Monday, May 20, 2019

Game of Thrones Watch: 8.6 "The Iron Throne"

Hooray for 300 posts!
 
Read the previous entry in the series here.

8.6 “The Iron Throne”
Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss


This episode could have been two episodes. It probably should have been two episodes, because the sudden and dramatic tone-shift halfway through was jarring. Also, I would have liked a bit more time between “Dany’s dead” and “welp, let’s find a new ruler.” That whole thing needed some time to breathe.

So let’s look at this in its halves because the first half was as infuriating as all the Dany stuff has been this season and the second half had its issues but at least resonated emotionally.

The Daenerys storyline feels like the writers set a trap for us and for the character. (Either that, or they believed their own hype right up until they decided to do Mad Queen Dany.) From the beginning, we’ve been supposed to cheer for Dany. She was the good guy. She was overthrowing slavers. She was liberating people—for real, not whatever “liberation” she was talking about in her rousing speech to the Dothraki and Unsullied. The narrative told us these were good things, that she was overthrowing bad, entrenched systems that needed to be overthrown.

For the most part, the narrative was right. Slavery is bad and should be ended. If a society can’t survive without slavery, it shouldn’t survive.

The narrative even asked us to cheer when Dany did things that are now used to show her burgeoning madness—crucifying the Great Masters. Feeding one to her dragons. Burning the Dothraki khals. She was constantly and consistently rewarded for these actions, sometimes in disturbing ways (the entire Dothraki nation falling to their knees and then unquestioningly following her everywhere, anyone?). The writers spent six seasons showing us that Dany was the good guy, if occasionally a little overzealous.



And then we get Tyrion explaining how no, actually, killing a bunch of slavers was somehow her “first they came for the socialists” moment. Which is insulting to the audience, insulting to the character, and insulting to survivors of the Holocaust, because for those who only know “First They Came…” through memes, it’s a condemnation of all those who stood by and let the Nazis get to the point where they were slaughtering millions.



Put that alongside the Nuremberg quality of Dany’s speech to her army (in a scary foreign language, no less), and the sudden Nazi imagery is just awful and offensive. Especially since the show also bolsters the “white supremacist” arguments of the people (like Cersei and the Tarlys) who were worried about the “foreign horde” coming in and destroying everything—because they did.

And then they essentially held the city hostage by refusing to obey the commands of the (very white except for that one Dornish guy—who even was that?) lords and ladies of Westeros.

So, yes. Trap. Because we were supposed to root for Dany. The writers set us up to believe she was doing the right thing. They hammered so hard how their show was so feminist because of all the powerful women doing badass things like ending slavery and feeding their enemies to dogs and wearing other people’s faces. Women On Top! as Entertainment Weekly put it. (Which has its own set of issues that I don't have room to get into here.)


And then they yank the rug out from under us, and instead of a woman winning Westeros and sitting on the Iron Throne—you know, a good one, not Cersei, who was also bad and evil, dontcha know—it turns out that she was evil all along. And the only logical conclusion is that she goes mad (whatever that even means) and burns a city to the ground and decides to set herself up as Queen of the World—which means she has to die, at the hand of the man she loves, no less, because that’s what women get in these stories.

So Drogon destroys the Iron Throne in a fit of grief? Or something? I mean, destroying it is obviously what needed to happen because it was clearly the One Ring and had to be thrown into the fires of Mordor, but (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) Drogon’s reasoning/motivation isn’t clear here. Carrying off Dany’s body makes some kind of sense, but since when does a dragon have the cognitive capacity to understand symbolism?

That’s where this episode should have ended. If they weren’t in such a damn hurry, it’s thematically and emotionally a great place for it to stop, and then move the second half to its own episode.


Because now we pick up all the pieces and figure out which white man gets to replace Daenerys. And I gotta tell you guys, I am not sold on Bran as king. Not only because, again, the narrative didn’t set it up so it made sense, but because of the reasoning we’re presented with and the way he’s treated and the optics of it.

So, first, Tyrion gets to be the one to propose making Bran king because of course he is. Tyrion can do no wrong. Even when Tyrion messes up, the narrative exonerates him because he was doing his best and just loved his family (unlike a certain dragon queen I could mention). So much of this would be so much more interesting if they’d kept even half of Tyrion’s characterization from the book (ex: see Jeff’s take on the utter failure to adapt Tyrion here.)

Then, his reasoning is that people love a good story, and who has a better story than Bran? May I propose just about everyone in this series? Reminder: Bran was Sir Not Appearing in This Picture in season five, and nobody seemed to care.

Then there’s the whole issue of calling him Bran the Broken, as if his disability is all there is to him. There are so many other monikers they could have used, and I cringed so hard every time they used this one.

Finally, let me point out that they overthrew a fiery, emotional, passionate woman (read: “crazy, irrational, uncontrollable, unpredictable”) for a cold, emotionless, all-seeing, all-knowing man, and if that doesn’t say just everything, I don’t know what does.


Then the writers (and actors and Ramin Djawadi, gods bless all of them) went straight for the Feels with the end game for each character. Brienne finishes Jaime’s story in the White Book. Sansa becomes Queen in the North. Arya hares off into uncharted territory. Grey Worm sets off for Naath. And Jon joins the Night’s Watch again (why do we even still have that?) and sets off to resettle the Free Folk north of the Wall.

I would like to point out that the two characters in this show who murdered their girlfriends are shown as justified in doing so and end up right back where they started—Tyrion as Hand of the King and Jon in the Night’s Watch. Other than their own feelings, there are no real, serious consequences for these actions.

This show, you guys. It has been one hell of a ride, and the last half of that ride was on fire and not in a good way. After the first four-ish seasons, it utterly failed as an adaptation, and then the last three utterly failed as any kind of good or compelling story. If this ending is where Martin’s going to end up (I have some Doubts and also some Questions), he’s got his work cut out for him getting us there (which is probably why The Winds of Winter is taking so long).

I, for one, am perfectly happy to put this entire show behind me, wrap up the few obligations I still have left now that it’s over, and go read/watch something actually good.

And now our watch is ended.

Deaths:
Daenerys Targaryen

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)