Beyond the Wall

After a first part of the chapter based on strategies and reflections; along the second part come together the show and the extreme emotion, you feel that your pulse itself accelerates and suddenly you can not help but exclaim: Great! Spectacular! The vision surpasses what you expected.

Greetings from Lithuania.

So "Game of Thrones" have finally hit the Hollywood in every meaning of this word in "Beyond the Wall". "Beyond the Disbelieve" - this is how this episode should have been named. As much as spectacular and at some points breathtaking this episode was, i was like "NO FUCXXX WAY THIS IS POSSIBLE" constantly during second half of this episode. I won't spoil it (although i would like to), but it is NOT possible any way it turned out here, even in a fantasy genre. I mean do they have like a GPS and teleport in that world? How much time it takes to simply travel in there?

Now for 4 seasons "Game of Thrones" was the only show that almost literally could shock my and pulled a rug from viewers - it was unpredictable like anything out there. But from last season and especially this one, i do believe we will see a happy ending in this show overall. Sure some side characters will die, but it won't be as effective as in the past, because they don't have time to properly show it! This season is rushed as hell and i do believe that future book / books will be even more popular by simply telling this story in non rushed way.

Overall, as much as spectacular "Beyond the Wall" was, i can not rate it any higher then 8 (and that is only because of great craftsmanship of the scenes) because of how unbelievably predictable it all turned out. And predictable in a most simple "Hollywood style", like we have seen in countless forgettable great looking movies. As it looks now, happy ending is not far away.

The wight hunt plan in this episode look stupid. but thought the director and writer make it seems smart. there are a lot of plot holes in this episode. but those plot holes are must and make the story fun to watch.

Work this out. Our heroes are surrounded by the walking dead. Gendry runs to the wall, tells his story to the night's watch, a message is composed and sent by a raven over a thousand miles to Dragonstone, Daenerys Targaryen gets organized and flys back ... all in 1 night. That has to be the fastest raven ever.

I don't want to focus here on the large number of plot holes or the absurd level of suspension of disbelief necessary to take anything in this episode seriously. That's been done thoroughly by others already. Instead I want to emphasize how far from the earlier seasons this show has come.

A quick reminder, here are the things that made Game of Thrones an amazing and unique show that both hardcore fantasy fans and those not so much into fantasy could enjoy, for at least four seasons:

• Scheming, plotting and politics. There were so many layers of betrayal, intrigue, and loyalties (and lack thereof). How many times we were shocked to see key characters unpredictably turn on each other. How sophisticated the political relations that did not treat the audience as idiots.

• Truly gruesome violence and head-turning sex scenes. Few movies or shows have displayed such graphic deaths. Sure, there are splatter and gore movies that are "worse", but it's a completely different thing to see it realistically portrayed and happening to characters you're heavily invested in. GoT has on multiple occasions left me trembling from shock.

• Multi-layered, deep, interesting characters. None of the characters felt like stereotypes or flat. They were always surprising you with new depths and character development. They were smart, deep and interesting. Compare Tyrion in the first two seasons to the Tyrion in the last two. He's completely uninteresting, a shadow of his former self. Same thing with Jaime. And it's not because of their character arcs. They've just become bland, stupid Hollywood stereotypes, completely hollow.

• Unpredictability and sense of danger. There's been no other show where you always felt that anything could happen, any time, to anyone. And just when you thought that you'd hit bottom and surely a sweet revenge story would start and things would get better. Nope. Things get worse. And worse. And gruesome, heartbreaking and still surprising.

All of this is gone now. It's become totally predictable, stupid popcorn entertainment. There's barely any intrigue left, all characters are boring and one-dimensional, nothing really shocking. I started feeling it in the sixth season, but that still had its highs. Now this episode. Not only is it a bad episodes, it's actually so poorly written that it lifts the veil off the preceding episodes of the season as well. It was still possible to ignore the worrying signals, until now, but this episode actually manages to remind me of how far off the track this show has gone. It's really, really sad.