Field of Dishonor: Game of Thrones 6.09 vs. Any Semblance of Dramatic Tension

Yes, this is the right image, and you're my favorite person if you know why before I explain it.

Wow. What a steaming pile of direwolf dung.

Let's take a quick look at our players.

Jon
Idiot. Gets told he shouldn't let Ramsay bait him. Lets Ramsay bait him. Lives anyway because let's face it he's the Chosen One.

Salsa Stork
Evil. Or idiot. Not sure which. Her decision not to tell Jon about her Secret Army of Insta-Win got most of Jon's force wiped out. The only question was whether this was deliberate or not.

Arrowmeat
Zig-zag, dumbass.

Lucifer's Priestess
Maybe not leave your sacrifice's curiously-unburnt wooden horse where some guy might conveniently stumble upon it after having equally conveniently forgotten about her all season.

Ramsay Sue
Wins until stopped by the Secret Army of Insta-Win. I guess that's supposed to be something.

And I guess we're meant to root for one or more of these people. If anyone actually thought Jon was going to die, I have a bridge to sell you.

And therein lay the problem.

Ramsay Snolton was already dead. Everyone knew it. Everything else was a formality.

Well, actually, that in and of itself was not the problem. The problem was that "everything else" failed to provide any dramatic tension whatsoever.

To illustrate what I mean, allow me to offer a counterexample.

After a traumatic incident leaves them in a condition disturbingly similar to "revenant," Our Hero embarks on a quest of revenge against an Evil Psychopath Villain who sees other people as mere toys to play with or else as punching bags to take his massive inferiority complex - possibly borne of daddy issues - out on. Adding a personal touch, Evil Psychopath Villain previously sexually assaulted the most important female character in the plotline, and has recently had someone Our Hero cares about killed.

(So far, so familiar...)

Everyone knows, however, that Our Hero totally outmatches Evil Psychopath Villain when it comes to combat (Our Hero in fact utterly annihilated a professional duelist earlier in the story), so Evil Psychopath Villain is actually afraid of, and actively tries to hide from, Our Hero. The stakes for Our Hero are of a different sort; Evil Psychopath Villain is extremely well-connected politically, and his political allies will end Our Hero's career if Our Hero succeeds in killing Evil Psychopath Villain. Our Hero doesn't care; killing Evil Psychopath Villain is something that has to be done. Our Hero's superiors, who know that Our Hero will be supremely useful in the war to come, do everything in their power (and then some) to stop Our Hero from killing Evil Psychopath Villain. The dramatic tension is therefore achieved in the form of the following two questions: 1) will Our Hero succeed in goading Evil Psychopath Villain into a fight, and 2) will Our Hero's superiors actually succeed in stopping her?

I am describing, of course, David M. Weber's fourth Honorverse novel, Field of Dishonor, the cover of which I posted at the top of the page. I've actually gushed about this before, because that image captures the end of the story so perfectly, and because it stands for something that exists in all good writing, a principle that I thought Game of Thrones stood for - that no victory can come without cost.

(I will say that one thing that bugs me about the novel is that the author - who otherwise clearly knows his stuff - keeps referring to pistols that clearly only fire one bullet with each trigger squeeze as "automatics." You would not use automatic pistols for the duels that are described in that book.)

The Army of Insta-Win does, in fact, turn up in a later Honorverse book as well, with the heroine at the head of it, but even then Weber is determined to drive home the point that war is hell: before the Army of Insta-Win arrives, most of the heroine's side is wiped out by the enemy's superior numbers, including the heroine's right-hand man for the entire series up to that point. Furthermore, the antagonists' surrender is shown from their not-unsympathetic leader's perspective, and it's hard not to feel sorry for him when he risked so much and came so close and lost it all at the last minute.

This is done well in both versions of the Battle of the Blackwater, with Tyrion taking a grievous injury before Tywin's army arrives, and Stannis - the Rightful King, not yet the child-murdering monster* of Season 5 - unwillingly being hauled off the battlefield by his own men in the show. So once upon a time the showrunners understood this little thing called CONSEQUENCES.
*No, I haven't forgotten Renly. Renly was an usurper who got what was coming to him. 

This is done well in both versions of the Battle of the Wall, where several named Night's Watchmen die, as does Jon's love interest, and Mance is sympathetic in defeat.

This time? On Our Hero's side, a giant dies. Was he the last of the giants? Was this guy supposed to be anything other than An Effect? I didn't notice. That's about it. Oh, right, Arrowmeat died. Who? Guy I haven't seen since Season 3? Guy who got about 20 seconds of screentime prior to this? Yeah. I care. Really. This is my caring face.

I have no idea if this is true or not, but it's more interesting than the episode.

They gave his body a passing mournful look while Satan's Priestess is right there in the seven-damned castle. Even one line of dialogue - "No, I can't raise him, he is not the Lord's chosen" - would have made that scene make even a lick of sense. I guess they didn't care too much. So why should I?

I gave "Hardhome" a pass because it was blatant padding that wasn't in the books, so of course Our Hero and his core band had to survive. This time, though... Well, this time it was just a pile of direwolf dung and I see no reason to pretend otherwise.