GoT - Is Over, Post Your Drogon Sightings

Yeah, wish they would have done something with Jaime talking about Shae. But in the end, they really didtryto change Shae's character to essentially be Tysha for the screen. Before the trial, Shae was not a whore anymore, she was actually in love with Tyrion and begging him to run away with her. Shae in the books was not at all like that; you could tell even in his last chapters with her that she was still in this for the money, he even has a lot of internal dialogues trying to convince himself she's not a whore but Martin makes it clear she is.

Show's Shae, when she is turned "back into a whore" is more reminiscent of Tysha being turned into a whore by force. The only real problem, I think, was we didn'tseeher being changed on screen; a few scenes with Tywin using force and money to turn Shae, with maybe Jaime watching (Or maybe Jaime being the one who plucked her off the boat), would have helped developed the sense that she actually did love Tyrion, and she was forced to betray him.

But from our point of view, us not seeing her, and then seeing her end up with Tywin, it kind of erased all of that--even my wife thought she never loved him, which is obviously not the effect they were going for. But that's why they say "show" and not "tell" on film--because if the audience isn't shown Shae being "turned", they will simply believe it never happened and she was always a whore.

Cad_sl said:

Ok sorry, another one I don't remember - did Arya really only go to Braavos because she had nowhere else to go? Or did she intend to go there? It seemed a little strange to me that she was trying to get to the wall, but then was like, oh well, guess I'll just go to a whole other continent and start a whole other life.

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At this point, given how things have gone in the show with regards to Arya's family members when she's been traveling to wherever they have been, I can see how she might quickly abandon her intention of going to The Wall to join Jon. It's almost as if death has become her harbinger. She probably felt that there was no point of fighting fate to get there. Going into the assassin trade seems like the logical choice.

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

4) Cersei in the books always came off as pure evil to me, while in the show they seem to dilute her despicability on the basis that everything she does is for the love of her children.

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Cersei is the Walter White of Westeros, minus the knack for cooking the Big Blue. She keeps telling herself and occasionally others that everything she does is all about protecting her children, but what's really driving her is her hatred for having her will subjugated by being reduced to a bargaining chip in the schemes of others, primarily Tywin. Obviously she does love her children (see Joffrey) but that's been eclipsed by her relentless desire to be the mistress of her own destiny.

Royal_sl said:

Cersei is the Walter White of Westeros, minus the knack for cooking the Big Blue. She keeps telling herself and occasionally others that everything she does is all about protecting her children, but what's really driving her is her hatred for having her will subjugated by being reduced to a bargaining chip in the schemes of others, primarily Tywin. Obviously she does love her children (see Joffrey) but that's been eclipsed by her relentless desire to be the mistress of her own destiny.

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Yep, this.

The biggest mistake of the episode was having Shae come at Tyrion with the knife and Tyrion killing her in self defense. I'm really not even sure what they were trying to do with that scene. Unlike the books, show-Shae is for the most part portrayed her as genuinely loving Tyrion. She refused diamonds and wealth in the free cities, got all pissy that she was going to have to share Tyrion with Sansa, and cried her eyes out when he attempted to send her away (Tyrion wasn't even in the room, so they weren't fake).

The testimony was set up as a combination of woman scorned ("I am a whore, remember") and pressure from Tywin/Cersei in rigging the trial (the point of the subplots of Cersei finding out about it and Tywin ordering that she be sent to his chambers). Her being with Tywin is easily explained by his own fucked up personality and hypocrisy. But then in the last scene, it's like they decided to toss out all of that characterization and put Shae right back into her book-version of not giving a shit about Tyrion. She comes at him with a knife immediately and doesn't even attempt to talk him down. He kills her in self defense, and that's that. He's sorry he had to do it, but it's not like he had a lot of options and he's really mad at Tywin for shattering his illusion rather than anything Shae did.

What they should have done was have her plead for her life and try to explain that the situation wasn't her doing. Throw in some talk about how he was right, its not safe in King's Landing, and she realizes now how dangerous Tywin and Cersei are. He is heartbroken and beyond reason though, so he doesn't listen/believe her and chokes her out. She doesn't put up a fight. As the rage subsides he painfully realizes that she may have been telling the truth (say he notices some marks of abuse via Tywin) which causes him even deeper psychological trauma. He goes to confront Tywin, who dismisses her as just another disposable whore. Tyrion arrows him, but falls into the deep depression he finds himself in during book 5. Shae successfully replaces Tysha in Tyrion's psyche and the story goes on largely unchanged.

But that all hinges on Shae actually being genuinely in love with Tyrion, like Tysha was. The knife ruins that and really skews his whole characterization going forward. But I guess Tyrion is the show's golden boy and can't do anything that is even remotely morally questionable. I'm sure next season they will neglect to include his melancholy/contemplating suicide and will skip to him making japes at Jorah for being in the friend-zone in short order.

LOL at all the idiots who thought Lena Headey could get away with posting spoilers on instagram

Well she posted pictures gouging out Pedro's eyeballs with her thumbs long before that happened too. It was a reasonable suspicion.

Lenas_sl said:

Well she posted pictures gouging out Pedro's eyeballs with her thumbs long before that happened too. It was a reasonable suspicion.

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The fact the Pedro one came out made the stoneheart one so believable, which made the whole thing soo great.

They really dropped the ball on The Mountain/Robert Strong stuff. The dude is supposed to be writhing in agony after being poisoned but this Icelandic dude can't act so they just have him lie there like he's taking a fucking nap.

Lambourne_sl said:

Good reddit post about Tyrion/Tywin situation, adds context for people that have not read the books:[ASOS/S04E10] Adding Context for non-readers... : gameofthrones
No TV show spoilers beyond what has been shown. Avoid the comments if you are on mobile, some mouseover spoilers below that sometimes show up on mobile.

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Wow, thanks for posting. That seriously makes a huge difference, too bad they left it out.

I am sure they took my different shots and tries at the scene. He must be a HORRIBLE actor, if they had to go with the one where he just lays their silently.

geffe71_sl said:

???

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Well GM Pycell said something along the lines that the mountain was as good as dead and that the new maestor working on the mountain was kicked out of some maestor school for his work in unconventional methods. And, the new maestor said the mountain would be changed; sounds like some necromancy type shit going on there.

The Hound had a compound leg fracture not to mention any of his other injuries, 10+ miles away from any potential help. No one around him has a horse even if they wanted to save him, which none of them do. Dude's dead.

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Considering how Brienne stumbled across them in the middle of an otherwise open country side, maybe it is a fairly well-traveled path?

Maybe he will be nursed back to health by some peasants and recant his "you're weak, you die" ways.

It's already been confirmed that the show version of The Hound is dead.

They really dropped the ball on The Mountain/Robert Strong stuff. The dude is supposed to be writhing in agony after being poisoned but this Icelandic dude can't act so they just have him lie there like he's taking a fucking nap.

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Seeing how The Mountain is The Hound's brother, and The Hound is a big dude himself with a bunch of makeup covering his face, I don't understand why they didn't just cast Hound in both roles from the get-go.

Currently, they don't look related at all.

They should have given Iceland some box jellyfish venom and filmed that.

Not a big deal. In the books, you really grow to despise the Mountain because you see a lot of first/second hand accounts of what he was doing in the riverlands during the war. Particularly when Arya was watching him at Harrenhal. In the show he's gotten so little screen time and has switched actors so much that at this point he's really nothing more as a character than Cersei's/Twyin's enforcer. In the eyes of the audience, all of the bad things he does runs through his bosses, so I don't think it would have been all that satisfying in context to have him die screaming.

Their handling of the character did make it difficult to flesh out that aspect of the Hound, but there really is only so much screen time to work with, so I can't fault them for making cuts where they had to. I wouldn't be surprised if a big portion of the audience didn't even make the connection between the mountain and the hound, similar to Jorah and LC Mormont. But that's fine, because they still work as characters even without the direct connection to their motivators.

The first guy was perfect but he had other obligations. I even thought the Icelandic guy did a poor acting job during the fight.

dak_sl said:

Seeing how The Mountain is The Hound's brother, and The Hound is a big dude himself with a bunch of makeup covering his face, I don't understand why they didn't just cast Hound in both roles from the get-go.

Currently, they don't look related at all.

They should have given Iceland some box jellyfish venom and filmed that.

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Because the dude they have playing the Mountain now actually looks like the Mountain for real. Too bad he can't act to save his life. I mean, for Gods sake, even Arnold got more lines on screen....

Tyler Mane would have been a good choice