The Big Battle

Game Of Thrones has featured a lot of battles, but none bigger that "The Long Night." (A fitting title, since at 82 minutes it was the longest episode.)  The battle episodes, even when well done, tend to be my least favorite--I like the overall story to be moving forward, not all the action taking place in one spot and lasting the entire show.  (In general, my favorite scenes are usually a few people sitting in a room talking.)

On top of which, "The Long Night" was poorly done.  It took place at night, with mist and snow all around.  Maybe it was the brightness level on my TV, but I could barely see what was happening.  Usually I give a blow-by-blow account of the episode, but I don't know if I can this time.

Even worse, the last third of the episode had sad music playing over everything so that all the regular sound was muffled (and sometimes the action was in slow motion)--this is a guaranteed killer of drama, and yet it seems to be catnip to TV directors and producers.  I can't understand it.

I was able to follow what was happening generally, and even there they let us down.  The good guys had a lot of fighters but didn't seem to have much of a strategy.  Maybe there was nothing they could do (actually, there was something--get the Night King, don't worry about anything else), but their general plans were pretty useless.

There were a lot of name-character deaths, as expected, though not anyone who will change the story arc.  Let's look at the scorecard.  There was Edd, Beric (the early deaths were secondary characters, if that), Lyanna (who went out swinging), Theon, Melisandre and, ending the battle, the Night King. Arya gets credit for that kill (and it was clear she'd do it after Melisandre said she would--didn't that kind of ruin the surprise?). By the way, I thought Arya might try some of those tricks she'd learned from the Faceless Men, but it was pretty much a full-on frontal assault.

I left out the most affecting death, at least for me.  Ser Jorah finally bought it. (Not a great night for House Mormont.) It was pretty obvious he wouldn't make it based on the last episode, but one can dream.  Sorry you didn't make it to the end, pal.

So what comes next?  The battle with Cersei.  This is a bit of a Babylon 5 problem--resolving the big war first, then going back to the smaller war.  Humanity has been saved from the threat of extinction.  Is it that big a deal now who sits on the Iron Throne?

Anyway, I still like the show, even if this season has been on the mediocre side.