Featured TV on DVD Review: Game of Thrones: Season Six
November 13, 2016
Game of Thrones: Season Six - Buy from Amazon: DVD and Blu-ray
Long time fans of Game of Thrones have just one question on their minds... Why is Season Six coming out this week and not in spring just before Season Seven comes out, like they’ve done every year before. Well, I have some bad news for you. Season Seven isn’t coming out in the spring. It’s coming out in the Summer. So will this Blu-ray holdover fans until the next season comes out?
Like the previous season’s review, I’m not going to look at the season episode by episode, as that would result in unacceptable spoilers before we even get to talk about a lot of the characters. (There will be spoilers for season five and earlier.) Instead, I will be looking at the various geographical locations and what is happening to the various characters there, starting with...
The North. Last season, Jon Snow realized how dangerous the Night’s King was and how important it was to get the Wildlings south of the wall. Unfortunately, he didn’t even try to explain why this was important to those who might see this as a betrayal of his oath as a member of the Night’s Watch and at the end of season five, he was stabbed to death. Davos Seaworth is the first to find the body and realizes that those who killed Jon Snow will kill him and anyone allied with Jon, unless they can get help. Fortunately Jon did save a lot of Wildlings and Melisandre did return after Stannis Baratheon’s defeat. It’s not really a spoiler to say both plans succeed. The Wildlings return in time to stop the loyalists from being killed and Melisandre is able to revive Jon. This does have a bit of a twist to it. Since Jon Snow died, his oath to the Night’s Watch ended. At first he’s sick of the fighting, but when Sansa arrives with Brienne of Tarth, she convinces him to try and retake Winterfell. First, they will have to raise a bigger army. The Wildlings will help, but outside of Lady Lyanna Mormont, he has trouble convincing the other houses to fight for him. Fortunately, Sansa has a backup plan. Unfortunately, her back-up plan might be the least trustworthy person in Game of Thrones.
Meanwhile at Winterfell, Roose Bolton can’t savor his victory over Stannis Baratheon, because his son, Ramsey, let Sansa get away and without her, their claim to the North is fragile. Roose goes so far as to threaten to disown Ramsey, if his pregnant wife gives birth to a son. She does and as a result, it is Ramsey that kills his father, because of course he does. (If I were Roose, I would have told my guards in advance to kill Ramsey as soon as I was told about having another son.) Ramsey begins to assemble a larger army to defend Winterfell and solidify his hold on the North. He gets a new ally in Smalljon Umber, who brings him a gift, which would be a spoiler.
Further south in King’s Landing, Cersei’s attempt at grabbing power by turning to the High Sparrow has backfired spectacularly. She begins plans to fight back against the High Sparrow. Meanwhile, Margaery Tyrell works on her own to overcome the influence of the High Sparrow. She does this by convincing him that she’s become a true believer and will convince King Tommen to do the same. She also tells her grandmother, Emma Peel, to leave, because she fears for her safety. This sets up a power dynamic between Cersei, Margaery, and the High Sparrow and only one can survive.
This season we have more of a focus on the Iron Islands, which is where Theon is from. We learn that the Iron Islands’ war against the North has gone poorly and Yara pleads with her father, Balon, to end this war. Instead, he plans to escalate the war. That night, Balon’s brother, Euron, secretly returns home and kills Balon. This gives Yara a chance to become the new leader. When Theon returns home, he even pledges to support her claim to the thrown. However, Euron has plans to do the same and wins the vote by pledging to marrying Daenerys Targaryen by offering her their fleet of ships in her quest to take over Westeros. Yara and Theon know Euron’s first step will be to kill them, so they steal the fastest ships in the fleet in order to beat Eruon to Daenerys to make the same offer, minus the marriage part. Who succeeds is a spoiler.
Speaking of Daenerys Targaryen, she was captured by the Dothraki and taken to Khal Moro, who first threatens to rape her, until she tells him she was the wife of Khal Drogo. Now she is to be treated with respect, but forced to live with the other Khal’s widows at Vaes Dothrak. This doesn’t work with her plans. Daario Naharis and Jorah Mormont have tracked her down and plan to rescue her. However, that doesn’t work with her plans. Daenerys has learned that the leaders of all of the Dothraki have arrived to decide what to do with her and she’s decided to tell them to follow her. If they refuse... well, being the Mother of Dragons has some benefits.
Meanwhile in Meereen, everything is on fire. Okay, not right away, but soon. Tyrion Lannister and Varys struggle to maintain order in the city, as they are outsiders and don’t really know the politics as well as they should. Varys does say he will have a network of little birds and that will help. Missandei and Grey Worm try to explain that Tyrion’s experience in King’s Landing doesn’t translate well to understanding the slaves in Meereen. Tyrion does understand that Meereen will need some protection when the Masters’ attack and so he frees the dragon, which doesn't eat him. This lends some credence to a fan theory, which I won’t discuss here, lest it turns out to be true. Things degrade until finally Daenerys returns. Her confrontation of Tyrion is one of my favorite scenes in the entire season.
Arya is still in Braavos. She was punished for using her faceless training to carry out a personal vendetta. She was poisoned, which left her blind, and now she must beg on the street. When we see her, she is attacked by The Waif, as a form of training... and because The Waif is sadistic. After a few more beatings, Jaqen H'ghar first temps her and when she passes, offers to continue her training and later gives her back her sight. He gives her another assignment, but warns her that if she doesn’t complete this one as ordered, she will get no further chances and being on the bad side of the Faceless Men is not a wise move.
The last plot thread of the season that we can talk about takes place north of the Wall. Bran is back and he’s being trained by Brewmeister Smith, I mean the Three-Eyed Raven. Bran is obviously excited to use his powers to peer into the past, as he can walk in these visions, but the Three-Eyed Raven warns him about spending too much time in these visions, as you can drown in them. There’s another reason why spending too much time in these visions is dangerous, but that would be a spoiler.
(There’s one more plot thread that we simply can’t talk about. If you’ve seen the season, you likely know what I’m referring to. If not, you can recognize the episode right away, as it is the only episode in the series that starts with action and not the opening credits.)
One last note. While Sam and Gilly are not moving the plot very much, I do really like their parts in this season. The fact that they can be happy together is a reason why Westeros is still worth saving. If everything was as bad as it was in King’s Landing, then the Night’s King would be greeted as a liberator.
For the most part, I’m going to ignore everything you should talk about when it comes to reviewing a TV show, because it’s Game of Thrones. You don’t need me to tell you that the acting is great, or the set design is fantastic, or the action scenes are staged incredibly. You can look at the show’s success at the Emmys to know it is worth your time. (This year, it passed Fraser for second place for the most Emmy wins all time. Only Saturday Night Live is ahead of it.) Or look at the ratings. The show’s ratings have grown every year and for season six, they were three times greater than season one. Instead, I’m going to look at a couple of the problems that have crept into the show and whether or not they got better or worse during season six.
I mentioned in my previous review that one of the problems with the show in season five was there were too many separate stories and while one would assume they would eventually all come together sooner or later, there was little to no evidence that was happening. For example, Daenerys Targaryen needed to get to Westeros, but not only was this not happening, it felt like there was no progression being made to get her there. Likewise, Arya training with Jaqen H'ghar was cool, but was practically unconnected to the main story. Those were the two biggest examples, but overall the show felt like it was spinning apart instead of coming together. By the end of season six, this was no longer the case. As I mentioned above, Daenerys was already in the process of gathering her forces and Yara was on her way with a fleet of ships and an offer of an alliance. Arya’s story is also connected to the main storyline this season, but in a way that was way too spoilery to discuss. Even Jon Snow gets dragged into the politics of King’s Landing, at least indirectly, for the first time. King’s Landing is united in a way that allows us to see the end of the story is near.
On the other hand, there was still a little too much gratuitous cruelty in the show. We didn’t have anything as bad as we had in season five, but there were still some instances here and there. Without getting into spoilers, the writers didn’t need to kill anymore people to prove Ramsey is a bad guy. I’m not talking about killing his father. That made sense as there was 100% political motives for that death and the others that directly followed. There were other significant deaths, one of which seemed particularly gratuitous without any emotional payoff. Cersei also gets into the gratuitous cruelty act, but that’s a spoiler as well. You don’t need this, as the characters are firmly established at this point and it feels like lazy writing.
Speaking of Cersei, I’ve seen some people who were impressed at how Cersei was able defeat the other two factions and come out on top and this showed how smart she was. However, she was only able to do this by doing something so stupid that no one thought she would even consider doing it, if they thought it was even possible. Remember, Cersei was previously told by her father that the Lannister gold mines were empty and she knew the Baratheons were already in debt to the Lannisters and to Braavos, so there wasn’t enough money to run King’s Landing for long and she just pissed off the only family with the resources to raise and feed an army, the Tyrells. Hell, she killed her own uncle, so there’s a chance whoever becomes the head of the Lannister family (she’s a technically a Baratheon after all) won’t even back her in a fight. On a similar note, too many people attacked Sansa for not telling Jon Snow about Littlefinger’s army. However, she told Jon Snow that they needed to wait to get a bigger army and he emphatically said they could not wait. He said he couldn’t wait, which is why she decided to go to Littlefinger herself. Finally, Varys didn’t teleport. The final shot included all four fleets (you can see the signals on the sails) so clearly some time had passed and the four fleets merged.
I would argue that season six was a step up from season five. All of the strengths from season five are still there and the plot is moving in a way where all elements are coming together instead of being unconnected. Winter has arrived and the end is approaching quickly.
The biggest single extra of the season is the In Episode Guide, which runs during the episodes. Here you can select Characters, Locations, or History at various points during the show to learn more about what is happening on screen. If you are new to the show, or didn’t have time to binge-watch every season before watching season six, then this has a lot of useful information. It is also a Blu-ray exclusive.
There are also 13 audio commentary tracks spread over the 10-episode season. Episodes five (The Door); nine (Battle of the Bastards; and ten (The Winds of Winter) have two audio commentaries each. Each episode also has a previews of that episode, as well as a recap of what led up to the events of that episode.
There are also a trio of featurettes, starting with the 20-minute Recreating the Dothraki World. The Battle of the Bastards is a 30-minute look at the making of the season’s climactic battle scenes. 18 Hours at the Paint Hall is a 28-minute look at the production season six of Game of Thrones, which added a third production unit this year and for the first time, all three units were shooting at the main GoT HQ. This featurette looks at that day. Histories and Lore has many characters narrating 18 different stories about the history of the Game of Thrones world. Finally, there are three deleted scenes with a total running time of 11 minutes. Although they are more extended scenes and one of them is the entire play Arya watched.
As for the price, the Blu-ray costs $40, which is only $5 more than the DVD. That's an excellent price for a TV on DVD release. Also coming out this week is a six-season box set, which is less than excellent. Box sets when the show isn’t over yet are a cash grab, because you know a bigger, better box set will come out when the show is finally over.
Game of Thrones: DVD and Blu-ray
Video on Demand
The Show
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Jonathan Pryce, Liam Cunningham, Stephen Dillane, Peter Dinklage, Iain Glen, Lena Headey, Carice van Houten, Patrick Malahide, Michael McElhatton, Diana Rigg, Max von Sydow, Natalia Tena, Pilou Asbaek, Natalie Dormer, Hannah Murray, Kit Harington, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Iwan Rheon, Gwendoline Christie, Emilia Clarke, Tom Wlaschiha, Maisie Williams, Michiel Huisman, Sophie Turner, Alfie Allen, Dean-Charles Chapman, Nathalie Emmanuel, John Bradley, Conleth Hill, Bella Ramsey, Gemma Whelan, Jacob Anderson, Faye Marsay