The Watch - Dissecting the 'Game of Thrones' Season Finale With Binge Mode Cohosts Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin (Ep. 180)

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald provide their instant takes on the finale and overall season of 'Game of Thrones' (0:30). Later 'Binge Mode' cohosts Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin join Chris to further dissect and examine what worked and what did not in 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 (18:30) and what we can expect from the forthcoming 'Game of Thrones' spinoffs (45:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the Big Picture on Channel 33, part of the Ringer podcast network. Each week, the Ringer's editor-in-chief Sean Fentasy interviews, directors, producers, and screenwriters for a peek behind the scenes of blockbuster films and festival favorites. On the latest episode, he sits down with Adam Wingard, one of my favorite genre directors, director of the new film Death Note on Netflix. And they chat about that. I hope they talked about your next. It's one of my favorite hard jams from the last few years. Subscribe and listen to the big picture on Channel 33, available on Apple Podcasts,

SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I'm editor at thebringer.com. And joining me in the studio, it was the podcast Prince that was promised. Sandy Greenwald!

Yo, guys, listen. We are Bob Seeger's making night moves here. We just wrapped Talk the Thrones a few feet away here at the studios in Hollywood. Yeah. And now... One champagne and one Miller of Light into this. The champagne went right to my head. And now, first of all, shouts to Zach Mack, who records Binge Mode, who records the watch, who drove to work.

Who produces Benjamin the watch. What did I say? It records. Like, he's not just an engineer. Are you Steve Albini, Zach? Or do you like a more tourist touch? Andy, it's Sunday night. We just watched Game of Thrones.

We just did Talk the Thrones. You can still watch Talk the Thrones at your leisure on all of our Twitter accounts. On the ringer's Twitter account, it's very easy to find. We're here on Sunday night recording because Andy is leaving for parts unknown tomorrow. I'm going on vacation. So we're going to get a chance, but I had to get the major domo of Peak TV to weigh in. I had to feed the streets. Yeah.

So let's get right to it, man. Season 7 is a wrap. We've been talking about this show for the better. part of our last five or six years. Adult lives. So what did you think? What a weird season. You know, it was really a fascinating and bumpy ride. We knew going into the season that seven episodes would feel different. And that was even before we realized, as I said, on Talk the Thrones that they invented teleportation. This didn't feel like any other Game of Thrones season. And it was so striking to think about

how we went from the literal highs of the loot train battle to the, the, you know, the the increasingly low lows of Beyond the Wall, just a week ago, where we were basically thinking, they're going to screw this up. We were almost, it's not that we were out on the show, but we had lost a lot of faith in Beniof and Weiss. That lack of faith continued for about 30 minutes into this episode. I think our maister, Jason Concepcion, shame-belled me and said it was 37 minutes in

because he had to stopwatch out, like he was coaching Steve Prefontein. And then it turned. then all of a sudden the mojo came back, the momentum came back, the little finger scene, the obviously the phenomenal ending with the dragon, all the John Snow stuff in between. This show can still flip the switch when it wants to and still get into that next gear when it's ready to. But it has been a fascinating study in watching a phenomenon have to comport to the rules of television. You know what I mean? Sure.

Endings are super hard. And in looking back in hindsight, and this is very brief hindsight, and obviously Miller Light-fueled hindsight, to think about it. But a lot of the things that we are bagging on kind of make sense in the writer's room meta-squinty way that these things often do when shows that we love stumble a little bit, right? Is it okay that it was only 10 minutes ago? Can I repeat myself from talking to drones?

I'm sure you can. This was my bigger point, that the big, the war to come, the great war that John Snow talks about, is it's a question of scale. It is a CGI versus CGI battle. Uh-huh. That can work in movies, but what TV does best is what Tyrion once called

powerful men in rooms talking about stuff. So the question for this season, once they decided they weren't going to take too many pieces off the board this year, was how do we get these people back into these rooms when they are so far apart? And what they came up with, and TV is built on this,

the best worst choice. And it was this, you know, zombie rescue mission. what did we get out of that? Well, obviously, the Knight King got a dragon out of it, but we got also Tyrion in a room with Jamie, Tyrion in a room with Circe. Particularly that, a great scene. Preposterous how they got there.

Worth it? What do you think? I think that this, speaking with you about what this show meant this season as television rather than as how it serviced Giora Martin's books, I was so struck by, I mean, we've watched some of our favorite shows for the last 10 years.

Stutter step into the endings. Yeah. Madman, Breaking Bad, and now Game of Thrones, I think. How did it bring it back? Well, it split its final season. Oh, you mean splitting the buildup? I didn't in terms of the distribution and how that breaks up.

I mean, Breaking Bad was always a sort of odd number of episodes, I think. You know, I mean, like that that's, it was the second season that kind of... The first season got cut short by the writer's right. The first season got to cut short, and then it kind of found itself in the second season, right? I think that I said this on the show.

I will be much more interested to listen to a binge mode 20 years from now that looks back on 7 and 8 as one brick. I think it's important to think of it that way. Because a lot of this stuff that I thought I hated about Game of Thrones, I never hated anything about Game of Thrones. The stuff that was my least favorite part of Game of Thrones was stuff like Varys and Tyrion talking or even weirdly a full exploration of like

If you're going to have Theon on screen, show it. Show everything, show his storyline, do dive deep into it. There were parts of this season that felt very truncated and felt very rushed. And then parts of the season, then in turn, felt, why are you doing this? Why are you giving so much time to something that I know cannot possibly ultimately matter? And I think that we went into this season with so many expectations about,

you know, like people were talking about Circe and Jamie dying in the first few episodes. That's what we thought. We completely misjudged what this season would be. Clegan Bowl. You know, all these things that were going to happen, happen. And at the end of the season, what happened was Thoros died and Little Finger died. Yep. And there was one second there last, this tonight, when I was like, oh.

Missing Day got hers. Yeah, that's right. Where I was like, Jamie's going to die right here. That was an exciting moment. I thought so too. And I was like, this is going to be really, I've become obsessed with how they tip their hands to things. because, you know, Red Wedding, in retrospect, looks very orchestral. Their golden hands.

They're planned out. What? They tip their golden hands. They tip their golden hands. I'm just trying, guys. But now, you know, I would almost expect any character who dies to get the kind of, get to say, your final defense the way that Little Finger does. There are so many things that need to happen.

And I put that in quotes. Not just for a, from a plot perspective, but from a fan service perspective. And let's be real. The people making this show care about that. The Tormond Breyenne thing fully emerged from fan reaction to it. That is not in the books. That was not in the scripts.

That was just chemistry. And good for them. That's what a lot of TV does. And it's this type of spontaneous plot that I thought Game of Thrones was immune from. Yeah. It just felt like it was a track, like a ride at Disney World that Beniof and Weiss

were just sort of riding a car around on. It's not that. But there's so much that still has to be done. And we got some interesting examples of how the differing feelings of how it might play out in tonight's episode. Well, the thing that you said that was about this idea of CGI versus CGI. And we're venturing into the part of the story where this is actually the Night King and everything around him is the fantasy element of what is already a fantasy story. This is a story where things that people thought were myths or legends or things that just died out, like dragons. the dragons died out. Night King,

scary stories you tell your kids at bedtime. Magic warging. All that stuff. That's come back through. So next season, by the very nature of their power, I would expect the Night King and Bran to be major, major parts of next season. If Bran is just, I see everything, but I show up once every three episodes, it's a mistake. Not that I want to deal with him being based out of his mind, but if he's that powerful, he should matter. Yeah.

He should matter. And you're going to see this show increasingly pull away. If these people are now south of the wall, they have to be a reality. They can't just be a rumor. They can't just be something that only John sees and he keeps dragging people to go see. So it'll be a facet. It's going to be a different show next year or two years from now than it was this season. It's interesting to realize how wrong we were on a bunch of stuff.

And now that we can see a little bit more of the board that they were looking at, Beniof and Weiss and the creators of the show. We thought Circe was coming off the board because we thought that there were just so much still to be done. And we thought the human villain was going to be taking care of this year and a CGI villain next year. They didn't humanize the CGI villain in any way. So there had to be human villains next year. But now that death is literally marching and has broken through the wall. Yeah.

Right? It becomes, and this is always a problem with the show, but now they're really facing it, it becomes harder and harder to make us care about B story and C story and D story. You know, it was when it was just like global warming and everyone's like, well, I'm worried about it, but it's not here yet. I need to deal with this, you know, these sort of relatively piddling problems regarding castrating Theon or whatever else was going on. So, for example, this season, think about everything that happened with John DeNaris, like huge legacy defining, world-shaking events. And Aria and Sansa were squabbling because Little Finger was being mean to them. And yet that was given equal footing

because that's what was happening in the North and we have to track those characters. Circe was kept alive now because whatever Circe does because of our investment in her feels worthy. We care about her or we want to see her get her comeuppance

or whatever. The resolution of Circe, whether she dies by Jamie's hand or Aria or whatever theory you want to come up with, that is one of the few planks remaining that will make audiences feel like like,

well, make them feel like they're not just stalling because the dead need to mark I actually have to say I was pretty satisfied with this episode. I didn't even mind the first 30 minutes as much as you guys. I sort of enjoyed the mix and match of characters who were all in the same arena, literally. But I was kind of disappointed by the fact that the whole, the Circe's Tyrion, not really like we've patched things up scene, but we've learned to live together a scene was actually just a ruse. And part of that is because I think this show is that.

it's best when it forces characters to do things they're uncomfortable doing. And almost every character has been put in one of those positions on this show with the exception of Sersey. She's always been in Kings Landing. She's always been pretty much what she says she is. Maybe she's her father's daughter. She did the walk of shame. Sure.

That was uncomfortable. Yeah. I don't mean that. I mean more like she's never really gone outside of herself, you know, in Lisa in my eyes. And she's the most fascinating character on the show to me in a lot of ways. How do you feel about the breaking up of the couple of the century? Well, that is interesting, but I almost think it would have been more fascinating to have Circe go along with literally what she said.

We're going to worry about what's happening later or later, and I hope that you remember, but that that would obviously come apart at the seams as soon as the rubber hit the road. As soon as they tried to work together. Yeah. And I was, when you're on was like, I'm going back to the Iron Islands, screw you guys. I was like, thank God. Yeah, someone should say that. I was like, thank God.

Yeah, this is a, totally. made sense and B, like, get this guy out of the paint. Also, how did it make you feel when you realize not only was he not going to save himself? He was going to put elephants on his boats and take them across the ocean. So any final thoughts you got on this? We're going to go to Maui and Jason in a minute. I know you got to go. How do you feel, I mean, one incestuous couple went off the board, but a new one took

its place. And, you know, I want to give shouts to Zach, who really, our producer, Zach Mack, who really wanted me to mention this. Interesting juxtaposition, the big reveal, like, obviously. Obviously, it was revealed last year, John's parentage to us, but it was never explicitly stated. Brand finally the Molly hits and he turns around right when the beat drops and he's just like, yo, this is who his parents are. Yeah.

I am saying it now. We can stop dancing around it. Like, even the Theon scene was, the Theon John scene was just suffuse in this world. What are we really talking about? Okay, they said it, right? As they said it, as it was confirmed, this thing that has animated Jason and Mallory for two decades as readers of the books. that was intercut with John going south of the wall

on his aunt which I think was an aggressive play by the showrunners to normalize it you know you know hashtag this is not normal I mean this is incest still okay and whatever it's a fictional story but it is a weird thing

that George R.R. Martin has... This is your waiter's island. Nobody cares. I don't think people care but I am interested You know this was conversations that they had where they were like, everybody wants this, and we have to deal with it because our tiny bearded lord has given us this. In 20 years and 10 years, we're going to look back and season 7 and 8

are going to bleed together and we're going to forgive some of the mistakes of season 7 for season 8. I don't think anybody in the Game of Thrones world is going to be like, but that's not. I know. Look, this isn't, it's just, it remains the most, to my mind, it's obviously the biggest show in TV, but it sparks the most conversation. It is the most fascinating show on every level. especially now, I think, as some cracks are starting to show, an Ice Dragon melted the wall. I mean, that's something that happened.

That was dope. It was a really dope note to leave us on for what might be 14 months. It was also a reminder that this is going to... This has been Game of Thrones, it's going to end his Game of Thrones. No show has this extra gear like Game of Thrones does. You know, Jason said on Talk the Thrones tonight,

he looked into the camera, Stuart Smalley-style, and he was like, don't eff this up. And I agree with them, of course, as many fans do, I just fundamentally believe, and this is not just me trying to cover up saying the show is critic roof and then criticizing it for three weeks. I don't think it can be, quote, unquote, bad. Because look who's on the board.

Look what they have to do. Look at the size of the story. If they need to, even if the first however many hours of next year feel weird, they can just press the Michael Knight Turbo Boost and do something nuts for the last 20 minutes, and we will walk away satisfied, right? So it's six episodes, but mega episodes. Six supersized.

Like two-hour episodes. Shouts to Jeff Zucker. Yeah, supersized episodes. And we don't know when. They're going to, you know, obviously the CGI demands, the production, post-production. It will not be next summer. It will not be next fall slash winter at the earliest. And we, Chris, we're going to miss talking about the show.

Sure. Mallory's going to, we're going to miss Mallory, even though we're going to see her on Monday. I got to get Mallory into Ozark. Heartbroken. It's thanks to, we've got to say, thanks to everybody for watching, tweeting, getting engaged on Soch with us. Talk to Thrones was a blast this year.

It was really fun. We love talking about the show. Obviously, there'll be more to talk about as, you know, things leak out over the next year. Not literally leak. Don't leak this season. Yeah, I know. Do not do that.

I'm going to have a conversation with Mallory and Jason next about their thoughts about season seven, but we bid a deal. to Andy Greenwald now. Great. Have a great week. Well, you're not having a week off, but I'm going to have a great time, Garnski. Bye, buddy. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Hotel Tonight.

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Okay, guys, Andy is on a jet plane somewhere warm, somewhere beautiful. His own sex boat. He is. I'm joined by Jason Concepcio and Mallory Rubin from binge mode. What an honor. Welcome to the watch, guys. The honor is ours. It really is.

The honor's ours, truly. It's a privilege to be here with you. We haven't done this in a while. I wanted to get your unvarnished, unfact-checked takes. Oh, wow. Let me put the solvent on the... on the trolley horse and just get that varnish off.

Long season, and here's where I wanted to start. Mallory, if I may be so bold as to take people inside it, you were just talking about this a little while ago, I know that you guys are working on

working season seven episodes into the ringers Game of Throne episodes ranking. Right. And you said, interestingly enough, I thought that it did not fare very well. No.

Correct. Tell me a little bit about that. Tell me a little. Okay, and well, okay, so specifically, how did you take these episodes, you put them against this thing that you've been talking about for the last four months, was that a gut check? Did that, was that kind of like, oh, season seven had issues? I think that we felt those issues in a very real way as we were watching it,

and one of the things that is important to do, certainly when you're ranking 67 episodes of a show, or just when you're ranking 60, as our staff did heading into this season, is to attempt to like counter your own recency or primacy bias. Like I think we saw a lot of early episodes rank very well and a lot of late episodes rank very well when we did this the first time, which is not shocking. Season seven had some really good moments and it also had a lot of problems. And because of the truncated nature of the season, there was not the opportunity

to have enough of the high highs to compensate for the low. So you're left with an experience where, sort of inevitably, by the nature of the experience, you focus more on the flaws than on the things you liked. Now, I think that's also just like, we just finished it. And maybe we step back in three months, maybe certainly after we finish the series, we step back. And it fares a little bit better in hindsight. And we're talking about that idea that seven and eight could be viewed as a complete statement. Yeah. Because we saw that a bit just with the finale itself, right?

we were certainly not willing to forgive some of the transgressions. Like, I don't think any of us will ever make peace with what happened with ARIA this season. But you ultimately could get to the point where you said, okay, I like the way the Little Finger thing played out in that moment. I don't like how they got there. I wish they had made different choices. But the thing itself worked. And so maybe we end up feeling that way about the entire season. But the thing about Game of Thrones is that is really fucking good.

And a lot of these episodes leading up to season seven were incredible. And so it's a really, really, really hard top. tear to crack, period. Like, even something like spoils the war that I think we all were like, wow, that was a dope hour of TV. Is it in the pantheon of amazing Game of Thrones episodes?

I'm not sure. The one thing that I wound up, I think I said this to Andy. The one thing I sort of weirdly wound up appreciating in retrospect, especially after last night's episode, was mid-period boring Game of Thrones episodes.

Sure. Yeah. I miss them. And I think that they actually were quite important. It used to be with those 10 episodes arcs, it would be like, something important happened early on, and then there was a lot of table setting

that happened for like three or four episodes, but that shit was really, really important. Nobody knows that more than you. I think part of what was tough about season seven is there wasn't a feeling of depth that the best Game of Thrones episodes and seasons have. To me, like the core, like, Game of Thrones experience is something like the door

or even like episode one of season four where Tyrion welcomes Oberyn Martell and you get this feeling of stepping into a story that's been going on for decades and watching and unfolding watching things that have been kind of bubbling below the surface for years and years and years suddenly come up to the surface. And with this season you just really didn't get that

until really the last 30 minutes of the finale. Right. You know, it was a bunch of stuff that seemed really disconnected from the rest of the series. You know, like Ariens, it's like a prime example. It's two people that we've come to know really intimately over the course of seven seasons acting in a way that's kind of like unrecognizable and it was just tough. Yeah, I mean, we threw a lot of inside pitches of George over the years, I think,

about his slowness and his pages. Who's we? Collectively. and the royal we and um there's a is it a blog he wrote or is it like a letter he wrote

that was about kind of like a critique of Tolkien and it was about like this idea that were you talking about this but it was like this idea that like he's like Tolkien's good

but and he is like here's all these questions I have about works and like what it works what were the works doing after Soron died like where'd they go and what was their system of government

he wants to know like who's rolling your bank if you're funding a work effort. Like, George is obsessed with the details of the world. That is why he, one of the things that's very important to remember, especially as we're critiquing the way that his story is adapted, is that he never wanted it to be adapted. Right.

Like, specifically sought out to create something that could not be adapted. That's what he said. It's like, I'm going to write something that can't be adapted because it's so deep and interconnected and the history goes back thousands of years. Right. And so you were inevitably going to feel, I think, at some point along the way, robbed of some aspect of like that richness of the world that he built. The other thing with the Tolkien connection that's interesting is that while he loves Tolkien is clearly informed by him and worships him, I think his issue maybe is like partially with Tolkien in the depth of the world and also partially with the way his disciples have behaved, right?

Like the idea that you have like black and white, good and evil. And that is, I think, to George and also to the best storytellers. This is true for like the wire and David Simon. Like the idea that good and evil is that concrete, that stark of a divide and there's no growth. area in the middle is fundamentally uninteresting as a storytelling device, right? And that's what makes Game of Thrones so cool is that somebody like Jamie can

do the things that he's done and still be somebody we root for. Especially you. I mean, you really root for that guy. That's amazing. Yeah, I think that there is a decided difference in the... I don't know if you could really break it up into...

It's like the John and Danny story versus the Starks and Lannister's story that maybe dominated the first few seasons. but I definitely think that there is a different, it feels different. And I think that that's not anything against like what Harrington and Amelia Clark are doing like with those characters or anything like that.

I think it has a lot more to do with, these are two characters who are being sort of held at bay by a lot of people in some ways, or at least on Danny's side. I think that she has all these advisors. She's been stuck in a lot of conference rooms over the years. And I think that there is like a sort of desire to have them be more,

interactive with more characters than the ones that they've been seeing move a little bit more, get around a little bit more. For as much as we made fun of John's incredibly efficient traveling this season, he at least got to see and do a lot of stuff, and it was pretty cool.

Speaking of that good and evil stuff, I was reading online a couple places today about that last shot of Tyrion, looking onto them, and whether or not he could have, I think for a lot of people, they're watching the show, they know there's six more episodes,

even if each of those episodes is two hours each or whatever they wind up making them. It's hard to imagine any other big character beats other than like plot-driven ones. Like is Tyrion in play as someone who could have like a new arc, a new, like be that in between good and evil? Because he definitely didn't seem happy about that. Let me just, I really hope not.

I found that extremely troubling. Tyrion, to be fair to Tyrion, everybody who comes into contact with Deneres Targaryen falls in love with her she's a very charismatic beautiful woman who rides dragons and is like powerful but also emotional

and vulnerable as the same thing like she's just she's attractive to people the most important person in the world yeah Dario Drogo Dora Jorra John

all these people just get into her and fall in love with her that said for Tyrion that's a tough look. Okay, maybe he would fall for her in some way. It just feels like fundamentally

out of character that he would be like I have a shot with DeNaris and I need to do something. And I'm mad that I do. And I'm mad that, yeah, and I'm mad that like I don't have

this guy's in my way. Right. Was that what that succession conversation was about? Which one? The one that... A couple episodes ago when he was just like,

we have to make plans for like your succession. No, that was. just about like continuity of government essentially like what's gonna that actually i thought was tyrian at his best this season right that was that was that was tierian um holding danny to her promise to actually break the wheel yeah um to restructure her government in a way that is um fundamentally different than the things that have come before you know like he was introducing an idea of like maybe you could um create some kind of democratic process here let's just talk about it i thought that was

him and his best the him standing like under the weird stairs and just like staring at the yeah at danny's cabin as like hump sounds are coming out is like him 100% at his worst yeah because i was wondering about this idea that he not unlike john is somebody who's sort of playing with house money at this point like he's killed his father he went on the run he's kind of exiled from the life he knew before and you know just in the same way that john is living essentially a second life and has dedicated himself to making the world a better place and if that means going up against ridiculous odds and sometimes creating ridiculous odds, so be it.

And Tyrion has been repeatedly just like, I am doing this because I think that she will make the world a better place, that she will like change things for the helpless and protect the people who need protecting. That would get thrown away because he has a office crush. Yeah, it's weird. I think it's interesting to hear you draw the connection between Tyrion and John because I think that's actually what's upsetting about this or what's upsetting about thinking about where this could go.

Like, listen, Tyrion falling hard for a woman he can't have, that fundamentally is actually his life. Like, wanting something that the world is depriving him of. And watching someone who is basically the platonic ideal, like Jamie is got everything to Tyrion didn't have. Yes. John now has everything Tyrion doesn't have. But that's the thing.

Like, Tyrion and John, that connection has been, I'm about to cry. Oh my God. I don't think anyone's ever cried on the watch. Oh my God. Last time we talked about this on binge, I cried too. The Tyrion John connection is so special because it's the heart of the entire story. Cripples, bastards, and broken things.

Why did they have that instant connection? Because they have both always felt like they weren't good enough. Like they weren't seen clearly or truly by anybody in their lives, by those people who did get everything, who always had the chance for power, glory, or love. And if Tyrion stops feeling like John is basically like him and suddenly John is the other, that kind of sucks.

Like Tyrion and John, seeing the thing in each other that nobody ever saw in them is like a really important bedrock to the entire story. I don't want that to be taken away from us. And it's also, it's just, it's in line with the worst stuff that happened this season, which is just stuff that felt extremely manufactured. Like, oh, we need this plot because the Night King is boring

because we don't want to write his backstory or do any work. So we got to create this thing where there's some kind of internecene force that is tearing apart which should be like a pretty solid alliance. I just realized I've been pronouncing that word wrong for my whole life. Which one? I don't know. I'm pronouncing it wrong. Which one, Gilly?

Oh, okay. I say intercene. That's devastating. Go ahead. So it just feels like extremely manufactured. Like all of a sudden, like, Tyrion is going to get caught up in his feelings in a way that's going to, like, blow an alliance

that the entire world depends on? Right. Like, no. No. So you touched on this a little bit. We talked about it last night and talked to Thrones. You turned to the camera. You said, don't F this up.

Yeah. Let me just throw out. I know you're just going to say no. But let me just throw out one theory. Okay. The reason why this felt, this season, I think, felt like they were playing pre-vent defense.

and there was a lot of like, oh man, Circe's going to die in like the third episode. Right. You know, like this little finger 100% dies next week, whatever. Like the feeling that we, the momentum, and that was partially all of the preseason interviews with characters

or people who worked on the show was just like, the pace at which the show moves is unbelievable. People aren't going to believe like their eyebrows are going to fall out because of this. And it was like a lot of near deaths and a lot of like close calls, but felt a lot more traditionally like, Look, we cannot get rid of Nicolai, man. That guy is super popular. He's going to be on the show for a while longer.

Is it possible that that was a stalling act to give George more time? To give George more time? As opposed to just saving the good stuff for season eight? I don't. I don't, when have they ever saved the good stuff? I don't think they care about George. I don't think they don't care about him. I agree with that.

Yeah. I think there's like, in retrospect, naming season six's finale wins of winter was a dick move that was a trollish just in case people don't know

why just because that's the name of the book that he's working it's the name of the book that he's working on that's not been seven years or something my god this is fucking crud holy shit

it's been like seven years and he's you know ostensibly working on it and to name to put the crucial reveal

of the central mystery of George's story in an episode titled what he plans to title his next book, just felt like a really dick move. Like that was, that was fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. I also, I completely agree. And I also think that even if we are to, like, enter the most charitable, altruistic headspace possible, a year isn't enough time.

Yeah, it's not. Yeah. for George. Like, you're buying him time to maybe, maybe, maybe put out the sixth volume. What about the seventh? There's no scenario in which he finishes the story before the show does. None. And that possibility ceased to exist, honestly, like when they chose to start the show.

Yeah. Yeah. But he was more deeply involved with the show for a while, though. He was named executive producer. He had co-write area. Do you write some of the scripts, right? Yes. And now he's out there like, I don't watch Game of Thrones.

I don't watch Game of Thrones. I'm with Quentin Tarantino, like, drinking. I'm wearing hats. I'm wearing hats. Trying on new hats on social media. So what do they have to do to not F it up? They have to,

they have to stop being, and like, I don't know shit, right? But the sense I get is that there's like a, they are, they treat the fantasy elements of this story almost like they're ashamed of them. Like they,

that stuff requires meticulous planning. You can't just be like, Brand is a three-odd raven now and he can see the future. He knows magic. And here's how the wards and the wall work. Like, you have to, you have to set those rules up in a certain way so that we all understand how they work. And I don't get a sense that the showrunners are interested in doing that at all. At all. Right.

You know, not at all. What do you think you're interested in? In just cashing out, getting out quick. Maybe that's uncharitable. Do you have a more charitable view of it? I can pretend to For the sake of discussion I don't have to

I mean like look You two being like I am really worried about this Because I have like a whole other thing I want to ask you about that It has to do with this but So okay Jason and I were having this conversation yesterday

We were having it last week I actually had this conversation with my dad On the phone on Saturday He called Heading down to the Outer Banks for the week Wanted to say good luck To the Talk of Thrones crew And

And Thanks Mr. R Thanks Bear And we were talking about the hero's journey and John, as we so often do. And one of the things that he said that I thought was really interesting and is very much in line with how Jason and I, and I think a lot of people think about the story, is it was always very clear if you are a fan of fantasy literature and the genre that it was going to be John's story. That was apparent quickly. And then in some ways it was going to be about John and Danny and that too some and what that twosom and what that twosom represents in this world. but that the most important part of the story

to the people who care deeply about it was Sonsa Ariane Brand specifically Ariane Really? That's the soul of the show. Because again, why do people like fantasy stories? What did Lewin say to Brand way back at the beginning of the story? Who doesn't want to believe that they're special? Right.

And so these kids who aren't necessarily the ones in position of actual power being able to impact the world in some way, Tyrion fits this mold too. That's the coolest idea that there is in the entire fucking world. Right. And so to lose sight of those characters and that idea. That's Superman. That's the natural.

Is that interesting. Yeah. Right. And so like, look, John is my favorite character in the story. John is one of my favorite characters in literature, period. I'm all in on John. I pick him as like the winner practically every week. I love him. I'm fully invested in this being John's story, but I don't just want John and Danny. I don't want that to be the only thing that feels like it matters in the show

because the whole thing that made Game of Thrones interesting and compelling and really special as a proposition was that so many other things always mattered too. And when you lose sight of that, particularly when the other things that matter are the ones that feel really core to the genre, it feels like a certain,

if not betrayal of an ideal, then at least you've kind of lost sight of what the thing was about in the first place. And I think that is a very sincere concern for people at this point. Now, if there are six episodes left and we get a lot of fucking on boats and John Ryan rides Regal

and Mel comes back from Valentus and Barrack passes the kiss of life and Jamie chokes Searcy and the Night King melts down the right keep. I think we'll all be like, this was really dope. I don't think there's a world in which people are like Game of Thrones stop being fun or interesting or cool. but there was a point in the last couple years

where people were like, this isn't just a fun TV show, this is one of the defining stories of our time. And I think people who've read the books and felt that way for a while, but that became just a commonly held opinion about culture. There's also the idea that they were doing it right. Yeah, this was actually like, you and I,

we love X-Men. Like, we really love X-Men, and they fucked it. They like, they did not, like, when people are like, oh, man, you know, those X-Men movies are pretty, early X-Men movies are pretty good. I'm like, they're fine. Right. You know, like Logan was really, really good. But that's a character of people have been living with

for decades and have so many different stories about it. And they screwed up half of the stories that they told with him. Like, we are not unfamiliar with the idea of something that we love. That is like this incredible act of just Herculian storytelling being just completely screwed up

by television or movies. You know? And the idea is that, like, for six seasons, throwing a perfect game. I mean, pretty much. I hate to keep coming back to the loot train attack. No, I want the example.

But that's, to me, is an example, a prime example of just the attention to detail that is required to create this kind of seamless interconnected world. George is great at naming stuff. And to name a battle

loot train attack, which is like a production title placeholder. You know, it's like you name that something. You name that in the script outline and then just got passed down somehow like all the way. If Winds of Winter was called Dome Bomb. Right. And literally no one in that world will ever call that the loot train attack.

They would never say that. It's that kind of thing that is just, you know, it's a misunderstanding of what genre they're working in. And it's, that's, I found it troubling. Right. The other thing is, of course, like the X-Men example or like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or anything, it's like there's established canon that people can turn to. Yeah. Right. So like I can say, all right, I think that the adaptation of Half Blood Prince is like a crime against humanity.

But I have Half Blood Prince, the book. So it doesn't matter to me that the movie is bad. You don't have Winds of Winter. I don't have Winds of Winter. I don't have confidence. I can't know for sure that we will ever get the end of the story fully as intended and as desired.

And so that makes it harder, I think, to forgive anything we view as a transgression. That's really the subtext through all of this. And that's the thing. Like, they have a shot to create the definitive ending of this story. Right. And it's a story that millions of people have their interior lives wrapped up in four years.

They care deeply about that. these characters and the things that they've been through. And to mess it up to kind of, you know, just to bottle it in a way that doesn't pay homage to the things that those characters have gone through would really, it would really be painful for a lot of people. And I think it would haunt them. It would haunt Benny Off and Weiss. With the exception of Benny Off and Weiss, the actors, some of whom are aging in a way that

they can't control, you know, and some of them who I'm sure would like... Who have named names? I wonder how tall Robin Aaron is right now. Is he just like seven feet? He's like a legitimate small forward. He's probably like, he's actually playing in the Croatian League and being scouted by the Mavericks. I mean, he looks like, he looks like Julian Casablanca is like playing for like Juventus or

something. But the exception of like the desire of probably several of these actors to maybe move on with their lives and not spend X amount of months. in Belfast or Iceland or Spain or wherever. This is one of the rare times where I'm like, this show could have just been 15 years long. Why not? Yeah.

Like we fucking recast. Yeah. Someone wants to leave recast. Yeah. Finish the story right. It would be wild. I don't know if you could do that with Lena. I don't know if you could do that with Nikolai or Kit.

But I'm just just for the sake of not having me. But you can also kill any of those people except for John probably at this point. Like we all, look, we pick Jamie and Sersie in the mortality pool. thought these people were going to die, right? So, like, if you can't ink dink dinklage to another deal, right tearing out of the story. That's not a satisfying reason to do it, but

shit like that happens all the time. I will ask you guys, the opposite side of that, should it just have been one final 10 episode season? Because it seems like they were working 100%. Yes. 100%. Even if it meant fewer hours of the story, we'd all have more peace and comfort if they had not been basically working

toward this clear end point of the season and back mapping. Yeah, that's the entire way. I actually could have ended the show. I mean, it would have been a very unsatisfying end of the show itself,

but I don't know that I think, I don't know that they needed to show the Great War. I think that the Great War could have been like, and then into the future. And it could have been John and Danny defeat the Lannisters or whatever.

And they've formed this coalition of man to fight the Great Battle and like they get married and like that's spin off time if you guys want to do a night king show or if you guys want to do a what's it like the middle age john and danny or whatever they do like you could have ended it but i don't i don't find i don't think that would be satisfying for many people right but what they're going to have to do next season with the storylines that they've already like started kicking around with the golden company and uran and you know what like what's going to happen with Searcy and where's Jamie going and all the people who are still

on the board plus this army marching south that's a lot to do in six episodes i don't care how long the episodes are which leads me to my final question for you sure we are in the ages is all we talk about we are in the age of expanding universes and intellectual property i am going to give you a choice okay game of thrones the television show ends in an unsatisfactory way but largely what you're saying. Some storytelling errors, some lack of depth, but cool shit.com. Right, yeah. Five dragons, setting shit on fire.

John, fighting with magic swords. Yeah, whatever it happens. Lots of sex on boats. And tons of sex on boats. And that ends, and then you're like, cool. And let's say, because I want to I want to have nice things like George finishes six or whatever. So George finishes. God bless us.

A book. Okay. Or? Just six or six and seven? Let's say six and seven. then he eventually finishes his last two months. That would be wild, but let's just say. I'm in my retirement home in Boca. Or with HBO or not,

Game of Thrones becomes expanded universe, and there's six Game of Thrones shows on. At the same time? Yeah. And that there are shows about the history, there are side shows, there are, hell, they could reboot the whole thing.

But maybe it doesn't have the grandeur and majesty and $100 million budgets that this one does. but we never get another page from George Well I don't necessarily want to make you choose But I think what I'm trying to get at is like you've had this experience By having this beloved text turn into a television show That had some issues but has basically been the biggest pop culture sensation of the century for the most part Like

Would you rather not see it adapted again? Would you rather not see anybody screw up anything that you guys Would you rather not see a young Griff show get messed up? Would you rather not see not even a Roberts Rebellion? I mean, maybe you could do a Roberts Rebellion show. I mean, I would be interested in any of it. But Game of Thrones has this weird place in the culture of being both something that die-hard,

aggressive fans are into and also casual people are into. I mean, what happens? What would you rather see happen next? Would you rather have like B-B-B-minus B-plus Game of Thrones spinoffs? Or nothing at all because it just didn't feel good when you were watching. the main show. I think I would, man, I mean, I love this world and it's great. And there's so much depth and so much backstory to everything that a B minus to be

Game of Thrones, Westrose history of Westrose story would be pretty good. I think this is not quite the question you're asking, but the thing that worries me about like the ending Game of Thrones is that if they bottle it, the less the takeaways going to be, oh, you know what? Fantasy doesn't work. It's not, people don't like it. It's not adult. Game of Thrones was great when it was all politics and it was all like,

it was all like family swobling. But when it's dragons versus ice zombies. But when it's dragons and magic swords and the prince who is promised, that's, that's for kids. And that's, that's bad. That's tragic because it's not because that stuff isn't compelling. It's because

they didn't do it right. They just didn't do it right. Yeah. Man, that's sad to about. Boy, that bums me out. Sorry, Mel. I choose any scenario where I get more pages from George. Okay, same. Yeah.

But I'm all in on spinoffs. I want more adaptations. Nothing about, okay, here's the other thing. It is important, like, very real end game concerns aside to pan back. And basically remember that we, like, didn't like, we really didn't like two episodes. Right. Eastwatch and Beyond the Wall were deeply flawed episodes in a 67 episode run. That's like pretty good. Now, there are other problematic episodes along the way, certainly. But still a pretty high hit rate. And if they can rediscover that form and sustain it in season eight, the will all be thrilled. In general, when I love a world, I love it so fully that I just want to spend as much time there as possible, even if it's not perfect. Like, even if it's the defender's version of whatever in that. You know what you mean? Yeah, totally.

Because, again, one of the things that, like, that draws people to the story in the first place is just the depth, the scope, the vastness of this thing that he's created. And it would almost feel tragic if we never got to see more of that brought to light. There's so much. And life, like, on our screens. There's just so much there to explore. And, like, I'm, you guys know this about me. Like, I'm, like, firmly in the Let Rolling Right camp. Like, no matter how many Harry Potter world.

stories, whether it's on pottermore. Like, I thought Curse Child was like an abomination. But there's not a moment in my life where I've thought, I wish she hadn't done this. Hold on her spurs. Yeah, because, like, any, any shred of extra detail about that world is a precious gift to me.

That's cool. That's how I feel about it. And so I would feel that way about more Thrones spin-offs, too. Like, I still am really excited to see what they decide on for the spinoffs. I mean, I think, frankly, picking a story that has, yes, obviously it's going to come from George's world and going to be one of his creations, but less canon, less pages behind it.

Yeah, what was the Jane Goldman? The Jane Goldman one that she's working on with George and that's the one that he was like, or she was like, it's something that will be familiar to people, but that has not been deeply. So what would that be? Well, so George has basically put the kibosh on Roberts Rebellion and Duncan Egg, right?

He's kind of like, you're not getting the, two things you probably want the most. Now, I know you are out on Robert's Rebellion because it's too familiar, too close. I thought it was too close and I thought it would just, there's too much baggage. Listen, I would want it. I know you'd get the, and you'd also get the Rogue one bit of like leading right into thrones. The last thing, I've never wanted it more weirdly than today because like it was so so thrilling to get a glimpse of Ragar finally and I was like, that was not enough. That was not enough. That was not enough. So I kind of want that more. I mean, think what, Blackfire Rebellion?

Do we get Agon's conquest? Sure. That would be incredible. What? I think it's probably going to be, I think, I don't know. From what I've, I don't know, I feel like it's going to be the dance of dragons. Just seems like that, which is like a civil war that happened. CGI.

Lots of dragons, evil queens, children getting killed. Then it happened like 150 years ago is really the end of the Targaryans as a dragon power. Right. They've definitely never opted into a story that required to. expensive CGI animals and then come to regret that. Well, that's going to be the big question is like what kind of budgetary? I mean, I think that what kind of commitment are they going to make to make this show? Because obviously you can make a punisher that takes place on six sets and three back lots of New York's.

Or you can make a punisher that, you know, looks like Dirty Harry in 1978 or whatever you wanted to make it. So my last question for you guys. What is the first thing that you are going to watch now that you are. done. Once binge mode is over on Wednesday, what's the first thing that you've either been hearing about that you're like, oh man, I got it. I know I got to watch this. Or read

or go to the movies. Like, what's the first thing you're going to do? What's the palate cleanser? I honestly have no idea. I'm dead serious. I have no idea. Okay. I'm all, I can't even think about it right now.

I bet people adding you, giving you suggestions would be a welcome respite. people at no it wouldn't actually don't do that everyone who heard that don't do that stop adding me

it's at any green wall do you want to get you're gonna think I'm lying but I am going to do a complete A Song of Ice and Fire reread

right now I know she's in I'm actually really excited to dive back in you just always find new things and every bit of new information you learn informs how you

process something from the past So I'm excited about that. And I also look forward to finally reading the name in the wind. Shouts to Ben Limburg. Shouts to Ben Lindberg. I'm going to do it finally. I'm excited to get into another epic fantasy saga that has definitely not been completed yet.

I'm excited to happen. The last one came out of 2011. The old Zach guy. He's like in his 40s? Oh, he's got playing in time. He's got, he's a bear. Trust me, everything happens to reading your 40s. It gets really good.

Television? I want to catch up on Preacher. Uh-huh. I want to watch Ozark truly because it means so much to you and I care about your passion. I just think both of you would enjoy it a lot. Okay. And then the honest answer is like it's, what is it, August 28th? I'm going to just be watching a lot of football and baseball.

That's right. Because we work at the ringer.com. Get ready for 10 games before you read off the next season. Jason and Mallory, you guys have been an inspirational thing here. It's just incredible to watch you guys do what you do on a weekly basis and listen to your binge mode. Everybody should go check out binge mode. and the cool thing about binge mode is always there for you.

So you guys can go back and if you want to rewatch Game of Thrones in this maybe the 18-month break that we're going to have until it comes back, that's another weird thing we didn't really talk about. I know, right?

Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, and you guys can always go back and listen to all these episodes of Binge Mode. They'll be there for you. It's a really cool library, an archive of, like, analysis, and it's a really cool active scholarship.

I'm very impressed with it. Everybody is. So thank you guys so much for being on the watch, and we can't wait to hear the last binge mode this week. We just try to make you proud. That's true.

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