Rate/Review thread

I give it a 9, I wish it had been longer. Only two things really made it not perfect for me.

LIKES
ARYA IS HOME! My girl standing in front of Ned's statue and talking about how someone didn't know his face.
Bran, Arya, and Sansa in the same frame again!
Bran creeping out LF with "chaos is a ladder"
Brienne and Arya sparring. I was afraid that was going to be fan service-y but I about slid off my chair.
The entire battle was beautifully shot. I loved the focus on Jaime and Bronn and Tyrion seeing his brother. NuDickon getting a bit of development was nice too.

DISLIKES
Bran and Meera departing. I know I sound like a broken record but I think Bran should be allowed to emote with family and Meera is his family too. That scene hurt, they deserved a better goodbye.
Being beat over the head with Jonerys parallels. omg. I'm glad you shippers love them, but damn. It's so blatant.

Jon is offering the chance of not becoming ice zombies. That's a pretty good offer IMO.

If Dany wants to rule the North, she needs to show she cares about them. A good way to do that would be to help them fight against the undead army coming their way. She now believes the threat is real and she's still demanding their submission before doing anything for them. She still cares more about her status as queen than saving humanity.

No wonder Jon doesn't want to bend the knee to her.

But Dany has refused to help until she gets something first, the only reason she's given Jon the dragonglasss is because she has no use for it and Tyrion suggested it.

As other king said, she shouldn't try to win the kingdom to save it, she should try to save the kingdom to win it.

The North has been fucked by the last southorn kings they had, is normal they want some sign that Dany won't be more of the same.

I gave it an 8. Probably my favorite episode of the season. The CGI as stoneheartsrevenge said was a little wonky in some scenes but overall the battle was well done.

I say kudos to Jerome Flynn, who I found more compelling in that battle then I did Kit Harington in the Battle of the Bastards.
I still don't think Jon and Dany have chemistry though the cave scene was a good one. I do think Jon and Dany are going to be a thing (obvious from Davos' comments) and the people who ship otherwise are going to be sad.

I don't care for the recast of Dickon, who just seems tonally off. He's supposed to be younger then Sam and inexperienced in battle. Tom Hopper looks older then John Bradley and does not play inexperienced well.

Loved the Arya/Sansa reunion, everything at WF (except Meera not getting her due). A few minor quibbles but an all around good episode!

A 9.
I have a problem with battle. it reminded me of David Nutter and Dance of Dragons in S509. I see seems and not-so-tight transitions.
Nothing desasterous but Sapochnik and Marshall do better close fitting.
I wonder if this has to do with location? Sapochhnik and Marshall did all their work in NI, as I remember BoB took quite a while and Hardhome was at the quarry.
S5 work and this are location in Spain they may be time constrained.

"She has a good heart"

When the credits roll and you see this episode was done by the Always Sunny director


The thing that struck me about the opening scene is how Jaime's conversation with Bronn kind of parallels Cersei this season.  Bronn is inquiring about the castle promised to him and Jaime is putting him off, just like Cersei has been stringing Euron along.  When the war is won indeed.  

Don't have to pay your debts if you never win the war



Cersei and Tycho Nestoris(do they say his name in the show?) are such fun characters to have together.  Gatiss feels less like a bureaucrat and more like a schemer this season, he's totally giving off a Varys-esque vibe in this scene.  And it's interesting that the Tycho scene leads into Littlefinger's.  Speaking of which, aside from last week's scene with Sansa, Petyr's writing has been a bit sloppy.  He keeps getting all these ominous scenes with the Stark kids, it seems kind of stupid that he's still sticking around Winterfell.  They've all made it clear that he's not wanted there.  If he doesn't have some kind of wildcard it'll be disappointing, because so far this year it doesn't seem like he has much game.  And how creepy is Bran this year?  The interesting thing is that it doesn't seem like he's planning on messing with Littlefinger, his chaos line definitely felt like a spur of the moment reaction to what Petyr said.  And if we can now assume he knows about Littlefinger's treachery, it's even weirder that Bran isn't sounding the alarm, warning his siblings.  He's just sitting in his chair and watching the fire. 

But then he remembers Littlefinger's catch phrase:



The one thing saving these scenes for me is Gillen's performance, which is always hilarious.  I love how with no hesitation he lies to Bran when asked about who owned the knife.  His reaction to Bran's chaos comment is priceless.  When Petyr apologizes for 'disturbing Bran' it really feels like he's projecting.  Then Meera's farewell is totally a bummer.  She has got to be the most underappreciated character in the series, but I wonder if we'll get to meet Howland Reed.  If so it could be the last great celebrity cameo of the series, I hope they get Danny Devito.  The Sunny crossovers have been teasing at what we really want to see, and that is Devito guzzling wine in a tunic set to Ramin Djwadi's stirring score.  

It would suck if Meera's last scene is this depressing goodbye.



Onto a scene with Stark soldiers Idiot 1 and Idiot 2.  I love how castle guards are this show's version of the incompetent cop cliche.  Whenever we get foot soldiers they are so bumbling it's hilarious, and this is at least the second time Arya Stark has been turned away as an impostor.  These two are particularly funny though, their snark and impatience makes them the misunderstood millennials of the series.  These two soldiers had more chemistry together than Jon and Dany, I'm officially shipping these two Northern guards, the show's hottest new power couple.  I hope they get a season long arc and a heroic death fighting the White Walkers.  Speaking of which, the Northern storyline has been kind of boring this year, we are long overdue for an epic zombie scene.  Arya has the same detached reaction when Sansa hugs her, the Stark reunions have kind of been a bummer lately.  Maisie's awkward laugh after she tells Sansa about her list is perfect, though.  At least she has some humanity to balance out the coldness.  Bran feels like a walking rolling, talking plot device.

Bran Stark's tragic death 8x03



The whole thing with the dagger felt kind of clunky.  Like with the increased pace of the season, there are way fewer character building moments and a lot of scenes like this that only exist to establish an upcoming plot event.  We get three Stark kids in one scene and they spend it talking about this plot dagger instead of reflecting on everything their family has gone through over the past six years.  It sucks that the show hasn't devoted any time to Stark siblings attempting any sort of catharsis with each other, after all this wait it's pretty underwhelming that these scenes are mostly rushing the plot forward instead of emotional payoff.  Dany and Missandei have a total gossip chat about Grey Worm and Dany is getting impatient waiting for Missandei to just spill the gory details all ready.  Many things? *smirk* (CUT TO JON SNOW) 

audience


Jon/Dany shippers are hyped meanwhile this is the third episode in a row without the fucking Hound.  These Jon/Dany scenes are torture for me.  The two worst performances in the show have been slammed together and the writing aint doing them any favors.  I will admit that season 7 Dragonstone is probably my favorite location in the entire series.  The photography in these scenes is so fucking gorgeous that at least I'm loving them on an aesthetic level.  There's a lot of blue/red contrast in the lighting for Jon and Dany which is fun.  Davos stoically guards the entrance to the cave, with a torch cutting through the darkness like a knife.  These images are so stunning that I wonder if it was intentional, most of the other scenes have drab visuals, often desaturated, and every major character is wearing black.  The fact that the visuals on Dragonstone are so breathtaking and stimulating help make up for the uneven pacing.  The cave drawing thing was so stupid though.  It just felt so convenient.  Is Jon incapable of convincing Dany to help without hastily drawing on the cave?  Everybody knows Jon stole some crayons from Varys and drew that shit in the night.  Man Dany's reaction to Tyrion's news is so petulant, it's kind of hard not to root for Cersei.  Watch Varys here he looks fucking terrified of Dany.  It seems like Dany and Cersei are trying out Mad Queen each other this year.  It's just too bad Emilia has to compete with Lena's performance.

"Enough with the clever plans"



Brienne and Pod have yet another training scene and if Arya's arc is anything to go by, Pod will be one of the best three fighters by the end of the season.  I mean he's been non-stop learning how to fight from people like Brienne and Bronn, who takes the plot armor trophy by the end of the episode.  I'm fully convinced that Pod is going to be an unstoppable killing machine by endgame.  The sparring scene between Arya and Brienne was fantastic, such a well choreographed and edited fight, it was exciting even though the stakes weren't necessarily high, but I'm desperate to see Arya use her water dancing skills against a real enemy.  I guess we'll have a scene between Littlefinger and Arya next week, but dude just needs to GTFO sooner than later.  


Jon Snow learns that Missandei was a slave



But I'm probably going to bang the mother of Dragons and save the world.  Do you know how hard it is to look sad right now?  I do love the moment between Jon and Theon.  These are the type of pent up emotions we've been waiting to see boil over for years.  I like the animalistic rage that takes over Jon as he grabs Theon, and I love the way that Davos moves in immediately and takes control of the conversation.  This segues directly into the final battle scene but I'm pretty eager to see where the next few episodes take us with Jon, Davos, and Theon.  Randyll Tarly is disappointed that he can't flog men at will.  I kind of understand, if you think of all the ways you can encourage new coworkers to step up and just kill it, knowing that flogging could have been on the table must be frustrating.  Bronn is the MVP episode and reminds us all why fancy lad school is overpriced. I love how the big battles of this season seem to come out of nowhere.  This felt a lot like Hardhome in that the enemy seemed to just materialize as a force of nature, and I think this was the best set piece since 5x08 because of the visceral nature of what played out.  

The audience reaction to 7x04



I love everything about this battle, that we're rooting for all of the characters and feeling conflicted about everything that happens to how scary the dragon is. The dragon hype is overwhelmed by how disturbing it is to watch like twenty minutes of people burning to death.  I was constantly going and forth from being excited to horrified because it was just so brutal.



Only this show can have a battle that's both triumphant and disturbing.  Jaime tells his troops to take cover and Drogon sets them on fire, and Bronn loses his gold in a moment of tragedy we haven't felt sting so badly since the Red Wedding.  I give all props to the show for making this scene so dark.  The final shots of Dany ripping a missile out of Drogon and Jaime charging on her back like he did to the Mad King are so epic that they're instantly among the show's most iconic moments.

When Jaime gets all the gold safely to King's Landing


I rate this episode 9 out of 10 burned soldiers.

But we did get the "reflective reunion" with Arya and Sansa when they talked in the crypt, didn't we? They talked about Ned, besides we've already had Sansa and Jon spend plenty time talking about the past - "we never should have left Winterfell". Plus Sansa's already tried casually talking with Bran and it's clear to her that he's so emotionally detached that he's not the same. Like Meera said, "Bran" died in the cave.

It's nice to see them together again, but they have all changed so much from when they last saw each other that they're almost different people. It's "bittersweet".

But they never once mention hose who are absent. What about Cat? What about Rickon? And Robb? I'm glad they didn't recite their entire six seasons of adventures (quite deftly done by Arya and Sansa's dialogue here, actually) but some kind of mention of their mother or lost siblings would be nice. 
I don't think Jon and Sansa have spent very long talking about the past actually   Stuff happened off-screen that needed to happen off-screen but there hasn't been much talk of what they have all lost. I dunno, it's a reunion that fans have been waiting for for years, and it's just falling very flat.