There's plenty of characters doing plenty of things. Bronn and Jaime had about as much a chance of accomplishing something meaningful as the Brienne and Arya fight.

Only thing I agree about all this is that the Arya scene just didn't work. Idgaf about the magic stuff in got, I don't even hate the teleportation bull****. It's necessary and it's been used for a long time now. but I really hate when they can't follow what they have established, based on the books or not. Arya could never do that to Brienne. Like, it's just not possible from what we know about Brienne. not to mention the size difference. I know it's supposed to mirror syrio fighting, but it didn't convince me. In the books, if this ever happens, I believe the build up will be a lot more realistic. Like we'll see her doing lots of cool stuff before facing Brienne. In the show she just had her ass kicked continuously by the waif and killed her somehow.


I disagree about the battle though. BGP's major complaint seems to be that they were all at square one in the end. So if drogon killed Jaime everything would be awesome? I do agree that it didn't achieve much, but it still was one of the most exciting and awaited moments in the show for me.

Yeah there's no way Arya could stand against Brienne even if they were both equally skilled, height and weight advantage are huge things and Arya's sword is not up to the job, there's a reason knights don't carry light swords like that. Meanwhile the only hint we've had that Arya is any good with a sword is her killing the Waif essentially off camera, Brienne should still be light years ahead of her in skill.

It also didn't work for me on a character level, like I said Brienne is not an egotist and wouldn't get mad like she did, she also wouldn't spar with real blades against one of Catelyn's daughters. For her part, Arya's arc for the last season or two has been partly her learning the value of secrecy and subterfuge, yet here she is openly showing off her fighting skills in the middle of Winterfell. I'm not saying that Arya definitely wouldn't do that, but I would tend to expect her to keep her capabilities under wraps, it's one of the ways she's changed as a character, she's learnt to be more cautious. It's a slightly awkward fit as a character moment and contributed to the awkwardness of the scene.

So it seemed like the point of the scene was just "applaud because yay Arya". I guess you could argue that the point was to show us that Arya is now really good with a sword, but it failed on that level for me for all the reasons above. I just didn't buy it.

Again, more storytelling than fan service, both of these things are in accordance with Jaime and Bronn's characters. There's a bit of a blurry line between fan service and storytelling here, I agree it's sort of fan service to manipulate the story such that well known characters pop up in every scene, but I think that feels more obnoxious to hardcore fans and is sort of necessary for more casual watchers. Fan service only really crosses the line for me when characters or previously established facts are disregarded in the quest for COOL SCENES. Fan service would be Cersei showing up on the battlefield to operate the crossbow personally, but at the last minute Lyanna Mormont runs into the weapon and knocks the shot off target. Lyanna then gives a speech about soft Southron women and how tough they make chicks on Bear Island, before defeating The Mountain in a duel.

This video on the Golden Ratio in GoT is worth watching if you haven't seen it before. I don't agree with everything they say but the basic theory that it foreshadows a balance being reached is clearly correct. The stuff about Dany and Jon being tied to the Walkers is a bit more dubious. Anyway, the reason I'm posting it here is that these symbols appear again in the cave drawings Jon shows Dany.

Back when the show was taking its time, we'd have had a few scenes of Arya struggling manfully against Brienne but getting owned, then in like the third or fourth scene of Arya getting trained, she'd unexpectedly disarm Brienne and Brienne would look shocked, then they'd smile at each other. Realistic and a nice character bonding moment.

Arya spent two whole seasons in Braavos learning the Faceless Men stuff (and that was frankly too long and goes on WAY too long in the books), but now she's gone from getting her ass kicked and somehow killing the Waif to being Arya, First Sword of Winterfell in the space of one scene. I'm assuming the point of the scene was indeed that Arya is now a wizard at swordfighting. It seems very clear that the show has switched to a fast-forward pace and that all that "we're only doing two more seasons because that's all the story there is" stuff from D&D was bull****.

Re Jamie: If you fall into a deep body of water while wearing half-plate armour, you drown. It's much too heavy to swim in. Of course, that didn't stop Theon surviving in the sea with chainmail.

She's showing that she's also learnt to fight with the faceless men - 'no one' taught her how to fight.

I also assume that Brienne has never faced anyone with that fighting style, she didn't really respect it at first, then the fight got much more equal.

In real life, the idea of Arya's sword essentially superseded the kind of heavy sword that Brienne has (though part of the reason was armour technology & longbows then firearms).

The small and more dextrous weapons are great against anything but full-plate, because you just have to stick the point in somewhere. There doesn't appear to be full-plate yet in the GoT world.

"fan service" or not Bronn getting a full jon snow in hardhorne masterclass cut was pretty awesome. The character deserved it.

Haven't watched yet, but between youtube and this thread I'm as spoiled as I could be, Drogon gets hurt? How badly?

He takes an arrow to the chest and doesnt seem to enjoy it but is prob fine next ep.

And I think there is full plate in the books at least. Arent the contestants in plate at the Hands tourney in S1?

fan service or not, the battle was just not exciting to me since the conclusion was very clear and the battle was delayed. It's not so much that Jaime had to die or something, it's just that the conclusion was clear from the start so how people think it can be one of the best things ever filmed is pretty meh to me. More to good tv/story than "yay dragons" and "yeah go bronn!" Blackwater, BoB, Hardholme etc. had higher stakes, better storytelling and were just far better due to the buildup and uncertainty. This isn't even a top 10, maybe 20, GoT moment imo. Once again this is the type of scene you open the season with showing a few shots of the dothraki and a dragon breathing fire after having wrecked the army. It's not an episode 4 "omgomgomg" moment, but they tried to make it that way by having 3 shows of nothing really happening and some fan servicey unnecessary shots of everyone's favorites. I originally thought D&D were crazy to cut this down to 13 episodes, now it seems like they're stretching the show out.

There's no way Arya can stand vs Brienne, there's no way LF rules the Vale, there's no way Bran becomes a tree in a day. Arya and Brienne sparring is not that unrealistic to some of the other fast forward moments we've had, and when the show (and books kinda) decided to fast forward 5 years we're going to get some subpar storytelling like this. Arya shouldn't be able to stand with Brienne, or take down the Freys singlehandedly etc but unless we wanted 6 seasons of her training and random politics in Westeros then this is kind of what we're stuck with. The scene itself was done well and was fun. It also looks like Maisie actually put in some effort to learn how to do the choreography which is a nice touch given some of the let downs in previous years.

In S1 the plate is even worse. Budget costs had them in cloth for the most part with some plate armor covering the major areas. No one has ever worn a helm since it's bad for tv.

Ah yes, that sounds right to me. The Mountain & Loras were for the jousting, as far as I recall.

Why do you even get out of bed inn the morning?

Battle scene showed dragons are the ultimate weapon and game changer. 3 dragons and dathraki conquer everybody. Dragon smashes formations. Dathraki on horseback kill foot soldiers not in formation. Horses used to dragon >> horses freaked out.

Edit: Take a modern battle helicopter back to the Roman times. Good luck.

Yeah not thinking watching this in action is awesome shocks me. Yeah, it didn't achieve much regarding the plot, but it was ****ing beautiful.

Lol sorry. I was just totally unimpressed, thought it was at best average, and shocked to hear everyone here loved it.

Show should yada yada yada dragon destroying an army?

Next episode,
Dragon. yada yada yada. Red Keep. yada yada yada. New Queen.

I can't tell if your last two posts are an attempt at addressing my criticisms or just posting your thoughts.

The complaints about Arya are absurdly stupid. They literally spent 5 seasons showing her training. What else could they have possibly done? The same people complaining about Arya now are the ones who complained for 5 seasons about how slow her plotline was moving. You cant have it both ways.

If she was not an extremely dangerous killer and great fighter by now it would be a big joke and all those scenes would be for nothing.

You people are brutal.

Yeah the Arya criticism is a little much. Like someone above said, Brienne is not used to fighting vs. that style, and I'm assuming she wasn't going 100%. The training montage from last season showed that she ended up holding her own vs. the waif so it's not out of the realm of possibility that she could hold her own vs Brienne. That doesn't mean she would ever beat her in an actual duel where Brienne was trying to kill her

Completely agree 100%. The 2+2 board has the greatest collection of nits I've ever seen in my life. If you only read the 2+2 GOT threads and never joined any other discussion groups elsewhere you'd think that GOT is a terrible show.

"We'll have to make you a complete soldier in very little time."
"How are we going to do that?"
"We're gonna need a montage."

After Hollywood has ****ed up robots fighting other robots (Transformers franchise) and Walking Dead somehow made Zombies unwatchable (how the **** do you do that?), I am happy that GOT is delivering Dragons roasting armies and making it very satisfying.

Im sure a lot of the omfg best evaaar episode are a lot to do with recency bias, but it was simply a great scene, and it did have some dimensions imo, one thing I liked was how awesome sauce Bron could not just brush off his Dothraki antagonists, when he has his horse cut from under him, it was a really good Dothraki serious business moment.

Also the CGI was great, I dont just mean it looked great, which it did imo, but it was used properly and efficiently to create visceral spectacle. Many times CGI is over used and basically over works the eye leading to viewer fatigue and detachment.

In context, I prefered this battle scene to most battle scenes in LoTR (most not all) and definitely all the battles scenes in The Hobbit. The Hobbit is a great example of CGI mania and how people cant reign themselves in and understand sometimes less is more, and LoTR has plenty of examples of this too.

Ultimately, for where I set my expectations for a fantasy TV show, GOT is still hitting it well over the bar, I think we are very lucky to have this kind of content in front of our eyeballs on TV. Most TV is such utter utter gash.