A Game of Thrones - TV Show Discussion Thread

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Stannis, the master tactician, seems to have brought columns of cavalry to fight in forests as well as on permafrost where the horses can't graze. Though, I guess if you go through the books it's fair to say logistics aren't his strong suit anyway...

[regexcellent]

Stannis only had 4,000 troops, but they were largely armored knights and men at arms and of course they're led by Stannis.

[rah]

In those sky shots (i'll probably watch it again) makes it only look like Stannis had a few thousand troops. Even if only 25% of the 100k were troops that's still a lot to overcome in the short time that they made it look like. Yes, I know they're are budgets involved.

[Guynemer]

Well, that's the thing. It isn't actually 100K warriors. It is 100K people--including kids, moms, elderly, etc. Not that the show has made that distinction.

[rah]

I don't know. I was watching with my daughter (who has never read the books) and just from previous scenes she knew it was Stannis to the rescue before they showed him. Which made me wonder why they did the Obscure the hero bit to build up suspense. It was pretty obvious already.

And she commented that he's the only one of those striving for the crown to actually act like a king. So I don't think this took anything away from his status.

Yes, it was cool that they showed it from the air, but even what we saw wouldn't have stood up to 100 k warriors. IMHO.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The way the show did it was to cut off Stannis's moment at the knees. The unsullied are barely talking about it. Losing it in the morass of Tywin's death, etc. It is far more impt to establish Stannis's military prowess than it is to show the Night's Watch held the Wall for a day.

[Guynemer]

Bull****. Complete and utter bull****.

They are BOTH badass moments. They both need room to be badass, thus separate episodes, as they are separate chapters in the book.

[Imran Siddiqui]

**** the Night's Watch. Stannis saving the day is far cooler - and was a total badass moment in the books.

[Guynemer]

I can not disagree with you more re: Stannis and the Night's Watch. If he arrived last week, it would've robbed the Night's Watch of their glory; here's the deus ex machina riding in to save the day. This way, the NW gets glory for their defense, AND Stannis for defeating Mance and being the only king to give a **** about The Wall.

[Bosh]

Minor spoiler about difference between the book and the show re: Tyrion.

Spoiler:

And I guess they just couldn't resist white-washing Tyrion just one more time. I suppose it makes sense they cut the bit about Jaime telling him about Tysha and perhaps we should be grateful that he won't be obsessing about where whores go now but them making him killing Shae possibly excusable as self-defense left a bad taste in my mouth. Never really got a good grip on what the hell the showrunners were trying to do with show Shae.

Would've preferred to have them keep the Giant of Lannister thread and the soup of singer and cut out those annoying scenes last season with all kinds of people saying such nice things about Tyrion behind his back. It's gotten really painfully obvious who the showrunners' favorite character is.

As for the rest of the epsiode:
-The bizarre decision to move Stannis here and rob his coming to the rescue of the Night's Watch of all of it's drama.
-Nice to see Kit Harrington finally learn how to act.
-Danny worked better than she has in a while.
-Everything with Arya was perfect, as nearly always, was telling Tyrion to hurry the **** up as I was afraid there wouldn't be enough time for Arya to get on a boat before the episode ended.
-Thought they could've cut Cersei down a bit and made more space for some other bits that seemed rushed. Well an extra bit of drama there doesn't hurt and helps to pile onto Tywin's no good, very bad day.
-I know we weren't going to get a reference to ****ting gold, but could we at least have gotten "I'm you writ small"? Bah.

[Guynemer]

Spoiler:

[regexcellent]

That episode really felt rushed. The series would have benefited from an extra episode or two so they could really flesh out the subplots instead of just giving them each a five minute scene but I guess they blew most of their budget on the battle at Castle Black.

Like moving Stannis to last episode.

[self biased]

Spoiler:

[Dr Strangelove]

They have an upcoming season next year to flesh out those subplots.

That GRRM, he's just a sentimental guy. Someone should ask him which of the older male figures most resemble his own father.

[Dinner]

I like how they had the episode where Tyrion kills his dad air on father's day.