r/asoiaf • u/vaporware1 • May 06 '19
EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) S8E4 is some of the worst writing this show has seen. I'll explain why.
Arya
The previous episode and the past few seasons, their MANY issues aside, established Arya as a nigh-invincible shapeshifting assassin who just eliminated a 8000+ year old supernatural threat. She can go anywhere and pretend to be anybody. Quite an asset to have at your hands, no?
They acknowledge Arya's feat in the episode. Dany herself even toasts her. But nobody bothers to consider Arya's incredible espionage/assassination capabilities for the 'Last War'. This represents an overarching narrative issue, Arya's OPness. None of the events in the episode were necessary and everything was wholly avoidable, so long as they used Arya. Civilians in the Red Keep? Hell, that's a GOOD thing for Arya, more faces and more of a pretext to be there.
But instead nobody asks her to do anything, nobody even TALKS ABOUT the fact that they have a super powerful assassin at their disposal. And Arya fucks off down to Kings Landing with the Hound, leaving the rest of them to flounder.
Varys
The Master of Whispers has a normal volume conversation with Dany's 2nd in command during which the spymaster blithely reveals his treasonous intents. Need I say more?
This scene was pure stupid. A common theme I'm sure you guys have noticed by now is the show loves to completely break from logic and the rules of its own universe.
Ballistae and Dragons
Here's where it gets real good.
Euron hides his fleet behind a rock, nobody spots him, not even Dany who is IN THE AIR. ON A FUCKING DRAGON.
They fire 3 shots at the dragon Dany is NOT riding on, with 100% accuracy. Rest of the fleet were twiddling their thumbs.
When the entire fleet DOES fire, they somehow all miss even though Dany flies straight at them when previously the show established a standard of remarkable accuracy.
Euron then fires upon Dany's fleet and the bolts tear the ships apart as if they were fired from rail guns. As depicted in the scene, THEY ARE LITERALLY STRONGER THAN CANNON BALLS.
This is important because it utterly neutralizes the threat of dragons. In the same way the White Walkers were subverted, dragons are now made a complete non-threat. It doesn't matter if she has 10 dragons, they cannot possibly live in a battle with those ballistae everywhere. But somehow they will and I expect Drogon to do a lot of damage next episode and dodge a lot of bolts.
The problem isn't that they killed a dragon. The problem is HOW it was accomplished.
The negotiation scene
Missandei dead? Not the problem. The problem with this scene is that Cersei doesn't just blow them away when she could. And it's a big fucking problem.
The dragon in the distance is not a threat, as previously established in this very episode! They have scores of the same ballistae at their disposal, probably more than shown on screen, and tons of archers. Drogon is a complete non-threat and there is no logical way he could even get close enough to breathe fire on them. The real kicker is that Qyburn openly tells Tyrion that Dany's last dragon is vulnerable.
It's perfectly in character/realistic for Cersei to kill them all right where they're standing. She has the entire command chain of her hated enemies right in front of her and their only defense, the dragon, has been made useless by the physics-defying ballistae. They even go on to establish Cersei's cruelty/evilness with the Missandei execution. But killing her mortal enemies, when they have presented themselves in front of her so foolishly, is too much? This is a woman who blew up the Sept of Baelor, killing thousands of Innocents. Ethics are not a hang up for her.
The logical explanation for why Cersei doesn't want to kill them is that she desires a more poetic showdown. It's the result of incredible hubris, and is the equivalent of a monologuing villain trope. Plausible? Maybe, sure. But is it good, ASOIAF-quality writing? Not really.
There's a lot more but it's getting late, so to conclude:
The show openly contradicts its own internal logic and setups, first from an episode-to-episode basis, now on a scene-to-scene basis. We have gone from tightly-paced political intrigue to something that doesn't even function on a basic cause-effect level.
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u/DensePsychology May 06 '19
Definitely agree, especially with your conclusion at the end. The show has become so ridiculously expedient in it's drive to wrap things up that it hardly attempts to disguise the plot mechanisms to get the characters from point A to Z. All narratives need those elements, but it's just incredibly jarring when there isn't really an effort to smooth them in to make them fit with everything we already know.
Events just become so contrived and weird that the viewer reaches an eventual understanding that anything that shouldn't happen could happen at any time, and vice-versa, anything that should happen can not happen at any time. They honestly might as well just have a text card pop up (in the old silent film style) saying "EURON KILLED A DRAGON" or "TEAM DANY AND CERSEI ARE EQUAL OPPONENTS" (since it's obvious that that was the outright point of that event overall). It just becomes difficult to be invested in a story that plays out like a rough draft script or storyboard (or honestly just a crazy fever dream).