A Game of Thrones - TV Show Discussion Thread

[regexcellent]

I watched the Wall scene again. What's with the evil music? Like, why do they try to make Stannis look so evil even when he does the most heroic thing in the ****ing series? Jesus Christ. I was too busy being happy to see Stannis to notice it the first time, but it's completely ridiculous. They've got this low camera angle and dark lighting to make it seem like he's some sinister monster.

[pchang]

Well, he did have sex with a priestess so she could give birth to a supernatural assassin to kill his own brother.....

[regexcellent]

His own brother was trying to usurp the throne.

In the books, it is made abundantly clear that Stannis is obsessed with firm justice and legalism (to a somewhat neurotic degree) and that he wants to be king out of a sense of the fact that that's how things are just supposed to be, not because he really wants to; moreover, because he believes (likely rightly) that the other candidates for the throne would be bad for the realm.

In the show he's a villain.

[Dinner]

Wow, big, big changes. The story is still good but big changes...

[Dinner]

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.

[Dinner]

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

[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.

[self biased]

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.

[Guynemer]

Spoiler:

[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]

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.

[Imran Siddiqui]

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

[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 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.