Season 6 Episode 8 "No One" - "Book readers"

Events in Bravos involving Arya this week completely broke my immersion in the story. In a show where I'll happily watch a thousand year old man-tree groom a teenage boy, where I won't bat an eye as skeletons pop up from the ground and elf-children shoot fireballs at them from the palms of their hands, where I cheer on a girl who owns three dragons and burns down a hut to murder 20 warriors but emerges from the flames unburnt herself - It was Arya's miraculous recovery from her gutting last week and subsequent impression of Trinity in the Matrix which made me finally go "Ahhh here..." while watching this show with material that didn't feature the Sand Snakes.

The damage was done to Arya last week, yes, but it was also done to this story-line back then in my opinion. We've been watching Arya grow very slowly but surely in Bravos over the last two seasons. Most of that progression appeared to go out the window though when she went walking around Downtown Bravos like a tourist taking in the sights one last time in the daylight, while the Faceless Men had a contract out on her life. Her behaviour pre-stabbing was so off, so unArya-like that countless fans refused to believe it was her. "Arya is the Waif...Jacqen is the Waif....Arya is Jacqen testing the Waif", there are numerous theories of that substance over on the various ASOIAF sub-reddits. I read a few, and not one of them convinced me it was something worth doing beyond the initial shock factor, and something that wouldn't make any sense and the 'why?' was lacking in such theories. Pure shock, nothing more. Even at that though, I might have found it a little easier on the eye and the brain than what actually happened in this episode after Arya got stabbed to shít last week.

The dragons, the magic, the White Walkers, I can buy all of that because as well as me choosing to watch a fantasy show, the show remains largely consistent in the parameters it sets when dealing with these supernatural elements. The show has never portrayed its human characters as super-human though. Yes there are certain exceptions to this - Jon, Beric, The Mountain - but Arya never belonged in that bracket and we've never been shown that she is anything but human and mortal. A potential hero, yes, but not a superhero.

In the show universe so far, we have seen King Robert Baratheon succumb to the wounds he sustained after being gored by a bore. He got bad stomach injuries and a terrible infection funny enough which lead to his death, despite having the best medical treatment available and not jumping into a Bravosi shít-canal post-goring. We've seen The Hound get his ass handed to him, sustaining a few almost-fatal injuries in the process. The description of him by Ian McShane's Septon last week describes a man at death's door when they found him. We saw Ned Stark get sliced on the back of the leg by one of Jaime Lannisters guards and Ned was on the sidelines with that for a while. My point here is that our heroes, anti-heroes, and villains on this show are human, mortal and susceptible to the same biological dangers as us in the real world.

Arya got shanked last week. The show went out of its way to show us the damage that the Waif was inflicting on Arya. Not only did she slash her, but she stabbed her at least twice deep in the stomach. On the second time while the knife was buried to the hilt, she twisted it around. That's a death sentence right there. Then the wounds are exposed to putrid canal water. I get that the show wanted to be brutal and shocking, but they can't have it both ways without something seeming amiss. They can't have our heroine take such heavy hits and then a day or two later be doing parkour around the city in epic fashion after a good night's rest and some milk of the poppy.

At the beginning of the chase, Arya should have passed out from the pain right there after jumping from the balcony of the actress' house. Shortly after that, she slides under a cart along graveled steps on her front at speed. Her guts should have been left in a skid mark right there. Then she jumps down off a high ledge onto more steps, ruining a bunch of oranges and tipping the show's hat to the Godfather in the process, then proceeds to roll down these steps. It is now finally that she starts to show a bit of wear and tear, she should have been dead by this point though.

It's only a fictional TV show and I'm writing a novel here, but it was quite disappointing. I've never really noticed plot-armour in the show, definitely not as glaring as this. As I said above, the damage had been done in the previous episode - Arya's behaviour out in the open before she got stabbed betrayed what she had learned about the Faceless Men and what she had learned from them, i.e. betrayed the last two seasons worth of character progression. Then the show went for an 'Oz scene' with the brutal gutting on the bridge. I'd argue that had they have just had Arya sustain a few superficial wounds, this week's episode wouldn't have suffered nearly as much. They would have gotten the ambush and step backwards for the protagonist, and they would have gotten the epic street chase this week without a million fans asking "How in Seven Hells?".

I don't think Arya's time has been completely wasted in Bravos. Before she left Westeros, she had to leave. She wasn't capable of doing the things needed on her own in order to complete her list, and on her own she was going to get killed. Now though, she's leveled up a bit and her apprenticeship with the Faceless Men will stand to her. She can survive on her own now. It's just, it could have been much more and the conclusion of it was a mind-bender. Even Sexy Jesus looked confused as to what to do or say at the end, and not in a "Oh my Many-Faced God, you killed the Waif" sort of way.

I don't have a problem with Arya luring the Waif to a spot where she could take out Needle and take a swipe at her in the dark. I don't even have a problem with the street chases, whether a girl draws on Robert Patrick's T-1000 for inspiration a little too heavily or not. It's that the show did this while Arya was in the early stages of recovering from fatal wounds. Wounds they didn't even need to give her. The stage was already set, the stakes high. We already knew Arya had a tough challenge given that the Waif had been making bits of her in one on one combat so far this season. The show went for short-term shock value and a cliffhanger finish with last week's stabbing, and ruined the conclusion of Arya's story in Bravos in the process.