LogFAQs > #967260840

Noumas posted...

Does anyone actually blame D&D?

Yes. George's sins do not absolve D&D here. Even without George's guidance, D&D had every opportunity to tidy up the series in a good or at least palatable way. Even the much-maligned penultimate episode could've been fixed in the context of that very episode with some relatively-minor adjustments.

But apart from D&D clearly misunderstanding numerous characters on a fundamental level ('Nobody trusts Littlefinger'), It's painfully clear in hindsight that, from the beginning, they wanted more than anything to bring the Red Wedding to the screen; nearly every major plot point that followed was an increasingly-failed attempt to recreate that high. In the case of the penultimate episode, Dany's ultimate turn to mass-murdering madness could've come about from roasting Cersei alive and liking it a bit too much, or from accidentally setting off caches of wildfire and liking it too much...but nope, she just decides that she's going to start roasting innocent civilians with no reason or direct provocation, because it's shocking and unexpected. And imo that's not even the worst offender in the series: Arya completely shutting off her brain long enough to be walking around in Braavos in broad daylight - only to quite predictably get shanked by the deadly assassin's guild she just betrayed - simply for the sake of maintaining the drama was the series lowest point.

Story cohesion and character development / consistency all took a distant backseat to shock value, and the entire show slid further and further into inevitable ruin for it.