Obviously there are spoilers

This recap written “live” while watching.

Forgot the office dead pool again. Um…both Cleganes, and Euron, and Qyburn.

Watching this slightly later than broadcast time (it’s 10.38 central right now), but have avoided spoilers online.

HBO previews. I genuinely have zero idea of the Watchmen mythos, but it looks fascinating.

“Previously on…” is Dany saying saying (with her eyes) that she’ll destroy everything that they’re not supposed to be destroying. And everyone second guessing Dany’s insanity. Oh, and a reminder of the stupid Brienne/Jaime romance thing, which did nothing but undermine Brienne’s character arc.

I would basically like Sansa and Cersei to win at this point, and just have a north/south cold war.

On with the idiocy!

Do the beginning credits really drag on these days, or is it just me?

Blah blah blah “true heir”. There is no “true heir” for fuck’s sake, it’s all just bullshit. But Varys is mysteriously writing to someone, anyways. Touching moment with one of his “little birds”, though. She’ll presumably die in this episode.

Incidentally, why didn’t fighty pirate man not eliminate the entirety of Dany’s half-drowned army last week, rather than just capturing Missandei.

D’uh, of course it wasn’t a secret

Jon, don’t look surprised that your secret is out. Is this the start of the persuasion that he should have it. Or is he just going to be dumb, too…“I’ll support the tyrant because of…what?”

Tyrion’s presumably got to be the one to put the dagger in Dany’s back eventually, though, right? He’s the most hopeful and loyal, and has forgotten all of his supposed cleverness. Dany does look kind of insane, though…good make-up job, nice job on Emilia Clarke’s part. Or is it just that Missandei isn’t around to plait her hair?

I thought for a moment Dany was gonna do a Tommen. But instead it’ll be farewell to Varys, who’s apparently taken the last six or seven hours to write a two line note. But, still, he can take comfort that his friend Tyrion is really quite sad that he got him executed.

At this point, is there really anyone other than Grey Worm who can comfortably justify not thinking Dany is a nutjob?

Here’s a little keepsake

At least Grey Worm knows that a slave collar is a shitty memento.

“Is that all I am to you, your queen?”

“Nope, you’re my auntie, too…”

Awkward.

Tyranny!

At least we’re doubling right down.

“I must be a tyrant in order to protect people from tyranny.”

…but, really, Tyrion? Why on earth would people think that Cersei has lost the war, she’s been winning since this season started. Genuinely, Tyrion’s utter stubbornness in refusing to admit this throughout the series has been ridiculous.

Oh, and Jaime didn’t manage to make full use of the usual Westerosi teleportation technology. How’s he gonna assassinate Cersei if he’s Dany’s prisoner?

Sneak in, for what purpose?

Please don’t try and just sneak Tyrion in to make a stupid attempt to persuade Cersei again to surrender in a war she’s winning.

Maybe Arya could just get in and wrap up both the Night King and Cersei with random jumps out of nowhere.

…oh, no, we’re going for the simplistic “sneak Jaime out of captivity and into the keep” ploy, apparently.

Fuck off, fuck off, with the “you need to persuade her or she’s going to die”. It’s just insane at this point.

At least Jaime took a moment to highlight that Cersei has been right about everything to date.

For all the tearful self sacrifice and farewells, Tyrion is just setting up the Drogon ex Machina.

Those bells ain’t ringing

Fighty pirate man is scanning the skies nervously…and for some reason they’re only deciding to load the scorpions right now. And the ones on the walls don’t even look like they’re loaded at all.

Nicely consistent paintwork on the window shutters in King’s Landing, though.

Feeling more positive about my “both Cleganes” deadpool, mind you.

Why do all these generals keep putting soldiers outside their walls? It really does kind of fundamentally miss the point of walls.

And now everyone has to work out ways to mysteriously converge on where Cersei is.

Drogon ex Machina indeed

Is it a bird, is it a plane? Nope, apparently dragons just work again.

Yep, apparently now there are fewer dragons and more scorpions than last time, scorpions don’t work and dragons do work.

Scorpions worked way too well last week, because plot. And now they conveniently don’t work at all, because plot.

It’s fucking stupid, it really is.

Meanwhile, back at the keep

Cersei also slightly confused that suddenly a completely effective weapon became completely obsolete in about three minutes.

You can make all the right decisions, but if the writers can’t even respect their own continuity from one episode to another, you’ll still lose the war.

Who gets to kill Cersei?

Someone may as well at this point, she’s just got screwed over by the showrunners. No doubt they’ll explain to us in their “inside the show” why this wasn’t idiotic.

Oh, but wait…

That was predictable

Sure, they may have surrendered, but…

Really, it’s not that great CGI.

BURN THE INNOCENT.

Oh, and Grey Worm has lost his mind, too.

Guess Jon is going to have to kill Dany next week.

Also, the Unsullied are really bad pikemen, given they apparently find it impossible to ever maintain formation.

Predictable, but reaching a stage of quite ridiculously gratuitious burning at this point. Is the intent to level the entire city?

Is it supposed to be worse with some corny slo-mo?

“Find somewhere to hide.” Your aunt is literally levelling the city row by row.

Wow, here’s some more stupidity on top of stupidity

Fighty pirate man magically makes it to shore in time to have a fight with Jaime, for no good reason at all.

“This is such a wasted scene, I’m just annoyed.” My wife has it exactly right.

Stating the blindingly obvious

“Your Grace, it isn’t safe here any more.”

Aw, green fireworks.

That was also predictable

Jaime miraculously turns the table on fighty pirate man after fighty pirate man “killed” Jaime. Two men who never had any particular reason to be in a scene together, having a climactic scene together.

Talking of climactic scenes

Undead Gregor genuinely existed for zero purpose other than to fight the Hound. Like, zero purpose at all.

Still, the Hound (“Sandor”) gets a moment to, what, save Arya from herself?

Conveniently enough, basically everyone else dies just in time to leave only Gregor left to fight the Hound. So that was lucky for that scene. The remaining Kingsguard really has gone downhill, though.

Can this be in slow motion, too? Should there be a white dove flying past?

Cutting Crew…

“I just died in your arms tonight.”

Still, for some reason, time for Jaime to say a final farewell.

And look, the symbolism, they’re standing on the map of Westeros that Cersei used to make all her plans for dominance.

Shouldn’t Gregor have died when Qyburn died?

Zombies die when their maker dies, right?

But seriously, the tyranny

This is so idiotic. She’s just burning everything in the world, because plot.

Meanwhile, Arya and the Hound get clobbered in badly filmed synchronicity.

You have to go for the brain

Has Sandor never seen a zombie movie.

Oh, no, he’s even more pointlessly invincible than that.

Cue music and death, for utterly pointless death.

Does anyone even remember their backstory any more?

We get it, stuff is on fire

Yeah, no shit you can share a concerned look about how badly things have gone.

No, Arya is not going to die from just being trampled.

At a certain point, doesn’t Dany need to stop to eat or pee or something?

No, Arya is also not going to get killed from a building randomly falling on top of her.

But she is going to live long enough to try and save civilians, because Arya is a hero, dammit.

No, Arya is also not going to get killed by a random bit of dragonfire.

But, not everyone can survive getting crushed…

Jaime’s doing really well for someone who was basically dead twenty minutes ago.

All for a fond farewell and a surprisingly peaceful death for he and Cersei.

Cersei, you got everything right this season, you deserved better.

Also, this makes the whole Jaime/Brienne thing even more fucking stupid than it was last week.

Pompeiinspiration

That was moving.

Arya, you got to kill the Night King. That’s so that Jon could be held back to kill Dany.

Instead, here’s a magically appearing horse. And more slow motion. Does a white horse equal a white dove?

And, fin. That was quite possibly the most irritating, stupid episode ever of an increasingly irritating and stupid show.

Next week

The last week. Can they top this week’s stupidity? That’s a tough ask, to be sure.

Dramatic music. Ash. Fear.

Probably a late “twist”.

Inside the episode

Come on then, let’s see what fucking bullshit you come up with to explain this crap away this week. What were we supposed to have seen?

We’re just ignoring the fact that everything that worked against dragons last week suddenly doesn’t work against dragons at all.

And, with stunning insight, they highlight that it’s a moral dilemma for Jon.

No, we haven’t always wanted to see these two face off again. We’ve basically forgotten about them. And I think it was probably a death by falling before it was a death by fire.

Did Benioff and whatever the other guy is called just compare themselves to Dante?

Arya was in the worst possible place she could be, and it’s the hardest journey anyone has to make in the entire episode, and then she found a magic horse.