TV Shows

[Otter]

GoT spoilers assumed by this point I think.

I think it's worth mentioning that a large part of why Ned's death and the Red Wedding worked fine for me is that it was showing that the story wasn't going to cheat for the good guys to win. That is a large part of why those scenes don't just read as shocking to be shocking, and the purple wedding shortly after shows just as well that the story isn't going to cheat to have the "bad guys" win either.

It really sounds like with this last season and all the shit Ramsay has been pulling out that the show misunderstood that element that made those scenes fine, and started having the story cheat so the bad guys would win. I've heard from virtually everyone up to date with the show that Ramsay has been pulling out some incredulous victories out of his ass and meeeeeeeh that's just bad writing. Kinda glad I waited to binge watch the series until after the season finale, because now it sounds like I'm fine waiting for TWOW to come out and for Martin to not be able to finish the last book in time.

So I have seen this exact view represented a couple times now:

http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/39xbe6/spoilers_all_the_reason_bad_things_happen_on_got/
http://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/39ym6b/s5e10_this_show_has_changed_from_good_guys_will/

And I don't really get it?  First of all, you'd have to convince me that Stannis is somehow a good guy for him to be a victim of this.  As I and probably a lot of show viewers see it, he's a bad guy who doesn't get any special dispensation from the show and loses like you'd expect him to.  If the show were cheating to protect villains, he should have been unstoppable after s5ep9.

Second, "important leaders of the army, royalty no less, infiltrate the enemy camp for some light sabotage/murder and get away with it" goes back to at least Odysseus and Diomedes.  It doesn't say to me that Ramsay has invincible plot armor and can do anything -- what exactly was the tangible result of his attack?  He started a fire in Stannis's camp and burned that one horse we saw at the start of the episode.  Maybe this nuked troop morale some, but it couldn't have been as bad for morale as the Shireen thing.  Ramsay's able to sally forth and whip Stannis because he lost half his army and all his cavalry, and that happened because of Stannis's leadership, not because of anything Ramsay did.

People just don't get passionate about following Stannis or fighting to get him on the throne in the best of times (there's a reason he had to use blood magic to kill his younger brother who had the weaker claim -- the populace actually liked that dude and thought the world would be better off with him in charge) and by following Mel's advice he lit his own public image on fire.  He deliberately sent away the guy he keeps around just to keep him from making awful decisions and then made an awful decision and then his troops abandoned him.  How are we being cheated when this dude loses?  If anyone fucked him over it was Mel, not Ramsay or GRRM or the showrunners, and listening to Mel was still his decision to make so I'm not overflowing with sympathy.

[Pyro]

Ramsay's attack crippled Stannis' army... Destroyed all the siege engines and most of the supplies and so on. This 'forced' Stannis' hand. Stannis was a competent military leader, and the ridiculous level of success Ramsay had was handwaved away. The story contorted itself to give maximum horror.

Also they all left but not a One tried to save her.  Kind of silly in its own right.

[Dhyerwolf]

These are the comments of someone who hasn't watched the show since season 3, so I may not be familiar with context, but: my sister assures me that the further the show deviates from source material this season (which was probably inevitable to some extent just due to how messy books four and five are), the more the quality of plot and dialogue degrade. Case in point: that burning is not a thing that happened in the books, and I struggle to think of a good reason to have included it either narratively or politically in-context (who's going to support a king that negates his own line of succession? Isn't that basically the point of kings in the first place?) It sounds like HBO's writers love shock tactics so much that they have to make them up where the source material isn't obliging (again see nothing happening in books four and five).

The TV show writers' fascination with Ramsay Bolton is also really fucking baffling (again this is just based on season 3, if he's all over the damn screen now then more reason not to bother catching up). A Song of Ice and Fire has a lot of compelling, devious schemers, and the TV show has occasionally made very good use of them, but Ramsay Bolton is not such an individual in original context. Book Ramsay is never really portrayed as any degree of competent without his dad around to keep him in line. Short of that, he's a bully with the capacity to terrorize a modest corner of the country and that's about it. If the show has decided to give him any talent for warfare, well, why? It sounds like someone on the writing staff must really think that mustache-twirling villainy is best villainy, and if there isn't constantly someone around that's obviously hateable in the most aggressive ways then people will stop watching or something.

Spoilers
Regarding the underlined part, the showrunners flat out said that this was included because GRRM said it was going to happen in the next book.

Anyways,  I would say the deviations have not hurt the show for the most part, but that's because the prior season was atrocious. I would say that over half the time spent the prior season was either spent on completely irrelevant filler or was super boring. The super boring parts were often very plot relevant, but were so badly done. The two big culprits there were the royal wedding and the trial (both of which suffered horribly because they looked so cheap and threadbare that they looked like vaguely upgraded Ren Faires; truth to be told, I don't think the writing or acting in either of those episodes was particularly great, so I guess my complaints there are that lack of quality was the culprit. I wouldn't say that this season had that many issues of that nature at least, and certainly most of their rewrites were at least more interesting to watch than say "Random Attack on Craster's Keep").

Not to say that this season didn't flounder at points as well, but I think that's more a symptom of the mess the series turned into.

Agree about Ramsay though; there's really no established reason to think he would be hyper-competent and plenty of reasons to imagine why he wouldn't be. That 20 men thing was completely absurd. It was pretty important too, because I don't think it was just one horse that was burend, but the majority of their food and supplies (a lot of other horses were scattered as well). Basically it had to be written that Ramsay's attack was horribly debilitating, because it was really just a reason to have the show burn Shireen since the attack established that the army likely would have died before even reaching Winterfell (No supplies+horrible Weather+lost a lot of horses+sounds like they didn't even have the resources to get back to the Wall without heavy losses).

[Sierra]

EDIT: I wrote a bunch of gibberish before I actually read Dhyer's post. Welp, it's a good thing I didn't care about the books anymore by this point anyway. I'd probably find it hard to justify even in that context?

It might be worth noting that this marks the point where the TV show has actually caught up to the books (it sounds like they compressed books four and five into one season, which is hilarious in an awful kind of way) and from here on out everything must be HBO invention based on whatever Martin's told them.

[Scar]

Unless next season is all about the greyjoys!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Unless next season is all about the greyjoys!

Well they're casting them all, so it's possible.  Then again we all thought Dorne was going to be relevant.

snip

That these are all defensible statements if the only thing you know is the show is why it feels like bad fan fiction a lot of the time.  The author doesn't like Stannis so he's not the guy who Sam refers to as "the King who still cared."  He's not a just man and he isn't simply using Melisandre's power for his own gain, he's a puppet and a tyrant at the same time.  He does things that make no sense whatsoever, like killing his only heir when his entire campaign is predicated on the idea that the Baratheon line is the rightful ruler of Westeros, just because he is A Bad Guy.  He's definitely not one of the best military leaders in Westeros because he can get punked out by 20 guys and doesn't even have his troops in formation to fight when he begins a siege, which is like "what the fuck" levels of incompetence.

e:  Also I don't trust anything Gurm says anymore about what's going to be in the next book.  Remember when ADWD was going to be ten years later or whatever?

[superaielman]

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was really, really good. Like, "we watched the whole thing in 30 hours" good. Excellent performances and a lot of really well-played absurdity. Ellie Kemper nails the lead role but Jane Krakowski and Carol Kane are the ones who make the show something special.

I enjoyed it way more than expected, though I do feel the first couple episodes were kinda weak? The show really hit its stride in the 3rd episode or so.

White Collar: Finally finished. The show ended the most logical way it could. Generally fun, probably lasted about one season too long? They were just never able to move away from the baseline conflict between Peter and Neal, which caused the show to feel a bit samey.

Just finished it myself.

Generally fun sums up the show well. I did not like the plot twist in the episode at all and thought it was easy to see coming, but oh well. The show was fun from beginning to end and never cratered the way Burn Notice did. I liked season 6 more than 5, but... eh. I think you're right it likely went on a season or two too many.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Game of Thrones just cast Ian McShane for season 6.  All is forgiven.

[The Duck]

Does anyone have feelings on Bojack Horseman? I just finished the first season. It's spoken very highly of but I just can't get into it. I know it's not supposed to be a laugh riot (and it isn't) and that it is a portrait of depression, but what's portrayed isn't like any depression or disillusionment I've felt. It touches a lot on loneliness but from a position of self destructiveness and loathing that I don't find particularly relatable (I'm not saying it's wrong but it's not the kind of thing I can relate to personally). The show also overexplains its jokes and some of its references are instantly dated. I dunno. People I trust really like it but it's not landing. I don't think it's a bad show, but maybe it's just not for me, and that's okay.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I like it a lot, but alcoholism and self-loathing speak to me.  Look to your left.

Season 2 is better over all, I think.  With the book done they have more freedom to go in whatever direction they want rather than hanging everything on that framework. It gives the secondary cast more to do since not every episode links back to "doing a thing for the book" this time.

[AndrewRogue]

Over the Garden Wall may be the best animated thing I've seen in the last several years. Very disappointed in myself for taking so long to get around to it.

If you are at all interested in animation and haven't seen it, check it out.

[AndrewRogue]

Speaking of animation. Star vs the Forces of Evil remains fun. It's kind of like if you took all the current awesome animation, stripped out all meaning, and inserted LASER PUPPIES.

https://youtu.be/UTS5t4HN7lY?t=11s

[Excal]

Man, skimming over all that GoT talk, I kept on seeing Ramsay and thinking Gordon Ramsey is taking over Westeros?  Maybe I should watch the show.  Sadly, in depth reading revealed there were no armies of foul mouthed battle chefs.

So, today I got introduced to this oldish show called Farscape.  It's pretty good, and I got talked into borrowing season 1.  This will clearly end well.  I am amused that the enemies are cold-blooded Australians, and the hero is an American astronaut whose main purpose seems to be to get beaten up, a lot.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Man, skimming over all that GoT talk, I kept on seeing Ramsay and thinking Gordon Ramsey is taking over Westeros?  Maybe I should watch the show.  Sadly, in depth reading revealed there were no armies of foul mouthed battle chefs.

My crossover fanfiction involves Ramsay Snow going around to failing restaurants and, upon finding expired chicken in their walk-in, taking out a flensing knife and peeling the head chef's ding dong like a banana.

[Scar]

Make that into a show plz.

[Fenrir]

I watched Rick and Morty's season 1 and it was amazing. I don't even know where they can go from there.

I find Futurama and Family Guy constantly unfunny so I don't even know why I bothered with something that looks so similar. Glad I did.

[The Duck]

Those are three very different shows. Family Guy is terrible but Futurama is better for playing with sci-fi ideas and characterization/pathos than actually making you consistently laugh.

I need to catch up on the new Rick and Morty though, season 1 was great.

[Fenrir]

Oh I meant that they had similar art style? With the giant round eyes and all? Family Guy is so bad I normally wouldn't have watched anything that reminded me of it

R&M Season 2 is definitely also really cool so far.

[Cotigo]

Once again, Fenrir and Gourry are doing it right.

S2 Rick and Morty is on the whole better than S1 I think, and S1 is fantastic. A couple episodes miss but bad Rick and Morty is like bad pizza: I'm gonna fuck it anyway.

I can kinda see the thing about the art style, but tbh in that genre of cartoon art style is really the only thing that unifies them.

[Otter]

I liked the first season better but

it was amazing. I don't even know where they can go from there.

[Fenrir]

I binge watched season 2 and while the first season 2 episodes are amazing, the season trails off a bit later. Making a sequel to the tv episode was not a really good idea.

Nothing big though, overall still A++ all time classic, i really loved the first season 2 episode / car battery episode \ replicant episode. My fav overall is still Rick Potion number 9 from season 1 though. With the Cronenbergs.

Yeah so I think one of the best things the show does is having things escalating insanely fast and always very creatively (while still having mundane b-plots, which works) The show feels generous, as it crams what could be 90 minutes of content into 20 minutes episodes, alwayd introduces new characters/backgrounds for all of 5 seconds, etc.
Rick is also the kind of character who steals al the scenes he's in, and he's the main character?

Gref you should watch this

[Cotigo]

I binge watched season 2 and while the first season 2 episodes are amazing, the season trails off a bit later. Making a sequel to the tv episode was not a really good idea.

Agreed. I liked the ending of the last episode, at least.

Re: TV episode, I feel like that was executive pressure or something. Rick even says, "I don't know why we're doing this either, we knocked it out of the park the first time."

The Cronenberg episode was the one that basically sold me on the show. The follow up in the TV episode just sealed the deal even further.

[Fenrir]

Weird. It doesn't feel like a show that suffers from any kind of executive pressure.

Oh I have to mention the one thing that made me laugh for 5 minutes: the part where Rick wins a 1 free Morty ticket , and acts repulsed in front of Morty, but then takes it anyway when Morty's back is turned. This show is so great.

[Cotigo]

Weird. It doesn't feel like a show that suffers from any kind of executive pressure.

Oh I have to mention the one thing that made me laugh for 5 minutes: the part where Rick wins a 1 free Morty ticket , and acts repulsed in front of Morty, but then takes it anyway when Morty's back is turned. This show is so great.

Yeah, I agree for the most part but really can't find any other explanation for why that episode exists.

At least the subplot about Jerry and Alien Nelson Mandela was there to pick up the slack a bit.

[Scar]

TINY RIIIIIIIIIIIICK!