Game of Thrones

Very entertaining and satisfying season, but I'm with Temo that it's a bit of shame how they've more or less abandoned the tight, realistic storytelling now that the TV show is untethered from the books. Just compare how long it took anyone to go anywhere of any distance (even within just Westeros) in the first few seasons to how Varys basically teleports back and forth all over the world at the end of this one, or how Littlefinger goes back and forth to the Eyrie conveniently quickly (or anything to do with Dorne). I don't think these kinds of plot points are necessarily inexplicable, but the show didn't really take the same level of care with fleshing out the details this season; instead there were a lot of broad strokes to basically tidy everything up into nice little bows for the final showdowns.

Also, I would have preferred they just Chuck Cunningham'd Dorne altogether.
 
Why do so many people struggle to realize just because a scene changes, doesn't mean no time has passed? If you watch the final scene, you see Targeryn ships from the slavers, Greyjoy ships, Martell ships, and Tyrell ships all heading to Westeros. Obviously some time passed from when Varys was in Dorne compared to back in Essos with the armada.
 
BlackwaterPark said:
Why do so many people struggle to realize just because a scene changes, doesn't mean no time has passed? If you watch the final scene, you see Targeryn ships from the slavers, Greyjoy ships, Martell ships, and Tyrell ships all heading to Westeros. Obviously some time passed from when Varys was in Dorne compared to back in Essos with the armada.
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That's how I took it as well. He gathered the Dorne and Highgarden ships and went back to Essos so they could take their entire army across the sea. They even said that just the ships with they took from the slavers and the Greyjoy ships wouldn't be enough.

As far as Littlefinger goes. They weren't in the Vale the entire time. A few episodes prior to even Sansa meeting with Littlefinger they had already decided to leave and 'go help my cousin' as Robin put it.

You also see Jamie arriving in Kings Landing which is some travel time from the Twins where the Freys are at and even longer from Riverrun where he helped take back that castle.

So all these events likely didn't even happen in the same order of time that they were shown on screen. And passage of timely is pretty evident. So while they didn't show all the events in between like they have in seasons past I really didn't have an issue with it. The show is coming to an end (13 episodes left) and this was a great way to start the final act.
 
Metaphysicist said:
it's a bit of shame how they've more or less abandoned the tight, realistic storytelling now that the TV show is untethered from the books.
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It's also a pretty massive necessity. As the overall narrative has progressed, the Song of Ice and Fire tomes have generally grown slightly longer to accommodate the added story-lines while maintaining Martin's "tight, realistic storytelling". To follow suit (and setting aside that I think the fundamental differences in the two types of media necessitate different methods of storytelling anyways) either the individual episodes would have had to run longer or the seasons would have to number greater.

Given production constraints, I'm fine with the idea that the show's producers are making certain elisions—though I also think it's fine to argue that cropping different aspects would have aided them better (and plenty of book-readers I know have likewise floated the notion that Dorne proper could've just been tossed out of the show's scope).
 
First you build the world, then the mythology then the characters and once that is done you can start telling the tale in depth. This means that once you establish the rules of the world, you can take liberties as you assume the audience gets that time has passed or other plot needs.
 
BlackwaterPark said:
Why do so many people struggle to realize just because a scene changes, doesn't mean no time has passed? If you watch the final scene, you see Targeryn ships from the slavers, Greyjoy ships, Martell ships, and Tyrell ships all heading to Westeros. Obviously some time passed from when Varys was in Dorne compared to back in Essos with the armada.
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Dude, I understand what happened. As I said, these things are not inexplicable; I didn't say they were plotholes. I'm talking about how the storytelling has changed and been simplified.
 
It's also a pretty massive necessity. As the overall narrative has progressed, the Song of Ice and Fire tomes have generally grown slightly longer to accommodate the added story-lines while maintaining Martin's "tight, realistic storytelling". To follow suit (and setting aside that I think the fundamental differences in the two types of media necessitate different methods of storytelling anyways) either the individual episodes would have had to run longer or the seasons would have to number greater.
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Again, I am still very happy with the show and thought this season was a blast. But I guess I was just holding out hope they could create their own resolution without changing the narrative structure too much.
 
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