Jesus. After all the eye-rolling, the laughing AT the writing/direction, the whisper-screaming at the screen "really?!", it was finally this horrendous episode that had me quit for good.
I read the books with almost the same reaction, so it's not entirely the screenwriting/direction's fault- in a sense, it's pretty impressive that they were able to capture so much of what the book accomplished. ALSO I will happily admit that the team's ability to visually recreate the scenes was truly impressive. I repeatedly recognized rooms I'd only read about before, which I don't remember happening to me so much in any other films from books I'd read.
BUT-- the first sex scene was easily the worst male-gazed bastardization of what could have been an awesome scene I've ever seen. The show has been thus far awful with regard to being so ridiculously male (only a problem when you're knowingly writing for an audience of women), and the first sex scene was no exception.
I won't go into it much, but suffice it to say that 30 seconds of our almost fully covered hero unfeelingly jabbing at what we are to guess is a falls below the standard of a great sex scene BY ITSELF. But then to follow that up with the woman who received that short, orgasm-less treatment with almost no pre-or post-stimulation professing to have LIKED IT was maddening.. I just.. Come on.
((Side, but just as angry note: There was more time spent on the old lawyer in the brothel scene than on the scene that's been built up to for the entire series! There was (or at least felt like) ten times more time spent on the unnecessarily gruesome lashing scenes than on the sex scenes! Who TF is this for??))
Regardless of what these poor women who rated this episode 10 stars consider to be a good, erotic, sensual, romantic, etc. sex scene, the standard should be much higher. And, if possible (spoiler alert: it's possible), it should not be so baldly, laughably written and filmed through the lens of men- as it's a show with a predominantly female audience.
Okay, I'm done- I really needed to get that out. Thank you, anonymous audience.
