Game of Thrones: Dissecting Reactions From Season 8, Episode 5 (Be Warned: Spoilers!)

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Before I go on, I have to do my standard warning for those of you who have not yet seen this (or some of the more recent episodes, to boot), but intend to. So, if you have not yet seen the most recent episodes, please stop reading at this point.

*** SPOILERS****** SPOILERS****** SPOILERS***

Okay, you have been warned. If you are still reading by this point, then you either have already seen the episodes, or for one reason or another, do not mind the spoilers to come. Just don't say that you were not warned!

So, there has been a lot of reaction regarding that last GoT episode, when King's Landing gets completely destroyed by Daenerys and her dragon after the bell signaling surrender had been rung. We had seen the entire Iron Fleet wiped out, and most of the key outer defenses completely breeched. We had seen the army allow their swords to fall to the ground. We had already seen Cersei close her eyes in resignation and disgust. 

Yet, there was Daenerys, looking as haggard as we had ever seen her, looking entirely unlike what we might have expected her to look like after she had finally achieved the one thing that she had wanted throughout her life more than anything else. And really, we can already say that she was the conquering queen. But her first act, for all intents and purposes, as the unofficially newly crowned queen is to completely devastate the city and kills what sure appeared to be a majority of the residents living there: her newest subjects.

Clearly, she had taken the whole "ruling through fear" thing very, very seriously. 

Fittingly, that close-up of Daenerys that we saw, just before she began what amounted to war crimes, was the last close-up that we saw of her. The writers specifically wanted us to get a view, and a feel, from the ground, where those who live in the city just taken over by this new queen - the daughter of the Mad King, you will remember - just seemingly goes from street to street, making a point to destroy and set fire to as much of the city as possible. We see the ramifications of that decision, as people run and flee, but there is no escape. They are now trapped within the very city walls that had previously kept them safe. Daenerys burns the city and it's residents. She destroys the Red Keep, and everything below it. 

In other words, it was a seeming senseless slaughter. 

The reactions were instant and mixed, although mostly, most people seemed to have a negative reaction to it. Some reacted with humor. my personal favorite was this one (see the link to internet reacting to GoT down below, where I got this from):

Mohanad Elshieky ✔ @MohanadElshieky  Did Dick Cheney write this episode of Game of Thrones?  219 10:29 PM - May 12, 2019

Now, that was funny!

Most people, however, were not at all amused by the episode. Remember that to this point, Daenerys had been considered one of the heroes of the show. Some people had named their daughters after this fictional character. And sure enough, many viewers reacted with complete surprise at this seeming complete turn from this particular character, and with this obvious bit of ruthlessness coming at the very moment when she had finally seemed to achieve her greatest moment of triumph. I even saw one woman posting an article about how women on the show were built up, only to be basically destroyed later. That is not even really true, as a number of prominent women on the show are still very much alive and very sane, even heroic. We still have Arya, Sansa, and Brienne, for example. Besides, most of the men endured much the same fate. After all, one way or another, most of the characters on the show were killed off. It is what the show is most famous for. So, I am not sure that I agree with the notion that women, specifically, on the show are built up only to have the rug pulled out from them in the end. At least not any more than the men. 

That said, however, there was plenty to discuss, and not least of which was Daenerys' apparent fall into insanity. After all, if this were real, her actions would clearly have constituted what we would define as war crimes. It was completely unnecessary. After all, the city had surrendered already, they had rung the bell, and the army had dropped their sword. The battle was over. Daenerys had already won. 

But the war crime part of it actually dominated the episode, and people wondered what they were watching. Many seemed to be horrified by the episode, and some people even went so far in their reactions as to suggest that this episode had ruined the entire season for them.

To me, that is going too far. While I do feel that this season feels a bit rushed - quite a bit rushed, truth be told - I hardly think that this episode ruins it. In fact, truth be told, I personally thought that this episode was brilliant. And if it upset people...well, it should have. That, I suspect, was the point.

Because let's face it: we all saw hope in Daenerys. We all liked her, and hoped that her side would win. Everyone wanted to see how Cersei would die, right? That was the big discussion prior to that last episode. She was the Queen of Evil, and we wanted Daenerys to be her downfall, which she was.

Still, this felt like a bit too much for some, but I think it was actually very well done. After all, we are living in mad times, and if we are being honest, I think that the tongue in cheek comment about Dick Cheney writing the episode had more than a little to do with the hypocrisy in people's reactions. Because while many people (myself included) liked Daenerys, the fact of the matter is that she always showed an absolutist, rigid approach to power. People needed to "bend the knee" and recognize her as their ruler, no matter who they are. And she was showing signs of a mental meltdown, and increasingly so, as this season wore on. 

This was not without precedent. There had been incidents in medieval history (and GoT is supposed to happen in a world similar to our medieval world), as some scholars noted (this bit taken from Charlie Hall's Polygon.com article, see link below): 

Paul B. Sturtevant, Ph.D. and the editor-in-chief of The Public Medievalist, says the fall of Jerusalem in 1099, the climax of the First Crusade, sprang instantly to mind as Dany took flight over King’s Landing. But, so too did a lesser-known episode from early Christian history called the Albigensian Crusade. Under the reign of Pope Innocent III, a Catholic force attacked the European city of Béziers. The killing was so indiscriminate, and the destruction so wanton, that it’s said one of the Crusaders coined the phrase “Kill them all! God will know his own.” That phrasing would eventually be modernized into “Kill ’em all, and let God sort ’em out.” 

Sturtevant, however, feels that this episode reminded him of a much more recent incident in history, one that one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, actually lived through and wrote about: the bombing of Dresden by Allied forces late in 1945. If you are not familiar with it, Dresden was completely destroyed on the night of February 12-13, 1945, just months before Nazi Germany would unconditionally surrender, and by which time it was clear that the war was going very, very badly for Hitler and the Nazis. Dresden had been saved from much of the destruction that had befallen other cities, because, as Vonnegut explained, it had been considered an "open city." That meant that it had no military value whatsoever, and so it had been left alone. They had heard bombing raid warnings before, but had learned to mostly ignore them for the false alarms that they inevitable had been, to that point. But all of that changed in mid-February of 1945, when the warning sounded, but this time, was followed not only by an actual attack, but by one of the deadliest overnight slaughters in human history. Sturtevant explains:

“The bombing of Dresden was during World War II, and it was when the Allies used incendiary devices ... and killed everyone in the city. Not through the explosive power of one nuclear bomb, but through progressive strikes that were meant to burn the city to ash and everyone in it.”  

“This [episode of Game of Thrones] feels very modern to me, because we are currently living in the age of the machine-gun. We are currently living in the age of the mass killing, the age where one person can kill 500 people with a single weapon without ever seeing their faces. Where we can drop bombs on people from above and from afar and never have to hear their screams. And that is one of the uniquely horrifying things about our current advanced technological age, and it has nothing to do with the Middle Ages.”

Indeed, these kinds of horrors have happened, even though many people seem reluctant to acknowledge or learn about them. And paradoxically, it just might be this very reluctance that, perhaps, allows them to happen in the first place. Our modern society rarely seems to come to terms with horrors or war crimes that have been committed, unless they point the finger of blame at the other guys. Only Germany, which was completely and totally defeated and which lay in ruins after the surrender in May of 1945, was kind of forced to own up to the war crimes and crimes against humanity that had been committed by the Nazis. Otherwise, the Japanese historically went to considerable lengths to deny, or at least not to acknowledge, their war crimes. And the Allied nations never took responsibility for their war crimes, including the overnight firebombing of Dresden, the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or indeed, the numerous other firebombings that took place in World War II. The United States had a difficult time acknowledging the horrors of American military excesses in Vietnam, from My Lai to the systematic napalm destruction of huge parts of Vietnam, as well as the literally millions of Vietnamese who were killed. Nor have we acknowledged our role in the estimated half a million to a million Iraqis who died during the combined wars and invasions and economic sanctions that the United States led, from the early nineties until much more recent times. 

This inability to acknowledge these horrors are perhaps part of the reason why we have warhawks in office again, tirelessly arguing their justifications for a new war, this time on Iran. Venezuela has also been regarded as a possible target of American military intervention. For a country that officially considers itself a peace-loving country, according to many, we sure seem to love going to war.

We should know better. And, in fact, I personally suspect that we actually do know better. Most of us know, on some level, that we are using some of those deadly weapons that we invest so much money on. I remember arguing with a conservative who supported Bush and Cheney and the impending (I actually called it inevitable) invasion of Iraq in the months leading up to the actual invasion. This guy was telling me that Saddam Hussein had built up an enormous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and so he clearly intended to use it. I reminded him that the United States had a far bigger, and far deadlier, arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and employing his logic, we too would seek to use it. After all, the Bush administration was pining for the invasion of Iraq, even though we were already engaged in a war in Afghanistan.

So, my suspicion is that this episode made many viewers feel uncomfortable, because it challenged their notions of who they systematically regarded as heroic. We are so used to that being the story line, the "good guys" and the "bad guys," that we kind of lose sight of the fact that the world is not really like that. There are usually many more shades of gray. And the scholars in that article by Charlie Hall were actually more annoyed with how the one major black character left in the show was the one who picked up his weapon, when everyone else had basically stopped fighting, and then instigated a slaughter. This, they felt, reinforced certain historical stereotypes about slaves being freed from their chains, and then unleashing mindless violence.

Perhaps that upset the viewers. But most of them, it seemed, were upset by the petite, blonde woman, who was seen as a hero on GoT consistently, leading up to this particular episode, when all of that changed.

Yes, the warning signs about Daenerys were there. And let's face it: we in our modern society have elected leaders who turned out to be very bad news. I am not only talking about Hitler, although he would be the clearest example of a democratically elected, and at one time, hugely popular leader who turned out to be very bad news. We elected the leaders who got us into Vietnam, after all. We also elected the leaders who led us into invade Iraq. Both of those wars, by the way, were popular among Americans in the beginning, and only began to get less popular as the wars began to not go so well. 

So, my guess is that people were upset that they had, if you will, supported Daenerys, only to find out that, once in power, she might actually be a monster, perhaps worse than Cersei ever was. And in this day and age, when we Americans have elected a man who muses about wiping entire nations off the map, seeing the kinds of impact that this has on the people on the ground might be more than a little uncomfortable. The notion of an entire city being largely defenseless, and being completely destroyed from a fiery attack from above might just hit  a little too close to home with what we ourselves seem to do far too often. 

Here are the links to several articles on the reactions to the latest GoT episode, and which got me on this topic to begin with:

Scholars weigh in on the inconsistencies of Daenerys’ Game of Thrones vengeance 84 The ‘battle’ of King’s Landing challenged expectations in more ways than one  By Charlie Hall@Charlie_L_Hall  May 14, 2019, 12:25pm EDT

https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones/2019/5/14/18618468/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-kings-landing-battle-medieval-history

Game of Thrones season 8: The internet reacts to the absolute madness of episode 5 Things got pretty crazy in there folks.  BY  MARK SERRELS  MAY 13, 2019

https://www.cnet.com/news/game-of-thrones-season-8-the-internet-reacts-to-daenerys-targaryen-and-absolute-madness-of-episode-5-mad-queen-dracarys/

Twitter Hated the Penultimate Episode of Game of Thrones image BY ESTELLE TANG MAY 13, 2019

https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a27451870/game-of-thrones-bad-episode-best-twitter-reactions/

Viewers Were Really Unhappy with Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 5 The showrunners are getting a lot of heat on Twitter.  image BY ERICA GONZALES  MAY 13 2019

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a27447877/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-5-reactions/

It Is Now Clear Having Two Short ‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Seasons Was A Mistake  Paul Tassi Paul Tassi Senior Contributor
May 14, 2019, 08:05am It Is Now Clear Having Two Short ‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Seasons Was A Mistake  Paul Tassi Paul Tassi Senior Contributor

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/05/14/it-is-now-clear-having-two-short-game-of-thrones-final-seasons-was-a-mistake/?utm_source=FACEBOOK&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Valerie%2F&fbclid=IwAR2eWgPvz35P5vWT6Xb69gN9gKtq-G32Tmd5YT8DUixQ9TlL4-VGisu3asw#1ec31501788a

The Charm of Green Bay: Super Bowl XLV Review

Apologies, I meant to post the Super Bowl review last week, just after the Super Bowl, when it was still very fresh. But it has only been a week, so it can hardly be considered ancient history, right? In any case, I wanted to not only give a review of the impressive victory by the Green Bay Packers, but also to delve into the reason why I so strongly wanted to see the Packers win it all this year. So, here was the review that I just touched up a little bit, and wished to post a whole lot earlier:

Wow! That Packer's win was indicative of their entire season. Hot start showing tremendous potential, followed by key injuries and the Pack seemingly on the ropes, but pulling through in the end. With the secondary severely depleted, was a bit worried the Steelers would come back, and it looked like that's what they were doing. But Green Bay got it, and deserved it! So glad they won!

It was like their entire season in microcosm/miniature. All year long, they battled to maintain that delicate mix of great and lofty expectations.

It was so pleasing to see them win. Earlier this season, I had taken a trip to the Midwest, and was fortunate enough to have gotten to see them. It was my second experience at Lambeau Field, having seen a preseason game prior to this one, back in 2009, against the Cleveland Browns.

Green Bay was even smaller than I had imagined it. Really, it feels like a typical suburban town, only that it is the big “metropolis” in the region, I it can rightly be called that. The one thing that makes it stand apart would be the Green Bay Packers, and of course, they were the reason that we were here.

Everything felt different, right away. It was strange. You could feel that this team was a local commodity, if you will. For one thing, it was the most packed preseason game I had ever been to at the time, and probably still is. The opponent was not the huge draw, being the lowly Cleveland Browns. Yet, looking around, there were hardly any open seats that I could tell.

It was, and remains, the most fun preseason game that I have ever been to, bar none. There was just a different feel about it. It felt almost like a college game, and yet it felt like a big event. But a community event, local, yet welcoming. Very inviting, very friendly. The game I was at earlier this season, against the Lions in the regular season, would prove to be the same thing. If I was admiring the Packers before, I became basically a fan of theirs after this positive experience. It was sports as they should be, at their best.

There is such a pleasant ambience about the town. It feels so special, so unique. The team literally and figuratively belongs to the community, to everyone, in a way. It is, after all, the only publicly owned franchise in the league. It is also a team steeped in rich and proud tradition, and there is clearly a legacy

There was something unique and easily noticeable right away. A positive spirit about the team, about the feel for the game, of the sport, and of their team, and this team’s place in history in this big league. It is the one thing that lends this town something truly unique and distinctive, and it is everywhere seen here.

That preseason game, a 17-0 shutout victory against the hapless Cleveland Browns, was apparently sold out (as it turns out, it was not quite a sell out, but almost – and certainly had to be the most crowded preseason game I have been to). There was hardly an empty seat to be found in the entire place.

But that was not all. It stayed that way, a stadium packed for the Packers, until the waning minutes of the fourth quarter.

Folks, I reiterate: this was a preseason game. Yet, it was a community event, and everyone seemed happy. They all could agree on one thing, and that was their Green Bay Packers. The thing that put this relatively tiny community on the map.

The most unique home of any team in the National Football League, if not in all of North American sports, and it made the team perhaps the most unique and distinctive team in North American sports. It has what I would consider to be a college feel to it. It is an event to behold and enjoy, appreciate.

It is hard not to become a fan, and so I became one. Yes, this, despite the fact that I have been a devoted Giants fan since I first started following the sport back in 1981, and they have remained my number one ever since. Also, the New York Jets were, and remain, my number two team. Yes, I am not one of those “hater” fans that can’t stand the other local team, or the whimsical fan who only follows my team, and does not enjoy the sport.

I like football, and find it entertaining. I have been privileged enough to see the Giants go to the Super Bowl four times, and win it three of those times. That is a pretty strong mark, and I am appreciative of their success. The Jets have not made it in my lifetime, although they have come close at times, and hopefully will make it sometime in the near future. But when these two teams are both eliminated, I still follow football, and like most people, I have my favorites, and my least favorites, and the older I got and the more I understood, the more the Green Bay Packers climbed on my list.

Still, going to Lambeau Field was something else entirely. I did not expect it to be, but it was. Figuring it would be the typical drunk fest of dumb, overage jocks who’s lives centered entirely too much on football and other sports, and not enough on the vast array of other things that life offers, I was surprised when it seemed far healthier.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The people of Green Bay love their Packers, and maybe they have an added significance in their lives, perhaps more than in other areas. I guess what was absent was the hopelessness, the nastiness. It seemed a far healthier atmosphere then I was accustomed to, being from the greater metropolitan area, living in the densely populated New Jersey, in stress-inducing suburbs of New York.

Go to a New Jersey Devils hockey game, and you will hear the fans adding their own unique, charmless lyrics after every goal the Devils score, as they all yell in unison, “Hey! You suck!”

I am not a fan of the Rangers, but the degree to which Devils fans obsess over the Rangers (Rangers Suck, and whoever the most recognizable name on whatever team New Jersey happens to be playing that day swallows) is really excessive.

Speaking of Rangers fans, admittedly, they are the reason I could never get into the Rangers, being some of the most arrogant, obnoxious, holier than thou fans I’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s the Big Apple’s team, but seeing as though they followed up on the tremendous promise of the 1940 Stanley Cup Championship team (fought before the United States entered World War II) by finally winning it again in 1994 (right around the time that OJ Simpson was making headlines for all the wrong reasons), and that they have not come close to winning it (or even going) since, you feel tempted to tell them to give it a rest.

Being a fan of hockey, I have a particular affinity for Canadian teams since hockey is, historically, a Canadian sport. But I’ve heard people shout out such lovely slogans as “Canada sucks!” and “Fuck Canada!” while attending such hockey games, both in New York and in New jersey. Was this perhaps during the height of the tensions between the two countries, during the glorious days of the Bush regime, you may wonder? Actually, a couple of such incidents happened just a few weeks ago, when I took my son to a Rangers game, to see the red hot Vancouver Canucks. Xenophobia was on display there. Speaking of those same Rangers fans, I also happened to go to another game in September, and was witness to a gay bashing incident. Lovely fans, indeed.

Some people like that. On some level, I can agree. If you have stress, then there are worse outlets for it then sports, although statistics have shown links to the rise of domestic violence following the loss of a local sports team.

Still, not everyone takes it that seriously, and this brings me back to the Pack. There might be exceptions, certainly, but in Green Bay, in Small Town America in the heart of the Midwest farming country, there seems to be a more ideal atmosphere. Kinder, more balanced. Perhaps a bit on the corny side, but even this has some considerable charm, when compared to the nasty Northeast. It’s not just the New York/New Jersey sports scene where nastiness can be easily spotted. I remember going to a Redskins game in Maryland, against the Patriots, and some drunken idiots claiming that Boston was “not even a real city”.

So the more relaxed and pleasant feel of Green Bay (aside from the weather) was indeed welcome. I have seen two Packers games at the famed Lambeau Field, which is pretty good for s Garden State guy, right? One preseason game, which felt very much like a college game, and felt as significant as a regular season game. The other was a regular season game outright, this past October, against their division rival Detroit Lions. What a game that turned out to be, much like the Super Bowl, actually. The Packers raced ahead, looking unstoppable at first, only to see their opponent grab the momentum, and get the Pack seemingly on the ropes. By all accounts, it seemed the Packers would lose, and yet they never relinquished the lead. They managed to pull it out, winning that game, 28-26. Watching the Super Bowl from work (okay, yes, I’m that rare dweeb who has to work on Super Bowl Sunday), I wore the same jersey that I wore on that day, my good luck jersey, and brought the mini helmet I got at Lambeau Field. Yes, I even got my son a cheese head. And yes, it take it away from him when he seems ready to destroy it, as if it were some valuable piece of art, instead of a glorified piece of foam in the shape and color of a slice of cheese. Shame on me.

Watching the Pack through these playoffs, and especially during this past Super Bowl, I found myself smiling at some of the memories, even the charming corniness, of the Packers faithful at Lambeau. It just happened that they were playing another poster child team for northeastern nastiness in the Pittsburgh Steelers, complete with their sinister quarterback, Big Ben Roethlisberger, he of the alleged assaults against women, with plenty of witnesses who confirm the allegations. Nor is that his only charming quality. I remember an interview (admittedly only vaguely) when he was a rookie, and he was talking about how women swooned at the sight of him (which makes me wonder why he would ever need to force himself on a woman in the first place, but that’s another story). Such a modest guy. And of course, there was that whole motorcycle accident without wearing a helmet episode, which showed very poor judgment by any standards, even though technically, you don’t have to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle in Pennsylvania. Everything about the guy seems to exude an air of perceived invincibility, doesn’t it? He seems to think, or at least seems to have thought, that he could get away with anything, literally, and it would never catch up to him.

I read that he was the least liked player in this past Super Bowl. Surprise, surprise.

So I would have been rooting for the Packers, anyway. The Steelers have won it plenty already, a record six Super Bowls overall, and this would have been a third in six years, and a seventh overall. For the packers, it would have been their first since the epic 1996 season, and only the second since the Lombardi era of the 1960’s. Now, Title Town has another title to add to their legacy, and add to the Lambeau lure.

It had long been a dream of mine to go see a game at Lambeau. All of the history, the tradition. Think of the names, Lambeau, Lombardi, Starr, Nitzke. The Frozen Tundra, host to such epic battles throughout the history there, with the championship runs of the 1960’s, most famously the so-called “Ice Bowl” which was the coldest NFL game ever. Incidentally, the third coldest game ever recorded was just a few years ago, when the Giants beat the Packers at Lambeau. Admittedly, I was happy to see them do it, but that was an exceptional circumstance, not the rule.

Finally, a note about Aaron Rodgers, who managed to keep his streak of overcoming immense pressure to exceed expectations remains unbroken Some of the experts proclaimed it the best game a quarterback ever had. Now, I would not go that far, having seen some incredible games by quarterbacks in high pressure situations, but it sure stood out. Nor was this a typical Super Bowl where the quarterback got the nod over more deserving players, which has happened with a fair degree of frequency over the years. The Packers, it is fair to say, would not have been in the big game if not for Rodgers, and they would not have won it if not for him, either. He had a mediocre third quarter, to be sure, and until the final touchdown pass, it looked like he had cooled off for good following a red hot start to the game.

Yet, with that touchdown drive, and with the drive late in the fourth to get the Pack a field goal that forced Pittsburgh to have to go for a touchdown to win it, rather than a field goal to tie it and force overtime, showed that he had reached elite status. He responded to the pressure like he always had: like a champion. He remained cool, calm, collected. Maybe it was not the best game a quarterback has ever played, but it was the game that he needed to play to lift his team to victory, and it was exactly what he delivered. In the process, he raised himself to the ranks of the great quarterbacks in the league, as well as adding another legend to the seemingly countless legends of Title Town. Let’s just hope that he knows enough to stay there, and not ever detract from his on-field performances with bad off field behavior, unlike his predecessor, or the other high profile quarterback on the field this past Super Bowl Sunday.