OT: Why is everyone on GoT so dumb? (Spoilers)

Submitted by OwenGoBlue on

If you've been on the internet this week the latest episode has already been spoiled by headlines alone. In case this is the only site you visit and you have yet to see Sunday's episode AND you still clicked on this, stop reading now.

Everyone is just so dumb in 700 AD or whatever and I can't handle it. 

Night King: Throw faster or at least have better caddies! Throw at the rock island!

Bran is just the worst at omnipresence!

Just have dragons burn the ships!

Writers: You have all of the deus ex machinas in the world and you still come up with "this dude who we never show rides in on a horse sometimes!" Why did you idiots give everyone plot armor this season?

Dear board, please answer me this: Who else is dumb? Who is the most dumb?

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PoseyHipster

August 24th, 2017 at 12:47 PM ^

I haven't read the books in years, but my recollection is that he's treated the same way there, as kind of a cold weather, international man-of-mystery who shows up when things go poorly.  As I said, he's definitely a convenient plot device, and not particularly well fleshed out, but I wouldn't call him a deux ex machina, because he is well established in the world.

Joined: 02/02/2016

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isleberg

August 24th, 2017 at 12:36 PM ^

Why not bring some ravens with them? Why didn't they all take horses beyond the wall?

This show has been a mess for a few seasons, it feels more now like True Blood than Medieval The Wire. The writers are obviously just mailing it in at this point and want to move on. 

The technical quality (effects, cinematography, etc) has been stellar though.

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Farmhouse Funk

August 24th, 2017 at 12:44 PM ^

Where did Eoron get all the wood and such for 1000's of ships? He lived on islands called the Iron Islands not on the forrest moon of endor? Also where did he get the 10-15 thousand people to man those ships?  Going into this season I figured he would somehow get these ships/people since they had to give Cersi some kind of chance but still....

Everytime Bran is on the show I wish that Jamie could throw him from another window. "I'm the three eyed ravon now" oh so that means ;you are an un-emotional asshole that drags each scene down and can't show any kind of emotion??

I still like the show for the most parts but certian things have been a little anoying and confusing.

They should just have a spinoff with Arya going around killing people, maybe have Lady Mormont as her side kick?

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grumbler

August 24th, 2017 at 3:20 PM ^

There are legitimate complaints about the show, and then there are complaints like this.

The British Isles were called the Tin Islands for a thousand years, and yet, there was enough room between the tin mines to grow the forests that built quite a few navies.

And Euron didn't have "1000s of ships."  He said "build me a thousand ships," but nobody would take his blustering as a precise instruction.  He certainly had hundreds.

The show is being very deliberate in showing that Bran has lost his humanity.  As Meera Reed points out, human Bran died in that cave.

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SalvatoreQuattro

August 24th, 2017 at 12:44 PM ^

what can be told in books. The show has it's flaws, but then most do. The acting ranges from superb to average, the visuals are fantastic, and the writing widely varies. It is a fantastic fantasy show. Emphasis on fantasy.

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mtzlblk

August 24th, 2017 at 4:12 PM ^

is the difference between book writing and TV writing, plain and simple. 

books = time, revisions, thoughtfulness, complexity, plot depth, character dev, etc. and so on.....

tv = simplicity, plot devices, budget, schedule, effects, tie-ups, etc. and so on

I still love the show overall, but I watch it a bit differently now. 

It would have been great if they had been working on the conclusion the whole time and had been planting the seeds for that in all the earlier seasons, but it seems more like they got to the end of the last season/books and then said "okay, let's get this all closed out in 1-2 more seasons, how can we make that happen?"

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ijohnb

August 24th, 2017 at 12:58 PM ^

not read any of the above because I watch the show WHEN IT AIRS but you should not post about leaked content without a warning in the title. And (spoilers) is insufficient. Make it clear within the title that you are posting about leaked future episodes. And bad GOT post. Characters on shows are neither "smart" nor "dumb," they aren't real and act only to serve the story. And why are they "acting dumb." Because George RR Martin wrote himself into such a corner that not even he can get himself out of it and the writers of the show are having to connect dots that really don't connect that well.

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tedbundy98

August 24th, 2017 at 1:01 PM ^

The Night King has a cannon like Vlad Guerrero, and he's just chillin with all these dudes on an island?  Cmon!  

Also, the whole purpose of going to dragonstone was to mine dragon glass.  So why go on a mission north of the wall without 500 dragon glass arrows?  1 valaryean steal sword, 1 fire sword and a couple dragon glass daggers wielded by a creepy stalker guy.  confus. 

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darkstar

August 24th, 2017 at 2:57 PM ^

What was the point of mining the dragonglass if you aren't going to use it when you can? Couple of arrows and some archers and they could've taken out some white walkers and/or Night King.

And what kind of military genius is Jon Snow?  Let's take 10 guys with no horses directly at an army of 1000s of undead when we don't know where they are just to get one to bring back as proof?  About as futile as Pickett's Charge.  How about take a boat and land behind them (somewhere south of Hardhome), pick off some stragglers at the rear of the pack and then GTFO?

I've given up on caring about the space/time continuum that they seem to have solved.  It took Brienne & Pod 2 seasons to get from King's Landing to the Vale but now anyone can get to any other point in the continent in 10 minutes of episode time. At least it keeps things moving forward.

I actually think the show is better than the books though having read them all. I think of this show as more entertainment than anything else.

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grumbler

August 24th, 2017 at 3:25 PM ^

Horses would be totally unrealistic under tthose weather conditions.  What are they going to eat?  How are they going to keep from freezing to death?

The lack of dragonglass weapons is a very good point.  Hell, the show would have been better and more exciting if they'd have had a way of striking back, so that there was a reason the White Walkers didn't over-run the island.

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Hanniballs

August 24th, 2017 at 1:27 PM ^

pisses me off. Why doesn't she just get rid of littlefinger, or at least just not spend any time with him? It's mindblowlingly obvious that he's all of the things everyone is complaining about above, not to mention creepy. I know he saved her ass at the batlte of the bastards but cmon man. It bugs me

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kehnonymous

August 24th, 2017 at 1:45 PM ^

Sansa is keeping LF around because he controls the Arryn army that saved their butts last season so politically she can't afford to lose those knights.  Nonetheless pretty much EVERYTHING about the Sansa-Arya writing this season has been butt-awful and needs to be mercy-killed with a quickness.

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blueblueblue

August 24th, 2017 at 1:29 PM ^

Like the second season of True Detective, these last several episodes of GoT further demonstrate HBO's amazing abiltiy to take a truly great show and turn it into something laughable. 

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ijohnb

August 24th, 2017 at 5:02 PM ^

is a bit harsh, IMO. It has been a mix of very good, and sporadic very bad. It won Best Drama last season. I know awards don't mean everything but the decline has not been that steep or that rapid. There have been some very unfortunate turns, no question. Last week was brutal. No argument on that. It was reminiscent of the handling of Stannis' fate in Season 5. You watched the show kick itself in the nuts like five times in a row. It miraculously rebounded from that though. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Lannisters are and have always been the best characters on the show. When either Jamie or Cersei is on screen, the show still really pops. The biggest issue right now is that Jon Snow has never been very interesting, and he is kind of the main character now. The Jon and Daenarys romance has been really, really bad, and I question the decision of the writers in deciding to go in that direction. It really isn't necessary, or inevitable. It has actually been really awkward. I am not seeing any chemistry and the plot has been contorted to shoe horn it in.

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huntmich

August 24th, 2017 at 1:35 PM ^

I didn't read the whole thread but a leading theory is that Arya and Sansa are acting to get littlefinger to show his hand. It doesn't make sense for Arya to give Sansa shit about playing the game with the Lannisters when she herself was the cup bearer for tywin. And it would also give meaning to the plot line of her with the troupe of actors.

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PoseyHipster

August 24th, 2017 at 1:47 PM ^

I hope you're right about that one, because otherwise (as I mentioned above) I'm very disappointed in the way Arya's been acting since returning to Winterfell.  I've been waiting for Littlefinger to get his for a long time, it's not a stretch to think I may have to continue to wait for that...

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BJNavarre

August 24th, 2017 at 1:36 PM ^

So, Kingslayer is shown sinking in about 50 feet of water with armor on at the end of the show. Next episode, he comes out of the water, practically unaffected, with no explanation of how he was saved.

Jon Snow is thrown in ice cold water for probably 30 seconds or so, surrounded by Zombies. Zombies decide to allow Snow to come out of water, give him time to recover, then kinda sorta attack.

W T F? Are people not able to drown on Westeros? 

Not to mention the 5000 mile roundtrip that the Ravens/Dragons had to make to save Team Snow from the zombies.

I'm not expecting realism, obviously, but all this seems like massively rushed & lazy screenwriting. It's stopped becoming suspenseful when you know the heros will be saved by a bunch of BS in the end.

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Laser Wolf

August 24th, 2017 at 1:45 PM ^

Quibbling about logistical issues on a show featuring people riding dragons, frozen dead men walking, giants, and children stealing dudes' faces. Got it.

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BJNavarre

August 24th, 2017 at 3:44 PM ^

Nobody expects realism, but there's constraints to the GoT universe that they've built up throughout the first 6 seasons. They've stretched those constraints at times, which is OK. What they've done the last few episodes is basically just thrown everything out the window to move the story to a conclusion.

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