Lurker > SeabassDebeste

Littlefinger didn't know anything about Ramsay, but he definitely knew that Roose Bolton would recognize the value of an asset like Sansa. In the show, Ramsay's psychopathy isn't infamous like it is in the books. And while it came a season too late with some really ugly execution on the showrunners' part, it provided the impetus to march the Knights of the Vale, under his command, into the North.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

40. The Lady of Winterfell Returns (Season 5)

Key points: Petyr Baelish marries Sansa off to Ramsay Bolton, and she's subjected to sexual and physical abuse for six months before she escapes with Theon's help.

The idea of this arc is pretty great in principle. The initiation of the plot is a dangerous move for everyone involved - Littlefinger, Sansa, and the Boltons - yet it has potential to pay dividends for all. Littlefinger finds the means to mobilize armies, Sansa returns home and is nominally in a stronger political position. Except then Ramsay blows it up, and the worst case is realized for Sansa and, eventually, the viewer: she winds up doing basically nothing except looking sad and empty and occasionally determined.

Sadly, the arc gives Sansa very little character development or action. We do get a motivation for Sansa to hate Ramsay, but it's absolutely meaningless for the viewer, since we already know Ramsay is a vile psychopath who needs to be put down. And rather insultingly, her arc is basically given to Theon, who never needed to be redeemed and whose purpose on the show has been vague and rather subdued ever since he fell into Ramsay's clutches. Theon is the protagonist of her rape scene and her escape scene. Great.

I guess there is one nice detail of execution - Littlefinger and Sansa's trip to the Winterfell Crypts. Cool way to bring R+L=J into the mix after so long of laying dormant after Season 1.

Book notes - Famously, Sansa replaces Jeyne Westerling as Ramsay's wife. It's a clever move that cuts out fake identities that wouldn't translate to TV. It creates a familiar face in a familiar location and trims a Vale subplot. And it makes us care about Winterfell... theoretically. Theon's heroism is actually slightly diminished here because Sansa actively petitions him and he betrays her once before helping her. And the idea that he helps out a girl who has no one else whatsoever is lost.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Jeff Zero posted...

Well, if this weren't the final season to possess ten episodes I'd probably be more in your camp with this decision. But considering we have 13 or so hours of television left in the tank with this series I had really hoped he'd reach the Citadel and begin a training arc. It felt so awkward that his scenes were so forward-moving and yet so infrequent and so slow in charting his course. It felt like we were back in Season 3 and this was one of the plots selected to move at a particularly glacial pace so as to pay off in spades in Season 4 -- except this time there's so much ground to cover in just seven episodes next season that it was a bit dizzying to me that they chose this path.

yeah, it's honestly puzzling why we're even following him there. the thing is, we know that the show can expedite things when it actually wants to - just look at the end of dany's arc at the end of season 6 and how she returns, beats the slavers, and signs up dorne and highgarden so easily. it's honestly a little bizarre how much stalling happens in season 6 give nthis.

Johnbobb posted...

Late tag

This is actually something I was considering doing while planning the episode rankings

also if the episode rankings are bad then MAYBE you should've submitted one to change them

honestly episodes don't interest me nearly as much as arcs (as i mentioned in the first post) - a lot of episodes have great scenes but a bunch of boring ones, and they almost never tell complete stories worth analyzing. it's like 'rate these six unrelated scenes,' which is... not ideal

Jeff Zero posted...

The Mountain is worked on throughout the entirety of Season 5 and has one inconsequential action scene.

I maintain he's being held back to serve as player-killing 'boss fight' when Daenerys invades. I've actually felt that way since before Season 6, even, if only because I felt like the Faith Militant lacked any singular force interesting enough to try to topple him.

yeah, i could see this, but season 6 was a gigantic stall in the storyline nonetheless. in hindsight, the mountain basically acts as a 'cersei's already won, but we're going through the motions because we don't have the story written for what happens when sept goes boom yet'
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

41. Cersei Versus the Faith

Key points: Cersei inherits the regency after Tywin and empowers the Faith Militant as a ploy against the Tyrells. She gets tossed into prison herself, at the word of Lancel, and has to perform a walk of atonement, naked. Tommen and Margaery become champions of the Faith and outlaw Trial by Combat. With the help of Qyburn, Cersei manages to detonate the cache of Wildfire under the Sept of Baelor, killing the High Sparrow, Kevan, and all of the Tyrells save the Queen of Thorns.

This arc contains one amazing scene and a whole f***load of bulls***. Cersei is not a compelling character. She's a control freak who vastly overestimates herself and has two facial expressions, and she's driven by a prophecy that's explicit and comes true basically to the letter - the absolute least interesting type there is. She 'wins' by basically losing at every political negotiation she tries. And there are just a whole lot of scenes that are basically the directors expressing their giant crushes on the actors involved for Margaery, the Sparrow, Cersei, and the like.

The only character to get anything remotely resembling a character arc here: Tommen. But he's woefully underserved; after some really interesting looks into his development as a king in Season 4 (where Margaery changes her tactics from seduction to tenderness) and early in Cersei's reign, he quickly becomes ineffectual and distant. Worse, because of the prophecy and how long the arc drags and being separated from the best character in this arc in Margaery, our investment in his scenes rapidly decreases. It's a real shame that we never truly get to explore his psyche when he finally chooses against his mother.

The arc is also just chock-full of false promise. The Mountain is worked on throughout the entirety of Season 5 and has one inconsequential action scene. Jaime Lannister rides at the head of the Tyrell army and no fighting whatsoever happens. Jaime is surrounded by Faith Militant and holds the High Sparrow at swordpoint in a hilariously poorly conceived scene that also yields no action. Loras Tyrell, one of the greatest jousters in the land, mainly sits, pouts and cries.

The direction of Cersei's act of domestic terrorism is fantastic, and the seeds are well sown. But it's an unearned anticlimax that kind of fits the arc. Cersei is shown to be one of the worst players of the game, deliberately alienating everyone. And yet when she 'wins,' she's not even using her most interesting chess piece in the Mountain. It's an amazing scene that in no way pays off any of the setup from the arc. But that's par for the course.

I'm just thankful that we're getting what appears to be seeds of Jaime versus Cersei here at the end. While the showrunners might not be able to handle meaningful politics anymore, I think they're still capable of pitting characters with close relationships against each other.

Book notes: Cersei as a mad queen is considerably more entertaining in the books, where she's a legitimate psychopath with mental illness. It's longer and more tedious, but you more freely see her f***ups, and the intrigues are far greater. You don't get really lazy writing like Loras's seduction, and Cersei correctly actually does lose power after her Walk instead of basically going back to status quo. Granted, Season 6 actually aired, so it's hard to hold it that much against the show - yeah, its pace was mindbogglingly slow, but at least it had an ending.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Jeff Zero posted...

Sam's arc sucked this year. I'm a big Season 6 defender but talk about a whole lotta nothing over there. There's this really sterling moment when Sam marches out of the room as a coward and then marches back into the room as a man reborn or whatever but aside from that there is pretty much nothing here that's outstanding. Some of his and Gilly's back-and-forths are fun but there's just nothing, nothing, nothing. Relative to so much stuff everywhere else. It's jarring and improper tempo and I hope it picks up next season.

I don't think it moved at the wrong tempo. Sam was only in three scenes this entire season, and they all counted. That's correct pacing for me, and it's the type of bold move that the writers should be empowered to do more often (Dany in Qarth...)
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

42. Ramsay Rules Winterfell (Season 6)

Key points: Upon the birth of Roose Bolton's legitimate son by Walda Frey, Ramsay - with the help of the Lord Karstark - slaughters his entire family and becomes Lord of Winterfell. He then consolidates power and terrorizes any Stark ally.

Ramsay's plot here is intimately tied to a much better arc in Season 6, but the first half of the season really has him on his own. Roose Bolton is one of the great villains of Game of Thrones, and his getting punked like this is one of the worst sins that the show commits, period - worse than Dorne, which had really s***ty source material.

Basically, every move that Ramsay winds up doing pays off perfectly. Despite all his murderous, treacherous, and sadistic ways, he gains ally after ally, as Lords Karstark and Umber happily join his side and fight to the death for him. He gains leverage on his closest enemies in the Stark remnants when Rickon is dropped right into his lap. A majestic direwolf gets an off-screen death, a beloved character who didn't need to return at all is killed incredibly predictably, and no correctly payoff is really dealt to his cruelty from a logistical perspective - one of the most frustrating parts.

The good thing is that Ramsay is at least an enjoyable character to watch. He's got a lot of charisma to him - if his plot armor weren't so thick and he didn't receive such disproportionate importance relative to his depth, he'd actually rank pretty decently. As is, he's meh, and his rule of Winterfell is just plain upsetting. Why couldn't this have worked with Roose instead?

Book notes: It's kind of hilarious to think that Stannis is still alive in the books and that he might actually defeat the Boltons. There's a zero percent chance Ramsay kills Roose this easily in the books. One of the great letdowns of the show relative to the book.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

43. Sam Reaches the Reach (Season 6)

The key points: Sam takes a sabbatical from the Wall to go to his f***pad in Oldtown with Gilly. On the way he enjoys dinner with a side of Valyrian Steel.

This is a really silly arc. Given that the rest of the storylines clearly are moving gigantic swaths of time per scene, it's ridiculous that over the course of ten episodes (and just three appearances), Sam only manages to make it to Horn Hill and Oldtown.

The pluses: Sam is barely in it! It's a three-episode 'arc,' and there's a hilarious dinner scene, and he just steals Randyll's sword seemingly as a f***-you. Also - the Citadel and the Tarly estate look absolutely gorgeous, visually. On the downside, there's barely any material here, and it still centers around Gilly and Sam, and it's just not that compelling, not that good. It's pretty hard to rank this arc much higher, all things considered.

Book: Honestly, this is almost completely a win versus the book, where Sam takes five agonizing chapters, sees Aemon die, and has his 'fast pink mast' boarded by Gilly. If Sam were always this concisely used (as in the show), he'd be a better character overall.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Nah, the same complaint applies to Dorne in the books, too. It's all incredibly impersonal and you're not really given a reason to care, especially about the Sand Snakes or Areo Hotah or Darkstar or Myrcella. Balon Swann mostly comes off as an idiot and Arianne's plan seems flagrantly doomed from the beginning. And because of the POV, Doran only gets to sigh and have things told in awkward flashback, too.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

where are my dragons

[to be continued]
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

*waves sausage*
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

And that's the end of the bottom tier!

RAMSAY CUTTING OFF YOUR DICK TIER
50. Brienne and Podrick's Not-So-Excellent Adventures (Seasons 4-5)
49. Daenerys in Qarth (Season 2)
48. Drowning in the Water Gardens (Seasons 5-6)
47. The Great Ranging (Seasons 2-3)
46. Theon Becomes Reek (Seasons 3-5)
45. Sam the Slayer (Seasons 3-5)
44. Steward Jon Snow (Season 1)
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

44. Steward Jon Snow (Season 1)

Key points: Jon Snow leaves Winterfell to join the Night's Watch. He immediately finds that it basically sucks, and he gets his kicks by antagonizing (and often getting the better of) the cruel Ser Alliser Thorne. After encountering a wight and saving Lord Commander Mormont, he earns the sword Longclaw. He is tempted to leave the Wall but brought back by his brothers. Mormont organizes the Great Ranging.

The greatest factor that makes Season 1 Jon better than the Season 2/3 Night's Watch: Maester Aemon is an unbelievable character. Frail beyond belief, blind, and halting in manner, he is never obnoxious like Pycelle or overly preachy and he manages not to dominate scenes where he shouldn't. Instead, he provides a steely anchor in the mess at the Wall. Without question, the best scene in this entire arc is Aemon's unveiling of his backstory.

The rest of it basically sucks, and that's mainly because of Jon himself. He's entitled, pouty, and basically humorless throughout his entire stay at the Wall. There are a few glimmers of light, character-wise - a short sojourn by Tyrion, Benjen generally being charismatic, Alliser reaching that point of a****** where he kinda becomes funny - but on the whole, it's a nasty place manned by an even nastier hero.

Honestly, this is played pretty straight relative to the books. Jon in Book 1 is... not great.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

that makes it even worse that the show handled gilly's scene like that, lol

typical way to identify that the night's watch guys are bad and sam is a heroic type without truly endangering sam at all, plus he gets to score!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

was that a show-only line?
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

45. Sam the Slayer (Seasons 3-5)

Key points: Sam takes Gilly and makes for the Wall. He kills a White Walker en route to Castle Black. At Castle Black he helps out Maester Aemon and Jon and the like and gets the s*** kicked out of him when the Night's Watch wants to rape Gilly. He gets saved by Ghost, loses his virginity, and eventually asks Jon for permission to head to Oldtown.

I basically went over why Sam's bland as a character. Everything he does is fairly preordained to success, and he's a fairly major character. Most of his scenes aren't offensively bad; they're just there, with Sam smiling kind of bemusedly and bumbling a bit. He essentially has no character arc, just a process of being bullied but generally being able to resist it with Jon's help and Gilly's love.

The big negative moment in Sam's 'arc' is the attempted sexual assault of Gilly, followed by her gettin' it on with him. It's not a big moment for him; there is a zero percent chance he's in true danger; and it involves Gilly getting hot for him after being threatened with rape. But Sam's the point of view character here, so don't worry, it's cool! Ugh.

Book notes: Sam's even worse in the books than in the show, but at least we're spared the sexual assault. But that trip to Braavos is dire. Aside from a few moments - notably Aemon's death - that s*** drags and is boring as f***. So in that sense, I'm glad the show at least condenses things.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

46. Theon Becomes Reek (Seasons 3-5)

Key points: Ramsay captures Theon and tortures him for months. After he's castrated, Theon becomes an obedient servant of Ramsay's and sleeps with his dogs. He helps Ramsay to drive out the Ironborn and is witness to Ramsay's abuse of Sansa. Finally he helps Sansa leave Winterfell.

Theon becoming Reek is the epitome of Game of Thrones as too dark, too edgy, too torture-porn. It represents a drastic limitation of the format - Alfie Allen is one of the cast's greatest actors, so evidently he has some sort of minimum screen time requirement after Season 2. But Season 3 alone gives us well over a lifetime's worth of repetitive, unconstructive torture for Theon. And then God-mode Ramsay is activated: he fights off some of Yara's best Ironborn with dogs and no shirt; he comes up with an uber-risky plan to take Moat Caillin using Theon (and it goes off flawlessly and incredibly gruesomely); he sniffs out Sansa's escape plan seconds after it's mentioned.

Ramsay isn't even a bad idea for a character. It's the overexposure that does him in. And it's the same with Theon Greyjoy. The thing is, Theon gets a very complete arc in Season 2. I understand that he's getting some of his comeuppance here, but Season 2 has done so much to demonstrate Theon's internal grief that this external punishment doesn't even feel good to begin with. And then the false hopes are just a colossal waste of time and it basically goes to s*** immediately.

Suffice it to say that Alfie Allen's talents are drastically underused in Season 5, as well. After being something of a nice sniveling snotbag when cowering in Roose Bolton's presence, he does practically nothing but tremble during most of Sansa's plight. While you can read Theon's emotions a bit on his face, it's not clear why his turning point comes where it does (especially after betraying Sansa in lower-risk, higher-reward spots). We'll get into Sansa in Winterfell later, but this isn't good material from a Theon perspective.

Book notes: The books' Ramsay is far less interesting and charismatic. However, he doesn't get overexposed in the same way, making him more effective. And once again, Theon can disappear for two whole books before coming back to resume his own arc. When he does, that arc is unbearably creepy and mysterious, with most of the torment left in Theon's mind as opposed to happening during the narrative. Reading Theon's thoughts as he regains his identity is an absolute thrill. I think Alfie Allen could have pulled it off, but a TV show can't afford to bury him for as long as it would have needed to in order to pull this trick.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Yeah, that's understandable. Sometimes you can just appreciate awful people. I sometimes do. The problem is that there was nothing to cheer for in this storyline, so my engagement was near-nil. I mainly felt relief that it was over when Craster's Keep exploded, except then we had to follow Sam.

Left out of my writeup: Jon being a f***ing moron and poking around Craster's when told explicitly otherwise. Him getting punched in the face or whatever by Craster was kind of satisfying, but also extremely stupid.

Ygritte's introduction was marred by Jon being so dumb, too. I came around to her eventually, but I definitely disliked her introduction scenes.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

47. The Great Ranging (Seasons 2-3)

Key points: Old Bear Mormont leads the Night's Watch past the Wall to search for Benjen. They are forced to reckon with Craster, but generally they just do a whole bunch of nothing. Jon is split off with Qhorin Halfhand, and the encampment is wiped out by White Walkers. The Night's Watch mutinies at Craster's Keep and, escaping with Gilly, Sam kills a White Walker on his way home.

This might be a controversial one to have low. There's certainly some interesting stuff here - glimpses of White Walkers, the seeds of Jon abandoning the Watch temporarily, the discussion of Mance Rayder, a feeling of helplessness. While the locale is visually kind of boring - lots of white - we do expand the world. The issues are really in the characters and the murkiness of the storytelling.

Jon is a pouty whiner during the early seasons of GOT, which is one of the biggest problems with any storyline involving him. Sam is an annoyingly plot-armored character, so tracking him isn't fun. He's blustering but lovable and always gets picked on, so you 'have' to root for him. There's no interesting arc for him because he feels like a GRRM surrogate - fat but kindhearted and book-loving (so you know he's a good guy!) The biggest plot points of this section hinge around the two old men, Jeor Mormont and the wildling Craster. Mormont is so likable that you know he's toast, while Craster is so intensely dislikable that even knowing he's got it coming, he worsens the arc drastically with his presence.

A lack of visual coherency here is also a problem. I've listed the recognizable faces here, but much of the 'doing' is happening via the faceless rest of the ranging party. You get a sense that something's happening, but it's not really clear what that is. Contrast two better told journeys - the king's entourage moving down the Kingsroad to King's Landing, and Robb's trek through the Westerlands. The former gives you a fantastic sense of orientation, while the latter is also vague, but it's compelling because of the storyline.

But here, it's not really clear why Jon is heading with Qhorin Halfhand to capture Ygritte. Stuff just happens vaguely. Suddenly we're at a place called the Fist of the First Men, but it's not clear why, because Benjen is so long gone from memory and nothing is really happening. The White Walkers appear at the end of Season 2, but by Season 3 they're gone and it's just disorienting in a bad way. (How does anyone escape alive?) It's messy, it's ugly, it's uncharismatic, and it's unsatisfying.

Oh, and book notes: I was pretty surprised by the books here. Jon is still douchey in Book 1, but by A Clash of Kings, his internal monologue is really nice. You still get the travelogue, meandering, waiting-for-something-to-f***ing-happen-in-dread feeling, but little details help - what they're eating, what the Bridge of Skulls is like, exactly what was abandoned in the villages. Jon's connection with Ghost is also explored in much more interesting detail, and some of the passages are really nice. I think Kit Harington is one of the biggest drags on early Night's Watch storylines, but the material is difficult.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

I should probably clarify that it's not Doran's handling of the Lannisters that made him weak; it's his failure to rein in what are apparently extremely powerful dissident factions. He finally threatens to take Ellaria's head, but she just goes and kills Myrcella anyway.

It's awful writing - one of the things that made the idea of Dorne cool at first was that listening and patience - qualities Doran has even for dissidents and women - is practiced by the Dornish rulers. It's actually cool that Doran believes in mercy. But because of the violence-first mentality of the showrunners, we get the message instead that "nope, an ideal ruler is Tywin who crushes his subjects, letting your women run loose is a mistake that will get you killed."

Certainly makes Doran look weak even if it's not his fault. Self-fulfilling due to the Sands' undermining him.

(edit) - Also just regarding rankings, Brienne's arc winds up much higher leverage than Dorne. Dorne ultimately winds up to be a stupidly bad waste of time. Jaime gets home and Cersei basically says 'let's forget that that subplot ever happened.' Brienne winds up giving an awful, stupid-as-f*** end to two great characters. There might be more good in Brienne's arc, but there's way more bad, and it negatively impacts the story in a way Dorne doesn't.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Yeah, Dorne was always gonna be bottom tier. The ineptitude of it is almost unfathomable for the show. The question is where it goes, because there are some other really dire ones here!

profDEADPOOL posted...

Tag.

That should not be 50th purely cause of how wonderful Pod is but whatever I get it.

I don't think Pod really plays enough of a role to move this up and out.

That said - there may be cases where some of these arcs heavily overlap and I separate the characters' focus.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

one more for today


48. Drowning in the Water Gardens (Seasons 5-6)

Key points: The Lannisters receive a clear threat on Myrcella's life from Dorne. Jaime and Bronn attempt to sneak into Dorne to smuggle Myrcella out but they're stopped by the Sand Snakes and Ellaria Sand. Prince Doran promises Jaime safe passage of Myrcella back, but he's undermined by Ellaria's faction and his clan is exterminated.

Yeah, this is awful, but it's kind of funny how stupid the logic is. It differs from Daenerys in Season 2 because while the events transpiring in Qarth make it ridiculous, here it's the internal logic that doesn't remotely make sense (alongside, of course, the hilariously bad writing and choreography.)

For one thing, it's pretty late in the game to be introducing major characters. I'm not a writer, so I imagine that it's difficult to establish characters strongly and explain who they are, but I'm guessing that announcing your parentage and identity to your sisters and mother is not the way to do it. Nymeria fights with a whip, which looks preposterously ineffectual as a weapon. They continue to have awful dialogue throughout, and it's unclear why Bronn is being given screentime at all. He's a really likable dude, but he has zero character arc and is obviously not a main player in the series.

A lot of the pure badness of Dorne can be chalked up to the fact that the showrunners were only allowed three days to film in the Water Gardens. It shows in the miserable fight choreography. Perhaps travel was also an issue, as notable Season 3 superstar Nicolaj Coster Waldau comes off as utterly lacking in charisma, hoping his good looks are enough to carry a performance. Maybe it's because he's recognizing the quality of the script. The limitations also explain why an entire kingdom in Dorne is reduced to one palace.

I guess I should mention just how stupid the plot is, too. Jaime accomplishes absolutely nothing in Dorne except bonding with a girl who dies for shock value. He's sent there pretty explicitly to betray an ally. It's all full of idiocy and it's getting me irked just trying to recap it so I'll stop there.

My favorite parts of Dorne actually come in Season 6, when Ellaria forces the coup by slaughtering Doran and Trystane. It's the only way you can justify such a weak ruler, and it's the only logical conclusion to what they've done. And the absolute hype when Varys shows up in 6x10 - oh yes.

Book notes: It's really sad that Ellaria is turned from one of the sorrowful voices of peace into this garbage. That said, book Dorne is a giant mess, too, a slow-burn that has had one really good moment (Ellaria's plea for peace), one great moment, and a dozen hilariously boring, ineffective chapters. Simplifying and condensing Dorne for the show was a great idea, miserable though the execution turned out to be. And yet, the net result is a push, once they gave Ellaria and Varys the immaculate 'Fire and Blood' quote.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Jeff Zero posted...

I could never rank Qarth so low because it gives us some of the most colorfully patently absurd names, faces, and twists in the entire show.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Daxos. Ducksauce. That alone has given my IRL friends and I more inside-joke laughs than possibly anything else in the series. Then there's purple-lipped Pyat Pree -- he who looks and acts almost exactly like that creepy dude in Lost Highway. The Spice King's flamboyant acting will have us all in tears if nothing else works and then there's Quaithe and her ridiculous fullmetal mask get-up.

When Daenerys enters Qarth, a certain key section of the show goes full-bonkers for several episodes in a way that nothing else really touches. It's a jungle in there, disorder and confusion everywhere.

It's not good television but it resonates with me for how incredulous it is relative to most other arcs.

It's probably more fun with a community. And honestly, if you watch it with the irreverence that the material demands (as opposed to the obvious gravity that the showrunners seem to want to impose), I can definitely see your attitude toward it.

This isn't like the Brienne case where the stakes are absurdly high for an incredibly bad storyline, it's more a fun version of bad that suffers most because it takes up waaaaay too much time in Season 2 (and, from a storytelling perspective, stomps all over the momentum from the birth of the dragons.)
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

49. Daenerys in Qarth (Season 2)

The key points: This arc begins with Dany wandering the Red Waste with what little remains of her khalasar. A bloodrider's head comes back on a horse. Xaro Xhoan Daxos, against the will of other Qarth Spice Lords, allows her into the city. Daenerys's dragons are abducted, but she gets them back.

In contrast to the offensive badness of Brienne's storyline (which actively undermined themes of the show and terminated great characters in favor of awfully misguided fanservice) the badness of Dany in Season 2 is more of the absurd, mindless variety.

Two or three episodes pass with Dany stuck in the Red Waste, where we linger a ton on just suffering. Taking the bad with the good is part and parcel in Game of Thrones, but the exotic city of Qarth doesn't provide much more by the way of interest. There's nominally some intrigue and mysticism, but there's a whole lot of cringeworthy 'Where are my dragons!' and some really head-shaking moments where Daxos is lying about his wealth, Jim Rash is blue and hopping around like a Zelda miniboss, and Dany's handmaidens - who play a pretty key role in Season 1- are dying.

The pluses here are in the scenery and imagination of the world-building. Qarth's look is visually stunning, and the Red Waste really feels like a desperate scene. But the arc provides almost zero character growth (ending with a truly puzzling scene involving a Drogo flashback.) and is generally a runabout that leaves us more or less at status quo. Consider this a giant 'meh,' with an extra downgrade for absorbing so much of our screentime.

Book notes: This may also be the first arc which showcases the relative weakness of TV (especially TV filmed over a decade) as a format, versus novels. Not only is the greatness of the House of the Undying lost in the show, but the book also economically devotes just five chapters to Dany in A Clash of Kings, each of which is packed with world-building or more organic character growth.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Jeff Zero posted...

I certainly wouldn't rank that dead-last but that's a more thoughtful analysis than I've seen of the arc elsewhere. It helps though that Brienne and Podrick are two characters whose actors really boost them, though, and they have decent chemistry on-screen together.

Yeah, I think that Brienne's show arc gets derided by others a lot for its lack of action. But the screentime they get is actually quite limited, albeit spread over a long two seasons. For me, the problem is really with the action they do get.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

Book notes: What's even more insulting is that Brienne's arc in A Feast For Crows is full of Brienne's immense humanity, her struggles about what it means to be a knight, her aversion to killing (but willingness to do it where needed), and succumbing (but never giving in) to insurmountable odds. This wasn't taken into account for the show ranking, but if it did, it would lower it even further.

Since it's Game of Thrones, it's not all bad. Gwendoline Christie is a fine actress for Brienne, and now that we've hopefully moved far beyond the shadow of Stannis, she may become more tolerable. Her reaction to Tormund and her pleas to the Blackfish are much stronger for Brienne than this arc I'm hating on. I'm cautiously optimistic about where she'll head next, though the sharpening of the plot suggests she could just become another beatstick in the wars to come. Podrick Payne is also always a delight, and because of him, this arc is actually pretty pleasant in its early stages before it became all the violence-in-the-name-of-Stark stuff.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

50. Brienne and Podrick's Not-So-Excellent Adventures (Seasons 4-5)

The key points: Brienne goes searching for Sansa and/or Arya. She stumbles across both randomly and winds up committing a whole bunch of violence and losing them. Then she leaves and hangs out in the North until she finds an opportunity to commit more violence in the name of honor.

Brienne is extremely unique as a lady the world of Game of Thrones - she's coarse rather than elegant; she's strong rather than weak; she's big rather than small. The showrunners mistake that what makes Brienne interesting is that she can't fit in, not that she can effortlessly stomp a dozen soldiers in a battle every time (because numbers mean nothing until the show deems that they ought to).

They equip her with some sort of servant complex where she's only happy if she's being someone's killing machine. It's inexplicable why she's obsessed with Catelyn Stark, but at least there's motivation for her quest to rescue Arya and Sansa. But the biggest problem here is that, going on the theory that being a good fighter makes Brienne a good character, the writers then presume moral superiority for Brienne and shroud her in it. It's more insulting than plot armor, even.

The show asks us to sympathize with Brienne when she asks Sansa and Arya - who are extremely seasoned - to go against their own wishes. Her encounters with the duo are purely by her own good luck, and we're invited to cheer as she nearly kills the best father figure Arya has had since King's Landing.

However, by far the most damning part of Brienne's search for the Stark girls is its penultimate sub-arc. While it's kind of sweet that Brienne eventually saves Sansa, we scrap anything resembling good writing with the circumstances. Brienne encamps herself outside of Winterfell for months and makes no effort to infiltrate the castle personally. She manages to tap a mole in Winterfell, but she's sniffed out immediately, and no further effort is made. It's frustrating that a character who's basically a superhero does nothing here, but maybe even she can't handle thousands of Bolton soldiers.

What's unacceptable is what happens on a character level. After failing to protect Renly, failing to protect Catelyn, and failing to protect Jaime - all essentially due to factors outside of her control - Brienne abandons Sansa. The candle comes up, but Brienne quite literally chooses vengeance over duty. We're asked to cheer for her either because we like Brienne (because she killz people very effectively and is on Team Stark, nominally!) or because Stannis is an a******. And yet she executes him in the name of King Renly.

What the actual name of f***? Brienne stopped serving Renly by joining Catelyn Stark, and while the showrunners loved Renly, there can be no mistake that the guy was a f***ing usurper by any definition. In a well-written storyline, Brienne's choice should have consequences. This choice essentially ought to define Brienne: she has abandoned her post because she couldn't let her demons go. And this would actually be an awesome way to take the story. Except that everything works out perfectly for her anyway, because f*** nuance. It's a f***ing embarrassment that she personally named her sword 'Oathkeeper' (in a super-cringe-worthy scene, no less).

This isn't even getting into the 'tasteful,' ambiguous editing that masks Stannis's fate for whatever god-forsaken stupid reason.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness

I got tired of waiting for the episode rankings to finish, and got too annoyed by how bad the rankings were. So I decided to do my own. Storylines might be more interesting to rank than episodes, as well, since an episode usually can't tell a complete story, and it can vary wildly in quality between characters.

I put together fifty loosely defined arcs - either character-centric, location-centric, or plot-centric - from the show, and I ranked them. Rankings are based on the show; however, when I have side commentary on the books (as comparisons are often inevitable for fans), I'll spoiler them out and attempt to divorce them from the main writeups.

Stay tuned for the lowest-ranked arc in the lowest tier!
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness