Holy fuck, yeah I forgot about the fucking beetle story. What the hell was the point of that? Evil dress - ripoff from Legend. You're right about the acting of Dany and Ayra's characters, bad choices there. Edit: Yeah also I think they wasted 3 full scenes with the Grey Worm/Missandei crap for the sole purpose of showing Missandei's tits. Not complaining about the tits, but that takes gratuitous nudity to a whole different level.
Heh, my point was that they wasted about 10 minutes of a show that needed more plot devices to justify showing some tits. But I guess with the Beetle Story, the stupid confession by Sansa an the waste scene with Arya, at least 70% of the show was a loss.
I know they're just trying to make Sansa be less passive than she is in the books but it's pretty idiotic. They just established Littlefinger as this master schemer and now his plan is to push Lysa out the moon door and say "uh well, she jumped". Not to mention that him telling Sansa to let the guards in this singer just killed my wife is such a great line.
Yep. Also missing from a lot of this is the Greyjoy plotline, which I'm sure they will continue to butcher into oblivion. In the books, IIRC Balon was the first king to get killed off, and unless I missed something, he's still alive. I'm assuming they are saving all of that for the next season, because we haven't heard a damn thing about Euron Crow's Eye yet, and he's one of the most polarizing characters in the books. I didn't really watch much of last season, did they keep the Damphair in the story or write him out?
I had 3 interpretations of the Beetle story. The first one was showing the difference between Jamie and Tyrion. Jamie didn't care, but Tyrion wanted to know. That's Tyrion and why he's different. The next two, I read online as additional reasonings on top of the top one. The second reasoning, GRRM is the guy crushing the beetles (killing characters with no apparent reason) but there is a reason. The third reasoning, what the Mountain does. Just kill and kill and kill. That's it. I thought the scene was good, but like a lot of things related to this series, for now it seems like filler.
I think you are right. They are going to keep it together in a season to make it easier to follow. Damphier was mentioned, never shown. Also, if the writers know that the plot goes nowhere, which is a possibility, that might be why they are skipping it or glossing over it
I'm not sure how you figure that plot goes nowhere. It illustrates how Crow's Eye takes power in the Iron Islands and ends up dictating that Victarion heads to Meereen with the dragon horn to court Dany in later books. I'd say that's pretty important. Edit: or are you just talking about Aeron Greyjoy's plotline?
About the beetles I doubt it has anything to do with the Mountain since he's only been on the show 3 or 4 times with as many different actors playing him, a majority of the audience really doesn't know anything about him, and the show certainly hasn't shown any signs of throwing in little tidbits or catering to book readers. I have no idea what's going on with the Greyjoys though. The Theon Moat Cailin stuff was in the middle of book 5 and Balon had been dead forever. In fact I think the reason there were so few people left guarding it was because Balon's death threw everything in an uproar and the majority of the force left to decide on the new king. Balon is definitely alive in the show so I'm not sure why there would be like 10 people guarding the castle or they would be so desperate to go home or feeling like they'd be abandoned.
Aeron. Isn't he suspected to be dead by Euron's hands? Or alive and on the run? They combine/lose a lot of characters who did seem important in the books until you went forward. Maybe this is the case?
Aeron Damphair is still alive in the books. I actually expect him to play an important part in the final two books, although there may be more than two books left if GRRM keeps dragging shit out and the show starts catching up (and keeps getting renewed). I'm getting convinced that the change/delay in the Greyjoy plot is an emergency device being used to extend the show to give dumbass Martin more time to get the nuts to finish the next book. The show could end up with 10-11 seasons on 7-8 books.
I don't think they're concerned with the books release, I imagine that next season is going to cover both Feast and Dance and even if by some miracle Winds was out by the time season 6 rolled around they could never wait for the next book. The irony is that with the weakness of the material they're working with(especially compared to Storm) even if they do condense it viewers are probably going to feel like they're dragging it out.
They've already dragged out a lot of things that should have happened far earlier in the books, and invented others, I wouldn't be surprised if they out and out invented some storylines that were never in the books to delay the Feast/Dance series even further. The battle at the wall hasn't even happened yet and that was a while before Jon was named Lord Commander, so I'm assuming the latter will happen next season as well. Feast/Dance will probably be the death knell for the series, and if that happens it will be sure to Martin not having published any more books.
Watching the Arya scene again the guard that tells them "Lady Arryn died." is comically bad too. I wonder how many takes they did of that scene. Reminds me of that episode of Louie where he was playing the cop in the Jewish Godfather movie.
Finally got to watch the episode and I have to agree with the assessment of people before this. The Grey Worm & Missandei (or whatever) thing bothered me. The beetle story was long and pointless, I would have preferred they used the time for that on more fight time. The fight itself was awesome but shorter than I would have liked. I liked the touch of them showing Oberyn's squire or whatever "polishing" the spears with a cloth right before the match. I don't like it but I think part of the reason they had Arya go to the Vale is that it will be similar to when Bran was so close to Jon that he could have joined up with him but didn't. Seems more painful for them to be so close and not reunite than be miles apart from each other at all times. Overall it was not the strongest episode and they seem to be straying more and more away from the books. I don't think you need to copy the books verbatim but when you seem to be making changes just for the hell of it and they aren't really improving the story it kind of rubs me the wrong way.
That's my problem here. WHY did they have to get Bran near to Jon, WHY do they need to get Arya near Sansa. I guess its to remind the dumbass tv watchers that they are actually part of the same family. And that means they are catering to the morons.
I tend to agree. You always hear about how they have to alter things for the TV audience, I don't know if that means dumbing it down or maybe just playing to people with a shorter attention span but it's kind of sad that they have to do that, or at least feel like they have to do that. More than anything it seems like these changes are just completely arbitrary. We'll see how the Arya storyline plays out but she has to go to Braavos and I just don't see why she would do that if they let her in to the Eyrie (which even though her aunt is dead and the general public doesn't know Sansa is there I can't see why they wouldn't) why would she leave? If Royce is so tight with the Starks surely he'd want to speak with Arya, the only other living Stark as far as he knows, and he could tell Arya that Sansa is there and she would stay. I just don't see a logical course of action where she doesn't end up meeting Sansa so now no matter what happens I'm going to be pissed off. Either she doesn't meet her and it's stupid or she does meet her and either chooses to continue to Braavos anyway (which is good but stupid) or she stays with Sansa completely altering her character's story arc (insanely stupid). I wouldn't say GRRM's stories have zero plotholes but when they make changes to things that were very well thought out by him it just opens up more question marks and holes in the story. When those changes don't seem to improve the story in any way that just bugs me.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I was never a Feast/Dance hater, and I think when we look back on the series as a whole one day they'll be less hate for them. They look like shit now because they are basically a ton of setup for situations that have yet to be resolved. The show is going to leave TV watchers with an entirely new worldwide dynamic with Stannis in the North, a power vacuum in King's Landing, and Arya and Tyrion across the sea (who I think will both get more to do than Martin had them doing through Feast/Dance). Then there's still the Citadel, the Greenseer, and the ENTIRE introduction/explanation of the prophecies, which due to the show's glossing over of the House of the Undying events, are still completely untouched. Throw in the Iron-born (I'm guessing they kill Balon in the opening scene next season), the dragons going ape-shit on more than one occasion, Cersi vs Margery (who is a far more interesting character on the show), and Dorne, that's a ton of shit to attempt to shoehorn into 10 episodes. What those two books lack is a definitive event, so it feels like there's a lot less story to tell than there really is, even if you cut two or three of the sub-plots entirely, and due to the fact that nobody is really sure how this all plays out, none of them are really expendable.
I saw this referenced on twitter, the actress that plays Cersei posted this way back in April http://instagram.com/p/nEeNM0PA3L/ Gotta be this season right? She also posted this picture which makes much more sense now.http://instagram.com/p/mVN1fdvAzU/
Also, from books to TV, you have to remember TV is once a week then a 10 month break where the show viewers cannot google anything without fear of being spoiled. Their knowledge rests on rewatch, reading HBO guides, or having friends who read the books and will explain things that have happened. On top of that, the books get to see what a character is thinking while TV does not have that help. I think the Bran/Jon storyline was to keep Bran's story interesting. In the book it's better, but it's not suited well for TV. Arya meeting Sansa, who knows. If they actually meet that will be annoying.
