Board 8 > Best & Worst Episode: Game of Thrones

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What do you think is the best and worst episode of Game of Thrones?

Personally going to have to think on this one but I'll let others start.

Previous Days:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Best: Once More with Feeling (HMs: Hush, The Body, The Gift). Worst: Where the Wild Things Are (HM: Beer Bad)

Feel free to nominate future shows to do.

Best: S1 E7: You Win or You Die
Worst: S7 E6: Beyond the Wall

I imagine most people will list a battle episode for best but that was my first instinct when I thought about it and I'm sticking with it. GoT had a lot of truly awful episodes in the last few seasons, so choosing one was hard. I went with the one that was so terrible it finally convinced me the show was broken and would never be fixed.

Best - Hardhome
Worst - uh... if I have to pick one, maybe the finale? The last season is just so bad I need to think on which was the worst. Maybe The Long Night will win out for me because it's not only a mess story wise but the cinematography is also awful

Worst: *gestures vaguely at S8*

Best - Spoils of War
worst - The Long Night

Best: battle of the bastards
Worst: s7e5

My interest in the series was more passive, so I wasn't as into it until later on. By BotB I was fully invested. Obviously there's arguments for the Tyrion trial episode or whatever else.

S7e5 can't remember the name, just has too much stuff going on. That and s8e4 imo are the two times the cracks showed the most because both of them are virtually all transition, all plot, there's almost zero good character stuff. However, I give the edge to s7e5 because I can't remember anything good out of s7e5 that isn't easy fanservice (e.g. gendry) while s8e4 has a Tyrion/Varys scene that I really liked

Best - The Rains of Castamere
Worst - Beyond the Wall

Best: Baelor
Worst: The Dragon and the Wolf

The other main contender for worst for me is The Bells, but at the end of the day I cant get over how stupid the execution of the R+L=J reveal was

Best: Battle of the Bastards
Worst: S8 as a whole is just the worst. If I HAD to choose, maybe The Bells.

Best: Blackwater
Worst: S8 Finale. But honestly just S8 as a whole if that's eligible.

Worst: The whole of Season 8 if that counts. The Bells if not.

Best: Blackwater
Worst: The Bells

But really you could put any singular episode of S8 as worst because they all suck ridiculously badly. Hell you could probably extend that to around 2/3rds of the episodes of S7 and a good half of S6 too.

Best: S3EP9
Worst: S8 Finale

Best - The Rains of Castamere
Worst - plenty of options, whatever the last episode of season 7 is called

Also, Battle of the Bastards is terrible, doesn't matter how satisfying the conclusion might be in itself.

Best: Battle of the Bastards

I know people have problems with how we came to arrive at the situation in The Bells but it was far from a bad episode (and I'd be in the huge minority to call it one of the best). Performances were top notch across the board, the action was thrilling, we finally got a proper payoff of the Mountain v. the Hound. And imo calling anything from S7-8 the worst is just forgetting that S5 existed

Worst: Sons of the Harpy

Gave us the worst fight scene of the series with the Sand Snakes v. Jaime and Bronn, had Barristan Selmy and the Unsullied completely overwhelmed by literally their first real challenge, and had nothing particularly good to counterbalance

That being said the worst thing about The Bells was the way it handled Varys imo

Best: The Climb
Worst: Mother's Mercy

Johnbobb posted...

proper payoff of the Mountain v. the Hound

Excuse me while I retrieve my ass because I seem to have laughed it off

best: the winds of winter
worst: the iron throne (comes to mind; possible there are worse, but this capped off such a bad season in such a disastrous way - has to be it)

Mobilezoid posted...

Best: S1 E7: You Win or You Die
Worst: S7 E6: Beyond the Wall

I definitely don't know all the episodes, but this seems about right. There's no way the best episode is not in S1.

Johnbobb posted...

we finally got a proper payoff of the Mountain v. the Hound.

>:|

if cleganebowl had happened in s7's finale that would've been amazing

it was bad in the bells

Best: The Winds of Winter (S6E10)
Worst: The Iron Throne (S8E6)

Choosing a worst was really difficult, so in the end I just went with the culmination of Seasons 7 and 8. There's no more wishing and hoping after the series finale, just bitterness. What seasons 7 and 8 devolved into is especially disappointing considering my favorite episode is the season 6 finale

Best - Hardhome
Worst - The Dragon and the Wolf

I know people hated S8. But to me, I didn't care. I didn't care because S7 finale killed whatever little care I had left
Littlefinger, being a master manipulator from the very beginning, turned out to be useless.
And the reason he fucked up? Some dumb kid with a plot hack that lets him see the past
The death of Littlefinger was the lowest point of the series. I can never get over that.
And if GRRM kills him in the same way in the books then I really question his skills in writing at this point

Best: The Rains of Castamere
Worst: The Iron Throne

Honestly I don't remember early seasons well enough to have a great sense of what my favorite was, but that's going to be in contention at the least.

Also, everyone that says The Bells, may I question why?
Is it because you believe Daenerys acted "out of character"?

Best: Baelor
Worst: The Iron Throne

Best: The Winds of Winter
Worst: The Iron Throne

Best: Blackwater

Best episode is tough, there's so many with a terrific sequence or two but a dodgy B-plot somewhere. I went with the more focused Blackwater, it doesn't hurt that it's entirely in King's Landing which is by far my fav setting in the series.

There's plenty of other awesome ones though, shout-outs to You Win or You Die (great beginning and end scenes), Baelor (duh, the moment the show revealed all bets were off), And Now His Watch is Ended (best Dany scene), Kissed by Fire (almost voted this off the back of Jaime's scene alone, it also has great stuff with the Brotherhood and Lannisters), and others I'm forgetting.

Worst: The Last of the Starks

OK, there's a ton to choose from for worst too >_> The show took a massive step down in S5 and never regained its footing. Yes, S6 had some great payoffs (Cersei blowing up the sept remains one of my fav sequences in the entire show) but the moment to moment writing was as bad there as it ever was. I went with S8E4, the one that tipped its hand to the show's endgame. It's a terribly written rushed script from start to finish and I don't think a single character acts like themselves. I'd vote The Bells but some of the action sequences there are solid if you remove any context, and by the time the finale rolled around I had lost all investment anyway. Dishonourable mention to any episode with the Sand Snakes, late-season Littlefinger, and yes the entirety of season 8.

Best: Battle of the Bastards
Worst: The Dance of Dragons

Best: The Spoils of War
Worst: The Bells

Best: Blackwater
Worst: The Iron Throne

Nominate Breaking Bad

Battle of the Bastards isn't a good episode

Nominate Doctor Who

Best: The Winds of Winter
Worst: The Iron Throne

Best: I don't even know anymore at this point. Any good memories I had of the show are long gone.
Worst: S7 E6: Beyond the Wall

Robazoid actually nailed it in the very first post. This episode is just awful. As bad as the later seasons are, I barely cared about the show anymore at that point. Every single thing that happens in this episode is truly atrocious:

Arya for some reason is dumb enough to believe that Sansa wrote a message begging Robb to surrender for literally any other reason than the fact that she was a 12 year old girl being beaten and held hostage by the lannisters.

The half-baked plan to capture a Wight in order to bring it to Cersei to try and convince her to join sides with them is something that a 4 year old would have known would never work and, indeed, it did not work. I think Tyrion (especially Book Tyrion) is not as smart as he believes himself to be, but there's no way he is THIS dumb.

So, they send a bunch of people to trudge north of the wall wandering in essentially a random direction to try and capture a wight. Mm... Hm... Okay then. It feels like maybe there was something they could have done instead, but let's see... so they get into a situation where they fight a few wights and then... they don't capture any of those ones... okay... so they keep going and get into a situation where they are being chased and... hold on a second... so Gendry is sent to run back to the wall to get help, but... if Gendry can escape to the wall by outrunning the wights, then why doesn't everyone do that...? Well, at least we can take shelter in this huge open area in the middle of nowhere, that will allow us to easily be surrounded. Wait, that wasn't a good idea? Crap. By the way, Gendry was able to run back to the wall in like just a few hours or something. Holy shit that guy is fast. No wonder he was able to get away from the Wights and nobody else could.

Oh yeah, here comes Dany, flying in on her dragons to save every-.... hold on... flying in on her dragons? wait a second... why didn't she just fly in on her dragons and capture a wight to begin with? oh, by the way, uh benjen is alive. actually now he's dead. the end.

really fucking dumb shit.

(by the way; there was no guarantee that whatever magic was animating the wights would continue to work after they were south of the wall. meaning they might have gone through all of this and then as soon as they got back it just turned into a lifeless corpse anyway.)

tcaz2 posted...

Excuse me while I retrieve my ass because I seem to have laughed it off

ok but seriously what about that specifically did you have an issue with?

on a sidenote, a few years back a handful of B8 users ranked all the Game of Thrones episodes to that point (everything in the first 6 seasons, as S7-8 hadn't come out yet)

the averaged top 3 episodes at that point:

1. S2E9: Blackwater
2. S6E10: The Winds of Winter
3. S4E9: The Watchers on the Wall

and the bottom 3 episodes:

1. S5E6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken
2. S2E2: The Night Lands
3. S5E1: The Wars to Come

also changing my answer for worst to S5E6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken because upon looking at these THAT was the episode that had the Snakes v Bronn/Jaime, and I was mistaken

Changing my Best vote to Watchers on the Wall.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Rushed.

Oh yeah definitely.
It really sucks that D&D decided to rush it for personal reasons
And even worse - at the end of the day it didn't even matter as they no longer work on the new Star Wars trilogy

Johnbobb posted...

ok but seriously what about that specifically did you have an issue with?

>>>:|||

Best: The Rains of Castamere (S3E9)
Worst: The Dance of Dragons (S5E9)

It made absolutely no sense in Sandor's story arc to want to fight Gregor, other than to please fans that wanted Cleganebowl to happen. The fight was cool looking in itself, I'll give it that much, but it wasn't a good conclusion to anything.

^^What? He always wanted to fight Gregor.

Best : Blackwater

Worst: The Long Night.

Anything from season 8 could be worst, really, but that episode in particular pissed me off. "Oh, let's get everybody hyped up on us creating the largest battle ever committed to film and then make it so dark that 90% of TVs on the market will barely show anything at all!" Go fuck yourselves for that, each and every person involved in the direction, editing, and cinematography.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/6/9/AAAvpqAADI65.jpg
Who thought this would be enjoyable to watch?