Giant Fail

This past weekend saw the release of the tenth and final episode of the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones. Episode one of season six was the first episode of Game of Thrones I had ever watched (you can read my short, nonsensical commentary on it here) but I hadn’t watched any other episodes since then. I thought it might be interesting to watch the final episode of the season just to compare it to the first, and the next day I discussed the episode with a friend of mine who is more familiar with the show. He helped me fill in some of the gaps of what’s going on in the world of Game of Thrones, and I now feel a bit more knowledgeable about the show, though I still can’t claim to know that much.

I’m not going to discuss episode ten in this post. Instead, I’m going to go on a dumb rant about something else related to Game of Thrones. After talking with my friend, I watched episode nine of season six, because I had read such great things about the massive battle that takes place in it. I watched the episode, and sure enough there was a big battle with some impressive cinematography and tons of deaths to be had. While the battle is very well done, there’s one part that really bothered me. Namely, Jon Snow’s army has a giant in it, but said giant’s tactical potential is completely squandered. The giant looks to be something like fifteen feet tall, and strong enough to wield a tree trunk like a club or staff, but instead he’s fighting with just his bare hands. All Jon Snow had to do was give the giant a large tree to uproot, and with it the giant could have both broken through Bolton’s battle line, as well as breached the gates of the city of Winterfell, and possibly have survived the battle. This is what we call squandering a valuable asset. I understand that things needed to play out the way they did in the show for the sake of drama, but this was really stupid. Combined with his taking the bait from Bolton and doing his best Leroy Jenkins impersonation, I have serious doubts about Jon Snow’s competency as a battlefield commander after watching this episode.