After seeing the first two episodes of this season of Game of Thrones, I was almost feeling as if I didn’t really want to watch any more. The end of season one was so good, so true to the books, and now I didn’t see that closeness to the books. But we went on to episode three and four and suddenly I felt hopeful again. There would be enough scenes from the books that would get adapted really well.
Then we watched episode five. I was almost in tears afterwards.
Four ended in such an amazing way, with the birth of the shadow, and I knew we’d get a fabulous death scene for Renly. Not to mention that they would be able to actually show Loras’s reaction, described so evocatively by GRRM with just a few lines.
But no. The death scene was thoroughly underwhelming, with the horror elements of GRRM’s writing pretty much lost and the death completely sanitized. There should have been more fear, more blood, more terror. Brienne should have been even more distressed, with Catelyn the one taking charge to get her out of there.
And when we returned to the tent after their escape, we got a scene between Loras, Margaery and Littlefinger that in no way captured what happened in the books. How could they not show Loras going mad with grief, killing his own companions? How could they have him conclude that it wasn’t Brienne, just like that? How could they waste that scene in such a way when they had the opportunity to show on-screen what was only reported in the books as no PoV-characters were present?
I wanted that death to be harrowing, I wanted the reaction from Loras to be a grief-filled rage that you couldn’t help but to be drawn in by. Those scenes were supposed to make me cry and while it is true that they did make me teary-eyed, it was for all the wrong reasons.
There’s nothing wrong with the acting in these scenes, I do want to stress that, but I can’t say the same for the writing of the scenes. They’re passable, if looked at just as television and not an adaptation. But compared to the books they were immense letdowns. I just cannot believe that such a pivotal scene was done in such a weak fashion and that they changed the aftermath so much.
There were good scenes in the episode, even some very good scenes—Tywin with Arya was brilliant, Tyrion with Hallyne was very good despite some botched history—but the way it started and the way it ended was quite shattering.
I already knew Qarth would be significantly changed, but actually seeing it was still painful. It bears only a superficial resemblance to Dany’s actual storyline. Of course, that is more than can be said for Xaro. They’ve changed his appearance, they’ve changed his sexuality, they’ve changed his background. There is nothing left of the character in the books except his name, so why on earth wasn’t it changed? Jeyne’s name was changed to Talisa, after all.
So far, I am also completely underwhelmed by these invented characters, such as Talisa and “Xaro”. They are just not good creations, so what are they doing there? Yes, Talisa is replacing a character that was not very fleshed out, but still, why replace her with a trite cliché? “Xaro” is replacing an interesting character with a completely new, completely uninteresting one. Why?
Last season, we saw the episodes get stronger and stronger. This one took a dive beneath the two opening episodes of the season and a mile below episode three.