Aside from the issue that you simply can't flee from an army that doesn't sleep headed by a telepathic, dragonriding warlord, you propose they flee to King's Landing where they're summarily butchered by Cersei?

Sounds good but I don't think I've ever seen a movie or television show depict large medieval battle scenes in this manner. Maybe I'm just not remembering an obvious occurrence, but maybe the simple answer is that a realistic, historical siege wouldn't make for nearly as entertaining a spectacle?

Ep. 5 already has a few hundred 1 star reviews on IMDB.

This season has had its problems, but the brigading has been a bit much.

Agreed

LMAO

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Jonah brings me more entertainment than anything the current GoT season has offered so far.

Mostly for a couple reasons.

1) Sieges are boring. It is mostly two sides just staring at each other till one of them gives. Either the attackers give up and go home* or the defenders run out of food and surrender. Assaulting the walls was a rare thing because taking a castle was extremely dangerous for the attackers. The things were constructed to be murder machines. Even breaching the walls wasn't a victory.

2)It takes a lot of effort to actually make a castle under siege and the siege camp look right. The castle will have built out defenses and the siege camp will have siege equipment and earth works. You would have to cgi most of it.

3) Battles were somewhat rare and usually lasted less than half an hour once forces were engaged. A battle lasting an hour was a long one. Medieval armies tended to be much smaller then is currently imagined. Most were in the thousands rather than tens of thousands.

*Knights and such there on feudal obligation weren't getting paid so once their obligation is up and they think that they won't get their money's worth in land or ransom then they will leave.

I'll never understand the point of that.

To be honest, I feel Season 8 has been around the same quality as Season 7. Reddit and 4chan had just convinced themselves that GRRM’s point of the whole series was a Targ Restoration, and a lot of the criticism is coming from fans who now see this thing is going to wrap itself up with a straight up tragedy.

I think a lot of people looked the other way at Season 7’s problems because they believed Jon and Dany were going to get a happy ending — otherwise eps like Eastwatch and Beyond the Wall should have received way more criticism than they did on IMDB, Rottentomatoes, etc.

Yep. And at this point, there seems to be a bunch of folks locked into that position. Episodes 5 and 6 could be the greatest things ever set forth on television and those folks will bitch and pick it apart. Seems like a bummer to dedicate 8 years of following a fictional television program, only to spend the last couple of months insisting on shitting on the closing of said series. Oh well, to each their own. I’m excited to see how it wraps up.

In season 7, there was still hope that the issues were necessary to set up for an epic ending. That hope is now dead.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but you're way off base from my perspective. I have neither expected nor wanted a happy ending. What I wanted was an ending that makes sense within the context of prior events, and demonstrable, consistent character development. And that's where I believe the show has utterly failed. Characters are doing things that make absolutely no sense, either with respect to their own recent actions, to their more distant past actions and with respect to their character development arcs, many of which began back in season 1. Things are happening for no other reason than convenience: "we need this person to be here doing this thing at this moment". And so we end up with nonsense like the last half hour of last week (and, I expect, what we get tonight).

I can still enjoy the show for what it's become. Turn-your-brain-off-at-the-door popcorn entertainment where all anybody is watching for is dopamine hits from fan service nods and cheap, empty shocks when characters die in puzzling, stupid ways. But I also feel disappointed that that's what the show is at the very end, a shadow of what it once was, and less than it should be. But it's not bad. It's okay.

All of this is fair analysis. I think I’m wondering why the internet hate train is only just now taking off - because in terms of public reaction, Season 7 had as good of reviews as it could have hoped for - while Season 8 has been reviled since the airing of Episode 3. DaFace’s analysis (that fans were hoping Season 7 cut corners out of thematic necessity) makes sense. I just haven’t seen much of a change in quality from Seasons 7 to 8 as the critical commentary and online hate make it seem.

It's really been discussed ad nauseum at this point, but when I say that hope is gone, it's really just that the hope that the show runners really understood the essence of the books in general is gone. It's pretty clear to me at this point that they didn't really understand the role of the supernatural in GRRM's world and, as such, have basically nerfed it all. Lady Stoneheart doesn't exist. None of the Starks can warg except Bran, and we don't really even know what the point of his character is at this point. The direwolves have all but been written out of the story. The prophecy of Azor Ahai seems to have been ignored entirely. The Walkers were taken completely out in a single episode by Deus Ex Arya.

The books really made the reader think that the gist of the end of the story was going to be a lesson about humanity being so focused on squabbles for power that they missed the bigger enemy. Is it possible that this was exactly what GRRM planned? It's possible, but given how concerned he's always been about setting things up and then adding twists on what you expect, that seems highly unlikely.

So for me at least, that's what it all comes down to. Episode 3 showed me that the show runners haven't been rushing to the end because they just needed to get there. They're rushing to the end because they don't know WTF to do and never really understood the story in the first place.

Anticipation (so as not to use the word "expectations" again) ...

Fans anticipated a cathartic crescendo in the concluding episodes ... not an awkward, nonsensical soap opera that is essentially a bunch of guys dropping their fiddles in a clumsy "danse macabre".

Tragedies can be great, too. Not every story needs to have a "happy ending" in order to be effective and wonderful. The problem here is that the fans' ambitions and enthusiasms are incompatible with the writers' abilities. It is what it is. No grand culmination (at least, so far) that answers questions and resolves seemingly crucial implications established earlier ... just a slow, agonizing, ungainly death. That's what happens when you don't have an ending ... and when you underestimate (or undervalue) your audience.

FAX

All good points.

My concern is that Seasons 7-8 (and G.R.R.M’s recent excerpts) show that George really has no idea how he wants to land this story.

Up through Season 6, the show really tried everything it could to adapt his vision to the screen.

Ah well. Hopefully he does write the finish this series deserves someday.