It would be a hell of a mess since there are no legitimate apparent Baratheon blood relatives left.

My take was that Edmure realized Jaime was 100% serious when he said he'd kill every single person there if he had to so he figured he was sparing all the men, along with the bonus of saving his own hide and the family he hadn't seen. Still kind of a bitch move.

If there're enough great scenes in a season, I'm going to feel OK with the bad ones. The Tower of Joy buildup was great, and that fight was incredible. Hodor's death were some of the best moments there've been in this show. If we get another scene like those in each of the next two episodes, I think we have to call this a good season. Nothing's perfect.

To be fair, his job wasn't meant to be to rule. It was meant to be to give Dany advice.

I think the problem here is that we don't see him scheming, we just see the output. He has nobody to talk to on his side, so he has no scenes.

Jamie saying "the things we do for love" was a trigger for us to realise he's 100% serious, even if it wasn't for Edmure.

Tower of Joy Build-Up? What's the Tower of Joy? I've seen this mentioned but never been sure what people are referring to.

Remember when Bran flashbacked to young Ned and company fighting those 2 guys? That tower Ned started climbing at the end is the Tower of Joy.

We never got a resolution to the Tower of Joy. What was the point of that scene? What's inside?

Just got forced to watch ep again. It's objectively terrible in every way.

Making of the last two seasons

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0vbSp7kxauU

Both Bourne and terminator are mentioned. Lmao

lol

The biggest problem with this story has ALWAYS been the pace of Dany's progress toward returning to Westeros.

She's been in Essos for so long she had to get a 2nd Dothraki horde because she squandered the first one. FFS after she proves her badassery with the Unsullied a couple times, get her on a ship to Westeros and commence teh killing.

What the Dany storyline never needed were long, drawn-out political battles with faceless, uninteresting villains such as the slavers and Sons of the Harpy. A couple of morale dilemmas regarding Jorah, dwagons eating natives, etc., is fine but come on. This is fantasy lit for the love of the Seven! We don't need protagonists to be that deep.

We can accept goddess-child-ladies with mythical powers, unblemished righteousness and seeming infallibility; we don't need to see a constant cycle of resounding victory followed by weakness and dismal failure sparked by hubris/inexperience.

***************

It's been apparent at least since the middle of Season 1 that Dany and Jon Snow were both central figures in the long Game of Thrones. The problem at the moment is that Dany is still futzing around, still collecting allies and Jon Snow is doing some tepid version of Robb Stark despite coming back from a heinously wrong murder.

I guess this episode helped reveal Margaery's plan a bit? Using religion and pussy to brain wash the king is the ideal way to be rid of Cersei. Sounds like the real world actually
Not sure how it helps Loras, but I'm sure there's more trickery there.

jfc i was at the beach fishing all day monday/tuesday and was looking forward to catching up on the episode last night, what a ****in complete pile of suck that was

so arya def has WOAT storyline, that had to be the worst writing i've ever seen

blackfish/edmure stuff was stupid af

khaleesi scenes were boring and repetitive as usual

if they do another one of these "dedicate a whole episode to some stupid battle" with this khaleesi (a'la the wall last season), i might just quit the show.

i was one of the more excited/satisfied ones with the first couple episodes of the season but the poor writing really is infecting the show from all angles and making it suck super hard

Arya's storyline in the first 4 seasons was awesome. In the past 2 seasons several things could have been done better, but overall her storyline has been great. Much better than Sansa or Dany's storylines.

People are getting way too whiny in this thread.

Not whining when the writing has been objectively terrible. Not in an artistic debate way whereby I didn't like something you did but objectively. The story structure has been terrible and the characters motives makes no sense at all. Arya's entire storyline for the past two seasons is utterly pointless at this point.

This season is really terrible.

The 2-season Arya arc was pointless and lol at being stabbed in the stomach but the actress bandages her up and she's fine. Because the actress was the jealous type and got used to sewing up all the men she stabbed? Gtfo.

Even Tyrion has been boring. They don't seem to know what to do with him, honestly it would have been better to kill him off dramatically than have him sitting in the pyramid making jokes with Grey Worm and trying to get him to drink wine.

Your posts are objectively terrible.

People way misuse and way overuse the word "objectively". And I don't think we can say any storyline is pointless until the resolution of that storyline.

I'm not overusing the term. There are long established story structure conventions. Her storyline is not following them and it's not due to an artistic desire to break the mold. It's just bad writing.

There was a resolution this episode. She is going home which is exactly where she was headed 3 seasons ago. Nothing she has done in the past two seasons appears to be more than the worlds longest drawn out training montage. The narrative force of which is she is now better trained, something that could have been accomplished in 45 seconds of screen time.

At this point the only characters I really care much about are Jaime and Cersei. Cersei is badass and the best moment of last week's crap episode was when she said "I choose violence." Also liked Jaime's speech to Edmure about doing anything to get back to Cersei.

The rest of the main characters are just not very interesting at this point. The show picks up a little when some of the secondary characters show up (Hound, Littlefinger, Bronn, etc.)

I am hoping next week is good since I've been waiting 2 seasons for Ramsay Bolton to finally get his.

Everyone is talking about the awfulness of Arya's storyline but the real tragedy this season is Tyrion's character. They had taken one of the best characters and destroyed his entire purpose. He is the political genius, the Machievelli. This season he is being written as a political moron who never does anything right. If the dragon bimbo, the dumbest person in Westoros, is back to "set him straight" I think I'm done with the show.

Surely Ned Stark was dumber.

I probably don't have the willpower to do this, but I might just stop watching and wait for the books.

Writing has been pretty terrible in several spots (as highlighted here) and I'm starting to wonder if I might ultimately enjoy reading the books more w/o any plot line spoilers from tv (assuming they don't turn into the book version of the next "Half-Life is coming soon") to get a better experience from more quality buildup to endgame.

There's no way you can remain unspoiled. You may as well watch the show, you'll have forgotten half of it by the time the final book is done.

basically

theres no way you dont learn about Hodor's story for example even if you didnt watch the show lol