The Good. The Bad. The Meh.

Published April 29, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hey Guys,

This will be long but at least I hope it’ll be worth it.

You guys are great. I listen to all your pods. Enough of that…I’ll get into it.

War
GOT is a modern tv masterpiece and this episode was shocking, beautiful, sad, and captivating all at the same time. But for a group of folks who have an unending wealth of combat experience between them, man, did they look like amateurs. They broke almost every cardinal sin of warfare. Here are some:

* I know that Jon and company probably never read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” but it seems like someone on the Dothraki team might have spoken up about the first strategic move to send in the heavy cavalry head on into a wildly superior enemy which they can’t see . This was stupid and they paid the price. Which leads to why in the shit they were attacking AT ALL! They were in a defensive position! What did they think was going to happen? If they wanted to scout the enemy force there were hundreds of other ways that didn’t include sacrificing 100% of your heavy cavalry. Bad. * Um, actually…Gene when you said we see the main characters surviving perhaps b/c their warrior lives have simply conditioned them to survive (Warrior Darwinism?) was not a thing…it is totally a thing. War breeds warriors. If you have read any histories of war (The Russian/Napoleonic ones come firstly to mind) you’ll find that this is exactly what happens. The ones who survive do so b/c they are inclined to and the more they survive, the better they get at it. I encourage you to do some light research regarding the soldiers of any army towards the very end of a war; it’s fascinating. Good. * Where the hell were the ranged weapons? We saw a hand full of catapults and when the army of the living fell back to WF we saw what looked like sporadic archer strategy; people here and there lobbing arrows. The living had tens of thousands of soldiers! You cram as many people as you can up on those walls with sustained volleys of fire and dragon glass arrows. Not one of these life long warriors knew to do this? Bad. * What else would I have done?…well first I would have stationed a dummy force at and around Winterfell to draw the army of the dead in and allow them to take over WF. Everyone else peaces out. This would allow your two greatest weapons, ridden by your two greatest heroes to remain off the board. When the dead all flood into the keep you Dracaris the hell out of the entire castle, putting the Night King on the defensive and FORCING his move.

Arya

* How much screen time did we lose due to Arya’s weapon that she only used for a handful of seconds? I was not as impressed as you guys b/c I expected more badassery before she loses the thing. But, the handful of seconds were sweeeeet. Good and Bad. * Her interaction with Mel was great. Especially, the god of death line. My only gripe is that it was an obvious line that was made more obvious by her not appearing on screen again until pulling a Mortal Kombat move on ole NK. It was great, I just don’t like knowing something is coming long before it does. Good. * The call back to the knife move was meh. More on that below. Meh. * As often as I hear you guys say the words “Ugh another trope!” I can’t believe you let the “sneaking around the library” scene slide. It was so tropey and made me groan. Bad.

Hound

* I thought his reaction (freezing up) was great. It showed a face of combat in a main character that you might not expect in this kind of epic. Good.

Night King

* I get it. Hubris. He’s bad ass and knows it. But am I supposed to believe that this guy is finally facing down the VERY LAST threat to him in the ENTIRE WORLD after how many thousands of years of preparation and he doesn’t have one iota of urgency or caution?? That same hubris would have caused him to just fly in and torch the place from minute one. It didn’t make sense. Either he’s maneuvering tactically or he’s not. I mean, his eventual move was to send in his undead dragon to separate Bran from everyone else…this should have been his first move before zombie Viserion had his throat torn out. The entire living army is outside; do that from the get go and game over. And only then did he slow-walk into the place with his peeps. I was totally waiting on him to explain his evil plan to Bran while Arya snuck up on him. Trope. Bad. * No fight?! We didn’t get to see this guy fight anybody. I would have been wayyy more entertained by a showdown between Arya and NK. Instead we got a little knife drop; and even more on that below. In fact, we didn’t get to see ANY of the Walkers fight anyone. Meh. * I like that he met his end in this episode at the hand of Arya and not Jon or a dragon. It was something I didn’t expect to happen. Good.

Theon

* Love that his arc ended this way. Bran’s last words to him made his entire character complete. Good. * But why did he have to do the dumb charge?!?! “ARGARHHH!” Trope. He didn’t think that just maybe he might be able to strike any sort of blow to anyone before dying? I would not have had such a problem with this if NK had not been taken down by Arya’s cutesy knife hand-change. NK was obviously convinced nothing could stop him which is a recipe for being stopped. But Theon?…”ARGARHHHH!” Dead. Bad.

Sansa/Tyrion

* Incredible acting. Incredible story telling. Their scenes and relationship is GOT’s long game paying off big time. I think we got some foreshadowing there about split loyalties. Good.

L. Mormont
Awesome. She crushed it. My second favorite scene. Her death was true to her character and killing that giant probably made a huge difference. But, it did kind of negate the whole Tyrion/Sansa thing about “We’re down here b/c we can’t do anything.” Imagine their surprise when they hear that the little 13 year old Mormont girl died killing a fucking giant single handed. Did you also notice that she killed the zombie giant the exact same way and in the exact same place that Ramsey killed Wun Wun after he broke down the same door? Good.

Jorah, Brienne, and others

* You guys already groaned about the last minute saves so there’s that. But what about the ongoing invincibility of these characters as we clearly see that they have been overwhelmed to the point of inevitable death only to be shown in a following scene to be kind of ok and fighting on. How long were Jaime, BriBri, and Pod fighting off 100,000 whites by themselves up against a wall? At one point there are uncountable legions of undead and the next Jorah only has to fight off 2 or 3 at a time in a completely open field. If all those multitudes of zombies flooded that castle, there would have been no safe inch but yet we continuously see shit like Tormund fighting all the dead on top of a pile of bodies as they conveniently approach or Arya neatly sneaking around while just a few dead folks are taking strolls in the library. Nah. You can’t make a scenario so dire and 1000% hopeless and then change your mind from scene to scene…”haha just kidding they’re fine”…I got LOTR flashbacks when Gimli and Legolas were counting their kills. Tormund: 5,6837. Bad.

Samwell

* Oh man is Dick right. What a piece of garbage. His only purpose in the episode was to get Ed killed in tropey fashion. Bad. * Also Dick, I think you forgot that in Saving Private Ryan, it was Corporal Upham who pitched the hissy fit when his crew was going to execute the German. He cried so hard about it that they let him go. That was the German who fired the bullet that killed Tom Hanks’ character.

Jon

* My favorite scenes of the episode were Jon trying to make his way to Bran. As he runs through the castle he witnesses all of his friends and companions being slaughtered (but not really at all we find out) and has to make the decision, over and over, to let them die (but again not really) b/c his mission to kill NK is about saving humanity…not just his buddies. But of course, we find out his friends were never really in any danger and none of the folks he passes on saving actually dies, so that watered it down. However, even watered down it was still super powerful. You expect him to make it to the Godswood for a bout with NK but he doesn’t which was a welcome subversion. Good.

I love the show and I love you guys. All the best from Bama.

Matthew Colson

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