Review of Game of Thrones Season 8 episode 6: the Iron Throne

If you’re looking for a happy ending, you’ve come to the right place! (Commence confetti throwing and balloons dropping on a joyous Bran.)

I’m not going to stop the wheelchair…I’m going to BREAK THE WHEELCHAIR. (Breakdance sequence follows)

Actual meme on Facebook: What do we say to HBO on Monday? Unsubscribe!

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Well. That sucked. But at least its over.

The show of course broke Godwin’s law twice by comparing Dany to Hitler, but I honestlyt think it’s far-fetched. While I accept that her saviour-complex does not bode well for her governing skills, and her ability to mass murder thousands without a thought does not make her particularly desirable, I have the feeling that most of the cities that she wants to liberate are just going to let her liberate them without a fight.

Somehow I don’t think that after conquering Slaver’s Bay and reducing King’s Landing to a a smouldering ruin, she’s going to have to kill everyone — which is exactly what the show implies, But when you think about it, that  is kind of braindead. Not every ruler is as stubborn as Cersei!  After that kind of force, I’m pretty sure the fear thing is going to work for her.

And I had to chuckle at Tyrion:

First they came for the slavers of Astapor who castrated boys and made them kill babies and puppies…and I did not say anything, for I was not a slaver of Astapor who castrated boys and made them kill puppies.

Then they came for 367 Meereenese noblemen who crucified 367 children…and I did not complain for I was not a Meereenese nobleman, and besides, those assholes deserved it.

Then they came for all those khals and I looked the other way because, they would have gang-raped her and…they kind of sucked.

You see, it doesn’t really work. The heavy-handed comparison to Hitler breaks down pretty quickly and easily. But I get that after Star Wars and the movie version of The Two Towers,they felt like they really really wanted to pay a tribute to Hitler, only with the Nazis being people of color here. It’s now a fantasy tradition!

I don’t think these guys, the showrunners, are really racist assholes, but, goddamn, the unintentional racist iconography is strong in the Dany storyline pretty much from day 1: in the books, all these peoples are emphatically multi-ethnic and multi-cultural: in the books they are mostly kind of… brown.

But otherwise, the first half was quite nice (other than the fact that Arya was as useless as nipples on a breastplate), and I think Kit, Peter and Emilia all deserve kudos for their fantastic performances of very badly written dialogue.

Loved the look of the Throne Room, loved the imagery of the melting throne (nice symbology there Drogon, way to reject the whole narrative of human power in all its venal vanity and absurdity …and way to do it in a very easy to grasp symbolic gesture -- You get an A for your art project--, but you’re preaching to the choir with Jon, I’m afraid) and the melancholy and haunting image of Drogon flying away with Daenerys in his grasp will stick with me for some time.

I did catch something interesting: Jon tells Peter that Sansa and Arya “don’t get to choose” and then Dany tells Jon the exact same thing about other people and Jon replies by sticking a knife in her heart. More of this later.

I know that they couldn’t leave the story there, even though once Jon knifes Dany, the story is effectively over. And that’s where the episode really started to fall apart. Not that it moved me at all. The tragedy of it all feels like story points on the back of a cereal box.

The…election scene. I thought that Edmure and Samwell were effective comic relief, but it all felt perfunctory and overly pat. Tyrion’s speech about stories was lame, but well done, and whatever.

What amused me is at the suggestion of leting the demos decide on who’s king, everybody immediately laughs and says: they don’t get to choose.

I mean it was a nice comic moment, but fuck. That’s a muddying of theme if I ever saw one! Isn't that the straw that broke the camel's back when Jon knifed Dany?

And the whole theme is heavy handed enough in the first place and then it just blows away like…ash on the wind.

And what gets me is I don’t think that that was an intentional muddying of theme. I think the writers just are rather sloppy this season, and that’s another example among many.

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Now the issue of Bran being king: I can see how it could work in the books. If Bran, the Three Eyed Raven, this character who somehow…you know, like, stands for the collective consciousness of man can somehow rule, then it’s not an uninteresting turn of events: something similar the godlike Paul Atreides and his godlike offspring ruling in Dune. It’s kind of cool.

The problem is…what the hell is the Three Eyed Raven? we've had nothing that makes me think he's Paul Atreides.  His whole schtick makes no sense to me.

Why was the last 3EyedRaven holed up in a cave? The more I think about the more I realize that the show runners have no idea what he is either and they are just bullshitting.

Now, I suppose one could get creative and spin some background story, but we shouldn’t have to do that.

I know that the 3EyedRaven being this…heriditary office… is not a thing in the books, that it’s a show-only concoction: since they concocted it, what the hell are they?

Really, the 3EyedRaven is a hollow shell. There is no pretending that showBran is not a useless character and I have no idea why the collective lordship of Westeros all just shrug the shoulders, say fuck it, let’s elect Bran. Heck, he’s a cripple who went beyond the Wall!…What a story!

Goddamn, he’s even less qualified than Jon. And that is really saying something.

You see, They needed to show us at some point in the series why having Bran (or anybody) as King is a good idea and not just Tyrion saying, welp, might as well be the crippled kid. I can think of no one better.

ShowTyrion is an establishd idiot, of course, but the fact that the rest of the idiots agree in seconds makes me doubt that Westeros is really in good hands.

And “Bran the Broken?” Seriously? Must they give him that title? All hail Bran the Broken! If I was Bran, I’d be like “yo, I can’t walk …or father children (thanks for blabbing, Sansa) but I’m not broken.”

Bran doesn’t want to be king…can’t see in the future…yet “that’s why I came”, i.e. to become king.

“You were right where you needed to be Jon…"so that I could become King, which is the outcome.

So then you have an actually quite sinister character who has weird magic powers (when it’s convenient) who may have manipulated everything, who pretends he can’t see in the future, but then actually admits to being able to see in the future.

Yeah, they thought that shit through rather poorly.

And then there’s the Small Council scene. For the fuck of everloving sake!

Bran is useless! Joffrey was a more hands-on king. Bran’s like “I’ll let you get on with it, I’m going to sit in a dark room with my wheel chair and Pod the Chubby.” And what kind of useless crap was that meeting:

we need food

No problem, boss.

We need ships.

As soon as we have money, boss.

Did they really need to do a sit-down for that? Wouldn’t, like, a couple of emails have sufficed? or, you know, pieces of parchment delivered by a page or whatever?

And WTF? Over in Barcelona they’ve been building La Segrada Familia for, like, 130 years, but they seem to have totally rebuilt King’s Landing, which is back to being a bustling metropolis with lots of ships in the bay! Doin’g trade, fish markets, merchants…but no brothels. It ain’t hard to make a brothel, you oafs: all you need is a pair of women and a cardboard box and a cash register.

The council chamber, which was literally roofless two scenes ago is now back to it’s former splendor.

Man, is this crap or what? Couldn’t they have moved the capital to, I dunno, shit, anywhere but King’s Landing? For plausibility’s sake?

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The closing montage was quite nice. I knew (or suspected) that we’d get Sansa sitting down to “The Queen in the Norf!” and I liked it.

Arya’s going to Americos…not so much. For one thing, that smug smile is going to be off her face when she runs out of food and her crew decides to throw her ass in the water…but whatever….maybe she’ll find Americos and “break the wheel” there.

Ugh. So stupid. I mean I get it: Arya is sort of…adventuring. And that’s her and she can’t settle down…but…I’m pretty sure the Atlanticos is uncrossable, and even if she gets to Americos, it really does raise questions that I don’t want raised in this story.

And I was especially moved by Jon just up and going North of the Wall with the rest of the Wildlings. His whole arc has been about breaking oaths for the common good…and now he breaks it for himself and finds peace and happiness in the Wilderland of the North. I like that. At least that’s how I interpret it.

So the beginning was all right if stuffed with gratuity and very thin writing and the last few minutes lovely.

But I’m glad it’s over. Has it taken the Golden Age of TV with it?

See y’all when the novelizations come out.