Game of Thrones Review: Season 8 Episode 5
I have never been truly disappointed by an episode of Game of Thrones before, but boy am I disappointed now. Actually, frustrated is a better word. It's as if the showrunners have been watching a completely different show all this time; what's been happening in season 8 has convinced me that they don't understand their own show at all, or--even worse--they don't care about it anymore.
A quick disclaimer before we start: I know some people like this season. I know some people are happy with how this is working out. This is no shade to you. Your opinions are valid, and I respect them. Frankly, I wish I could enjoy this season too. I've defended this show for YEARS, even when they made big plot bumbles (in my opinion). I've defended other episodes in this season because I thought we were building to something that would be satisfying. Now, I'm beginning to regret that. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad the show will be over next week. I'm not going to miss it, and I'm ready to rip the bandaid off. Based on what happened this week, to my mind, there is no way they can end the show in a satisfying or comprehensible way.
Before we dive into the nonsensical mess that this episode created, let me start off by saying that there were some good moments in this episode.
We finally got the Clegane bowl! Now, that was a story arc that was well handled. Plus, that fight was amazing! When the Mountain started to pull the sword out of his stomach, I was like "uh-oh, we might be in trouble here." When he put the dagger through his eye and the Mountain still didn't die, I was like "oh come on!" But, in all seriousness, it was very fitting that they died in fire and they died together. I'm glad the Hound finally got his revenge, even if he had to go down at the same time. There was no other way for his story to end.
I also liked Jaime and Cersei's deaths. The only way they could go out was together in each other's arms. There was no other way to end their arcs. Sure, it would have been better if one of them killed the other one, but I'm not too mad about it. I wish Jaime could have stayed with Brienne and been happy, but that just wasn't in his character. Jaime is essentially a Cersei addict. We, as the audience, hoped that he could stay away from her and stay "sober," but, in the end, his death had a certain sort of inevitability. It was also kind of touching (for lack of a better word) to see Cersei reconnecting with her humanity at the end. When the walls (literal and metaphorical) start closing in, I felt bad for her. As she sobs and says that she wants her child to live, it really is a tragic moment. Although Cersei has been the engineer of her own fate in many different ways, it's sad to see an intelligent woman with a lot of potential fall victim to her own greed and lust for power. Lena Headey didn't have a lot to work with in this season, but she really turned in a first class performance.
I was also really moved by Jaime and Tyrion's goodbye. When you put those two characters together, magic happens. It was their last scene together, but boy what a last scene! I was fighting back tears the whole time.
Arya decides to live! I loved the moment between her and Hound when he basically tells her that she has to change her ways or end up like him. It was powerful, and I'm glad that Arya decided to live. I keep picturing her in one of those shirts that says "Choose Life" a la the Wham music video. Maybe she'll end up shacking up with Gendry after all? Who says that the lady of Storm's End has to wear silk dresses and sew. Lyanna Mormont was the lady of Bear Island and she was a warrior through and through.
I'm not going to lie, it was pretty cool when Drogon blasted his way through the wall behind the Golden Company. Now that's how you fight a battle!
Plus, throughout the whole episode, the cinematography was on point. This episode was visually beautiful, and the special effects were truly amazing. On an emotional level, it was really distressing to watch (and not just because of the brazen character assassination), but it was supposed to be difficult to watch. Compared to everyone in the city burning alive, what Cersei did with the Sept of Baelor a couple of seasons ago was a practical joke. From a directing and visual stand point, the episode did everything it was supposed to do; the storytelling and the writing are the problem.
In fact, I was cool with just about everything up until the bells started ringing. Before that, the episode was going well. It was predictable, but enjoyable. We were finally seeing Dany achieve what she's been working for for years. After the bells...
Daenerys' turn in this episode made me so angry I couldn't stand it. When she was sitting on Drogon on the top of the wall and her eyes were going all crazy (great acting by Emilia Clarke by the way; none of this was her fault), I thought she was going to fly at the Red Keep and destroy it/try to get at Cersei. When she started torching the streets of King's Landing, I was flummoxed. It was far more of a horror movie than anything we saw in episode three. So, how on Earth (or how on Westeros) did we get here?
The only true explanation is that she went mad: truly and clinically insane. I mean, she must have lost her mind, right? The only problem is that that's not really how insanity works. The show tries to imply that emotional pain set her over the edge. Insanity is not an emotional response; it's a medical condition, a clinical disease. But, if we accept that this is an emotional response, it makes even less sense. We've seen her lose people and things that she cared about before (most notably her husband and child), but she never responded by taking out her pain on innocent people. Dany's responses have always been targeted and logical.
In the inside the episode feature, the showrunners explain Dany burning the city by saying that she decided to "make things personal." Um, excuse me, making things personal doesn't mean murdering millions of people after they surrendered. Making it personal means killing Cersei (and maybe Euron) with her own hands. Making it personal might mean tearing down the Red Keep. Dany has said that she wants to rule the people of King's Landing; she's never expressed any particular anger toward them. If the people of the city had done something to her (desecrating Missandei's body, for instance, or mocking her when she visited in season 7), it would have made more sense. But there was zero reason for her to do what she did.
So, even if you accept that this is an emotional response (which doesn't make any sense to me), you have to accept that it is tinged with madness, and, as I noted above, insanity doesn't really work like that. Even if it did, the change is too abrupt from a storytelling aspect. The showrunners essentially throw years of character development out the window in half an hour. There was no build up to her being insane; they just decided to take her character in a random new direction. If they wanted to take her in this direction, they needed to set it up from the beginning of the show. Instead, they completely ruined the character; it's almost as if they don't know anything about Dany at all!
Now, I know that there are a lot of people (mostly on Twitter) who are trying to make the case that her past actions have hinted at her madness. I think those people are confusing insanity with brutality, or maybe they just don't want to believe that the showrunners could destroy the show so blatantly.
So, let me prove to you that Daenerys is not mad (or, at least, hasn't been mad in the past). Right now, many people are pointing to acts of violence and brutality committed by Daenerys and calling them madness. Maybe they want to believe it's madness because they don't want to believe that Dany is capable of being so cold; they want her to be the silver-haired princess we've all grown to love. After all, if she's insane, all of her bad actions were out of her control.
That's not the case. From the beginning, Dany has been fiercely intelligent, driven, and motivated to achieve her goals. She has a keen political mind, and everything she does is calculated to advance her own cause. Let's set aside ideas about good and bad for a minute. whether or not Dany is a good person doesn't have much relevance in this conversation, and it doesn't have any bearing on her supposed madness.
Has Dany been brutal? Yes. Has she done morally questionable things? Yes. Has she done cruel things? Yes. Does that make her insane? No. Everything Dany has done from season 1 onward has had an underpinning of logic. Almost everything that people point to as evidence of her madness was done in service of her own motives and to advance her goals. On the rare occasions when she takes personal revenge or levies her own personal vision of justice, her response is proportional, if not always wise.
For example, after she conquers Meereen, she takes revenge for the crucifixion of the slave children by crucifying an equal number of slave masters. Now, we can argue that this was a bad decision, and I think it was. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, after all. However, there is logic in this decision. Her action wasn't random, and, from her perspective, it was just. She killed the people who she believed to be responsible for the deaths of the children. Furthermore, Dany was later able to acknowledge that her action was a mistake and learn from her error. That is not the act of a mad woman.
In their behind the episode segment, the showrunners cite Dany's lack of reaction to her brother's death in season 1 as a hint at her true character. Of course, they seem to conveniently forget what Dany's brother was like. Why should she mourn for a man who subjected her to repeated physical and emotional abuse? Furthurmore, by the time Viserys died, Dany was well aware that he wasn't politically savy enough to lead the family back to Westeros. In fact, he was very likely mad. To Dany, Viserys represented only an impediment to regaining the Iron Throne.
I've also seen some people online point to the burning of the khals in Vaes Dothrak as a sign of her madness, and, frankly, I think that that is preposterous. Dany has always been motivated by gaining power, and killing the khals was an obvious way to increase her power and build her army. For a woman interested in gaining power, it's a no-brainer. You can argue that seeking power in that way is morally wrong, but that doesn't make Dany insane. And, frankly, in Game of Thrones, ideas about morality are pretty irrelevant for most of the characters. I think that Dany tries to be a good person (at least, from her perspective), but she doesn't believe that being a good person means that she has to sacrifice her own aspirations.
In fact, in this episode, her actions work against her goals in an unprecedented way. Although Dany have made mistakes that have damaged her cause and power base in the past, it's always been accidental. Here, she throws caution to the winds and decides to rain down fire on her own troops and supporters, including the love of her life. Season 7 Dany understood that destroying King's Landing would irreparably damage her image and make it more difficult to consolidate power. If we accept that burning King's Landing was a decision--and not a mental breakdown--it's difficult to imagine that she would inflict so much willful damage to her own cause. Even Aegon Targaryen--Dany's ancestor and role model--didn't sack cities after they surrendered.
Another problem I have with Daenerys' switch in this episode is that they imply that Jon rejecting her love was the thing that set her off, or, at least, the last straw. The idea that Dany would go on a murderous rampage because she's upset with her boyfriend (and she's been upset with him for a while, by the way) reinforces negative stereotypes about women and annihilates all her character growth throughout the years. Daenerys is now a petulant, spiteful child, not the intelligent woman we've grown to respect. I think this is a moment when we could have used a woman in the writer's room.
So, when we consider Dany's character arc, we're left with these questions: what was the point of all those seasons in Essos? What was the point of years of learning to be a leader? Why did we watch those episodes? Why did the show treat her triumphs as victories? The show made us root for Daenerys, and to have her character arc end in meaningless anger and violence is deeply unsatisfying. True, her story was never going to have a fairy tale ending, but I think we all expected her character development and personal growth to mean something at the end.
I also have an objection to a huge plot hole that this episode creates. If Dany could defeat the Lannister armies and force King's Landing to surrender without really injuring any civilians with only one dragon, why didn't she do it in season 7? She didn't attack King's Landing in season 7 ostensibly because no one could figure out how to take the city without hurting innocent people. In this season, she seemingly came up with her plan of attack in a very short period of time between episodes 4 and 5. Even though Tyrion advised against attacking King's Landing last season, you'd think they'd be able to figure out how to take down the city without creating carnage over the course of 7 episodes. In the end, it only took Dany a few hours to bring the city down. I think it would have made more sense to have Dany capture King's Landing last season and become the queen. Season 8 then could have focused on resolving the White Walker plot in a more satisfying way and dealing with the implications of Jon and Dany learning that they're related. The question of Northern independence could also have been addressed. Or, maybe Cersei escapes in season 7 and Dany has to deal with her leading a rebellion against her. In my opinion, any of those things would have been more interesting than what we got. However, this is kind of a minor point compared to the larger issues of character assassination that are going on here.
Another problem I have with this moment in the series is Cersei's arc. I don't mind that she died in this episode, I don't really mind how she died (although I would have preferred a more impactful scene), but I am annoyed that she didn't really have anything to do in this season. Most of it was her looking out the window and drinking wine. Again, this is really a minor thing compared to all the other issues I've expressed here, but I think it bears mentioning anyway.
My only consolation in all of this is that George RR Martin has said that he's sad about the way the show ends and the ending will be different in the books. I mean, it almost has to be different because the storylines have diverged so much. Maybe she'll have a legit reason to destroy King's Landing in the books. Dany might end up as the Mad Queen, but, if she does, he will certainly do a better job of setting up that switch. Even though the books offer some consolation, I'm really disappointed in the way the showrunners decided to end the show. Apparently, HBO wanted them to do more seasons and they were like "nah, we're good. We just want to end it." (Probably because they're eager to get to their Star Wars project now.) If they lost interest in the project and stopped caring about the show, I wish they had turned it over to someone else. The fans did not deserve this.
Valar dohaeris.
(Side note: I didn't talk about my predictions for future plot points in this review because, at this point, there's very little future plot to consider. However, I think Sansa is going to end up on the Iron Throne. Long may she reign. She's been my favorite character since I read the first book almost ten years ago. At least I can feel somewhat satisfied about that.)
A quick disclaimer before we start: I know some people like this season. I know some people are happy with how this is working out. This is no shade to you. Your opinions are valid, and I respect them. Frankly, I wish I could enjoy this season too. I've defended this show for YEARS, even when they made big plot bumbles (in my opinion). I've defended other episodes in this season because I thought we were building to something that would be satisfying. Now, I'm beginning to regret that. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad the show will be over next week. I'm not going to miss it, and I'm ready to rip the bandaid off. Based on what happened this week, to my mind, there is no way they can end the show in a satisfying or comprehensible way.
Before we dive into the nonsensical mess that this episode created, let me start off by saying that there were some good moments in this episode.
We finally got the Clegane bowl! Now, that was a story arc that was well handled. Plus, that fight was amazing! When the Mountain started to pull the sword out of his stomach, I was like "uh-oh, we might be in trouble here." When he put the dagger through his eye and the Mountain still didn't die, I was like "oh come on!" But, in all seriousness, it was very fitting that they died in fire and they died together. I'm glad the Hound finally got his revenge, even if he had to go down at the same time. There was no other way for his story to end.
I also liked Jaime and Cersei's deaths. The only way they could go out was together in each other's arms. There was no other way to end their arcs. Sure, it would have been better if one of them killed the other one, but I'm not too mad about it. I wish Jaime could have stayed with Brienne and been happy, but that just wasn't in his character. Jaime is essentially a Cersei addict. We, as the audience, hoped that he could stay away from her and stay "sober," but, in the end, his death had a certain sort of inevitability. It was also kind of touching (for lack of a better word) to see Cersei reconnecting with her humanity at the end. When the walls (literal and metaphorical) start closing in, I felt bad for her. As she sobs and says that she wants her child to live, it really is a tragic moment. Although Cersei has been the engineer of her own fate in many different ways, it's sad to see an intelligent woman with a lot of potential fall victim to her own greed and lust for power. Lena Headey didn't have a lot to work with in this season, but she really turned in a first class performance.
I was also really moved by Jaime and Tyrion's goodbye. When you put those two characters together, magic happens. It was their last scene together, but boy what a last scene! I was fighting back tears the whole time.
Arya decides to live! I loved the moment between her and Hound when he basically tells her that she has to change her ways or end up like him. It was powerful, and I'm glad that Arya decided to live. I keep picturing her in one of those shirts that says "Choose Life" a la the Wham music video. Maybe she'll end up shacking up with Gendry after all? Who says that the lady of Storm's End has to wear silk dresses and sew. Lyanna Mormont was the lady of Bear Island and she was a warrior through and through.
I'm not going to lie, it was pretty cool when Drogon blasted his way through the wall behind the Golden Company. Now that's how you fight a battle!
Plus, throughout the whole episode, the cinematography was on point. This episode was visually beautiful, and the special effects were truly amazing. On an emotional level, it was really distressing to watch (and not just because of the brazen character assassination), but it was supposed to be difficult to watch. Compared to everyone in the city burning alive, what Cersei did with the Sept of Baelor a couple of seasons ago was a practical joke. From a directing and visual stand point, the episode did everything it was supposed to do; the storytelling and the writing are the problem.
In fact, I was cool with just about everything up until the bells started ringing. Before that, the episode was going well. It was predictable, but enjoyable. We were finally seeing Dany achieve what she's been working for for years. After the bells...
Daenerys' turn in this episode made me so angry I couldn't stand it. When she was sitting on Drogon on the top of the wall and her eyes were going all crazy (great acting by Emilia Clarke by the way; none of this was her fault), I thought she was going to fly at the Red Keep and destroy it/try to get at Cersei. When she started torching the streets of King's Landing, I was flummoxed. It was far more of a horror movie than anything we saw in episode three. So, how on Earth (or how on Westeros) did we get here?
The only true explanation is that she went mad: truly and clinically insane. I mean, she must have lost her mind, right? The only problem is that that's not really how insanity works. The show tries to imply that emotional pain set her over the edge. Insanity is not an emotional response; it's a medical condition, a clinical disease. But, if we accept that this is an emotional response, it makes even less sense. We've seen her lose people and things that she cared about before (most notably her husband and child), but she never responded by taking out her pain on innocent people. Dany's responses have always been targeted and logical.
In the inside the episode feature, the showrunners explain Dany burning the city by saying that she decided to "make things personal." Um, excuse me, making things personal doesn't mean murdering millions of people after they surrendered. Making it personal means killing Cersei (and maybe Euron) with her own hands. Making it personal might mean tearing down the Red Keep. Dany has said that she wants to rule the people of King's Landing; she's never expressed any particular anger toward them. If the people of the city had done something to her (desecrating Missandei's body, for instance, or mocking her when she visited in season 7), it would have made more sense. But there was zero reason for her to do what she did.
So, even if you accept that this is an emotional response (which doesn't make any sense to me), you have to accept that it is tinged with madness, and, as I noted above, insanity doesn't really work like that. Even if it did, the change is too abrupt from a storytelling aspect. The showrunners essentially throw years of character development out the window in half an hour. There was no build up to her being insane; they just decided to take her character in a random new direction. If they wanted to take her in this direction, they needed to set it up from the beginning of the show. Instead, they completely ruined the character; it's almost as if they don't know anything about Dany at all!
Now, I know that there are a lot of people (mostly on Twitter) who are trying to make the case that her past actions have hinted at her madness. I think those people are confusing insanity with brutality, or maybe they just don't want to believe that the showrunners could destroy the show so blatantly.
So, let me prove to you that Daenerys is not mad (or, at least, hasn't been mad in the past). Right now, many people are pointing to acts of violence and brutality committed by Daenerys and calling them madness. Maybe they want to believe it's madness because they don't want to believe that Dany is capable of being so cold; they want her to be the silver-haired princess we've all grown to love. After all, if she's insane, all of her bad actions were out of her control.
That's not the case. From the beginning, Dany has been fiercely intelligent, driven, and motivated to achieve her goals. She has a keen political mind, and everything she does is calculated to advance her own cause. Let's set aside ideas about good and bad for a minute. whether or not Dany is a good person doesn't have much relevance in this conversation, and it doesn't have any bearing on her supposed madness.
Has Dany been brutal? Yes. Has she done morally questionable things? Yes. Has she done cruel things? Yes. Does that make her insane? No. Everything Dany has done from season 1 onward has had an underpinning of logic. Almost everything that people point to as evidence of her madness was done in service of her own motives and to advance her goals. On the rare occasions when she takes personal revenge or levies her own personal vision of justice, her response is proportional, if not always wise.
For example, after she conquers Meereen, she takes revenge for the crucifixion of the slave children by crucifying an equal number of slave masters. Now, we can argue that this was a bad decision, and I think it was. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, after all. However, there is logic in this decision. Her action wasn't random, and, from her perspective, it was just. She killed the people who she believed to be responsible for the deaths of the children. Furthermore, Dany was later able to acknowledge that her action was a mistake and learn from her error. That is not the act of a mad woman.
In their behind the episode segment, the showrunners cite Dany's lack of reaction to her brother's death in season 1 as a hint at her true character. Of course, they seem to conveniently forget what Dany's brother was like. Why should she mourn for a man who subjected her to repeated physical and emotional abuse? Furthurmore, by the time Viserys died, Dany was well aware that he wasn't politically savy enough to lead the family back to Westeros. In fact, he was very likely mad. To Dany, Viserys represented only an impediment to regaining the Iron Throne.
I've also seen some people online point to the burning of the khals in Vaes Dothrak as a sign of her madness, and, frankly, I think that that is preposterous. Dany has always been motivated by gaining power, and killing the khals was an obvious way to increase her power and build her army. For a woman interested in gaining power, it's a no-brainer. You can argue that seeking power in that way is morally wrong, but that doesn't make Dany insane. And, frankly, in Game of Thrones, ideas about morality are pretty irrelevant for most of the characters. I think that Dany tries to be a good person (at least, from her perspective), but she doesn't believe that being a good person means that she has to sacrifice her own aspirations.
In fact, in this episode, her actions work against her goals in an unprecedented way. Although Dany have made mistakes that have damaged her cause and power base in the past, it's always been accidental. Here, she throws caution to the winds and decides to rain down fire on her own troops and supporters, including the love of her life. Season 7 Dany understood that destroying King's Landing would irreparably damage her image and make it more difficult to consolidate power. If we accept that burning King's Landing was a decision--and not a mental breakdown--it's difficult to imagine that she would inflict so much willful damage to her own cause. Even Aegon Targaryen--Dany's ancestor and role model--didn't sack cities after they surrendered.
Another problem I have with Daenerys' switch in this episode is that they imply that Jon rejecting her love was the thing that set her off, or, at least, the last straw. The idea that Dany would go on a murderous rampage because she's upset with her boyfriend (and she's been upset with him for a while, by the way) reinforces negative stereotypes about women and annihilates all her character growth throughout the years. Daenerys is now a petulant, spiteful child, not the intelligent woman we've grown to respect. I think this is a moment when we could have used a woman in the writer's room.
So, when we consider Dany's character arc, we're left with these questions: what was the point of all those seasons in Essos? What was the point of years of learning to be a leader? Why did we watch those episodes? Why did the show treat her triumphs as victories? The show made us root for Daenerys, and to have her character arc end in meaningless anger and violence is deeply unsatisfying. True, her story was never going to have a fairy tale ending, but I think we all expected her character development and personal growth to mean something at the end.
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| How I feel about Daenerys after this episode |
I also have an objection to a huge plot hole that this episode creates. If Dany could defeat the Lannister armies and force King's Landing to surrender without really injuring any civilians with only one dragon, why didn't she do it in season 7? She didn't attack King's Landing in season 7 ostensibly because no one could figure out how to take the city without hurting innocent people. In this season, she seemingly came up with her plan of attack in a very short period of time between episodes 4 and 5. Even though Tyrion advised against attacking King's Landing last season, you'd think they'd be able to figure out how to take down the city without creating carnage over the course of 7 episodes. In the end, it only took Dany a few hours to bring the city down. I think it would have made more sense to have Dany capture King's Landing last season and become the queen. Season 8 then could have focused on resolving the White Walker plot in a more satisfying way and dealing with the implications of Jon and Dany learning that they're related. The question of Northern independence could also have been addressed. Or, maybe Cersei escapes in season 7 and Dany has to deal with her leading a rebellion against her. In my opinion, any of those things would have been more interesting than what we got. However, this is kind of a minor point compared to the larger issues of character assassination that are going on here.
Another problem I have with this moment in the series is Cersei's arc. I don't mind that she died in this episode, I don't really mind how she died (although I would have preferred a more impactful scene), but I am annoyed that she didn't really have anything to do in this season. Most of it was her looking out the window and drinking wine. Again, this is really a minor thing compared to all the other issues I've expressed here, but I think it bears mentioning anyway.
My only consolation in all of this is that George RR Martin has said that he's sad about the way the show ends and the ending will be different in the books. I mean, it almost has to be different because the storylines have diverged so much. Maybe she'll have a legit reason to destroy King's Landing in the books. Dany might end up as the Mad Queen, but, if she does, he will certainly do a better job of setting up that switch. Even though the books offer some consolation, I'm really disappointed in the way the showrunners decided to end the show. Apparently, HBO wanted them to do more seasons and they were like "nah, we're good. We just want to end it." (Probably because they're eager to get to their Star Wars project now.) If they lost interest in the project and stopped caring about the show, I wish they had turned it over to someone else. The fans did not deserve this.
Valar dohaeris.
(Side note: I didn't talk about my predictions for future plot points in this review because, at this point, there's very little future plot to consider. However, I think Sansa is going to end up on the Iron Throne. Long may she reign. She's been my favorite character since I read the first book almost ten years ago. At least I can feel somewhat satisfied about that.)
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