I'm fine with the plot points. And you're gonna forget I said that by the end of this rant I think. But really, I have no problem with jamie returning to cersie before she dies, with Dani turning mad, with Jon refusing his title and following the queen, with tyrion following the queen and both of them ultimately being betrayed by her, and even with the rampage of king's landing being easy with one dragon. None of that I have a problem with. Also I'm fine altogether with clegane bowl.
I'm just gonna lay out the issues to get myself organized and then tackle them one by one.
- arya's assassin character assassination
- overpowered dragon
- jamie and cersie
- dani's choice
- plastic armor
- Jon's choice
Alright, let's take these in order of least offensive to most offensive. Plastic armor. Uh... the whole point of a giant metal breastplate is to stop a spear is it not? I mean, medieval fights had a lot of clanging and stabbing and deflected blows because armor was very effective at stopping blades. Armor and shields were extremely potent, so why are they split in two by spears as though they don't exist? This seems like it's done for expediency to keep the show moving, but honestly I'd rather sit with a gritty long swinging slog of armored up fighters looking for a weakness in their opponent.
Jon's choice. Uh... 5 seconds ago you were in love with Dani and all over her. Now all of the sudden you've lost your love interest? How does that happen? I get the idea of keeping your relative at arms length when it comes to who you'd fall for, and even the idea of just not liking the looks (in that way) of someone who is genetically similar to you. But after it happens, you can't just shut that off. Dani's character seems to realize this, and Jon's doesn't. And he doesn't ever confront the issue, or have some well motivated dialog, or make some heartfelt speech or appeal or anything. He just doesn't want to talk about it.
Dani's choice. How did her character get from "I'm the breaker of chains and the freer of people" to "I'm a mad murderer" again? I mean, for a little while there she put her own quest for the iron throne aside for the good of the people she was trying to save. If this story has been her slow descent into madness, it hasn't done enough of a job motivating that descent. Because of that, it makes her look like she's just pissed off that her BF isn't interested anymore and goes on a muderous rampage. It looks like character assassination instead of the compelling story of a good person gone bad, slowly... like breaking bad.
Jamie and Cerise. All he needed to do was stab her and die in that underground spot where they held each other and died anyway. That's it! And his character arc is complete. Everything about his makes sense, and he is a compelling and interesting character. Cersie also needs to not be begging for her life (to no one in particular). I get that she doesn't want to die, and I get that the audience would like to see her suffer in the end, but it's not consistent with anything about her. She's already lost everything She doesn't fear death. Her character has only gotten stronger and more cutthroat. She should have faced death at the top of that tower like a the person of conviction and strength that she is. Sobbing in Jamie's arms was such a horrible bit of writing. I think it was to make you feel better that she got her comeuppance, but she just shouldn't. Ever. You get no atonement from her. Except if Jamie kills her! Which he really needed to do to make his character arc pay off. Then you get some closure on the Jamie/Cersie love tragedy. It also helps give Tyrion's character more of a complete ending. Seriously, how did they not do that?
Overpowered dragon. Suddenly the scorpions can't hit anything. Coming from the direction of the sun was a good touch, and from above where they can't pivot, but after you get low you have to go straight back up and divebomb again. Staying low isn't the answer, that gets you killed. Why is dragon's fire a small bomb? It's fire. You could imagine that scene where the dragon takes out the front gate from the wrong side (with stones flying) as being rewritten to just have the gate engulfed in flame only to no longer be in flame a second later. Perhaps the door stays lit, and the soldiers are burning, and other wooden things are burning, but stones flying? That dragon was the hand of god. A column of destruction that obliterated everything it touched as though it were a phaserblast from the enterprise. It's fire.
Last and most devastating, was the assassination of our assassin. Arya comes to the city to kill Cersie. And the hound says "you sure about this" and she's all "no actually, I journeyed this whole way without actually thinking about it. I'm outta here." You can fix this with a little dialog. Arya is a calculating psychopathic killer at this point, the hand of death itself. If the hound says "wow, looks like Cersie's gonna die anyway". Arya can simply say "yea you're right. If she doesn't, I'll come back to finish the job. And just walk out calmly". If only she walked out calmly. Instead Arya resorts to the female action trope of trying to save women and children. Really? Of all the characters that you're going to have running around saving women and children you choose Arya? That's about as far from consistent for her as any behavior I can think of.
Arya is obviously being set up to kill Dani. And that's fine, I think it's a good twist for the show. But Arya doesn't need to run around seeing this "face of death" with horror and disgust right after she killed the night king and death itself. She's a calculating instrument. She can simply observe and calmly conclude that Dani goes on her list. I was so disappointed with what they did to arya in this episode. It's hard to overstate. If she doesn't come back and kill dani with a mask, it has to be with a mask because we need more payoff on that, then it will represent a complete and total collapse of one of the most important characters in the show. Even if she does come back and kill dani with a mask, this episode was so inconsistent and so painful that it has left permanent damage on a great character.
I'm so disappointed with this.
