Game of Thrones S08E04 Review: Idiot Ball

Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 4: The Last of the Starks

-insert your own Starbucks cup joke here, I'm not going to make one. There's enough for me to mock in this episode without joking about a random oversight-

Game of Thrones is a complex show, but on its core, it's a show that's never been afraid to pull its punches and do extremely unexpected plot twists. In previous seasons, and even arguably in the previous one (which has proven to be quite controversial among the fanbase, as I gather), the twists are earned, and even if the buildup might not be ideal in a compressed, budget-restricted television show, if you sit down and think about it, the twists in Game of Thrones tend to make sense. Sure, Khal Drogo dying to sepsis or the Red Wedding or Cersei blowing up the sept or Ned Stark being executed or Arya jumping and stabbing the Night King can all be argued as jarringly paced and odd narrative choices... but you can't say that those aren't illogical. They all make sense in the context of the story. 

The events that took place in this episode, however, particularly the latter half... they all honestly felt like they were just the barest cliff's notes of the developments of a battle, without any of the nuance, just shoving in plot twists without any sensibility. Throw in some random "twists" in terms of fucking over characters' characterizations... the supposed developments that happened in this episode felt far, far more abrupt for the sake of being abrupt in a way that felt far worse than the teleporting armies in season six and seven. I've always loved the moral ambiguity of Game of Thrones, I've always loved how honour is almost always never the right way, but murder is also bad, I've always loved the shades of moral gray between the characters... but this episode really ended up feeling off, like all of these characters suddenly do shit that is just flat-out stupid for them to do. It's not until writing this review that I find out that this is one of, if not the lowest-rated episodes of the show, and I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. 

Throw in some very problematic handling of characters, and while this episode isn't suddenly "the show's horrible now", it's certainly taken a fair bit of a nosedive. I'm genuinely not sure just why so many scenes in this episode felt off to me. Partly, of course, it's because of just how wooden and artificial the Jon/Daenerys romance and situation felt. I've gone and watched some of the director commentary about how they felt the scenes between the two leading characters of this show are supposed to be, and boy oh boy do the scenes not work at all in trying to inform me of Jon and Dany's respective conflicts and priorities. It's not until this episode that we really get an honestly rushed mission statement, and it's sort of devolved into an honestly pretty predictable soap drama of Daenerys telling Jon to keep it a secret, but Jon, despite being certain that he doesn't want the throne, blabs anyway. And, fair enough, it's Jon, and it's established that he's got a whole lot of that Stark honour in him... but I dunno. I really felt like all of this ended up just being melodramatic for the sake of melodrama. 

And honestly, as much as I understand and applaud Emilia Clarke's performance in portraying Daenerys's increasing frustration about the situation and general jealousy at how people are receiving Jon as a war hero (god damn it Tormund), the actual lines and events that play out really end up making her come off as a bratty kid who stomps her foot down when she doesn't get her way, and while Daenerys was always a bit petulant, this episode she comes off as particularly bad -- and that's before her dragon and one of her most loyal companions get killed. While it's great to see Daenerys finally show emotion again after spending a good chunk of this season and the previous one just being an aloof, detached ruler... it's also frustrating to see her essentially revert back to angry child mode. 

And... I dunno. Would more episodes with more talking help out? I feel like it probably would. Let it really sink in that Daenerys is disturbed a lot by the grief of Jorah's death, and is feeling genuinely threatened by her reduced army and Jon Snow's popularity. Instead we genuinely just breeze through all of it, making all of the Daenerys moments later on in the episode feel like they come out of nowhere. 

This episode is also framed pretty oddly. It's meant to be a huge setup piece to what the show calls the "Last War", but ultimately doesn't really do a whole ton other than the couple of BWAAA SUDDEN PLOT TWIST at the end. The first twenty five minutes or so of the episode is just a bit of book-keeping, and I suppose most of the actors manage to portray their scenes relatively earnestly. The funeral's great, that drinking game was fantastic, Jaime and Brienne get to get on with each other, Sansa and the Hound share a touching scene (as problematic as that "rape made me stronger" sentiment is), Gendry gets made a lord and shares a nice little scene with Arya where she refuses to just be another lady. 

And... and all of those are nice, but it feels like we're just taking our time showing all of these nice-but-ultimately-unnecessary scenes, but the actual characters that the season seems intent on being the backbone of the conflict -- Jon and Daenerys -- feel woefully rushed. 

Ultimately, I suppose this episode is the most damning evidence that Daenerys isn't the ideal ruler for the Seven Kingdoms, and previous seasons has had some hints and inklings that, yeah, her tunnel vision towards ruling the Iron Throne and her unwillingness to compromise is her greatest weakness. Between ignoring her wounded dragon, her reduced fleet and just general desperation whether it be spontaneously naming Gendry Lord of Storm's End or her begging of Jon to keep his identity a secret, this episode basically knocks Daenerys down a couple of pegs while building up Jon as the ideal Messiah for this mess, something that Tyrion and a ready-to-defect Varys discuss in one of the admittedly more entertaining parts of this episode.

The thing is, though, the episode never really spends enough time with Daenerys and Varys to really let it sink in that Dany's desperation and refusal to listen to her advisers is caused by... emotion? Desperation? Stupidity? Bullheadedness? All of the above? The fact that none of her advisers really even suggest any alternate options than to "stall and hope we think up of a better plan" muddles things up a lot as well, and honestly, in a better-written episode this segment and whether we're supposed to see Daenerys as desperate but losing her weaselly allies; or just simply going full-on Mad Queen throwing a tantrum isn't particularly clear. And the episode's clearly not concerned, because by the end of the episode, any ambiguity on Daenerys's part, whether it's just her poor leadership or just desperation to prove that she is the rightful ruler instead of Jon gets replaced with good old-fashioned spiteful vengeance over dead-Missandei.

Also muddling this even further is that Varys and everyone else seems to think that Jon Snow, the man who clearly doesn't want to lead and has been proven to be so honour-bound that he's most definitely going to never listen to more pragmatic advisers like Tyrion and Varys, is somehow the better choice than Daenerys? I dunno, Jon's the hero and all, but I'm genuinely not sure that other than the whole "Aegon Targaryen" thing (and it's clear Varys is willing to bend things and doesn't really care about legitimacy) what makes Jon a better ruler than Daenerys. I dunno. Again, the discussion just felt rushed and so bare-bones that it's hard to me to grasp the reasoning behind these characters' actions. In theory, I am not opposed to the deconstruction of the promised saviour, and Daenerys losing her mind as her world falls apart around her would be a great story-line. The fact that it's handled with genuinely piss-poor pacing, while at the same time playing all those promised saviour tropes seemingly straight with Jon, feels very off. 

Throw in that problematic mid-episode action scene, too. Sure, Rhaegal gets shot straight in his chest where zombie-Viserion mauled him last episode. Fair enough -- I don't have a problem with the ballistae bolts taking down Rhaegal. The sheer randomness and general stupidity of everyone in Daenerys's fleet to both not realize that a gigantic Ironborn fleet led by Euron "Plot Armour" Greyjoy is just hanging out nearby is bizarre, and the fact that apparently somehow these ballistae somehow also double as essentially cannonballs? That felt genuinely out of nowhere, and even with Daenerys's short-sightedness in strategy, this feels like the fault of the writers more than anything. Like, how the hell did Daenerys miss an entire fleet from the air? The show itself just shows Euron simply parking that massive fleet behind like a couple of rocks. And also, how the hell did the Ironborn manage to hit three bolts onto one dragon (being accurate enough to hit both the throat and the recovering chest wound) and pointedly fail to hit ignore the other, when it's later shown they have at least a couple dozen anti-dragon ballistae? I dunno.

Throw in the general bizarreness of how these ballista are used, and... Like... I get that this is a fantasy setting with undead ice-men and collective hive-mind ravens and flaming swords and face-changing cults, but somehow these ballista bolts are essentially as powerful as gunpowder-driven cannonballs and shit? I dunno. Killing Rhaegal... yeah, sure, he's wounded. I can buy it. Completely decimating ships like explosive buckshots? That's another thing entirely.

Anyway, Rhaegal's gone, Daenerys's fleet is gone, and, perhaps in the most contrived coincidence, Missandei ends up being captured by Euron's fleet. Because of course, Dany's BFF and Grey Worm's love-of-his-life gets captured, and not killed while the ship's shattering all around them. Oh, and then she gets chained up and just straight-up executed. And while it's just a matter of time before Grey Worm or Missandei (or both) get killed because obvious death-flag is obvious... I dunno. It felt like a particularly nasty case of a character being killed just to drive another character into angst, in a particularly poorly-executed example of the Women in Refrigerators trope. It's not that Missandei should be 'safe' just because she's a woman or whatever, but the fact that she has nearly no agency in this entire episode, and quite literally just exists to die and give Grey Worm and Daenerys angst feels like such a disservice. It was bad when the show did it to Rickon, but Missandei's a character we've followed around since season three, and it's very unfortunate. 

Speaking about that scene for a bit, was there a reason for "fuck the rules I am queen" Cersei to not just shoot Daenerys in the head right then and there? Or Tyrion? I dunno. Again, like many of the main characters, Cersei's reduced to a bit of an enigma in this season that she could do whatever and I genuinely couldn't tell you if it's still in-character, considering how much we jump around and how oblique everyone's motivations seem to be.

Speaking of Cersei... man, we went a long way from the carefully-crafted "villain you love to hate" types like Joffrey, Ramsay and Littlefinger to just a poorly-written twit like Euron, huh? 

Jumping around a bit... I also find Jaime's character arc confusing, and him sleeping with Brienne felt like a relatively natural progression of their close relationship over this season, even if the writers had to throw in a random sequence of Tyrion being uncharacteristically mean-spirited in going "HAHA VIRGIN"... and then he finds out that Cersei's gotten an advantage, and leaves Brienne in bed while he rides a horse and goes back to Cersei? And... I dunno. If this was really the show playing Jaime's betrayal straight and having him revert to a slave-of-love to Cersei, it honestly destroys multiple seasons' worth of character development for no sensible in-story reason at all, and if Jaime is actually faking it... it's an example of the shitty audience-misleading lines that plagued the horrid Sansa/Arya/Littlefinger storyline, lines that wouldn't make sense once the "revelation" is done and the fact that all of these arguments are just there to mislead the audience and no one else.

Also, the fact that Brienne, the most badass knight ever, is reduced to a sobbing wreck because her paramour decides to gallop off and betray them, instead of at least trying to stop Jaime... I dunno. It also felt particularly uncharacteristic of her of all people. I dunno. I guess she's just narcissistic and spiteful and that's all her character's boiled down to?

Speaking of Jaime... I enjoy the acting and the amazing delivery of the word "cocksucker", but I am honestly completely not invested in the Bronn confrontation with Jaime and Tyrion. Really, Bronn's like a great mercenary and all, but just basically making Tyrion essentially pinkie-swear to totally give him Highgarden when they kill Cersei feels like such a anticlimactic and bizarrely unrealistic way to end this particular confrontation. I don't know what I expected, but definitely something that's not as banal as this.

What else went on? Tormund is just... written out of the show, I guess? He fails to get it on with Brienne because, of course, his crush is one-sided, and then he ends up buggering off with the Wildlings back to the Wall... and Jon lets Ghost go off with Tormund. And while all of the "Jon should have given Ghost a pat" memes are a bit tiresome, I do agree that the farewell between Jon and Ghost is done with so little fanfare and so little emotion that it's genuinely jarring. Honestly, even an implied, offscreen nuzzle or a more personal "kneel down and talk to the CGI dog" scene would've done wonders here. Jon and Sam also have a farewell, and I get it, Jon making farewells to actual people should be more emotional than the farewell to his dog, but it's just a disservice that they bother to acknowledge Ghost but not actually give that scene the emotion that they should. The Direwolves have been ignored enough in this series, and budget be damned, cut out half of the extraneous action scenes in the previous episode to make room for Jon ruffling Ghost's head. Or, for that matter, Daenerys mourning her dead dragons, her supposed children.

It's honestly the sort of poor budgetary decisions that focus so much more on grossly-overblown scenes of giant shambling undead scenes marching on Winterfell several times more than it should be, but actual scenes that matter, that would resound with the audience ended up being completely half-assed. And honestly, the eighth season has been nothing but disappointing from a writing standpoint, and only the strength of the actors' performances has kept the season as entertaining as it is. 

Also, speaking of relatively wasted characters... is Bran's story just done? I'll reserve judgment since we still have two episodes to go, but, man, throw Bran onto the pile of "yeah this character was kinda handled poorly". 

I will praise some of the more exciting parts of this episode, though. I loved the Tyrion/Varys scene, as I mentioned earlier, and the drinking game early on in the episode is fantastic. Arya and Sansa confronting Jon under the Weirwood Tree is great, and I love that while Sansa is adamant at opposing everything Daenerys does, Arya actually acknowledges the needs of allying with Dany. In an episode where the rest of the cast flounder about as they struggle to maintain their character arcs, Arya and the Hound continue to be a surprisingly consistent pair, with Arya refusing to be a lady and be Gendry's lady wife, and the two of them riding off to put a knife in Cersei and the Mountain's necks is something that, hey, I genuinely felt like something these characters would do. 

Also great in this episode is the little detail of Qyburn's completely blase reaction to Tyrion's attempts to prevent the slaughter of the citizens Cersei's funneled into the Red Keep, noting dryly about the screams of children. Oh, Qyburn. 

Overall, this episode just feels like it's spending all of its screentime in the wrong places, and not properly developing these characters. I honestly am not sure just why the producers are so insistent on keeping the final season at six episodes considering how honestly poorly-paced these character developments are. Sure, this episode certainly has some good parts about it and it's not all bad, but I can't help but feel like the show's really dropped the ball on this episode, squandering the otherwise fantastic cast, expensive sets and massive fandom for a genuinely disappointing ride this week.

For a show that has just pulled a subversion with the previous episode, tossing out the big lore-heavy-main-supernatural-undead-scourge-plot for the supposedly character-driven politics... and then completely drop the ball on developing the characters to drive said political plot. This show essentially threw that whole event-heavy, action-scene-heavy spectacle-driven plot down the drain with the promise of engaging politics and treachery, but then ruins their own character-driven plotline, so... I dunno. Perhaps I'm being slightly harsh on this episode, but I honesty do feel nothing but faint disappointment throughout this entire episode.