick all for the good guys. Could’ve used some more Danny or Sansa sex scenes, and the best we got was Arya humping the smithy boy in the basement. 

[Nivek 17,000]

Yea nothing ever went from that good to that bad

Texas football, LSU football…

[tbone_ 14,202]

Texas football, LSU football…

Fair.

[Hozz 1,020]

On 8/13/2021 at 12:47 PM, Murfdogg21 said:

It’s been long enough that I don’t care, but after that abortion I would have accepted well done fan fiction as a valid do over starting about halfway through the Battle of Winterfell episode. Never got my Zombie Ned Stark. Never got anything out of the Night King. Bran’s powers did dick all for the good guys. Could’ve used some more Danny or Sansa sex scenes, and the best we got was Arya humping the smithy boy in the basement. 

That is what infuriates me the most.  A crowd sourced script from Reddit would have destroyed what we got from those two shitheads.  How did HBO not see this coming?  Who read through that and thought "Yeah, this is great!".

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, it feels good to vent about this.  I never read the books.  Wasn't as religiously into it as most of you (missed a handful of episodes over the whole series arc).  But was usually appointment television for the wife and I.  Even fiddled around a bit during the peak seasons with the map and houses and all that on HBO's site.  Last two seasons though, she didn't even watch.  I had them on in the background. 

But I'm realizing now that y'all are typing this out...that yeah...I don't even think about this show anymore.  I don't talk about it with anyone.  I don't hate it, I wish I could go back and watch it for the first time again, etc.  But yeah, it was all we could talk about sometimes with friends.  And now, I barely remember that it happened.  That's kinda weird now that I think about it.  Not trying to wish it away, but the show just never occurs to us...at all.  Plenty of other shows we loved, they still come up in conversation, or a reference, or a laugh.  But it's as if Game of Thrones was like a concert that you think you loved at the time, but now...you don't even remember it and you don't care that you don't.  It happened, you assume it was great at the time, but it just doesn't occur to you.  Weird.

[Guest]

On 8/11/2021 at 11:58 AM, tbone_ said:

Yea nothing ever went from that good to that bad

[52-80 19,271]

18 hours ago, Hozz said:

That is what infuriates me the most.  A crowd sourced script from Reddit would have destroyed what we got from those two shitheads.  How did HBO not see this coming?  Who read through that and thought "Yeah, this is great!".

get in, get rich, get out.

[The Hot Dog Buffet 1,292]

16 hours ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, it feels good to vent about this.  I never read the books.  Wasn't as religiously into it as most of you (missed a handful of episodes over the whole series arc).  But was usually appointment television for the wife and I.  Even fiddled around a bit during the peak seasons with the map and houses and all that on HBO's site.  Last two seasons though, she didn't even watch.  I had them on in the background. 

But I'm realizing now that y'all are typing this out...that yeah...I don't even think about this show anymore.  I don't talk about it with anyone.  I don't hate it, I wish I could go back and watch it for the first time again, etc.  But yeah, it was all we could talk about sometimes with friends.  And now, I barely remember that it happened.  That's kinda weird now that I think about it.  Not trying to wish it away, but the show just never occurs to us...at all.  Plenty of other shows we loved, they still come up in conversation, or a reference, or a laugh.  But it's as if Game of Thrones was like a concert that you think you loved at the time, but now...you don't even remember it and you don't care that you don't.  It happened, you assume it was great at the time, but it just doesn't occur to you.  Weird.

Yeah, it feels like I heard a Nickelback song, kind of liked it, and then made the mistake of going to see them in concert. Never going to mention that one.

[Message Board User 12,396]

🤣🤣  "Bran the Broken"

 

Edited November 16, 2021 by Message Board User

[MillerEP 30,501]

My hope is that Wheel of Time lives up to the Rep of the books to reach the same success GoT had during its run. The main benefit is that there is plenty of source material with a complete beginning and end. Amazon gets my allegiance for now because they did right by "The Expanse" which is the best SciFi we'd had in a really long time. Just hope they don't squander it. 

 

[Knoxtnhorn 6,067]

On 8/13/2021 at 10:45 PM, Nivek said:

Texas football, LSU football…

Dear August 13th post.  Just wait...

[Guest Lobo]

3 hours ago, Message Board User said:

🤣🤣  "Bran the Broken"

 

LET'S GO BRAN STARK!  (clap, clap...clap, clap, clap!)

LET'S GO BRAN STARK!  (clap, clap...clap, clap, clap!)

LET'S GO BRAN STARK!  (clap, clap...clap, clap, clap!) 

 

[shadow_operative 15,932]

i've been doing a rewatch over the last three weeks and hoooollllyyyyy shit this show sucks so much dick after season five, and really sucks some dick during S5 as well. i was already saying that the show had fallen off when it first aired, and yet it's actually 10x worse than i remembered. it's comical. bingeing the show makes it so evident.

•it's written like one of those marvel comics movies from S 6-8. it's a stark (no pun intended) change from the first five seasons. every goddamn character is constantly saying something "humorous", or ending each scene with some sort of punch line. every episode is like a trailer for every modern popcorn flick which permeates the theaters. it's so, so different from the first 3-4 seasons.

•which leads me to my second point- all of the characters just change on a dime out of nowhere. Sansa goes from having the absolute shittiest existence of anyone who ever lived, and just completely scarred for life, to just being Miss Bad Bitch Boss Bitch Confident Strategist Hero Lady with zero transition or explanation. the same type of unexplainable change goes for several other characters. they all just totally change out of nowhere.

...for example, Tyrion. What the fuck dude? i'm still on S6 in my rewatch, and this dude has gone from being arguably the most clever, sharp, witty, most well read person alive, to some blathering, meek, pussywillow twatwaffle with zero confidence or intellect, just out of nowhere and for zero discernible reason. he just goes from brilliant and confident to retarded and meek in a flash. it's asinine.

beyond this, the writers, for whatever reason, tries to bring the most ridiculous levity to the show, via every single character alive. instead of a couple of people (eg bronn, tyrion, jamie, et al) being naturally witty, every single character (sansa, arya, brann, etc) has to end every single scene with some water head retard punch line or joke like it's a charity benefit variety show and not an HBO drama series. the writers showed their ass in this regard.

bottom line, this show fell off a cliff waaaaayyyyyy before the final season/final episode. that S6 episode with the dude from Deadwood was like watching Willow. it was legitimately hard to watch. that shit was so awkwardly out of place it was embarrassing. season 8 was just the cherry on top off the shot sundae that is most everything after S4. going back and rewatching this show i'm legitimately in shock that more people didn't see the massive fall off in this show sooner. even the best episodes form S5 forward are ridiculously lame compared to most any episode form the first four seasons. damn. it's just so bad. such a shame. 

[shadow_operative 15,932]

jesus christ these dudes ruined this show so hard and so fast. i'm at the scene where sam and gilly arrive at the citadel, and the entire scene is, for whatever inexplicable reason, supposed to be funny. Sam is meek, and shy, and stammering, and also trying to be cute, and funny, and jocular, while his opposite number is stoic, and quiet, and withholding, and stern, and it's just an absolute fucking barrel of monkeys!!

every other scene is like this now. this show used to be serious, with the occasional, timely dose of humor. now, like i said, it's like it's a marvel comics movie all of a sudden. every character is either dropping some badass punch line or behaving in some zany, goofy, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny manner. i said gooooood damn. these dudes ruined this show, well before the final season. 

 

Edited June 13, 2022 by shadow_operative

[shadow_operative 15,932]

i'm just laughing while i'm watching at this point. every. single. scene has to be something epic. there's no more sharp, incisive, interesting dialogue, each story unfolding at a relatively slow pace, with bits of action and heroism sprinkled in. now every single scene has to be something straight out of the movie trailer; every single scene has to be epic. what a shame. i'm gonna leave the posting about it alone for the time being, but i'm seriously surprised at how glaringly different the show is in the latter seasons, and at the fact that we all didn't pick up in that sooner than we did. 

[PilotsError 2,325]

 

[futureman 22,559]

2 hours ago, PilotsError said:

 

I don’t want to like that guy but he can be kinda funny at times. 

[52-80 19,271]

2 hours ago, PilotsError said:

 

things that make you surly, this thumbnail clickbait big eyes photoshop thing that this guy does

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,979]

Can we post spoilers yet?

[shadow_operative 15,932]

13 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

jesus christ these dudes ruined this show so hard and so fast. i'm at the scene where sam and gilly arrive at the citadel, and the entire scene is, for whatever inexplicable reason, supposed to be funny. Sam is meek, and shy, and stammering, and also trying to be cute, and funny, and jocular, while his opposite number is stoic, and quiet, and withholding, and stern, and it's just an absolute fucking barrel of monkeys!!

every other scene is like this now. this show used to be serious, with the occasional, timely dose of humor. now, like i said, it's like it's a marvel comics movie all of a sudden. every character is either dropping some badass punch line or behaving in some zany, goofy, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny manner. i said gooooood damn. these dudes ruined this show, well before the final season. 

 

this dumbassery is followed by that long-ass montage of Sam changing out chamber pots, gagging, pouring stew that looks like fecal matter, changing out chamber pots, gagging, etc, etc, etc. the amount of humor that they insist on trying to inject into each episode is, again, jarring after bingeing this show and having fresh memories of seasons 1-4. can't believe we all didn't notice it in real time. 

[shadow_operative 15,932]

i remember @henrygandorf mentioning how it bugs him in movies and tv when two characters start a conversation in one place, say, at the dinner table, and then it cuts to them some time later, like as they both get into a car for example, and the characters are picking up their conversation right where we last saw them, as if they just stopped talking for several minutes and then picked up the conversation again out of nowhere. ive got a similar gripe from this episode with the guy from Deadwood.

so, we see The Hound single-handedly carrying a giant piece of wood, wood so big that every other piece has to be carried by two people. The Hound goes and sits on a rock, and the Deadwood guy comes up to him and suddenly starts telling him the story of the day when he first came upon The Hound. "I thought you were dead", he says. he mentions how The Hound's femur bone was sticking out of his leg, and shit like that. he was indeed in some pretty awful shape that day.

so now i'm supposed to believe that this guy and The Hound have been together long enough that The Hound's compound fracture is completely healed and he's out here back to full strength, and this guy has never in all that time told him about the day he found him? he's all of sudden just doing it right now for the first time ever? jesus christ that's lazy writing. i remember getting crushed for being critical of that episode when it came out, but nah man- that shit was awful. i'm finding myself really itching for my pound of flesh so to speak from Benioff and Weiss. i guess i'll go scavenge youtube and google and see what i can find in the way of people bashing and shaming them. 

[shadow_operative 15,932]

 

 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,979]

I still sometimes say tell people that they seem like the type of person who names their swords.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,979]

Also, 

[Kennythetiger 9,484]

12 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I still sometimes say tell people that they seem like the type of person who names their swords.

I just call them cunts. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,979]

Not quite as acceptable in polite company.

[Tom 2,959]

17 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

i've been doing a rewatch over the last three weeks and hoooollllyyyyy shit this show sucks so much dick after season five, and really sucks some dick during S5 as well. i was already saying that the show had fallen off when it first aired, and yet it's actually 10x worse than i remembered. it's comical. bingeing the show makes it so evident.

 

You pretty much nailed it.  I felt this same way when the show was airing weekly.  Season 8 was shitshow, but there were three meandering seasons filled with mediocrity leading up to it.  I think it was the end of season 4 when Tyrion killed his dad and escaped from King's Landing. That was the last time the show was really great.  

Edited June 14, 2022 by Tom

[shadow_operative 15,932]

5 hours ago, longhornmatt said:

It’s kind of amazing to me how overnight it went from the biggest thing in pop culture to now basically out of everyone’s minds.  I guess “Red Wedding” persists as a cultural reference, but that’s really about it.  Nobody is dropping a bunch of GOT references in casual conversation or reminiscing about the series like we do other shows/movies that reached those heights.   They fucking killed a golden goose in spectacular fashion.  The amount of money Martin lost by not writing the last books before the show went downhill must be staggering.  

this really is the craziest thing about how they torpedoed this show. it was literally the biggest, most popular TV show of all time, and then in one fell swoop it became so bad that everyone everywhere just dropped it from their lives, in all aspects. nobody references it or talks about it anymore. basically, the public is Dany, and the show is The Iron Fleet. i seriously doubt we'll ever see anything like it again. 

[TheFlyingBoat 907]

4 hours ago, Tom said:

 

You pretty much nailed it.  I felt this same way when the show was airing weekly.  Season 8 was shitshow, but there were three meandering seasons filled with mediocrity leading up to it.  I think it was the end of season 4 when Tyrion killed his dad and escaped from King's Landing. That was the last time the show was really great.  

I think mediocrity is a bit harsh and I say this as someone who criticized S5 contemporaneously. Certainly relative to its peak where D&D could simply lift the screenplay from the book it was quite mediocre, but compared to the general corpus of TV it was solidly at the borderline of acceptable and good, perhaps slightly closer to the acceptable side. Season 7 was when it became truly middling, carried only by prior world building, beautiful set design, phenomenal casting, and good will powerful enough to look past most faults. Season 8 was impressively bad in execution (I am largely ok with the grander plot points). But S5 and 6 certainly had its redeemable moments.

[shadow_operative 15,932]

this guy says everything i've been trying to say, but better, and with video examples. he did the exact same thing i did- fired up a rewatch, thinking he was prepared for the eventual fall off, only to be stunned how early/seriously the show fell off, which is mucin easier to see when binge viewing the series.

 

[shadow_operative 15,932]

 

[TriStone 1,724]

On 6/13/2022 at 5:45 AM, shadow_operative said:

for example, Tyrion. What the fuck dude? i'm still on S6 in my rewatch, and this dude has gone from being arguably the most clever, sharp, witty, most well read person alive, to some blathering, meek, pussywillow twatwaffle with zero confidence or intellect, just out of nowhere and for zero discernible reason.

No less ridiculous was Cersei morphing into some brilliant strategist.  In the books she was a complete idiot.

[Fletch 5,800]

On 6/14/2022 at 4:09 AM, TheFlyingBoat said:

I think mediocrity is a bit harsh and I say this as someone who criticized S5 contemporaneously. Certainly relative to its peak where D&D could simply lift the screenplay from the book it was quite mediocre, but compared to the general corpus of TV it was solidly at the borderline of acceptable and good, perhaps slightly closer to the acceptable side. Season 7 was when it became truly middling, carried only by prior world building, beautiful set design, phenomenal casting, and good will powerful enough to look past most faults. Season 8 was impressively bad in execution (I am largely ok with the grander plot points). But S5 and 6 certainly had its redeemable moments.

Yeah season 1-4 were amazing. 5 was mostly boring. Hardhome saved the shit out of that season. I remember Ayra sweeping a place that was super clean. The high sparrow shit. Jon Snow was trying to be all LBJ and integrate the free folk with the northerners or something. Ramsay unnecessarily fucked with Sansa to a ridiculous point. No telling how much therapy Sansa would need but nope all that crazy shit that happened just made her stronger or smarter or something. While she was a fucking dumbass in the early seasons. But she’s the smartest person fucking Ayra has ever known somehow.
 

God this fucking show. Season 6 was straight fan service. Like I’m pretty sure they just scoured Reddit and were like “ok the people like the hound. Get him back. Oh! People like Davos! Let’s have him just do things. Hey! Let’s take the smartest character on the show and make him a comedic relief drunken dumbass! People love it when Tyrion is being an idiot!!!!”

But I mean season 6 at least had its moments and was a solid bounce back from the waste of time that was season 5. After that it was just absurd. The fan service worked in season 6. It was mostly well executed. They went overboard with it while trying to outsmart everyone all while trying to out do every previous villain. I’m not even pissed anymore. I’m just at peace with the whole thing 

[closetohumping 17,484]

Nsiap