Jon and his team go beyond the wall to capture a wight. Daenerys has to make a tough decision.

Look, I don’t want to be negative. I don’t go out of my way to seek out things to complain about. I love this show. I was so captivated and enthralled by the first season that the following summer I bought the book set and raced through them, undaunted by the dozens of hours of reading thousands and thousands of pages. I couldn’t get enough of this world. The show was flawless for 4 plus seasons….but the show has suffered drastically since Benioff and Weiss didn’t have GRRM’s books to guide them in writing the show anymore. It started last season with Dorne and the Sand Snakes and Arya’s adventures in Braavos. There were still moments of brilliance though.

This season has been rough, but episode 6 is a disaster. It’s the worst written episode of the entire series. This was the “jump the shark” episode. The writers have completely given up and no longer make any effort to write a plot that makes sense. The only goal at this point is to get to the end of the show. I can’t help but wonder how much of this is due to possible burnout for Benioff and Weiss. This show has been their life for 8 years, 24/7. They already have a new show in development despite GoT not being over. If that doesn’t speak to their decreased level of commitment to GoT, I don’t know what does. I also can’t imagine it was HBO’s call for shortened seasons, this had to be B&W’s call. This show is HBO’s cash cow, if it were up to them it would have been 7 or 8 standard 10 episode seasons. This would have been better, because it would have allowed more time to write episodes that didn’t feel rushed.

B&W and the rest of the writers have completely ignored how large this world is. This episode was the worst offender of that. If I’m remembering correctly, in the very first episode of the show King Robert tells Ned that it took months to get from King’s Landing to Winterfell. Granted they were traveling in a large caravan, but the point that is established is that this world is massive.

In this episode, Jon and the gang are headed further north from Eastwatch to capture a wight to prove the White Walkers exist and they all need fight together to stop them. They capture a wight as planned but are overrun and surrounded by more wights led by the Night King. During this, Gendry is sent back to Eastwatch to warn Dany. Let’s forgive that they appeared to be hiking for at least a day or two but Gendry sprints all the way back to Eastwatch. They send a raven to Dany from Eastwatch to Dragonstone, where Dany is. Do you have any idea how far that is?? That bird would have been flying for DAYS if the writers remembered how large this world is. Meanwhile Jon and the gang are just hanging on a frozen rock in the middle of the lake, surrounded by wights and the Night King. They didn’t appear to have supplies outside of their weapons. Couldn’t the writers have shown a couple people carrying food and water, or have someone mention offhand the amount of food and water they have left? Why didn’t the Night King send his army to attack and finish them off? The episode clearly shows the group sleeping and at least a day has past. They apparently have no food or water (again, something that could have easily been resolved by better writing) and they have just been hanging out on this rock with the Night King’s army silently staring at them for hours, if not days.

Of course Dany gets the message and proceeds to fly all the way to the North, past the Wall, from Dragonstone (again, the raven should have taken days to get there, it should have taken days for Dany to get to Jon) and she saves the day. They would have run out of water and food long before this or the Night King would have slaughtered them if B&W gave a fuck anymore. Also, Dany and Drogon should have immediately gone after the Night King after they watched Viserion get killed. Or have Rhaegal go after them. They can breathe blames from really far away, so they could have been within reasonably safe distance of the Night King and his ice spears.

During this point, Jon is moving away from the group to kill wights. WTF are you doing Jon, everyone is getting ontop of Drogon to escape and you move away to kill a few wights? Again, WTF was this writing. Naturally he doesn’t make it back to Drogon and Dany and he gets tackled into the ice water, but survives of course (fan service, Jon can’t die). And then fucking Benjen/Coldhands shows up OUT OF NOWHERE to save Jon and give him his horse so he can ride back to Eastwatch. This is was so frustrating. The writers again had to save Jon’s life and figured they hadn’t used Benjen in awhile, let’s use him. Where was he all this time, was he observing this battle and decided to join in when he saw Jon was in danger? He just happened upon it at the right time? Would have been better if Jon and the gang had run into him while they were making their journey North, but to have him come in last second out of nowhere was just plain bad writing.

I'm in to the end, but the show is far from what it used to be.

It seems like D&D decided to go for full spectacle over logical storytelling. Kind of a Michael Bay movie approach of linking together cool action scenes with a rather weak plot line. How in the hell would Dany know where to find these guys in the great north? How long would she have to spend in the air to get to them? I've looked at the maps and it's a distance no matter how you cut it. Cool to see the Night King establish himself as the ultimate bad ass, but the whole creation of an Ice Dragon seems more like a fan fiction story to me.

Do Baratheon genetics give people Flash like abilities ? This is the only explanation for Gendry making it back to Eastwatch.