8x04 Review Thread (Spoilers)

I'm in the opposite boat. I actually enjoy the nihilism.  I love dark stories. I've been hoping for a Mad Queen storyline with Dany for years, I believe it's what the story has been building towards.  My issue is with the execution.  D&D really fucked the show over by scaling down to shorter seasons. The pacing is too fast so they find themselves jamming round shapes into square pegs. There are so many important plot points that feel calculated instead of organic.

Things no longer feel grounded in any semblance of verisimilitude.

And I just want a nice happy ending. 

This episode was a no for me

Gripes:

- arya is going to Kings landing to kill cersei?! Sorry i love arya but its not your kill
- starks calling jon brother then not supporting or trusting him
-sansa is littlefinger 2.0 (Dany was right)
- jon looking at ghost because he doesnt know if he is stark anymore. I dont even like dogs that much and i wont forgive jon for not saying goodbye
- brienne and jaime felt unnatural and briennes reaction to jaimr leaving was cringe and a bit out of character i felt. Also just skip a love scene we've been wanting to see since season 3.
- my girl Dany is having a real hard time and is alone
- why kill missandei
- they jusy had to kill another dragon and i hate that it was euron. No budget for ghost and rhaegal and how did they build those arrow things so fast.
- literally want dany to burn KL now
- tyrion is literally useless where are your tactics

Likes:
Tormund at the feast
Playing drinking games at the feast
Jon and Dany scene
Dany watching missandei's execution
Arya abd gendry scene
Davos

Okay, so ... if I can somehow accept that any (unlikely) follow up in the north with the dead-end WW storyline is gonna happen in the finale not in 4 or 5, and judge this one on its merits ...

I actually rather liked it. Cross-Bronn and unneccessarily awkward Jaime/Brienne office Xmas party shag aside (preferred the sexual tension in the knighting scene) and the weird visual logistics of Dany not spotting EURON'S GIANT FUCK OFF fleet lurking behind a cliff from way up in the sky (contrived surprise attack but still a shocker I adored ) I actually really enjoyed this one more than many seem to have.

Thought the opening funeral scene (epic speech from Jon) Tyrion/Varys dialogues (old school GOT) and last ten minutes of haute tension (Qyburn IS The Mouth of Sauron!) were pretty masterful, tbh. Never has Cersei looked more evil (ultra-Disney villainess sneer.) Ugh. Knew Missandei was screwed the minute she held Greyworm's hand and smiled on the boat. Don't entertain happiness in Westeros, you fools!

Someone on reddit dubbed this ep "The Days The Ships Died" (RIP Arya & Gendry, Jaime & Brienne, Dany & Jon, Jon & Ghost, Missandei & Grey Worm etc) and I s'pose I have to concur!   

But whilst respecting other opinions, I honestly can't see how this wasn't a decent/gripping episode for the majority of its runtime.  Judging by some of the professional critique online you'd think it was season 5 Dorne level bad or something. It's not. Dunno if we go into a feeding frezy every time D&D pen an episode to weed out all the hackery, or if the knives are fully out en masse to set Thrones up for classic "disappointing HBO long-running series finale" fare at this point.

I've never been backward slamming lousy episodes on here, but I usually go by whether the majority of scenes come together in the whole as opposed to focussing on the one or two that don't. Sure, there were character beats and issues here that didn't land exactly on the nose, they SHOULD have shown the Stark girls' reaction to Jon's parentage and we SHOULD have had a full goodbye to Ghost. But you know what? Other times, the critique just gets excessive. Sansa keeps a secret for all of twenty minutes her father kept for twenty years? Guess what - that's what teenage girls do. It just seems kinda unjust an episode this decent in so many respects gets pilloried as dross (if not socio/racial contextualised to death through our over-reliance on reactionary social media outrage these days as some definitive moral arbiter of the vox pop social feeling. Yes, a named black character died. After the named half dozen white charaters who died last week. *coughdon'tmentiontheDothrakicough*.) Honestly, traipsing through the articles and post-mortems to Thrones has become an exhausting job in itself it takes every one of the seven days between episodes to absorb. Or maybe our expectations were always set too ridiculously high? I don't know.

Again, it wasn't perfect with more than a few blips along the way (Starkbucks, rushed Bronn scene, Jaime's yoyo moral compass, and cutting away from a crucial sea battle felt very season one when they didn't have the budget. How they love doing this when a character falls into water: Davos at Blackwater and Jaime/Bronn during the wagon raid, I'm looking at you.) But as for the BIG narrative beats? The Jon and Dany scene was heartbreaing with her begging him. And as for Dany’s deteriorating mental state being rushed or unconvincing? Wasn't feeling that criticism at all. This was no Anakin murdering Jedi younglings at the drop of a hat scenario. Connversely, Clarke COMPLETELY sold me on her growing sense of paranoia & isolation in this episode. After Jorah, her vulnerability re: Jon/the Stark sisters closing ranks and the one-two body blows of Rhaegal THEN Missandei, her batshit/going postal face felt completely earned & believable to me. Some of Clarke’s best acting in the entire series to date, in fact. Give her and the showrunners a break. If they're going with the mad queen, they've done it justice in the groundwork not simply copped out with: "oh well, that's her old man's bloodline boiling up again!"

If there’s ANY postscript to the white walker stuff, it'll surely be once KL plotline is resolved, so I'm holding fire on that one. At this point, I can’t see how the next ep doesn’t contain the most big name character deaths of the series: Jaime, Cersei, Brienne, Tyrion, Jon and Dany could all go, or none of them. Fuck knows. Not looking good for Dany or the star-crossed lovers, but this will be a massive domino effect episode, I fear, with some VERY seismic dominoes. My (now instantly jinxed not to happen) guesses:

Episode 5:

1./ Jon or Jaime stop off at Riverrun for reinforcements en route to KL (how can this not happen? Their forces are too depleted otherwise to make an even fight.) All hell breaks loose, first in an infantry battle Cersei's Golden Company start winning. Dany wants to go nuclear with Drogon. Jon or Tyrion say no and to fall back for now.
2./ Varys out-manoeuvres/betrays Tyrion somehow.
3./ Tyrion is executed by Dany.
4./ Jon stops (or is even forced to kill) Daenerys to stop her lighting up King’s Landing. Probably midway through. They're not passing up the opportunity to show a dragon over that city when it's shadow was teased in Bran's visions seasons ago.
5./ Or equally (I still want it but the Jaime kills Cersei thing seems too obvious) Jaime does the same in offing Dany, since the "KL civilians in peril" scenario exactly mirrors why he killed The Mad King. This will all be like the ultimate PTSD for him.
6./ Arya assassination attempt on Cersei fails.
7./ Cleganebowl. Because, obviously.

Episode 6:

Fuck knows ~ If they both somehow make it out alive, then Jon in a loveless marriage with Cersei to unite a divided realm? That's how the War of the Roses ended after all with Henry VII marrying Elizabeth of York, and we all know GRRM has a boner for the history.

Epilogue: Tormund and Ghost encounter something creepy in the north before they put out the bat signal to King Jon and the whole damn thing begins again ...

Or flash-forward to Bilbo Samwell of Tarlyshire writing up the annals of “A Song of Ice & Fire” as an old maester type to see things out.

P.S: I also can't hate on an episode containing (IMO) the series' single greatest shot of Tyrion, sorry.   8/10.

love that reference

I'll be honest, episode 4 has ruined every expectation I had for a satisfying ending. And by satisfying I don't mean happy, I mean a logical and cohesive ending that fits with the arc and development of the characters. Instead it looks like they are going for a shocking and depressing ending and if they have to shot logic in the face to get it, they will do it.

It's like the undead dragon destroying the Wall all over again.

At this point I'm ready to be dissapointed but not surprised.

Especially if he's about to face Euron. We know dogs are the only things Greyjoys fear.

They (Nutter, the director) said it was handled that way to save money on CGI.  Ugh.  Still no excuse.

It's going around Twitter that according Rotten Tomatoes viewer rating of the episode, it has a 59%

this fucking show has really got me all out of sorts

I’m reluctant to say it was a bad episode, because honestly, it wasn’t poorly executed. It was a well made piece of television. Acting, directing, visuals, writing, I felt everything was solid.

But with the dark place this story is headed, it’s hard for me to reconcile plot developments I don’t like with well made TV. To be blunt, I don’t wanna see Dany lose her cool and do something terrible she’ll regret. I don’t want to see her advisors turn on her. I don’t want to see a character I’ve grown to love and sympathize with unfurl and head into a downward spiral.

But damn is it compelling to watch at the same time. Fuck!