Well I guess this is what it ultimately boils down too. If you see the series through the eyes of the final season, then yes it does feel underwhelming. But for me, the earlier seasons were stellar and I can view them independent of the final season and hence appreciate the show as a whole a little more.
Television Game of Thrones (TV) • The watch has ended
- Thread starter ha_rooney
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The last season of The Wire was much weaker than the first four too but it doesn't stop me thinking it's the best show ever made. The Sopranos and Mad Men both had a noticeable dip in quality in their last few seasons too.
I don't think GoT is near any of those three in a "greatest ever" list, probably top 7-10, and the last two seasons (I still thought S6 was excellent) don't change that for me, even though they were terrible.
I don't think GoT is near any of those three in a "greatest ever" list, probably top 7-10, and the last two seasons (I still thought S6 was excellent) don't change that for me, even though they were terrible.
What drop in quality are you talking about? The ending was perfect as far as I'm concerned.
The ending was great but the overall quality wasn't as good. Same with The Wire, actually.
Oh and The Wire is a 10/10, go wash your legs.
I meant that very last season. For me it is definitely a 10 show overall.
Well we finally agreed on something, I guess we're friends now.
Didn't they agree to a 300 million deal with Netflix? Don't think D&D give a rat's Arse about Star Wars as long as the money keeps pouring in. At least star war fans can breath easy now.
Just saw that Benioff wrote the script for Gemini Man, how the feck is this guy getting all this work after fecking up the most popular TV show in the world?!
Just saw that Benioff wrote the script for Gemini Man, how the feck is this guy getting all this work after fecking up the most popular TV show in the world?!
Well got that wrong.
it was shit
What they did took guts, but not in a good way. Their reasons for doing things were fcked up. 'surprise, we got ya, expectations subverted' - even if it didnt make sense.
The biggest issue the last season had looking back is how actions had no consequences. But thats all been covered in the almost 1k pages here.
Also D&D wanted to write and have a show with their slavery fanfaction didnt they? The more you read about these two, the worse it gets
The biggest issue the last season had looking back is how actions had no consequences. But thats all been covered in the almost 1k pages here.
Also D&D wanted to write and have a show with their slavery fanfaction didnt they? The more you read about these two, the worse it gets
They're just bad writers who managed to blahg their way through a meeting enough with an old man to be handed the keys to one of the greatest epic fantasies of our lifetime. They have nothing of note to give themselves other than soap opera trash and knob jokes.What they did took guts, but not in a good way. Their reasons for doing things were fcked up. 'surprise, we got ya, expectations subverted' - even if it didnt make sense.
The biggest issue the last season had looking back is how actions had no consequences. But thats all been covered in the almost 1k pages here.
Also D&D wanted to write and have a show with their slavery fanfaction didnt they? The more you read about these two, the worse it gets
It's really a simple as; once the source material was gone they had nothing. Absolutely nothing, to lean on. Bryan Cogman would have figured out how to do something without GRRMs work, but not these two clowns. The writing has been on the wall since Tyrion was getting a blowy in the first episode of the show. D&D are just terrible trashy writers.
Which is the most bizarre thing. once you get to that point, why not outsource / hire people to do a job, where you can still take credit if its a roaring success, or shift blame if its a failure.
No doubt, they did a fantastic job for the first 4 seasons. 5 was iffy, but wasnt bad (well Dorne was) but then 6 was a whole loada fun. Then it just went down and kept going down. The whole thing doesnt make sense.
To be honest I think the first 4 seasons were fantastic in spite of them. Save for a couple of moments that we know they wrote they butchered the story and made changes that took the show way off track. The things they get praised for are so watered down compared to the books that I've been amazed because I'm reading them for the first time and shocked at how foolish I was to think these guys had had a difficult time trying to turn novel into TV.
And then there's the obvious bits where it was clearly just a couple of horny dude bros who cared little about story and more about dem tiddies
Complete garbage. One of the worst final seasons of any seasons ever
I can't believe people are still talking about this. It could have been the greatest tv show of all time but it got so bad in the end thats its lowest depths was below even that of the Walking Dead. The fact that history will probably see the Walking Dead as a better show says it all. The final 2 seasons were genuinely Batwoman level trash.
The final seasons were dumb as feck, but come on now let's not lose your mind completely here
The more these two open their mouth, the more convinced I am that ‘they guessed Jon’s mother right’ was utter bollocks from GRRM. He saw the potential in the format and latitudes offered by HBO and decided to wing it, especially when he himself got to be heavily involved in the writing process.
I genuinely hand on heart can say the only seasons of the Walking Dead worse than the last two of GoT is ironically seasons 7 & 8. GoT's peak was 10/10, its lowest ebb 1/10. For me TWD at its best was a 5, at its worst a 2. As incoherent and rubbish at TWD is, its never hit a low as bad as GoT.The final seasons were dumb as feck, but come on now let's not lose your mind completely here
I genuinely think it went something like.
GRRM: You can do the show if you tell me Jon Snows real mother.
D&D: Catelyn Stark and she kinda forgot Jon was her daughter? That would subvert expecations.
GRRM: I'll give you a clue, she was ned's sister.
D&D: Ned has a sister?
GRRM: She might have eloped with Rhaegar or been kidnapped
D&D: Arya Sr.
GRRM: It sounds like Brianna, without the Br and an added L at the start.
D&D: Sansa
GRRM: Just get me HBO money.
That episode ran on TV just two days ago, so I have the tones of their voices fresh in my mind. Brilliant.
I think Lindsay Ellis did the best, most thorough and even handed dissection of whatever this turned into. Mercilessly free of points relating to battle formations and succinctly dismissive of the most rabid defenders of the show (@robinamicrowave).
I'm really appreciative of what Lindsay Ellis usually does. She's a great YouTuber with a really keen eye. But I think her behaviour after the final season, and her analysis of it, was unusual. She's usually shuts down people who personally attack creators and harass cast members, but she advocated that sort of behaviour when it came to Game of Thrones and D&D. Her analysis of Daenerys' ending is completely fair enough, it's just her point of view and that's fine, but I think the problem Lindsay struggles with when it comes to how it all ended for Dany is similar to the problem quite a lot of the audience had when digesting the last three episodes. What I mean to say that is that quite a lot of fans made the mistake of projecting themselves onto Daenerys, saw her journey as an example of how to enact progressive politics, and subsequently took it as a personal insult when their woke hero turned out to be capable of genocide after all.
Wasn’t the original pilot episode absolutely horrific? We should have known then that it would eventually disintegrate into horse piss.
She burnt down a city with a million people in it. How is that not genocide?
It is. But the issue isnt that she did it, but how it got to the point. I mean you talk about 'fans making the mistake' but then you go and do the same thing to defend D&D
How do I make the same mistakes as Dany's stans when I defend D&D?
You project yourself on to D&D and echo the thoughts that people just didn't want to understand maybe?
I mean, I personally still don't get how you can do all those in depth write ups of the early seasons, then forget all that and completely change your tune with the last season as if it's suddenly satisfying.
Oh and btw, you shouldn't tar everybody with the brush you made up yourself. Not everyone had a story in mind and were disappointed with how it ended like that, it was more of what the show became over all. And if you were true to yourself and your writing, I'd have expected you to at least be in the boat of questioning that.
I don't think it's hypocritical of me to enjoy every era of the show, is it? I definitely prefer seasons 1-4 than 5-8 (although I prefer season 6 over season 2), and I think it's a shame that D&D didn't have books to adapt all along, but TV shows are constantly in flux and in the balance for a number of different reasons and I count myself very lucky that we were given any sort of end, let alone one I enjoyed as much as I did. As I've implied, I don't think D&D helped themselves by making the decision to shorten the last two seasons so significantly, and I've openly stated numerous times on here that I don't think the final season was a shining example of how to finish a TV show. But I think they managed to bring the story to an end that (to me at least) made sense, kept in touch with the original themes and messages of the story, and was consistently entertaining and exciting. I think, once they ran out of books to adapt, the show dropped from being a consistently 9/10 show to being an 8/10 show that had real bummer episodes on occasion (haven't ever liked 'No One', 'Eastwatch', 'Beyond the Wall' or 'Winterfell' that much), but I only defend D&D because I sympathise with their situation. I think it would have been very easy to give Jon and Daenerys the Aragorn and Arwen ending and send everyone home happy - it was the ending I wanted and expected until they gave me their ending, which I much prefer to mine.
As for me tarring everyone with the same brush and saying that detractors "had a story in mind and were disappointed with how it ended", you'll have to forgive me. I was neck deep in r/freefolk at the time and they were - and remain, as far as I'm aware - very, very upset that Daenerys died. But then I think about the ending they wanted, which was yet another Targaryen dynasty with yet more children born of incest, and I feel slightly sick.
I appreciate the world isn't r/freefolk but when there are more than a million of the feckers on there justifying Dany's actions in King's Landing, ranting about how "Martha" wasn't Jon and Dany's baby after all but one of Varys' little birds, etc. it does wear you down a little!Your ending must have been truly shite if you much prefer a boring council scene to it.
A drunk chimpanzee could have engineered a more gripping season finale than Dumb & Dumber conjured up.
My ending involved Jon being killed by the Night King in the throne room as Dany, who had just burned Cersei and The Mountain alive just after he had won her trial by combat for her and made Jon turn against her for it, lies dying only for Jon to rise up as he's been resurrected by Bran (who died previously at the hand of the Night King) and he tells Jon in a vision that shows Rhaegar singing to a pregnant Lyanna by the fire that the Night King wanted him (Bran) dead because he was the physical host of the entity known as the Three Eyed Raven which grew more powerful with each new member until Bran, who has now allowed the 3ER to reach a power so great that he can transcend time and space to make changes to the world, and that all legends of Gods are really just about one person - Bran. And then Jon pulls the dragonglass from the Night King and crawls to Dany's side as she dies, but the Night King starts to move towards them as his form turns human again and with Dany's dying breath she calls out Dracarys and the Night King looks up to see Drogon towering above him and burns him to ash. Jon feels destroyed because he doubted Dany and gives up his throne because he wants nothing to do with war anymore and is sick of others trying to tell him what he must do.
And THAT was still better than what they have us, so fecked if I know how bad your one was mate!
they needed another season really
I wonder was the issue time and money?
anyone could see that a story with such a broad range of stories across a huge land after seasons of twists and turns with characters developed would need to play out a little more naturally
to me it just felt like they abandoned character traits, stories in a mad rush to get done
I wonder was the issue time and money?
anyone could see that a story with such a broad range of stories across a huge land after seasons of twists and turns with characters developed would need to play out a little more naturally
to me it just felt like they abandoned character traits, stories in a mad rush to get done
Nah, the issue was that it was being written by two idiots that by their own admission did not understand anything about what they were adapting. Two idiots that let the actors define how they wrote the characters, actors many of whom started off as children and grew up to be not very good actors at all. It was a shit storm that all came to a head with a disastrous final season.
I'm not even sure how you write a character based on the actor instead of the character:
Lena would like to drink and stare some more this season.
Maisie wants to be more like a ninja.
Peter doesn't like witty dialogue or being in any way useful.
Isaac fancies a sit down.
Emelia's in a right a strop and seems very forgetful recently.
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Basically.
The battle formation criticisms and debates about TV production ergonomics are tiresome distractions.
If something is jarringly written and carelessly put together then it might have something to do with the shoddy workmanship, and it might not have anything to do with Skipio Africanus favouring the spearman flank, or who forgot to reorder the office stationary, or a death threat some berk wrote on twitter. Jeeze.
The battle formations are part of the lack of care and craft. Not so much the lack of historical accuracy or tactics, but on a higher level that they completely lacked any story consistency and rendered the actual battles somewhat moot when an army can be routed just to get a cool looking shot only to show up again in the very next episode like nothing happened.
There's so much to pick apart you can easily end up going down a rabbit hole focusing on any one part of it, but they all lead to the same place: Bad writing and a complete lack of care for the story they were telling.
Nah. I never liked Daenerys as a character, and her transformation was more a case of absolutely awful writing rather than a betrayal of the emotional attachment of fans.
I guess this is why I don't have that big a problem with Daenerys' ending - I didn't see it as a transformation, I saw it as a tragic but inevitable culmination of her story. Before the season (hell, before The Long Night) I didn't anticipate the writers going down that path at all but once they had done it recontextualised a lot of concerning events from her past for me, made me realise that I'd been reading her story all wrong (same goes for Jon and Jaime), and made me even more pleased that I had nothing to do with the ending.
Btw, @Mr Pigeon & @SquishyMcSquish that ending I had was the most basic Lord of the Rings bollocks in the world. I thought the show had lost its wickedness and become too kind to the main heroes. I thought we'd lose Winterfell in ep3, see Jon & Dany lead an evacuation south in ep4, and eventually defeat the Night King in ep5. Then in ep6, Jon would die heroically in some way and Dany would ascend to power and be a fair ruler for years to come. My ending totally betrayed what the show was trying to say all along and I'm seriously glad that it didn't go down that way.
April 14. Just wanted to pop in and say that D&D are clueless cnuts and the biggest con artists in the business.