Billions is better than Game of Thrones in studying power, hate and corruption - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 05-07-2019, 03:17 AM

https://www.salon.com/2019/05/05/bil...nd-corruption/

"There’s no fighting the Game of Thrones flood," says Melanie McFarland. "All we can do is float along until we all reach its final destination. Even so, it’s worth pointing out that the direction Billions has taken this season makes it a more consistently fascinating analysis of power and its dynamics than most of what’s going on in Westeros. At this point Game of Thrones revolves around guesswork (for the audience) and serving up spectacle. Meanwhile, every Sunday at 9 p.m., Billions confidently plays with power’s favorite consorts: corruption, wrath and my personal favorite, pettiness — the drug that makes people take certain slights too personally and too far."

Sansa Stark's Game of Thrones celebration scene with The Hound rang so false, encapsulating all the problems in this week's episode
SOURCE: VANITY FAIR
"Every piece of their interaction is confusing and limited. Worse, it obfuscates each character’s growth," says Sonia Saraiya, who explains why the scene during the Battle of Winterfell victory celebration made no sense on many different levels. "It feels like a repudiation of both of their character arcs—and, as I have said again and again this season, a missed opportunity for growth and connection," she says.

"This is a lot to write about one scene, I know. But it goes to illustrate two points. One: these characters, for so long, have been so beautifully drawn that this compressed, sloppy conclusion is increasingly galling. It’s shortchanged their long-running, thorny, often quite moving transformation as characters. You could analyze nearly every scene in 'The Last of the Starks' in this way, and come up just as frustrated and confused as I am here. The way that I feel about Sansa is the way that other fans feel about Tyrion, or Jaime, or Jon, or Missandei. The show’s conclusion is crushing the nuance and movement out of each character, reducing them to bite-size takeaways. To me it seems as if Sansa sat down at that table not to speak to The Hound, but to tell the audience something they already know: she’s been through a lot, and she’s strong now. The way that she did that undermines her own statement—but at this point, Game of Thrones is entirely surface-level. We cannot read more nuance into this scene, even though eight seasons of backstory are there, waiting to be brought to bear into the scene. The other point is much simpler. If you want female characters in your show—if you want them to struggle and survive in a gendered world, if you want them to be stately queens or mad ones, if you want them to **** or fight or cry or do all three at once—hire female writers. It will help."

ALSO:

This was Game of Thrones at its worst: "It's as if the writers, the entire crew, the showrunners got through the Battle of Winterfell and simply gave up," says Matt Miller. "This, sadly, was Game of Thrones at its worst—Episode Four is reminiscent of some of the lowest moments of Season Seven. It's nonsensical, lazy, and cringeworthy from beginning to end."
Does Game of Thrones have something against people of color?: "The disposability of POCs in Game of Thrones is something that we’ve had to get used to," says Hanna Flint. "Bye Khal Drogo! Laters, Oberyn! Farewell, Dothraki horde! See you on the other side, Sand Snakes! This is a show with a high kill count, of course, but, when there are already so few black or brown characters, seeing them drop like flies at the hands of white characters, in service to other white characters, makes it all the more frustrating."
“The Last of the Starks” should forever be remembered as one of the worst portrayals of female characters in TV history
Here are all the ways Game of Thrones failed its women this week: Why can't David Benioff and D.B. Weiss understand 50% of the human race?
On Sansa Stark: "For the millionth time, rape and abuse of women isn't just character development or a way to show a female character has matured"
The love for Daenerys has been extinguished faster than you can say "dracarys"
George R.R. Martin still has a chance to redeem the Game of Thrones ending, at least in the books
Director David Nutter talks "pouring gasoline" on Daenerys' fire
Nutter on why he's so great with Game of Thrones actors: "Sometimes, when actors reach out to their characters, they’re nowhere in sight. They need to find something inside of them. And then the characters are right there. As a director, I want them to find the character that’s already inside them, instead of trying to manufacture or manipulate or make something up. That’s not really honest or true."
Nutter explains why Jon Snow didn't pet his direwolf Ghost
How Game of Thrones botched Jon Snow's relationship with Ghost
Political science explains why Daenerys may be a terrible queen
Presenting Cersei Lannister as a Billie Eilish song
Will Arya Stark play a big role in the final two episodes?
The Mountain writes on Instagram: "So sorry. Cersei made me do it..."
Why the funniest line on Sunday's episode was "the new prince of Dorne pledges his allegiance"
Turns out that Game of Thrones' dragons are "kinda weaksauce"

Game of Thrones' errant Starbucks cup has become a metaphor for its final season flaws

Game of Thrones fans have been having a laugh celebrating the Starbucks coffee cup gaffe in Sunday's episode, but it's also allowed them to "venti" their frustrations with this final season. "As amusing as all this is, it’s also an opportunity for fans to vent their frustrations with Game of Thrones in general, using the Starbucks cup as a sort of synecdoche for their overarching problems with this season of the show thus far," says Aja Romano. As Twitter user Fred Fujiwara noted on Twitter: "I think the Starbucks cup is really a metaphor for how sloppy the plotting of this season has been. You hate to see it but it's staring you in the face." Another Twitter user, Jen D'Angelo, pointed out the irony of a Starbucks cup appearing one week after complaints that the Battle of Winterfell was too dark to see. "The fact that there was a Starbucks cup in tonight’s Game of Thrones that no producers or editors noticed throughout multiple cuts merely 1 week after the DP yelled that the show’s not too dark to see is truly *chef’s kiss*," she tweeted last night. Romano adds: "Viewers have increasingly called out the show this season for its sexist and racist treatment of various characters and what seem like the characters’ inexplicable motivations. The Starbucks cup, at least for now, may be the perfect representative of all of these complaints — ironically giving the fandom something to unite around in the series’ final weeks."

ALSO:

UPDATE: HBO responds with a tongue-in-cheek reply noting it wasn't Starbucks: “In response to inquiries from those who saw a craft services coffee cup in Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones, HBO states, ‘The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.'”
Game of Thrones art director Hauke Richter hadn't seen Sunday's episode, but said the coffee cup gaffe had been blown out of proportion: "Things can get forgotten on set"
A Starbucks spokesperson declined to say if the company has any relationship with Game of Thrones
Starbucks tweets response to cameo: "TBH we're surprised she didn't order a Dragon Drink"
Starbucks doesn't seem likely to reap a concrete business boost from its unexpected cameo
Starbucks cup inspires many questions, like: Is it actually a Starbucks cup?
Did the Starbucks cup belong to Sansa Stark?
Starbucks cup inspires Game of Thrones fan fiction
What it's like to run the Westerosi Starbucks

Game of Thrones failed its female characters in "The Last of the Starks"

"A few weeks ago on Game of Thrones, when Brienne of Tarth became a knight and Arya Stark decided to have sex for the first time, it seemed like the show committed to an idea that’s been building in recent seasons: that female characters can be defined by something other than marriage or sexual trauma, and they can be powerful outside of their familial relationships with men," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "Brienne wanted something other than a mate, Arya took charge of her own sexual destiny, and both of their desires were validated. In a show full of rape and driven by women tearing each other down to gain power, 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' suggested that women could be defined by something other than their pain. Then, in Sunday’s episode, 'The Last of the Starks,' all of that beautiful character work went straight to hell." VanArendonk adds that Sunday's episode "suggests that Game of Thrones, eight seasons in, still cannot conceive of a way for most women to exist in its world beyond being sexual partners, being mothers, or tearing one another apart. For a short period on this show, it looked as if Sansa, Cersei, and Daenerys might be the figures of strength left at the end, a trio of women who might rid themselves of the idiot men whose battles shaped the map of Westeros. Now, it looks as if they’re all just another layer of obstacles who will destroy one another so that Jon Snow can take the throne."

ALSO:

Sansa Stark's scenes were too problematic: It looks like she's morphed into the North's version of Littlefinger
There were at least seven out-of-character moments in "The Last of the Starks"
Why didn't Cersei just kill everyone?
Fans are outraged by the treatment of direwolf Ghost
Iain Glen on what Daenerys whispered to Ser Jorah Mormont: "It’s something entirely sincere and true to the moment and something that I’ll never forget"
Game of Thrones shippers were rewarded and punished with the Brienne storyline

Game of Thrones' "The Last of the Starks" tried to shove three episodes' worth of story into one episode of television

"After a season that has largely avoided the time compression problems that felled Game of Thrones season seven, 'The Last of the Starks,' the fourth episode of season eight, abruptly hit the gas and tried to shove what felt like three episodes’ worth of story into one episode of television," says Todd VanDerWerff. "It was nearly an hour and 20 minutes long — so, only about an episode-and-a-third in total — but the overall effect was mildly chaotic, with a whole bunch of things happening and very few of them having the emotional weight that Game of Thrones clearly hoped they would have. Sansa would find out information in one scene and be sworn to secrecy, then immediately betray that trust the next time she appeared onscreen. In theory, weeks passed between those moments, when Sansa truly had to agonize over the secret she now carried. In practice, it felt like about five minutes." He adds that David Nutter's direction was top-notch, but David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' writing was "a mess, making for the weakest episode of the final season so far and an inauspicious preview of the show’s remaining few hours. Then again, maybe that’s the point! The fallout from all of these events would inevitably be messy and fractious and bloody; perhaps Game of Thrones is trying to mirror that inevitability via structural storytelling choices."

ALSO:

Has Game of Thrones lost its way?: "Politicking, scheming, and backstabbing was once what this show did best, with every interaction dense with potential for surprising implications down the road," says Melissa Leon. "Now, with only two hours and some-odd minutes left in the series, character logic has begun to unravel, with egregious mistakes and head-scratching denouements being made left and right with little consequence or justification beyond the plot prescribing weird lapses in judgment."
On the back of Tyrion, Game of Thrones returned to what it does best: "Clearly, the hard fantasy elements are not where masterminds David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s hearts ultimately lie, despite the ominous warnings of Thrones’ own characters," says Alison Herman. "And as much as that priority may frustrate certain fans, it still presents an opportunity. By resolving the White Walker threat so early, the show left itself half a season to devote to the conflicts it did care about: those between humans, with their shifting loyalties, messy emotions, and other storytelling perks you just can’t get from a bunch of CGI zombies. Or, as Tyrion Lannister neatly puts it: 'We may have defeated them, but we still have us to contend with.'"
The Varys/Tyrion scene was frustrating because it’s a reminder that the series has put its remaining eggs in the dullest basket possible
Game of Thrones' plot engine was operating at maximum capacity, often to its own detriment
“The Last Of The Starks” featured some throwback poor writing of its female characters
Choppy storytelling resulted in so many aspects of "The Last of the Starks" not making sense
Game of Thrones won't stop hinting at the dark Daenerys theory
There's one problem with the "Going Mad" plotline: This new development feels unearned
Gwendoline Christie on Brienne: "There were some things I didn’t expect. If there’s a character you care about and you feel like they go through some sort of hell you feel protective toward them"
Game of Thrones’ Missandei controversy, explained
Arya and Gendry's scene featured a Season 1 callback
Twitter trends was dominated by Game of Thrones characters this morning
The "For the Thrones" music video featuring The Weeknd, SZA and Travis Scott is "so embarrassing"

05-07-2019, 03:17 AM	#1
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,472	Billions is better than Game of Thrones in studying power, hate and corruption https://www.salon.com/2019/05/05/bil...nd-corruption/ "There’s no fighting the Game of Thrones flood," says Melanie McFarland. "All we can do is float along until we all reach its final destination. Even so, it’s worth pointing out that the direction Billions has taken this season makes it a more consistently fascinating analysis of power and its dynamics than most of what’s going on in Westeros. At this point Game of Thrones revolves around guesswork (for the audience) and serving up spectacle. Meanwhile, every Sunday at 9 p.m., Billions confidently plays with power’s favorite consorts: corruption, wrath and my personal favorite, pettiness — the drug that makes people take certain slights too personally and too far." Sansa Stark's Game of Thrones celebration scene with The Hound rang so false, encapsulating all the problems in this week's episode SOURCE: VANITY FAIR "Every piece of their interaction is confusing and limited. Worse, it obfuscates each character’s growth," says Sonia Saraiya, who explains why the scene during the Battle of Winterfell victory celebration made no sense on many different levels. "It feels like a repudiation of both of their character arcs—and, as I have said again and again this season, a missed opportunity for growth and connection," she says. "This is a lot to write about one scene, I know. But it goes to illustrate two points. One: these characters, for so long, have been so beautifully drawn that this compressed, sloppy conclusion is increasingly galling. It’s shortchanged their long-running, thorny, often quite moving transformation as characters. You could analyze nearly every scene in 'The Last of the Starks' in this way, and come up just as frustrated and confused as I am here. The way that I feel about Sansa is the way that other fans feel about Tyrion, or Jaime, or Jon, or Missandei. The show’s conclusion is crushing the nuance and movement out of each character, reducing them to bite-size takeaways. To me it seems as if Sansa sat down at that table not to speak to The Hound, but to tell the audience something they already know: she’s been through a lot, and she’s strong now. The way that she did that undermines her own statement—but at this point, Game of Thrones is entirely surface-level. We cannot read more nuance into this scene, even though eight seasons of backstory are there, waiting to be brought to bear into the scene. The other point is much simpler. If you want female characters in your show—if you want them to struggle and survive in a gendered world, if you want them to be stately queens or mad ones, if you want them to ** or fight or cry or do all three at once—hire female writers. It will help." ALSO: This was Game of Thrones at its worst: "It's as if the writers, the entire crew, the showrunners got through the Battle of Winterfell and simply gave up," says Matt Miller. "This, sadly, was Game of Thrones at its worst—Episode Four is reminiscent of some of the lowest moments of Season Seven. It's nonsensical, lazy, and cringeworthy from beginning to end." Does Game of Thrones have something against people of color?: "The disposability of POCs in Game of Thrones is something that we’ve had to get used to," says Hanna Flint. "Bye Khal Drogo! Laters, Oberyn! Farewell, Dothraki horde! See you on the other side, Sand Snakes! This is a show with a high kill count, of course, but, when there are already so few black or brown characters, seeing them drop like flies at the hands of white characters, in service to other white characters, makes it all the more frustrating." “The Last of the Starks” should forever be remembered as one of the worst portrayals of female characters in TV history Here are all the ways Game of Thrones failed its women this week: Why can't David Benioff and D.B. Weiss understand 50% of the human race? On Sansa Stark: "For the millionth time, rape and abuse of women isn't just character development or a way to show a female character has matured" The love for Daenerys has been extinguished faster than you can say "dracarys" George R.R. Martin still has a chance to redeem the Game of Thrones ending, at least in the books Director David Nutter talks "pouring gasoline" on Daenerys' fire Nutter on why he's so great with Game of Thrones actors: "Sometimes, when actors reach out to their characters, they’re nowhere in sight. They need to find something inside of them. And then the characters are right there. As a director, I want them to find the character that’s already inside them, instead of trying to manufacture or manipulate or make something up. That’s not really honest or true." Nutter explains why Jon Snow didn't pet his direwolf Ghost How Game of Thrones botched Jon Snow's relationship with Ghost Political science explains why Daenerys may be a terrible queen Presenting Cersei Lannister as a Billie Eilish song Will Arya Stark play a big role in the final two episodes? The Mountain writes on Instagram: "So sorry. Cersei made me do it..." Why the funniest line on Sunday's episode was "the new prince of Dorne pledges his allegiance" Turns out that Game of Thrones' dragons are "kinda weaksauce" Game of Thrones' errant Starbucks cup has become a metaphor for its final season flaws** Game of Thrones fans have been having a laugh celebrating the Starbucks coffee cup gaffe in Sunday's episode, but it's also allowed them to "venti" their frustrations with this final season. "As amusing as all this is, it’s also an opportunity for fans to vent their frustrations with Game of Thrones in general, using the Starbucks cup as a sort of synecdoche for their overarching problems with this season of the show thus far," says Aja Romano. As Twitter user Fred Fujiwara noted on Twitter: "I think the Starbucks cup is really a metaphor for how sloppy the plotting of this season has been. You hate to see it but it's staring you in the face." Another Twitter user, Jen D'Angelo, pointed out the irony of a Starbucks cup appearing one week after complaints that the Battle of Winterfell was too dark to see. "The fact that there was a Starbucks cup in tonight’s Game of Thrones that no producers or editors noticed throughout multiple cuts merely 1 week after the DP yelled that the show’s not too dark to see is truly chef’s kiss," she tweeted last night. Romano adds: "Viewers have increasingly called out the show this season for its sexist and racist treatment of various characters and what seem like the characters’ inexplicable motivations. The Starbucks cup, at least for now, may be the perfect representative of all of these complaints — ironically giving the fandom something to unite around in the series’ final weeks." ALSO: UPDATE: HBO responds with a tongue-in-cheek reply noting it wasn't Starbucks: “In response to inquiries from those who saw a craft services coffee cup in Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones, HBO states, ‘The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.'” Game of Thrones art director Hauke Richter hadn't seen Sunday's episode, but said the coffee cup gaffe had been blown out of proportion: "Things can get forgotten on set" A Starbucks spokesperson declined to say if the company has any relationship with Game of Thrones Starbucks tweets response to cameo: "TBH we're surprised she didn't order a Dragon Drink" Starbucks doesn't seem likely to reap a concrete business boost from its unexpected cameo Starbucks cup inspires many questions, like: Is it actually a Starbucks cup? Did the Starbucks cup belong to Sansa Stark? Starbucks cup inspires Game of Thrones fan fiction What it's like to run the Westerosi Starbucks Game of Thrones failed its female characters in "The Last of the Starks" "A few weeks ago on Game of Thrones, when Brienne of Tarth became a knight and Arya Stark decided to have sex for the first time, it seemed like the show committed to an idea that’s been building in recent seasons: that female characters can be defined by something other than marriage or sexual trauma, and they can be powerful outside of their familial relationships with men," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "Brienne wanted something other than a mate, Arya took charge of her own sexual destiny, and both of their desires were validated. In a show full of rape and driven by women tearing each other down to gain power, 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' suggested that women could be defined by something other than their pain. Then, in Sunday’s episode, 'The Last of the Starks,' all of that beautiful character work went straight to hell." VanArendonk adds that Sunday's episode "suggests that Game of Thrones, eight seasons in, still cannot conceive of a way for most women to exist in its world beyond being sexual partners, being mothers, or tearing one another apart. For a short period on this show, it looked as if Sansa, Cersei, and Daenerys might be the figures of strength left at the end, a trio of women who might rid themselves of the idiot men whose battles shaped the map of Westeros. Now, it looks as if they’re all just another layer of obstacles who will destroy one another so that Jon Snow can take the throne." ALSO: Sansa Stark's scenes were too problematic: It looks like she's morphed into the North's version of Littlefinger There were at least seven out-of-character moments in "The Last of the Starks" Why didn't Cersei just kill everyone? Fans are outraged by the treatment of direwolf Ghost Iain Glen on what Daenerys whispered to Ser Jorah Mormont: "It’s something entirely sincere and true to the moment and something that I’ll never forget" Game of Thrones shippers were rewarded and punished with the Brienne storyline Game of Thrones' "The Last of the Starks" tried to shove three episodes' worth of story into one episode of television "After a season that has largely avoided the time compression problems that felled Game of Thrones season seven, 'The Last of the Starks,' the fourth episode of season eight, abruptly hit the gas and tried to shove what felt like three episodes’ worth of story into one episode of television," says Todd VanDerWerff. "It was nearly an hour and 20 minutes long — so, only about an episode-and-a-third in total — but the overall effect was mildly chaotic, with a whole bunch of things happening and very few of them having the emotional weight that Game of Thrones clearly hoped they would have. Sansa would find out information in one scene and be sworn to secrecy, then immediately betray that trust the next time she appeared onscreen. In theory, weeks passed between those moments, when Sansa truly had to agonize over the secret she now carried. In practice, it felt like about five minutes." He adds that David Nutter's direction was top-notch, but David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' writing was "a mess, making for the weakest episode of the final season so far and an inauspicious preview of the show’s remaining few hours. Then again, maybe that’s the point! The fallout from all of these events would inevitably be messy and fractious and bloody; perhaps Game of Thrones is trying to mirror that inevitability via structural storytelling choices." ALSO: Has Game of Thrones lost its way?: "Politicking, scheming, and backstabbing was once what this show did best, with every interaction dense with potential for surprising implications down the road," says Melissa Leon. "Now, with only two hours and some-odd minutes left in the series, character logic has begun to unravel, with egregious mistakes and head-scratching denouements being made left and right with little consequence or justification beyond the plot prescribing weird lapses in judgment." On the back of Tyrion, Game of Thrones returned to what it does best: "Clearly, the hard fantasy elements are not where masterminds David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s hearts ultimately lie, despite the ominous warnings of Thrones’ own characters," says Alison Herman. "And as much as that priority may frustrate certain fans, it still presents an opportunity. By resolving the White Walker threat so early, the show left itself half a season to devote to the conflicts it did care about: those between humans, with their shifting loyalties, messy emotions, and other storytelling perks you just can’t get from a bunch of CGI zombies. Or, as Tyrion Lannister neatly puts it: 'We may have defeated them, but we still have us to contend with.'" The Varys/Tyrion scene was frustrating because it’s a reminder that the series has put its remaining eggs in the dullest basket possible Game of Thrones' plot engine was operating at maximum capacity, often to its own detriment “The Last Of The Starks” featured some throwback poor writing of its female characters Choppy storytelling resulted in so many aspects of "The Last of the Starks" not making sense Game of Thrones won't stop hinting at the dark Daenerys theory There's one problem with the "Going Mad" plotline: This new development feels unearned Gwendoline Christie on Brienne: "There were some things I didn’t expect. If there’s a character you care about and you feel like they go through some sort of hell you feel protective toward them" Game of Thrones’ Missandei controversy, explained Arya and Gendry's scene featured a Season 1 callback Twitter trends was dominated by Game of Thrones characters this morning The "For the Thrones" music video featuring The Weeknd, SZA and Travis Scott is "so embarrassing"