Add me to the list of people who watched it early to avoid being spoiled. No regrets. It's a humdinger of an episode.
Why not? What does it matter if i adhere to a company's schedule or enjoy their mistake and see an episode early, many people (including me) don't feel any kind of obligation or loyalty to a company that offers a product which they have already prepaid.. The HBO subscription is still paid if you are an HBO customer and the others.. well, the Internet works fast
yeah, I didn't want to be spoiled (more than I already was), although I don't REALLY care about spoilers, as it's the HOW more than the WHAT that really matters. Already pay for HBO, so while I didn't watch it that way yesterday, I will again on Sunday anyway, so whatever. Plus, why wait if I don't have to? It's available now. On the other comment, forgot about Ghost a while back, but yeah, not dead or MIA, just chilling in the Winterfell kennels I guess. Apparently they had a bit for him in the script a couple episodes (just Jon saying hi to him on his way down to Dragonstone), but it got cut sometime before it made it to air. Maybe about the time they tried to justify finishing/paying for the CGI at the final cut, I guess.
It was funny reading in the first book how Tyrion thought some guy was an idiot for trying to cross over some deep water in full metal gear (during a battle) and inevitably drowning in the deep waters. That's basically what should have happened to Jamie in a recent episode.
Jaime was wearing a special type of armor that has flotation properties. I believe the technical term for it in medieval times was "plot armor"
More specifically, it was "hero plot armor." If it was a random Lannister who charged at Daenerys but was knocked off at the last second and landed in the deep water, he would be dead. And forgotten.
Unfortunately, not only should Jaime's heavy armor have dragged him to the bottom, the extra weight of his solid gold hand should have made it completely impossible for Bronn to have lifted and swam with him as far as he did. Way too easy.
Yep - assuming they were in panic fight-or-flight mode, that would have also used up their oxygen much quicker. All in all, really pushing the boundaries of suspension of disbelief lately. Euron's magic fleet, the crows who fly at superluminal speeds to deliver urgent messages, people who move around whole continents in mere hours and now Jaime's floatation armor. Oy vey, what's next?
I have to agree. I don't know if it's the result of the shortened seasons or the general direction of the story but it all seems a bit crammed and moving to fast (geographically) for it to make sense. I'm especially bummed that Bronn and Jaime managed to escape.. in full armor, drowning and surrounded by enemy troops. Yet they break water well awaqy rom where they fell in (never mind that the river or pond Jaime was next to seems to have an absurdly steep fall from shore to deepest part all within a a metre or so). I don't mind suspending belief once in a while or the use of plot armor but GoT was usually better at this and it runs contrary to the whole "Anyone can die at any moment for the dumbest reasons" that made GoT so popular.
Part of the problem is that now they're in the home stretch, they're running out of disposable characters and it's too late to introduce anyone new for the audience to miss or even care when they're killed off. Have to say I can't help but feel sorry for the people making this. For over half a decade all anyone seemed to complain about is how slow the plot moves and now they've picked up the pace to where something epic and exciting is happening in every episode, all people can say is "OMG! SLOW DOWN IT'S ALL TOO FAST!!!"
That's another thing that never made sense to me. I've never heard of a homing pidgeon that could deliver messages to multiple locations. The idea was that the birds would always go straight to their home roost. The show and books seem to instead think of ravens as magical Harry Potter owls who can seek out random individuals. Theoretically, I suppose you could keep multiple birds from various castles/home roosts, but one would think there would be a time limit on how long you could keep a Casterly Rock raven in, say, Winterfell and not have it eventually consider Winterfell as its home roost.
It's extremes on either end of the storytelling spectrum. If they had taken a more balanced approach earlier on and not gotten SOOOO bogged down in travelogue minutia, they would have had more space later on to tell a tighter story. Instead they front-loaded the early seasons with a lot of unnecessary filler. That and they made a HUGE mistake (IMO) making these final two seasons so damn short. Next season will be even shorter which, of course, will be a bigger mistake. I'm sure we're going to see a lot more magical time compression and impossible movements of main characters before it's all said and done. I chalk it up to every major house having a metric ass-ton of ravens in their rookeries, each with its own dedicated source and destination. It would certainly be believable in the context of the Citadel - they even have their special white ravens for the announcement of the arrival of winter. It has been kind of a logistical stretch, I agree, but not nearly as glaring as some of the other recent absurdities.
If this were a wholly original show, I might agree, but it's an adaptation. An adaptation that despite it's at times languid pace, still managed to skip over whole swaths of material. *cough*ladystoneheart*cough* Given that they were also adapting a (still!) incomplete series of books, one can forgive them for dragging their heels a little in hopes that GRRM will managed to knock out the last one before they caught up. Didn't pay off, but then hindsight is always easy, no? Now they've passed all the authorial material they're just going for it and finishing this off (possibly before the remaining cast start asking for silly money to renegotiate?) It actually took me a while to realise he was even Sam's brother. Not that I'd have remembered the actor that played him last time. He was in what? One scene? I think the predominant thought when he showed up was "Oh hey, it's Billy Bones!"