I rarely hear criticisms itt tempered with actual real life constraints. Though to be fair a viewer shouldn't necessarily have to consider those when levying criticism.
Still though, It all comes down to D&D are full blown hacks, not:
- Budget (more so in earlier seasons than now, but still)
- Actors schedules, health, pay scale
- Filming across multiple continents
- Filming time constraints
- Post time constraints
- Running time constraints
- Basic human burn-out
Yes every show has these challenges, but never before on this scale.
You rarely see people in the industry shit on GOT, because having perspective and an understanding as to what it takes to craft this behemoth really does wonders to curb petulance.
Now that being said I'm not defending this past episode - plenty of moments could have been more deftly handled despite the above - But I'm really exhausted by no perspective negativity
I do tend to take that into consideration when I criticize.
Like, Jaimie was my favorite character in the series. Truly, he was the character that made me feel this show was special, and why I started to read the books. And it's a reflection of their shitty writing for him that I can no longer call him my favorite character, I don't really even have one anymore.
He should have broken from Cersei a long time ago. BUT. I do realize that filming for a TV show is different than writing a book, and for the TV shows needs, they had to keep Jaimie in King's Landing somehow. Otherwise Cersei would be the only top billed star in that region, and would have no other character the audience cared about to interact with post season 6. No more Littlefinger, Olenna, Margaery, Tyrion, Tywin, Joffrey. It's just Cersei. And they needed someone to be her counterpart on screen after she became queen, and it couldn't just be Qyburn and the Mountain.
They could have tried to build Kevan up more and not have him killed off, or introduce more lords at court, or have Cersei interacting with the smallfolk but that would involve more budget, and beyond that, the task of trying to make fans care about characters that don't matter during the final stretch of episodes.
Jaimie is one of their top paid actors, so it was in their best interest to manufacture a way for him to stay in the King's Landing scenes for as long as possible to keep Cersei paired with another actor to produce scenes with. And for them to justify having King's Landing scenes at all, which I'm sure cost a lot to produce, rent, etc.
It doesn't take away my criticism, as I still hate how Jaimie has treaded water as a character (and don't get me started on the rape scene), but conceptually I understand why they made the decision to stray from the books and delay his redemption/break from Cersei.
