Television When was your Game of Thrones breaking point?

Enjoyed it right until the end, but last season was quite clearly rushed & nonsensical.
Quite clear that the first seasons were the all time best though.
The writing was through the roof in those seasons, let alone the verbiage used (which went from British English Lord of the Rings style, to American in latter seasons).

It does make sense since the first seasons were based on the actual books, and the latter seasons were created by hollywood execs with piss poor writing.
 
I was still on board till toward the end of season 8 but season 7 was obviously a significant dropoff in quality from the very solid season 6. It's just many of us excused it because we knew there was still one more season to work with and potentially improve things (they're going to take two years to make it, it's GOT TO BE GOOD...).

Season 7 still had its good episodes and moments. That episode 4 battle, like you said, was really well executed. Season 8 even had a couple of good episodes and moments. But when you have a great series, you really should be sticking the landing and season 8 certainly did not do that. It crumbled in the big moments. Long Night battle- a jumbled mess that even the GOAT GOT director could not salvage.

Not only that but all that build up for Frost Maul and co. and they were treated like a co-main event on a Conor McGregor card. Hell, like a co-co- main event since Weiss and Benioff rapid-fire played it like Frost Maul is the big bad, no Cersei is the big bad, NOO Dany is the big bad. All within three episodes. Rushed, ridiculous stuff.

Dany's heel turn was handled in a terrible manner. No nuance at all. And executed in the most ludicrous way possible. She goes from someone who protects civilians, particularly women and children to someone who goes scorched earth deliberately on citizens. Not only does she not have qualms about killing them but she actively goes out of her way to kill them, prolonging the siege when the Lannisters already surrendered so she can do grid lines across the city nuking everything in her path rather than, you know, flying straight to the Red Keep and killing the person she actually has beef with.

But y'know Targaryen, something something, flip a coin, something something, burn them all, something something.

It was just bad. The failure of episodes 3 and 5 on that season were so significant that the entire season was a wash. And the final season should have been, at the very least, satisfying.
 
Oh and also, Bran's arc was handled terribly. He becomes king and no one could possibly care because he was made to be a dull dud in the final couple of seasons. This might have been excusable if they had made his power factor into the defeat of the Night King. However, they instead made him ineffectual, serving only as live bait for the white walkers.

Arya striking the killing blow on the Night King is not inherently problematic. But it absolutely should have been a collaborative effort. It's right there. Jon can't get to Bran because of the zombie dragon. Have Bran warg Rhaegal- as everyone had been hyped for him to do, devastate the already injured zombie dragon and then clear the field for Jon to get to Bran. Then have Jon and Arya team up to take on Frost Maul.

No excuse for having Jon and Bran whose story arcs were most directly connected to the White Walkers have no role of note in taking them down.
 
Sand snakes were epically bad.
I really disliked the portrayal of most of Arya's arc. I was rooting from her from the beginning but it ended up just feeling aimless. Her transformation into a super assassin just didn't feel believable.

The worst thing is that it went nowhere. Again, piss poor Hollywood writing.
Her arc was supposed to be a traumatised girl going rogue and becoming a killer, which felt believable.
Problem is that went nowhere and they just made her go back to being normal (just slightly more adept with a sword than others).
This is unbelievable.

I would have continued Arya's descent into hell, becoming one of those assassins that can change faces, and maybe even killing some of her own family before getting killed herself (having become a demon of her own).
 
People complain about the second to last season, but I still Loved it then. The seven samurai mission ‘to catch a whitewalker’ (why don’t you have a seat right over there) episode was fucking epic, and eminently rewatchable, I don’t care what anyone says.

The final season was an absolute shitshow though. The castle siege where almost NO ONE died, such pussy ass shit. Dany turning evil just for the sake of it, such unbelievably contrived soap opera bullshit. Mutant-faced Arya jumping across 5 time zones to kill the Night King, because yass queen girl power, one of the stupidest & most embarrassing scenes ever conceieved. There were still a few great moments sprinkled throughout (Red Witch’s sacrifice, Hound vs. Mountain), but not enough to offset the overall absolutely catastrophic derailment, which amounts to the single worst plummet of a series of all time. Shame on D&D, those snake oil hacks. Shame on GRRM too, that brilliant but ultimately lazy Santa sloth.
 
When stannis killed his daughter, I started to develop a hatred for the writers, Stannis was too noble snd iron willed to let women break him down like that
 
When stannis killed his daughter, I started to develop a hatred for the writers, Stannis was too noble snd iron willed to let women break him down like that

It was precisely BECAUSE he was so noble & iron-willed, that Stannis was willing to do that. It didn’t work, but them’s the breaks when you are a true leader making the tough decisions. #IStanStannis
 
The second to last season was poor, but only at an "end of Sons of Anarchy" level.

The actual last season was complete and total dog shit and I was watching it hatefully out of pure obligation because of previous time invested, the same as Dexter.

One of the all time GOAT bed shittings in TV and movie history.
 
It reached a laughing point for me when they essentially made an episode appear so dark that it was like watching a black screen that had sound attached.

I thought it was one big troll job.
 
People complain about the second to last season, but I still Loved it then. The seven samurai mission ‘to catch a whitewalker’ (why don’t you have a seat right over there) episode was fucking epic, and eminently rewatchable, I don’t care what anyone says.

I thought that was really where the show was clearly sacrificing thought out long term storylines for stuff that would look good for a couple minutes at a time on screen and storylines that would seem good for the length of an episode if you didn't think about it too hard.

The whole idea of capturing a white walker to convince Cersei in the first place was a silly plan. All of that risk of key people to catch a white walker and transport it around the globe and why would Cersei necessarily be convinced to do anything anyway if she saw one. I'm trying to think of an analogy...something like...in the middle of WW2 Churchill and FDR decide to go into hostile and wartorn territory to personally capture...an Antarctic polar bear that has a manifesto about how it wants to kill all humans, all to take that bear somehow behind German lines and show it personally to Hitler in the hope that he'll stop warring with the allies. Big surprise when they actually capture the bear and get it into Germany...wow, Hitler still wants to keep fighting, wtf? Good thing Churchill and FDR didn't die in Antarctica there.
 
What makes it funny is Douche&Douche rushed it so they could do their star wars thing...then they ended up not even getting that
 
The whole idea of capturing a white walker to convince Cersei in the first place was a silly plan. All of that risk of key people to catch a white walker and transport it around the globe and why would Cersei necessarily be convinced to do anything anyway if she saw one.

Yours is of course not a rare complaint, a lot of people share your criticism. Man, I Loved that whole concept though, & the execution. Especially since we actually got to see the payoff of the zombie popping out of the box, which I thought was a great scene. Something about it happening in broad daylight really brought out the insanity of the reality they are dealing with hitting everyone who didn’t previously believe for the first time.

And the actual mission itself, that whole episode is magic to me. Some of the best character interactions in the whole series for me, it was a great excuse to finally link up people I always wanted to meet each other. And the ending with the dragon being dragged out & reanimated is such beautifully haunting stuff. To others though, it’s just ‘Where’d they get the chainz?? So dum.’ Oh well.

I'm trying to think of an analogy...something like...in the middle of WW2 Churchill and FDR decide to go into hostile and wartorn territory to personally capture...an Antarctic polar bear that has a manifesto about how it wants to kill all humans, all to take that bear somehow behind German lines and show it personally to Hitler in the hope that he'll stop warring with the allies. Big surprise when they actually capture the bear and get it into Germany...wow, Hitler still wants to keep fighting, wtf? Good thing Churchill and FDR didn't die in Antarctica there.

This was a strange, roundabout way to pitch your David Lynch WWII movie event idea; but still, I like your moxie kid. I will pass this along to the Netflix execs.
 
When Breanne of Tarth roamed around and fought the lobster knight for like 300 pages. Fucking total BS from a once eic novel series.
 
S8 killed GOT completely for me.. any podcast, books, future shows.. no interest

It clearly peaked in the first 4 seasons when they used pretty much only source material..

After that they had bits and bobs.. and these guys aren't near GRRM level

But yeah despite some annoyances (stannis death).. s5, 6, 7 still had great moments.. For me S8 didn't even really have that.. it was only disappointment.. the white walkers, danny heel turn, random deaths for the sake of it (Varys)
 
I kept a sliver of hope until “The Bells”. It was a hard toxic relationship to leave.
 
When Danerys went full wacko


Was last straw.

Reality after the episode where Dany an Tyrion were sailing to Westeros it went sharply down hill
 
Season 7 I was beginning to see the rushed nature and bad writing but the show was still entertaining. Season 8 however, was a giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. Terrible writing.
 
Back
Top