Game of Gnomes Series 8

Ah it was OK. Some nice moments that didn't quite compensate for how incredibly stupid some of it was.

It's really the writing that's letting it down at this point, there are just so many inconsistencies, ridiculous leaps and plain stupid decisions being made in the writer's room.

- Bran wargs into a handful of ravens for seemingly no reason.
- Jon ends up surrounded by hundreds of undead yet somehow fights his way through.
- Their plan to light the trench is to hope that Dany can see Davos waving a couple of torches on the wall from miles up in the middle of the night and during a snowstorm.
- They place the bulk of their army ahead of their trenches and defenses.
- They use their catapults once.
- They send the Dothraki charging into a death trap for no apparent reason.
- Jorah appears out of nowhere to defend Dany.
- Dany's in trouble in the first place because she just sits in the middle of the battlefield and lets a bunch of wights climb onto her dragon.
- The Night King decides to go after Bran when he could have just repeatedly reanimated the dead until there was nobody left.
- Arya manages to sneak past the entire battle and every white walker undetected, despite barely making it out of the library.
- Sam spends most of the episode covered in wights then proceeds to lie on a pile of corpses, crying, and somehow survives.
- Jaime and Brienne are pinned to a wall by hundreds of them for at least 1/3 of the episode and somehow survive.
- Nobody thought that perhaps the bodies in the crypt could be reanimated too.

On top of that, the decision to end the Night King's arc the way they did and when they did was really disappointing. We've had years of build-up and that's it? He just walks around smirking for a bit then dies? I thought we'd at least get some more depth once he met with Bran, that they'd discuss something or have some weird showdown or that Jon would have to fight him one on one. Now we're going from an undead king riding a dragon and hordes of unstoppable zombies to a manipulative monarch with a bunch of mercenaries? It's such a step down.

So... was that it? That was Winter Coming... the Night's King etc? Kinda cool in terms of defeated expectation and the show not going in the direction I expected, but I feel a bit disappointed that the dead were (seemingly) defeated so easily after so much build up. Not even talking about the details, some of which were ok and some of which were predictably rather silly (to say the least). I actually liked the way it all happened in the dark and often you didn't know what was going on, but somehow they didn't manage to give the zombies the air of menace that they have had in the past.
So we're back to Dany and Jon vs Cersei then? Seems a kinda odd battle (in terms of narrative) in that the goodies appear to have vastly more powerful forces at their disposal - surely they could go "Right, no more fucking around, we fly down to King's Landing with the dragons and burn the fuck out of Cersei" but someone will no doubt come up with some reason why they can't do that.
Anyway maybe it's a deliberate choice to go back to the show's strengths which have previously been when it deals with politics and backstabbing etc which all somewhat melts away when one side is an inexorable zombie horde. You couldn't make cunning deals with zombies but even with them out of the picture (presumably) I just don't really know what room there is left for politics between the good(er) guys in the north and the evil basts in the south.
Maybe I'm just moaning cos my girlfriend got it pretty much exactly right in terms of predicting what would happen, whereas pretty much the only thing I got right was saying that Dolorous Ed would die....

Cross post with Version there but I think we're saying a lot of the same things.
I was hoping for a sec that when the Night's King met Bran and they stared at each other he was suddenly gonna go down on one knee and Bran would be revealed as the ultimate baddie and (glowing blue-eyed) leader of The Others... but obviously that didn't happen.

I half expected Bran to climb out of his wheelchair.

This is good and just about sums it up.

Something I missed which someone else pointed out was that the NK's dragon blasts a hole through one of the castle walls, but Jon hides behind a bit of wall and it somehow withstands the same treatment.

IdleRich said:

going on, but somehow they didn't manage to give the zombies the air of menace that they have had in the past.
So we're back to Dany and Jon vs Cersei then? Seems a kinda odd battle (in terms of narrative) in that the goodies appear to have vastly more powerful forces at their disposal - surely they could go "Right, no more fucking around, we fly down to King's Landing with the dragons and burn the fuck out of Cersei" but someone will no doubt come up with some reason why they can't do that.

Click to expand...

Agree with most of what both of you have said except this. We'll have to wait to see what the damage is, but it looked to me that nearly the entire army was wiped out due to idiotic strategy and planning.

I did like the rain of zombies.

Yeah probably most of the army was destroyed - but from what I see, one dragon is better than any amount of armies, even when hit by Qyburn's device specifically for killing dragons there is very little effect. Other than the Night King no-one has come close to killing a dragon, whereas a dragon can burn an entire army in minutes, if not seconds. So even without an army and otherwise depleted I don't really see how anyone can stop Dany and Jon if they fly south with the dragons. As things stand at least.

I'm assuming Jaime will let them know about the wildfire stores throughout the city and warn them not to use dragon fire for fear of torching the entire place.

Are both dragons still alive? it wasnt clear.

Oh, and FFS, give your army shields!

droid said:

Are both dragons still alive? it wasnt clear.

Click to expand...

I thought one of them was dead, but there are two in the teaser for next week's episode.

Yeah maybe one of the dragons did snuff it, it wasn't clear to me either.

I'm assuming Jaime will let them know about the wildfire stores throughout the city and warn them not to use dragon fire for fear of torching the entire place.

Click to expand...

But what I'm saying is that previously they said "We don't wanna win as tyrants burning the city, we want to be saviours" but I think now they would say "Fuck it, Cersei betrayed us again, left us to fight the undead alone, so we're just gonna rock up there and say you have two choices; option one is deliver up Cersei and a few other leaders to be killed and if you don't we go for option two which is where we just burn everything and everyone". As far as I can tell that will still be possible with one dragon.

Yeah, but nobody wants to be the ruler of a pile of ashes and King's Landing is full of ordinary people. I can perhaps see Dany finally becoming her father and Jon having to stop her from burning the whole lot, but I doubt Jon would ever just go "fuck it, let's burn everyone alive".

They could have Dany die whilst King's Landing is destroyed then Jon can remain "King in the North" whilst ruling the entire country.

I'm beginning to wonder if the main battle that remains might not be between Jon and Dany one way or another...

I wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if Jaime ends up killing Cersei.

Him or Tyrion, or Arya disguised. It was... ...prophesied.

Yeah that surely should happen cos of the prophecy. Everyone keeps going on about The Hound vs The Mountain happening at some point as though it's preordained but I don't see that as so likely... the Mountain is effectively no more anyway.