The Last of the Starks, review

Game of Bitches.

I watched this episode yesterday morning and wrote a review, then took it down to think about it. I had most of the day off, so I got plenty of time to see what people were saying here and on various parts of Facebook.

Mainly the dialogues I saw came down to two different camps:

"Sansa’s a real manipulative bitch" camp.

And "Dany is crazy bitch" camp.

In the meantime I’ve seen a lot of arguments for these positions, all of which make no sense, really.

Much like this episode.

Let me get this out of the way: I am officially bored. This show is no longer any fun — not even fun to make fun of any more. This makes me sad. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve changed.

OK, the basic shape of the plot: the plot points are not bad and it all has a sort of tragic grandeur that has surely come more from the mind of GRRM than the mind of the hacks Benioff and Weiss  they are going for this grand revenge tragedy much like Shakespeare, where everyone dies. I’m cool with that. I’m cool with Dany fucking shit up…that’s what I want from this story.

Daenerys is motivated by the twin engines of ambition and vengeance, the engines that helped to survive the Red Waste with nothing and conquer Slaver’s Bay. Once her dragon is awakened (or woke, if you will: this dragon no longer fights for equality though).

Jon Snow is nothing but a spineless pushover, who can be relied on to a) to the honourable thing and b) do the stupidest thing imaginable, trusting in his own plot armour to save him again and again and again. Cersei is incapable of doing anything but hold on to power even if the cost is all of King’s Landing and her own life. So you can see the conflict that happens when you put these three together.

Like I said the plot is good…but the bullshit between the plot points bugs me to no end.

But what bugs me most is the way people are reacting to the women in this episode, because I think it’s fundamentally unfair and entirely unsympathetic: misogynist even. But it's written that way, curiously.

 This is nothing new. It happens with every interesting female character on every modern TV series. Skyler White, what's-her-name Soprano...

This time the debate and accusations kind of surpass those other shows though because the show has been all about  Sansa vs Dany since episode one; and because everyone seems to be either in the Sansa or Dany camp is jumping on one side and painting the other  side entirely black…;and if they don’t like Sansa, than everything she does seems evil…and ditto with Dany.

And it’s boring, at least to me, this judgementalism. Is this a generational thing? Do younger people judge more? Is everything so easily divided into black and white by the Harry Potter set?

The show opens with a sombre funeral for what looks like about a hundred corpses.  Music plays. Not a single combatant is without wounds. Everybody looks downcast…tears are shed. The skies are grey. The wind blows, mournfully, stirring the wigs of the leading ladies and Jon Snow’s carefully permed locks. After that…it’s party time!!!! 

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Despite the smell of smoking dead human, everybody is having a good time except for Dany and Sansa. They keep giving dark looks at each other. Sansa’s jealous of Dany : why does that bitch get all the attention? Dany is jealous of Jon: why does that bitch get all the attention? 

Varys sits right behind Dany, also not having fun but giving her dark looks

Criticism I’ve read: Dany is obviously crazy because she’s not having fun at the party after the funeral when one of her only friends and most of her army has died. And Varys looks concerned: why isn’t she having a good time? She’s in this place where everyone hates her and everybody is acting loud and obnoxious.Her army has been decimated and one of her best friends has just died.

If that’s crazy, then I am nuts because that is me at literally every party ever. Especially parties when my best friend and half of my army has been killed.
This is exactly how I feel at Christmas parties that my company throws. I look over the employees, drink as much vodka as I can..But I can’t cut loose because I’m the boss and I don’t want to do anything undecorous…I’m glad they are having a good time and I’m enjoying the food, but I just want it to be over.

This is sane behavior when you are in charge, people.

So then, Dany takes an act of queenship and makes Gendry Lord of the Stormlands….or Storm End: they just go together. Fine.

Sansa’s pissed off.

Tormund…who has perhaps surprisingly become one of the few characters I actually care about lets off some good ones…”a madman or a king!”

Dany is a bit insulted by that.

Once Dany leaves, Sansa does lighten up, getting in some…lame character defining lines with the Hound for the stupid members of the audience. “I heard they broke you in hard.” “If I had left King’s Landing, I wouldn’t be what I am today.”

This is horrid, horrid dialogue. People do not talk like this. It’s so bad that it sickens me. The fact that Benioff and Weiss see Sansa's physical, emotional and sexual abuse as something that makes her strong is kind of weird...the fact that the Hound and Sansa just merrily chat about it is just...not believable.

Still...the iplication is that the conversation inspries the Hound to leave. So Sansa influences the plot here.

What I think would have made the scene work is Sansa bitching about Dany…See her working her angles….I doubt if the Hound is a big fan of Dany…he fucking hates everybody, big ole grouch.

Brienne, Jaime and Tyrion and a silent Pod play Tyrion’s “most boring drinking game in the world". On the positive side, the acting is so good, I almost believe they are drunk. Jaime ends up boning Brienne. Jaime, I note, has been one-handed for five years….and still hasn’t managed to learn how to take his own shirt off, unless that was a ploy. I mean, most of the time in Westeros, you don’t need to take a shirt off. You just wear the same thing and it’s filthy anyway, but this is one of those times when you need to.

And the scene comes off as vaguely creepy. More of this later

Tormund gives me the only laughs this show can give me anymore.

Arya give Gendry the “it’s not you it’s me” line. To be honest, the pre-battle sex was probably not that good. It’s not as if Gendry is super-experienced. But I buy that Arya wants to remain unattached. Of course, no one thinks Arya is crazy for not enjoying the party. But then, to be fair, Arya is not running for Queen.

Dany and Jon have an awkward scene.

Criticism number two: Dany cares more for the throne than for her love affair with Jon. Well, NO SHIT, SHERLOCKS. Do people not understand that the basic gist of this criticism is fundamentally, horribly sexist, with implications that women’s ambitions should be totally subservient to men’s ambitions…even if the man is totally unambitious!

To me this scene between her and Jon was absolutely believable and well-played: and Dany is right. Jon’s mere existence is a threat to her life. Whether he wills it or not.

She understands this. As dumb as Dany is, she is not nearly as dumb as Jon. But she’s in a bit of dilemma: because the sensible, ruthless thing would just be to get rid of him…but she can’t do that because she loves him. Neither can she get rid of his sisters, who she knows are working against her; because she’d lose his love and risk a rebellion if she did that. So she knows that Sansa is plotting against her…but she can’t do shit about it.

Therein lie the seeds of tragedy my friends.

And, forgive me, but the show has honestly…honestly done a shitty job of selling Jon as a leader that I am supposed to accept…I get that he’s charismatic and brave; and I get that that’s important in a warrior culture and that the fact that he is male is also important…In fact, the fact that he is male is basically the only rational reason for putting him on the throne.

I’m sorry “not wanting the throne” just doesn’t make sense as an acceptable qualification. It’s jaw-droppingly stupid and I refuse to buy it.

This is not the Belgariad. I feel like the younger generation has been polluted by shit like Harry Potter….which I enjoy, but this idea is straight out of Rowling. I can just see Dumbledore, beard all a-flow, saying: the fact that you don’t want to be a king, Harry ,is precisely the reason why you’d make a good king. And then giving a wink or some shit.

And when delivered by a hoary old actor with a deep mellifluous voice in a childrens book/movie, you can buy it.

In Game of Thrones it represents a dumbing down so profound that I want to celebrate it Tormund-style: by vomiting. The fact is, there is not a single reason to think that showJon Snow will be a good and competent king. Not one. So it substitutes this rather cheesy mom-meme and tries to pass it off as a bona fide reason.

Everything the show has shown us is that Jon is an idiot absolutely incapable of thinking politically, and absolutely vulnerable to manipulation by anyone. The fact that he can’t understand why his secret must remain a secret if he doesn’t want it to foment rebellion (which also threatens his life as well) is proof that he should NOT be king.

Jon just constantly fucks up and happens to be saved by deux ex machina devices. His teflon reputation among the other characters bothers me because it is not believable.Dude is a fucking idiot. I get that Sansa supports him: he’s her brother (OK, not literally) and also she can manipulate him very easily: or at least could until Dany came along. But I don’t get why Varys supports him…is it just because he also sees Jon as pliable? That’s possible…

Now don’t get me wrong: I think that Dany is extremely problematic as a ruler, too. She does overrule her counselors way too often: does she ever take their advice, in fact? And she’s not as smart as many people; she has little wisdom and deep down the criticisms of her Messiah complex are true: but, as Tyrion points out she has done miracles twice. And those were not figments of her imagination. She’s literally worshipped as the Messiah in Essos by the slave-class and even those she’s made chaos in there, she’s also genuinely started a chain reaction that might end up in the overthrow of some real nasty plutocrats. She really is a sort of iconic, religious-type figure. You can't blame her for believing in destiny when she is immune to fire and has brought forth dragons in an miracle that no one has really explained.

But yeah, that doesn’t make her a good Queen. She’s not. She’s clueless and dangerous. But the show is not trying to persuade me about Dany. It’s trying to persuade me about Jon. Or it's not. It just assumes that I'll just go with it.

And I don’t get the “mad” criticism. I don’t see her as mad. I see her as tough; entitled; egotistical but not delusional. Entitled and egotistical applies to most of the characters.

But, yes, I can see quite clearly that her anger is going to result in some real evil shit….but why is she “mad” while Tywin, who also sacked King’s Landing for no reason at all has all sorts of “tough but strong” admiration from people? In fact, in the calculus of Westeros, the idea that Dany can regain the throne without some collateral damage is again…stupid. I feel like I’m watching Harry Potter or something. you don’t make war without killing people. That is the whole definition of war.

And by the way...the idea that she might bring Blood and Fire (which is what Varys said he WANTED her to do in Season 6 when talking to the Sand Snakes) back to Westeros doesn't square with what he's saying now...and let's examine Varys, Tyrion and Jon Snow's strategy for a moment, just so that everybody is crystal clear. 

Their  strategy is to starve King's Landing to death, until the commoners guillotine Cersei.

 And the show seems to be telling me that this is the HUMANE thing to do. 

What the fuck?

Why can't Dany simply do what she did in Astapor? Go in there and spare the civilians, warn them to get undercover and then go in with the dragons and her army and battle them. Yes, there will be some collateral damage, but I'd wager that I'd rather die in fire than go through the Holodomor and cannibalize or be cannibalize. Because I'd personally rather die than see humans bereft of every single shred of dignity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Why is Daenerys “mad” when Cersei chops off Missandei’s head and she goes apeshit? It’s exactly the same thing Jon did in the Battle of the Bastards when Rickon got killed after all; he lost his shit and acted idiotically.

Why am I supposed to accept Jon as a “hero” or “the rightful king” for charging at Ramsay’s army singlehandedly and reject Dany as “mad” when she’s basically doing the equivalent? I tell you it bothers me. It’s the show's shitty writing which relies on the same devices over and over again that’s to blame: but the fact that I, as an audience member am supposed to see Jon as the logical choice insults my goddamn intelligence.

I don’t want it to. I want to support Jon, the Rightful King, the Bastard who Rose from Death to Become the Benevolent Ruler…but fuck it, I can’t.

Sansa: another thing is Sansa. OK. People have been comparing Sansa to Cersei right and left. It’s wrong.

She’s not Cersei. She’s Littlefinger. She doesn’t want to be the power on the Throne…she wants to be the Power Behind the Throne. And yes, she is conniving, she is planting seeds and distributing shit, in proper Littlefinger fashion…but she does have reason. After all these are her weapons: the only way she can defend herself. 

But she is after all genuinely concerned for Jon. Not only because Jon is her brother whom she loves, and she has a premonition of his death…but she needs Jon to be her political puppet: he’s key to ruling the North, at the end of the day. And she needs the power…again because it’s her only way to defend herself.

The irony is, by playing her Littlefinger game, she has probably doomed Jon.

I’m curious as to how her story will play out. I’ve been assuming all along that she would end up as Queen in the North…and as she is intelligent and competent, and does have some compassion, I think she’s honestly the most “qualified” to rule in the whole damn show…but then, to have what is essentially the female Littlefinger on any kind of throne is really pretty fucking dark when you think about it.

But now, after watching this episode,  perhaps Brienne will abandon Winterfell to go South after Jaime, (thus dooming herself) and since Brienne is  Sansa’s protection…Is there anything up North that could threaten Sansa? Bronn, maybe?

By the way, Sansa saying to Jaime that she regrets not being there to see his sister executed is one of the coldest lines anybody has said in the entire series…and the effect was Jaime leaving Brienne.

Again, Sansa moves the plot along.

Like Littlefinger, Sansa knows the exact thing to say and the ripple effect is…almost implausibly effective. I like this, though. The show needs a Littlefinger for the political stuff, to get the gears of the plot moving and having one of the characters transform into Littlefinger is amusing when you see the effect on the fanbase and the denial and the convolutions of thought it evokes. 

Brienne:

What bothers me most was Brienne’s treatment. For the record, I totally buy Jaime’s regression, even if it’s inelegant, arc-wise.

I find it actually one of the most believable things in the whole series. His story arc was never about redemption in the arms of Brienne, the ugly manly knight; his story arc is intrinsically linked to Cersei. It was the whole trip north that was bullshit, (and totally unbelievable: how did he survive that battle when he can’t even untie his shirt) not the trip back to King’s Landing.

But to see Brienne so vulnerable and pleading with Jaime not to leave her… it was too painful and just made me feel that the whole episode is, like so many of Benioff and Weiss’s shit, just them taking dumps on the female characters…because it’s all about the women, this episode.

On the one hand it is believable that Brienne would be so stricken with grief after letting her life-long guard down…all I can say is there had better be a follow-up. She needs to go Mad Knight or it was all just pointless bullshit designed to give the message that letting down your guard just makes you weak?

I hate that heavy metal adolescent shit as much as I hate the adolescent Harry Potter shit.

It bothered me. Maybe I just feel protective of Brienne, because of the books or something — I love those chapters of hers, even though many don’t. But to see her reduced to pathetic…kind of pisses me off. But it was a raw, emotional scene and she is a brilliant actress.

Maybe it’s because Brienne has always been so strong in such a traditional masculine way…and when you see that taken from her, she is stripped bare as just another pathetic woman done bad by mean men.

Fuck that narrative.

Arya: Arya’s rejection of Gendry felt spot on. No complaints. Her rejection of Dany isnot really justified by the scripts of these episodes, to me. And I noticed that she is not planning to come back from King’s Landing. That doesn’t bode well. I tell you what though, if Arya’s role is just to deux ex machina Dany away…I’m gonna be pissed. I hope that Dany kills her, that is more interesting.

Let Jon’s character do something, Arya! Stop relying on others to save him, showrunners!

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Rhaegal’s death and the destruction of Dany’s fleet was sudden, unexpected and well-done visually, but it just seems so fucking easy. How did the Targaryens rule for so long if their dragons are so fucking vulnerable? I get that it was necessary for the plot. But it just felt too easy…it was, if anything, even more implausible than The Long Night. Oh, the repercussions on Dany’s character and the plot were believable enough: the battle was, franky, ridiculous, though. If there had been an actual plausible battle with some damage done to the Iron Fleet, and not such a ridiculous shot as Dany riding at Euron and then dodging ten million spears, I’d be happier.

Shit, she could have divebombed them…like Harry Potter going after a Snitch…ah, it was bullshit.

Prediction: Going forward, I’m more or less sticking to my prediction I made last week. I'm no longer sure if Dany needs to kill a Stark...I actually now think that Cersei will blow King's Landing sky high but the blame will fall on Daenerys and Jon will move to stop her...but I do think that killing Arya would finally move the audience to hate her...it would work for me too, if only the show wasn't so stupid that I don't care anyore.

I also think that Tyrion will betray Daenerys, not so much for Jon or Sansa, now…but for Cersei’s unborn child and for the love of Jaime.

The bit with Missandei doesn’t feel too GRRM-y to me. Even though we had a similar scene in the books when Rodrick Cassel was besieging Theon’s Winterfell. It just seemed so…silly. And yeah, don’t get me started why Cersei just doesn’t just kill everyone of Dany’s army…now I’m starting to think that even Cersei is an idiot.

And Missandei…do you really have to be so selfish as to call out for the mass slaughter of innocents?

Another bitch. All the women in this episode were really quite bitchy…and the one that wasn’t was an emotional wreck. Bad taste in my mouth: this shit is unapologetically anti-feminine (not anti-women: because the women who are strong in their way triumph: but the traditionally feminine women are generally tarred with the shit brush…except for Gilly. Who seems to know her place.)

Well, let’s see what the heroes with cocks make of all this next week.