‘Game of Thrones’ Scorecard: Season 7, Episode 6, ‘Beyond the Wall’

This Game of Thrones discussion is written by someone who has read George R.R. Martin’s books (as well as the occasional fan theory on message boards), but the column will usually only discuss events that have happened on HBO’s televised version. Please respect these boundaries should you choose to participate in the comments section.

(Scoring is typically one point per killing or instance of nudity, though the reviewer reserves the right to award bonus points for style.)

Totals: A zombie bear killed a guy. Two guys? Four? Does the cold get credit for killing Thoros? Some rando got tackled into a freezing lake by zombies; another fell into a screaming pit of wights. Maybe another extra from the Wall died, I dunno. What am I, the official Game of Thrones scorekeeper? LET ME MOURN. They killed a dragon, man! That fucking asshole killed one of Dany’s dragons and brought it back as an evil zombie dragon and now the good guys have to fight the army of the dead AND an undead dragon. Fuck.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, Benjen Stark got killed, too. Re-killed? The show was never super-clear about where he fell on the living-dead spectrum. RIP FIRE MACE.

Notes: So, like, is Undead Viserion going to breathe fire or ice? Despite the potential for “friendly fire” (BAZINGA), the former seems more beneficial for the White Walkers as they take their war south, but the latter seems to fit a little better thematically. I mean, the series of books IS called A Song of Ice and Fire. We’re entering the home stretch of the plot, it’s no time to be metaphorical.

Totals: Tormund spoke about his desire for Brienne; Jon was shirtless and held Dany’s hand; I made a big ol’ wankin’ gesture.

Notes: People are gonna talk a lot of shit about the IMMENSE narrative license the writers have taken with this season generally and with “Beyond the Wall” specifically. But George R.R. Martin and the showrunners also deserve a fair amount of credit — I think that’s the right word here — for re-wiring my brain to think, “Come ON! Just let that pretty lady make out with her nephew!” All I’m sayin’ is, the fastest way to heat up a hypothermic body is with skin-to-skin contact. Look, I’ve taken survival classes, I just want to see what’s best for Jon’s health.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: We probably don’t have to say it, but incest is wrong.

Let’s go ahead and get it out there: “Beyond the Wall” had some problems, particularly the gaping holes in the logistical narrative that led to the Battle of Oh Shit Island. Was the climactic scene a technical marvel? Yes. Was it exciting? Absolutely. Was it built on a foundation of bullshit to reach those heights? Yep, that too.

Just as “Battle of the Bastards” had an obvious, pre-ordained rescue from the Knights of the Vale, so too was Dany’s arrival via dragon telegraphed as soon as the Snow Patrol got marooned — if not earlier. In both episodes, the director deserves credit for building a claustrophobic tension that put me on edge despite the transparency of the next step, but neither battle stands up well to scrutiny.

These are the episode’s biggest offenses:

If you’ve been reading the Scorecard this season, you know that I’ve mostly ignored this season’s compression of geography and logistics to serve the narrative, largely because the show was never specific about how much time was passing. But when you have Admiral Peary’s Snowicide Squad stranded on an island without food or shelter in Arctic conditions, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room in the timeline.

It’s frustrating, too, to watch shot after shot of epic glacier porn, establishing the massive scale of our adventurers’ icy trek, only for Gendry to cover it in a hasty marathon.

Anyway, if you want to dive deeper into the nerdy specifics of this misstep, please see Uproxx’s detailed breakdown of how far it is to Dragonstone, how fast ravens fly, and how thick ice needs to be for a human to walk on it. I’m good leaving it with this:

(SB Nation: We’ve got all the SR-71 Blackbird content in sports media.)

You know what’s gotta be cool about writing a fantasy series? At a certain point in your story, consumers will ask, “Wait, how did this happen?” and you can just respond, “Magic!” Because fuck those nerds, what did they expect?

Which is to say: If the Night King just raised his hands and lifted Viserion from the lake with the powers of his ancient winter-magic or whatever, I would’ve just said, “OK, he does that too I guess.” (Then I would screencap the image and caption it THAT’S TELEKINESIS, KYLE!)

But drag the dragon out of the lake with chains, and we’ve got problems. How do the chains not tear off a wing or the dragon’s head? And more to the point, where does an army of the dead find FOUR SEPARATE HEAVY-DUTY CHAINS in unsettled wilderness? “Hey guys, don’t forget the MILE of chains that belong on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. You never know when they’ll come in handy!”

Oh no! The water that swallowed large swaths of your enemy is starting to freeze! They’ll be able to walk across it and attack you again if you don’t break it! Why, IF ONLY you had, say, an endlessly renewable source of fire, or a giant hammer and several strong men to wield it. ALAS.

(Hey, while we’re going down this road: If the wights don’t need need air to survive, why wouldn’t they be able to walk across the bottom of the lake to Oh Shit Island? The island must have one of those precipitously sharp drop-offs that Westeros is known for.)

Listen, Night King. You connected on the deep throw, so no one’s going to second guess your results. But when it’s third-and-short, just move the chains. Take what the defense gives you. I’m not encouraging you to be Alex Smith, but I don’t need a Rex Grossman out there, either.

Forget the battle. Put aside your sadness about Viserion, or your anger towards the writer who pitched supersonic ravens. Just for a moment, let’s enjoy the fleeting golden light of male bonding:

*Show canon, not books. That means Longclaw (Jon), Oathkeeper (Brienne), Widow’s Wail (Jaime), Heartsbane (Sam), and the catspaw dagger (Arya).

Aside from the occasional fan theory or Wiki check to look up some Westerosi history, I try not to read much about Game of Thrones because (a) I don’t want what I write here to be influenced too much by outside sources, and (b) I especially don’t like slipping into the ouroboros of meta-commentary. But it’s been impossible to ignore the legion of complaints from the Twittersphere about the show’s penchant for “fan service.”

I’m not plugged into the entertainment industry, so I’m relatively detached from the landscape of ComicCon and the hassle of covering film franchises that prioritize winking at fans over good storytelling. But to me, shouting “Fan service!” every time a beloved character ISN’T shockingly killed off feels reductive.

For five seasons, Game of Thrones lived a dual existence: The book readers watched in delight but knew what came next, while the show watchers were shocked by Ned’s execution, the Red Wedding, and other unexpected turns. The series flung characters across the globe, and now, as the scope shrinks to accommodate a climax, the show is in uncharted territory, and the only stars Weiss and Benioff have to steer by are George R.R. Martin’s gravy-stained notes.

There are definitely problems with the show, but I’m not sure “fan service” is the cause or even the result. Lopping off 30 percent of a show’s season — from what I understand, this is largely tied to the spiraling costs and growing demand for CGI dragons — has deleterious effects across the board: characterization feels rushed, timelines get compressed, and narrative chasms open up.

(I felt a spike of excitement last night when I thought that Jon Snow had drowned and believed — incorrectly — that he was going to be turned into a White Walker. I’m not exactly disappointed he survived, but I definitely didn’t like the methods they used to get there. Still, I didn’t expect a dragon to die.)

And without the last two books to produce a conclusion, fans have filled the uncertainty with their own theories about the show’s direction. Jon Snow is Azor Ahai. No, Jaime is Azor Ahai. Bran is the Night King. There is a wildly successful YouTube channel that is nothing but eight- and 10-minute videos discussing mysteries and fan theories. These hypotheses bleed into the media writing about the show, and their predictive ability lessens the potential impact of any twists.

So please, go ahead and bust on the broadband ravens, but don’t dismiss the show for improvising some fun with Tormund and Brienne. Sometimes actors overdeliver in a small role, or characters are fun to write, and they get a little more play as a result. That is sometimes what happens on TV shows. The good ones are entertaining, and we’ve been watching this one for seven years.

Hey, what’s up? No, let me finish that sentence: What’s up your ass? Even after everything you’ve been through and all your training at the House of Black and White, are Sansa’s childhood transgressions against you still that terrible? Oh, and speaking of the Faceless Men, remember when you had all that training that was supposed to make you perceptive to deception? Is Littlefinger REALLY that good?

And why did you hand your Valyrian steel dagger to Sansa? Was that supposed to intimidate her? Why did you leave it unattended in your room when you carry it everywhere else in Winterfell? And if Sansa was snooping in your room when you entered it, why did YOU leave after your conversation with her? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for HER to leave your room?

Anyway, just some stuff I’ve been thinking about. Looking forward to you wearing Sansa’s face when you kill Littlefinger in the season finale.

Cersei and her Womb of Doom; GoldenHand 007; Frostfangs Forge & Chain Factory, the North’s No. 1 source of heavy-duty chains; Sam & Gilly; Team Greyjoy; and oh yeah BRAN FOR SOME REASON. FEEL LIKE DOING ANYTHING, BRAN? NO? JUST GONNA HANG OUT AND BINGE-WATCH HISTORY WHILE YOUR EVIL TIME-LOOP FUTURE/PAST SELF DESTROYS THE WORLD? COOL.