creekdipper

And BBC/PBS already has the market cornered on one of them.

fumanstan

But he's been in 7 episodes! 7!

Bill Needle

I see it as they used it as an opportunity to close out the Uncle Benjen character, a character that has been around since the second episode of the series. At least there won't be any "what happened to the Russian guy" questions about him. Sure it was a little contrived, but without him showing up there would have just been a different contrivance.

jfoobar

OK man, whatever you say. Two brief appearances in the past year or so with nothing before that since May of 2011 is "various appearances throughout". You win.

Rob V

Yes.... and if that offends you, gfy.

Giantrobo

Well, since the show's writing is so shitty i have no reason to believe Benjen is actually gone. Doo Ex-Bad/Lazy Writing will save him.

Why So Blu?

I have not called anyone a mouth breather in a long time.

Osiris3657

well if anyone is offended, it's clearly you with abbreviation. You're one of the people I was referring to in the post below.

Osiris3657

I think that episode was poorly written as well, but mostly let it slide. I agree that the impact of Jon and Ramsay meeting at the end did not have the emotional impact I was hoping, due to what had played out earlier that episode.

I should have taken the same approach as you, but I guess I was hoping that D&D would take these final episodes seriously and make sure everything fit together in a sensible way.

davidh777

Is it possible to disagree without insulting each other?

creekdipper

That's only possible in the Politics & Religion Forum.

creekdipper

Hmmm....

Thanks. Hadn't considered that.

Dogpile Escape worked for Glen.

(Not ultimately, of course, but just sayin' there's certainly a precedent with other top-rated shows.).

Maybe he can come back as Unca Stoneheart.

Draven

My wife literally said "I wonder if Benjen will show up?" and he did. It wasn't like Varys rode in to rescue them. It was a character we already know is in the North and probably keeping tabs on the white walker army.

Why's it so weird that he showed up?

Rob V

lol... it's dragons and zombie snowmen vs medieval soldiers... and you're worried about the writing. People take less shit for liking Two Broke Girls than those of us who watch GoT to be entertained for an hour. Not everything needs to be Citizen fucking Kane. You've become the Dragon Tattoo of GoT threads.

aktick

No! Piss off!

Edit: Dumbass!

starman9000

davidh777

GreenMonkey

Like Draven, I have. I re-read all the books in a series when a new one comes out. An exception: When the final Fitz & Fool Robin Hobb book came out, I only re-read the most recent 6 books. I didn't have the energy for 14 or whatever again, since I'd just done it a couple of years prior.

I started late with Martin, since I thought it was going to be overhyped garbage (how I feel about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time). Turned into my second favorite series, if he ever finishes it.

So I read storm in the early-2000s, and then re-read them before Feast came out, and then re-read them again when Dance came out. It helps I read pretty fast.

Frankly I'm not onboard with the general opinions of them. Yes, Storm was the best, but I don't feel like there was a huge drop in quality. The only problem with Feast and Dance is that they were spliced up badly between POVs (Feast not having much of the main "heroes" hurt it, it helps to mix up some Jon and Tyrion, etc into the painfully assholish mix of Jaime and Cersei, etc).


------

Anyway, as far as this episode, it wasn't handled well, but it's not the first time the show has bungled something that should be not too hard to do.

Bring a crow along, have Bran do something useful by seeing them in danger. Bran sends the crow to Dany, maybe. Or have everyone running behind Gendry, ala season 1's Fist of the First Men sequence, but then they are forced to divert to more defensible ground when the army of the dead catches up with them. Plenty of ways to handle it that made more sense than Gendry runs really fast one way, and they run into the middle of a lake the other way. Meanwhile raven flies halfway across the continent, and Dany does the same. It would be 3,4,5 days.

If nothing else, you'd expect them to send the dead in small handfuls to wear them down.

Other complaints are a bit silly though. Yes Dany would be cold, but Dragons are surely very warm. But she should have some sort of saddle or something to hold her on the damn dragon anyway, as would anyone atop something that flies like that. Bitch about that if you want, but the cold? Pfft.

Ditto for the Night King aiming at the dragon on the ground.

How is the dragon evac-ing some stupid humans on the ground a threat to his army? I'm not sure he sees any individual humans as a real threat. He'll kill them eventually. Obviously if he's willing to camp his army around the lake for a few days to wait them out, he's not in a hurry to kill them. It's not like he *knows* John is the hero of the story or whatever.

However, the dragon in the air, breathing fire on his troops? Immediate threat that needs to be neutralized, first!

Yes the dragon on the ground is an easier target, but obviously he's an awfully good shot with his ice javelin.

Coldhands as a deus ex machina was a bit weak, some foreshadowing would have been cool, but the show has gotten a bit hurried in its execution.

The problem is, that no one is paying the price for boneheaded decisions any more, and that's because they don't have Martin's writing to lean on. Earlier in the show/books, when someone did something boneheaded, they paid the price (Robb, Ned, Stannis's fleet attack on King's Landing, Sansa, even Jon). The plot armor has gotten a bit thick, but it's definitely TV show plot armor and flaws, without the books as a base. Battle of the bastards, the ice lake, Arya being stabbed repeatedly, etc.

fumanstan

Seems like a trend. I know I laughed at Osiris' Transformers comment earlier, but the generalizations of people that have issues and those that don't is getting really annoying. As well as my personal annoyance of people calling out those that are just voicing their complaints.

Lifepawn

Benjen had to go. He could answer too many questions that Bran finds too hard to explain.

DaveyJoe

This is what I hated about the trend that started last year, specifically with the Battle of the Bastards. The suspense of the show hinges on the fact that anybody could die and when protagonists make bad decisions, they aren't protected by plot armor. It really bothered me with every thing Jon did during the battle at Winterfell, after this week's episode I can only assume that Jon is the Prince that was Promised and is literally being protected by a divine presence.

That doesn't excuse Jaime and Bronn's miraculous survival of The Spoils of War. Hell, I even thought more than just Thoros would die this week, the stakes are supposedly higher than ever, but nobody seems like they're in much danger anymore. Of course we may be sorry for what we wished for after the finale.

lwhy?

Sorry if this was posted but I haven't seen it and didn't want to scroll through 14 pages, but it takes an in-depth look at the travel time: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc.../#7db0a0d57365

jfoobar

Yes, of course we are. This dismissive concept that the genre somehow alleviates the need for good writing is just bizarre.

jfoobar

Great post. I don't think I can disagree with any of this.

Josh-da-man

They're kind of up against a wall now.

They've killed off most of the strong, brave, heroic, or smart characters, and they haven't been replaced by anyone.

Ned, dead. Robb, dead. Oberyn, dead. Stannis, dead. Tywin, dead. Selmy, dead.

And we're left with people like Cersei, the world's greatest swordsman who lost his hand, the crippled kid, the undead bastard, the dwarf who lost his mojo, teenaged girls, and people like Theon who have somehow managed to survive seven years of conflict despite being worthless.