Reviews

Usually in a exciting crime thriller we would watch the police and the villain in a suspense-packed chase, and the winner would be whoever is the smartest and the one being one step ahead than the other. But not in the Tatort episode "Das Nest". Here the police and the criminal surpass each other with blunders and careless decisions. So the winner would be the one who is the least incompetent. I did not find that to be exciting at all. Here some examples which let me roll my eyes:

• At the beginning the police decides to wait at the crimescene for the murderer to return. Good idea. But instead of placing 30 special forces in this gigantic labyrinth of a villa, only two (!) police women wait somewhere in the upper level of the villa, while the special forces wait somewhere outside of the villa. So the moment the criminal enters the building, the police already lost control over where he is in this gigantic house. In the search for him, the two policewomen finally separate, similar to a bad horror movie. Due to this amateurish plan, the villain escapes, of course. The special forces are of no use at all, as their job is to follow passively and arrive when it is too late. This "chase" was almost funny in an embarrassing way. The only thing missing was the police slipping on a banana peel.

• The villain has now escaped. The police has no trace at first, but then finds out that the murderer sutured the bodies together incorrectly on purpose. From that they deduce that the killer works in the medical field. And suddenly only five suspects are left. How come? Because allegedly all the victims were treated by these five doctors. That is all the viewer is told ... If all the victims would have had two doctors in common I already would have been puzzled by that great coincidence, but five? The victims could only have such a high number of common doctors if they had all been treated in the same hospital. But if so, then this is such an obvious trace that should have been noticed immediately by the investigators. But they did not despite supposedly "perfect" research and work. They have no clue at all and need a slide projector to finally find this bizarre trace with the sutures.

• Later the Tatort tells us, that the murderer is an intelligent and meticulous surgeon. And then we see how he does not behave intelligently and meticulously at all. We see him, the murderer with allegedly years of experience, potter around at home in bright daylight, the bloody corpse in the open trunk of his car. His daughter and wife talk to him and have no clue, the corpse just two meters away. If the murderer was so dilettantish and negligent, he should have been caught red-handed years ago.

• Later, the serial killer buries the same corpse in the forest. He seems to have planned everything carefully. But in a later scene we see how one arm of the buried corpse protrudes from the ground and is found by a hunter and his dog. I assumed the serial killer was clever enough to bury a dead body, but I was wrong.

And these were just a few moments where the suspense and story of this Tatort episode was supposed be generated with the help of doltish mistakes made by the characters.

The writing of D&D makes GoT in season 8 a shadow of its former self. There were always plot twists that made GoT great and they always made sense. Now when D&D want to take out a major character like Dany, they let her turn mad in one episode, and in the next you see her wander the throne room without guards, with Jon walking up with his weapons at his belt. Everyone knew beforehand what was coming then, just except the characters themselves. Before, with GRRMs writing, the show was always smarter than the audience. No way I could have guessed the beheading of Ned or the Red Wedding. Now the audience is smarter than the show. The "plot twists" are just cheap, unlogical or made up. Arya coming out of nowhere and kills the Night King? Sure. Rhagal shot down by 10 super scorpions, while in the next episode 500 scorpions were useless? Sure. Bran becoming the king, because he fell of a tower and he knows stories? Sure.

I liked the episode until Daenerys attack the Iron fleet. Last episode 11 ships with scorpions could instantly kill a dragon, with superb accuracy, range and penetration power. This episode 500 ships plus the scorpions on the wall got nerfed down to useless toys. Also the fight of Jaime and Euron was a disappointing puzzle of cut scenes. Finally the bells tolled and the city surrendered to Dany. It was basically now her city, it was her dream come true. Because of that I could not retrace why she now wanted to kill all her innocent subjects and destroy her new city. Also it was a riddle to me why the Unsullied decided to kill the surrendering Lannister soldiers. But apart from that I liked the setup to the battle, the Clegane bowl and the ending of Jaimes and Cerseis story line.

I liked some moments in this episode, for example the Tormund scenes and the goodbye scene between him, Jon, Sam and Gilly. But the original GoT-Feeling didn't come up for long. The aliveness and richness of the world of asoiaf seem to be gone. There were a lot of bad moments: (1) "Remember when everyone was drunk and Gendry was walking by to take a p**s outside and was made the lord of one of the most important houses of westeros by Daenerys?" Neither Daenerys (nor Gendry) would like to have stories like that circulate. Not doing this as a part of a big offical ceremony undermines Danys authority and the legimitization of all that. Seems out of character for Dany as a wannabe monarch. (2) I would have loved to see the immediate reactions of Sansa and Arya learning the biggest secret in the show. Same for Tyrion. And for Varys. But they cut away and only show hours or days / weeks later (feeling for time in GoT has gone, too.). (3) Jon leaving Ghost without really saying goodbye, though he knew Ghost since he was a puppy in season 1. (4) Bronn pops up out nowhere and and finds his two targets conveniently being alone. No explanation of how he found them and then is he is gone into nowhere again. (5) Tyrion and Varys believe the story by Sansa of Jon being a Targaryen instantly with no doubts, though Tyrion knows that Sansa despises Daenerys (why she does that also feels artificial for me). (6) Daenerys and her dragon being teleported from Winterfell to Dragonstone. (7) Rhagal gets instakilled. Nobody saw the ironborn fleet? Neither both dragons and Dany from the air miles away, nor the garrison of Dragonstone? It was daylight. Also those ballistas seem to be supernatural. Three shot fired and three hits at Rhagael. But then 20 or more shots are fired at (the much bigger) Drogon but now the super ballistas all miss. (8) Teleport for Euron to Kings Landing. (9) Next scene you see Team Daenerys walk to the walls of King's Landing (teleporting again). You can clearly see that she is in range of those ballistas, and according to the logic of the Dragonstone fight earlier Cersei would just have to give the order and Team Dany would be put to pieces. But Cersei does not so, being out of character. (10) Cersei hired Bronn with wagons full of gold to kill Tyrion, but when he is walking in front of the city walls she doesn't want to kill him anymore? Out of character. (11) Though Dany and the Unsullied are teleported from Winterfell to Dragonstone, and from there to Kings Landing, Jon and his army are not there yet. To conclude: So many scenes were unsatisfying or lacked logic. It doesn't feel anymore like the story unfolds itself. It feels like the writers are tearing the story in the directions they please.

There were so many questionmarks above my head the whole episode. In so many moments of "The Long Night" I could not understand, why a certain character is doing a certain action. The only explanation I could find was that the writers wanted it to happen that way. Let's run through: (1) How did the red woman got through the army of the dead? How could she ride so relaxed with the Undead behind? (2) Last episode we saw Jon and the others plan to be defensive in the fight. Remember him say that they can't beat them in a straight fight? So they digged trenches, built barricades, etc. But now we see the Dothraki and the Unsullied not behind the fortifications, but in front of it. What is the purpose of those fortifications when you place your soldiers in front of it? Not only are fortifications useless that way, they also hinder your retreat, because you have to pass bottlenecks. But we come to that later. (3) Anyway, for some reason the Dothraki are supposed to stand in front line. But at the closeup of their weapons (Arakhs) they look they are not made of obsidian, but of steel. But if so, why did the Dothraki not get obsidian weapons like the other humans? How did they intend to kill the army of the dead? Why are they standing in front line with inadequate weapons? (4) Then suprisingly the red priestess arrives and blesses the Arakhs with fire and then rides past the Unsullied. Why did the red priestess just try to give fire to the Arakhs of the Dothraki and not to the spearheads of the Unsullied? I don't know. (5) Then the Dothraki attack. Why? Weren't they suppose to be defensive because "we can't beat them in a straight fight"? Also they did not know that Melisandre was about to arrive to conveniently improve their weapons and sight by fire. And yet they still stood in front line. Did they plan to charge with inadequate weapons, in the dark, an enemy they cant see, but who can see or smell them, an enemy with superior numbers and with magic powers linked to coldness and darkness, who would add them to their undead army when they fail? To every beginner in strategy that must sound like a horrible battle plan. But seemingly this is what they planned, because why else would the Dothraki be placed in that position? I just can't wrap my mind around this. (6) Jon is riding Rhaegal. He sees White Walkers near a forest and decides to attack. Why does he do that? Again, they wanted to be defensive. He wanted to lure the night king to the Godswood to Bran. He knows the dangerous magic powers of the night king. And yet somehow Jon let's himself get lured away from the castle, away from his troops, away from his plans, into a dark forest. Why? (7) Finally. The guys in front of the trenches want to get behind the fortifications. But because the retreat takes so long due to the bottleneck in the selfmade fortifications, the Unsullied have to back up the retreat and hold the line. The Undead just run over them and the Unsullied have a hard time being pushed against the wall. Again: Wouldn't it be a better battle plan to position the Unsullied behind the fortifications to kill the slowed down Undead who would crawl through? Who planned this strategy? But it gets worse. (8) Grey Worm gives order to light the trench on fire. Now the Unsullied do not only stand with the back to their selfmade wall, no, the wall is also burning. Who came up with that strategy and why? (9) Jon said about the undead: "Our enemy doesn't tire, doesn't stop, doesn't feel". This was true for the wights overrunning the human army. This was true for the giant rushing through the gate in a killing frenzy, ... until he met little Lady Mormont. He grasped her softly without crushing her instantly like the others, raising her conveniently close to his face. It looks like he wants to eat her, but since when do wights do that? Why is the ravaging zombie giant suddenly so out of character? Only so that Lyanna can stab him in the eye and have her hero moment? But it goes on. Remember the wights overrunning the front line, laying themselves in layers over a burning trench, climbing the walls on top of each other, killing humans in a unstoppable frenzy? They are now walking relaxed in a library. How come? Why the change in character? Anyway. As soon as Arya sneaks out of the room and closes the door silently the undead suddenly start to go wild again and break through doors. Why now? Is the only explanation for the slow intermezzo that the writers wanted to show that Arya can sneak well? (10) At that moment I did not know what the characters wanted to do. Where is Arya heading? Where are Sandor and Beric running to? Characters are just running around and they are not talking. Are they going to rescue Arya? How do they know how to get to her? (11) Jon is surrounded from all sides by a screen full of wights. What is he gonna do? More and more Zombies walk closer. They are standing inches away from him. How is he getting out of this? We see him swinging his sword once. Next scene: The upper half of screen of wights around Jon is suddenly gone. Did they walk away? Did Jon really kill them all? How? It was not shown. (12) Jon is saved by Dragonfire-Dany. She lands behind enemy lines. Does she want him to get on the dragon, too? He says "Bran." She says "Go." and off he runs. What was the point of the landing then? Only so that the dragon can be climbed by hundred of wights and Dany could be thrown off? (13) How come that we see the main characters Brienne, One-Hand-Jaime, and Podrick the Squire still standing their ground lonely, while all their warriors are dead? How come that we learn that Sam survived despite having been in front line, while thousands of other skilled warriors were killed like flies? It was not shown. How come that all Greyjoy men are killed except the main character Theon? So that Bran can tell him he is a good man? Later we see the main characters Tormund and Gendry still stand, while all their comrades are dead (except one Stark soldier in the picture). Isn't that lucky? (14) The Night King perforates Theon ... and his front armor ... and his back armor ... with what? A broken wooden pole, which pokes out of the armor like it wasn't layers of forged metal it went through but butter. Is that even possible? (15) Why did Melisandre commit suicide? Just to fulfill her prophecy she gave one season ago? Why doesn't she continue to try to serve the lord of light?

To conclude: In so many moments of "The Long Night" I could not understand, why a certain character is doing a certain action. The only explanation I could find was that the writers wanted it to happen that way. But when I mentally have to leave the logic of the asoiaf-universe and find myself at the writers desk the action gets dull. I can not take a battle scene serious when I see strings of a puppetmaster attached to the characters. The whole episode I did not ask myself "What are the characters going to do?" but "What are the writers going to do with the characters?" Since S6E10 onwards I have the impression that complementing the fascinating but decreasing GRRM content with ever more wishy-washy writing, just to finish the series now, is a bad idea. The size of plot holes culminated in this episode. I fear what the last three episodes might bring.