Episode 6 Review!

SPOILERS AHEAD Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Okay episode six comes to a close with one of the biggest reveals in the entire series and I think we are all speechless. So let's get into it. From here on in, there be dragons.

        Ice Dragons! Many had been long speculating this for George's novels and it's funny...there were a lot of teasers and promo posters and things of Ice Dragons for Season 7 that got everyone in a frenzy but it was hard to imagine this actually happening. It was never made clear if they were fan-made or not...but either way the prophecy has come true (for the show, anyway): Viserion has been killed and will be the Night King's steed. This is huge. I was very impressed with all the action sequences in the episode. Obviously they went to great lengths to ensure this be a grand visual spectacle. I'm still not sold on why they decided to go through with this ridiculous plan in the first place, but here we are. I'm admittedly swept up in the big reveal and considerably less salty than last week, but of course, as par for this season, this episode still committed a laundry list of cringe-worthy moments concerning exposition, forced dialogue and contrived devices. Let's get into it.

BEYOND THE WALL PT. 1

        We open with some bro bonding and discussion about how it's cold. Well maybe if y'all brought some hats along with you...never mind, not important. This segment is filled with some fun character moments and quotes including, but not limited to:  

"Walking's good, fighting's better, fucking's best."
                                                                                       -Tormund Giantsbane

"You're winging. This one's been killed six times and you don't hear him bitching about it."
                                                                                        - The Hound

(Because being sold off and then sexually abused is funny when it happens to men because Mal has a nice pair of tits! So much for Sandor's character redemption lol. )

And how about this exchange between Tormund and the Hound:

"Want me to suck your dick?
"My what? "
"Cock.
"Oh. Dick, I like it."
"Bet you do." (plays laugh track)

This is followed by some fan service about Tormond being in love with Brienne.
     
        So if we are going to spend all this time on this ridiculously nonsensical journey, I'm glad the conversations are at least...fun? I mean if you parallel the jovial nature of this misadventure to the painfully forced "Catiness" happening in Winterfell, it's absolutely atrocious but hey...we can't have the whole thing be so tonally dramatic, right? It appears that all that drama they set up of nobody in the group getting along wasn't foreshadowing, just filler, because they seem like a rag-tag group of old war buddies to me. Amazing that they resolve their (several) differences in a thirty second scene while Arya and Sansa have been wandering around hissing at one another for the entire season, but more on that later.  
        Mixed in with the sit-com banter scenes there is some good dialogue from Beric (You and I aren't going to have much fun while we're here. Death is the enemy. The first and the last. The enemy always wins, but we still have to fight it.) that leads me to believe that our lightning lord isn't long for this world, sadly. They also decide to address Longclaw with Jon and Jorah. It was a bit funny to have Jon bring it up, seeing as how it was in plain sight for their entire journey north. Fine. I'm glad they are addressing it though.
        Jon offers him Longclaw (which probably would have been a better thing to do before they left for a suicide mission that he needed a weapon for) and Jorah rejects it knowing that he brought shame to the Mormont name. I don't know why Jon seems to want to cozy up to Jorah and be nice to him...I mean they literally have had 2 scenes together where the main focus wasn't even about them. All Jon knows about Jorah is that he sold slaves and betrayed Dany and ha(d) Greyscale. Oh well! Here's your family heirloom!
         Another layer that perhaps I'm stretching with a bit, is the subtext about Jorah seeing that Dany has begun to develop feelings for him (Jon), and Jorah is, in a weird traditional way, "giving Jon his blessing." Not that Jon or Dany need to have it, but they need to have some narrative recognition of Jorah's love for the woman Jon is clearly about to be with. Perhaps, again I'm adding layers to this surface scene that simply aren't there, but Jorah has been the closest thing to a father that Dany has ever known, and would they had spent more time actually developing on-screen chemistry between Jon and Dany, instead of having every other damn character in the show reinforce the notion that they are crushing on each other, then this scene between Jorah and Jon might naturally have had that subtext without me trying to desperately search for some layered narrative meaning. It might be that Ian Glenn knows how to give such powerful, expressive reactions, and deliver lines like "and your children after you," as though he's discovered the secret to all human emotion and is only aloud 5 words to express the thought...I know that's a lot to unpack from one line of dialogue, and most of this season has been completely surface level intrigue and emotion, but you can't keep me from making things more interesting than they probably are! Yeah okay, the scene is probably just about the sword.  
       

WINTERFELL

        Cryptic Arya is just a mess. Why is this longwinded monologue being directed at Sansa? Why are we poisoning all these fond memories of Arya realizing who she wants to become just so we can squeeze out contrived drama? Well, we need for Arya to bring up her hatred of the Lannisters in order for this plot to make sense. So let's tie in Sansa's thin connection with them to which she was a political prisoner and abuse victim and blame her for the downfall of the Starks. Will do. The annoying thing is that it's a well-written, well delivered monologue but it's just used as a device to pour on the Sansa hate. After all Arya's training, and growing and understanding of how twisted and manipulative people are, she's just out to tear down her sister in a way that's almost more characteristic for Littlefinger. Is that why Arya doesn't trust Sansa? Because she knows Littlefinger is treacherous and figures that Sansa may be easily manipulated by Littlefinger? Why not just tell Sansa this? Tell Sansa about when you were a cup-bearer for Tywin and Littlefinger walked in...I mean that scene is something that's in the show only, so why not use it to your advantage? But rather than Arya being level headed and investigative, she has become a naive, accusatory, irrational little monster.
        The Starks are not kin slayers, so the fact that they are making this long-forgotten note into a season-long plot is deeply frustrating. I wish they got this arguing out of the way when they first reunited. The reunion at Winterfell was so flat and uneventful, they might as well have just went with this melodramatic mood from the start. It was too long a build up and this slogging plot of "sibling strife" has offered the audience absolutely nothing while simultaneously butchering these two characters. It's as if Arya has spent 6 seasons laying awake at night thinking about how much she hates the way Sansa looks in her pretty dresses. As if she's been indefatigably pining for the day she can return to Westeros and kill Sansa. She hasn't, in case you were keeping score. She has better things to do like...ohhhhh maybe that list that has been at the center of her character arc since season 2? Again I ask from the rooftops "Why did Arya even bother coming back home?" 
        Also, every time the show refers to the battle for Winterfell as the Meme-erific Battle of the Bastards, I die a little bit. The fandom calls it that, not the f@cking lady of Winterfell. Also, why isn't Sansa allowed to have nice things? How many times are you going to criticize her for being traditionally feminine? Are we going to even the playing field and start calling you Arya horse face the way everyone did in the books?  Are you still holding onto when Sansa lied in front of the King and then they had her Direwolf executed as punishment for your wolf maiming the prince? Nice. You've really grown a lot.
       Book Arya is actually jealous of Sansa because she views her as the perfect embodiment of female--Sansa is just like her mother, even prettier. I always found Arya's struggle so empathetic, not because she's some alpha fem with a vendetta against pretty girls, but because she's struggling to find her place, her role in a society that is clearly not built for her to succeed. That's why we love Arya and that's why George is constantly praised for his feminist characters.  I thought this show was hailed as being "super feminist," as well. Is that all it takes? Having some tomboy shaming other women for daring to be more feminine than they are? Got it.
        Sansa is then consulting with LF and she's nervous that the Lords will betray her if Arya shows them a letter written 5 years ago that we are supposed to believe would have any relevance at all. Littlefinger not so subtly suggests to her that she could have Brienne "protect her," which, yeah, thanks.
        Sansa goes snooping around and finds Arya's faces in her laptop bag. Arya catches her sister and gives us another slowburning, unmotivated tension-fest where she basically threatens Sansa's life and tells her to make the first move. Is it a test? Well either way it's full on fan fiction at this point because Sansa is not on Arya's list, and Arya is showing all her cards all at once, right away, to officially be in the running for the worst assassin in Westeros. Arya is now blackmailing her sister, but to what end? If this is all some plot to expose Littlefinger, they need to hurry up and do that before they destroy these two characters for good.
        Arya then hands Sansa the dagger after frightening her. Is this to instill fear in Sansa or is this meant to inspire her to "do what needs to be done?" There is a hint of intrigue here and then it sputters out with another note (so many great plot devices!) that Sansa receives from Cersei beckoning her (why?) to King's Landing. So Sansa is sending Brienne in her stead because she thinks Little Finger is trying to get her to kill Arya, thus sending the North into chaos. Or am I overthinking that and they just want to throw stupid road blocks in the way to create a faux sense of danger at the expense of logic? Anyway, Sansa is seemingly trying to be sensible and trust-worthy to her sister because it's really the only move she has. Is there any way Sansa can have a plotline where she's not being backed into a corner by people she thought she cared for? Oh well.
         Some people were speculating that the note was made up, but I think that would be pretty unwise to send Brienne into enemy territory. She would be killed. I believe this letter from Cersei to be real, simply because the series doesn't have time to explain why Sansa would concoct such a plan. They have to stick with surface level intrigue. Why Sansa isn't at all suspicious of why Cersei would be organizing some grand meeting in King's Landing, I don't know. I feel like if your direct enemy (unless all this silly war stuff is just forgiven) sends you an invitation to something, you laugh at it and toss it in the hearth. In either case, she sends Brienne away in service to the plot, which may or may not lead to Brienne's and her own death. Alrighty.

DRAGONSTONE

        Alrighty let's continue trying to convince the audience through the eyes of other characters other than Jon and Dany, that Jon is in love with Dany. This time it's Tyrion who bears the burden of the cringe-worthy seed planting. Then Dany makes some offhanded comment about not liking short men, which of course Tyrion takes offensive to, being particularly small himself. Other than that, this scene is just more gravy in case you couldn't already tell that Dany and Tyrion aren't seeing eye to eye (see, I can make tactless dwarf-related puns too.). What's confusing about these scenes is that they always start off reminding the audience how great and wonderful Tyrion is, and how much Dany respects him, but then she spends 10 minutes arguing with all his points, and refusing to listen to his council. So here we are again, with Dany and Tyrion in plot prison because if they were actually given something constructive to do (are they still in a war or...?) then Dany wouldn't be able to stick around for the obvious plot development. The only problem is that Dany is all the way down on Dragonstone, probably more than a thousand miles away from Jon+ Company...
        What needs to happen with the Dany/ Tyrion story arch is that they need to decide who's story it will become. At this point, both characters have become uninteresting shells of who they once were because they are seemingly on pause for plot reasons. For now, Dany continues to be deeply suspicious of Tyrion for daring to voice his opinion and make logical sense. I feel like I'm repeating myself. Oh. It's because the same story problems occurring in the Dany/Tyrion plot are a direct mirror of the problems happening with Arya/Sana and with Jaime and Cersei. While all the other plots move at lightning speed, and characters fast travel to wherever the plot demands them to end up, their character arcs are trapped in limbo.  

An aside: I'm glad they are addressing the Tarly incident. It might  just be them covering their tracks for treating characters like plot devices this season but at least they addressed it.

BEYOND THE WALL: THE BEAR

        The reason this entire "Beyond the Wall" segment is void of drama and such a disconnect for the audience is because they aren't there out of consequence, they aren't there because they have no other option, they are up north of the wall due to some thirty second musings from Tyrion. In the last episode, he putters around the stone table and just says "hey, here's a crazy idea!" and the rest just go with it. In the past, Game of Thrones delivers consequences to brash, nonsensical thinking...now they are reveling in the spectacle as though we are watching Saturday morning cartoons.
        Thoros is attacked by a pretty cool zombie bear. This is an exciting action sequence and there's a hint of irony that it's Thoros who saves the hound from the inflamed bear and gets mortally wounded. But the hound freezing up because of his fear of fire is never addressed for the rest of the episode. Thoros seems fine after his bear wounds are cauterized Revenant-style, but yeah nobody calls out Sandor for this fatal character flaw that eventually causes Thoros to die...no arc, no remorse, just...well that happened.
         In the next segment, he's walking with the others as if his wounds from earlier were actually just cramps. They then stumble across a party of wights. These wights are led by a Walker and heading single file to conveniently check out the trap that was sent for them. At least I think that's what we are intended to think? Jon kills the Walker and then all the rest of the wights fall dead save one. They catch it by tossing a burlap bag over it and then SUDDENLY! They are overwhelmed by the army of the dead for their final boss fight.

Here's where the nonsense takes full flight.

        Gendry Olympic sprints all the way back to the Wall to "send a raven to Daenerys". Care to tell us why? Is it to tell Dany sh!t she already knew? That the dead were coming? Why didn't she just come in the first place? So she could sit around and argue with Tyrion?
        The party runs out into an island in the middle of a frozen lake because how can we have the "behind enemy lines" trope complete without getting trapped and surrounded? And that's what we do. We sit and wait between cut scenes to establish a passage of time. For the first time in the entire season, they go out of their way to establish that time has passed. So Gendry Baratheon, whose nickname is now "the fastest," has to run all the way back to the wall. But no sweat. He makes it. So Davos sends a raven to Daenerys which apparently says:

        "Hey you have to fly like a thousand miles up north to some lake deep beyond the wall because the dead army has surrounded Jon+Friends right on the one yard line. You have to go risk everything with you, and all three of your dragons in order to save Jon, for whom at this point I have no idea why you would have any narrative purpose to do so."

        But dammit if she doesn't get a sudden burst of energy and do just that! She flew to the reach and back with no consequences, and Drogon seems to be absolutely fine after getting a giant scorpion bolt in the shoulder, so wait until you see her next trick! She hops on Drogon looking like Elsa from frozen and flies off!
        At this point, Thoros has frozen to death and the dead have attacked our magnificent seven (six) and it's a super bad@ss sequence if you ignore the logistics. How long have they been sitting there, days? Weeks? Well the lake freezes over again and they run to attack. Lots of hacking and slashing fun commences. Our heroes can't possibly make it out alive! Unless of course the scene right before this has anything to do with -- oh it's Dany to the rescue!! Seemingly weeks later because that's how long it would take to run back to the wall, send a raven all the way to Dragonstone, then fly beyond the wall... Dany arrives in the nick of time.
        Had this plan been laid out ahead of time and not come out of nowhere bending all rules of travel and time, it might have actually been satisfying. There was no reason for Dany not to have at least gone to the wall with them last episode, I mean all they did with her was have another conversation with Tyrion which, again, could have been had at the wall. Well, let it go, because Elsa is on her dragons roasting wights and we are lifting the choppers out of here--but oh no! Jon is all blood thirsty and won't stop killing wights, dang it. They stick around just long enough for the Night King to make an attack. Instead of attacking Drogon, and the entire party including Dany and Jon, he rolls a nat. 20 on his special ability and bam! Viserion goes down. All they had to do to make this more interesting was have Viserion fly at the White Walkers and the Night King. This way we can see that our heroes actually know what the f@ck they are doing, and it gives cause for the Night King to attack Viserion rather than Drogon and the party. Let's pretend that happened...Woah, isn't that sufficiently more dramatic because we saw our enemy being frightened by these beasts, and were given a payoff with Viserion's death? Awesome. So the party flies away and leaves Jon because he's the hero, which is expressly a turn-off on Dany's OKWesteros profile.
        There is more to this adventure for some reason. All the tropes you can imagine. They fly away and one hero (Jorah) almost falls off and then is grabbed before the camera can even catch up it, then Jon is knocked into the frigid water but, much like Jaime's cliff hanger, we know Jon will be fine. How you ask? How about another deus ex machina scene where Benjen shows up for 12 seconds to give him his horse! Jon won't freeze to death either because, well, I don't know. Do we need this?
        My only theory is that Jon needed to see Benjen as a narrative reveal that Jon will end up just like Benjen. Jon is undead. I know the show doesn't care about this major plot development and character trait/flaw but Jon is undead. So is Benjen. And since they spend absolutely zero screen time exposing any of what that is like, I can only speculate this point. It might just be that D&D wrote themselves into another corner and wanted to give the audience something extra to fret about, but they aren't the type of show runners known to do that, are they? In the past, they've used deus ex machina not in a cheap way, but in a rewarding payoff of entire season-long plots. The Lannisters and Tyrells joining forces to save Tyrion & Co in the Battle of the Blackwater, or Stannis coming to save the Night's Watch from the wildlings because Mal told him where the real war is to be waged, or the knights of the Vale coming to win Winterfell after Sansa plotted for a season with Littlefinger, who we never thought could be trusted to do a damn thing. The device does not feel cheap when reason and narrative payoff are the main ingredient, the devices used in this episode just feels like cheap excuses to get from A-Z .
         
        EASTWATCH

        Dany is upset (sort of, I guess) about her Dragon dying and then Jon comes roaming up to the wall on his faithful steed. In his recovery bed, the dragon queen goes to him. Jon wakes up and we bear witness to the biggest, ungodly cringe-fest that this show has ever offered. So Daenerys comes in and gets a peak at his yummy hairless pecs I mean his stab wound and she thinks "So he did take a knife to the heart? Innnnnnteresting." Jon then wakes up and apologizes because he's a guy and that's just apparently something guys do unprompted. In reality he should wake up and say "I F@CKING TOLD YOU SO," but hey, I'm projecting. Dany's Dragon just died and so Jon has to be super nice even though Dany doesn't seem to care. She came to their rescue after their ridiculous plan fell through, and now she's lost one of her "children," so now we have to be nice. But she is seemingly far more affected by Jon Snow being (plot)hurt than she was when shedding her crocodile tears for Viserion, and one is left to wonder...was this whole plot really just a stupid excuse to ship (get it, they're ON A SHIP) Jon and Dany. Ugh.
        Then something happened that made this cringe-fest the most cringiest of cringe. Jon refers to Dany as "Dany," and my stomach violently turned. I think it was supposed to be cute? I think it was supposed to draw a parallel between Jon and Viserys (Jon is her nephew after all) but all it made me want to do was curl up into a ball and die. They put us through that moment simply to get us onto the subject of "Well what shall I call you, Father Aunt Mary" (I'm really proud of that layered pun I just threw at you) and he decides that, despite this entire season, despite the northern lords, and despite all the reasons given why he won't do it...he's going to bend the knee and call her his Queen. Then they hold hands and, kids, that's how I met your aunt mother.
           The ENd.

            Wait no! Cut to beyond the wall.
         
        The dead are pulling the dragon out of the frozen lake. Where did they got the chains? That I'm less concerned about I guess, but how did they get the chains on the dragon? These things require planning and logic, but then why would we need that? This is all in service to the payoff which my inner fanboy jumped for joy. And Smaug becomes an ice dragon...I mean...Viserion. This is almost an identical shot of the end of AN Unexpected Journey, but hey. Blue eyed, undead dragon. Cut to black. Sweet.
        So episode 6 is officially in the books and I'm starting to think their advertising campaign was a sham because they promised up a bunch of lengthy episodes with sprawling set pieces and, well, I don't like being that type of demanding fan so whatever. I don't care if you use paper dragons and plastic swords, just make your writing cohesive and logical, and give respect to the characters and the world you've created. That's all.
        I think this season suffered greatly with the foolish decision to have only 7 episodes. The sprawling world, the exciting road shows, the clashing of personalities and the intimate character moments either do not exist, or they exist in such a fast pace, that all weight is lifted from these moments entirely. Jon + Dany go from refusing to bend the knee, to having dull history lessons in caves, to now suddenly being in love? Sana and Arya go from estranged lost siblings with clear purpose and emotion, to bitter, scheming little monsters without hardly any cause. They aren't growing, they aren't having anything new happen to them, they're all just there for filler, quite honestly, until Jon comes back into their lives. The main issue, as I've said before is that they spend so much screen time with fabricated exposition, spectacle and fluff, and then when it comes time to have significant plot revelations or touching moments, or anything that requires a bit of tact, or time, or weight...it falls flat. The ten episode formula worked. It gave us breathing room, it gave the plot time to settle, and it gave the characters time to react and deal with the consequences of whatever it was that just happened to them. With such nonsensical story telling you risk breaking the trust that your audience once had in you as an author. For me that trust has been broken and I think with this episode above all others, Game of Thrones has jumped the dragon.      

See you next week for the finale where we're going to have to wrap up like 8 plots that have gone untouched for 3 episodes!

-CjM