Game of Thrones Episode 6.10 Spoilers

And so we reach the end of another season of GoT.  This one certainly had its ups and downs.  Let’s hit the episode itself before we talk about the season.

The final episode was full of the smirks.  Cersei after going nuclear, though she couldn’t escape the fallout of Tommen’s fall.  Sansa in the corner of the table as Lyanna Mormont laid the smack down on the other lords of the North.  Dany as she marched on the wooden horses across the sea.  Arya as she stood over Walder Frey crossing yet another name off her list.

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GoT Episode 6.9 Spoilers

There was a lot going on in this episode, but there isn’t really too much to talk about.  Dany had the “I’m a badass” battle scene.  She tells the Masters what’s up.  She does the whole, “no we are talking about YOUR surrender” bit.  Then she casually flies off and wrecks a ship or two.  Grey Worm has a badass moment when he executes the two Masters representatives.  Side note: had it really taken that long for the other two dragons to get loose?  That bit was very odd.  Yara and Dany’s negotiations were pretty entertaining as well.  Power to the ladies.  It won’t be the last example.

The Battle of the Bastards was just brutal.  No two ways about it.  The one “light” moment, that still involved tragedy, is a little protip for Rickon.  I assumed they would show that another archer took him out.  But as Sansa said, he was pretty much toast from the moment Ramsay got him.

Random digression overall protip: why did Ramsay even leave Winterfell?

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Game of Thrones Episodes 6.6-8 spoilers

Sorry I was out for a bit.  Vacations and Overwatch hit.  Phew, I need to take a break on that one.

We’ll hit the big events over the last few episodes.

So the main theme from this season is “just kidding, no one dies on GoT.”  Benjen’s back after 5 seasons.  And he just happens to find Bran and Meera before the horde of white walkers who were literally two steps behind them.  And he is…mostly dead? Wave the magic wand.

The Hound is back?  Come on man.  Again, I love the character, but dude was pretty fucked up when we last saw him.  And now he is back seemingly perfectly healthy.  He has some really odd scenes of hanging out with Ian McShane, who knocked his role out of the park.  And then they kill McShane and a bunch of other people to…motivate the Hound back to going and fucking people up?  We get it GoT, terrible things happen in this world.  We didn’t really need to women in refrigerators this bit to get the Hound back on the track of killing people.

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Game of Thrones Episode 6.5 spoilers

Well, this episode was pretty terrible.  I don’t like dwelling on the fact that I am falling further and further into being a hater of this show.  But, it isn’t completely my fault.  The showrunners keep making bad story decisions.

After making what I didn’t think was a very bold claim last week about Sansa fucking up Littlefinger the next time she saw him, she did not fuck him up the next time she saw him.  I’m a little surprised Sansa didn’t have Brienne at least rough him up a bit.  I did like Sansa’s comments about moving between various sets of monsters who killed her family.  I’m just a little clueless as to what Littlefinger’s role in the story is right now.
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Game of Thrones episode 6.4 spoilers

Sorry, was out of town for the week so didn’t post this in a reasonable time.

This episode clearly revealed what will probably be the case for the rest of this season.  There are story lines I care about and those that I really, really don’t.

But first, RIP Osha.  After being gone for many episodes, she returns for two quick scenes, and then Ramsay stabs the frick out of her.  I hope we don’t get too many more tease scenes like this of “oh, oh, is Ramsay going to die? noooooo, I’m sorry.”  Either don’t show him or kill him. Continue reading →

Game of Thrones episode 6.3 spoilers

I’ve written about most of the episodes in Game of Thrones.  And I’m sure I’ve said this a few times about certain quotes.  And each time, they were probably correct.  But truer words than the title of this post have not been spoken on the show.  Both the books and the show have failed on numerous story occasions.  One of my favorite books is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, which will hopefully be a topic for another post.  The hero of the story is an architect, and the book sets him up as a very, very good one.  One of the other characters asks him if he ever makes mistakes.  He says that he makes them all the time.  He just doesn’t build them.

Everything doesn’t always have to go right for the characters.  Characters themselves can make mistakes.  But consistently putting barriers in their way that move them seemingly further away from their arc is a failure of storytelling.  And Game of Thrones has seen that often. Continue reading →

Game of Thrones episode 6.2 Spoilers

Really?

Let’s waste no time and jump Ned’s head first right into Jon Snow’s resurrection.  So, after the countless characters who have died, and the list was added to in this episode, Jon Snow is the one who gets brought back.  I know book people will point to another character who gets brought back.  I doubt we will see her in the show, but my response there would be what is her point?

Anyway, we all pretty much knew this was coming.  Of all the ways they could have done it, I can’t believe this is how they chose to present it.  At least with Thoros and Beric, there was some passion, some performance.  Here we have Melisandre all but meh-ing her way through the ritual.  She doesn’t believe it will work, and she seems to put the barest minimum of effort into it.  If you are going to frickin’ resurrect someone from the dead and counteract one of the greatest forces this story has exhibited, give us some sound, some fury.  Maybe the editors chose the wrong take.  Maybe the next one was once more, with feeling.  This moment should have been a great moment, but it had none of the shock and awe of either the red or purple weddings.  Jon’s exhalation of the breath of life felt more like the story releasing a sigh of frustration.  This is what the story has come to: we have to magically bring people back alive to progress.

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spoilers for Game of Thrones episode 6.1 and all that has come before

Well, Game of Thrones has returned.  I’ve written about previous seasons on other sites (and now its watch is, probably, over).  I skipped last season, but I’ll do or do not a piece for each episode this season.

For some background to my perspective, I have read the five main books.  I haven’t read any of the preview chapters from book six.  And I haven’t read any of the supplemental stories.  I am far from an expert on the lore of A Song of Ice and Fire.  I liked book one until they introduce the character of Ned’s head.  And the series has slowly gone downhill in my eyes.  I simply haven’t liked most of the decisions George RR has made.  I was hoping season five of the show would avoid some of them, but it did not.  And now here we are in the aftermath of those decisions.  I will be curious to see what the show does.

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The following discussion will contain spoilers for Star Wars The Force Awakens.

Well, it was about that time to talk about Star Wars The Force Awakens.  I have now seen the movie twice.  The first time was with my best friend at the very first showing opening night.  I saw it again last night.  Overall, SWTFA just has too many story problems for me to say that I liked the movie.

Let me frame my Star Wars fandom a little before my comments.  I would consider myself a moderate fan.  As a kid, I was captivated by the original trilogy, loving the world of the movies, the toys, and several of the video games.  I even read a few of the books.  I saw the prequel trilogy with high enthusiasm.  While I loved many of the action scenes in the prequel trilogy (most of the lightsaber fight scenes were incredibly well done), the story was not what I expected.  As I have gotten older, my love of all the movies has slowly waned.  I see more and more issues with the story.  While this article can be very crude with its writing, it brings up a lot of valid points regarding the plot issues.  I still do love many of the elements of the Star Wars world (the force, lightsabers, x-wings), but I was not that optimistic about SWTFA.

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Some Jessica Jones spoilers will follow.

So I’ve been watching Netflix’s Jessica Jones.  I didn’t know anything of the comic before watching.  I was just curious because I have enjoyed most of the Marvel properties on the screen so far.  I was meh about Daredevil, which is maybe something I will talk about soon.  But, I definitely wanted to give Jessica Jones a try.

I’m only seven episodes in, but so far this show is perhaps one of the darkest and most bizarre shows I’ve ever watched.  It seems like nearly the entire point of the story thus far is to torture the main character Jessica Jones.  Let’s look at a few examples.  Under Kilgrave’s mind control, she was (I’m pretty sure it was implied) raped, physically abused, and then forced to kill a lady.  We presume this lady was innocent, but we aren’t sure at this time.  Then, she is forced to watch the same thing happen to another young woman as a way for Kilgrave to announce that he is back.  She meets Luke Cage the husband of the woman she killed.  She starts to develop feelings for him only for the story to force her not to tell Luke about how his wife died until he finds out in a way that causes him to hate her.  One of her neighbors gets addicted to drugs through Kilgrave in order to follow her around.  And, then another gets killed by Kilgrave and left dead in Jessica’s bed for entirely innocent reasons, though not from Kilgrave’s perspective.  Finally, Kilgrave essentially forces her, but not through his mind control, to come live with him.

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