Game of Thrones - mostly

[Kath]

Some dickbag Hollywood editor I know was saying that it was made that way so "true fans would KNOW how it actually ended"

I know almost nothing about the story; it's a Mafia guy who needs a psychiatrist. That's the extent of my knowledge, except for the ending, which made headlines. I put that ending, though, in the Seinfeld category. At that point, why bother with an ending? Just make a declaration: "We know we need to end this story, but we don't know how. Use your imaginations; likely better than anything we can come up with." I would have preferred they did that with Lost, instead of the crap they threw at us. I was so pissed.

[Kath]

I wouldn’t know, so thanks for mentioning it. I read the first three books, and it wasn’t mentioned in there.

I looked it up; we found out in Season 7. It was so long between 7 & 8, it's easy to see why I thought we knew that for years. 'Cause we did.

[DBTrek]

Every show should end with Arya hurdling over hordes of undead, stabbing the director, and the cast and crew instantly falling down dead.

[BjornP]

The NK and other white walkers control the wights. They could have instructed the wights to kill everyone but Bran, and only then would the NK appear. It was a rather odd departure from him earlier, leading from the back. That he is drawn to Bran, doesn't mean he needed to rush toward him.

Or...rather, that actually depends on whatever Bran possibly did while he went out of his body. Maybe he was having some sort of conversation with the NK, who also has the ability to interact with the spiritform version of Bran as we saw when he touched Bran in one of his visions in the 3YR's cave.

As for realistic battles, I wasn't referring to Deus ex Arya, but to the stuff already mentioned like sending off cavalry to charge at an enemy they can't even see, and thus determine whether it's a dumb move to charge or not. Same with shooting artillery without having a target point where you can see the enemy either are, or will be by the time your ammunition hits. Or stuff like cavalry charges where cavalry uses swords as their main weapon, as their charging weapon or the wearing of thin leather armor with...studs that serve no apparant usage. Or the idea that everyone in the middle ages apparantly wore...brown. And loads and loads of other small annoyances I know will never change.

Still, I kinda liked the way everything was dark - even if I actually couldn't see much. It added to the atmosphere of death and darkness. And it at least tried to be suitably epic. A shame that the series Mormont house is now extinct. The book-Mormont house had more siblings than the one that died at the Red Wedding and the little girl - but there had be a some tragedy in the show and this was ok tragedy.

If they did as you wish they did, the only episode left is the White Walkers and their wights to head to KL and kill everyone else. End of story, end of man, at least in Westoros, until the dead figure out how to use boats. Essos doesn't have a shot; they don't even know the enemy exists. Who wants to watch that?

99.5% of viewers are totally pissed off, and B&W are now in fear for their lives.

I don't write anywhere that I wish they'd do that instead. I don't. I just wish the NK hadn't been portrayed as such a 1D, dumb, stereotypical monster villain. It's just "He was sacrificed by Children. He is angry about that. After staying put in the far north for thousands of year, he suddenly attacks...because he wants to delete memories, oh, and now someone did a feint and gutted him to death.".... I'm just missing something.

[Kath]

I don't write anywhere that I wish they'd do that instead. I don't. I just wish the NK hadn't been portrayed as such a 1D, dumb, stereotypical monster villain. It's just "He was sacrificed by Children. He is angry about that. After staying put in the far north for thousands of year, he suddenly attacks...because he wants to delete memories, oh, and now someone did a feint and gutted him to death.".... I'm just missing something.

So, 1,000 years ago, the Children of the Forest created him to help them take down men, who were destroying their way of life. When Bran the Builder got word, he built a magical wall to keep him out. He's had 1,000 years to plan out how to fulfill his only mission; his only obstacle being the wall.

It makes perfect sense to me.

[DrYouth]

The thing that I'm watching in this series is the millennial theme of potent females and impotent males...

Bran is an example...

He sucked at archery but his sister excelled.

He becomes a vacuous cripple and his sister becomes superhuman.

This overlaps with the symbolism of hierarchy... the obvious oppressive symbol of the Iron Throne... with the wall as the ultimate symbol of exclusion... the wildlings are the initial enemy... then the dead - created by some original race?? (not clear on this exactly)

Ned Stark... the archetypal honest man... must submit to Kings Landing... his son is crippled... but a reckoning is coming.

A potent female is rising in the South... armed with dragons and a potent female rises to the Iron Throne after the demise of her impotent male offspring and even her incompetent brother who loses his hand and grants protector status to a massive female - Brienne of Tar. The Hound is run off... his massive brother is turned into a monster... The main protagonists are a dwarf, a eunuch, a booky nerd and Jon who kneels to the dragon lady to try to save the North. There is even a child female who slays a giant.

So the hierarchy of masculinity is upended... but will a new equivalently "masculine" female hierarchy rise in it's place?

I guess we will find out.

[StCapps]

Anyone who has actually seen The Sopranos want to shit on the ending? Come at me, bro. Wasn't the best ending in television history, but it was far from the worst, and it suited the show quite well.

Lost's ending and it's final season sucked, solved way too many of the mysteries with unsatisfactory answers, they picked a side in the reason vs. faith angle instead of leaving it open to interpretation, and betrayed the strengths of the show by leaning on it's weaknesses. Lost's ending is an infinitely worse than the ending of The Sopranos, those two endings shouldn't even be mentioned in the same conversation, The Sopranos ended strong, Lost ended real weak.

[Kath]

The thing that I'm watching in this series is the millennial theme of potent females and impotent males...

Bran is an example...

He sucked at archery but his sister excelled.

He becomes a vacuous cripple and his sister becomes superhuman.

I seriously doubt that was what Martin had in mind when he started writing book 1 in 1991. Most of above happens in the first few chapters.

I'm not a fan of over-correcting to make up for past mistakes, but it's also not fair to claim that women can never be the badass of a story. The world has known quite a few badass female rulers throughout mankind's history.

[StCapps]

The Ice Zombie ending was never going to big climax that a lot of the shows fans were expecting it to be, there is a reason they got the ice zombies out of the way, because if you make that the ending of the show, it's impossible to nail the landing, bullet dodged. Not seeing a better way to kill off the ice zombies in an episode, than what they came up with. The more we learned about the ice zombies, the less interesting they became, solving mysteries is a helluva drug, especially when the mystery was key to making the ice zombies cool in the first place, and the payoff usually isn't worth it in those circumstances, Lost knows.

[Kath]

The Ice Zombie ending was never going to big climax that a lot of the shows fans were expecting it to be, there is a reason they got the ice zombies out of the way, because if you make that the ending of the show, it's impossible to nail the landing, bullet dodged. Not seeing a better way to kill off the ice zombies in an episode, than what they came up with. The more we learned about the ice zombies, the less interesting they became, solving mysteries is a helluva drug, especially when the mystery was key to making the ice zombies cool in the first place, and the payoff usually isn't worth it in those circumstances, Lost knows.

Without the zombies, there's no story. The Wall was literally a main character in this story. No wall or zombies to worry about? Still a story, but far less interesting. No reason for Jon to exist; no reason for Samwell to exist. We don't get to meet Jorah's father, who is the reason Sam saves Jorah; all sorts of plot lines are less in-depth without the wall.