Looking at Game of Thrones (Season Five)

This time around with only about 70% love and a #spoiler warning that might need to be taken seriously, my Game of Thrones season five wrap up:

Up to this point, I’ve done my best to keep these at 99% summary and 1% criticism, but that isn’t possible this time around because this season is like a tuna melt if the tuna was made with mayonnaise that was left out in the sun.  The show’s producers made some seriously questionable choices this season, and the final episode, even on a second viewing, is just terribly executed and in dire need of a rewrite.  On the plus side, this is the season that gave us the Hardhome massacre, so…not a total loss.  Moving on.

Let’s start with Raven Bran.  Raven Bran isn’t in this season.

His older sister, Lady No More Tears, gets used as a political bargaining chip by her new uncle, Lord Cheesedick.  She’s basically given to the bastard son of the turd who murdered her brother, the king of the snow.  She’s forced to marry the bastard because it gives his family political legitimacy in the north.  She’s also forced to marry him because she was raised by a family that wholly buys into the patriarchy, so her only worth is her beauty and her ability to have children, and her only marketable skills are sewing and cooking, and THIS IS WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO GO TO FUCKING COLLEGE.  They get married and on her wedding night, she’s brutally raped by her new husband.  This scene is disturbing as fuck and even though it isn’t even a little graphic, it’s terrible, and you seriously get the impression that the writers and/or director and/or editor and/or all of them are a bunch of fucking creeps who secretly watch snuff films on the internet.  It’s so terrible that suddenly I feel guilty calling her Lady No More Tears, so from here forward, I’ll be calling her Sansa.  Anyway the raping continues on a nightly basis, but eventually her husband, the bastard, gets distracted by a bit of war, and she jumps off a battlement into the snow, holding hands with Theon (the guy who cut off Theon’s junk is Sansa’s new husband, the miserable bastard), who helps her escape.

Her little sister, Stabbity Jane, has sailed to Ninjatown to learn how to be a ninja.  It turns out ninjas aren’t good hosts, and they hit you a lot, and call you a liar.  There’s a lot of talking that makes you feel like you’ve been in an insurance seminar all day, but it’s really only been ten minutes, and then Stabbity uses her new ninja powers to murder one of the people who helped kill her father.  You want to enjoy the justice being served to this dirt bag, but two things get in the way: First, this show has succeeded in destroying any credible notion of justice at this point, and second, watching a twelve–year–old girl dispassionately murder a man with skill and aplomb, is a tad upsetting.  Afterward, the male model ninja guy is dispassionately upset with her, so he renders her blind, because…reasons.

MEANWHILE, across the ocean, Magic Dragon Jesus Lady is governing, but at least she’s having to deal with a cult of murderers who wear cool masks, so it’s not just local access city council meetings.  Let’s put a pin in that for just a second.

Also across the ocean, Tyrion the dwarf has just arrived from Kingtown after killing his father.  He’s accompanied by Spymaster Baldy, who fled Kingtown with him after realizing he was an accomplice to murder.  Baldy is an interesting guy.  He’s spent decades in Kingtown, witnessed the truly disgusting levels of corruption and depravity, has acted in defense of the crown, whoever the crown was at the time, has plotted against the crown, and all of it in the best interest of maintaining public order and the rule of law.  In other words, he’s motivated by ideology, which is one of the most dangerous qualities a person can have in this world, AND he’s alive, due in no small part to his skill at taking the weather in any situation such as realizing when helping someone escape prison turns into helping someone commit murder, and deciding that now might be a good time to leave everything behind and sail to a new place across the ocean.  Somehow his ideology can’t seem to evolve to the idea that the entire concept of royalty is fucked in the head.  Okay, so Spymaster Baldy and Tyrion are on the other side of the ocean and Baldy thinks Tyrion needs to go to work for Magic Dragon Jesus Lady as an advisor, because Tyrion actually displayed great skill at running Kingtown back in season two.

Let’s take a quick pause to acknowledge something.  Tyrion is a murderer.  He murdered the prostitute he was in love with for sleeping with his father, and he murdered his father.  Baldy, too, is a murderer, having directly killed at least one person that we know of, and having facilitated the murder of god knows how many people.  Both of them have killed, both of them have no connection to any legitimate power structure on this side of the ocean, both of them have no apparent source of money, and somehow, both of them are sitting on cushions, drinking wine, and are on their way for a job interview with a queen.  #WhitePrivilegeIsReal.  Alright, back to the story.

Tyrion decides to go to a brothel, and is spotted by Sir Lusty Pants, who used to work for Magic Dragon Jesus Lady.  She banished him when she found out he was spying on her for Spymaster Baldy, way back when he first met her.  Sir Lusty Pants stopped spying on her when he saw her naked and covered in baby dragons, which would be a genuinely spiritual experience for just about anyone, but Magic Dragon Jesus Lady was still pissed, so he’s fired.  Recognizing Tyrion, Sir Lusty Pants decides to kidnap him and bring him to Magic Dragon Jesus Lady as a gift to get back in her good graces.  It doesn’t work, but now Tyrion can interview for the job, and he gets the job.

Magic Dragon Jesus Lady attends a massive gladiator UFC match, and the winner is…Sir Lusty Pants, who should probably be named Sir Stalker Pants, but let’s be nice.  The murder cult with the cool masks attacks, and they come close to killing Magic Dragon Jesus Lady but then the dragon she wasn’t able to lock away in the dungeons for being a bad, bad dragon, just magically shows up like some sort of ghost in some kind of machine.  She gets on the dragon and they fly far away.  She wonders where they are and goes for a short walk, and is suddenly surrounded by a massive group of the rapey, stabby, hill people she used to hang with in season one.  Back at the palace, Sir Lusty Pants and Dario, the pretty mercenary who fights for love (…) decide to go look for Magic Dragon Jesus Lady while Tyrion hangs back and runs the city as the newly-appointed Minister of White Privilege.  As Tyrion is looking out over the city, Spymaster Baldy just magically walks up from behind him because palace security is apparently a shambles.  Baldy says, “Hey,” and Tyrion says, “Hey.”

MEANWHILE, Lord Grumpypants, who saved the crow people at the end of the last season, decides it’s time to march with his army on Snowtown.  The weather is against them, most of his army is just mercenaries, and a bunch of their food and supplies are set on fire by Sansa’s husband, the bastard.  Grumpypants has a witch working for him, and she says they need all the good luck they can get, so the best way to get some luck is to set his daughter on fire, as a sacrifice to the god of light.  Grumpypants agrees, this is a good idea, to set his daughter on fire so he can realize his political ambitions.  GRUMPYPANTS IS THE BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT IN THIS ENTIRE STORY, and that is a significant achievement.  So they set his daughter on fire.  The next morning, half of his men have taken all of the remaining horses, and have left during the night, because it turns out setting your own child on fire doesn’t inspire confidence in your employees.  The witch takes the last horse and runs away before Grumpypants can set her on fire.  Grumpypants, widely considered one of the finest military leaders in the seven kingdoms, decides to take his tiny remaining army, and march on Snowtown, where they get their asses kicked – to death.  What a brilliant strategist.  He’s dead, which is great.  Fuck him.

One last aside.  This show sometimes goes way too far out of its way to display the hideous cruelty people are capable of.  It’s one of the themes of the show, and presumably the books.  WE DON’T NEED TO HEAR LITTLE GIRLS SCREAMING IN AGONY AND BEGGING FOR THEIR PARENTS SAVE THEM AS THEY BURN TO DEATH.  This scene isn’t even a little graphic, and it’s without question the worst thing I’ve ever seen on a television show.  I’ve never been the sort of person who thinks the entertainment industry is responsible for the state of the world or that it ought to be held accountable for anything, and I’m still not, but this scene went way too far, the producers were irresponsible for filming it, and HBO was irresponsible for broadcasting it.  Please feel free to disagree with me, but please also feel free to direct your disagreement in the direction of your fucking toilet.  I am inflexible on this.  Fuck this scene.  Alright back to the story.

Down in Kingtown, Queenmom is pissy with her daughter in law so she finances and legitimizes a cult of religious fanatics and sets them to the task of persecuting her, because she’s apparently the sort of person who sprays for ants by setting fire to the house.  In the course of this silliness, the cult turns on her, and throws her in jail for being #icky with her brother.  They eventually allow her to go home to await trial, but not before shaving her head and making her walk naked through the city while people spit on her and call her the C word, and once again, you seriously have to wonder if the writers and/or director and/or editor and/or all of them are a bunch of fucking creeps who secretly watch snuff films on the internet.  When she finally gets home, she’s picked up and carried inside by Frankenmountain, who used to be Mountain Greg, who was almost killed by Inigo Montoya, and then just barely brought back from death, so he’s now kind of like a trained zombie.  Queenmom is traumatized and pissed, BUT I’M SURE SHE’LL DEAL WITH IT IN A HEALTHY WAY.

MEANWHILE, John Fuckin’ Snow is hanging out on the wall with the crow people.  There’s an election where the crow people vote for a candidate by stacking a specific geometrically shaped chip on a dowel, and you’re like, “Hey look, it’s an electoral process that can’t be hacked by Russians,” and after they count the chips, John is the new leader of the crow people.  He knows that an army of ice zombies isn’t going to concern itself with the political concerns of the living, so he decides to ask the wildy people to help them fight.  This upsets the crow people, which is stupid, because there’s only like fifty crow people left, but they’re always cranky because of their vows to never have sex.  All the wildy people who weren’t at the last battle are hanging at a place called Hardhome, which should tell you a lot about both the area and the people who live there.  John takes some crow people and some wildy people to Hardhome to ask the wildy people there to fight in exchange for a safer place to live.  Some say yes, and some say no, but they all say yes after a shit ton of ice zombies attack.  What follows is easily the greatest zombie action sequence ever filmed, especially when we learn how dead people deal with descending a sheer cliff face (#ZombieWaterfall).  A bunch of wildy people escape with their lives, but just as many or more are killed.  As John and the other survivors, are floating away on a boat (the dead don’t swim) (#buoyancy), Ice King walks to the edge of the docks, raises his arms, and all the dead wildy people stand up, newly recruited ice zombies.  Ice King now has the largest army anyone’s ever heard of.  Back at the wall, where the crow people live, the crow people are #horngry, which is kinda like #hangry, but worse.  A bunch of them can’t get past their political differences with the wildy people, and they can’t accept an alliance with them, and they decide the best way to express their frustration is to murder John.

The season ends with the camera looking down at the corpse of John Fuckin’ Snow.

Takeaways from this season: Cruelty is like mayonnaise; a little goes a long way.  Civilization is still a bald-faced lie, held together by spider webs and dumb luck, but the greatest threat to civilization is easily the ruling class, who probably have an unconscious understanding that society is better without them, which explains a lot of their shit behavior.  The world needs leaders, not kings.  Honor is still dangerous, and the world is still indifferent.  Also, the creative process is difficult and sometimes it’s easy to get lost in it, which is why your collaborators need to be people who can occasionally take a step back and say, “Hey is this right?  Is this how we want to do this?” It’s really easy to go too far.  Also, PARENTS SHOULDN’T SET THEIR CHILDREN ON FIRE.

#GoT #LazyWriting #ParentingFailure #FuckRapeScenes #FuckStanis #FuckTheGodOfLight #HardhomeMassacre #TheDeadDontSwim # WhitePrivilegeIsReal #horngry