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About reiver

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    Hedge Knight
  1. reiver

    How Would You Rate Episode 109?

    Or cutting a lot of littlefinger's manipulations and cleverness in favour of him telling us how smart he is... Oh wait. I liked this episode the most of all the series so far. It wasn't great but it worked well as a TV interpretation of the book and for the most part the changes intrigued rather than annoyed me. Shae's personality for example or the Northern army not splitting as fully. The change that did irk me is the last part of the Tysha story being left out. It removes so much of the dissonance around Tyrion that i think it makes for a less interesting character. As to the battles, well i agree with those who say not seeing Jamie was a loss. I feel that a lot was sacrificed early in the series to shoehorn him in and there were some pretty shitty scenes as a result. Why go to all that effort then neglect an excellent and far from expensive chance to include him. That the scene would have been all kinds of awesome makes it doubly dissapointng. For the wider battles i'm not so bothered. In the same way i didn't need the play with the ass scene i'm quite happy to not have the violent equivalent. The broad strokes of the battle and the drama involved combined with the outcome is all i need. I don't really want to see a few minutes of extras hacking at each other. So by that standard it wasn't a great job but i'm not overly saddened either. That said it may be a result of reduced expectations from what has largely been a rather mediocre show. An 8 this week
  2. reiver

    How Would You Rate Episode 106?

    Some of the previous groundwork was necessary. We're at the stage where we're being beaten about the head with it now to the extent that it's ridiculous that they allow Theon to even have a bow if he's so much an outcast and prisoner let alone sent off as a trusted envoy. I'm now thinking Theon's capture of Winterfell, within the context of this adaptation, would not even be the slightest betrayal whereas in the book i had a fair bit of dissonance about it.
  3. reiver

    How Would You Rate Episode 106?

    I loved the episode but there were a few things missing that would have made it even better. I understand the lack of the wolves in the fight for purposes of getting the dogs to behave but they could still have had them tearing at the corpses or finishing off a downed man as he tried to rise. Surely getting a dog to eat sausages dressed to look like intestines isn't beyond the dog wranglers and if it is then hire better ones. It would have made the scene bloodier and more horrific and would have kept the wolves there as characters. At the moment i'd be suprised if many viewers even remember them. Robb and Theon was again a bit too much. We get that Theon isn't a Stark, we get that he resents his position but they're overegging the pudding to the extent that Theon's betrayal is an inevitability. It was quite shocking in the books and i'm sad how much of that they will have lost in trying to justify and explain it early. I loved the fight in the eyrie and liked that they managed to tell a lot of the story visually. I'd have liked the contrast in armour to have been a bit more pronounced. Bronn's was spot on but Ser Vardis looked too lightly armoured for the contrast. i suppose that's very much a book geek quibble and something that wont even flit across the mind of a viewer but it's something that i feel would have added to the scene without any effort. My favourite so far. I gave it a 9
  4. The renly Loras scene wasn't awful it was just a little fat (unlike both emaciated bodies on display, seriously if you're going to do fan service lets get some guys with meat). The slurping made me lol which i guess wasn't the intention. Overall i liked the episode but was again left cold and baffled by a lot of the changes. Littlefinger/varys was a decent scene but utterly wrong to have two people whose stock is in whispers and intrigue go all Bond villain on each other. There were several more artful ways of acheiving the same affect (inc. the cut Littlefinger explaining his manipulation of robert's council to Ned). I'm really unsure on the cersei scene (again) and i think i'm going to be waiting until i see just how much she's lying to see whether i like the character alterations. Best added scene was Bran and Luwin. A perfect example of how to do exposition, world building and character development without feeling forced. If only they were able to do this more often...
  5. I rated it 7. It was a decent episode but had too many flat and seemingly pointless scenes with protracted backstory. I'm rather baffled that after 3 episodes of dancing around names and history when it would have been appropriate that we got such an info dump with this ep. Not that i'm opposed to filling in the history but it all seemed a bit forced, clumsy and unnatural. I also don't like a lot of the changes, i'm not a book purist and i accept the need to reshape for a different medium i just think that too much has been mangled and lost for the sake of changing rather than to improve. So many of the good lines have been plucked and replaced with cliched pap that seems to be from BBC drama rather than the HBO shows i love. This isn't even scratching the awesomeness of Rome or Deadwood.
  6. reiver

    Poll: How would you rate Episode 103?

    Best yet imo. I may not have liked a lot of the deviations from the book but there were some excellent scenes that were allowed to last longer than previously and even back to back scenes involvng the same character. Less of the skipping around between stories made the show feel more settled and less like a sugar high kid with a remote.