What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Shellhead wrote: I read the first five books but haven't watched any episodes of AGoT yet, so I really appreciate the use of spoiler tags here. I have heard that there are significant differences between the books and the show. Would it be accurate to say that the quality of the show declined after the first few seasons? Martin is a great writer, and probably significantly better than the writers for the show.

I've read all the books too, and I wouldn't agree with that assessment. In my opinion, the first three books are excellent. But books 4 and 5 are just not very good. The show makes some VERY smart edits, and cuts out huge swathes of Martin's bullshit meandering. Brienne's boring travelogue? Gone. Tyrion's voyage down the river? Gone. The second "lost Targaryen" (I can't remember his name)? Gone. All that stupid shit in Dorne? Gone.

I think the show has managed to maintain a pretty high level of quality, even once they get past Martin's published material. They've even made some changes to Martin's material that I liked better! Just as a non-spoilery example, when Arya is on the run and hiding at Harrenhall, she ends up being Tywin's cupbearer. Tywin doesn't recognize who she is though. The two have some fantastic scenes together, none of which happened in the book.

Obviously, everything from about the 5th season on, it's hard to say how much the show has changed from Martin's story. It'll be very interesting to read book 6 someday, and find out. I'm a GoT hipster. I read the first book in 1996, long before it was cool. I've managed to make peace with the whole book vs. show debate. I'll read book 6 if Martin ever publishes it, but in the meantime I'm very much enjoying the show as its own separate thing.

Shellhead wrote: I read the first five books but haven't watched any episodes of AGoT yet, so I really appreciate the use of spoiler tags here. I have heard that there are significant differences between the books and the show. Would it be accurate to say that the quality of the show declined after the first few seasons? Martin is a great writer, and probably significantly better than the writers for the show.

Right around the time when the show's story lines started to really diverge from the book for mostly stupid reasons like "we liked this actor so we decided to give this part to them" is when I bailed on the show. I'm glad I did because I've heard more and more about lazy story-telling that makes no sense even if you had never read the books. Call me a book snob or whatever, but the show just sounds like fan fiction now.

I'll wait for Martin to tell me the real story if/when that ever happens.

Also:

AGoT = the book
GoT = the show

yeah the Tywin scenes with Arya are incredible and i wonder if they did that because of the quality of the actor playing Tywin.

That's an interesting result of this being a serial adaptation of the books, as opposed to a movie trilogy. The writers have the freedom to adapt the story to the quality of the actors based on audience response to the past episodes. (I am not implying that this series would have at all worked as a movie trilogy.)

Black Barney wrote: yeah like why doesn't Bran just wheel himself into the room when they're fighting and say, "you're both idiots and not just cuz you're girls" and that's the end of that.

shouldn't they have developed one or two of the redshirts just a BIT so we could feel that loss. Instead it's like a stupid original series episode of Star Trek.

Warning: Spoiler!

i would have liked to see ONE shot of Tormund or the Hound reacting to seeing dragons for the first time. I know they had their hands full but it seems like that's been a monumental moment for EVERY CHARACTER from Jorah to Tyrion to Jon. It's a miracle for crying out loud but I understand that the Army of the Dead is a tad distracting.

Is Beric the same actor from Season 1 that Ned sends out to give the King's justice to the Mountain? They look totally different.

Different actor after the first season.

Gah, are y'all still on about Falcon Crest?

leave us be with our stories

I really didn't care for the shoe-horned-in conflict between Arya and Sansa. I understand why the writers felt it was necessary, but it makes no sense character-wise.

I also thought the bag o' faces was incredibly stupid. There's no need to ground or explain that. Just have Arya show off her skill to Sansa while they're horsing around. Arya would think it was just a big laugh, but Sansa would be horrified. That gets the same point across, develops character, and doesn't show us the "magic" of latex.

the more they try to explain the no-face assassins, the dumber it gets. It works best when you know nothing about it. So now we see that Arya has a very simple mask of Frey in her stylish leather attache-case, isn't that supposed to be his actual flesh? So how does she get his hair exactly right when she puts it on? Oh, and his height and voice and build as well? It's REALLY dumb that they just show us a bag of faces because before that we all assumed it was much more elaborate and creepy and we didn't really want to know.

At least Arya is ready to work with Ethan Hawke now. It's pretty much the same thing.

ALSO, in that very scene, they were about to set up a really cool game (no sarcasm) of the game of faces with Sansa/Arya. Arya spends almost an entire minute of screen time explaining how the game is played, she asks Sansa a pretty nifty question about Jon and then.... THEY DON'T PLAY THE GAME. What was the point?

To any fan of the show that was a half-decent writer, I bet they could have come up with some pretty cool scenes with Littlefinger and various people of Winterfell that would fill in the time pretty well. Heck, Lady Mormont interacting with either of the Stark girls (or Brienne for that matter) would suit me fine. You have thrown together all these sub-characters with main characters and there are endless opportunities to have them engage in conversation. North of the wall, that's exactly what they've done. We have the Hound, Jorah, Jon and Tormund all interacting together for the first time ever and they're not wasting that opportunity too badly. It's cool. They could be doing the same thing in Winterfell with Bran, Arya, Pod, Brienne, any of the Northern lords... but instead they're being Falcon Crest in Winterfell and I hate that Barnes is right about that part.

So at this point I think it's pretty fair to say that Westeros is about the size of North Dakota.

I stumbled into an episode of Midnight, Texas last night. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention until the cat started talking. As I was watching it, I thought it seemed a little bit like True Blood - he's a vampire, he talks to the dead, she does something but I don't know what yet, etc. It turns out the novels behind the show were written by Charlaine Harris, who also wrote the novels behind True Blood. Explains the family resemblance, I guess.

Barney, I think you'll appreciate this discussion of the last episode (and its poor writing):
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archiv...l-roundtable/537363/

In non-Westeros news, I started watching Bosch last week. So far, (about half-way) I like it. It's definitely a slow burn, and it gives the central mystery enough red herrings and twists to make it a compelling detective story. I also appreciate the seeming realism of police work and office politics, which is reminiscent of The Wire (some of the same people were involved in both).

I'm a little bothered by yet another serial killer story (I'm actually fascinated by real serial killers, but tv and movie versions are rarely done well). Fortunately, he's the B-plot and is only there to add action to what would otherwise be a very boring procedural.

Thank the Mother for that article, Greg. Easily the best one I've ever read on GoT. I keep nodding my head in agreement as its well-thought out, and not nit-picky, critique. I mean, I've been watching this show for 7 seasons and this is the first season that is giving me some pause.

"I'm sick of all the near-drownings", damn skippy.

I wish i had complained more openly about this whole quest in the first place. Why is Cersei going to care? Tyrion should know she won't care. And we, the smart audience, certainly know it. She'll see the undead and say, "yeah, Qyburn made me one of those, he's awesome. Ok, death to all of you now."

Through all this complaining, I can't deny the fact that i got teary-eyed at the moment between Jon and Dany. That was amazingly powerful for such a short scene. Falcon Crest still has me by the balls and I love it. I disagree with the 2nd author that the moment between them isn't realistic. But that's why it opens with Jon actually feeling super bad about what happened and Dany having a moment where they felt the loss together.

hey do you think that Dany and Jon will ride their own dragons to Winterfell and that will single-handedly convince the North that Jon is ok?

lol, i love the author hoping that the Waif is wearing Arya's face.

just about to finish season 2 of The Sopranos, really great. I just noticed that in two entire seasons, I've only been bothered by a lazy screenwriting shortcut ONCE. That's a pretty good track record for 25 episodes! It's when Janice goes home after Richie passes on. Tony puts her on a bus that says, "SEATTLE" on it. First of all, there's no way there's a bus that goes right to Seattle from NJ. You'd go to Chicago or whatever first. Secondly, why wouldn't she just fly?

Anyway, loving this show. I'm laughing a lot. I don't remember it being this funny.