Game Of Thrones Season 5 Discussion Thread

I think they're just trying to make it so Tyrion isn't entirely meaningless, but not exactly the best choice of options in that regard.

@theht said:

Eh I dunno. I feel like the Unsullied, Greyworm, and him just got jobbed out to those dudes. It was kind of pathetic. Granted it was a sneak attack and they were out numbered, but I had held them to a higher standard then that. Also Selmy has/had so much hype and he failed to deliver IMHO. If he's actually dead that's rather lame.

I initially thought Selmy was underwhelming until I considered that fighting 7 (?) opponents by yourself is probably really hard, let alone doing it when you're an old man. The Hound didn't breeze through his fight against 5 Lannister men (and Arya jumped in to kill 2 at the end). At the very least it certainly made good on this:

@kishinfoulux said:

Yeah, they built the Unsullied up to be unstoppable feelingless murder machines and they get bumped off by a bunch of angry slavers in (admittedly cool) masks? Felt like a cop out.

As for Selmy, I think the fact that Grey Worm put a spear through the guy that was just about to cut Selmy's throat is telling. Both he and Grey Worm will be our of commission for a good while, though; lucky for Dany that one of her former advisors is riding back when she's down on personnel. Now that I think about it, this season has had a lot of convenient run-ins...I wonder if the books are like that.

I kinda pegged Selmy for dead the moment he had his little trip down memory lane about happy singing. For characters that have had minimal development, having a really personal moment like 5 minutes before their death is pretty much a cheap trope. Even if he isn't dead just from that fight, I expect he'll die of his injuries sometime in the next episode or 2.

Also, how terrible was that sand snakes scene? It's already enough that they have a lame gang name, but one of them going off on a backstory monologue for almost no reason was maybe the most cringeworthy thing that's happened on this show.

Yeah, I didn't really like that either, would have been more effective to me if she just silently walked up to her spear and threw it into the guys head and that was her 'yes'
but who fucking monologues to a group of people who probably already knows her back story anyways? Aren't they all friends or something?
It felt like the type of moment that in any other show would have been followed by a close up on her face, a cheesy musical cue and then a cut to commercial.

If we are supposed to think they are an intimidating force at this point then it's not working.

Oof. After last night, I now have to accept that I have no clue as to where this season will ultimately end up. I knew they were going to take liberties in regards to the books, but dayum.

@zolroyce: I believe they're all family, sisters/mother.

True but it's better than nothing at all. To me, he's a nothing character because yeah he didn't have development.

I'm going to write a massive blog post about this later but there is no way in hell that 8 elite troops would ever lose to 20 random street thugs when the initiative was on the side of the elites throughout the entirety of human history. Even badass cavemen would defeat more numerous shitty cavemen. Hoplites have spears and swords and no hoplites would be stupid enough to use spears as a primary weapon in congested streets, let alone their miniscule shields. The best Navy SEAL in the world with a military-grade knife would be able to take on 10-15 chumps with kitchen knives by himself, let alone 7. These guys are trained killers, it's what they do, it's what they're good at; of course they could handle pathetic rabble.

@fredchuckdave: I very much agree with your first two points, but as for the Navy SEAL comparison.. With all due respect, 15 people? Not a chance in hell. 7 people? Not a chance in hell. The trick to fighting multiple opponents is simple, it's keeping one of them between you and the rest of the group at all times. This is often done by quickly eliminating someone and then grabbing them, using them as a human shield you can twirl around, threaten or shove into your oncoming attackers. Once you get into a situation where there are too many for you to effectively hold off simply by positioning yourself, you are fucked. This is about ten times as true if we're talking knife-fights, where-in you need to jump, or bodily shove someone attacking you away to effectively block an attack. Parrying, or deflecting fast knife attacks from numerous sources, is fiction. If you have multiple people charging you with knives, there is next to nothing you can do as all they need is some weight to drive the blade in. For the record, I do Krav Maga.

On topic, though, I believe they've already said that the majority of the harpies were people hired by the former masters, they're likely mercenaries or at least professional soldiers themselves. I don't think it's unrealistic for them to be able to swarm a smaller group of soldiers who specialize in spears and get the advantage with their knives in a tight alley, doubly so as it was an ambush. Honestly, there's way too many unrealistic expectations of fighters in this here thread. What Greyworm did in that scene was borderline impossible.

Overall, I liked this episode a lot, the exception being the sand snakes scene.. Boy.. It's been said, but damn, that was not good.

So the unsullied were out numbered, in close quarters with weapons not suited for it, and unable to fight in a phalanx because they were surrounded. It doesn't make them bad warriors, just completely out of the their element. That's the whole crux of the soldier/cop bit of this season.

That being said, I would bet that the sons of the harpy aren't just untrained rabble. I bet they're predominantly a mercenary force brought in by the masters.

@do_the_manta_ray: You're making the assumption that the opponent is organized, surrounding you, and attacking in unison; none are the case, you have initiative and a hell of a lot of intimidation on your side; even fanatics are impacted by morale. Barriston could just have walked in the room and killed 2-3 guys in a few seconds, the rest would at least be taken aback both by his sudden appearance and that some of their buddies had just died. The best spearmen/swordsmen in history fought dozens at once (Zhao Zilong first and foremost, but also Lord Guan and even Alexander was a beast in personal combat) and even continued to fight for several hours. The two pilots in the downed Black Hawk in the Battle of Mogadishu held off over 50 people for several hours. There are numerous other historical examples of "one against many" and 7 is far from the upper limit.

If we take Barristan's boast that he could "cut through the five of you like carving a cake" then dying to 7 random dudes with knives seems a rather ignoble end.

In the same fucking episode Bronn kills 4-5 riders on horseback essentially single handed, on foot with a sword and throwing knife; this is virtually impossible in reality.

....Your examples are laughable and romanticized. And it was two Delta Force snipers that came down and defended the blackhawk. With guns.

@defaultprophet: We are talking about a fictional show you realize? Three Kingdoms is about 70% historical; which as history goes is more accurate than almost everything.

It is more than possible that the Harpies are made up of several of the pit fighters/gladiators that have been a point of contention this season. That would provide a little more combat credibility than rich people with knives. However, they all should have been fighting at Grey Worm's level. Hell, he took out at least 1/3 of them by himself.

And, yeah, the Sand Snakes scene kind of sucked, but that one with the short hair was a cutie.

Yes we are but you are saying "Realistically he would have been able to kill all of them easily. Cause Dynasty Warriors(And yes I know they're actual historical people, i'm being humorous) fought dozens of guys at once and they are history's best fighters!"

If anything, I'd say the Unsullied and Barristan did better than they should have. There was one shot from above of two unsullied just getting rushed by like 8 Harpies, and that's how the other fights probably should have gone down. Barristan did well because the harpies suddenly used dumb videogame/movie logic of only attacking one at a time, and only stabbing once when they do get in on him.

If the Unsullied/Barristan were actually armored properly, then I could maybe buy it, but even that's a stretch.

Glad I'm not alone on this. Exactly my feelings.

@fredchuckdave: We're talking about different types of weaponry here in different circumstances. That's what combat is. Excuse me, "kombat". If I have an automatic rifle, and I'm up against 10 guys with knives at the other end of a field, I'm probably going to do alright. If I'm up against 10 guys with knives in a small room, that rifle might take a few of them with me, but that's it. Same mentality applies for swords, spears, cooking pots, you name it.

About your "historical" example, commanders taking to the field were flanked by some of the best warriors in the entire force. They formed a tight circle around their commander, and protected them from harm. They'd counter attacks, and drive heavily into their opponents to open them up, thus allowing their commander to strike the killing blow. This wasn't done merely to stoke the ego of said leader, but to boost morale for the troops in the army, making them believe that the one they were following was indeed blessed, and undefeatable. It is why those stories exist to this day. Not to say that said commanders weren't usually adept at fighting. They'd had the best tutors money could buy, but the way you're presenting is simply, and unfortunately, false. Those heroes never existed.

Now, the Bronn fight was actually pretty realistic. He defeated three people. The first, he caught with a throwing dagger after the man gave him an opportunity to use it. In the chaos of that, he immediately cut down a second's horse for Jaime to deal with, and then set out to defeating two opponents on his own. They were on horseman, which is a feat, alright. But that is something other knights, in the crusades for instance, have been reported to have done. So it's far from implausible.

I think you guys need to take a step back and realize this was written by someone who has probably never been in a fight in his life. Wether it was realistic or not doesn't matter, what happened happened for story related reasons. It could have been 5 harpies, it could have been 50. It's just an arbitrary number picked out to make it seem plausible.

Dude, word.

And so another episode ends with characters dying in randomly tragic ways. I didn't much mind the direction of the scene itself. The clothing on the Sons of the Harpy would imply that they are in fact some of The Masters and one would assume that they are among the most educated in the region. They would be as organized as possible even if few of them could pass for actual combatants. I can buy that they out maneuvered and out manned the Unsullied squad after leading them into a trap on their home turf. I'm just struggling to see what purpose it serves by continuing to kill off named characters so unceremoniously other than to make the story more tragic. It's why I always gripe about the plot sucking despite how much I enjoy the production. Now when I see a character die all I can do is shrug.

@do_the_manta_ray: A skilled horsemen has an extraordinary advantage over a lone combatant; particularly one without a spear or crossbow. Cavalry are generally considered to be worth about 10 or so infantry on the field, though the actual advantage given the terrain could certainly be much greater. The impetus of one's strikes on horseback makes the likelihood of survival for the person on foot minimal at best. 3 skilled horsemen are much more dangerous than 7 nondescript knife wielders who may not have any training whatsoever.

@defaultprophet: :I'm not talking about DW, just Romance of the Three Kingdoms which is one of the best books ever written (and perhaps the most influential aside from the Bible). Your commitment to being overly literal highlights a penchant for pedantry that indicates a lack of adaptive reasoning and awareness which would severely limit one's tactical capability due to lack of creativity. This is not a particularly uncommon trait to have for Americans but it is certainly easy to exploit. This is particularly amusing considering the largely theoretical content of the discussion.

Was the thesaurus you just ate tasty? =P

Barristan's past has a quite a bit more badassery in it that the show just hasn't covered. I cringed all the way through that last scene. A bunch of slavers (who I assume since they are slavers have not a done a whole lot of fighting) with kitchen knives just took out a group the most disciplined, well trained soldiers in all of Essos. Oh and Barristan Selmy too because, fuck it? This show does some things so well and other times and I just want to shout at my tv.

The problem I had with the fight scene at the end was the way the unsullied (that weren't named characters) were just killed like they were nothing, it's not like Grey Worm had extra training, they were all treated the same and thus all are meant to be ridiculously good fighters.

The most interesting part of the show to me was what it hinted at about Jon Snow's parentage. 1.) Melisandre only goes after men with royal blood. She went after Jon. We heard a tale about Rhaegar Targaryen from Barristan to Dany, then we get the story about Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar from Sansa and Littlefinger. If you go back to season one, Ned Stark was always trying to keep Robert from killing Dany. Why? My guess is that Jon isn't Ned's son. He is Lyanna(Ned's sister) and Rhaegar's(Dany's brother) son.

Jon Snow is Danaerys Targaryen's nephew. That's my theory.

I'm really shocked that most of you think that Grey Worm and Selmy are dead. Getting stabbed a few times is not how this show kills characters. Let's look back at how people actually die:

1. Ned: Decapitated.
2. Robb: Shot by a bunch of crossbows, throat slit, decapitated.
3. Robb's Wfie: What felt like a hundred stomach stabs.
4. Catelyn: Throat slit.
5. Dany's Shitty Brother: Molten gold hat.
6. Renly: Stabbed by shadow baby.
7. Joffery: Super long poisoning scene.
8. Tywin: Crossbow'd while poopin'.
9. Oberyn: HEAD CRUSH!
10. That Wizard Guy: Lit on fire by dragons.
11. Shae: Super long strangling scene.

And so on. Point being, when you are killed, you are killed hard. Every instance of "got hurt a bunch" ends in either recovery (Jon got arrow'd three times but made it back, Tyrion gets sliced across the face but lives, Davos gets blown off of his boat by a dragon nuke, The Mountain is stabbed by fucking poison spears but is going to be a zombie man or something) or at the very least, ambiguity. (Is the Hound dead? We don't see it. Did Syrio get killed? Didn't see it.)

I'd be stunned if they had Grey Worm stop that harpy from slitting Selmy's throat (a favorite killing blow, as shown above) only for the both of them to croak. What's the point of showing that? I predict at least one of them will make it out of this.

Rosabell Laurenti Sellers the word adorable was like, invented for her.

Your theory and the theory of tens of thousands of people who have read the books...

As for the Sand Snakes, that scene was utterly terrible. Some of the worst acting I've seen on the show.

@mirado: He is dead. It was confirmed by many entertainment outlets and by the actor himself. Which makes the scene all the more strange because I don't think that was made clear at all. Not with the music or atmosphere or anything. Nothing in that scene was saying to me that he just died.

Also yea that sand snake scene was one of the worst scenes they've done. right up there with Ramsey fighting off 20 ironborn warriors bare chested. I don't mind them making changes to the story but honestly all the worst parts seem to be the ones they make drastic changes too. And not just because it's different and I need to be like the books or anything but just because they don't seem as well thought out.

Khal Drogo would like a word with you about dying hard....

@top8gamer:Both of them? I'm stunned. What a way to mishandle a death scene, then.

@butano Drogo died so hard, he was killed twice and took an unborn baby with him.

@giantrobot24: Yeah, that's fair. Some of those Unsullied died immediately, without any fight. I'll agree that was lame.

Fuckin hell, that's pretty good.

So this episode was...eh. Too much Winterfell, which is the weakest plot of the season IMHO. Also I just hate anything with Theon in it. He needs the axe.

So Selmy is confirmed dead, and that only reinforces how weird his death scene is to me. At least Grey Worm is still...well, I was going to say rockin' but I'm not sure if you can call his condition anything that active.

Also, isn't sailing into Valyria supposed to be a big fucking deal? Like, a "no one ever returns" kind of big deal? Seemed strange that Jorah would assume there would be nearby fishing villages next to the fantasy equivalent of the Dead Zone. Or that he would attempt to sail through it in as shitty of a boat as that.

Finally, Dany's scene with her dragons is the highlight of the season so far. There's a bit of the Mad King in everyone, I guess.

@mirado: yeah looking at interpretations of what it looks like seem vastly different

I think that's meant to be a former Valyrian settlement/ruins not the islands of Valyria itself. If it actually is meant to be that then someone done fucked up. The smoking sea around valyria isn't smoking as in there's a bit of fog. It is smoking as in there are active volcanoes and geysers.

@mercurialau: I'm afraid that's really supposed to be Valyria, even if it's completely unlike the book version. Jorah even says that they're sailing through Valyria and Tyrion implies that they're sailing on the Smoking Sea. They've been setting it up to be a very different kind of place from the novels since last week when Stannis was talking about being told to send Shireen away to Valyria to live out her days with the Stonemen. So the show version of Valyria is just a ruined leper colony with dragons, apparently...

I'm not really even clear at this point why Jorah wants to go through Valyria at all (or how they are supposed to have got there so quickly in that tiny fishing boat. Oh wait, that's right it's GoT and everything is near to everywhere else). First off they're supposed to be heading straight to Meereen, but now they're making an excursion through Valyria? Is it just so that they'll avoid running into pirates as Jorah implies? Seems foolhardy if so. Given that the Jorah-Tyrion storyline has been a mash-up of a load of disparate stuff from the novels, I wonder if they're trying to tie in Dragonbinder with Jorah finding it and bringing it to Dany along with Tyrion to win back her favour? Tyrion says something about collecting a "Targeryan heirloom" but Jorah does say that Tyrion will be enough of a gift. In the books Euron reckons to have been to Valyria to get the Dragonhorn (although that might also be dubious boasting on his part), so given they've written out the Ironborn entirely, perhaps they're loading that on Jorah as well. Dunno, it all seems weird.

Other than that, this was a bit of a middling episode. The Miranda stuff seems a bit superfluous to me and the Greyworm-Missandei romance doesn't interest me at all, really. The Wall and dinner with the Boltons was pretty good, though.

Nice Dany finally being a good ruler and redeeming herself at the end of the episode, even if it took fucking forever to happen. Way too dragged out. And at the beginning of the episode she was her worst yet, so I was worried. I think things are turning around though.

Hoping the Boltons get destroyed by Stannis so we can end that storyline.

This guy gets it. Theon is the worst only because Ramsay Bolton, who is not interesting and his whole character is "I"m sick and twisted" which does nothing for me on a show that has managed to make interesting villains otherwise that have some depth to them. Tired of watching that dude and Theon as a result.

I'm afraid the Jorah's greyscale situation is just going to be a hidden zombie bite trope. I hope they've developed something more interesting than that, but I don't see where else it could go.

This episode was not great. The Jon stuff was ok, and builds towards something new. I've generally thought Kit Harrington wasn't a very great actor, serviceable, but not outstanding. This season though, I think he's doing really well. Most of the episode was pretty boring though. Apart from that, Stannis did the the thing he said he'd do, and explained why he was doing it again, and Brienne is also doing the thing she said she'd do, with little else happening. Don't get me started on the Boltons though. Like, we get it, they are crazy and evil and totally messed up. How about they actually do something interesting for once? We had 4 seasons of Joffrey being an evil torturous maniac, that type of villain has lost it's effect by now.

The Daenerys thing was weird. She goes from homicidal tyrant to "you know, maybe I was wrong" for little to no reason. All her advisor lady did was suck up to her and tell her how she always makes the right decisions (which is patently false), and somehow that makes her change her mind, instead of feeding into her ego even more. At this point she's actively made enemies of both the slaves and the masters, and I just can't imagine how they can write any convincing scenario where she isn't murdered in a bloody revolt.

Also the zombie attack at the end was some 80s italian b movie stuff. Not bad, but kind of out of place and generic, especially with Jorah hiding the zombie bite.

Stonemen seem like the opposite of Walkers only you don't die to become one, you remain living.

Clearly that's exactly what it is.

Yeah it was silly, but at least she's doing something right. The combination of restoring their cultural traditions in some sense and marrying into the cutlture will probably work for her. At least I can stop watching her be a little Donald Rumsfeld every week in her scenes maybe?

As far as your comments on the Boltons, I agree. I think Joffery was way more interesting because of the factors around him and his run ins with other interesting characters in Kings Landing (his relationship with Sansa, the way his family was controlling and fighting for power behind the scenes, his real parents, etc). Personally, I find a child king kind of thing interesting too, seeing how that actually plays out. Ramsay and the Bolton's in general lack all that depth and the character is even more twisted, to the point where it's actually pretty silly to me most times when he's on screen. Ramsay is easily the worst character on the show.

It feels like some things are still happening in the show just because the same thing happened in the books. Albeit with different characters, but still the same damn scenario.

He strangled her well for like, 5 seconds. Possibly enough to lose consciousness, but perhaps not. In any case, not even close to enough to actually kill someone, which requires you to strangle someone for at least 2 minutes. Though this is obviously not exclusive to Game of Thrones. A lot of films and series think you die after being strangled for a couple of seconds, which is always so immersion breaking. In reality, there is no way Shae could possibly be dead.

Also, we found out Selmy is dead now. So I guess your prediction is accurate, but your argument still isn't. It seemed like Grey Worm prevented the final slice that was needed to kill Selmy, but he's dead anyway.

@theht I disagree completely. If you take out the lines of dialogue that several actors had that stated Selmy was a true badass, you would've never known he was one of - especially not the - best warrior that world had ever seen. He did absolutely nothing onscreen that made him seem like the most skilled warrior in that world. Oberyn seemed far more skilled. The Hound seemed more skilled. Grey Worm seemed more skilled. Same goes for Jon. Heck... Bron seemed more skilled.

It is the problem I have with this series though. There is so much awesome talk, but very rarely does anything back it up.

@zevvion: He strangled her for like 30 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IaQC5L4e84