Season 6 Episode 8 "No One" - "Non book readers"

wp_rathead

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

The writers have said that they were trying to show that despite all her training Arya is still just a young girl and she let her guard slip thinking of going home and getting away from Braavos.
Probably over-egging it, but it's something we do forget.

As for the recovery time, I'm not convinced I needed to see a clunky passage of time montage just to get that point. It's relatively easy to accept that there must have been some time passed for her to convalesce and partially heal. They split the scenes for that purpose I assume. Sometimes we get a reference to time like Dany being told it was seven days march to Meereen and arriving by Drogon that night. But other times it's just assumed that time has passed.

1) yes, but the previous episode shows her getting needle and being all psyched up. This episode she is wandering around Braavos unarmed and standing out in the open.. Hell had the episode had her being vigilant but was just a momentary lapse of concentration that got her stabbed it'd have been believable but she was off for the whole episode - probably why so many people had theories that it wasn't Ayra at all.. For director to just go "kids do the darnest things" is a cop out imo.

2) I've no issue with time jumping/skipping. For example I know alot of people were freaking out over Littlefinger "Teleporting" up to Sansa earlier this season but it's clear alot of time passed and no need to show him travelling. But point in this episode is she WASN'T healed for the chase scene - she was still injured - ugh it was just so cartoonish how it was played out and just could have been done. Like the idea of Ayra Killin the Waif in the dark so that they bought blind was brilliant..

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Conall Cernach wrote: »

All of this Arya healing stuff could have been solved if instead of Lady Crane giving Arya milk of the poppy she had said she was giving her some potion from Qarth and left it ambiguous as to what it could do.

Or if they just didn't bother having the pointless nonsense cliff hanger they went for for the sake of cheap thrills. Ayra lets herself get spotted by the waif, runs, lures her into the dark, kills her. Makes sense for the character, makes her training have had meaning, still get the big set piece chase scene, same end result. And not derail one of the main characters and have everyone spend the next week squabbling over how dirty rivers are and how long the blade was etc

It's going to go down as one of the landmark moments in the show for all the wrong reasons

CMOTDibbler

wp_rathead wrote: »

1) yes, but the previous episode shows her getting needle and being all psyched up. This episode she is wandering around Braavos unarmed and standing out in the open.. Hell had the episode had her being vigilant but was just a momentary lapse of concentration that got her stabbed it'd have been believable but she was off for the whole episode - probably why so many people had theories that it wasn't Ayra at all.. For director to just go "kids do the darnest things" is a cop out imo.

But you're doing the exact same thing by saying 'the whole episode'. We had two scenes; one where she bought passage to Westeros and another where she seems to be having a last look at Braavos. They were both on the same day since she was sailing at dawn. She was continually moving until she stopped to look at the colossus of Braavos and that's when she was caught unawares. You're assuming that she's being lax for a very long time when in fact it's a couple of minutes at most.

wp_rathead wrote: »

2) I've no issue with time jumping/skipping. For example I know alot of people were freaking out over Littlefinger "Teleporting" up to Sansa earlier this season but it's clear alot of time passed and no need to show him travelling. But point in this episode is she WASN'T healed for the chase scene - she was still injured - ugh it was just so cartoonish how it was played out and just could have been done. Like the idea of Ayra Killin the Waif in the dark so that they bought blind was brilliant..

I'm not sure how long you think it takes for a wound to heal, but I've direct experience of this in the last few weeks. For a young person, you're talking about as little as a week for stitches to start to heal and two weeks for the stitches to be taken out completely. She was somewhere less than a week for the wound to open again as it did. Why is that so unbelievable?

CMOTDibbler

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

But you're doing the exact same thing by saying 'the whole episode'. We had two scenes; one where she bought passage to Westeros and another where she seems to be having a last look at Braavos. They were both on the same day since she was sailing at dawn. She was continually moving until she stopped to look at the colossus of Braavos and that's when she was caught unawares. You're assuming that she's being lax for a very long time when in fact it's a couple of minutes at most.

I'm not sure how long you think it takes for a wound to heal, but I've direct experience of this in the last few weeks. For a young person, you're talking about as little as a week for stitches to start to heal and two weeks for the stitches to be taken out completely. She was somewhere less than a week for the wound to open again as it did. Why is that so unbelievable?

Fair play, honestly, you have been defending the show regarding Arya's wounds and her ability post-injury for a week now. However, the very broad consensus on multiple fan-sites is that that was all a bit of a mess. I get what you're saying about time passing on the show without viewers realising it, but they did not do a good job at all if it was their intention to show time passing. Doesn't matter if DB Weiss calls me up and says "Actually, 2 months passed there while Arya was recovering, it was in the script", they made it look like Arya got drilled in the stomach with a knife one day, and was out on the chase the next day.

Plus, if there was a significant passing of time, where was the Waif during that time, what was she doing and why was she doing it rather than hunt down Arya as her mission dictated? It's just messy no matter what way I think about it, no matter how much I want each episode of this show to be flawless.

I'm normally very easy with this show. I despise the norm it has become to nit-pick every single thing in a scene in a TV show or a movie. Criticism is turning to cynicism and a lot of what I read in regards to GoT is the latter rather than the former. However, this time, in the case of Arya's miraculous recovery and/or the show's failure to adequately show the passing of time, I'm going to have say that it was quite poorly executed. Then when I see an episode like 'Battle of the Bastards' a week later and how things can be done so right, it makes the Super-Arya stuff a bit more frustrating.

CMOTDibbler

stankratz wrote: »

Fair play, honestly, you have been defending the show regarding Arya's wounds and her ability post-injury for a week now. However, the very broad consensus on multiple fan-sites is that that was all a bit of a mess. I get what you're saying about time passing on the show without viewers realising it, but they did not do a good job at all if it was their intention to show time passing. Doesn't matter if DB Weiss calls me up and says "Actually, 2 months passed there while Arya was recovering, it was in the script", they made it look like Arya got drilled in the stomach with a knife one day, and was out on the chase the next day.

Thank you, I think

stankratz wrote: »

Plus, if there was a significant passing of time, where was the Waif during that time, what was she doing and why was she doing it rather than hunt down Arya as her mission dictated? It's just messy no matter what way I think about it, no matter how much I want each episode of this show to be flawless.

The Waif clearly thought she was dead. She watched the water for a while, saw nothing but blood and straightened her tunic in a 'job done' kind of way. She made no attempt to run down to the water's edge and look for Arya, so I think it was clear that she thought the job was done. The subsequent attack on Lady Crane could well have been days later. Lady Crane had been alerted to her danger, so she would have been on her guard.

stankratz wrote: »

I'm normally very easy with this show. I despise the norm it has become to nit-pick every single thing in a scene in a TV show or a movie. Criticism is turning to cynicism and a lot of what I read in regards to GoT is the latter rather than the former. However, this time, in the case of Arya's miraculous recovery and/or the show's failure to adequately show the passing of time, I'm going to have say that it was quite poorly executed. Then when I see an episode like 'Battle of the Bastards' a week later and how things can be done so right, it makes the Super-Arya stuff a bit more frustrating.

I hear you. I've stayed away from the 'Tower of Moans' aka westeros.org because of the almost idiotically negative views that are nurtured there. I do understand the Arya scenes left a lot to be desired, but I'm not in the space that says it was downright ridiculous either. It does require a fair bit of inner exposition to cover the gaps, but at the same time I always look at issues like this in the frame of how it could have been done better and anything I come up with seems clunky and contrived. Sometimes less is indeed more.

CMOTDibbler

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

Thank you, I think

I was serious, but I can see how something like that can come across as condescending in text form, especially when the person who writes it is posting something in disagreement.

The Waif clearly thought she was dead. She watched the water for a while, saw nothing but blood and straightened her tunic in a 'job done' kind of way. She made no attempt to run down to the water's edge and look for Arya, so I think it was clear that she thought the job was done. The subsequent attack on Lady Crane could well have been days later. Lady Crane had been alerted to her danger, so she would have been on her guard.

So what made her reassess that opinion and resume the hunt for Arya? I agree on the 'job done' appearance of the Waif's actions after stabbing Arya, I had no problem with that whole stabbing scene at the time. It was only a week later when we saw Arya up and running that I started to think that those wounds demanded a bit more attention on the show's part, or not to have been so severe in the first place. I'm not actively trying to dislike what went down on screen, I really wish it was the opposite. If anything, I'm too forgiving on the show sometimes. It's just, no matter what way they intended it in the script, the way it was executed and edited onscreen pulled me right out of the show. That hasn't happened to me before with this show, which is why I was quite disappointed and vocal about it.

I hear you. I've stayed away from the 'Tower of Moans' aka westeros.org because of the almost idiotically negative views that are nurtured there. I do understand the Arya scenes left a lot to be desired, but I'm not in the space that says it was downright ridiculous either. It does require a fair bit of inner exposition to cover the gaps, but at the same time I always look at issues like this in the frame of how it could have been done better and anything I come up with seems clunky and contrived. Sometimes less is indeed more.

Yep, some of the negativity is actually just silly and would in fact put you off visiting a site, as you know well by the sounds of it.

I'm all for inner exposition - I was one of those in the minority who didn't need to see Bruce Wayne get a lift back to Gotham from Bane's Prison in The Dark Knight Rises in order to enjoy the movie (If you are familiar with that example) But there are times when even my creative mind can't fill in the blanks without thinking 'Hold on, this is getting silly now'. I would have happily just assumed that Arya spent a week or two at Lady Crane's recuperating before the chase, only for everything I viewed was screaming at me as I was watching it "Something is wrong here" and then proceeded to disconnect me from the events on screen.

However, I am not looking for heads to roll. There is actually a busy thread over on the ASOIAF sub-reddit titled "HBO, do not let Mark Mylod direct another episode of GoT". Of course, everyone else can do it better than the guy who's actually doing it! I'm not there myself though, I just wish he himself had have done it differently, just slightly - A line of dialogue from Arya/Lady Crane to acknowledge the time passing in 'No One', or The Waif to not twist the knife at the end of 'The Broken Man'. However, the director has said that they were going for that big shock to keep viewer's guessing about Arya's fate over the following week between episodes. Arya?! Yeah, we all thought she was toast, you fooled us there! As well as that, he said that D+D's script called for "the greatest chase scene in cinematic history" - So they clearly thought about the shock, they thought about the cinematic chase, i.e. all the cool stuff, but I feel the character actions and expositions could have done with a bit of that attention.

That's probably that CMOT - Nothing is going to change how I felt while watching the scenes in question unfortunately, even though talking about it here does no harm. You have been defending this for a week and won't change your opinion now, plus I wouldn't want to see you do that at this stage after all that work! (And that was serious too!)

CMOTDibbler

stankratz wrote: »

I was serious, but I can see how something like that can come across as condescending in text form, especially when the person who writes it is posting something in disagreement.

I actually wasn't being sarcastic. I was thanking you for the 'fair play' remark.

stankratz wrote: »

So what made her reassess that opinion and resume the hunt for Arya? I agree on the 'job done' appearance of the Waif's actions after stabbing Arya, I had no problem with that whole stabbing scene at the time. It was only a week later when we saw Arya up and running that I started to think that those wounds demanded a bit more attention on the show's part, or not to have been so severe in the first place. I'm not actively trying to dislike what went down on screen, I really wish it was the opposite. If anything, I'm too forgiving on the show sometimes. It's just, no matter what way they intended it in the script, the way it was executed and edited onscreen pulled me right out of the show. That hasn't happened to me before with this show, which is why I was quite disappointed and vocal about it.

I don't think she reassessed her opinion on Arya being dead. She was just fulfilling the contract on Lady Crane. If you remember, Arya heard the noise and left the bedroom and that's when the Waif saw her. Once you accept that the Waif thought she'd killed Arya, then it flows from that, that she isn't aware she's in Lady Crane's lodgings.

In terms of the passage of time, I think the fact of Arya's attempted refusal of the milk of the poppy demonstrates that she (Lady Crane) had been feeding it to her for some time. Having had post-op 'milk of the poppy' myself , I know there comes a time when not having it seems better than having it; usually because the pain that it's supposed to dull has receded enough to make the muzziness seem the worst of the two.

A little bit of dialogue about her injuries might have helped, but I often find those kinds of conversations to be contrived and feel more like a narrative than a genuine conversation. In the Lady Crane scene, the writers tried to be a bit more subtle, so she spoke of how she'd got her revenge on Bianca and how the troupe was moving on shortly. All intended to give the appearance of time passing imo.

Anyhoo, thanks for engagaing in such a thoughtful way. A lot of the discussion in other 'locations' about these kinds of things feel more like a battle against the zeitgeist than a genuine attempt to unravel a scene and understand what was intended.

wp_rathead

stankratz wrote: »

Fair play, honestly, you have been defending the show regarding Arya's wounds and her ability post-injury for a week now. However, the very broad consensus on multiple fan-sites is that that was all a bit of a mess. I get what you're saying about time passing on the show without viewers realising it, but they did not do a good job at all if it was their intention to show time passing. Doesn't matter if DB Weiss calls me up and says "Actually, 2 months passed there while Arya was recovering, it was in the script", they made it look like Arya got drilled in the stomach with a knife one day, and was out on the chase the next day.

First off I second stankratz- CMOTdribbler put forward good arguments in defence of the Ayra scenes in 7 and 8- don't agree with all of them but they were good to read regardless

Secondly, you made me think of that writing hiccup that Graham Linehan talked about before with the "Undercover Policeman"
It is a trap that some writers fall into, where they will write something in the script like "An undercover policeman walks down the road"
The writer will feel like they explained it but the audience will have no way of knowing making it redundant piece of information, despite being important to the storyline (I may have fecked up the example but ye get the point)