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Hey Legion! Our Christina Janke will be posting her recap and review later today, but I had to weigh in on last night’s Game of Thrones finale. I’ve been talking about it on social media, and I posted a place for you to post your opinions, which I’m dying to hear. Obviously there are going to be SPOILERS for last night’s Season 5 finale ‘Mother’s Mercy,’ so consider yourself warned. In addition, there will be spoilers in the comments. Please mark BOOK SPOILERS if you’re putting any in there.

Okay, here goes my rant. I hated last night’s finale. It undid all the brilliant work of the first four seasons. If you’ve been reading my work for any amount of time, you know how much I’ve loved the show and how disappointed I was in this season. First of all, the scene with Jon Snow wasn’t what upset me last night. That is in the books. I knew it was coming. Hell, Kit Harington cut his hair a bit shorter, so it was kind of expected by book readers. You could see it coming when Sam left with Gilly and the baby. Sure, he could be resurrected by Melisandre (ooh, I want to see someone take her out). Maybe the Night’s King who gave him the skunk eye two weeks ago will make him part of the icy army. Doesn’t matter. Not saying I loved seeing him go, but I feel like they earned it. They’ve been hinting for some time. (By the way, Harington said he isn’t coming back.)

Daenerys is off in some plains area with her injured dragon and no food — and the Dothraki just show up? What? Did Drogon mentally call them in? “Hey guys, mom totally locked up my brothers, so come get her.” And that ring that she dropped in the middle of a huge area — of course it will be magically found by her pursuers because plot? Didn’t she call in Drogon mentally during the fight? He’s just too full of ouchies to come get her now?

Cersei’s walk of shame was in the books and expected as well. But — did we have to spend half the episode on it? That’s one of my issues this season. It was completely uneven. This should have been the third episode. They dragged the hell out of every story, and the things they should have showed us (Brienne of Tarth! Tyrion!) got short shrift. It felt like overkill and a way to keep showing us naked Cersei. I have zero issues with nudity, by the way. This just felt like it went on forever and ever. I got the point 3 minutes in. That’s the other issue. They’re beating us over the head with things this season. Yes, Ramsay’s awful. We get it. Things are dire. We get it. The earlier seasons were balanced with some hope, whether or not we knew it was futile. This is pretty much sorrow porn at this point. Joffrey was awful, but it wasn’t every other scene. We got more Tyrion. It wasn’t all pure misery. Cersei is not a character you’re really going to feel for, even after her seven hour walk of shame. She had Ned killed. She encouraged Joffrey’s monstrous behavior. She’s screwing her brother. She killed the king. A little gook and bloody feet don’t matter in the face of that. (For the record, in the books, Cersei contemplates others who have taken this walk and thinks about how, passing the spot Ned was killed in, her actions started it all. Far more interesting than what we saw.)

Arya — I love this character. I loved watching her take down Meryn Trant. However, there was no reason to put those other little girls in there to be beaten. Again, we know he’s awful. Just having Arya in there with another face would have worked. It was established what a pig he was last week. The whole House of Black and White storyline has been boring this season, largely because it was so slow. I loved the story in the books. It moved faster. Yes, a book moved faster than a TV show. Should I be able to say that? In addition, the scenes (as were the ones on the wall) were so dark that it gave me a headache to watch. Did you spend too much on the dragon? Couldn’t afford lights? What?

Next, let’s talk about Dorne. Not a great story in the books, but it was torture to watch. Terribly written characters and what the hell was with the Bronn story? Did you put that in there for a reason? The stupid ‘bad pussy’ line. None of this makes any sense. I don’t buy the attraction. I don’t buy any of it. The lipstick plot was pretty obvious to anyone who has ever read a fantasy novel. Or watched Firefly. If a kiss makes little sense or lasts too long, it’s poison. I liked the Myrcella/Jamie scene. It was one of the few I did. Pretty much that and Tyrion and Varys. So about 1/16th of the show.

Stannis’ death by Brienne — he deserved it, but it felt like a cop out. I’ve been waiting to see this woman all season and we’ve gotten dribs and drabs. She misses the candle by a few seconds? Really? Too pat. Too easy. Just lazy. Then she gets to kill him, but it all falls flat. Of course, she wouldn’t have been able to get to Sansa before the stupid leap off the building anyway.

And there there’s Sansa. First of all, she steals a corkscrew and picks a lock? Which she, what, learned in thief school? She clearly didn’t learn not to drop it on the floor. Reek kills Miranda by pushing her over a balcony (yay), then they jump off the freaking building? Unless you bring her back as LSH next season, that was awful. You just invalidated everything you did with her character. THAT was not earned. If that is how it ends, all Thelma and Louise, then her entire story is sorrow porn. Also, the showrunners talked about that jump as brave and going forward with life. So, does that mean she’ll survive the jump that is way higher than the one that killed Miranda? Right, because plot. Also, for the record, if Sansa has just gotten to the point where she’ll risk everything to get that candle up there so someone can help her, I don’t buy the suicide idea. I also don’t buy that they’re both stupid enough to think they could survive that. Which they will because — what was it again? Oh right. Plot.

Let me say this. I’m not bitching about all the death and killing off main characters. I read the books when they first came out. I knew what I was going to watch. I’ve loved the first four seasons, which were chock full of murder and death and bad people. It’s the way this season was handled that I hated.

 

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Jenna Busch

Jenna Busch is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Legion of Leia and has hosted and written for sites like Nerdist, ComingSoon.net, Metro, Birth. Movies. Death., IGN, AOL, Huffington Post and more. She co-hosted Cocktails With Stan with the legendary Stan Lee and has appeared on Attack of the Show, Fresh Ink, Tabletop with Wil Wheaton, in the documentary She Makes Comics, on NPR and Al Jazeera America, and has covered film/TV/gaming/comics for years. She's currently a co-host on Most Craved. She's been published in the comics anthology Womanthology, is a chapter author for Star Wars Psychology: Dark Side of the Mind, Game of Thrones Psychology and Star Trek Psychology and more, and owns a terrifying amount of swords and 20-sided dice. There are also those My Little Pony trailer voice overs that give one nightmares.

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