Despite all its charm, grandeur, glut of legitimately great filmmaking and stirring moments, “Beyond the Wall” remains for me one of, if not the most frustrating episode of Game of Thrones to this point due to its relative abundance of logic holes and writing shortcuts. To be clear, I don’t think the flaws I’ll discuss below are enough to completely sink the episode, even in the the aggregate. Nor do they take much away from the experience of the viewing the handful of unforgettable moments the episode contains. However, based on the standard that the series has set for itself, I can’t ignore the amount of compromises made.
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‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7, Episode 4: “The Spoils of War” Reaction
As short as seven episodes may be for a season of American television, an episode this eventful and consequential arriving at the relative midpoint of a season is reminiscent of the great primetime soap operas of network television pulling out all the stops for sweeps and ending on a massive cliffhanger before a hiatus. However unlikely it is they would kill off such a crucial character as Jaime in such a fashion, the drama of the moment was undeniable, especially following as spectacular a battle sequence as it did. As strong as the first three installments were, there isn’t much doubt in my mind that “The Spoils of War” was the strongest episode of the season to this point by any metric. Continue reading
‘Game of Thrones’ Season 4, Episode 9: “The Watchers on the Wall” Reaction
This episode-“Blackwater” 2.0, was good bloody fun and a prime example of what makes Game of Thrones so unique as a series. Not just unique in the way that the show is special-it being of superior quality to almost everything else the medium has to offer-but unique in its very essence as a work of media-art. Game of Thrones the television series exists somewhere between cinema and television, blurring lines and creating new forms in the process. It is in episodes like this that the series makes its mark. Continue reading