6x04 POST-Episode Discussion (airs 15th May)

Of course he calls it the Bastardbowl.

boojam has an odd sense of humor. 

He's like our very own resident Monty Python!

A girl has no manners when supping from the (clegane) bowl.



The vision quest just isn't something that would have translated well to the show.  The show is just too gritty and verisimilitude is too important.  That's why the producers are capitalizing on Bran's connection to the Weirnet.  It's a way to tell stories from the past(and future?) that don't betray the forward momentum of the narrative.  We can view past events through Bran's trips because we are experiencing them at the same time.  When Bran sees the Tower of Joy it's new, and important information for both the character and the audience.  But if Dany had a hallucination in her isolation, it wouldn't progress the plot in the same way. It would feel like an out of place sidetrack in a storyline that plenty of people are all ready impatient about.  Dany, more than anybody, needs forward progress.

The Dothraki abducting her is what happened in the books so I don't see why that is a problem.  And the scene with an injured, exhausted Drogon, was effective, especially considering how good the show has been at bringing the dragons to life and affecting the audience's emotions with them.  I still can't watch the scene where Dany chains up Rhaegal and Viserion without getting choked up.  It was important to establish the fragility of Drogon to emphasize how Dany would be on her own while in the captivity of the Dothraki.  Many viewers criticized how Dany was rescued by dragons in the show time and time again, but this year she secured her own triumph.  Emphasizing how weak Drogon was in last year's finale underlined how strong Dany would be in the first chapter of season 6.+



The problem is that the show cut out all of the Meereenese politicians.  I would've liked to a see a more complex adaptation that was more faithful to ADWD, because I loved that storyline.  But almost all of my show-only friends are bored to death by the Dany story by season 5, if not sooner.  The torture wouldn't have worked without the Shavepate, which wouldn't have worked without other suspects for the Harpy who-dunnit such as the Green Grace and Reznak.  

Dany's story in season 5 is definitely dumbed down, and streamlined, but I think it was clear that she mourned Barristan properly and then immediately flirted with the Targaryen inside of her by going to a more extreme form of expression.  It's quite appropriate for the mid-season mark of the year she chained her dragons up.  Without this scene, she wouldn't have had a visual expression of the conflict between the Queen and the Dragon.

Harry Lloyd cameo would've been so good...

Most likely. GRRM did say that she and Tyrion spend most of TWoW separated, but will eventually meet.

I think Dany suffered the most from the story 'growing in its telling.'  Her plot in ADWD was my favorite, but while reading, I knew it would be impossible to do justice in the context of the show.  Her story in the first book/season was easily the most compelling, and then she found herself in a holding pattern while the politics of Westeros took over.  Even in the biggest book, ASOS, we only visited Dany fleetingly, and her chapters were quite fast paced, conquering cities left and right, liberating slaves, it was great stuff.  But a lot of show fans are checking their watches as the Meereen plot drags on, wondering if and when she'll ever get to Westeros.  No other character has teased an event way back from the first book that still has yet to come to fruition.  I find the consequences of Dany's liberation in Slaver's Bay quite compelling... but I understand why the viewers are growing impatient and frustrated; and why the producers have tried to accelerate certain aspects of her story.



Considering Dany just fled the political machinations of a society she couldn't embrace, I don't see why she'd willingly go to a city that she knows will 'enslave' her as a dosh khaleen, prophecy or no. She avoided that fate for a reason.  Dany's story in ADWD was her internal struggle between Queen and Dragon, at the end she embraced her inner Dragon.  Dany knows what will happen to her if she goes back to Vaes Dothrak, and after all that she's gone through, I doubt she'd allow external forces to push their traditions on her.  And George is too good of a writer to allow that story to progress without serious conflict between Dany and the Dothraki.

And if Drogon was in danger in the fighting pits, he could be vulnerable against the Dothraki as well.  But I think Dany flying away with Drogon was much more symbolic of her choice to embrace her inner Targaryen.  I don't think George left us that cliffhanger so Dany would win the upper hand right away in the next book, and I think the show's direction with Dany's story is a solid hint at that.