Everyone is focused on the alley scene, and rightfully so, but I was equally cheesed at the way peasants in robes armed with sticks, clubs, and knives so easily arrested one of the deadliest knights of his generation. As he was practicing with armor and weapons on-hand.
I really disliked that they chose to use homosexuality as the sin du jour for the Faith Militant to go after. GRRM was rather subtle with it in the books, it took me a second reading early last decade to even realize Loras and Renly were in a relationship (the rainbow colors of Renly’s kingsguard flew right over my head, on a gay pegasus). And the show has established that Loras is a well respected fighter, so standing there while peasants hauled this young member of nobility, armed and armored, was as silly as the Unsullied alley fight’s choreography.
Pod
6142
Grey Worm screamed in pain. I guess he didn’t keep up with that makes-you-immune-to-pain-poison? ;)
On that note: A lot of Harpies died. But none of the others got scared or ran in fear. How many untrained soldiers stand around to fight after 20 of your mates got speared to death? TV Harpies definitely ain’t the ones from the books :/
My instant reaction to Renley’s arrest was “he’s armored and with a sword. Why didn’t these guys get chopped up?”
I think on the whole it’s just the difficulty of making a tv show. I think the intention was simply to show outnumbering, which beyond a certain level is plausible, no matter how badass the fighters.
It’s just that the outnumbering doesn’t come off - there’s not enough numbers - and it makes the supposedly badass fighters look a bit pathetic.
I say all of the following with a great fondness for the posters in this thread. I really do like reading everyone’s reactions. I’m now going to be abrasive for rhetoric’s and efficiency’s sake:
Must be tough to find quality television when you’re a five-star armchair general! It’s too bad the early talks to have Iko Uwais play Barristan fell through, I think he woulda been great in that fight. Now I want everyone to close his eyes and honestly ask yourself: are you sure you didn’t actually dislike the Harpy ambush because the good guys lost? If Selmy hacks through the rest of them, are you excited? Or is fight choreography really the issue? I thought Grey Worm had some slick moves with the spear. How concerned were you that Jaime Lannister had the footwork of an old man, or the footwork of a very handsome Danish actor who attended Statens Teaterskole which, let’s be honest, probably doesn’t have as good a stage combat class as the British conservatories?
Slainte, here’s a link to David Benioff’s well received novel. Here is D.B. Weiss’s novel. I don’t know about Weiss, but I’ve read a short story from Benioff and the guy has undeniable chops, probably more than you’d expect from someone so handsome.
Jon Rowe, please tell me when Edward Snowden got his hands on the internal Bolton emails, because this is the goddamned middle ages and I’m pretty sure the dude isn’t telepathic – unless Van Dyke beards confer ESP.
Telefrog, I’ve gotta give you credit; Baelish now waltzing out on Sansa with Stannis on the warpath seems… dicey… at the very least. But I’m a man that believes in process, not results; you predict an eclipse because a voice from behind your refrigerator told you so, you only get half credit.
Alright, the Bulls game is underway, I’m going to quit with the abuse. Last note: I noticed a pool of CG blood spreading beneath Grey Worm, don’t know if anyone else saw it – not looking good for him, but I bet he lives anyway, at least long enough for Missandei to weep over his dying body.
Ser Barristan was on his day off. He was wearing a surcoat, but no armor. That was the whole point of the set up to his wandering the streets of Mereen on his day off: no armor. Had he been wearing armor, the fight would have gone otherwise.
jg93
6146
We established about 100 pages ago that many here are masters at Medieval swordplay specifically, and Medieval tactics in general, when they were all crying about how terrible the fight was with Jon Snow and Karl Tanner, the knife wielding thug who overthrew Mormont and was residing at Craster’s Keep :P
The Unsullied got sonned because the Harpybros got attack roll bonuses from Surprise and Homefield Advantage.
Some nights, you just roll for shit and the minions cause a TPK.
Dude, Littlefinger isn’t a swordsman, words are his weapon, and information is his ammunition.
He is the mother flipping Ed Snowden of Westeros, period. That is how he works. Running brothels all over Westeros more bugged for snooping than your iphone. Knowing is his business.
I hope that we find out he is still pulling the strings somewhere, that would be the only explanation.
And look, when you have invested multiple dozens of hours reading books and wikis, and you see something that flies in the face of what you were expecting, it is odd.
That scene could have been done better, maybe closing doors to trap and seperate the unsullied, or a distraction, or arrows or something. Ambushes don’t really work great when you run out and pause in front of your enemy. “All right, when we attack run out and surround them, then pause to let them get their bearings and into formation” The way it played out was not what I was expecting. It stretched believability. It is all worse than the book, where the harpies are a relentless force of civil upheaval, snatching people in the night, causing chaos. This was definitely not the coolest death of a character who is very much alive at the end of the 5th book.
YES.
They’ve already cut out Bran for this year, Tyrion hasn’t so much as whispered “Where do whores go?”, what more do you want, people?
They should have settled that ambush scene using Insult Sword Fighting ™
Yeah, I doubt the unsullied are trained in any witty quips.
habibi
6153
I don’t have much issue with Sons of Harpy being good fighters. In Martin’s world, nobleman sons and Fleabottom scums can be trained to defend the Wall; cowards like Ser Janos Slynt can lead King Landing’s city guards; peasants can fight so well in a blink of an eye after they joined the Sparrows, after they were decreed by the King to carry arms. Why are we surprised that Meereen noble and can fight?
We’re going in circles a little bit here and I’m probably contributing to that. But, it’s more than just that they can fight. It’s that they dispatched what is supposed to be an elite fighting force.
And, even if they can fight, I think the better question is – why do the Unsullied NOT fight like Unsullied? They break ranks and go one-on-one and they are supposed to be the most disciplined soldiers in the world. The alley was small, but it wasn’t that small, there was room for them to form ranks shield-to-shield. They didn’t here and the reason for that behavior, I think, pretty obvious.
That is, D&D need to move the plot along and they’re willing to do some damage to the lore and continuity along the way. Or to put it even more unkindly – they don’t even notice that they are ruining some of the lore. There hasn’t been a midichlorian moment yet but a few of us are worried that we’re going to have that.
Some of the “purists”, for lack of the better term, in this thread (and I guess I’m one of them) think there would have been better ways to kill some Unsullied and Barristan without ruining the lore. A few examples have been mentioned: arrows, wildfire, poison.
OK, point taken. Maybe I was a little too critical calling it “made-for-TV” style writing, but the fact does remain that, for now, I’m a little bit disappointed that the new content seems to be somewhat inferior in quality to the stuff we’re used to and I can’t help but equate that to not having the framework of Martin’s writing to work from. I’m not going to stop watching the show, and I’m not about to claim it’s anything less than one of the best hours of television available, but I am worried that this journey down a new path has started out with a couple of speed bumps in the writing/scripting.
I’m fine with Barristan and Gray Worm being killed to set the table for Jorah and Tyrion to arrive and take over as protector and advisor respectively, I just think it could have been written/handled better, as could the Sand Snakes scene, and some of the stuff with Sansa and Petyr. Hopefully with another couple of episodes to get these new plotlines rolling the old plot threads and the new will all start to blend together a little more seamlessly.
Overall I thought that the episode was pretty weak. Despite the gratuitous fight scenes, and despite a few very pivotal events (the arming of the Sparrows), it didn’t feel like too much HAPPENED. Lots of relating backstories; lots of recapping events from a season ago; a temptation here and there; a touching father-daughter character-building scene.
Individually, all these were well-executed and nicely acted. But it doesn’t feel like we ended too much further down the road than when we started.
The Sand Snakes scene was the low point of the episode for me. OK, we meet these three ladies. OK, we establish that they are bloodthirsty. Fighting and fucking. Got it. But on a second viewing, the scene itself looked really silly.
If this were Kings Landing, they would have had the conversation in a private residence or a tavern or a brothel or whatever was convenient, but apparently in Dorne you set up a pavilion tent in the middle of the desert when you want to conspire. Decent security I suppose - no one is going to overhear you… but presumably everyone gets suspicious when all the bastard children go riding off into the dunes all at once. Or maybe not – perhaps everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the murder-grrls leave town.
And then the execution of the poor ship’s captain. So… he comes ashore; he finds one of the Sand Snakes to give information to in return for gold; he tells them really useful information. Then I guess that rather than paying him for his service, they take him captive, drag him out into desert, bury him up to his neck, find some scorpions, put them in a bucket and dump them (and the bucket) over his head. Then, after dramatically whipping the bucket off, they execute him in cold blood without actually talking to him any further.
I guess this was supposed to tell us something of the three (largely indistinguishable aside from side-boob) women and their step-mother: they’re vicious and will kill someone for looking at them wrong. But, even for obsessive-compulsive murderers, the captain’s execution seems like a VAST amount of work for very little payoff. Not to mention the fact that people will very quickly stop providing you with information if your reward is the ol’ scorpion-bucket.
I can forgive the Sand Snake execution bit because people throw their lot in with all sorts of shitty leaders in the show and books. Why would anyone sane work for Ramsay Bolton? He killed a guard just to fake-out Theon when he “rescued” him out in the woods. Same question goes for the people working with Littlefinger. These guys kill their own henchmen or partners as a matter of course.
Razgon
6158
Well, he can’t let Cersei become suspecious!
And dear lord I’m bored watching this season. Pretty much every episode so far, I’ve been happy when the credits rolled. Bummer.
Couple of thoughts in response to the thread here.
Last week they established that the Harpy’s consist of non-nobles. They track down one of the Harpy’s in a shack and bring his stuff back to the Queen. She makes some comment questioning why a commoner would want to be a Harpy. I don’t remember the response, just something like “because commoners like slaves because it means someone is under them in the pecking order”.
For the Sand Snakes, I think they want to track down Jaime themselves, and the only way to guarantee that is to kill the captain. If the captain tells other people, the Dornish leader is more likely to have a peaceful conversation with Jaime to avoid war. If the Snakes get to him first, they can kill him and start an international incident (which is what they want). While I think the scene was horrible, the rationale makes sense to me.
Well, I don’t think a commoner would fight much better.
I think that the main problem isn’t that fight scene at all, it is because in the books the harpies were never seen. All that was found were bodies in alleyways. They are supposed to be this scary shadow group dropping bodies by night. Not a group staging ambushes in broad daylight. Why do that? Their whole goal is to terrify Daenerys and her army through night murders. The psychology is different in the books, more of a terrorist cell, and less of a standing army.
I think the scene existed to up the stakes in a faster way. In the books there is an army bearing down at the city, and the harpies are killing them from the inside. I think that it is important to speed the stuff in Mereen up, because it took too long in the books. But it shouldn’t be done in a way that sacrifices from the source material if necessary.
