Biggest Shock/Surprise in 5x10

Are you kidding me? You've never even seen True Blood and you're going to use that as your entire platform comparison as to why you think D&D should hand the show over to someone else? 

Well. I have to agree with King Tommen, THAT is shocking and distasteful. I'm certainly glad it's just your opinion and you're going to have a hard time selling that.


 

The biggest shock for me is that they didn't go any further into Jon's stuff and ended right with a shot of him supposedly dead. And now they're going to double down (because they have to on account of how they decided to end things this season) and pretend like it's real.

All these declarations are going to be proven false in pretty short order. S6 filming is going to start in a few weeks and it's going to be pretty much impossible to hide Harrington's participation. He also will have to be listed for the main cast which you can't keep a secret. Maybe on another lower profile show, you can get away with some secrecy but GoT is the most closely scrutinized production going by a wide margin. Nothing will slip by the media or fanbase.

So all of this is going to be for nothing. They should've put the resurrection into the finale (even if it was ambiguous) and then they could avoided both the down note the season ends on as well as having to outright lie for a while before having to come clean later on.

Also, despite apparently knowing about leaving the show since he got the S5 scripts back over a year ago, Harrington currently has nothing scheduled that he's due to be shooting for at this time. So yeah, this story is going to fall apart pretty damn quickly.

You're free to like the 2 latest books but understand you are in the vast, vast minority when it comes to holding that opinion. ASoS is generally thought to be the best volume of the story and that's not really up for debate. That's why the show took 2 seasons to cover it off, all the best stuff happens there.

I like the books but the last 2 were a significant downturn and suffer from Martin's left turn from wanting to tell the story he originally set out to do in favour of introducing a number of characters and locations that increase the ridiculous sprawl that he was already having trouble juggling. And in doing this, he caused his main protagonists (the ones his readers really care about) to dick around, spinning their wheels while everyone went off and had their own individual adventures and isolated themselves even further.

Martin had the right instincts when he originally set out to make a trilogy like LOTR. The fact that he's dragged this thing out for 7 fucking books (with him now hemming and hawing about the possibility of having to make it eight) is the ultimate indicator that he's lost the track. Tell the story you originally set out to tell my man. Stop the world building for the love of all that is holy and sacred.

Arya's gory murder scene

And ADwD is my favourite book. AFfC is the worst one.

I think the reasons why AFfC and ADwD are viewed as slow has something to do with ASoS being so packed.

Now that I think of it, ASoS is better than ADwD. But AFfC-ADwD combination is best.

Myrcella was the big shock for me. I knew she was dead the moment Ellaria kissed her, but I was surprised Ellaria would do that with Trystane on board. I mean, not only has she disobeyed Doran, again, she has put his son in danger. I didn't expect Selyse to kill herself either.

I find hard to appreciate the opinion of people who don't respect other opinions just because they are different.

On topic: another thing that surprised me (and was a relief) was how they adapted the Mercy chapter, it was hard to read the parts where Arya kisses Raff and he touches her so I'm glad the show didn't do it.