House of Cards in the discussion.

Dexter wins not because it was great, but because how unfathomably bad it ended

first two seasons with DOAKES were very strong

trinity season was also elite

The Bran=NK is so asinine that at this point its basically a lock to just be a spoiler. Last time there was a theory that stupid it was Walt poisoning Brock and LF killing Joffrey and those both turned out to be true.

Pretty disappointing watching those "making of" videos and seeing them talk about budgetary restrictions so much. Wonder how many Ghost scenes we'd get if all the ****ing piraters would pay instead of being stealing scumbags

this is correct, DOAKES was ELITE

top 50 lists without West Wing, VEEP, Freaks & Geeks, and Firefly?

*sigh.

i suppose F&G and Firefly don't quite make the >15 episode criteria, but they were still great.

lol west wing

hbo made a gazillion dollars last year, have to imagine a big part of that was from GoT

Finally someone mentions The West Wing. Peak West Wing is ****ing great. Two Cathedrals has an argument for greatest episode of TV ever and I'm saying that with no hyperbole.

Mr. Show no love on lists. I saw some article a while ago about how many of their ridiculous sketches have basically come true.

I actually think s2 is as good as s4. Its beautiful

Is that supposed to be a counter argument or something? Seems irrelevant

of all the things to rightfully nit about this episode, the speed of Gendry + ravens + dragons is the worst IMO.

time elapsed on this show is always unclear. I don't think there is anything specific that shows they were on that rock for one night. IMO it's ambiguous. (though I agree in general that if they were supposed to be there for a long time, then all the subsequent action happening so quickly is not great storytelling, it's just rushed). it's also just part of this universe now that people teleport so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stuff like Benjen showing up out of nowhere and not having time to get on his horse (???) is way dumber. as is the Night King javeling a flying dragon from 500 meters but choosing not to hit a stationary one 20 feet away. that stuff is just lazy/dumb

or that the zombie army was stopped by cracked ice in the presence of the night king who can freeze things at will.

they basically knew they needed a way for the night king to revive a dragon and everything they came up with to advance that plot starting with tyrion's "plan" is nonsensical

Wait what? How were either of those theories stupid? Both make perfect sense in the context of the character and the story they were trying to tell.

eerrrm Olena killed Joffrey

Right with help from LF. Regardless, I'm confused as to how guessing that LF was involved in Joffrey's murder can be described as "unfathomably stupid".

What I don't understand is why you can't just have Dany show up without Gendry and the raven? It's perfectly plausible that she would just be worried about Jon and his dream team and go north on a rescue mission because of her own concern. Like, huh, maybe I should stroll up there with my 3 dragons and see how they're doing on that idiotic mission that was destined to fail, instead of sitting here doing nothing? It also adds to the excitement of her showing up, which is predictable either way, but at least not completely telegraphed.

Eh, on this front it's damned if you do damned if you don't. People complained that the Knights of the Vale showed up at the Battle of the Bastards "out of nowhere" despite it making plenty of sense that 1. Littlefinger would like to "help" sansa and 2. he would wait until the very end to do clean up duty rather than use his forces from the start. There's a conversation he has with Cersei in s5 about how they should let the north fight itself and then clean up the winner, yet when he does exactly that people complained it was dues ex machina. I think there'd still be complaints if they just had Dany show up in a similar fashion, despite it making perfect sense.

There's a difference between cleaning up the winner and timing it perfecting so that your army arrives literally with seconds to spare. And OK, maybe that's a trope that's fine to bring out once or twice, but how many times have they gone to that well? Tywin showed up at the end of Blackwater, Littlefinger at the BotB, the dragons during the revolt back in Essos, the dragons last episode. It's just become tiring that we keep seeing people saved at the last minute over and over

...and over and over and over. The internet is a big place so I assume someone has already compiled a list of these last minute saves over the course of the series. The volume is presumably heavily tilted towards more recent seasons.

Sucks for Ned Stark he wasn't a s5 or later character

Jaime deciding to return to Harrenhal and showing up just before the bear eats Brienne