Rate Episode 8x05

Unsullied here! So, immediately after watching I'd no idea how to rate this ep. I've been talking to a friend just now and getting my thoughts together and I've ended up with an 8.
Visually it was stunning. I thought it was absolutely gorgeous. I loved (well, not loved, but you know what I mean) seeing the brutality of war. I also loved seeing exactly why dragons are considered so fucking terrifying. Like, I knew they are, but this episode made me feel it under my skin. Cersei and Jaime's death was... not what I expected, but it made sense. I was terrified Arya would actually die, but it was worth the tension and heart ache to see that beautiful last scene with the horse.

HOWEVER, (and maybe I should've deducted more points) the fact Dany started burning innocents after the city surrended felt completely unearned to me. I could tell we were heading this way (the Mad Queen), but not like this. Not after a surrender. Not with no obvious justification other than "she's pissed off". I assumed she'd fly to the keep and maybe people would die as collateral damage in her effort to bring down Cersei, but just randomly burning up innocents? Nope. That felt competely out of the blue.

8/10

The writing is still pretty sloppy, but whatever. This season and it's plot lines desperately needed more time and we are now facing the consequences. 

The good? Dany snapping and wreaking havoc. The war crimes on the "good guys" side and the absolute chaos of the battle. The bad? The way Dany snapped. Surely killing Rhaegal here would make more sense. 

The plot armour in this show carries on being even more and more ridiculous, but that's that. Thank god that the shitty character that was Euron died. Good god everything about him was so tragically bad. Golden company was also hilariously bad. This season has been a tad disappointing, but this was a pretty solid episode.

6

I gave it a 6 too. I had some major problems with the writing, but I can't deny that this was one of the most beautifully shot, directed and acted episodes of the entire series. 

My problem with the whole brutality of war thing is we've seen it all before. We saw it at the Blackwater with guys getting the heads popped by rocks and sliced in half by the hound, at Snowbowl with the slaughter in the shield wall when wildlings were getting massacred by the Boltons, we saw it at the "siege" of Winterfell when the Baratheons were crawling around in the dirt with no legs...

They've driven that home so much. This episode is brilliantly put together and well shot, but it feels overly gratuitous. A large part of the episode is just "Dany burns shit". It goes on forever, and beyond things like Cleganebowl and Varys' death, it's largely void of meaning.

Characters like Euron and Qyburn die in bland, predictable and pointless ways. The Valonqar prophecy is completely abandoned...

I'm not even saying it's a bad episode, it's better than last week for sure, but it just feels disappointing. I suppose that might be the point, but there was a lot of long term storytelling that feels somewhat unrewarded. Cersei's death should be more important. Varys' schemes just go up in smoke. What did happen to his "alliance to restore house Targaryen" schtick from Season 5 anyway?

Then again, maybe the point is that Dany breaks the wheel. The wheel is the scheming of Westeros' lords after all. The Varys's, Cerseis and Tyrions of Wesreros lay out their schemes, and Danaerys destroys them. She's breaking the wheel, of course that means upending an entire city, killing thousands, destroying a civilisation. It's Slaver's Bay X10. It's chaos and it leaves King's Landing in ruins. All that's fine, the grand scheme and premise is sound. But ultimately, that was all this episode was, and for a series that's always had depth and tension, this episode was very one note. Spectacle is this series greatest asset, and a spectacle this was. But once it's over your realise it was just that, and nothing more.

Also, if Arya kills Dany... Eugh.

5.

Special shoutout to a gorgeous shot which is not getting the love it deserves in the wake of Kings Landing battle....Drogon emerging from the darkness to burn Vary. Utterly breathtaking in its eerie beauty.

My non-reader reactor buddy hated this episode fwiw. But she has hated the whole season