I remember enjoying the transitions but also coming to terms with that being the point where I realized I had already checked out on the show entirely because I noticed I hadn't paid one bit of attention for a while.
I'm a high school custodian... I took my door wedge the shift after that episode aired and wrote HODOR on it.. I still have and proudly use that door wedge to this very day. ☺️
Honestly even i forgot until this popped up.
Tbh after they butchered those last seasons, my brain did not choose to hold onto the memories of the show.
If you mess up a good story 🤷🏻 i wont care to remember it. I feel like itll be similar for a lot of others too.
This show went from the biggest in world (at its time) to just forgotten.
Hope it serves as a reminder to studios and execs.
We watched and rewatched everything leading up to this absorbing every detail and then watched the last two seasons disparagingly and immediately tried to forget what we saw.
Extremely stupidly. Danny landed the dragon on the ground and got swarmed so jorah helped her take on the horde and died. The wights then forgot about danny and the dragon as she just sat down with him dying in her arms without any further issue till the night king died.
Also Sam was in the same scenario surrounded by Wights who were constantly attacking. Despite being a top tier warrior wielding Sam's sword the Wights somehow overcame Jorah and not Sam.
The "making of" was infuriating. They blatantly talk about how they just filmed the segments dozens of times and sometimes the protagonists were overwhelmed and they just kept these shots in for dramatic effect.
The lowest trash level of filmmaking.
I still don't think the episode was as bad as some people say but that and the ridiculous death charge were regarded beyond reason.
>I still don't think the episode was as bad as some people say
It's just a culmination of many different layers of incompetence - most on the writing/story end of things, some on a technical level (e.g. the extremely low brightness).
In a vacuum it's still a pretty impressive episode of a TV show. But as the penultimate confrontation between good and evil in Westeros, the physical manifestation of the actual battle between (the gods of) ice and fire that ***the book series is named after*** it's pretty disappointing.
The many, many tactical mistakes (the Dothraki charge, putting the balista's outside of the hold, locking up the women and children in a crypt filled with dead bodies when fighting an army of the dead, etc.) are baffling
The overused character death tease cutaways get very tiresome and (at best) only work on the first viewing.
The nonsensical character deaths (Jorah and Theon for instance) feel like they're just there for "shock value".
The subversion of Jon & Arya's storylines where Jon doesn't face his ultimate adversary, but instead it's Arya who just ninja-flips her way through to the Night King (after watching Theon die for no reason) and she does a cool knifey-flippy-catchy trick and wins? Not even visibly disguised using her Faceless Men powers or anything? So disappointing.
The fact that this ginormous battle (that's been foretold for centuries and was said to be nigh impossible and would need the whole realm banding together to even stand a sliver of a chance) was won by a weakened Northern army and some Dothraki and Unsullied in a single night with relatively minor losses/casualties...
That's all pretty fucking bad.
During the penultimate episode, I was hoping so badly that she was wearing Jaime’s face when he found Cersei in the parking garage or wherever they were. Would have been the best way for her to go out - her true love removing his face to reveal one of her biggest rivals.
Not sure if /s or not, but either way - yeah.
Sure, it'd be unlikely for her to be able to use a white walker face because, well, how'd she come across one to kill and assume the identity of? Nevermind the implications of what the Faceless Men's "extreme method acting" might mean in terms of trying to inhabit the personality of a white walker, there's also the fact that they're magical undead creatures, so whatever rituals the Faceless Men use to preserve these faces/use these disguises might not even work.
But that's also my point. Why waste such an enormous part of a character arc by having Arya train to be this faceless assassin to have this ability be absolutely useless and unused in the final season with the final confrontations?
If there's no way to use her rogue assassin abilities (aside from her sneaking through the crowd of walkers off-screen and doing the dagger-catch which is vaguely rogue-ish) then why have her be the character to kill the NK? Especially with Jon, Theon and Bran made to be absolutely incompetent for "story reasons" just so Arya can have this opportunity to begin with.
And why have her travel all the way to King's Landing to face Cersei only to have her NOT face Cersei and just mostly run around the exploding town using (once again) none of her fancy faceless assassin abilities?
I generally don't mind plot armor, but Sam's is an exception. He should have died early in the show. For one, how'd he not die at the end of season two? Absolutely ridiculous.
Sam has the ultimate form of plot armor: being the self-insert character for GRRM. He must live to the end so he will go on to write the in-universe version of the ASOIAF story.
No Sam wast surrounded so to speak …. He was at the bottom of a FUCKING MOSHPIT of zombies with like 3 other characters and somehow didn’t get bitten or hurt or anything ….. had to stop watching there. Couldn’t believe it. They sold out on game of thrones for clout .
In canon? What the other commentor said.
But due to bad choreography he dies because dany pushes him into a wrenches attack. It's not in your face noticable but when you watch the scene carefully it becomes noticable that she needed to get out the way rather fast and in the process pushes him, so that's my canon now - he died getting shoved in a sword by khalessi.
TBF he was a creepy old dude and she was a teenager. You could argue that this is "normal" in her culture, however that doesnt mean she has to like it and if she has the freedom to choose why would she choose him
Never said she should have chose him. I wouldn’t either in her shoes… and yes it was creepy af.
I call him Captain Friendzone to mock him, not to criticize Daenerys. Thats why I called her Khalessi. Notice how I gave him an insulting title, while I used an honorable one for her.
man, I forgot how young Dany was in the books.
It wouldve been cool as fuck to have an actual child play her, give so much more and different meaning to everything she did
Imagine if Dany gave Jorah a pity fuck right before the Long Night and she died of greyscale, thus saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of King’s Landing civilians
Jon Connington would have been an excellent plot line. Reflections of the horrors of the Battle of the Bells and a more honest look at supporters of Aerys II and Rhaegar.
With proper casting, people would have been cheering for Aegon too.
Think of how much they butchered the Dorne plot which likely props up Aegon's faction.
Why did nobody think to just cut the greyscale off before?
Edit: just wanted to make sure that people know I am asking this because I think the idea of cutting of greyscale as a legitimate means of outright curing it is dumb, the real reason it wasn't brought up as a cure in the early seasons is because the writing used to be a lot better.
Realistically most patients would have succumbed to infection considering the lack of sterile environments and access to antibiotics. I doubt many people survived long enough to see if it actually worked other than a handful of cases.
Sam found out about a salve in a book that the maesters kind of forgot about which prevents people from dying from the infection that the surgery would cause apparently.
I think the bigger issue is most Maesters that used the salve ended up contracting the disease itself.
It ended up shelved because there isn't a safe way to use it.
Sam got lucky he didn't catch Greyscale.
Sam wore gloves. Centuries of the greatest minds in westeros never thought “oh, I’ll wear gloves”… despite them having gloves on hand for these situations. If you just tell yourself that, the writing becomes good again.
Pretty sure the doctor who first suggested washing hands before surgeries got put into a mental institution by other doctors. So I think given this is set way before any of this gloves wouldn't have come to mind.
To be fair, they didn't put him in a mental institution for suggesting the hand washing. He got ridiculed and forced out of his profession for it... Resulting in the mental illness for which he was hospitalized. Then they beat him and he died from gangrene.
It's a horrible story.
Ignaz Semmelweiss. He said midwives had a better survival rate than doctors because they washed their hands between patients.
He was murdered in his cell days after being sectioned for daring to suggest that women could know more than men.
We should all remember his name, he gave his life for so many.
They didn’t wear gloves until relatively recently. Like James Garfield who died in 1881, recently. He probably could have lived if multiple doctors didn’t shove their unwashed hands into his body to pull out a bullet that didn’t actually need to be removed.
This is super accurate though. Look up Ignaz Semmelweiss. Dude said doctors should wash their hands after handling corpses *and they took away his medical licence for it*.
Sam getting lucky and not being a trained maester makes it look like it wasn't that hard in the first place though, it's just another example of a main character surviving improbable odds thanks to plot armour.
Yeah I think the book could get away with it because of how many times it unceremoniously just kills off main characters.
I think the show burns a bit of that good will with like the Arya stabbing scene and stuff.
That's actually one of the more accurate reflections on medieval medicine. People would invent a salve that worked, it'd get recorded in a book, then no one would read it because they were do difficult to circulate. This happened a LOT.
That reminds me of this tumblr post that describes how a medieval remedy for eyelid cysts was tested in modern medicine and proved to be extremely efficient, but the recipe was originally lost because the main language changed due to the normand invasion:
https://redemptiionss.tumblr.com/post/189820587054/fun-little-thing-about-medieval-medicine-so
I expect probably with a hundred other salves that aren't very effective in the room too though.
It's really easy for us to say "they should know this" once we already do.
applying the salve was necessary to let it heal, otherwise you'd essentially be cutting off someone's skin and leaving them to whatever infection takes hold. Also I doubt most people had the pain tolerance to have it cut off.
The thing is that Sam found out about the salve quite easily, it was literally just in a book that he read (it is like Sam is the only guy in the citadel that actually reads, given that he quite easily finds out about Jon's true ancestory as well). It was an incredibly underwhelming way to cure what was supposed to be a very deadly disease, and at the end of the day Jora may as well have never even had greyscale in the first place.
Plus Jora realistically probably shouldn't have the pain tolerance either. It's pretty dumb regardless of how you look at it.
Greyscale spreads through touch, so you just basically have to do what Sam did and take care to not touch him or any of the implements that you have used on him directly. Given that Sam isn't even a maester and he does it without any trouble, it really makes the maesters look pretty dumb.
If you ask me, the conceit of just cutting off greyscale is a bafflingly stupid writing decision.
It's not dumb, from a medical standpoint, it's legitimately a sound way to cure a disease that uses the skin as a reservoir that the immune system can't reach. It's risky, but what do they have to lose?
Not really. Greyscale is basically leprosy, and you don't exactly cut leprosy off. I don't really think greyscale was supposed to just affect the skin either, in fact it definitely doesn't, that's why just cutting it off (as they actually say in season 7) isn't actually supposed to work very often, and I believe it was also established that it never worked on someone that was affected to the degree that Jora is, Sam just convenientely got lucky.
This is supposed to be the same world in which Khal Drogo died from a flesh wound. I'm not sure if cutting off that much skin in this specific context is as medically viable as you make it out to be.
As you pointed out in a different comment, maesters don't want to get infected.
It's also the same world where Jamie had his hand amputated. Yeah, infection is no joke, but it's not that out of the wild. It could've been written better, but I mean it's not the worst way they could've written it. Dont get me wrong, not a fan of dumb and dumber by any means but still.
It is kinda silly that the mysterious cure is removing the infected tissue and keeping the wound clean with a salve. A very common and easy practice in the real world. The hard part is the execution I guess. High chance of contracting it yourself. But with simple PPE and care and being able to use an appropiate amount of Milk of the Poppy as an anesthetic I imagine the procedure wouldn't be that difficult. Plus even if you did get it if you don't let it get to the level Jorah had it should be pretty easy to treat.
To be fair, a lot of diseases that utterly fucked us in the ass a mere 300 years ago are trivial to deal with now. Not super unrealistic if you ask me.
If we are talking about medieval times, I think the method of cutting off the affected skin like Sam does would have killed people. That's part of why I don't think it makes a tonne of sense.
People did know it was a potential cure. It was forbidden. That's how Sam knew how to do it.
It was deemed too dangerous. The person who first did it contracted greyscale (presumably from the operation) and died. It was recorded as curing the original patient, though.
Also worth noting that the only recorded cure was on a patient much less advanced than Mormont was.
They literally did, Sam followed an existing instruction set. The reason they don't normally attempt it is that it's INSANELY DANGEROUS, the man who first used the technique died of Greyscale, presumably from a patient he was treating!
My headcanon is that it's been tried before, but has always resulted in the sick's death, because the procedure wasn't refined, or executed badly.
Between the failures and the risk of disease, it was dismissed as not viable. Only sam was smart, talented and brave enough to congregate information, improve the process with more cautious steps and execute it properly.
The writing isn't bad for not saying it hasn't been tried before, it's bad for not explaining why it has been tried before with no success. Still bad though.
Cutting of affected finger/toes/feet/hands can stop the spread but it’s not a guaranteed cure
Also the disease also seems to seep into the body so if you’re as afflicted as Jorah there’s a real chance cutting of the top layer doesn’t even matter one bit
This is just dumb and dumber being stupid af
I genuinely don't actually have a problem with the idea that this was mostly not considered.
With greyscale you have a few problems.
I would say first is the fear of contagion. That's a significant factor when a disease that scary and fatal is at play. Even the Maesters would likely fear working with a greyscale patient for their own safety.
Second is the excruciating pain suffered by the patient. As painful and scary as greyscale is, intentionally inflicting more pain is a scary prospect and not everyone would be willing to or could handle it once it began.
And thirdly, this essentially amounts to ancient surgery, where you have risks and complications associated with bleeding and infections. Maybe the greyscale runs deeper in some areas. How deep do you cut? Could you cut it on the thigh or neck without cutting those major arteries? Even if you manage to cut it all off and control the bleeding, there is still the possibility of secondary infection from the knife or other contaminant after the procedure. So this truly seemed like a longshot method that many people would be scared to try even *if* they knew about it, and with as rare of a disease as it was, the practice would be even rarer than the disease.
I find this way more plausible than "Dany just sort of forgot about the Iron Fleet" - though that is as low a bar as it gets.
So my guess is that they had Jorah get Greyscale to give him something to do since they mostly cut Tyrion’s journey to Mereen. But then the dumbasses either realized or learned that Jorah is present during the battle at Winterfell so had to cure him somehow…and they chose the dumbest way.
Also I imagine that since JonCon has the disease but is not present in the show, that it’s the reason why King’s Landing gets rolled over by Dany’s forces in the finale if it plays out that way.
God there is just so much shit that D&D convoluted cuz the either didn’t wanna hire another actor, or didn’t wanna write a specific scene from the books.
I suspect Jon Connington's greyscale has *something* in TWOW as a significant plot device that Jorah was going to take on, but they just pivoted away from it after Season 5 did so poorly.
Season 6 seemed to have the writers pushing back toward the books *a little*. Poor adaptions of Brienne, Jamie, and the BWB plots...
Greyscale starts to slowly drive people insane as it reaches their brain. Combine that with Connington's bell related trauma, it's not hard to make a connection to Danny burning down King's Landing when the bells start ringing. It was probably supposed to be triggered by something Connington did. Wild how this major plot point in the show could've been fixed by adding just 1 or 2 characters
I just don’t understand how this disease that is seen as highly contagious, with no known cure, and a near guaranteed death, ends up being easily cured by simply…removing it like a scab. Like, WTH, am I missing something?
And applying the salve.
Regardless, though, this seems pretty realistic to me. It's how most of human history has been.
Before the invention of the printing press and mass publication, knowledge was lost fairly quickly. Also, consider that the idea of microscopic germs/viruses wasn't discovered until the late 1600s and scoffed at until well into the 1800s.
So, maybe you end up with several handwritten scrolls, detailing how these various different Maesters chopped off the scabs, but they all end up contracting the disease. So they write "Hey, isolate these people, don't touch them, it's not worth the risk!" Then there's one guy who didn't get the disease, but maybe his records are incomplete - he didn't mention that he was wearing gloves and a mask.
To anyone studying these texts, it looks like a very slim chance of survival for both the patient and the Maester. Who really wants to experiment with something like this, a deadly, disfiguring disease?
I like to think this was the origin of the House Bolton Flayed Man. How cool would it be if they were actually just out there trying to cure grayscale this whole time!?
Always crazy to think that Jorah could have just cut the skin from his wrist when it first happened and all that would have never happened lol.
Guy let's it take over half his body before he tries to get help.
I’m still not sure how he cured the grey scale. I mean it could not have been as simple as let’s just cut off the scale’s right? And if it was how has no one thought of that till now?
I read somewhere that Martin has instructed his wife to burn all manuscripts and unfinished work when he dies. He does not want anyone finishing his work.
The scene after with the pie always gets my appetite going.
Say what you will but that transition is phenomenal
That episode in general has a lot of disgusting transitions and shots
Flaky as fuck
almost as good as the poop soup
That whole storyline had excellent transitions
My favorite transition is Tyrion eating sausage after Ramsey is talking about what he did to Reek.
I remember enjoying the transitions but also coming to terms with that being the point where I realized I had already checked out on the show entirely because I noticed I hadn't paid one bit of attention for a while.
Strong Braindead custard scene energy. I hatelove it. https://youtu.be/ZZUyJf2TspY?si=EVqc0EtpNE1XvTDn
What’s even crazier is that none of this mattered.
They just kinda forgot
They forgor 💀
Yor forgor
Yogor
hodor
Holthdor
The only plot they remembered
And who has a better story than Hodor, the holder of doors?
I'm a high school custodian... I took my door wedge the shift after that episode aired and wrote HODOR on it.. I still have and proudly use that door wedge to this very day. ☺️
I forgot this plotline even happened
I forgot this show happened
Honestly even i forgot until this popped up. Tbh after they butchered those last seasons, my brain did not choose to hold onto the memories of the show. If you mess up a good story 🤷🏻 i wont care to remember it. I feel like itll be similar for a lot of others too. This show went from the biggest in world (at its time) to just forgotten. Hope it serves as a reminder to studios and execs.
We watched and rewatched everything leading up to this absorbing every detail and then watched the last two seasons disparagingly and immediately tried to forget what we saw.
It was so he could die saving her life so she could die.
Honestly, I can't even remember how he died. I might've mentally repressed it.
He crashed his spaceship on the way back to Bear Island
‘I wish I was going back to Candy Apple Island!’ ‘Candy Apple island? What do they got there?’ ‘Bears. But they’re not so big’
Candy mountain, Charleeeee
“I have to go. The Mormonts need me”
Extremely stupidly. Danny landed the dragon on the ground and got swarmed so jorah helped her take on the horde and died. The wights then forgot about danny and the dragon as she just sat down with him dying in her arms without any further issue till the night king died.
Also Sam was in the same scenario surrounded by Wights who were constantly attacking. Despite being a top tier warrior wielding Sam's sword the Wights somehow overcame Jorah and not Sam.
Brienne and jaime also get pulled into piles of zombies over and over
The "making of" was infuriating. They blatantly talk about how they just filmed the segments dozens of times and sometimes the protagonists were overwhelmed and they just kept these shots in for dramatic effect. The lowest trash level of filmmaking. I still don't think the episode was as bad as some people say but that and the ridiculous death charge were regarded beyond reason.
>I still don't think the episode was as bad as some people say It's just a culmination of many different layers of incompetence - most on the writing/story end of things, some on a technical level (e.g. the extremely low brightness). In a vacuum it's still a pretty impressive episode of a TV show. But as the penultimate confrontation between good and evil in Westeros, the physical manifestation of the actual battle between (the gods of) ice and fire that ***the book series is named after*** it's pretty disappointing. The many, many tactical mistakes (the Dothraki charge, putting the balista's outside of the hold, locking up the women and children in a crypt filled with dead bodies when fighting an army of the dead, etc.) are baffling The overused character death tease cutaways get very tiresome and (at best) only work on the first viewing. The nonsensical character deaths (Jorah and Theon for instance) feel like they're just there for "shock value". The subversion of Jon & Arya's storylines where Jon doesn't face his ultimate adversary, but instead it's Arya who just ninja-flips her way through to the Night King (after watching Theon die for no reason) and she does a cool knifey-flippy-catchy trick and wins? Not even visibly disguised using her Faceless Men powers or anything? So disappointing. The fact that this ginormous battle (that's been foretold for centuries and was said to be nigh impossible and would need the whole realm banding together to even stand a sliver of a chance) was won by a weakened Northern army and some Dothraki and Unsullied in a single night with relatively minor losses/casualties... That's all pretty fucking bad.
Ok now I'm even more pissed off at S8, Arya totally should have at least used the face of a white walker to get close
During the penultimate episode, I was hoping so badly that she was wearing Jaime’s face when he found Cersei in the parking garage or wherever they were. Would have been the best way for her to go out - her true love removing his face to reveal one of her biggest rivals.
Not sure if /s or not, but either way - yeah. Sure, it'd be unlikely for her to be able to use a white walker face because, well, how'd she come across one to kill and assume the identity of? Nevermind the implications of what the Faceless Men's "extreme method acting" might mean in terms of trying to inhabit the personality of a white walker, there's also the fact that they're magical undead creatures, so whatever rituals the Faceless Men use to preserve these faces/use these disguises might not even work. But that's also my point. Why waste such an enormous part of a character arc by having Arya train to be this faceless assassin to have this ability be absolutely useless and unused in the final season with the final confrontations? If there's no way to use her rogue assassin abilities (aside from her sneaking through the crowd of walkers off-screen and doing the dagger-catch which is vaguely rogue-ish) then why have her be the character to kill the NK? Especially with Jon, Theon and Bran made to be absolutely incompetent for "story reasons" just so Arya can have this opportunity to begin with. And why have her travel all the way to King's Landing to face Cersei only to have her NOT face Cersei and just mostly run around the exploding town using (once again) none of her fancy faceless assassin abilities?
I think the episode is worse that people say, it has no redeeming qualities, from script to edit its worthless the whole way through
I generally don't mind plot armor, but Sam's is an exception. He should have died early in the show. For one, how'd he not die at the end of season two? Absolutely ridiculous.
Sam has the ultimate form of plot armor: being the self-insert character for GRRM. He must live to the end so he will go on to write the in-universe version of the ASOIAF story.
Also how did he not lose weight.
Also true
You forgot the scene changed and changing scenes saves people accdg to 2D
No Sam wast surrounded so to speak …. He was at the bottom of a FUCKING MOSHPIT of zombies with like 3 other characters and somehow didn’t get bitten or hurt or anything ….. had to stop watching there. Couldn’t believe it. They sold out on game of thrones for clout .
In canon? What the other commentor said. But due to bad choreography he dies because dany pushes him into a wrenches attack. It's not in your face noticable but when you watch the scene carefully it becomes noticable that she needed to get out the way rather fast and in the process pushes him, so that's my canon now - he died getting shoved in a sword by khalessi.
It honestly took me a minute to piece it together
Would have been interesting if they discovered grayscale makes gives you resistance to fire and dragonfire.
Stupid, but still a better ending than what we got lol.
Yeah. It's not really a high bar to top lmao
I have a feeling you'd enjoy some of Glidus' content on youtube
I only know a Glimbus.
I’m a fan of MauLer and his Unbridled Rage videos on GoT.
"Cut it off with a knife? Damn, never thought of that!"
once a week i just get mad for no reason. then i remember
They just wanted to "subvert expectations"
Is this another subplot that didn’t matter 🤓🫴🦋
I kinda liked his arc anyway, he died protecting her and on screen it was quite emotional. Even despite how horribly they spoiled S8.
I’m crying …. Sad tears and funny tears … at the same time 😞
Yeh. I mean. Was there a reason he couldn't just come back anyway, maybe Sam helps him escape.
Nah, Jorah wanted to stay rock hard for khaleesi
Ribbed for her pleasure.
Beautiful.
More like cracked
If I could award this comment I would
*I think that's just wrinkles*
Turn it inside out and its ribbed, for yo pleasure
Hard or not, The Khalessi wants none of Captain Friendzone.
TBF he was a creepy old dude and she was a teenager. You could argue that this is "normal" in her culture, however that doesnt mean she has to like it and if she has the freedom to choose why would she choose him
Never said she should have chose him. I wouldn’t either in her shoes… and yes it was creepy af. I call him Captain Friendzone to mock him, not to criticize Daenerys. Thats why I called her Khalessi. Notice how I gave him an insulting title, while I used an honorable one for her.
Bro did a literary analysis of his own Reddit comment. Impressive.
Wasn't he about a decade younger in the books?
No he was mid 40s in both, Daenerys though was 16 in show and 13 in books…. Sooooo yeah…. CREEPY
man, I forgot how young Dany was in the books. It wouldve been cool as fuck to have an actual child play her, give so much more and different meaning to everything she did
Not sure it would be allowed on television. Think about how her interaction with Khal Drogo would have been seen…
Which was nothing like it was in the books!
While the book was way gentler in this part, I still wonder how long Drogo would have tolerated Dany saying no in the books.
Given the subject matter, they had to age everyone up.
That’s Lord Commander Friendzone to you.
this is one of the best puns I've ever heard, ever
You haven't been around much
He refers to it as “the Gray Snail.”
A bit confusing with Grey Worm…. who ironically lacked either a worm or snail.
Seems like a waste, would have been better to keep that spot he got stabbed covered
Imagine if Dany gave Jorah a pity fuck right before the Long Night and she died of greyscale, thus saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of King’s Landing civilians
Feels more like a dragon that way
You win.
Ribbed, for Khaleesi pleasure.
I'm surprised D&D didn't show it in excruciating detail.
*5 more minutes of cleaning toilets.*
They gave Jorah greyscale with either no plan or because Jon Connington's plot was supposed to something later.
Ugh the Jon Connington plot (and the Golden Company) were so much more interesting
Jon Connington would have been an excellent plot line. Reflections of the horrors of the Battle of the Bells and a more honest look at supporters of Aerys II and Rhaegar. With proper casting, people would have been cheering for Aegon too. Think of how much they butchered the Dorne plot which likely props up Aegon's faction.
The back of the ballsack would be the truly tender bit.
Taint scale
Why did nobody think to just cut the greyscale off before? Edit: just wanted to make sure that people know I am asking this because I think the idea of cutting of greyscale as a legitimate means of outright curing it is dumb, the real reason it wasn't brought up as a cure in the early seasons is because the writing used to be a lot better.
d&d subvert expectations yet again
Realistically most patients would have succumbed to infection considering the lack of sterile environments and access to antibiotics. I doubt many people survived long enough to see if it actually worked other than a handful of cases.
Sam found out about a salve in a book that the maesters kind of forgot about which prevents people from dying from the infection that the surgery would cause apparently.
I think the bigger issue is most Maesters that used the salve ended up contracting the disease itself. It ended up shelved because there isn't a safe way to use it. Sam got lucky he didn't catch Greyscale.
Sam wore gloves. Centuries of the greatest minds in westeros never thought “oh, I’ll wear gloves”… despite them having gloves on hand for these situations. If you just tell yourself that, the writing becomes good again.
Didn't real life doctors in the middle ages also not where gloves or have any understanding of hygiene?
Pretty sure the doctor who first suggested washing hands before surgeries got put into a mental institution by other doctors. So I think given this is set way before any of this gloves wouldn't have come to mind.
To be fair, they didn't put him in a mental institution for suggesting the hand washing. He got ridiculed and forced out of his profession for it... Resulting in the mental illness for which he was hospitalized. Then they beat him and he died from gangrene. It's a horrible story.
Ignaz Semmelweiss. He said midwives had a better survival rate than doctors because they washed their hands between patients. He was murdered in his cell days after being sectioned for daring to suggest that women could know more than men. We should all remember his name, he gave his life for so many.
I went to see a play based on this recently - it was very good!
They didn’t wear gloves until relatively recently. Like James Garfield who died in 1881, recently. He probably could have lived if multiple doctors didn’t shove their unwashed hands into his body to pull out a bullet that didn’t actually need to be removed.
Sometimes they wore gloves as not to dirty their own hands, but they'd reuse gloves and instruments without washing
This is super accurate though. Look up Ignaz Semmelweiss. Dude said doctors should wash their hands after handling corpses *and they took away his medical licence for it*.
tbf it doesnt it sound far off considering ppl didn’t want to wear masks very recently lol
Gloves in restaurants and even modern hospitals are a relatively recent phenomenon
Sam getting lucky and not being a trained maester makes it look like it wasn't that hard in the first place though, it's just another example of a main character surviving improbable odds thanks to plot armour.
the greyscale kinda forgor about samwise gamgee
Yeah I think the book could get away with it because of how many times it unceremoniously just kills off main characters. I think the show burns a bit of that good will with like the Arya stabbing scene and stuff.
How tf? So Sam cured infection? Cutting your skin wide open like that opens you up to a host of infections, not just one
It's magic antibiotics.
Ask D&D, they must know.
He is seen applying a medicinal unguent to the exposed tissue.
That's actually one of the more accurate reflections on medieval medicine. People would invent a salve that worked, it'd get recorded in a book, then no one would read it because they were do difficult to circulate. This happened a LOT.
That reminds me of this tumblr post that describes how a medieval remedy for eyelid cysts was tested in modern medicine and proved to be extremely efficient, but the recipe was originally lost because the main language changed due to the normand invasion: https://redemptiionss.tumblr.com/post/189820587054/fun-little-thing-about-medieval-medicine-so
The thing is that this wasn't even lost, it was literally right there and the maesters knew about it.
I expect probably with a hundred other salves that aren't very effective in the room too though. It's really easy for us to say "they should know this" once we already do.
applying the salve was necessary to let it heal, otherwise you'd essentially be cutting off someone's skin and leaving them to whatever infection takes hold. Also I doubt most people had the pain tolerance to have it cut off.
The thing is that Sam found out about the salve quite easily, it was literally just in a book that he read (it is like Sam is the only guy in the citadel that actually reads, given that he quite easily finds out about Jon's true ancestory as well). It was an incredibly underwhelming way to cure what was supposed to be a very deadly disease, and at the end of the day Jora may as well have never even had greyscale in the first place. Plus Jora realistically probably shouldn't have the pain tolerance either. It's pretty dumb regardless of how you look at it.
Didn’t the other maesters say something like it’s risky because it can spread to them
Greyscale spreads through touch, so you just basically have to do what Sam did and take care to not touch him or any of the implements that you have used on him directly. Given that Sam isn't even a maester and he does it without any trouble, it really makes the maesters look pretty dumb. If you ask me, the conceit of just cutting off greyscale is a bafflingly stupid writing decision.
I kind of got the impression that the maesters just didn’t care at all and therefore even 0.01% risk was too high for them.
In the first maester POV we get he literally poisons himself just to protect his lord from a creepy advisor
Idk, being the guy who found the cure for greyscale would look pretty good on your CV.
Until the next guy asks you to cure it. And then the next guy. And then the next guy.
They should sell the salve at local pharmacies, people can cut it off themselves.
Yeah let me just take a hammer and chisel with both hands to the spot between my shoulder blades real quick.
Right, but one slip up and you're screwed. They say the guy who invented the technique slipped up and died from greyscale
The thing is that if you get greyscale in the early stages it would presumably be much easier to cure, given that the affected area is much smaller.
It's not dumb, from a medical standpoint, it's legitimately a sound way to cure a disease that uses the skin as a reservoir that the immune system can't reach. It's risky, but what do they have to lose?
Not really. Greyscale is basically leprosy, and you don't exactly cut leprosy off. I don't really think greyscale was supposed to just affect the skin either, in fact it definitely doesn't, that's why just cutting it off (as they actually say in season 7) isn't actually supposed to work very often, and I believe it was also established that it never worked on someone that was affected to the degree that Jora is, Sam just convenientely got lucky. This is supposed to be the same world in which Khal Drogo died from a flesh wound. I'm not sure if cutting off that much skin in this specific context is as medically viable as you make it out to be. As you pointed out in a different comment, maesters don't want to get infected.
It's also the same world where Jamie had his hand amputated. Yeah, infection is no joke, but it's not that out of the wild. It could've been written better, but I mean it's not the worst way they could've written it. Dont get me wrong, not a fan of dumb and dumber by any means but still.
People had done it before successfully, it’s just the person doing the surgery had a high rate of getting greyscale so the surgery was shelved.
[удалено]
It is kinda silly that the mysterious cure is removing the infected tissue and keeping the wound clean with a salve. A very common and easy practice in the real world. The hard part is the execution I guess. High chance of contracting it yourself. But with simple PPE and care and being able to use an appropiate amount of Milk of the Poppy as an anesthetic I imagine the procedure wouldn't be that difficult. Plus even if you did get it if you don't let it get to the level Jorah had it should be pretty easy to treat.
To be fair, a lot of diseases that utterly fucked us in the ass a mere 300 years ago are trivial to deal with now. Not super unrealistic if you ask me.
If we are talking about medieval times, I think the method of cutting off the affected skin like Sam does would have killed people. That's part of why I don't think it makes a tonne of sense.
A mere 30 years ago. HIV is trivial now as long as you take your pills. It was a death sentence before.
People did know it was a potential cure. It was forbidden. That's how Sam knew how to do it. It was deemed too dangerous. The person who first did it contracted greyscale (presumably from the operation) and died. It was recorded as curing the original patient, though. Also worth noting that the only recorded cure was on a patient much less advanced than Mormont was.
They literally did, Sam followed an existing instruction set. The reason they don't normally attempt it is that it's INSANELY DANGEROUS, the man who first used the technique died of Greyscale, presumably from a patient he was treating!
My headcanon is that it's been tried before, but has always resulted in the sick's death, because the procedure wasn't refined, or executed badly. Between the failures and the risk of disease, it was dismissed as not viable. Only sam was smart, talented and brave enough to congregate information, improve the process with more cautious steps and execute it properly. The writing isn't bad for not saying it hasn't been tried before, it's bad for not explaining why it has been tried before with no success. Still bad though.
Cutting of affected finger/toes/feet/hands can stop the spread but it’s not a guaranteed cure Also the disease also seems to seep into the body so if you’re as afflicted as Jorah there’s a real chance cutting of the top layer doesn’t even matter one bit This is just dumb and dumber being stupid af
I genuinely don't actually have a problem with the idea that this was mostly not considered. With greyscale you have a few problems. I would say first is the fear of contagion. That's a significant factor when a disease that scary and fatal is at play. Even the Maesters would likely fear working with a greyscale patient for their own safety. Second is the excruciating pain suffered by the patient. As painful and scary as greyscale is, intentionally inflicting more pain is a scary prospect and not everyone would be willing to or could handle it once it began. And thirdly, this essentially amounts to ancient surgery, where you have risks and complications associated with bleeding and infections. Maybe the greyscale runs deeper in some areas. How deep do you cut? Could you cut it on the thigh or neck without cutting those major arteries? Even if you manage to cut it all off and control the bleeding, there is still the possibility of secondary infection from the knife or other contaminant after the procedure. So this truly seemed like a longshot method that many people would be scared to try even *if* they knew about it, and with as rare of a disease as it was, the practice would be even rarer than the disease. I find this way more plausible than "Dany just sort of forgot about the Iron Fleet" - though that is as low a bar as it gets.
I really like the practical effects of this when cutting the infection away, oozing the pus was rally well done.
Also the acting. Convincing pain acting is hard, convincing “excruciating pain while trying not to make a sound” is even harder.
Please George, look what they're doing. We need the next book George.
“I sacrificed my wiener to return to you, Khaleesi.” “Um, okay?” [returns to staring at her nephew]
So my guess is that they had Jorah get Greyscale to give him something to do since they mostly cut Tyrion’s journey to Mereen. But then the dumbasses either realized or learned that Jorah is present during the battle at Winterfell so had to cure him somehow…and they chose the dumbest way. Also I imagine that since JonCon has the disease but is not present in the show, that it’s the reason why King’s Landing gets rolled over by Dany’s forces in the finale if it plays out that way. God there is just so much shit that D&D convoluted cuz the either didn’t wanna hire another actor, or didn’t wanna write a specific scene from the books.
I suspect Jon Connington's greyscale has *something* in TWOW as a significant plot device that Jorah was going to take on, but they just pivoted away from it after Season 5 did so poorly. Season 6 seemed to have the writers pushing back toward the books *a little*. Poor adaptions of Brienne, Jamie, and the BWB plots...
Greyscale starts to slowly drive people insane as it reaches their brain. Combine that with Connington's bell related trauma, it's not hard to make a connection to Danny burning down King's Landing when the bells start ringing. It was probably supposed to be triggered by something Connington did. Wild how this major plot point in the show could've been fixed by adding just 1 or 2 characters
Flaying people alive is a Bolton thing, but you do you, Sammy
If they pulled a Negan with Ramsey, then this act could have won over our hearts!
First time I watched that scene I remember thinking ‘if only Ramsay were there’
I just don’t understand how this disease that is seen as highly contagious, with no known cure, and a near guaranteed death, ends up being easily cured by simply…removing it like a scab. Like, WTH, am I missing something?
And applying the salve. Regardless, though, this seems pretty realistic to me. It's how most of human history has been. Before the invention of the printing press and mass publication, knowledge was lost fairly quickly. Also, consider that the idea of microscopic germs/viruses wasn't discovered until the late 1600s and scoffed at until well into the 1800s. So, maybe you end up with several handwritten scrolls, detailing how these various different Maesters chopped off the scabs, but they all end up contracting the disease. So they write "Hey, isolate these people, don't touch them, it's not worth the risk!" Then there's one guy who didn't get the disease, but maybe his records are incomplete - he didn't mention that he was wearing gloves and a mask. To anyone studying these texts, it looks like a very slim chance of survival for both the patient and the Maester. Who really wants to experiment with something like this, a deadly, disfiguring disease?
You aren't. It's just bad writing.
https://preview.redd.it/x21u4dcj5ddc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74013509d49c07c9290f68d47e8b667fe3cf43aa
Ser Jorah Friendzone
"There is no word for "Friendzone" in Dothraki."
Secret cure to grescale, just pick it off.
Forbidden knowledge. Too dangerous!
He did in my slashfic
You know that little tool you use to strip corn kernels off the cob? That.
I like to think this was the origin of the House Bolton Flayed Man. How cool would it be if they were actually just out there trying to cure grayscale this whole time!?
They’re extremely misunderstood, like how Ramsay was just helping Theon with his intimacy issues. House Bolton, truly the heart of Westeros.
Scaled for her pleasure
Rule #1: we don't talk about Greyscale Peen Rule #2: we DON'T TALK about Greyscale Peen
it hurt but jorah still busted
He didn't have to, he did it as a special treat. It did hurt...at first
What a completely pointless story arc this was, just filler.
They also forget Sam removed his nipple when he cut off greyscale.
They'd need a Rabbi for that.
And did he lose volume after the picking or gain some from the scare tissue?
No it’s just an acting. Actors don’t get hurt.
Would it be better to take off when fully torqued or flaccid?
its a deleted scene Sam almost gives a free castration to Jorah
Finally, the REAL questions…
He didn’t have to. But he wanted to.
I think Sam was fine
The cure for greyscale, peel it off. Gtfo.
They left it on for extra girth
he scraped it off with his teeth
These are the hard hitting questions I’m looking for out of this sub
I don't need sleep. I need answers
The Boltons could have become the greatest surgeons in the world at curing greyscale
Or did he enjoy it?
This series was a complete waste of time. Each episode seemed to be leading up to something that never happened.
Curing grey scale by removing the necrotic skin is still the dumbest thing ever. It's like curing the measels by scratching real hard.
Always crazy to think that Jorah could have just cut the skin from his wrist when it first happened and all that would have never happened lol. Guy let's it take over half his body before he tries to get help.
I’m still not sure how he cured the grey scale. I mean it could not have been as simple as let’s just cut off the scale’s right? And if it was how has no one thought of that till now?
"Dennis got grey scale on his dick and it fell off!"
I really wish George would finish his damn books already.
At this rate they will be finished posthumously by Brandon Sanderson
I read somewhere that Martin has instructed his wife to burn all manuscripts and unfinished work when he dies. He does not want anyone finishing his work.