Game of Thrones begins....

[Valmy]

And you could have even made that work as well.

The North wants indepenence, and given the sacrifices they uniquely made to stop to the zombies, they get it. But they want true independence, and they are concerned that any dual monarchy would inevitable lead to them being subsumed back into a practical subservience, and some of the notable nobles resist.

So the compromise is that they agree to the political divide, but only as long as the Westerosi King is separate from the Northern monarch, hence Bran gives up all claim to the North in favor of a Start that can actually provide an heir, Sansa.

But of course that would require them to take valuable time away from the dragon burning up children, so fuck it, lets just go with the 3 minutes speechifying instead.

When you are an immortal spirit being you don't need to provide an heir

[The Brain]

Why didn't Grey Worm kill Jon immediately after the murder of Daenerys? He seemed pretty upset generally even before the murder and no one could have blamed him. Did I miss something or was it just another piece of lazy writing?

Grey Worm wasn't in the room when Jon assassinated Dani.  I'm not sure why; none of her guards were.

Unless Drogon was actually taking Dani's body to Grey Worm, GW wouldn't even know she was dead, let alone that Jon had killed her.

[Berkut]

Remember back in the Battle of the Bastards when I said that the writers had all pretty much given up trying to tell the GoT story, and had pretty much just started churning out vanilla Hollywood scripts with gorgeous production values?

Well....yeah.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Why didn't Grey Worm kill Jon immediately after the murder of Daenerys? He seemed pretty upset generally even before the murder and no one could have blamed him. Did I miss something or was it just another piece of lazy writing?

Grey Worm wasn't in the room when Jon assassinated Dani.  I'm not sure why; none of her guards were.

Unless Drogon was actually taking Dani's body to Grey Worm, GW wouldn't even know she was dead, let alone that Jon had killed her.

Right, I'd love to actually know what happened there. Jon is pretty dumb, did he just run to Grey Worm and admit he had killed Dany? Because absent doing that, I don't know how the Unsullied or Dothraki would even know Dany was dead, at least not until after Jon easily made his escape from their camp by walking out unmolested, since there was literally no body or human witness it'd be easy to presume she was off flying Drogon--something she did regularly.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the one true black mark against Benioff & Weiss is that they could've easily done better and just chose not too, likely because they had grown tired of the property and wanted to move on to other projects. The key evidence is HBO wanted 7/8 to be 10 episode seasons, and B&W only agreed to do 7 & 6, that's 7+ hours of screen time where they could've at least tried to move more rationally to Martin's outlined ending. They could've had a whole arc where Dany starts seeing "visions" and getting increasingly paranoid. They could've had an actual traditional battle maybe between the Dany vs Cersei forces, one where something happens that pushes Dany over the edge and causes her to take an even darker turn. Then they could portray the King's Landing siege a bit longer, with even more growing frustration/paranoid for Dany and her finally lashing out and just burning up the city with Drogon. Meanwhile they could've also used more time building Bran up, showcasing his magical abilities, even making those abilities part of how the Night King is defeated. I'm no writer so I'm short on specifics, but even a half-assed effort would what actually happened, which was almost no logical buildup to the ending events and they just try to paper it over with Varys saying "when a Targaryen is born a coin is flipped" and Tyrion saying "clearly Bran the Broken should be King because reasons", and then having everyone go along with it.

[HVC]

Jon is noble to a fault. A dumb, dump fault. he's not a wolf, he's a labradoodle. Of course he told them.

[FunkMonk]

My wife, who's never seen the show or read the books, is suddenly interested in watching GoT now, after all the fanfare and outrage at its end, so we're watching it from the very beginning.

Watching through Episode 4 of Season 1 and it's ridiculous how good the writing is compared to Season 7 or 8. It's like an entirely different show 

[The Minsky Moment]

Bran as king makes sort of sense; the entire realm is exhausted and devastated from war and all the ambitious lords are dead.  The North gets its kingdom.  The Vale lords are portrayed as tending to isolationism and lacking broader ambition and are also pro-Stark.  Neither Edmure nor Gendry are likely to make trouble or oppose a Stark king. Bronn has no connections or base of support beyond what he has been given by Tyrion on sufferance and appears to be content with what he has. Tyrion presumably controls the Lannister lands.  The Ironborn are mostly wiped out at this point. Dorne would be expected to seek independence but the writers long ago gave up on any real treatment of Dornish politics, probably for the best.  Bran threatens no one and is an ideal figurehead.

I guess that all that could be explained better but simply showing the motley crew on that stage delivers the point.

[Habbaku]

Bran as king makes sort of sense; the entire realm is exhausted and devastated from war and all the ambitious lords are dead.

Not Lord Edmure! He shot his shot and was let down by his own niece. 

[HVC]

Bran as king makes sort of sense; the entire realm is exhausted and devastated from war and all the ambitious lords are dead.

Not Lord Edmure! He shot his shot and was let down by his own niece. 

That's the second shot he missed on the show.

[grumbler]

Remember back in the Battle of the Bastards when I said that the writers had all pretty much given up trying to tell the GoT story, and had pretty much just started churning out vanilla Hollywood scripts with gorgeous production values?

Well....yeah.

I was hoping that you were wrong.  I hoped in vain. 

[grumbler]

...The key evidence is HBO wanted 7/8 to be 10 episode seasons, and B&W only agreed to do 7 & 6,...

I agree with the basic thrust of your argument, but think that this "evidence" has become something that is believed because it is believed.  As far as I know, the "ten episode" bit (and the "ten seasons' it all came from the HBO production manager, who said after the truncation of the seasons was announcing something like "I think I could have gotten them ten episodes a season and even a ninth and tenth seasons."  That's not the same as "HBO wanted..."  There was no money guarantee and keeping the cast together for more shooting would be expensive.

I think that HBO would have been better-served by having D&D hand over the show after season 6, so they could pursue the Star wars TV show project.  They'd have still gotten some residuals as the adapter for TV, but wouldn't be so time-constrained.  Somebody new could work on wrapping things up in the final 20 or so episodes.

[celedhring]

I haven't followed the behind-the-scenes goings that closely, but I seem to recall one of the reasons given for the shorter seasons was to be able to have a higher budget per episode. Which imho has been counterproductive (too low story/spectacle ratio), but seems a rather believable reason.

[Razgovory]

It looked to me as the choice of Bran was designed to allow the government to be ruled by the Small Council.  Country really needs a Parliament.

[Barrister]

I do wonder how Brann as King is exactly going to work.

On the one hand, he has no allies (the North is now free), no natural source of power, and he's not exactly a warm and fuzzy type.

But on the other hand he can see through time and space.  Which sounds like it would be pretty handy.