*This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones through Season 6, Episode I and for A Song of Ice and Fire through A Dance With Dragons and spoiler chapters for The Winds of Winter *

*Also this article discusses certain events of the series, including rape, that might be triggering to individuals*

The previous season of Game of Thrones was awful. Unforgivably awful.

"But, Rudy!" you may say "Season Five was the most lauded season yet! It won like twelve Emmys! Can it really be that bad?"

The answer is yes. It can. And it was.

For starters, the writing last season was incredibly lazy. The ham-fisted mentions of Greyscale, for example, made it painfully obvious that someone was going to catch it. In fact, I would argue that the only purpose Shireen's character served last season was to endear her to the audience and bring up Greyscale before brutally burning her to death for shock value™ at the end of "The Dance of the Dragons" (5x09).

The whole scenario doesn't make a lot of sense. Why is Shireen, a child, accompanying her father on a long march through the freezing North to besiege Winterfell? Why would Stannis, a claimant to the Iron Throne, sacrifice his only daughter (and legacy) for a stint of good weather?

In fact, in the Theon sample chapter from The Winds of Winter, Stannis explicitly instructs his men to continue fighting in Shireen's name should he fall in the upcoming battle at Winterfell.

"It may be that we shall lose this battle," the king said grimly. "In Braavos you may hear that I am dead. It may even be true. You shall find my sellswords nonetheless."
The knight hesitated. "Your Grace, if you are dead — "
" — you will avenge my death, and seat my daughter on the Iron Throne. Or die in the attempt." (George R. R. Martin, The Winds of Winter)

Regardless of things like character motivations™ and themes™, the show then uses Shireen's burning as justification to randomly kill of Stannis in the next episode, but cuts away at the last minute out of fear of being "gratuitous."

I just want to be clear here: This was the event out of the season that would have been "gratuitous." Not the brutal rape of Sansa Stark in "Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken" (5x06), the attempted rate of Gilly one episode later in "The Gift" (5x07) or even the sacrificial burning of a child in "The Dance of Dragons" (5x09).

Speaking of Sansa Stark, what happened to her last season was disgusting. It was also indicative of the problem this show has with female characters.

For those who haven't read the books, here's a brief overview of her arc from A Feast for Crows:

Sansa spends time in the Vale of Arryn pretending to be Alayne Stone, Petyr Baelish's bastard. Through her arc she learns to read people and to manipulate her circumstances with words. Lord Baelish teaches her political manipulation, and while the reader gets the impression that she's not necessarily safe with him, she's not mistreated. In this identity she makes friends with Myranda Royce, and she cares for her cousin, Robert Arryn. Her own struggles with identity nicely parallel Arya's identity struggles in Braavos.

That's not the Sansa Stark story we got last season. Instead we got this pile of shit:

Sansa spends about two episodes in her "edgy" Alayne outfit that debuted at the end of Season 4. Then Petyr Baelish tells her that he has a great idea and brings her back to Winterfell and marries her to Ramsay Bolton, the legitimized bastard of Roose Bolton, whose hobbies include flaying people, hunting human beings, and torturing Theon Greyjoy Reek.

What a great match.

Sansa is fully revealed as Sansa Stark (who, by the way is still wanted for murdering Joffrey) and on her wedding night Ramsay rapes her. During that scene, the camera decides to focus on Theon's Reek's anguished expression. Sansa decides then it's time to run away, and after Theon kills Myranda (another victim of Ramsay), they jump off Winterfell's walls.

In an effort to be honest, a situation similar to this does occur in the books. It does not, however, happen to Sansa Stark.

It happens to Jeyne Poole, Sansa Stark's friend who disappears after Ned Stark's arrest back in A Game of Thrones when her father is killed. Littlefinger says that he'd "find a place for her."

He actually forces her into prostitution.

Then, during A Dance with Dragons, Ramsay is set to marry "Arya Stark." The reader knows that Arya Stark is actually in Braavos, and it's revealed through Theon that this is actually Jeyne Poole. It's also apparent that most of the surrounding Northern Lords realize that this isn't actually Arya Stark, so they do nothing to help.

The kicker is that Benioff and Weiss (the showrunners) made a clear choice to adapt this storyline. In their own words:

"There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.”

Apparently this had been their intention since Season 2, to rip Sansa out of her own plot where she develops as a character and insert her into a storyline where she is raped and brutalized because they "loved the subplot."

How fucked up is that?

Season 5 had numerous other issues too including wonky CGI, dark sets, weird continuity errors, and another plotline Benioff and Weiss butchered nonsensically.

I am, of course, talking about Dorne.

Back in Season 4 we were introduced to Oberyn Martell, Prince of Dorne. Remember? He's the guy whose head gets smashed in while trying to avenge his sister and her children.

You may remember that Myrcella Baratheon was sent to Dorne by Tyrion for safety back in Season 2. Oberyn mentions that Myrcella is safe in Dorne because they do not kill children there.

So, of course, the Dornish plot of Season 5 is entirely focused on killing Myrcella. To add insult to injury it's Oberyn's paramour, Ellaria Sand, who is behind it all. Myrcella has also been aged up (they literally switched actresses, I'm not kidding) so she can make out with her betrothed all the time.

Basically the plot in the show seems like a poorly written buddy cop movie. Bronn and Jaime go down to Dorne and try to bring Myrcella back at the same time that Ellaria and a trio of Oberyn's bastards, the Sand Snakes, attack.

The plot is literally nonsensical. There's some really awful fight choreography, a weird slut-shamey game of slapsies, and boner-activated poison.

It culminates in Myrcella telling Jaime that she doesn't care that he's her father (remember, she's a bastard born of incest) before tragically dying of poison like maybe a mile off the coast of Dorne.

It's safe to say that isn't what happens in the books.

The actual Dornish plotline is one of my favorites from A Song of Ice and Fire and it's so drastically better than this garbage.

I'd go into it here, but it's not worth having to explain it all only to watch Benioff and Weiss soil it further.

All of that background just to talk about what happened tonight on Game of Thrones.

We're just gonna break this down plot by (lack of) plot.

Plot 1: The Wall

So remember that big shocking moment at the end of last season where Jon Snow was stabbed to death? Well apparently this next scene takes place immediately afterward and no one thought to, I don't know, maybe move the body?

So Davos finds him (even though Davos isn't supposed to be there, he's supposed to have gone to White Harbor to talk to Lord Manderly and then be on Skaagos looking for Rickon (remember him? He's still alive!).

But whatever Davos finds Jon and then they ran into Dolorous Ed (whose name I forgot) and then they hole themselves up with his body?

Also who actually thinks he's dead? Kit Harrington still appears in the intro.

I mean if we're being honest the "Olly stabs Jon" event was so incredibly hamfisted the entire last season. Every time Jon would do anything, we'd cut to an Olly reaction shot just to gauge his approval / disapproval. Honestly....

So Alliser Throne basically tells everyone that he and a bunch of people killed Jon Snow and manages to somehow talk his way out of it? (And surprise, an Olly reaction shot despite the fact that Olly knows because he also stabbed Jon). People are okay except for the small contingent of brother who are holed up with Jon's body and Davos.

Davos talks as if he's going to lead a revolution from within the Night's Watch.

Somehow Alliser Thorne has command of Night's Watch despite the fact that it doesn't work that way (like voting was such a moment last season so don't even start) and no one is actually upset (except for Dolorous Ed and Davos and some people without names, remember Benioff and Weiss killed off Jon's other friends at the end of Season 4).

Okay so then Davos is like "Mel is powerful, I've seen what she can do."

But like the only real think he's seen is the shadow baby and we know that she doesn't have one of these things.

So we cut to Mel and she's looking at herself in the mirror and then she flashes her tits (again) and then removes her necklace and suddenly she's old.

Problem is, we've seen her without the necklace during Season 4 and she's not old.

Proof:

It's implied that she's older than she appears in the books, and that her appearance some sort of glamour, but it comes with some sort of build up. The reader is granted two chapters of Mel's POV and she becomes more interesting.

In other words, what happens in the books is worth more than this:

There's more to Mel than just filling HBO's t&a quota for the episode (seriously I still don't know why she had to fully disrobe in that scene, was there narrative purpose??? I don't know???).

Plot 2: Winterfell

I honestly don't know why this scene with Ramsay was allowed to exist. Ramsay is a monster, yet Benioff and Weiss constantly try to humanize him and give him some semblance of a character arc when they literally just victimized Sansa Stark of all last season (and yes, we will be getting to her because I am still angry).

Honestly I'm so sick of this show trying to humanize Ramsay fucking Bolton when literally last season they ripped Sansa out of her own plot just so she could be raped in Winterfell because the "liked the plot but it happened to a character that the audience didn't care about."

I'm sorry you thought a rape story was more compelling than a character's proper arc. Maybe that says more about you.

Anyways, is Roose Bolton now afraid of the Lannisters when just last season they were too far away?

Doesn't he owe is current position to the deal he conspired with Tywin?

Also stop dangling Walda's potential child in front of Ramsay, we all know that it's just setting up another female character to be brutalized to prove that Ramsay is a monster again. It's obvious and not clever. #ProtectFatWalda

I guess the one thing this plot did in this episode was make me hate it. Also confirmed Stannis's death (which still doesn't make sense to me).

How long has it been in-world since last season?

Jon's body is still lying there, but Roose and Ramsay already know Stannis is dead?

*shrug*

Plot 3: Sansa and Theon

And the scenes the spawned a thousand shippers. Am I the only one sickened by this? Sansa Stark deserves so much better.

Anyways, I guess they survived the fall and are now just running through the North being chased by Ramsay's "best men" (who I suppose are the twenty good men that managed to destroy all the food and horses for an army of over 5,000).

They literally swam through a frozen river which seems like a guaranteed hypothermia and death but, hey, no one asked what I thought.

Also suddenly they're friends despite the fact that Sansa mentioned that she wished she tortured Theon herself (in, what I guess counts as an empowering moment™).

So they get caught because, again, these are Ramsay's best men and it all looks bleak until serendipitously Brienne shows up and almost singlehandedly kills all of them?????

How long ago did she kill Stannis? How did she find them? None of this is explained and yet we're supposed to accept that this happens due to ~plot convenience~?

And then Brienne swears to protect Sansa and Sansa forgets the words despite the fact that Sansa was enamored with tales of knights and would know the words by heart.

In perhaps one of the least empowering moments of the episode, Sansa actually asks Theon's permission.

Why does Sansa feel the need? For all she knows this man killed both of her younger brothers (Bran and Rickon for those who don't remember because they haven't been relevant in over a year) and betrayed her older brother.

It's insulting to the character to make her ask permission.

Plot 4: Cersei and Jaime

Alright so we're in King's Landing and Jaime is returning from Dorne. There's no real indication how long they've been traveling.

I guess my big question is last season Myrcella died while Jaime was about a mile from the Dornish coast, why didn't he do anything? Ellaria literally murdered his niece / daughter.

It doesn't actually make any sense.

Also there's something to be said about Cersei and Jaime and all this "it's us versus the world" rhetoric they throw around. And it's this:

Why is the most unproblematic ship this show presents an incest pairing?

Cersei also mentions the prophecy, but not the final part which says that a "little brother" will eventually kill her. It's commonly thought that though Cersei assumes this "little brother" is Tyrion, it actually may be Jaime. He is technically younger than she is. Are Benioff and Weiss retconning that to give us this totally unproblematic incest pairing? Maybe.

Also Cersei talks about how Myrcella was totally 100% good (which admittedly she seems to think about all her children) but last season Myrcella seemed like a brat. So I guess your mileage may vary?

I don't understand whether or not this show is trying to justify the incest pairing, and I'd rather not think about it too hard.

Subplot: Margaery

So we're treated to one scene of Margaery who is still imprisoned by the Sparrows within the Sept of Baelor. She tries to demand things from a Septa, who may be the scariest character yet, and basically worries about her brother.

She then meets with the High Sparrow, but the scene goes nowhere.

In my notes all I have written is "Marg is ????"

I suspect we only got that scene because Natalie Dormer is a rather popular actress currently.

Plot 5: Dorne

As I mentioned earlier, Dorne is one of my favorite parts of A Feast for Crows and I find the storyline very compelling. Last season Dorne's introduction was bad, and I guess it only gets worse.

Basically we watch Ellaria escort Doran through the Water Gardens. Then there's just a whole bunch of murder as Ellaria and one of the Sand Snakes (my guess is Tyene, but honestly no one else knows the difference) murder Doran and his guard, Areo. Apparently "weak men will never again rule Dorne."

Also there are a couple of palace guards who do absolutely nothing during this scene. We've only ever seen Ellaria work with the Sand Snakes, so I'm not sure if the conspiracy runs deeper than that.

Doran asks what will become of his son (Trystane, the guy Myrcella made out with a bunch).

Well, cut to Trystane who is apparently on a separate boat from Jaime and Myrcella. The other two Sand Snakes appear (you can tell Obara because she has the spear, Nym is my guess for the other one) and basically straight up tell him that they're going to kill him?

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that they're technically related.

So Trystane chooses Nym to kill him, but Obara does it eliciting this example of Emmy Awarding-winning writing: "You're a greedy bitch, you know that?"

I don't pretend to understand exactly why this happened. In the books Trystane isn't important and barely appears on page.

Another other thing that confuses me is travel time. Trys seems blissfully unaware of Myrcella's death which implies that they're on different ships, except that they left from Sunspear at the same time. Also Myrcella died a mile from shore. But they're now in King's Landing which is about half way up the continent from Sunspear.

Have the Sandsnakes been on the boat the entire time? No time indication has been given, but that's not a day trip. We also know that all three Sand Snakes were on the shore when Myrcella left because we got that scene with the terrible-looking CGI handkerchief.

According to the BluRay commentary, the real handkerchief didn't flutter nicely so they used CGI to get the effect they wanted. I'm not sure I understand because the special effect they used looks like shit.

This plot is bad and Benioff and Weiss should feel bad.

There's yet to be any narrative significance to any of this except proving Oberyn wrong when he says that they don't murder children in Dorne (because whoops they totally do).

Plot 6: Meereen

We're treated to a scene between Tyrion and Tyrion's #1 Fanboy, Varys as they walk the streets of Meereen without incident because somehow in Dany's absence Tyrion has kept the city from total anarchy despite the fact that he shouldn't even be there yet.

Honestly I'm not sure why everyone in the world (except Cersei and Tywin) love Tyrion so much and think he's an A+ dude.

Let's be real though, the only reason Barristan died last season (which he totally shouldn't have) is to usher Tyrion to Dany faster.

There's no emotional significance to his arc, and the characters he meets on his journey are just conveniently removed from the plot (RIP the Gryffs, what a great plot twist that could've been).

Apparently someone burns Dany's fleet which is fine because I totally forgot she even had ships, but also someone is organizing the Sons of the Harpy.

Honestly I don't remember what happened at the end of last season. In the book Barristan is persuaded to move against Hizdarr (Dany's husband) but he might have died in the pit? I honestly don't remember.

He has to be dead, right? Otherwise, why is Tyrion ruling?

I should mention this now, because it's sort of my favorite way Benioff and Weiss justify themselves.

When asked why they brought Tyrion to Dany so early, they responded with: "Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen."

Lmao alright

Plot 7: Brocation (feat. Fuccboi and Nice Guy)

So then we have Jorah and Daario who are on a journey to find Dany. They come across the area of the Dothraki Sea where she was found by the Khalasar at the end of last season.

Then in a "leaves of Lothlorian"-esque moment, they manage to find whatever she left in the dirt despite the fact that it must have been trampled by at least a thousand horses.

Chalk another one up for serendipity, I guess?

There's also some hamfisted emphasis on Jorah's wrist because he has Greyscale. The show, of course, has ignored this on occasion when Jorah touches Dany in Dreznek's pit.

I'm not kidding.

How lazy do you have to be?

I mean it's very unlikely that Dany contracts Greyscale, but like at this point that's just one of many lazy continuity errors.

I feel like the show wants us to be sympathetic to Jorah, but that's disgusting and sort of in-line with supporting his sort of "Nice Guy" attitude with Dany.

No thanks.

Plot 8: Daenerys

Speaking of the Mother of Dragons, the next plot we get is Dany basically enslaved once again by the Dothraki and forced to bear witness to the riders basically talking about raping her. There's a joke about whether the carpet matches the drapes (Emmy-nominated writing at its finest) and a joke about anal (lol amiright?).

But they decide not to rape her until the Khal okays it (~progressive~).

So they take her to the Khal and the Khaleesi's like "kill her" and the Khal is like "But she's hot and you tell me to kill all the women they bring before me! Then Dany rattles off her titles and the Khal doesn't care until she mentions that she was the wife of Khal Drogo, and then suddenly it's off to live with the other Khals' widows (the Dosh Khaleen) in Vaes Dothrak as per Dothraki custom.

Which, could be really interesting because in a prophecy that the show doesn't care about, it's mentioned that "to touch the light, you must pass beneath the shadow." There are many possibly interpretations of the prophecy, one of which is that Daenerys must pass beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains when she returns to Vaes Dothrak. This also falls in line with "To go forward, you must go back."

Plot 9: Arya

I have to admit, when the scene started I assumed we were back in King's Landing. I was wrong, this is apparently Braavos.

We see a blind Arya Stark begging for coin.

Then the Waif (that's the name of the character, it's just the girl from the House of Black and White in the show) shows up and basically beats her up with a stick for an uncomfortably long period of time.

That's it. That's all that happens.

We watch Arya get smacked around for a few minutes and that's it.

What a meaningful scene.

At least it didn't take place inside the Temple to the Many-Faced God because that location is so dark that you can't actually see anything.

Conclusions

This episode wins an award for perhaps being one of the most boring episodes on record.

So little actually made sense and the rest was just shitty dialogue and I guess some deaths that had so little emotional impact that I don't even know why they bothered?

That being said, Game of Thrones sort of has to be watched because it's deeply ingrained in our cultural zeitgeist that it will probably continue to be lauded by critics.

I, however, am over it and will continue to criticize it until actual magazines stop lauding it for being ~edgy~ and ~unpredictable~.

There's nothing edgy about poor writing and it's only unpredictable because it lacks any form of internal consistency. It falls apart to any sort of scrutiny.