*Spoilers: Dude, the episode was 48 hrs ago.

“Home” is a really lame name for an episode of ‘Game of Thrones.’ And a great deal is already being said about the particular acts of violence in the episode, which are still managing to shock even the readers of the books. Who missed, I guess, the dozen or so times Roose Bolton told the us that they were bound to occur. I would have named it “Please” and not for the prayer of the Red Woman. Please, as in HBO saying, please keep watching the show.

The real new horror is getting a clear view of what can happen to a fictional narrative that gets sold unfinished to a major network. A cautionary tale for aspiring writers, even if… yeah I would have taken that paycheck. We did get a taste of this last year with how bad the storyline was for Dorne. You can see what began with the “Red Woman” continuing on with “Home.” And that is the horror of boredom.

You can see the writers of the show just jumping from plot point to plot point, making sure their little boxes get checked off for the episode without any real desire to tell the fucking story. Send these characters here. Kill that one. And that one. Remind the audience of that character. Naked flesh. Unrealistic combat because we aren’t sure if we want to kill that character yet. Cut scene and done.

I am not wrong. When Tywin Lannister finally met his much desired end, he got shot on a privy. The Red Viper got his head smashed by a pair of bare hands. Lysa went through the Moon Door. All of this is carnage with style and it was part of what made the narrative of ‘Game of Thrones’ so new and refreshing. A simple knife is a death for a nameless character. Lame is the only word for that being the end of the ‘Lord of Leeches.’

Admit it. You wanted to see Roose get hunted by Ramsey and his hounds. You wanted to be able to savor Roose getting a taste of his own medicine. You wanted a death as spectacular and significant as the Red Wedding. And instead what we got was a truly great villan just being swept under the rug in a hurry. You could almost see the shepard hook reaching out of the writer’s room and sweeping Roose off the stage. And to be honest, without Roose around to provide the possibility of victory, Ramsey is only a clown. Who is ever going to believe he can hold the North?

The death of Roose Bolton needed to be able to convince us that Ramsey is a villain worthy of usurping his father. The show has gotten to the point where we don’t really have a character worthy of our hate. We are left describing minor role despots with “as bad as Joffery” or as “cunning as Tywin.” Yet no one left can step out of the shadows of seasons past and claim our hatred and make us want to see them die.

Death being so trivial isn’t the only way that ‘Game of Thrones’ has become a snooze fest. Because there is suddenly a whole aversion to having some deaths when really there should have been a blood bath. For instance, the conclusion of the stand off between Ser Alister Thorne and Ser Davos. That the free folk don’t hold back in a fight and have little restraint is what makes them who they are. So when the rescue party breaks down the gate at Castle Black and charges in…. to a staredown…. that too is a dramatic departure from the style of the series. Because the free folk would have slaughtered all the traitor crows or died trying. When in the history of Westeros has a free folk stared at a crow until he dropped his sword? Not only does it feel false, but it is simply the fastest way of moving the story along so the writers can get it over with already. It was the same play for comical relief that doomed the storyline in Dorne.

Another way the lack of death is so noticeable is when we catch up with Arya in Braavos. Here is the plot: “Ayra and minor character, no dialogue where anything useful is said, no action that moves the plot line along, resolved when another minor character appears and says the scene is over.” This is the sort of laziness that generally make a lot of Star Trek unwatchable outside of the Dominion War in DS9. Ayra doesn’t actually perform an act of redemption. The audience just gets to watch one girl beat up another with a stick. That is very lazy writing and it’s so boring. Why not have Ayra, now blind, have to figure out how to give the gift she was supposed to perform in the last season? And have her do that in the way the book laid it out?

And don’t get me started on the Tyrion and the pet dragons scene. They are dragons, HBO writers. They can never be tamed. Their most recent meal that they bothered to eat was manflesh. And suddenly, they become domesticated because that is what is convenient to have a really quick and simple scene with them and our favorite dwarf. No, no, no. Granted things are boring in Mereen and need to be spiced up. Further references to men without cocks fell rather flat and couldn’t even be saved by the writers having the characters admit the joke was flat.

To be honest, Tyrion needed to fuck things up. Letting the dragons out should have been a costly success. Idealy, killing Varys. Redoing their little back-and-forth from King’s Landing in the “Red Woman” was boring and just makes the show limp along. I like the Spider, don’t get me wrong, but these are dragons. They need to remind HBO that they are dragons.  They are the nuclear option, and when they are on screen, there should always be fire and blood.

To round this out, I should mention the death-reversal of Jon Snow. I am neither unhappy nor happy that it happened. You expected it because there needed to be a major character at the Wall and I couldn’t see that being Ser Davos. On a side note, it’s interesting to see that Ser Davos either does not know or refuses to believe that Melisandre had Princess Shireen burned at the stake. Be that as it may, again the storyline was so very not-Westeros-like. Because everyone in that room would have just walked away from a dead body lying on a table after the events of Hardhome. Yeah… nope.

How much more interesting would it have been to explore the idea that Jon Snow was in Ghost? And that Melisandre discovered him there? How interesting would it be to have her face-to-face with evidence of the power of other gods in the world and then have to work alongside that older power to return Jon Snow to his body? Because you know, really, that would take the Red Woman down to a whole new level of shaken faith. And ‘Game of Thrones’ gets right up to the point where that is possible… and the writers just plain chicken out.

Good storytelling has to be more than putting a character on the screen and then using a cut screen. And it is a shame to see the incredible world of Westeros diminished into a cut-out version of its former self. Given, the later seasons of a show are harder to write. The audience has seen a lot and you have to come up with new ideas without dramatically altering the story. Still, ‘Game of Thrones’ had such an obvious and successful formula. It is a puzzle as to why HBO has suddenly become so prudish and slapstick. Though two episodes in, I am beginning to understand why there are rumors about cutting the remainder of the show short by a hand… full of episodes.