Metal Reviews

Yep, Tyrion is in some pretty serious trouble!

Finally, "The Watchers on the Wall" is upon us. I really liked the Blackwater episode so my expectations are pretty high for this one.

well, it was no Blackwater, but it was good. nice scenes with the giants and the scythe. shame they didn't show the giant fight. aliser thorne not sucking at his job, who would've thought.

Catching up on Hannibal and just had my faith in it shaken with Eddie Izzard popping up as a random serial killer. Almost as cringeworthy as when Ricky Gervais was a bomber on Alias. Next time: Stephen Fry on Black Sails! Use British actors properly pls, low-to-middle-ranking tv shows.

Yeah it was no blackwater, and too much time was wasted on the sappy crap, but at least most of the battle proper was well done. Really odd place to end the episode too: a very busy finale coming.

awesome finale. can't imagine what the non-book readers are thinking, every plot thread ended in a cliffhanger, only Jon's seems more or less predictable.

Jon

SPOILERS AHEAD















and Stannis was one of the few things I thought the finale did well. For once Stannis didn't appear entirely evil (he even complimented Jon's father), and the tease of Mel giving Jon the eye at the funeral was very good.

The other things? Not including the story of Tysha made Jamie and Tyrion part on good terms, which makes a lot more sense than Tyrion's book vow against the whole family considering Jamie frees him. Varys appearing to escape with Tyrion is a great idea since he'll have something to do in catching up with his old friend Illyrio. Having Varys disappear for almost 2 seasons would have been a bad idea.

As for the bad things?

I hate the idea of Cersei wanting Jaime again, I'm sick of the attempts to whitewash that character, and it only makes me hate her more. And Tyrion gets the whitewash too by Shae inexplicably attacking him!??! Why couldn't Tyrion have that one moment of ruthlessness like in the book?

Which gets to a larger point: the big death sequence was horribly rushed, why? Varys leading Tyrion through the catacombs under the city could have been tremendous. Him casually directing Tyrion to the Tower of the Hand would have built tension for the viewers as we realized Tyrion wanted revenge than just to escape.

But I guess it had to be rushed because of that ridiculous neverending fight scene/shouting match between the Hound and Brienne. Why was this necessary? Why did Jojen need to die in that awful looking fight scene against the wight/skeleton things? Sometimes I just think the showrunners change things because they can, and they want to 'own' it. I think the egoism of these guys has really crept in when you compare how much more faithful they were to the books back in season 2 and especially season 1.

Quite disagree here - the Hound/Brienne fight was brilliantly physical and one of the best on the show yet. Certainly didn't feel that long, either. Did hugely dislike the magic wood child throwing fireballs about, though, and the skeletons were a bit Jason and the Argonauts. Bran's storyline is the most magical and thus the weakest for me at the moment.

Don't think Cercei wanting to shag her brother or Tyrion killing his ex or defenceless father (I'll miss Charles Dance) count as a whitewash, either tbh - quite the opposite. He's definitely growing dark as a character, as is Arya. Her face when the Hound was near begging her to kill him (fantastic scene from him, btw) was chilling.

As for changing the books, if it means a more entertaining show then I'm all for it. Not read all of the books but read up to about here, and there are definitely long dull sections.

GAME OF THRONES SEASON FINALE COMMENTS SPOILERS AND SHIT








Stannis: i never saw Stannis as evil, just ruthless. then again the same could be said for even the biggest assholes in the story.

Tyrion: good thing they're done with it. like this, besides having the brothers be on good terms, they also make Tyrion hate most of his family over the way they always treated him, not over a single (horrible) episode with the general family hatred as background. also, he's about to embark on a quest to murder his whole family, so his ruthlessness will come. i agree on presenting Tywin's death and Tyrion's motivations, though.

Jojen: my guess is the actor had some other commitments or someone had to be cut from the budget and he got the axe.

Brienne/Sandor: i liked the fight. i had said before that if there is going to be filler, it might as well be action. it also establishes Brienne as a truly formidable fighter. on the other hand, her sporting Lannister gold, i mean, surely she could have talked her way out of it?

Arya: weird reaction. she hates the hound enough not to give him a quick death, but she'd still rather hang out with him than with Brienne. a case of better the devil you know...?

The books definitely need changing in places, especially if you've read book 4. Martin seems to get weighed down by his creation at that point. That said, I'm not confident in these show runners to do much better. We'll see.

I feel Cersei is definitely getting the whitewash because in the books she doesn't appear to love anyone but herself. Still having a weakness for Jamie doesn't jive with the book version of her whom apparently only cared for power.

Tyrion in the books saw Shae, saw her plead for her life and swear she was forced to say those things, and Tyrion strangled her anyway. In the series she just attacks him. To me that feels like a whitewash of character.

Overall, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree at this point, because I think a lot of the show is pretty bad now, and our definitions of entertaining strongly differ on the Brienne/Hound fight. The Hound/Arya pleading scene was excellent, agreed there. Those two actors scenes together was a real highlight to the season.

The stuff that happens up North over the next couple years will still keep my interest though, and I was happy with how the groundwork on the Stannis/Mel/Jon trio was laid, so maybe I'll just chime in on that element of the story and try to keep my less positive opinions to myself.

Azrael: series Tyrion has no reason to be angry with Jamie, so the family murder quest starts with Tywin and presumably ends with Cersei. As I said earlier this was a good change, because the book reasoning for Tyrion being mad with Jamie were so flimsy anyway.

Heh, fair enough, although I think calling the show 'pretty bad' is being ridiculously harsh on it. The acting base underneath it all is undeniably solid, and I think where we differ comes down to taking different slants on the book/show situation. Feel free to not be positive, although we know you usually come around to things you initially are negative about in the end... *cough*Agalloch*cough* ;)

Parts of it, not all of it! And yeah most of the acting is very good. The advantage the showrunners have coming up in book 4-5 is that Martin struggled so much with it that they will have a real chance to majorly improve upon it. For example, Martin set aside the North and Essos entirely for Book 5 so he could concentrate on King's Landing, the Greyjoys, and Dorne in Book 4. I'd say the lengthy Greyjoy and Dorne subplots sunk book 4.

I would be shocked if season 5 (Book 4) ignores Essos and the North, and with good reason.

agreed.

Tyrion is clearly as much of a fan favourite on TV as he is on the books, maybe this a bit of panderingon HBO's part? one thing i didn't get though, he kills Shae (defending himself i guess, but still), but he still resents Tywin calling a whore when she clearly is a whore?

as for the Greyjoy/Iron Islands focus on book 4, i quite enjoyed it. find them a fascinating bunch. very viking, very metal. i mean, look at the names of the ships on the iron fleet
Grief
Woe
Leviathan
Fear
Lamentation
and of course
IRON VICTORY
IRON VENGRANCE
IRON WIND
IRON WING
IRON LADY
IRON MAIDEN

ok i made the last one up but wouldn't it be awesome?

seriously, though, they're cool and so is Dorne (although the way he went about showing how Dorne works was pretty boring), i look forward to seeing them come to life. also apparently all the Martell girls are smoking hot so there's that. and i bet Victarion will be the biggest fucking badass in the series when he shows up.

Sunshine is your friend.

*looks at EBD*

But do you have anything to contribute? Surely you watched the show.

I enjoy the show. The books are better. I don't pick it apart like you do, because you know, life and such.

Just finished watching all 8 seasons of Dexter which I thought, for the most part, was a great show. How did the writers go so wrong with the last episode?

I never watched Dexter but I heard about how disliked the ending was: what would you have done differently?

A lot of these shows that take us on great journeys have a lot of trouble with the final destination. The Sopranos ending is a critical darling but a lot of people, myself included, considered it a cop-out. The Breaking Bad ending was in many ways designed to please the fans but that led some people to bash it for being too safe (I liked it anyway). The Wire's ending wasn't even really an ending, just a demonstration of how things in Baltimore kept repeating. The ending for True Detective was sappy and awful, etc.

Dexter was a great show when the story detailed his own personal struggle with his 'Dark Passenger' (the need he felt to kill) while trying to maintain a normal existence, along with the tension of possibly being caught. It was always good story-telling whenever someone was beginning to figure him out. It didn't matter if it was a coworker, another killer, or his sister. That made for good television. I think the show went wrong in two areas:

The first being that in an attempt to humanize Dexter despite his psychopathic personality they continued to attempt to inject girlfriends into his life. There were just too many attempts and it took away from what Dexter was good at. They also introduced a son that Dexter becomes solely responsible for after his wife is murdered. The son becomes an afterthought as he spends all of his time with a nanny. Why include him?

Dexter does finally find happiness (as close as Dexter can feel it) when he falls in love with another psychopath. As the series drew to a close the storyline paved the way for them to ride into the sunset together and that Dex had a real shot at being 'normal'. Again, as close as Dexter can get to normal. Then suddenly in the last two episodes Dexter's dear sister is shot and dies from a complication. Dexter decides that his dark ways set up the situation for his sister's death and that he must completely withdraw from the people he loves...by driving his boat into a hurricane. You think he's dead but no, somehow he lives and the show ends with Dexter working as a lumberjack, living alone. He left his son to his psychopathic girlfriend.

The entire show was predicated on Dexter being a psychopath due to grizzly events he witnessed when he was a three year old child. His struggle with the Dark Passenger, living with his crimes, and dealing with his sister finding out who he was seemed punishment enough. The writing had set Dexter up to break away completely from his psychopathic side. That in the end, he could control the inner monster and along the way he discovered he did have a heart. He did have real emotions. Then in one final episode the writers and Michael C. Hall felt it was fitting to have it all fall apart. It just didn't make sense.

Thanks Raven, appreciate that kind of analysis on the forum. So the series ended up with a vague punishment for Dexter, on top of what his life already was (no doubt the childhood memories were critical to his character). My guess is the writers were afraid to give a 'serial killer' a happy ending and thus opted for this 'purgatory' type thing. The purgatory type ending irritates me in most shows, so I understand your frustrations.



Often times I think these storylines are literally filler. I'm not sure how the Dexter series renewal schedule was, but the staff may have been given more show than they knew what to write about. It seems like a common TV trope for a main character to have a child with the purpose of making the viewer look at them in a different light (humanized) and then the child quickly vanishes out of sight because scenes of changing diapers and babies crying is not something people generally want to watch.

Anybody try that new show The Knick with Clive Owen? It debuted last night and has gotten pretty good reviews.