A Game of Thrones - TV Show Discussion Thread

[Imran Siddiqui]

Wait, you don't like Ciaran Hinds for Mance?

TBH, I always pictured Mance as being a bit younger, but Ciaran Hinds plays the role very well.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Littlefinger gets away with it because everyone else is a conniving rat****er, and everyone knows everyone else is a conniving rat****er, so why bother trying to hide it?

Indeed. In the books everyone knows Littlefinger is a conniving rat****er, but everyone tends to be scared of him, because he connives so well.

[Guynemer]

Wait, you don't like Ciaran Hinds for Mance?

[Bosh]

Littlefinger gets away with it because everyone else is a conniving rat****er, and everyone knows everyone else is a conniving rat****er, so why bother trying to hide it?

Maybe. But the actor annoys the hell out of me, one of my least favorite castings up there with Mance and Illyrio from Season 1. His accent changes more often than his demeanor. Like I said, one note. Any good rat****er should be masks behind masks behind masks.

Luckily so many really excellent actors to balance them out.

[Guynemer]

Littlefinger gets away with it because everyone else is a conniving rat****er, and everyone knows everyone else is a conniving rat****er, so why bother trying to hide it?

[Bosh]

She's got Iain Glen who is an excellent actor. Unfortunately his character is probably the most under-written one in the show- he's just there to explain things and look a bit sexually frustrated.

Ya, he's good but Emilia Clarke herself isn't anything special acting-wise the same for Jon but he got a bit better in S4E1, a bit.

Just look at the Arya story line for example. The plot is a bit of a mess in Season 2-3 with her wandering around randomly and getting kidnapped by various people but it works since she's always fun to watch and can act.

What Princess Perkytits should have is a combination of:
1. Wanting to live up to her ancestors without really knowing **** about them except what her dumbass brother told her. Sort of Plastic Paddy but with blood and fire.
2. The desire to really help people, especially slaves and underdogs as she was sold herself.
3. Wanting to just say "**** this ****" and burn everything that gets in her way. This often comes in conflict with 2. which causes problems.
4. Some basic cunning and ability to take advantage of being underestimated.
5. Being in waaaaaay over her head, not being smart enough to see through flattery and trying to fake it til you make it and being able to just barely squeak by on bravado until you realize that you've ran ten feet past the cliff Wile E. Coyote-style.
6. Being really deeply tired of the act she's putting on all the time and just wanting to go back home to the place she grew up in exile as a kid before her brother started with his crazy ass plots in the first episode of season 1 but knowing that's she in way too deep to turn back now and that she has to ignore any doubts and fears even though they're scaring the **** out of her since she knows deep down that she's just a scared kid putting on a big show with some big scary props that she doesn't know the first thing about how to train.

All tied together with standard bildungsroman stuff. It could work, but yeah it doesn't really work on the show. What we mostly get is her trying her best to look stern. Same problem with Littlefinger. He's a conniving Machiavellian bastard and acts like that all the time. What kind of conniving rat****er acts like that in front of everyone?

I love the show and it does some great stuff, the casting director is a genius and I just can't believe how many kids she could find who could act but a lot of characters who should really have layers get stripped down to simple one-notes. This even happens to some of the enjoyable characters, but a lot of the actors are good enough to rise above the lines they get given.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

-Not the best actors, not terrible but if either had a Tywin/Charles Dance level actor that'd help things a lot.

She's got Iain Glen who is an excellent actor. Unfortunately his character is probably the most under-written one in the show- he's just there to explain things and look a bit sexually frustrated.

[Bosh]

For Dany and Jon I think their adaptation from book to TV suffers the most from the books to the show because:
-Not the best actors, not terrible but if either had a Tywin/Charles Dance level actor that'd help things a lot.
-Both rely heavily on internal dialogue while keeping on a brave face. The thing is when you adapt that you either get very flat characters (just the brave face) or sound whiny as **** if they spew their internal dialogue all over the place.
-Some of the best parts of the books require a lot of sets and lots of money so got cut out or cut way down to save money. Princess Perkytits suffered badly from this in the second half of Season 3 and in Season 2 Jon was just a cluster****.
-Apparently shooting on a glacier is really hard (who knew?) so that really hurt the acting in the glacier scenes. You can see everyone acting much better when they got off that ****ing glacier.
-Martin's worldbuilding is actually pretty weak. What he's good at is dense soap opera webs of interesting characters (this guy is that guys father who is cheating on that guy with the girl who was supposed to marry that other guy who her husband killed and because their marriage fell though this guy was pissed of so etc. etc.). But stuff like the horse guys (some bits of that were even worse in the books, for example Dany's wedding) or even the mainstream feudal society in Westeros is really pretty thin gruel when you strip out all of the interesting characters (the only real exception to this is Braavos, Braavos rocks). This kind of complicated soap opera goodness comes through really well in the main King's Landing scenes in the show where you have that dense web of characters but for some of the side plots (like Jon and Dany) you have the main character stumbling through Boring Stereotype Land that isn't that interesting because Martin's really not as good as he thinks he is at worldbuilding and those kind of dense webs of characters that make the good bits of the series interesting either don't exist in the books or existed and made the books fun but got cut out of the show because they already have more named characters than any TV show ever.
-Season 1 = Book 1, Season 2 = Book 2, Seasons 3 & 4 = Book 3. This means that parts of Seasons 3 & 4 suffer as stuff that should've all been put in one seasons have to be stretched way out across two seasons. As to why they chopped Book 3 into two seasons you'll be seeing that in the next few episodes, some really good stuff should be coming up that just couldn't have been crammed into one season together with the Season 3 stuff.
-We're getting old. Dany's the most popular character in the show. Mostly with the youngest and most casual viewers (and viewers who like tits). She beats Tyrion and everyone else in search traffic and her Season 4 preview vid got about double the number of views that Tyrion's got. When I read the early books for the first time as a teenager my favorite characters were easily Jon and Dany but that changed as I got older. Some of the stuff you dislike a lot is appealing for teenaged viewers for whatever reason (tits! dragons! fire! their brains haven't finished growing yet so they're really dumb!).

Based on some preview stuff I've seen and how I think they're going to adapt some things you might like Princess Perkytit's storyline more in the season half of season 4 (but not until them). Maybe.

[DaShi]

"Oh, they're coming; the dragons are on their way."

[Imran Siddiqui]

And you know... I expect it to really get rolling in the last couple books.

[Nikolai]

Spoiler:

Don't hold your breath. Dreary Daenerys peaked when she nicked that army and it's all downhill from now on as far as interest goes. Though I expect HBO will find a way to make it less boring to all except extreme detail enthusiasts.

Spoiler:

Not really true. The ending in the last book promises a lot. It seems she might finally get moving!

[regexcellent]

It's pretty odd that the Perkytits arc is weak. All of the political scheming in the show is, without exception, excellent- so they can do dialogue and plot and do it well. Meanwhile the Arya BoyGirl arc shows they can do bildungsroman well too. That's a strong story arc.

It's not weak acting. She's doing pretty well with the material provided and is surrounded by quality support actors. But the writing is repetitive and paper-thin. I moaned for Britain in season 1 about how unconvincing the horse-riding, horse-eating, horse-worshipping Horse People of Horseland were, but they're matched by the Nameless Hordes of No-balls in this season. Everything taking place on that continent is coming across as filler written on the back of an envelope on the drive into the studio, and only the occasional sighting of dragons or boobs keeps it alive.

The show really wouldn't have suffered much if she'd only appeared when actually relevant to the rest of the plot.

This is more or less how it comes across in the books too, if that helps any. Get used to it because that won't change for a while. It's one of the most common criticisms of the series.

Fortunately, some other story lines are about to get very exciting. You'll find out which this Sunday.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The show really wouldn't have suffered much if she'd only appeared when actually relevant to the rest of the plot.

There is another character who, in the book, was introduced this way and seems to be suffering greatly for it. There's a lot that happens with her that I just don't find that interesting, but I'm not convinced it would have been better to have her show up in book 5 or 6 after having only been mentioned by Westerosi characters for what she's doing off-page.

[rah]

The first time Princess Perkytits was referenced here, it took me a few seconds to realize there was no house Perkytits. Then I chuckled. Yes, getting old if not for the timid.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

It's pretty odd that the Perkytits arc is weak. All of the political scheming in the show is, without exception, excellent- so they can do dialogue and plot and do it well. Meanwhile the Arya BoyGirl arc shows they can do bildungsroman well too. That's a strong story arc.

It's not weak acting. She's doing pretty well with the material provided and is surrounded by quality support actors. But the writing is repetitive and paper-thin. I moaned for Britain in season 1 about how unconvincing the horse-riding, horse-eating, horse-worshipping Horse People of Horseland were, but they're matched by the Nameless Hordes of No-balls in this season. Everything taking place on that continent is coming across as filler written on the back of an envelope on the drive into the studio, and only the occasional sighting of dragons or boobs keeps it alive.

The show really wouldn't have suffered much if she'd only appeared when actually relevant to the rest of the plot.