Note: This post contains serious spoilers from the most recent episode. Spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers
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Okay, ready?
I know the Dungeons and Dragons bros are under the gun to get thing wrapped up here, but their inattention to details is starting to really ruin the show for me. It was easy enough to simply sit back and enjoy the spectacle of “The Long Night” without thinking about it too much, but last night’s episode “The Last of the Starks” didn’t have a fun, massive, dimly lit battle to distract me from all the Kimberly-sized plot holes.
The first thing I want to complain about is Daenerys’s decision to forgo any rest and march straight for Winterfell. Since this is in principle an NFL satire site, I’ll make an NFL analogy. Imagine you are the, let’s say, Jacksonville Jaguars. You just beat the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game (aka the Tom Brady Invitational). It took almost EVERYTHING you had to pull it off, and in the end you got saved by some faceless, undersized, scrappy slot receiver making a miraculous play in the waning seconds of the game. In the real world, you’d have to face the Detroit Lions in the Super Bowl in two weeks. But in my made up fantasy here, Roger Goodell gives you a call and says that you are welcome to take as much time as you’d like before scheduling the big game. You can wait all the way until June, if you’d like.
A smart team would take advantage of this opportunity, and let everyone get back to full strength before stepping on the field again. It’s not like your opponents are going to be signing any new free agents. And they are going to have to pay the ones they’ve already signed, who aren’t going to be just stand around twiddling their thumbs for free. An even smarter team would realize that one of their coordinators has an entire network of spies that could be relied upon to obtain incredibly valuable intelligence about your opponents’ offensive capabilities, troop movements, and whether or not their fucking fleet is still in harbor, or if they just up and pulled anchor and sailed off somewhere at the exact same time your ships are headed in their direction.
Which brings me to my second point: Rhaegal’s death. Imagine that you’re Mike Glennon. Even from a vantage point of just a few feet higher, you can see threats from pretty far away, right? Now imagine that you’re hundreds of feet in the air. You can see even further! In fact, if there was a ship trying to hide behind a rock long enough for you to get within a line-of-sight so they could shoot at you with their ballista, you’d probably get within a mile and say to yourself “hey, what are those stick things pointing up there from behind the rocks? Is that a safety cheating over to take away the deep post? No! Those are ship’s masts! Well they’re not the ships from my own navy, I should probably circle around a little bit and see what’s up. Oh, they have ballistae! Better keep my distance.” Listen, the ballista is a pretty cool piece of siege machinery. But we’ve already seen one dragon taken down by a miracle projectile. Rhaegal deserved a better death than the equivalent of a horror movie jump-scare.
My third point, which is more of a wistful suggestion for what would have been an awesome shocker twist: imagine if, when Cersei was whispering in Missandei’s ear, the latter had simply grabbed Cersei’s arm and pulled her off the battlements, plunging both of them to their deaths. How baller of a death would that have been? And imagine them both splatting on the ground in front of Tyrion while he stands there stunned, open-mouthed, splattered with blood? I get chills just thinking about it. And then the remaining two episodes are about mopping up Euron, Qyburn, and the rest of the Lannister crew. Ah well.
Finally, I’m hoping that it’s Arya that kills Cersei while wearing Tommen’s face. At this point I’m not sure I really care who does it, though. I just want it to be over with.
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Note: much love to Brian Grubb/Danger Guerrero for the post title inspiration
Just caught up.
Cersi should have killed everybody at the gate.
Cersi should have killed Tyrion
Danny should have waited
Danny should have seen the big boats
Jon Snow would be a shitty king
Bran hasn’t done one goddamn thing this entire time
I do not buy Brie-Jai being a couple for one goddamn second, and the episode would have been better if Brienne had rolled over and found only Jaime’s golden hand under her in bed.
It just seems like there are a lot of people becoming inexplicably stupid whenever the plot demands they make a mistake. Things are rushed. Everybody just wants this to be over with. I’ll watch it, but my overwhelming hunch is that the next ep will be fun trash, and the ending will leave everybody with a severe case of blue balls.
It was stupid but fun.
Jon is the dumbest man in Westeros. Dany is just being foolish, but he’s a fucking goon. I can’t wait until this is all over and Sansa takes the Iron Throne over Cersei’s dead body. I’m just not sure if Tyrion is going to die with Dany or not.
The real villain here is apparently HBO, which wanted the ever-more expensive series to wrap up now, (if the rumors are true the writers had to fight for even this abbreviated season), rather than the 10 years GRRM had wanted. As a result things that would have taken three episodes in the past are taking 20 minutes, and it’s getting increasingly ridiculous. I also think that a lot of the main characters are either aging out of their roles, getting more, and more lucrative, outside work, or both.
GoT was a great series for 5-6 seasons. It’s ending with a whimper rather than a bang, but I’m going to ride this dragon to the end.
Of course, since I’m not an idiot, I’m going to ride my dragon at night and/or above the clouds, and I am going to attack from behind, (shut it), and only after telling my dragon to cut out the pre-attack screeching. We’ll talk shit after we win.
What he said.
Just to further point out, the new head of HBO wants to shit out as much crap as possible to compete with Netflix, which is stupid as fuck because Netflix already has the market cornered on loads of cheap, unwatchable crap. HBO’s entire niche has always been about quality. Oh well.
These are not real names.
/remembers Michonne
Ahem….Carry on.
No worse than your average lacrosse team.
Bryyxon doesn’t get that joke.
But hey, Brienne got laid.
How the fuck did Cersei get hold of Missandei in the first goddamn place?
Her boat assploded, then Dread Pirate Euron fished her out.
No, they made a point of having Grey Worm yell at her to get in the skiff; she got into a lifeboat that immediately got captured.
Also, since you’re a fan of watching leaders make questionable decisions, how do you feel about the Raiders scheduling a workout for Incognito?
Honored.
Had the exact same thought about Missandei yanking Cersei off the wall. Also, strategically there was zero reason for Cersei to spare her little brother from the archers.
But on the whole (hole? I dunno), I’m trying really hard to ignore all the inconsistencies and just enjoy it. (Probably how my wife feels about sexytime)
I was able to do that last week, but this week was just too damned much.
The ham-fisted writing trying to make Daenerys seem like a tyrant is bothering me, along with all those other points.
And why didn’t Cersei just open fire on the single platoon of Unsullied that was the only protection for all her enemies?
Much like Rhaegal and poor Ghost, we deserved better
I kind of like how Ghost got sent to live out his days with a nice farm family somewhere upstate, though.
Fuck Jon forever for that. You want to bang your aunt? Not my thing, but whatever. You want to have your fearsome heavy cavalry charge blindly into the dark against an army of everyone who’s ever died in the North? You do you, Patton. You want to keep secrets from you family, friends, lovers for reasons that could only be called ‘stupid’? Sure.
But motherfucker, you abandon your faithful dire wolf without so much as a scratch between the ears, after he whines mournfully at you? You are goddamn dead to me.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Again?” – R’hllor