While promoting the new season of his HBO series The Leftovers, a new interview with Damon Lindelof (Lost showrunner) has a few words to say defending the latest season of Game of Thrones. Lindelof also discusses why he quit Twitter, clickbait journalism, and more with Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd! Note: Full spoilers for Season 5 under the cut.
Firstly, Lindelof points out the differences in Sullied and Unsullied viewers which actually led to a pause in his reading of the series:
I love Game of Thrones. I read the first three books, and I was just finishing Book 3 when the show premiered. And right around the time that Ned died in season one I felt that rush of book reader’s superiority—”I knew that it was going to happen and nobody else did.” But it was also intermingled with jealousy for the people who did experience it first onscreen. That’s where I stopped reading the books. Book 4 was already out, and 5 was on the verge of coming out, and I was like, “I would love to get to a place in this show where I am genuinely surprised.”
He also points out the discourse surrounding variations between the books and the show as well as how he was not only surprised by Season 5 but very impressed:
As someone who makes television, I watch that show and I do not know how they do it. I just don’t understand, on a sheer logistical level, of how they’re able to produce that qualitative of a product in the amount of time they have with so many different locations and so many different parts.
Despite criticism over the latest season of Thrones (by both fans and critics alike), Lindelof explains why he still found the season “excellent” overall:
As a storyteller, if you can make one, let alone two, excellent hours of television a season if you’re doing eight or 10 episodes—an excellent episode by all accounts—I think what people don’t realize is that in order to produce those excellent episodes, there have to be episodes that set that up. There also have to be episodes that begin to—although this is never a storyteller’s intent—make [the viewer] go, “I don’t know, I don’t know about this…” That makes those excellent episodes all the more special. And when I was watching [episode 8] “Hardhome” this season, I was just like, “That’s one of the most excellent hours of television I’ve ever seen.” You only need to demonstrate excellence once a season for me to view the entire season as excellent, or the entire show as excellent. And Game of Thrones is able to do it at any one time.
He concludes by touching on the small dispute between himself and George R.R. Martin regarding his statement toward the Lost finale and some of the controversy that lost (pun intended) fans during the last season of Thrones:
I don’t watch television to find things to gripe about, and I think we live in a clickbait-y media culture that exists to pick things apart. I love-watching Game of Thrones, so I’m immensely forgiving of things that perhaps are not the strongest attributes of the show. And despite the fact that George R. R. Martin has flamed the Lost finale, there is a schadenfreude aspect of me saying, “Well, I kind of hope Game of Thrones sucks at the end, too, so they’ll know it feels to have somebody say that to you.” But I don’t think the Lost finale sucks. And I want Game of Thrones to end awesome, because I’m a huge fan, and I have every reason to believe that it is going to end awesomely.
But when you are in the zeitgeist, and when you are loved, there’s this part of it—people threaten to stop watching, people say “it’s not as good as it used to be,” people say, “If you kill this character, I will stop watching the show.” One of the things that people fell in love with about Thrones was its willingness to kill anyone—but you can’t kill Jon Snow, you know? And it’s like: “But I thought you loved the show because we killed Ned Stark! He was the un-killable character!” So we have to be willing to do that.
Lindelof’s series The Leftovers kicks off its second season on Sunday, October 4th! Follow the link for the trailer!
For the full interview where he discusses his favorite moments of Season 5, the fans who “stopped watching” and what makes that an “asshole” move, head on over to Entertainment Weekly!
What do you think of Lindelof’s comments towards Season 5? Does it change your opinion at all? Let us know below!
Nate: When Season 5 first premiered, I wasn’t as satisfied with it as the previous seasons but upon a binge styled rewatch, the satisfaction quickly returned. I agree with Lindelof’s statement regarding the importance of anticipation and the surprise of Hardhome was indeed excellent.
Lost Showbutcher Damon Lindelof calls Game of Thrones Season 5 “excellent”
There, that’s better.
Now THIS is news
“Nate: When Season 5 first premiered, I wasn’t as satisfied with it as the previous seasons but upon a binge styled rewatch, the satisfaction quickly returned. I agree with Lindelof’s statement regarding the importance of anticipation and the surprise of Hardhome was indeed excellent”
I haven’t binge watched it yet, but I was overall very pleased with the season. Lindelof is right on one very important point: When you have multiple stories/characters coming and going, some will leave you colder than others. It happens with every show. I, for one, as much as I enjoyed Breaking Bad, found anything to do with Skylar, Walt Jr., and the kleptomaniac sister in law to be an utter bore. But that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of that show, overall.
After the wars to come, who will be leftover to wander and claim the ruins?
Love both shows, but oddly, I didn’t really enjoy Lost.
If I want to boycott, it’s my choice!
We are not obliged to accept anything.
I loved the series because for the story, not because they have killed Ned!
Kill all the characters is not a good thing, it is repetitive and it does not serve the story.
Now I do not like the series
Even years later, it still makes me mad that he can’t just admit that Lost had one of the worst final seasons in the history of television. A finale so bad that when I look back on that show, it still feels like a colossal waste of time.
Comparing Lindelof’s “The Leftovers” with Cuse’s “The Strain,” Cuse is making better TV post-Lost. I think Damon Lindelof is probably a great guy to hang out with and drink a beer, but I will never watch another minute of any project he is part of.
Mieux,
He agrees. He just wants to prevent you from ever being able to watch again.
I’ve always been a big “Lostie”, and while the series finale was a bit of a non sequitur, I was satisfied with it. Martin has said he wants the ending of GoT to be bittersweet. How much more bittersweet than the ending of Lost can you get? They went through all those trials and tribulations only to realize in the end that Jughead worked; but at least they were all back together.
ColdPie,
Sounds like he wants to hold people to their word about boycotting. He thinks that people are full of crap and don’t really mean it. And he’s probably right. There seem to be tons of hate watchers out there. How many of them said they were never gonna watch again but then did and now get online to bash it every chance they get?
Killing Ned and his heir (Robb) was plotwise a very good decision, because it made his other kids learn to fight to survive. And we as a watcher/reader can see their progression. That’s very interesting.
In French:
Tuer Ned et son héritier (Robb) était une très bonne décision, parce que ça faisait ses autres enfants à apprendre à se battre pour survivre. Et nous comme observateur / lecteur peut voir leur progression. Cela est très intéressant.
Quand je dis que je vais boycotter la série, je vais vraiment le faire, il ne s’agit pas de paroles dans le vide … Et je ne suis pas la seule.
I agree with his statement about people who say they will never watch the show again. There is a lot of yelling, insults,….etc. But they are still there next week. “sigh”
Tuer pour faire avancer l’histoire oui mais … j’ai l’impression qu’actuellement la série tue les personnages de façon totalement gratuite !
Une mort définitive de Jon Snow par exemple n’aurait aucun sens ! Sauf faire le buzz et dire “on est trop fort, on a tué le chouchou des fans” C’est ridicule et je ne peux pas l’accepter.
Adam,
Exactly! Lost was one of the greatest shows of all time until that last season, and I still get miffed when the subject comes up lol. It’s a neat trick to make a show where every episode forces you to ask a million questions; It keeps viewers locked in. But in the end, you have to answer those questions because otherwise you’ve just wasted everyone’s time. This is one of of the reasons that I have faith that ASOIAF will end a lot better. GRRM was also a huge Lost fan and he had a similar issue with how it ended. I also agree with you about The Strain. It has some small problems here and there but it’s an overall good show.
Am I the only one who liked the ending of Lost?
EDIT: Liked may be the wrong word, but I was quite content with it.
I agree. When the guy who f’d up LOST is all of the sudden says he loves GOT, that’s the kiss of death right there.
Never watched ‘Lost’ because of how negatively the final season was received, and 197 episodes is way too much for me. I’m not sure why this guy’s opinion is worthy of an entire post about it. But I guess news is kinda slow right now. I will say that I disagree with him about only needing 1 or 2 hours to be excellent to make a season a good one. ‘True Detective’ season 2 had 1 great episode, but the season as a whole was a steaming pile of shit.
As for GOT season 5, I thought there were 3 or 4 very good episodes, with 1 or 2 of them being excellent. Overall, it is probably my least favorite season.
Kath6152,
I don’t think that his skills, don’t allow him to recognise a good story.
for example: I’m quite bad at football, but i can recognize that Messi is the best player in the world. That I , a mediocre player, recognize his skills, does not make him a bad player.
Tyrion Pimpslap,
Season 2 still tops my list, only thing good was blackwater
It worked for me but not for many others.
Cumsprite,
It wasn’t a masterpiece, but I still think its no way near as bad, as most people say.
Really? Which one? That whole thing was “Showgirls” bad.
While I do not agree completely with the “1 excellent hour out of 10 makes an excellent season” statement, I actually prefered the pacing of season 5 to that of any of the previous seasons. I like that it started off slow and building up character plots, with some big moments towards the middle episodes (Barristan’s demise, Sansa’s wedding), and then go out with a bang with the last 3 episodes. Yes, there were some bits that were not that good (Dorne was not as well integrated to the show as it could have been), but I do not have a problem with Sansa’s rape or Shireen burning, both were beautifully filmed, acted with excellent cinematography and never felt gratuitous or out-of-character for those involved.
I do not get all the people here raving about how good season 4 was. I mean, I quite enjoyed it, but I was really distraught by the pacing, shuffling around characters almost in every episode, and some dispersed moments here and there, with the exception of the great 9th episode. Well, this is only my opinion, of course. But still, do not get all the criticism over season 5. And yes, I have read the books.
Tyrion Pimpslap,
The first season was good. But i strugle to find a good episode in season 2.
Chymeria,
the pace in S5 is just like it was in S1, S2, S3. Its S4 that has a different pace.
EDIT: I also agree with your other statement. Dorne could have been batter, but so could Qarth in S2 or Arya in S4.
Mihnea,
And probably that’s why I disliked the pacing of season 4 the most. This is not to say that it was my least favourite season, but I disliked the pacing. For seasons 1-3, I actually only started watching the show a few months before season 3 started, so I pretty much binge-watched seasons 1 and 2 and then continued with season 3, therefore I do not have a sense of each season in itself.
S5 has been done in the best possible way, given the source material. I was really impressed by last 3 episodes.
I also think it was a good idea to put some parts of AFFC and ADWD to S4 and S6.
mau,
Agree, they combined/cut the best way they could. I was a bit sad, when I tought Euron was cut (really like him), but it looks like he is in S6, so im happy.
I stopped watching LOST somewhere around Season 3, partly just from generally dimming interest, but also because it was by then apparent to me that there was no way the plot was ever going to be satisfactorily resolved (from subsequent reactions, I evidently was correct).
On the pacing issue, I agree with him. That was one of the criticisms of Season 5 that I didn’t really get, except possibly Tyrion’s story, where they vastly simplified things, but also did so in a way that removed most of the real incident until he got to Dany’s court; oh, and Brienne, I guess, but that was really a case of her being absent almost entirely from the second half. But there have been some poorly-paced stories in every season, except perhaps the first, since the plot of AGOT is the tightest of the bunch.
My criticisms of Season 5 relate to its actual content, and those elements I found lacking have not improved at all on reflection.
Well, as one person who will never watch any show Damon Lindelof has anything to do with (after six years of “no it’s not purgatory” we get purgatory, dammit!) I will say I agree with him on this one. I truly don’t understand the hate Season 5 gets from some quarters – granted, mostly from places like westeros.org, not here – because it’s brilliant. Didn’t much care for the fight sequence with the Sand Snakes but there’s still tons of stuff to love: Jon’s death scene (though I refuse to believe he’s gone), the Tyrion-Dany scenes, Tyrion & Varys, Tyrion & Jorah (is there anything with Tyrion that isn’t great?!), the Jon/Mance stuff and Mance’s execution, Brienne finally catching up with Stannis, Theon finally turning on Ramsey and helping Sansa escape, the Pit sequence, Myrcella’s touching-moment-then-creepy-death, Cersei’s walk of shame, Arya and Ja’qen, and above all else, the incredibleness of the Hardhome battle. Whoa. GREAT season.
Cameryn,
Jorah was STELLAR this season, realizing his father died, the poem about Valyria, and the fighting scene in EP9, the way he says ”Oh glourios queen”, it gives me shivers.
I would like to say that I also agreed with almost every change they made in S5.
Deaths of Barristan, Stannis, Shireen, Hizdar, Myrcella and Trant.
Sansa in WF, Jaqen H’ghar with Arya, Stone Men in Valyria, “Jorah Connington”, Tyrion and Dany, Hardhome, older Tommen,…
Jaime in Dorne was a good idea, but they should’ve cut SS.
Also cutting YG, LSH, Darkstar, the Vale plot, Quentyn were great decisions.
Ravyn,
I liked episode 7 of season 2. Maybe ‘great’ wasn’t the right word, but I did enjoy it. Frank was the only character I had any emotional investment in, even if his dialogue was the worst, and this episode was a good one for him.
mau,
well while i agree, we really don’t know just how important they are. GRRM says they are. so while i agree that they seem very comical, the fact that they where cast seams to point that they have some part to play, that could not be done be another character, like Arianne for example.
Mihnea,
For GRRM even Mago, Garlan, Willas… are important characters.
I know what he said, and I hope they have some purpose, but for now, they were useless.
mau,
i don’t go with GRRM word, if it was true we would have got YG, SH, Arianne, and even got damn Quentyn.
I believe they have some role because they where cast in the show, if they did not, had a purpose, they would have been simple be cut, like those above i mentioned.
EDIT: Speaking of mago, i wonder what dothraki they will cast, they do need a face, someone Dany can interect with.
Is this guy’s word gospel or something? The be all end all?
mau,
Jaime in Dorne would have worked had Jaime retained any of his progress he makes in the books. I am not a fan of him still being head over heels for Cersei. Maybe I’m just too invested in this character(who I consider to be the best book character), but everything post season 3 has not worked for me, which is disappointing, because he was the best part of season 3.
Cameryn,
You know the Island wasn’t purgatory, right?
Sure. I guess that’s the reason why you spend your time on a GOT fansite during the off-season.
Tyrion Pimpslap,
I think the seeds of him breaking with Cersei are there, Bron’s question to Jaime. And now Mycella, i personally think this will be the breaking point. I don’t see really the point of him breaking with Cersei this season. I belive that will be a major part of his story in S6.
Think like Jon’s election as LC, they did not do it in S4 but did it early S5, because it was a major part of his story THAT season.
Il faut suivre ! Je boycotte si Jon Snow ne revient pas à la vie!
Tyrion Pimpslap,
What makes TD 2 seem even worse is that the show now in its place SHOW ME A HERO is excellent and a grand example of what HBO is capable of.
Yeah, that’s just not true.
– The first four episodes were praised by critics and fans alike when they were first released.
– Episode 5 got good reviews as well.
– Episodes 7, 8, 9 and 10 got great reviews.
The only episode that received a lot of criticism was episode 6.. but somehow it made the WHOLE season become “problematic” for the vocal minority.
Heck, just check the highest rated episodes on IMDb :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/eprate?ref_=tt_eps_rhs_sm
SEVEN episodes from season 5 made the TOP 20.
Progress he made in S5 was different than in the books. In the books he is becoming a stronger political player, but in the show he is becoming a father.
I don’t think that the show needs to choose. If becoming a political player serves some purpose in the story, they have 3 more seasons to do that.
I liked him in S4. Almost every scene with him was great.
LOST will forever be my most beloved show, no other show since or in the future will ever replace it in my heart. I loved it from the first time Jack opened his eyes to the last frame where he shut them for the last time. For those who still whine about the finale, dudes it is only your opinion – and while a bunch share it- it does not automatically make it true. There are also many like me who were moved by it and to whom the six year journey was not so much about the mysteries as it was about the characters and the finale did right by its characters. Besides one “failed” episode does not and cannot erase the rest of the series. Does a less than satisfactory finale, all of a sudden erase the shocking moment where Ben strangles Locke to death or the scene where we realized that Jack and Desmond had met before arriving at the island?
And I know I’m ranting but as someone who is trying to become a working screenwriter, it bothers me when people who most likely have no idea how much work goes into structuring and writing a script just pissed on other’s people work and dismiss it so simply. Writing a feature length screenplay with 6 or 7 characters and a story arc told in a span of 2 hours is difficult enough, structuring a story with more than 10 characters, where everyone is given distinct voices and motivations, and pacing a story that must evolved through several seasons must be maddening. So it is okay to criticize if a show or a movie failed, in your opinion, to meet your expectations but to dismiss writers and showrunners as ‘hacks’ or ‘showbutchers’ is absurd and ignorant.
zod,
Thank you. The notion that the s5 wasn’t well receieves as a whole is the biggest urban legend. The reviews for the first 4 episodes were universally praised and some outlets said it was shaping up to be GoT’s best season.
I hate when people talk shit about the lost finale but their reason for disliking it is invalid.
Lindelof helped out with Star Trek Into Darkness, which has suffered sort of a GoT S5 fate — overall, very well-received, but not without enough detractors to make it obvious some fans find it quite flawed indeed.
I liked his work in STiD, although it is hard to discern which parts he wrote and which parts Or I and Kurtzman wrote.
I have never been able to make it through Lost. I got through two seasons and it wasn’t clicking. The cast just doesn’t do much for me and the relationship angles bored me to tears. It’s telling that my number one memory of the show is probably the time in S1 that I went, “hey, Delenn from Babylon 5 is in this cave, torturing Sayid.”
Did Lindelof work on Fringe? I kinda like Fringe. I know the Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman gang helped out, at least. Lindelof is often involved with them.
A man with distinctive taste, at least I will give him that
I for one absolutely loved lost…even with the ending. Before lost I never had a show that I tuned in for weekly,got together with friends for viewing parties,and even went and bought a new 1080p tv for the finale. The writers strike did the show a great disservice in the 4th season and it never seemed to properly recover from that. Thrones is alot better imo because of lost and some of the things it did. I kinda do wish Lost came on HBO tho…all that said..was gendry the one shootimg,all sawyer and Co in the outrigger???
Loved Lost (of course not quite as much as GoT). Yes, even the last season
Intrigued by The Leftovers
Liked Harry Potter
Hate /Loved True Detective s2 (esp Vince Vaughn)
Lindelof has some excellent points – it is amazing anyone can pull off something as gargantuan as Game of Thrones.
Laura,
Honestly, I think most of the questions were answered, or at least it was pretty clear based on context (for example, no one says explicitly that the Incident caused the baby-problem on the Island, but it’s pretty clear it did when you look at when that problem started occurring). The only biggish mystery they didn’t really solve was the Libby story. And then there were a few little things like the bird in the S2 finale, or the people shooting from the raft in S5. Or the mysteries were given vague, fantasy answers to things (for example, characters like Walt being born special, or the source of magical energy at the heart of the Island). That fan-service video I think really just gave some explicit answers to mostly small mysteries that cropped up throughout the show. I’m really struggling to think of any more big mysteries they didn’t answer within the show, or at least gave enough clues for the audience to see a pretty clear answer.
What’s interesting is that many blame the finale, or the final season generally, for the fact that some of the mysteries that cropped up weren’t sufficiently answered. My tendency is the opposite. I think the moments when those mysterious things were introduced lose their value when they don’t really build up to anything satisfying. Like, the fact that we don’t really know who the people were on the raft were in Season 5 (which was a tiny, forgettable moment honestly) doesn’t make the finale weaker for me, it makes the episode where they showed up weaker for me.
zod,
No shit. How many times are they going to say they’re boycotting the show, yet continue to come to a fansite about the show? It makes no sense.
Not to be rude, Mieux, but perhaps you’d be more comfortable on a site where there are lots of people who say they will boycott the show, that way you’ll have many with whom to commiserate.
I definitely agree there. In a sense it is a problem with the finale, but it also shows how a badly-handled storyline can retroactively devalue earlier episodes. Watching serialized television requires viewers to be allowed to assume that individual plot elements being introduced will pay off or be explained in a satisfying way — when a show reaches the point where viewers can’t do that, it’s in real trouble; and when viewers have been doing that, and the assumed payoff never arrives, it seriously affects a series’ “rewatch value”/holistic assessment.
LOST is one example of that; the mythology episodes of The X-Files are another (or, from the trashier end of TV, the widely-mocked end of Gossip Girl).
GoT might end up having some of the same problems that Lost had when it came to satisfying their fans in the endgame. I think most critics of the Lost finale are really coming from a place where they loved the show, followed it for years, and the finale just didn’t seem to be a good enough return on their investment. I think that puts too much pressure on a finale, but I think that’s accurate.
With GoT, I think there could be a similar problem. There are so many people interested in who wins the throne at the end, who ends up surviving, how we say farewell to each of the characters, and there’s almost no way that the showrunners will be able to craft an ending that satisfies the wishes of everyone watching. And you’ll have people decrying the whole show because it was all building up to what was, in their eyes, an unsatisfactory ending. I mean, really, when was the last time that a show that runs for several years, with a devoted following, actually provided an ending that satisfied everyone?
Hodor Targaryen,
The ending of any Show will leave some people dissapointed. They like some character, that in the end won’t make it, some question is left unanswared, even if the writers never even attempted to ask that question in the first place,…..etc.
No ending will make everyone happy.
Hodor Targaryen,
Well, I don’t think any finale has ever satisfied anyone. But I’d say Breaking Bad and Mad Men were two series that quite recently exited to general contentment.
The genre-type shows that are held to have disappointing finales tend to be ones that built some sort of “mystery” over the course of the run that they were never going to be able to resolve satisfactorily (Lost, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica). In the case of GOT, GRRM (presumably) has a solid notion of the ending he’s working towards, so that at least shouldn’t be an issue.
Hodor Targaryen,
Yes, every popular show never succeeded in pleasing everyone, but in terms of mysteries I don’t think that the GoT has an impossible task in the next 3 years.
1. Who’s Jon Snow’s mother?
2. What WW want?
3. What will happen to the Iron Throne?
I don’t think there are some other big questions
And I’m sure every missing character will return in S6-S8, so there will be no loose ends.
Laura,
Happy accidents don’t write scenes, writers do, so any great scene with Ben was still written by the show writers. The showrunners may or may not have had an ending in mind when the show began but even if they did, they could have easily changed their minds to accommodate what had transpired in between, it happens, it happens a lot. Which is the reason why they finally knocked on the network executives’ door and asked for a finale date so they could realistically map it out. As for the mysteries, no they didn’t really owe us anything. A lot of the mysteries were created by the fans and not the show, just like many ‘mysteries’ in the ASoIaF series are created by fans who would grab onto a minuscule detail and create elaborate conspiracies around it. I mean, did you read Jeff Jensen’s recaps like I did? Did you not obsessed over what books Sawyer was reading and try to find meaning in them? It was the audience who tried to assign meaning to every detail and when the theories we created in our heads were simply not addressed we were disappointed.
In most cases, writers do not create a story to please an audience. Sure, positive audience reaction is great for self-confidence and the ego but a writer must first and foremost do right by him/herself. In the end, it is you who have spent countless hours writing and rewriting, the work only matters if you are at peace with it. Or go ask Josh Trank how it feels to have your name in something that did not reflect his vision only because the producers thought that their own version would be more pleasing to the audience? Have I ever been disappointed by a writer? Sure, I still have not truly forgiven JK Rowlings for killing the magnificent Sirius Black and I don’t quiet get why she thought Ron was a good option for Hermione but my quibbles with her choices do not in any way diminish the love I have for the magical world and characters she created on a little napkin.
I’ve never seen lost. I had that problem with Merlin (BBC). The last season was a bit repetitive. But the final was really bad/abrupt/rushed. I had expected some pay-offs from earlier episodes, but that didn’t happen. I’m not going in detail, but the ones who saw it will know what I mean. To be honest it ruined a bit the whole series for me. I really hope Game of Thrones is not going to make the same mistake.
Yes, they did, because they promised answers (and, especially, logical answers, if you’re old enough to remember early on when they claimed there were real-world explanations for everything).
Actually, while people tend to sum up the criticism of LOST’s ending as there not being answered, a lot of the substance of the criticism is actually that the answers they did give sucked. Which goes to another point, that when you write a mystery you don’t just have to deliver an answer, you have to deliver a dramatically satisfying answer (A Storm of Swords in this particular series has an example of each, where the revelation about Jon Arryn is considered a highlight of the series, and the revelation about who sent the assassin is widely considered anticlimactic and very lame, to the point where the show has either decided to omit the explanation entirely or else is going to come up with some other resolution).
Maceless Fan,
No. Just no.
For me S1 of TD was just like Lost in terms of answers
Of course it’s excellent, everything’s better than Lost.
Lost was simply a show where they wrote the script as they filmed; stories jumbled up together which stopped making much sense somewhere in Season 2 and even more so as it went on.
Adam,
Am I the only one who liked the finale for Lost? I mean, it could have been better, but it was pretty good.
Edit: Apparently I’m the only one in this comment section who even likes Lost…
GOT is at peril , that cannot be denied. I mean with no novels to keep it in track for the upcoming seasons. That was the problem with Lost and lots of other shows that fell victim of their popularity. I hope this will not happen this time.
And yes. Hard home was for me too maybe the best tv hour in a long long time.
mau,
Pretty much. That show had great acting and atmosphere, but on a writing level I don’t think it was anything to write home about, and going into the final two episodes I was thinking that (a) I didn’t have much sense, based on the information given so far, who the killer was and (b) I didn’t really care about the mystery at all either.
Sou,
I don’t think Season 6 represents as radically different a departure from the writing of prior seasons as some have made it out. Different from the first season, sure, but the show has strayed more and more from the books with each season, and particularly in Season 5 it was already using the books mainly just as a plot summary (which they tweaked very heavily). They hardly ever use dialogue directly from the text anymore, for instance, and a majority of the scenes only have book counterparts in very loose senses. So writing Season 6 based on GRRM’s summaries will probably not be that big a departure.
clouddragon,
I liked it!
Sean C.,
And that is why I respected S2 more. i don’t think it was great, it was ordinary, but I didn’t feel cheated.
He’s wrong. Season 5 was atrocious.
Seasons 1 & 2 of Lost were TV gold, the rest was pretty mediocre. I despised the ending. Felt like I had wasted years of my life after watching the finale 🙁
Je fais se que je veux. Je vais sur les sites que je veux, et j’ai le droit de m’exprimer !
Que ça vous plaise ou pas !
Si D&D ont été assez idiots pour tuer Jon Snow pour de bon, je boycotte !
Al Swearengen,
heh, i wondered where you left! Got worried, who was going to troll if you left.
Al Swearengen,
Shame Linda’s already taken, she would make the perfect wife for you.
Mihnea,
Lel it’s always trolling when you go against the grain and dare to criticize the almighty Game of Thrones TV show. Mustn’t say anything negative about D & D’s work, otherwise you’ll be considered a troll. No no it must be praised at all times, it’s the GOAT TV Show!
Sean C.,
I hear you; I just hope they are crystal clear (or Martin is) on where they are going with the plot right from the start (instead of trying to accommodateveryone the fans, for instance).
Even for those who agree with the huge cuts made from AFFC and ADWD (and the earlier books) in order to make the material viable on screen, doesn’t it still seem like they rushed to squeeze the story into one season? I understand why the show could not feasibly add many *more* characters and locations; but considering how little we get of the Tullys, Greyjoys, etc. — and especially considering that the next book is not even finished — I wonder if two seasons would have been better for the AFFC/ADWD material, as with ASOS.
Jeb,
Elio is a lucky man, I am jealous that he gets the pleasure of being sat on by her firecrotch each night.
Yes, S1 of GoT had been just a translation of the books with some added material.
S2 was faithful to the books, with some liberties.From S3 I think they more a more used books just like the outline.
And I think it was good, because they knew GRRM won’t give them the ending in written form, so they decided they won’t be dependent on the books, because the show would have collapsed in terms of writing in S6-8.
And I think that in S5 it was really obvious that Bryan Cogman made a big mistake in his writing for the first 4 seasons, because he was more faithful to the source material than GRRM himself , and when he lost that backing it showed.
His episodes in S5 were okay, but nothing extraordinary. The best dialogue scenes from S5 were in D&D’s episodes, because they have great experience in using the books like outline.
I’m not very optimistic for Cogman’s episodes in S6.
Mieux: Je fais se que je veux. Je vais sur les sites que je veux, et j’ai le droit de m’exprimer !
Que ça vous plaise ou pas !
Si D&D ont été assez idiots pour tuer Jon Snow pour de bon, je boycotte
Translation: Blah, blah, blah.
And where would you end s5 then?
Mieux,
I don’t suppose you’re older than 15, are you dear? Relax, it’s just a TV show and this is just a fan site.
Al Swearengen,
Did you spend every single minute of six years watching Lost when it ran? My understanding is that it was a show that run from September to April, on a weekly basis for about an hour each episode. Now if you obsessed over it to the point where you did nothing else over those six years, that, my friend, is on you not on the showrunners.
Right, Al, because no one here ever has anything less than glowingly positive to say about the show. No one here has ever disliked anything done by the show, has never had a problem with a single decision the show-runners have made, and has never expressed a wish this or that had been done differently.
Never. Not even once.
I remember and I was smart enough to not believe them. Didn’t impact my enjoyment of the show a bit. Were you really expecting a real-world explanation for the smoke monster?
Al Swearengen,
You are still charming as ever.
Also, you’re wrong.
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
Hey I don’t make the rules. Apparently you’re deemed a troll if you say anything negative about the show. It’s not my fault the show lately has me being more negative than positive.
LOL… you know the place where they were at the very very end of the final episode WAS purgatory, right? The church? The place where they were all gathering, their stories incomplete? That place. Purgatory. Ending exactly where Cuse & Lindelof had said for six years they’d never go.
My opinions are not invalid since they’re my opinions, and I’m FAR from the only person (among countless other critics and fans) who felt the metaphysical nonsense ending and Lindelof’s statements about how the plot really didn’t matter “because people really care about the characters” bullshit completely let the story down.
I hate when people talk shit about people who have different opinions than they do. (Well, unless it’s practically a policy, like GoT hatred from certain websites…)
I really liked Lost and the ending was satisfying. we won’t have anymore good shows like Lost and Firefly since people these days seem to think breaking bad and the walking dead are good.
Cumsprite,
Give Dolan my regards.
Al Swearengen,
Name calling how very original. Lost ran for six seasons from September 22, 2004, to May 23, 2010, five years and 8 months to be more precise, happy?
Cumsprite,
No, I wasn’t, but it’s nevertheless simply wrong to state that the audience’s desire for answers is something they’re imposing on the show, when the writers were making very explicit promises of answers from the beginning. Indeed, due to the fact that by then the phenomenon of shows not planning out their mysteries and getting completely derailed by it was well-known, the writers were asked many times whether there was a plan, they knew the answers, etc., by fans wary of getting invested in another such show. The writers vowed that it wasn’t like that. The writers were full of crap, as it turned out, and as such the fans are fully within their rights to call them out on it.
… including Walt’s clairvoyance, which was never addressed again. But this assumes that they were actually coming up with rational reasons for everything, when in fact they’ve even *stated* for the record that they made it up as they went along. Now, I have no problem with making it up as you go along, provided that you have enough respect for the material to come up with a suitable finish, but they were reading fan websites and they *knew* there was stuff that needed to be addressed, and they didn’t. (Except a few items in a DVD extra with Ben and Hurley… in an extra!!!)
Then again, you can argue that the people writing about the smoke monster that murdered the pilot of the plane in episode one, and writing about the mysterious Cerebus map Locke discovered, and many other things early on were not really thinking about those things later on, or writing episodes anymore. (There are more than a few early LOST writers/producers who left the series mid way through.)
—-
In the meanwhile, I’d taken time off from this board – on this website that I genuinely love – and see, sadly, that I’ve come back to a level of discourse that still assumes everyone thought Season 5 of Game of Thrones sucked. Despite stellar ratings, great reviews and a lot of people thinking to the contrary… Sigh.
Because everyone who says anything nasty about the show is a liar!
Mieux,
C’est ton choix, vas-y, ne regardez plus le show.
Sean C.,
You are right. I still, for the most part, enjoyed the show from start to finish but the disappointment many fans feel about the show is justified as is their desire and right to ask for some accountability. I’m just not one of those fans in regards to LOST. ASOIAF, on the other hand ….
So, what did happen in Lost’ finale? I never really watched it since at the time I was living in France and US shows dubbed in French really put me off.
Mieux,
Dans le cas de Jon Snow, nous n’avons pas encore vue les consequences de sa mort, alors on ne peut pas juger la valeur de cette evenement quand cetait la derniere scene de la saison. You just can’t compare at this point.
No, people are welcome to their views, but I’d really like to know why some people accept it as gospel that “season 5 of GoT was terrible” when there is no consensus as to whether it was good or bad. Yes, in general, people think the Star Wars prequels suck in comparison to the originals – that’s sort of a consensus. The jury is still out on GoT Season 5, and there are countless people who don’t agree that it was bad. I thought it was as good as ever.
Al Swearengen,
I wouldn’t consider you a troll if you would give constructive criticism. Coming onto a fan site just to say the show sucks leaves no room for discussion.
Season 5 was great like ALL SEASONS…I have yet to hear one of my show watcher friends state otherwise.
Get over it, whether you like the fact that they stick to the books or not this is still a great show and probably the best on TV currently; IMO nothing comes close!
Not liar, just over-dramatic.
“May a river of shit catch Al in a blind alley.”
Cumsprite,
lmao nice. I do miss Don, he was a cool cat. I hope his business is thriving and he continues to work on his projects. Hopefully one day I’ll see his name attached to a big production. “Robert’s Rebellion ” directed by Omar Brown, now that’s a sight that would bring a tear to my eye.
ok on n’a donc pas le droit d’avoir une opinion sur ce site ! J’ai autant le droit de m’exprimer que vous ! Je trouve que D&D font de la merde, de plus en plus ! Et je ne suis pas la seule à le penser !
Et dans le livre RIEN n’affirme qu’il est mort ! Martin laisse la porte ouverte, ici D&D empêche la spéculation, ils ferment la porte, Soit ils spoilent les livres, soit ils ne respectent pas les livres, soit ils devraient prendre des cours de communication !
Cameryn,
Many people, near the beginning, thought that the castaways dies on the plane and that the Island was purgatory. The showrunners specifically said that was false. What they did in S6 did not contradict that, since they did in fact survive the plane crash and the Island wasn’t purgatory. I don’t think touching on the idea of an afterlife was inconsistent with what they said. And, btw, that was a perfectly valid question. Even GRRM thought the characters were dead from the beginning after seeing the finale, and a lot of people had the same misunderstanding and criticized the show for doing something it didn’t do. That”a what your comment sounded like.
Vous les anglophones vous êtes fainéants !
clouddragon,
Like a lot of others here, I was just supremely dissapointed that so much of the show revolved around the various mysteries, and what’s worse is they told us right until the end that they had a plan and answers were forthcoming. And the ending in the church felt like something they wrote in a hurry after someone on a message board figured out the better ending they had planned originally.
LOST season 5 > GoT season 5
Lazy? No. Bored with you saying the same thing for the umpteenth time in a matter of a few hours? Yep.
By the way, if you’re going to try and insult someone, you may want to look to this for some tips:
I’m not French
And yes lazy and insulting!
Mieux,
Congratulations!!!
You managed to make a post where you didn’t include how you were going to boycott!!! You’re making progress.
I’ve never seen Lost, but I thought Prometheus was a piece of garbage. One of the worst AAA movies in the last few years. Totally ruined the backstory to the original Alien.
That’s really all I know of that I’ve seen from Lindelof, and it wasn’t a good start.
Lost remains one of my favorite shows ever, up there with GoT. The final season was emotionally fulfilling but mythologically frustrating. WHO WAS IN THE OTHER OUTRIGGER AHHH
Sean C.,
I was another person who abandoned Lost early (first few eps of S3 I think?). But man, S1 was one of the best pieces of television I’ve ever seen. I actually stood up and screamed when they revealed Locke’s backstory (the wheelchair) in ep 4. Then a couple of years later I randomly flicked to an episode in S5, and it looked like they were time travelling or something? I was glad I’d stopped watching. The only place I’ve seen time travel used effectively on tv is S1 Heroes (another great start followed by a decline – can’t talk about it, too painful). As for the X-files, I loved, loved loved that show, but man for the last 4 seasons it was a slow moving trainwreck: Duchovny leaving and Anderson’s limited involvement were the nails in the coffin but the ever-changing, overwrought mythology started way before then. It would have been much better if they had a defined endpoint like GoT will have. Although I’m interested to see what they do with this mine-series thing!
Robb Snow,
I liked the Stak Trek reboot! In general I find production of Lindelof’s projects are always flawless but style doesn’t always compensate for a lack of substance, which is obvious in some of his screenwriting (Prometheus, ugh). My god. what a waste of money, talent and >2 hours of my life that was.
Mieux,
S’il te plaît, arrête! On connaît déjà très bien quelles sont tes opinions sur D&D et le show… Maintenant, épargne-les-nous. Si tu vas vraiment boycotter le show, vas-y, c’est ton doit!! Si tu est tellement fâchée contre D&D comme tu le dis, écris-leur une longue lettre en y éxprimant tes griefs… Ce sera beaucoup plus constructif pour toi.
mau,
Sean C.,
Yes, I think you’re right, Sean, the mystery aspect is what separates inevitably disappointing endings from other finales. Finales like Breaking Bad and Madmen pretty much didn’t do anything super surprising, but people weren’t tuning in to be shocked either. I think you also made a good point in another comment about how those complaining about lack of answers really have a problem with the answers given, which is fair. I personally didn’t mind some answers, and actually really liked some of the answers Lost did give us.
Even though GoT doesn’t have nearly as many mysteries as Lost, as mau points out, I still think there is the issue of fans trying to predict the ending of the series. I mean, if Daenerys ends up being the winner, I feel like a good chunk of the fandom will not like that ending. And if she doesn’t win, then others will think that her journey was a waste of time. I don’t know, I just see some of the irrationality of fans, and how possessive they are of their show and where they want the story to go, I can easily imagine an ending that divides fans based on what those fans expected to see at the end. So even though it isn’t telling its audience “Hey, we’re a puzzle, try to figure us out!” the way the Lost showrunners did, I do think that the fans are invested in and possessive of the way they want the story to end, and it is unlikely to provide an ending that fulfills every expectation that most fans have (or give an ending that is so good that people will disregard whatever ending to the story they imagined for themselves).
I absolutely agree with this!! I’m afraid we will have endless posts from people complaining about how D&D ruined the series because they didn’t like the the ending. I’m bracing myself already… (of course, they will be on they right to do so).
lol at the people talking smack about season 2 of True Detective, it was great and leagues above the last season of GoT
As a very casual watcher of Lost, I thought the finale was fine. I skipped the entire season before the final season though because it was all just such a convoluted mess for me by then.
And I think the point of posting this article is showing the opinion of someone in the same business who has dealt with some of the same pressures. Not that this particular guy is a special snowflake, but he does know how to make a TV show (good or bad) and he does know how hard it is to tell a story. I appreciate his insight but I don’t have to agree with his opinions because he has more experience.
I loved Season Five of GoT and I loved the Winterfell story. I thought Sansa’s progression was one of the more fascinating parts of the season. And yet that seems to be what makes people think the season sucked. Well, that and the Sand Snakes.
Season 5 is actually my favorite. The pacing was better than ever, as was the writing and acting for the most.
It was the same progress shown in a different way: in both book and show, he sets out to prove that he’s Tywin Lannister Reborn, and instead proves that he’s a man with a figurative soul. It was just another part of kill the boy (in this case, Tywin’s son) and letting a man be born. The key issue is that he’s starting to show some ability to empathize for the first time: and one key parallelism among the primary characters is that they become increasingly less self-centered and increasingly broader in their perspectives.
As for Lost, I was neither yay nor nay on the ending. I had worked out that they were going in some direction like that a while before. The only part of the series that did not work for me was the “middle” year where they basically were killing time because the network would not give them permission to start ending the series. That was the year that they focussed a lot on the passengers from the other half of the plane, and it felt like they were stalling for no good reason: which, it turned out, was exactly what was happening! However, once they got greenlit to shut things down, it worked pretty well. All of the stories were (as the show’s title implies) variants of lost people trying to “find” themselves in one way or another. The finale did just that. (The old Talking Heads’ song starting out “everyone is trying… to get to the bar…. the name of the bar: the bar is called Heaven” pretty much summed it up!)
In a lot of cases (and SoI&F will be another case, I am sure), much of the criticism of the finales (e.g., Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, Babylon 5) is of the “spoiled grapes” variety. People wind up getting pretty invested in their ideas for what the final plotting should be. But that is another reason to pay attention to the story as well as the plots: most of the egregiously wrong ideas about how those series would end would never have fit into the story or type of story that the authors had been telling all along. If you had hoped, say, that Harry Potter was going to defeat Voldemort with previously unknown magic attached to the color of his (and his mother’s) eyes, then you really had not been paying attention!
davyJones,
You are the only person I’ve seen call TD season 2 “great”. Literally, the first. Sounds like you need to take this up with the entire internet, not just this GOT fan site.
Tyrion Pimpslap,
I was considering starting to watch True Detective, but after all the complaints I’ve heard about the second season, from all sorts of different people, I decided not to bother. I’ll watch Season 1, at some point, as from what I understand it is definitely worth watching, but now that I no longer have that “time is of the essence feeling” about it, it will probably be a while.
They better announce some new cast members soon!
How did he do that, exactly?
I’m going to just jump into this without reading all the comments, in which I am sure the Lost finale has been extensively discussed.
I remember when Lost debuted. I was 16 years old; my parents knew about it and there was a lot of hype around it. I watched the pilot. I remember it being okay, but honestly, I wasn’t really following any show week-to-week as a sixteen year old. I did not watch The Wire, or the Sopranos, or any of those first-half golden age shows (until after those series had concluded).
Of course, I recall hearing the chatter about the Lost finale. People were excited for it. Then people were really mad or disappointed about it. Although I never watched the series beyond the pilot, I heard the details of the ending; how the episode revealed a whole “they were dead the whole timeeeeeeee” bit about the last season. I didn’t really think much about that one way or the other.
A couple of years ago I decided I would truck through the series, despite the uncomfortable number of episodes per season. I liked pretty much everything about it. I saw why people liked it.
I got to the end knowing (basically) what was going to happen and that it was considered terrible. Again, I watched it, but did not feel strongly one way or the other about the finale.
This is all to say that, looking back at my binge-watch of Lost, I liked it. I think it is probably unfairly hammered. It has many redeeming qualities, it is quirky, it is interesting, it has a certain flavor that is unique to Lost. The ending was the ending.
The Leftovers is pretty tight, too.
Not really on topic but I’m pretty excited eat out next season being so unknown.. I wanna kno who will be playin euron .. When do they start filming for greyjoy a do we think?
TheTouchOfFrost,
This, of course, is just a guess, but I’m thinking until they get to a location shoot with a noteworthy new cast member, we may not hear much.
There will always be some people who don’t care for a mystery resolution, I expect, but I would say that mysteries will only make for “inevitably” disappointing finales if you wrote your mystery without any notion of what the answer is (sometimes when you do that you can tie everything together in a way that totally works, but that’s insanely risky, and for a multi-season show built on constantly introducing new elements, doomed to fail). As a general rule, if you introduce a mysterious plot element or character, you should have an idea of what the answer or payoff is — that doesn’t mean you can’t change that later, if you get a better idea, but you should never be caught with your pants down by having no explanation at all.
Hey, Nic Pizzolatto!
S1 was actually pretty good. Not perfect, but definitely worth watching. McConaughey is pretty much unforgettable playing a more messed up version of X Files’s Mulder. The show does a good job of using flashbacks and perspective to mess with how you feel about the ongoing story. The big drawback of the show is that the more they unravel of the mystery, the less interesting it is. As for S2…It was basically Mystery Science Theater bad.
iridium,
I’m not a fan of his, but Lindelof pretty much has assured himself an ongoing place in Hollywood when he came in and essentially rescued World War Z by changing the ending. Whatever you thought of the movie, it made money, something it definitely wouldn’t have if they had gone with the one they originally shot, where Brad Pitt’s wife sold herself as a sex slave to one of the soldiers in exchange for food and shelter.
Sou,
It was the culmination of six seasons worth of dense mythology, so it’s a little hard to sum it up in a quick soundbyte. The final season as a whole had worked pretty hard to address and answer the dozens of mysteries built up over the show – but a good chunk of them, including a couple major ones (The Cabin was always the most infuriating for me) remained unanswered. In addition, many fans (personally, not me) were angry at the answers that were given. Some mysteries fans think are unsolved actually were and they missed it, or require you to piece together information yourself from hints and clues given (generally minor ones). Others were really just unsolved and possibly never had an answer. (The Cabin!!!)
The reason most hate the finale itself was because it didn’t bother to answer any mysteries (save for the one regarding the final season’s ‘alternate timeline’…it’s complicated), and was focused on resolving the story’s climax and saying goodbye to the characters. Which was absolutely the right choice. I understand being mad at the showrunners for not having a plan the first three seasons, and poor planning in the last three, but I’m not sure why people blame the finale specifically, and not, say, the show as a whole. Did you really want an information dump on the last episode? Wouldn’t that be extremely poor storytelling? Just saying.
As for True Detective Season 2, was I the only person who ended up loving it? Don’t get me wrong, it was a MESS, and there were aspects of it that were absolutely terrible, like much of the dialogue, but starting in episode 5 and growing to the end I grew more and more absorbed with it and the way it played with noir tropes in a gorgeous way (like Vince Vaughn’s last scene…awesome). And for all the criticism, much of it fair, I thought more would at least appreciate Miguel Sapochnik’s brilliantly orchestrated, terrifying climax to episode 6, proving he is one of the best talents in TV right now (it’s not written very well per se, and could have been an exploitative, cheap scene to fill HBO’s nudity quota, and instead it was a masterclass in first-person perspective suspense that would have made Hitchcock proud).
That’s a good question… The books don’t offer an obvious choice, as with the Red Wedding and Yunkai for S3’s climax. My overall impression of S5 was just so strange, like it was both too slow-going in its storytelling (despite new additions not in the novels), and too intent on pushing to the end of ADWD (given how much book material was left out). It didn’t help that Stannis’ arc seems to have ended in an immensely disappointing way, unworthy of his character, but that’s another issue.
Both the books and the show are in almost-inevitable decline, I think, because how often does any narrative series (on page or screen) maintain a high level of critical praise? e.g. Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men all did superb work in their fifth seasons — a rarity perhaps — yet some faction always claims their beloved show had peaked earlier. Game of Thrones is a tough nut; if the budget allowed, I think the novels may have been better served by more episodes and less excision. At least, maybe fewer threads could have been left dangling — personally I still hope to see the Brotherhood again, and Arya’s direwolf, and the Blackfish…
Chymeria,
I agree completely.
I thought Season 5 was very well done considering the source material (vs. Season 4’s source material) and the fact the show runners had to balance existing material with new (and invented) material.
Pacing, acting, directing was mostly well done. Sure it wasn’t perfect but nothing is.
And Hardholme indeed is not just a ‘best of season’ type of episode, its one for the ages.
Ravyn,
…jesus fucking christ. I have a lot of things I could say about this, but I won’t – too angry/depressing and off topic. But, yeah, ok, definitely score one for Lindelof there!
All of his blather at the outset about what Tywin had left for them, and how it was their job to preserve his (and their family’s legacy), etc. That is what led him to Dorne. But in the end, instead of “by whatever means necessary,” he winds up preaching “All you need is love.”
Stuff like this is the heart of story.
I do not think that is why some viewers/readers end up disappointed. Harry Potter offers a very good example: although Rowling clearly had it planned out from the start, there nevertheless were a lot of disappointed readers in the end. The reason was that they were hoping for a different ending. They wanted more magic, more world-building, etc.: and they didn ‘t want (say) Harry’s scar to be a piece of Voldemort’s soul, or Snape to not be “evil” or stuff like that.
Now, the book will be much better remembered for doing what it did instead of what some fans wanted it to do. However, that does not negate the fact that some fans were disappointed, or that ANY book would have disappointed some people.
Wimsey,
I always find one of the problems these fantasy franchises have is that their rabid fan base inevitably ends up writing their own endings, so when the actual ending comes, and it doesn’t match entirely the one they’d been envisioning for years, they react negatively. This happened with Star Wars, Potter, LOTR (film), and likely with GoT. Some viewers will accept nothing less than Jon-Dany ending up together. Some want Tyrion to ride a dragon. The lag time it takes to make these things just fuels the personal fantasies people create in their heads and sets them up for an inevitable disappointment.
Exactly. And the last 3-4 episodes were also widely praised as great stuff. Essentially, ONLY middle episodes were more broadly criticised, which is something that regularly happens during GoT mid-seasons. It doesn’t help that the most infamous Dorne scene and Sansa’s wedding were in 506 as well, so that was bound to colour the whole thing.
c’est bien ce qui me semblait, la liberté d’expression est interdite sur ce site si on est pas un bête mouton qui aime la soupe qui lui est servie!
Mieux,
Look man, talk about whatever you want, but every single post of yours reads like, and I’m sorry to say that, complaining about sovereign human rights to live, work, and express oneself, freely peppered with insults (remember fainéant?) Say something constructive and engage in a debate. You’re quite welcome here!
Pour vous, si on a pas le même avis que vous, ce n’est pas constructif de toute façon, on est obligé de penser comme vous sur ce site!
D&D ont fait un mauvais travail cette saison, et un seul bon épisode ne sauve pas une saison.
Faire dire à Jon “Ghost” et non “Olly” (bonjour le personnage inventé complètement creux et qui a toujours l’air constipé) , ça coûtait une fortune? Changer l’intrigue pour des personnages secondaires, je peux l’accepter, changer l’intrigue d’un personnage principal très aimé du public, non! (Ou est Ghost? Ou sont les visions de Mélisandre? …)
Ils me donnent l’impression de courir après le buzz à tout prix au détriment de l’intrigue et m’ont enlevé le plaisir de regarder la série.
A voir s’ils font un meilleur travail en saison 6 mais j’ai des doutes!
Can you use english?
mau,
Just quickly using Bing translate I could see it was basically the common AFOIAF sort of opinion. Nothing worth investigating too much further. Just your average purist madlib basically.
J’utilise bien un traducteur, pourquoi ne faites vous pas l’effort ?
Mon avis a autant de valeur que le votre! Aucun respect pour les gens qui ne pensent pas comme vous c’est dingue!
Off-topic, did anyone in the UK see Pedro Pascal from I think his pre-Prince Oberyn days on Law & Order SVU last night as a dodgy agent. I’m pretty sure he’s been on Law & Order before as a different character (a pimp)!
Mieux,
Nisi jedini koji zna i neki drugi jezik. Mislim da bi moderatori trebalo da te izbace odavde.
Cameryn,
Simply put …
If you’re a book purist? Season 5 was the WORST SEASON EVER.
However, if you’re a show watcher, or somebody who is capable of understanding that the book is the book and the show is the show, then Season 5 was a pretty good season with a few minor hiccups.
Vous pensez qu’on n’a pas le droit de donner son avis.
C’est donc une dictature en Bosnie ?
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
Part of me is annoyed as I want to know who’s cast as who but on the flipside, I’m glad the security is tighter this year.
Wimsey,
At no point in the story did Jaime have a choice between “by any means necessary” and “all you need is love”. He acted like a complete moron and got captured, at which point he was completely at Doran’s mercy and had to talk his way out. The whole Dornish jaunt was a ridiculous attempt at knight-errantry, not something Tywin would ever have done. If that was meant to be the arc, it fails completely.
As to the latter, as I said, some people will always be disappointed by a resolution. Art is subjective, so I can’t think of any finale that has ever pleased everyone. Some people never liked a given property to begin with, so it’s hardly surprising that a subset of the people who liked it at the outset didn’t care for the resolution.
But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is not remotely akin to the end of Lost or BSG in terms of negative reception.
You won’t please everybody just because you follow a plan; and indeed, some series have scuppered themselves specifically by following a planned ending that no longer fit the show (e.g., How I Met Your Mother). But if you spend several years writing a show based around mystery mythology and don’t have a plan for it, that’s where the biggest disappointments come from. Like with BSG, where Moore admitted that the ominous “And they have a plan” title card, etc. we’re just thrown in to sound cool and the writers soon realized they had no clue what such a plan might be. Or, well, everything from the early seasons of Lost. Alias, similarly a show that had been making it up as they went along, I think actually did resolve its biggest arc phrase in a satisfying way, but the series as a whole is strewn with MacGuffins and plot strands that didn’t add up to anything.
Mieux,
Nije loše, ali nisam iz bosne
Et pourquoi tu le fais pas toi au lieu de jouer à l’intéressant qui parle une langue que presque personne ne comprend ici ?
i’m french, mieux your free to speak, but apply to the website rules and try to be respectfull.
Easy way : gtfo
I’ve only seen a few early episodes of Lost, so I can’t really comment on that, but HBO’s excellent Spawn series ended its third season in a really great place with a load of exciting threads hanging… and then was just never followed up with a fourth season. I don’t know if I prefer an incomplete story over a botched ending. Some part of me wishes I’d quit Battlestar Galactica a season early.
I’m with you there. I’m hungry for casting and filming news, but last year’s leaks were unbearable.
One of the things I love about the show is all the commentary and buzz it sparks on social media, but because of last year’s leaks I had to stay out of many outlets. That was a bummer!
After episode 5 I breathed again when we all became unsullied all the way through episode 9. It was an exciting time. Somehow I feel we were struck by Hardhome’s awsomeness not only because it was amazing, but also because we didn’t see it coming.
And then… some stupid asswhole leaked the pictures of Jon’s stabbing, I stumbled with them while I was looking for some images not even remotely related to GOT. Quite frankly I was outraged. I knew it was coming, I had read the books, but I still felt robbed of the emotional journey this show puts us on.
So, now I am tiptoeing around GoT info. Hoping I get some news, but praying I don’t get spoiled. Ugh, hate this feeling!
GhostCR,
As a book reader i completly agree. Its so much more fun, not knowing what’s coming!
Selah:
i’m french, mieux your free to speak, but apply to the website rules and try to be respectfull.
Easy way : gtfo
On m’a dit qu’il n’y avait pas de problème à m’exprimer en français ici !
Si j’utilise un traducteur, le résultat sera le même que si vous copier coller mon texte
Le français est une des langues les plus parlée au monde, contrairement au Croate
Did the french invade us?
Ska jag börja skriva på svenska också? För att du inte orkar översätta från franska? Allvarligt, cut the french yo!
Just making a point…
Mieux,
Mon Dieu, as-tu fini de faire ta petite crise, pauvre bebe!
Judging by Mau’s usage of certain verbs, I’d venture a guess it’s not Croatian either. Keep it up! Maybe you get lucky!
Well, maybe he’s from Haiti? Or Senegal? He did say he’s not from France!
Where are the mods?
Wow, lots of people here REALLY hated Lost!
I loved Lost, and that includes what I thought was a stellar finale. I had several issues with the last season as a whole, but u thought the finale itself was near perfect…
I also really don’t understand the people that are (still!) mad and say the show didn’t answer any of the questions. Huh? It answered what the numbers were, where the polar bears came from, why Ben stole Alex, what happened to Rousseau’s team, what the whispers were, why Hurley was ‘crazy,’ why they were brought to the island, why Richard doesn’t age, how the statue was broken, where the black rock came from, what the smoke monster was, and on and on and on.
It may not have answered every single thing, but what are these big mysteries that Lost supposedly failed to answer? It answered damned near everything. If you didn’t like the answers, that’s a different story.
Mieux,
I agree, D&D did a poor job this season. And 2 good episodes in a season of 10 is not enough to make a good season (all Dorne arc, Stannis “character development”, dialogue especially Tyrion – Jorah/Daenerys)
But for Jon’s arc, I don’t see the problem. Jon doesn’t seem to be a warg in the series and it’s not an issue. He still can be revive.
Same thing for Melisandre visions, her look before she left Stannis said a lot about her mistake on Azor Ahai.
One major reason he wanted to speak about season 5 is because he wanted to stick it to GRRM pretty bad. One time GRRM insulted lost because of its ending and he flamed GRRM on twitter for being an extremely slow writer. It was pretty funny because it was true.
Some of the show haters should get together and make their own version of GoT. Maybe then they would learn to appreciate D&D’s hard work on a 5+ season show.
Now I could be wrong, but to me it appears that 80+ % of the people who post here do speak/write in English. Even when it is a second or third language, they make the effort and I have noticed that the other posters are very kind and tolerant, even patient.
So… Mieux Get off that high horse you are riding and get with the program. You have taken up 1/3 or better of two threads now, evidently repeating the same thing. This community will help you with your attempts at English. I know you can do it, I saw you post earlier posts in English. People have asked nicely, please have the same courtesy to them.
Unless you are a troll who is trying to use a different tactic hiding under the radar of, I don’t speak English. If so, you will be found out soon enough. If not, my pardon…but please….stop with the French that you say you are not speaking. *rolls eyes*
Wimsey
I agree with others here that no matter how this last season ends, many will be disappointed. I read constantly about “so and so are going to be married”, the number of people possible to ride a dragon and so forth. Truth is, we don’t know and in the absence of knowledge, people will make up the dream ending scenario. With years more to mentally reinforce that imagined ending, it will only be that much stronger.
For HP. Same thing happened. And oddly enough, even for LotR’s though the books had been published decades before PJ even thought to make the movies. Still the same disappointment from purists and revisionists. It isn’t a question of will it happen, but how large will that disappointment be. Not that it will matter one jot, it is how it will go down in history. Is it Lost part two of failed finales? Time will tell.
red viper,
Les seuls qui font des crises pour une langue et un avis qui ne vous plais pas c’est vous!
Vous faite un caca nerveux quand on ne pense pas comme vous
Can’t comment much on Lost, since I never really got into it (except for watching the pilot), but I remember being quite disappointed with the slow-motion trainwreck that was the concluding seasons of X-Files. In that case, however, it wasn’t a question of a good or bad finale. It was four seasons (6-9) of the wheels slowly coming off as it because clear that everything that had been built up before that didn’t really have any over-arching plan or explanation – it was just being made up on the fly (Samantha Mulder, anyone).
In most stories where I disliked the ending, this is the reason – the fact that the story was just being written day-to-day without any idea where it was going to go or any regard for where it had been. And that’s something you pick up on as the story moves along – when loose ends simply vanish, or new important characters or critical events suddenly appear without warning. It’s NOT because everything was great for years and THEN the last episode sucked.
I would compare something like the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, where everything in the story leads relentlessly and logically to its conclusion, with The Dark Tower, where more and more crap was shoveled in until the whole thing collapsed and nothing was resolved.
I have hope for GoT and ASoIaF — although there has been some changes to the original plan and *apparent* filler in the later books, everything still seems to be pointing at an already planned-out ending. We won’t be able to fully judge until we see it, however, and some people will hate it no matter what when it doesn’t fulfill their personal head-canon (Stannis fans, etc.).
E agora é o lugar onde eu posso mostrar que falo outra língua. Mas isso não significa que deveria falar babaquice só porque muita gente tem preguiça de traduzir.
JCDavis,
A troll? Because I have difficulty speaking English?
And no I’m not French, I live in a country where one speaks three languages, French is one of them.
Maybe you prefer the Netherlands or German?
This seems very important to me the relationship between Jon and his wolf in books. As much as Dany and her dragons.
They can do it for Bran, why not for Jon?
Like I said, if you are a troll, you will be found out, if not…pardon. Still, why move from French to Dutch or German? What would be the point? You are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Forcing others to what you need, when your needs are less than 80+% of everyone else is just self serving. OR like I said, there is another reason. Obviously you are able to reply in English. I won’t respond to anything else you do write otherwise and I wish others wouldn’t either as it just perpetuates the issue. And obviously encouraging you. Done!!
Indeed, where are the mods on this issue? I am sure there is no mandate that one use English on an English speaking board, but it sure helps. Um…board = communicating. I think I am really liking Mihnea all the more!!
Look, I’m from the French speaking part of Belgium as well, and my English is far from perfect… but it’s just a simple courtesy to express yourself in English when you try to engage in a conversation with an English speaking community.
If you can’t do that, then why don’t you try a French speaking community? You should be right at home at lagardedenuit.com as this place is full of purists who like to whine a lot.
Oh, and the thing about “free speech” is that it works both ways. So while you have the right to voice your opinion about D&D and GOT, others are free to criticize that opinion and to think that you’re just full of shit when you threaten to boycott the show.
JCDavis,
Thank you! 🙂
“lagardedenuit.com” is a bad site they are always late on the news!
Aui and I tried to talk in English, except I can not make myself understood, people understood wrong!
proof, you think I’m going to boycott the series when I leave them a last chance! (only if Jon is back)
And for the 5644555 th time, I was told that I could express myself in French.
Ezas eshna gech ahilee!
(is Dothraki acceptable?)
Hodor’s Bastard,
In that case: Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam.
Today is a good day to die!
Mr Fixit,
Oh, yeah? Them’s fightin’ words, bro!
(Interesting that they are both similar insults)
Mieux,
in French or English, you’re completely repetitive and boring. Congratulations on being able to spam in two languages. Please, please, please boycott the show and this site, too. And just for the record: Jon Snow is dead in the books, too. The TV show didn’t invent that.
We did not read the same books! It is unclear if Jon died in the books!
And if you do not like my comments, do not read them!
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
Are you watching the best show of the summer, Mr Robot? If not, well worth your time! (TD is not worth your time)
Hi all..or Guten Tag.
That is exactly what I am doing. Ignoring your posts. When I come here to get my daily fix of GoT news I expect them to be in English. Same for the comments made. I can’t be arsed sticking your posts into Google translator. I think it would be common courtesy to use English on an English-speaking site?
You ignore?
but why you answer!
Funny way to ignore!
To everybody who are replying and arguing with “Mieux” …
She replied to my comment asking her to stop her little tantrum by using bathroom pipi/caca humor, so you can see the level of maturity/intellect at work here …
Don’t waste your time.
Mieux,
It’s hard to ignore your posts when every other one is yours. You must have a lot of time on your hands. Or in desperate need of attention.
Which I guess I’m giving you by responding.
Jon Snow is almost certainly not permanently dead. Kit has been spotted numerous times in Belfast with the rest of the cast (including Carice van Houten and fellow Night’s Watch actors), his hair is still the proper length, they’ve been filming on the set of Castle Black… and that’s on top of the hints they’ve dropped in this season such as Aemon’s line about killing the boy and letting the man be born, Sam’s line about Jon always coming back, and Melisandre arriving at Castle Black just before Jon’s death.
Do I need to mention the fact that the writers went out of their way in Season 3 to have Melisandre meet Thoros of Myr and hear the story of how he brought Beric back from the dead? This doesn’t even happen in the books, so it was added for a very specific purpose.
The resurrection gun has been hung on the wall. All D&D have to do is fire it… and they will.
This is not humor “pipi” “caca” but an expression!
You know the holidays?
Short. You tired, I just gave 2 or 3 times I think. This is not a crime.
Stop with the Sterile debate and your insults.
Cersei’s Brain,
Oh Mr. Robot is everything amazing.
I hope …
Ravyn,
Cersei’s Brain,
And I know I’m missing a person, or two (my apologies)…
Thanks for the feedback and recommendations.
As far as Mr. Robot goes, I’ve heard a lot of great things about it from a lot of different people, and it is at the top of my list to watch when I get in tv watching mode, again.
As for this Mieux character, well, lets just say any thoughts of my “blah, blah, blah” comment being unfair, and I did have a moment of, “hmmm, maybe I’m jumping the gun just summarily dismissing this person’s posts,” have all gone out the window. We’re on day 2 of their comments, and they are the epitome of “same shit, different day.” They may as well take their first comment, copy it, and paste it every few minutes, since they all say the same thing.
*”All English speakers are lazy and insulting”” comments in 3…2…1…
Sorry guys, but this thread instantly made me think of this!
Laura,
That was frigging funny!! Still laughing.
+1
LOST is probably my favorite show of all time… and THE LEFTOVERS is a very good show (it got really intriguing as it got closer to the end of the first season). I think Damon Lindelof is a freaking genius and one of the best story tellers in television. His movie story telling has been spotty for a lot of people but maybe that’s because he’s just geared more for telling TV stories.
I admire him for taking the high-road and loving GOT even after GRRM shit all over the LOST finale… and erroneously, mind you. One of my biggest disappointments in Mr. Martin, if not the only real one, is that he aped the same bullshit line about the LOST finale that people who didn’t understand the ending shouted loudly for weeks/months without making ANY EFFORT to check if they were right. And they weren’t. That ending is NOT about everyone being “dead the whole time.” NOT REMOTELY.
And as Lindelof has said many times, if GRRM hated the ending and was disappointed, that’s fine. He can have his opinion. But he should hate it for non-made-up reasons that are based in NOT PAYING ATTENTION to that ending, or the episodes leading up to it.
I understand if someone is confused by the ending, but then make a fuckin’ effort to understand it before you preach about how awful it was that they were “dead the whole time.”
They weren’t.
Laura,
Hahahahaha!!!
TheTouchOfFrost,
I’m not sure what the hell that was, but it gave me a chuckle. 🙂
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
Alle Engelssprekers zijn lui en beledigend. 😛
Sam the Slayer,
Shame! 🙂
About Season 5: It was good, with a few major flaws: Dorne, the ending of Stannis’s arc, an over-reliance on shock moments and a feeling of hopelessness that was a bit too strong.
The rest of the season was the usual GoT quality: strong writing, stronger acting and beautiful directing. The High Sparrow, Braavos and Hardhome were standouts to me.
🙂
I’ve yet to do my rewatch of Season 5, yet, so there’s still time for my opinions of what did and didn’t work to shift (some opinion of mine always shifts on rewatch…I either realize something was better than I first thought, or maybe wasn’t as good as I first thought). I’m interested to see if my feeling of things seeming a bit crammed together will dissipate, or be solidified. So much was left out (that’s not a complaint, just an observation), yet it felt like almost too much happened. Then again, that could be my brain trying to process what was different, while trying to remain open to what we were given. Now that I know what’s there, I can just watch it for what it is. The US has a holiday weekend coming up in a couple of weeks, so that’s likely when I’ll do my rewatch.
I agree with him.
I’d probably rank it just below season 1 as my favourite. Another season consisting of mostly build up with a few payoffs at the end.
Plus Stephen Dillane had more to do and nailed every scene (Even the nod!)
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
It’s an anime called Hetalia. It’s an exaggerated allegory of political and historic events as well as cultural comparisons between countries who are represented by stereotyped characters. The episodes are only a few minutes long each but it’s not a bad easy watcher.
Lost wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get into the show. That’s just me though. To each its own.
Many shows last more than they should. One of them is Dexter. S1 is one of the best things I’ve ever seen… Amazing! The last seasons were unnecessary. The ending is… well, as good as the last seasons. Anyway, the first seasons are pure gold…
S5 of GoT reminded me of The Walking Dead style: slow, slow, slow for some episodes and then… BOOM! Zombies, zombies everywhere… 😀
I had no problem with season 5.
Well, that explains a lot about Lost…and why it sucked so much…
“There also have to be episodes that begin to—although this is never a storyteller’s intent—make [the viewer] go, “I don’t know, I don’t know about this…” That makes those excellent episodes all the more special. ”
So.. as a viewer, you need to sift through mediocre crap to really appreciate the good eps? That’s just BS and would be equivalent to a 5-star restaurant serving Hot Dogs as an appetizer and gruel as the main course so that their guests can *truly* appreciate the excellence of the dessert.
And citing “Hardhome” again and again as an example of season 5’s excellence is getting old. Yes: It was a *great* ep.. I rank it among the top three of the entire show. But that doesn’t make watching Arya washing corpses over and over, the Sand Snake-/Dorne-fiasco or the whole rushed nature of the “Cersei and the HS”-plot any less painful.
To come back to the original quote I posted: The cynic in me might even go as far as saying that having one truly great ep in a season can actually *hurt* your show. A lot of comments I read after Hardhome boiled down to: “no wonder the Dorne-arc looked so cheap and rushed.. they probably put 80% of their entire budget into Hardhome”. Is that what people want? To wait through seven or eight sub-standard to mediocre shows just so that they can get to the one or two stand-out eps at the end?
I probably wouldn’t either, if the drop in quality wasn’t this noticeable. I recently re-watched the entire series and – *compared* to previous seasons, S05 is a pretty big let-down. Which, IMO, is almost entirely down to story-related stuff. Well.. if we ignore the weirdly staged and filmed Sand-Snake-fight, that is.. 😉
Sascha,
I suppose what constitutes BS is subjective. I didn’t loathe S5 of GoT the way some people did. I did wonder about cutting a certain Dornish female character and making another the total opposite of her book counterpart. The way Sam and Gilly left in the show was okay although it could still have worked if the book plot had been used (except that a certain baby had been cut). I thought the earlier episodes in season 5 were intentionally slower because they were building up to the last three episodes – well that’s my tuppence (two cents) worth. Of course what one likes or dislikes is as I have said on another thread instinctive – how I react to season 5 can (and often is) different to how others react. I’m not making excuses for what this man has said because actually I never really liked “Lost” and apart from a couple of episodes at the beginning didn’t follow it.
Sascha,
This is higly subjective. I’m curently watching season 2/3, with a friend who’s new to the series. And i see no drop in quality.
Dorne could have been batter, but so could Qarth in S2. Other writing problems i fail to see, I tought KL story was among the best stories this year, in no small measure thanks to Lena and Pryce acting. They where superb this year.
If you say that you did not enjoy this stories, that is fine. But to say the quality of the writing is bad, is plain wrong.
Mods: I know you don’t like multiple user names on one email but I’ve changed my handle from Arya Havin’ a Larf? Hope this is OK!
Yes, and he turned up as a lawyer in ‘The Good Wife’ as I’ve just started watching series 1. Reckon I’m one of few who remembers seeing him as a young actor in Buffy.
Mieux,
Like you said “in books”. We’re here to talk of the show and in the show, the relationship between Jon and Ghost is not as important because he doesn’t need it.
And they did it with Bran because the whole Bran’s arc, in books and in the show, is about his power, he’s the strongest greenseer.
But what about Dorne… How can anyone defend that awful piece of shit television history?
I loved LOST!! It remains one of my favorite series ever..The first time i ever watched a show on the edge of my seat every week. Even liked the finale, never understood the hate it got. But i did hate Nikki and Paulo. And Michelle Rodriguez’s character (can’t remember the name, lol).
Ser Matt the Sullen,
What about Dorne? It took up 5% of season 5. All of the other arcs worked well for me, and I’m not going to let 5% ruin my experience.
Ser Matt the Sullen,
All of Dorne scenes took about 10-12 min. And the only scene i had problems with was the fight scene, where i blame the location, as the fight on the beach, with the guards was very well done.
Doran was great, and I enjoyed the prison scene.(already half of Dorne scenes)
Why i think many book readers don’t like Dorne is that the books made Dorne look more inportant, then it actoully is.(a problem that apears throughout AFFC/ADWD)
So what should i do? Hate the entire show for 5-10% of its scenes?(and I personally would give Dorne a 6/10) I didn’t like Qarth(wich was also 5-10% of S2), but i liked S2.
So you can say you didn’t like Dorne, its fine not everyone likes the same things. But too start saying that its ”awful piece of shit television history” is just plain stupid.
Your opinion is not fact. I have friends who enjoyed Dorne quite a lot.(show watchers only, got only 1 reader friend)
And if you need to use words like:”awful piece of shit”, it makes it hard to take you serious…
Mihnea,
There were pieces of bad writing in S6. Bad poosay, the lackluster ending of Stannis’s arc and Barristan’s weird and illogical death are only a few examples.
Sam the Slayer,
For you perhaps…
Beristan illogical? tell me what is illogical
I liked Stannis ending, reminded me of a greek tragedy, everything tha could go wrong. A ”lackluster” ending is not bad writing.
Again, because YOU did not like these things, does not make it bad writing.
I’ll give you the ”bad p**sy line”. the only line in the entire season i tought was, bad. But it didn’t annoy me or make me angry. just a quick luagh, wich was most likely intended.
Sorry I should have said “can be” in the above sentence. I’m rubbish at proofreading my own work – strangely enough I excel at noticing other folks’ mistakes!!!!
Ser Not Appearing – of course I’m not a mod but I think it’s okay if you are open about changing your user name. I was “Olde Crone” on the site that (almost) died of shame for a time but I was open about changing it and the mods didn’t rap my knuckles about it. I’ve wondered about changing my name again from time to time – not that I loathe my present moniker but I have wondered about avoiding possible confusion since Dame Pasty became ennobled.
Mihnea,
Barristan (and Grey Worm’s wounding too, for that matter) was illogical because he was supposed to be one of the best fighters in Westerosi history… And died because of a bunch of unarmed nobles with knifes. He should be able to kill them all without breaking a sweat; something that was clearly established in books and show (a little less clear in the latter).
Regarding Stannis, his ending was lackluster not because of the events that took place leading up to it, but because of the sudden-ness and illogicality. We’ve been following Stannis for four seasons: to suddenly end his story in two episodes is plain lazy and abrupt for one of the show’s main characters. The way he went down also doesn’t make any sense: Stannis would never sacrifice his daughter (to clarify: Shireen’s death in and of itself was not a bad thing, the fact Stannis agreed to do it (instead of Mel + Selyse doing it behind his back, for example) was), and for someone who is supposed to be the best military commander alive (which was stated multiple times!), he did an awful job in the battle (i.e. Why order a siege with so little men? Why not send scouts to look at what the Boltons are up to?)
Sam the Slayer,
With Baristen i’ll come back to you when he gets killed by a yunkish slave on stilts.
as for Stannis you try to argue that he should have used logic when he just lost his entire family. I know people who lost family, in those moments you don’t think straight.
As for him being a main character i think this is a joke, Jon is a main character, Arya is main character, Jaime is a main character not Stannis or Rob or Robert. And the best millitary commander does not get beaten by a dwarf.
Your problem is that you can’t see the character in a differant situation. Yes Stannis never would have burned Shireen in the books, as far as we know. Because she is not there. But she sure as hell was in the show. And now Stannis has a dillema he never had in the books. And this was the outcome.
In the show- Shireen goes with Stannis, he decides to sacrifice her to win the battle and the War for the Dawn, wich he thinks only he can win, he fails.
in the books- Stannis goes without Shireen. He ends losing the battle, Shireen gets sacrificed.
your problem is that you try to argue that Stannis, in the books would not have burned Shireen, but in the books he never had to face this question
Because one of your favorite characters died in such a way, does not make it bad writing.
Don’t. You’re thinking I’m one of the people who think GRRM is holy in everything he writes: I’m not. If Barristan dies in that (or a similar way) in the books, I’ll criticise GRRM for it as well.
Regarding Stannis, many of the things I’m pointing out could have been done before he lost his family (of whom he sacrificed one voluntarily and never cared about the other anyway), such as sending scouts. Besides, Stannis was never beaten by Tyrion. Weakened? Certainly. But Stannis was defeated by the Tyrells, who arrived unexpectedly: if you watch the end of Blackwater again, it becomes quite clear that Stannis would have conquered KL if it wasn’t for the Tyrells arriving right on time.
And Stannis was very much a main character, though in a different way than Jaime or Jon: he may not be a main character in the overall story, but he certainly was one in S2 through S5. Main characters are able to carry entire storylines, and Stannis did just that.
Your ‘different situation’-point makes no sense. Stannis is trapped in very much the same way in the books as well, and declares in that very same situation that he will have no burnings whatsoever and that his supporters have to try and put Shireen on the throne in case he dies. It’s quite clear that he won’t sacrifice her.
In the show, that is made clear as well, but in a different way: by Stannis showing his love for Shireen multiple times (3×05 and 5×04, for example). Yes, he was trapped in the show: but he would have been able to escape quite easily and figure out another way to win the war pretty soon, as it was quite clear that Stannis would rather keep his daughter alive than sacrifice her: until 5×09, at least.
Stannis is not even my favorite character. The Hound, Varys and Nimble Dick rank above him. 🙂
The Island wasn’t purgatory, you must’ve understood it wrong. They died first, the flashes in season 6 were purgatory
If Game of Thrones ends with them all in the sept hugging each other I am going to be super pissed.
Mihnea,
Totally agree on the subjectiveness. There are probably a lot of people out there who will defend post-season 9 seasons of The Simpsons as well..:)
And at the risk of beating a dead horse: I just thought that season 5 was a wasted opportunity more than anything else. The Dorne-stuff could’ve been done better – instead we got a weird, amateurish looking fight-scene, some cringe-worthy dialogue (“bad pussy”) and a great actor wasted in an underdeveloped and underused role (Alex Siddig). Or the HS-plot which seems to have come out of nowhere and made Cersei and the QoT look like bumbling fools. Or take Arya and her adventures in the House of B&W: Way too slow, too repetitive and it didn’t really lead to anything other than a brutal killing of a tertiary character and her blindness-cliffhanger.
The thing is: I don’t have a problem with where the characters ended up in s05ep10 – my gripe is more about their journey and the way the show messed up setting up those plots. In some places it felt a bit “rushed” to me.. while other stories lingered too long on uninteresting scenes. I guess what I’m trying to say is that some of the plots failed to “flow naturally”. Like the Red Wedding which didn’t come out of nowhere but had its roots in previous eps/seasons. Oh well.. maybe it’s the quality of the later books (I haven’t read them yet)… *shrug*.
Mind you: All of my gripes with the season I still consider “first world problems”. I enjoyed season 5’s stronger stories and eps and still rank GoT among the top three TV-shows I’ve ever watched. So as long as they don’t have Tyrion waterskiing in season 6, or Jamie getting a hipster-alien as a sidekick, it’s all good.. 🙂
S.
Sascha,
You need to read the last 2 books, You will understand the changes, and why most of us book-readers are happy they cut all the filler.
Mihnea,
I’m hard at work, reading.. 🙂 Book 2 is almost done.