The Official Good Television Thread

Latest GoT episode was pretty lame. Lots to harp on about so I'll just say what bothered me most was how they muted the audio to play this somber piano piece over the climax of the battle, taking the viewer out of the experience right as some major characters are looking to bite it. This world needs more Craig Zahlers.

I wish the episode had been written by this guy:

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What parts of it were horrifying? I thought any and all attempts at horror this episode fell completely flat.
 
I mean, what else were you expecting? We knew exactly what was coming based on how previous massive battle episodes have been. They'll never be my favourite type of episodes, due to their focus on epic scale and cinematography over any kind of subtlety. There's really little room for interesting plot developments or character interactions, which I find to be more interesting. Although it coming full circle by the end was pretty neat.

I found most of the episode to be tense and gripping and horrifying honestly. And I particularly found the last 10 minutes or horrifying, that music you talk about adding weightiness and gravity to the situation. Kind of feel you're judging it on being something it isn't. Out of interest, how could they have done this episode (where the major battle is still the main part of it) to make you enjoy it more?
 
I mean, what else were you expecting? We knew exactly what was coming based on how previous massive battle episodes have been. They'll never be my favourite type of episodes, due to their focus on epic scale and cinematography over any kind of subtlety. There's really little room for interesting plot developments or character interactions, which I find to be more interesting. Although it coming full circle by the end was pretty neat.

I found most of the episode to be tense and gripping and horrifying honestly. And I particularly found the last 10 minutes or horrifying, that music you talk about adding weightiness and gravity to the situation. Kind of feel you're judging it on being something it isn't. Out of interest, how could they have done this episode (where the major battle is still the main part of it) to make you enjoy it more?

I've liked most of the previous battle episodes, with Hardhome and Watchers on the Walls in particular being among my favorites of the whole series. I have no issue with the fact that this episode was low on dialogue or plot development (although I definitively have issues with how anti-climatically they wrapped up one of the series longest-running plotlines) but I still think it was pretty bad by the standards of a 'battle' episode.

After last week's calm-before-the-storm episode, I expected/hoped for an episode that would truly have me on the edge of my seat, fearing for the lives of these characters. But I felt almost no tension at all from this episode because for the most part, no named characters are in any danger despite being in almost nonstop combat with the most fearsome enemy the show has created.

What I mean is that the direction and editing make it apparent when someone's about to bite it or not. Take the opening skirmish against the dead. The action is too frenetic for any important character to die, because the viewer might miss it. But when Sam is knocked down and the pace of the editing slows down and we focus on two characters, they become mortal. And the PoV indicates specifically that it's Edd who becomes mortal.

We see characters fighting wights all the time but the quick pace of the editing never makes you think the fighting is leading up to a death. Take Jaime, Brienne and Tormund for instance. All of these characters had charming character moments in the previous episode and any sort of life-and-death situation involving one of them would've been unbearably tense. Yet they spend the whole episode surrounded by wights without any hints that they're in real danger. Do you remember the scene from "Beyond the Wall" where Tormund is nearly dragged into the water by an overwhelming amount of wights? Or the scene from "Battle of the Bastards" where Jon nearly suffocated in a pile of bodies? That was tense. This episode had nothing like that. The only time a character appeared to be in danger was when they were obviously going to die. And even the deaths weren't as effective as those fakeouts I mentioned. The deaths in this episode were telegraphed, inevitable and in several cases had any inherent tension sapped out of them by an overbearing piano theme.
 
Battle of the Bastards >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Battle of Winterfell

I admit that I loved Arya killing the Night King, but holy shit--in the third episode?? I wasn't expecting that, and it felt unearned. So now we're to believe that Cersei and fucking Euron Greyjoy are the ultimate villains? That's kind of lame.

Also, we better learn more about the Night King. I want a fucking story from Bran. And speaking of Bran, where'd he go when he warged out for half the episode? I assume that will have meaning, but I've been disappointed by GoT show-writers before.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the writers have made some promises they need to fulfill; and the execution of The Battle of Winterfell did not live up to the magnitude of what happened.