Yup, surprisingly weak Arya storyline. The resolution to the fatal-looking knife-in-the-gut cliffhanger was a weak “it’s just a flesh wound!” And we’re left with the FM religion/philosophy being - who the hell knows what? Inconsistent and incoherent. I really don’t like stuff that’s ultra-mysterious and then turns out to just evaporate into vague supernatural pointlessness. Unlike Sansa, who is now one of the most complex and interesting characters, on a personal level Arya seems little changed since she left the Hound for Braavos almost two seasons ago. The acting troupe was fun, but that seems to have been killed off. The net outcome of the entire Braavos/FM storyline for Arya seems to be equivalent to little more than 18 episodes of Karate Kid fight montage.
Maybe there will be more reveal of what the FM are really all about, and continued interaction between Jaqen/Arya? But it didn’t feel that way.
The siege of Riverrun was anti-climactic as fuck, too. I thought we were being set up to have a reason to bring Jaime and Brienne back together with conflicting motivations, and… well, it didn’t really amount to anything. Brienne’s proposal to have the Tully army go North would’ve at least added an interesting development to that plotline.
And where as the Jaime we’ve seen develop over the years gone? He’s back to being the same place he was when we first met him - “I’ll kill everyone in the world to be with Cersei”
Blackfish amounted to nothing. Okay, so you’ve decided you have to fight for your home instead of Sansa’s home. So be it. But then after Edmure decides to capitulate, and there will be no fight for your home, and Brienne asks for your help and gives you a chance to continue to fight for your family and help Sansa… you say “nah that’s cool, I’m gonna go die to some random guards”?
So does she have the skills to assemble her own portable “library” of faces now? Or does Jaqen lend her some? Or are the FM assumed identities just vaguely supernatural, and now she has the secret power? If she can’t at least look like other people after this incoherent storyline, it really has been dumb.
Did anyone else feel your heart sink a little at the moment Tyrion revealed that he’d like to retire to a country estate and become a vintner? There was a touch of melancholy in the way he said it that seemed to presage that he won’t live to realize that ambition.
And one more thing. After Arya came back to the house of black and white, Jaqen says “and a now a girl has finally become no one”
Which is a totally nonsensical conclusion that only seems to exist for Arya to say “what the fuck gave you that idea? I’m clearly doing all this because I’m not”
Yeah, the whole storyline has gotten sloppy. It’s impossible to make logical guesses about where the plot is going when it’s not even trying to make sense.
At first I thought, “Oh, this is what Jaqen wanted all along.” Then i thought, “There’s no point in trying to understand any of this until it’s over.”
I actually don’t have an issue with the Riverrun siege though. Game of Thrones is a great show precisely because it doesn’t just go for whatever outcome is most interesting. Characters behave logically, even if the logic of their actions denies the viewer what they want to see. Sure, if I listed the possible outcomes of what was going to happen at Riverrun, what I saw would be the least enjoyable. But it made SENSE, for various reasons:
The Blackfish is too damn stubborn.
Jaime has digressed about halfway because of the death of Marcella and what’s happened to his sister. His dad dying and his brother being the killer and running away hasn’t helped. The only thing keeping him with one toe in possible redemption land is his affection for Brienne and his friendship with Bronn, who is a shockingly good influence on the Lannisters despite the fact he’s got few redeeming qualities himself other than being funny.
Returning Lord Edmure to the castle was a brilliant ploy and it worked exactly as intended. Lord Edmure wasn’t brainwashed, the scene with Jaime made that more than clear. Edmure just isn’t as stupid as the Blackfish.
Jaime won’t be slaughtering the defenders of Riverrun. He’s not into sadism for its own sake like Roose Bolton. The real question is whether he’ll allow them to march north and aid the Starks. Seems like he shouldn’t, since Brienne didn’t fulfill her part of the bargain, but you never know.
Finished watching the episode. Gotta love the smirks on Cersei and Qyburn’s faces after her “I choose violence” line.
The interactions between Jaime and Brienne were quite touching.
It was super cheesy; repeatedly stopping to strike a pose and crick her neck like a badass? C’mon. :rolleyes: Just do your shit. I’m glad she failed as a Faceless.
I don’t deny that there were some elements of the whole thing that were off (although the way you present it is extremely exaggerated), but it was a matter of Occam’s razor: the alternative theories were so absurd and nonsensical, and would require even greater suspension of disbelief than the admittedly weak but straightforward interpretation. So while I can kind of see why people wanted it to be something other than it was, the mental contortions necessary to arrive at their conclusions and believe that those had to be the best explanation were silly.
And yes, being completely right does count for vindication purposes. You don’t get to brag about how sophisticated a viewer you are because you came up with some crackpot theories that were completely off-base. I can still sympathize with some disappointment in the way her storyline has been handled, and at present it does seem like the entire FM arc has been pretty pointless.
I didn’t come up with any crackpot theories. I thought it was going to turn out pretty much exactly how it was going to turn out, and that it would be horribly disappointing and stupid writing. But you don’t seem to understand why a whole lot of people were coming up with pet theories - because they didn’t want to accept to accept that it was just a sudden, massive turn for the worst in writing quality, and so they thought a misdirect was more plausible than the writing turning down about 6 notches.
Your position that it wasn’t that dumb, or that it wasn’t that out of the ordinary, is much less tenable than those notions, and you’re being obnoxious if you think you can gloat. It’s not as though you were smarter and predicted the outcome better, but rather, you weren’t paying enough attention to register the dramatic dip in writing quality that lead to people wanting to find alternate explanations, so you saw their need to seek an alternate explanation as “conspiracy theories” when you didn’t see such a need yourself because you didn’t even notice something that required explanation. You don’t have the superior position that you think you have.
So we’ll never learn where those two bags of money materialized from, I guess? And yeah, a couple of stab wounds to the abdomen is totally something you could just walk (swim) off. A good night’s sleep, and basically, you’re fine, except the occasional grimacing.
I guess even on this show, sometimes the resolution is just sloppy writing…
I’m also a little annoyed at the play. I mean, Joffrey was universally reviled and hated; so who went and wrote this over-romanticized play with him being the innocent victim of conspiracy and subterfuge? Cersei? (I know, small thing, but still.)
Yes, that totally was a ‘I’m one week from retirement’-sort of speech. I worry a little…
The thing with Tyrion is… they’re setting up to be the guy who fucked up by making the alliance, and somehow inviting the attack…
But what would’ve happened if he didn’t make the alliance? The sons of the harpy would still be killing people and the city would be on the brink of civil war or even in civil war. And then the masters would’ve showed up with their fleets against an even weaker target. It’s not as though Tyrion lowered the city’s defenses when the alliance was made - the unsullied are basically always on duty.
And on the other side of it, why would the masters agree to stop funding the sons of the harpy if they had intended to attack anyway? They would’ve benefitted by continuing that and having the city weaker for their attack.
If the peace had made Tyrion disband the armies and send everyone home, or send the navy away, leaving them vulnerable to the Master’s treachery, it would make sense. But nothing like that happened, and so while I suspect this is meant to set up Danerys telling Tyrion he fucked up, he didn’t actually do anything harmful.
After Arya rejects the faceless men instructions and refuses to kill the actress, then runs, then kills the waif, suddenly Jaqen concludes “a girl is finally no one” - uh, where’d you get that idea, guy? It seems quite clearly that is not the case. It just seemed like inexplicable setup for her “NAH SON I’M ARYA STARK OF WINTERFELL YO” line that followed.
Tyrion is in big trouble. At first I thought his plan was good on the merits, but still a bad idea because he’s supposed to be representing Dany while she’s gone, not ruling in her place. What he did would be like someone banning abortion and gay marriage while Obama was away. Dany would never have negotiated with slaveholders and Tyrion, as her loyal servant, shouldn’t have done it either. THe fact that it went really bad means he’s in even more trouble.
What interests me though is how this ends. Are the dragons going to burn the enemy fleet, or perhaps that fleet from the Iron Islands is about to show up?
We saw her spending a ton of time begging as well as selling “oysters, clams, and cockels”. We don’t know if TFM were charging her any rent, or if so how much, so this is an example of one of the things that people were complaining about that’s really a non-issue. It’s plausible that she saved it over time. Doesn’t require any further explanation.
Agreed that she recovered a bit too easily from wounds that looked pretty serious, but it’s a common enough TV trope to let it slide. Ideally it would have worked better if the wounds were just grazes or maybe a single puncture wound closer to the side rather than two close to the stomach with a knife twist.
Universally? By the show audience maybe, but I’m not sure we can apply that to everyone in the show’s world, especially outside of Westeros (where this is taking place). They wouldn’t have known all the details of his sadism that we know.
We’ve also seen that she basically received nothing for her begging, and her oyster-selling was only a cover—and those oysters themselves didn’t come for free. It really strains credulity that she could make enough money this way to not only buy her passage to Westeros, but even dictate to the captain that he’s to change his schedule and leave the next day.
There were basically riots in the streets; Joffrey was nearly killed, Sansa nearly raped. The reaction of the audience to Cersei’s walk of shame shows how universally loathed she still is. To a large degree, the sparrows could only grab power because the Lannisters have little to no sympathy among the commoners.
Hmmm. Where Arya is isn’t under Westeros rule, is it? The Lannisters might be more popular overseas than at home. Or it could just be that the actress is just so damn talented that she made the audience identify with Cersei.
