GRRM really wrote the series into a corner. There's a reason it's been almost 2 decades since the original trilogy, and he still clearly has no f**king clue how to come up with a good ending. Therefore the showrunners are being forced to scramble to come up with something. There's clearly a disconnect between the guy who wrote the original trilogy (which was a masterpiece), the middle 2 books (same person, much lower quality), and the TV showrunners who are trying to write a compelling and entertaining finish. They tried to stay somewhat loyal to the books in season 5, and it resulted in a boring season overall. I'm not sure whose idea it was to have Cercei blow up the sept and destroy the Lannister/Tyrell union, but that stupid choice really left them no good story options to put up a resistance to Dany, so now they are being forced to create conflicts. Yes this was a very fan servicey episode, but again I enjoyed it overall, save for unnecessary sex scene, and another gross out jump cut (seriously WFT is with that). The writing isn't as strong as earlier seasons because the guy who wrote the source material for those earlier seasons isn't any help. So they are forced to fall back on just trying to make it entertaining, and I feel they are still doing a good job of that.
It was very fan service oriented and I'd suggest that now that they are off be books the show will be that way going forward. I'm not convinced these writers are actually good storytellers. They certainly lack logic. -cersei looks like she is set to lose (Jamie said as much) yet the lords of the reach, noble knights, are going to betray their lord house to join her? Ok fact, olenna declared rebellion against the crown, why would these houses even meeting with cersei? They know what she did to lords at the sept, including many of their own. Why would they all even think about meeting her? -it's kind of annoying that we have to use contrived plot devices to reset the game to make cersei a feared bad guy again. She starts the season with no allies and surrounded by powerful enemies and through no doing of her own all of sudden the reach is ready to betray olenna and euron conveniently finds the greyjoy fleet and smashes it. Weird enough that in an island with no resources they just managed to rebuild the entire iron fleet bigger and badder for him. Who knew all anyone has to do was ask? One thing I'm sick of hearing is that so and so "believes" in Danny. That is such nonsense. Anyway I've accepted that the narrative will be weaker and less logical going forward. It will still be good television .
He knows how it ends and he's told them that, but they don't know the story used to get it there. So for example they may know that Jon ends up King and that he defeats the White Walkers and that certain other characters are dead, but they have no clue how GRRM actually gets us to that point. Not defending GRRM here, I gave up on the books, but the show writers haven't shown they are good at creating logical stories. I suspect we will see a lot of stuff that is cool to look at but ultimately makes no sense and that we will see illogical ways for the show to keep threats active. We already see it with Cersei.
"Fan service episode" has a sort of negative connotation... but I'm not really sure why the show-runners should be criticized for a.) trying to advance/wrap up the story in the limited amount of space and b.) creating a hint of suspense/unknown so that the ending is not entirely predictable. I presume nobody here actually does know the ending.... what if they all die? What if there is no happy ending? In the end, I presume most reviews of last night's episode end up favorable... which makes sense since fan service episode also implies that they're giving the majority of the fans who watch the show what they want.
My biggest problem with the Euron armada, is that they were able to build those in what seemed a short amount of time (forget the fact that there was probably not enough wood on Iron Islands), that you could maneuver them to sneak attack a flagship of another fleet, which IMO was a huge budget shortcut by the showrunners. I think the takeaway from the lords and bannermen scene, is that King/Queen title still holds some power, and most of them are just hoping to pick a winning side. Personally, I enjoyed the Dany scene with the allied houses. Maybe lack of team chemistry takes them down a notch.
You're questioning the logistics of building ships in a world that has dragons and little girls can change faces/voices whenever they want. I do like the logic of Dany's team showing a semblance of restraint against burning it all down... because then, what's the point of taking over if everybody's dead?
I mean there could be an advanced robotic factories tucked away on the Iron Islands. Or they could've just showed Euron dismantling homes, whipping the commonfolk to slave labor conditions to build ships NK style. Just tightening up some of the storytelling would've gone a long away of explaining how Euron is a powerhouse. Spoiler From what the books, it seemed more like he has a small elite group and some magic horn and generally just a crazy bad ass.
Do we know exactly how much time has passed since Euron whipped the iron island-folks into a frenzy over supporting him?
I will echo what others have said. Eurons overnight super fleet built from an island of no resources is down right negligent. And how they managed to sneak up Yara's fleet. How did Euron know that Ellaria would conveniently be on this fleet so he could serve her up to Cercei. One would find this kind of writing on a network television show. All in which they needed a 5 minutes sex scene to detract from the atrocity. At this point, Cercei has no allies. Randyll Tarly and the Grayjoys have always been minor houses that nobody took serious. The Martell and Tyrells could easily keep Cercei busy. Im starting to see why they truncated the last two seasons. They have no material that doesn't involve half of the material being pointless filler.
Unfortunately, GMM was a little too good and detailed in his first few books and foreshadowed everything. We all know where this is going to go. The only thing we don't know is who really wins in the end.
Fantasy is fantasy. Magic and dragons and Faceless Men and White Walkers and whatnot. But since there is presumably no magic for the Iron Islanders to make wood grow and put together ships and such, then this is a legitimate complaint......or whine, anyway. In 1600, say, planet Earth, it would have taken a shipwright and his work crew months to build a single ship. Granted, there are gaps in time in the episodes. Varys didn't get on a jet and fly to Dorne then hop the red-eye to Meereen and join Team Dany, just as these new episodes don't all occur within a couple days. They are definitely telescoping the story like what happened with "Rome" in its second season. There, it was a budget thing, and could have gone on another couple seasons, but was forced to wrap up quickly. Here, they know an audience will start to fade out if they don't wrap it up with a bang. One thing's for sure. We're not going to be saying, "Boring, nothing happened this week." Even if we can question the logic of hiding out, waiting for your crazy pirate uncle to attack you. The three lady captives are in such DOO. The woman who killed Myrcella, PLUS her own daughter? Cersei will have a field day there.
GoT intentionally keeps time irrelevant. What we do know is the Greyjoys are not a very big army. We also know Yara took a significant group with her. To build that kind of fleet takes a very long time and this has been pointed out a couple times in the past. Even the Lannisters never build one because of the time and effort. If you're saying years have passed, then what is the White Walker army doing? Walking around in circles waiting for Daenarys to finish up her conquest and to wrap up the story line down there?
The "you're questioning logic in a show with magic?" line is so lame. The show still operates within its own logical realm. The Iron Islands were a small kingdom to begin with, lost men in their invasion of the North and then lost all of their ships and a chunk of men with Yara and Theon. Yet on an island with few resources and few men left they built 1,000 ships and MANNED them all? It's completely illogical. They then sneak attacked the other Greyjoys and wiped them out in a quick massacre. Sorry, it's dumb and illogical. The show needed to quickly erase the fact that Cersei was about to get gangbanged by the entire world AND they found a way to get rid of the need to ever spend money a huge naval battle. As for @superfob saying people just want to be on the winning side, there is no reason the Lords of the Reach would even meet with Cersei. There was no reason to think she could be a winning side AT ALL. She killed a ton of noblemen including those representing the Reach. An alliance has formed against her that includes the Tyrells, Dorne, Danny and her massive army and 3 dragons. Dragons mind you that Westeros should be terrified of, particularly the Reach. The Lannisters have been running out of money since season 2 and have been in a state of constant warfare. The North has rallied to defeat her loyal servant in the North, the Value has come out publicly in favor of House Stark, the Lannisters have lost control of the Riverlands... The person in the middle of all that invites the Bannermen of her enemies to meet with her without their armies and they agree? Are they stupid? Real issue is that the show needs Cersei to be a strong villain and there was no reason for her to be that anymore. So they just went "poof" and restored her to the position of powerful, evil ruler that needs to be conquered. All the time spent with stupid Dorne stuff was totally washed away as irrelevant. They are literally a non-factor lol. Not that I'm sad we won't see the Sand Snakes anymore, but it was awfully convenient how this episode was essentially nothing more than restoring us to the status quo of Cersei being really powerful and writing off a bunch of allies for Danny.
