Whinging About Game of Thrones for 45 Minutes

I just became a tier 1 & sadly I'm hating the Patreon interface, but loving the videos

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It's from Veep! Not sure the exact episode/season, though. It's another great HBO show

megmazzle

Does anyone know where the "give me just HALF a second. what the fuck?" clip at 3:22 is from? Would make a great reaction video for my life right now.

Jack Atherton

Became a partreon sub finally after months of thinking about it from this video! I like how you not only showed GOT, but also how we all went through a GOT breakup and Chernobyl was our hot fling afterwards that, while we knew there was an expiration date, it kept us in the same city instead of moving away from HBO.

Please let this be a three-partner ^____^

MzMilena

I'm so excited for the next one!

Paul J Edwards

Your timing is incredible. I managed to have no interest in GoT... until two weeks after the finale when I got curious about why everyone was so mad. Lo and behold, a week or so into my research here you come with your post mortem. I love it, I love whinging, and I'm super looking forward to part 2.

Great vid as always :) This episode was especially interesting to me as a game writer. Game endings are hard to pull off, especially for story-driven endings, especially when player choice is involved. Obviously, GoT is not interactive media, but in an environment where show runners feel like they have to respond to fan theories... I would say there is at least some interactivity. One thing I have found about pulling off a good game ending is precisely what you discussed -- on the one hand, it's good to have an ending in mind, otherwise you have so little structure that players get bored (this happens in sandbox games). On the other hand, if you've got your ending in mind and have tried to shoehorn the story very hard to fit that ending, players feel like they don't have a choice in the story, and also get bored. Threading the needle between the two extremes is very very difficult. The few times I have done it, though, the endings have been extremely memorable without being controversial or contrived.

Vladimir Barash

Great vid, as usual. Congrats on the Hugo nom! Looking forward to part 2.

You are BRILLIANT. There are a lot of GoT whinging vids but this was the most cathartic. I always do feel a bit hypocritical for hating GoT's ending as much as I do while I was fine with Lost's...but me a JJ thot so that's how it be.

chiraledge

Congratulations on the Huge nomination, Lindsay! It is extremely well deserved.

Hmm, unfortunately, this will have to be the first of your videos... ever... since 2008, that I will be unable to bring myself to watch. I've got a... thing with Game of Thrones, in which I haven't watched it in years and am still highly averse to information on what has happened since then, while also not really feeling as though I have any intention of watching the rest of it ever.

Matthew Dunne

"Hot X That Fucks" has become my new favorite thing

Silv

Shae testified in court that Tyrion and Sansa had plotted to kill Joffrey and usurp the throne. I'd kill somebody for that. She also would have sounded the alarm if Tyrion hadn't killed her. Why do people keep saying that killing wasn't justified? It was justified. Finally, season 7 had problems but I loved season 8. We can agree to disagree on that.

Ryan Courdy

Good shit as always, Lindsay

I think part of that would be that latecomers haven't had any time to think about the episodes. If you've been watching the show for any length of time, you've got that year long break between seasons to think about it, talk with the people you watch it with, go make an internet about it, read other people internets about it. If you were watching right before season 8, you'd have no time to do that. You just have to go

Noodle Fiasco

I’ve seen an interesting trend recently with GOT, at least in my day-to-day life. People who were already fans before Seasons 5 and onwards (especially book fans) have held it to high scrutiny and had lots of complaints from week to week, speculating on what would happen now that the books couldn’t tell us... this escalated slowly each season but was at its height during Season 8 where the understandable frustrations were dissected each week. But people I know who binged the first seven seasons right before the eighth, or who binged it all after it was over, haven’t been anywhere near as critical. They’ve watched the same show but haven’t been part of the years of discourse and speculation. I’ve had quite a few latecomers ask me why everyone was so upset, because it didn’t turn out as badly as the long-term fans told them it would.

Rich Kee

Hilarious and great as always. A little note, i found the Bobby-B parts and such a bit too shout-y and unnecessary. But anyway, great stuff and congrats about the Hugo nomination, you deserve recognition

Tamar Kalir

this is so cathartic, thank you, can't wait for the second part *-* and yay for the hugo nomination, so happy for you!!

Lol okay I low-key predicted this was gonna be a two parter when I saw that 44 min mark, there was no way Lindsay could contain her whinging down to 44 mins lmao. Congrats on the Hugo nomination!

Elizabeth Anne

god i heard it the first time as “Natalie Dormer is now Sansa’s fiancée” my poor sad sad sansargaery heart... Also like God, I’d love for you to explain a little about why Tywin is so amazing and like Why do i love him.....why I lOVe?????he’s so good but so agggg Also yeah i jumped ship after the Sansa rape because it was incongruous with the logic of the show(but also because YIKES)

I mean in fairness, WFD was extremely rapey, so I can see why it appealed to HBO

Lindsay Ellis

I'm pretty stoked for Part 2. This was good.

Brett

The whole "GRRM does fantasy fiction like no one ever has before" take floating around the internet throws me. I don't think of myself as a prolific or knowledgeable reader but I must have read way too much epic fantasy because ASoIaF always struck me as extremely typical of the sub-genre. I read the first book as a teenager, got to the scene where the Lannisters walked on stage, closed the book and predicted everything that would happen and that didn't mean it was ruined or anything. I read up to the third book before giving up because I could tell he was never going to finish the series (GRRM's roots as a tv writer were showing through). A lot of epic fantasy never gets finished, at least not by the original author. What worries me is the woman in the background of all those clips was Nnedi Okorafor, the author of one of my favorite novels Who Fears Death. Her work is currently being adapted by Mr. White Savior Complex for the Rape is Good for Ratings network and I don't think it's going to end well at all.

De

my hot take: I loved Game of Thrones all the way through, and this essay does not change my opinion on it at all. I felt it was a compelling meditation on power and family all the way through - themes are relevant until the end, and the show is a technical marvel. I've been re-watching the series with the audio commentary and it gives me a ton of respect for every single person, top-down, who worked their asses off for this show. I had fun watching it all the way through. That's what matters to me. I also feel like it's really, really rich to extract a whole authorial intent from a quote Benioff said nearly a decade ago... but you have your opinion, and I have mine. Lord Life Alert made me laugh pretty hard, ngl. Enjoy your Hugo, best of luck.

J Darzins

This was a pretty cool thing to read and reminded me that there are reasonable people out there. I have to do the same thing sometimes...force myself to just fully listen to people criticize things I love before immediately rejecting their points. Thanks for sharing 😊

Caroline Belleman

While I was still entertained by the show, it definitely dipped in quality. I couldn't have put my finger on it, but you explained it beautifully. The books' surprises tended to be twists that were perfectly in line with the world and the characters as they were, while the show was bouncing around every which way and jumping to twists that made no sense. I wasn't aware the GRR Martin had stopped being involved, but that explains a lot about how the show shifted. I can't believe they denigrated themes... Ultimately, I don't care too much since I was always more invested in the books than the show, but it's still a shame. Looking forward to part 2!

CodeTako

I don't care about Game of Thrones, but a Lindsay essay, so hype

Adrian DeZendegui

Great as always. I'm curious to know whether you think an extra season (or just a longer final season) of character development would have made a difference, or if the hyper-need to subvert expectations in the wake of lack of source material just made this a lost cause. My personal opinion is that in the early seasons there technically weren't surprises since all the surprises were published in the books and could be searched, but once the books ran out and the need to subvert the same way the previous source material did failed to sate the years of speculation that had already existed. The "R+L=J" theory and the "Hold the door" guess someone made years ago turned out to be correct, but the reveal seemed off and didn't really come across the way they were expected to in the fan theories.

So don’t share the link?

Lindsay Ellis

Also all the pro ending people saying stuff was foreshadowed, especially Arya being the one to kill the night king, sound like people trying to poorly fit an explanation for a conclusion, as opposed to the other way round...

Phoenix Art House

I'm so glad I stopped after season 4. I can't believe the stupidity of the later seasons. Especially how deep the showrunners pretended everything was and how poorly structured the motivations of everyone was...

Phoenix Art House

I was about to become very sad and then BAM! TWO-PARTER! HYYYYYPE

muddlewait

This is not a great set up, ppl can get the benefits of patreon w/o paying. Your videos are just unlisted on youtube; anyone with a link can view it.

Gibran Arroyo

Been having a real shit last couple days. Got the notification and said in confidence "Great - this will make everything better!" And I was right. Thank you Lindsay!!

Kit Brogden

I thought Tywin should have hanged Shae after the trial like he said he would.

Martin Robertson

show of hands, who else had to look up "whinging" ?

Peter McDevitt

This video is to me what Dan Olson’s Annihilation video was to me - the media had a deep impact but I struggled to sort out my feelings in a way that made sense. Thanks Lindsay & Team!

Caitlyn Bidwell

good, informed, thoughtful criticism is really enjoyable. Also BOBBY B!

I mean...I went to Penn State during those first few seasons, and for years, the only reason I knew as much as I did about the show was because of fraternity meatheads in my classes RAVING about it, so...yea, that's pretty accurate.

Ooooh Surprise Sequel. Also, I really appreciate the fact that you took 10,000 words to basically write an introduction for this. The rage and time-investment that you've put into this is really cathartic for me. I'm super hyped for part two. Dorne deserved better goddamnit. Thus end my unstructured thoughts.

WhyDoIBother

Thank gods for Lindsay. that's all

Hank Kleinberg

I just want to write that I find your scrunchy face when John Green reads the Audible info adorable

Jack Gattanella

Bless you for this

Ezra Linehan-Clodfelter

I...came to despise this show during season 5. What it did to Sansa and Stannis was unforgivable. I stopped caring for the show from then all the way to the end. This show is repulsive to me. Sansa because the show-runners just undermined her entire story and said "Rape = good character writing for women" Stannis because he is far more developed and interesting in the novels, the show-runners just went bad fanfiction and said "We don't like Stannis so we're just going to get rid of him in the most anti-climatic, forced, character assassination way possible." Dorne isn't much better as the show-runners just turned a developed and progressive country into one where all woman are homicidal psychopathic lunatics for no bloody reason.

Chris

Oh my god the corgis

FauxRetro

gasp got so excited by a discussion of Emily's post

Wooo new video :D

I wrote and deleted a negative post, I like this now that I got halfway in. I like the show more than most people but I have no problem with explaining the reality of what happened here... the negativity sometimes puts me off but that's not fair, I don't begrudge anyone their opinion and I can be mature enough to not be pushed away by disagreements. I thought the explanation for why the show got worse were very well explained (I also like the sopranos and mad men endings a lot, and am currently rewatching Lost to decide how I really feel) and I appreciate the dig. looking forward to pt 2. Glad I stuck it out and glad to be a patron.

jpVari

As maddening as Game of Thrones became, that's how exciting the prospect of a Lindsay Ellis autopsy is!

Samuel Webb

This is amazing

Griffen Rosado

OMG YES MOAR GOT!!! Thank you Lindsay

Gabe

TURN DOWN FOR WHAT Seems like Mad Men's ending was a slightly better version of the Sopranos. Shit stays the same but WHACK THERE'S THE THEME

Spencer Ellsworth

Thank you for this , this made my day SO MUCH BETTER

Lethurblaka

Absolutely died at the Punnett square.

Ugino

I died at the Thomas the Tank Engine theme with the cast reading.

oh god the level of catharsis in watching this!!! THANK GOD THERE WILL BE A PART TWO.

Can’t wait for pt 2!

Lala

YES! I do not know how I will focus for the rest of my workday knowing this is a thing.

thank you for this meal <3

This made my day. Thank you for talking about GOT in a thought out and smart way

Gabi Christie

This was the best birthday present.

Missy Curtis

Thank the seven

Odin Linga

God I was having a bad day and you came in and made it so much better, thank you so much Lindsay

Allyson Cygan

AS IF MY DAY COULDN'T GET BETTER! ILY

Tony Muad'dib

Omg I have been waiting for this bless you

Kirsten Geddes