Good TV

[Wizz]

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

@Faceless What I miss is political subtlety. Don't get me wrong, I really loved the season so far because they get to play with all those toys Martin has given one by one - and I could really not care less about nitpicking of the "how fast do ravens fly??" variety - but it's more about wide brush strokes and big battles than backroom dealing, clever betrayals and outmaneuvering.

In that environment though some of ASoIaF's greatest characters like Varys or Littlefinger really don't have much to do. Even Tywin would have found it tricky to thrive without focusing on him more as a military than a political figure.

I think this is largely because the series is running into endgame territory. All the backroom stuff was a slow build to this, a bunch of assholes refusing to believe winter was coming, now winter's come. Probably my favorite shot of the finale was Jaime seeing a snowflake hit his glove and looking up to see the stormclouds over King's Landing, followed closely by the Wall coming down. It's so heavy and inevitable and final, and puts all the human struggle and pettiness into stark, ugly relief.

[Arkandel]

@Wizz Thankfully climate change denial in the interest of short term political benefits belongs solely to the domain of fantasy fiction!

[Wizz]

@Arkandel
I MEAN IF WINTER WAS REALLY COMING WHY IS IT SO HOT AMIRITE

[HorrorHound]

@Wizz said in Good TV:

@Arkandel
I MEAN IF WINTER WAS REALLY COMING WHY IS IT SO HOT AMIRITE

S'okay! Winter has a suit, and the ladies love it.

[Jaded]

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

@Faceless Well, the narrative is pretty much leading there. When the plotline is "we need dragonglass weapons to fight the army of snow zombies led by a 12,000 year old lich king" it's just not very useful to be the guy who whispers into the right ears. I get that.

But I can still miss it.

Your summary makes it sound like their show writers worked at Blizzard some years ago.

[surreality]

@Arkandel FWIW, I was betting on the ice spears being able to do exactly what the ice spear did (she said vaguely, so as not to spoiler too brutally) as something of a parallel/foil to the dragonglass and/or valerian steel.

Even put in a bet with my father on which ep we'd see it shown in (second or third to last), who insisted this was stupid.

My dad now owes me $5, but the smug factor? Priceless.

[Bobotron]

Finally watched 7th episode of GoT.

Holy fuck I need a time machine to go FORWARD IN TIME I need the next season NOW.

[Cupcake]

I've officially been declared "Explainer of All Things GoT" at my workplace. Like, people will literally come to my desk and ask me to explain storylines, or wait for me to drop something off at their desk and request explanations.

[Arkandel]

@Cupcake What's funny is that I've seen it both ways... both indignant overly smug ASoIaF nerds raging about how the season is ruining things with too much exposition ("do they REALLY need to hand-feed us that intel about Rhaegar??") and completely casual viewers having zero clue about anything but the broadest strokes ("that smuggler is Jon's dad, right?") who, yes, need to have things explained to them somehow.

But I guess the bloggers with the clickbait titles rehashing reddit posts need to make a living somehow.

[Cupcake]

@Arkandel I should start demanding pay-to-click/request explanation tolls.

[Coin]

@Cupcake said in Good TV:

@Arkandel I should start demanding pay-to-click/request explanation tolls.

"If you want an explanation, bring a muffin."

[Arkandel]

GoT Season 7 Finale SPOIIIILERS.

... Still here?

Did anyone else get annoyed at the kangaroo court they had for Littlefinger in there? There was no evidence, no chance for the accused to prepare himself or even to know he'd be on trial, just a quick 2-minute recitation of the accusations and then an execution! He didn't get to ask for trial by combat or to negotiate taking the Black.

Worse? No one even passed the sentence, and if Sansa implied it then she certainly didn't swing the sword. Arya just went "eeh, I've heard enough STABSTAB". That's as much a Stark thing as wearing fur!

[Coin]

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

GoT Season 7 Finale SPOIIIILERS.

... Still here?

Did anyone else get annoyed at the kangaroo court they had for Littlefinger in there? There was no evidence, no chance for the accused to prepare himself or even to know he'd be on trial, just a quick 2-minute recitation of the accusations and then an execution! He didn't get to ask for trial by combat or to negotiate taking the Black.

Worse? No one even passed the sentence, and if Sansa implied it then she certainly didn't swing the sword. Arya just went "eeh, I've heard enough STABSTAB". That's as much a Stark thing as wearing fur!

Honestly?

No. Not really.

I found it appropriate, and in keeping with the attitude that all three of the people with actual authority in the room have developed over the course of the show.

Sansa learned how to be ruthless from Cersei, Joffrey, Ramsey, and Littlefinger himself, none of them people who would give their target a chance if they could avoid it, and she could.

Arya really likes killing people, and doesn't really give a flying fuck about rules when she does it.

Bran is beyond emotion and propriety as the Three-Eyed Raven now, and he knows the truth, objectively, as a nigh-first-person witness to it all, so there's no requirement of 'fairness' from his point of view, either.

Everyone else was either the command of Sansa, or probably had fucking enough of Littlefinger and was way more internally loyal to either Sansa or, at the very least, Jon, who left Sansa in charge, and they are smart enough to realize that coalescing the forces amassed under a single command instead of answering to Littlefinger-who-answers-to-the-Starks is just simpler.

In short: there wasn't anything Littlefinger COULD DO, never mind that letting him talk is just always a mistake and that was what Sansa learned--slowly, but she learned it.

[surreality]

@Arkandel They really didn't have any question in mind of his guilt. Or of the threat he posed to them. It had already been strongly implied that Bran had seen everything he had done with the recitation of the 'chaos is a ladder' line in the earlier episode. They have a real means of determining the truth or falsehood of accusations in the form of a dude who can actually see the actual past to verify whatever could be necessary.

Not really feelin' the injustice.

Sure, he could have asked for a way out -- combat or the wall -- but. Everywhere he's been, he has been an insidious threat, full stop. Even at the wall he would have remained no less a threat than he had consistently been everywhere else. Hell, they could have Man in the Iron Mask'd the dude in an oubliette and he still would have been a threat and everyone was painfully aware of this.

We're also talking about execution by someone with an actual hit list of those she deems responsible for her father's death, that she aims to carry out no matter what anybody thinks about it. Even if he made it through that scene in some manner with an 'out', dude was just not going to get past Arya the moment she became aware of his part(s) in betraying her family in pursuit of power in the longer term without more complex machinations that they likely have time to explore in what remains of the screen time for the series. This may end up being a different path taken in the books, since they are known to be divergent, but for the medium and intended limitations, it makes a lot of sense.

Edit: In my head, the last scene of this series does still somehow end with Littlefinger rowing past Gendry, still rowing in circles, with an awkward wave as Westeros burns behind the both of them.

[Wizz]

@Arkandel

Yyyyeah, I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand it felt like major plot rush, same as everything else this season...but on the other hand, it was like, damn. It really nailed home how hard and cold and...Stark (ba-dum PSH) the children have become, and while I'm not sure that we will I kind of hope that we see some kind of fallout for it in Season 8, like the show will acknowledge how rushed and unjust the trial was via Jon, even if Littlefinger was a piece of shit and seeing him get his was super satisfying.

[Roz]

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

GoT Season 7 Finale SPOIIIILERS.

... Still here?

Did anyone else get annoyed at the kangaroo court they had for Littlefinger in there?

Um, no, it was the most satisfying part of the whole episode.

Sansa and Bran were both witnesses to his crimes. When the noble family in charge witnessed your crime, it's not that strange for them to move swiftly to execution in a feudal society.

There's no innocent until proven guilty here!!

[Cynan]

@Coin said in Good TV:

In short: there wasn't anything Littlefinger COULD DO, never mind that letting him talk is just always a mistake and that was what Sansa learned--slowly, but she learned it.

This. I mean, also everything else you said, but this especially.

When your opponent is the guy whose superpower is talking his way out of everything, and when he's demonstrably caused at the very least dozens of deaths (and way more if you blame him for every death in the wars he started) by doing so, you don't give him the chance to talk his way out. It may have been extreme, but it was justified in context.

[Lain]

I don't mind that they got rid of Littlefinger, but it was a bit anticlimactic for my liking. Also the way he crumpled and begged like a bitch seemed way out of character.

Also Littlefinger was a fun wildcard. He did the job well.

[Arkandel]

@Lain said in Good TV:

Also the way he crumpled and begged like a bitch seemed way out of character.

We don't know that - he'd been made of teflon for so long with nothing sticking on him that he was never in a live-or-die situation before. By the time trouble went near him he had either already ensured he had won or he was ready to bail.

Also the crying part might have been a ploy.

But hey, at least Arya has his face now so maybe we haven't seen the last of the actor, who really is great.

[Kanye Qwest]

It was totally in character for him to beg. Littlefinger was a person comprised 70% of ambition and 30% of survival instinct. The imbalance is what got him killed, but I think it's totally in character for him to do whatever he thinks might get him a little more time to manipulate Sansa.