Game of Thrones’ Seven Episode Summer Surprise

Yesterday, I took the afternoon off. You can always tell when I take a break from the internet because while I’m away, *everything happens.*

In this case, it was the announcement that Game of Thrones will not only be held by HBO until Summer of 2017, but it will only be seven episodes long. This gave fresh hope to book fans everywhere that maybe now Martin can finish The Winds of Winter before the next season, while causing everyone else to wail and gnash their teeth. But not only did the production reveal that there most likely would not be episodes until *after* the Emmy period for the 2016-2017 season was over (sorry HBO, looks like everyone else will get a turn next year), but also that we would only have seven episodes–and four directors.

This is an interesting puzzle, as, since Season 4 , the production has been in a nice and comfortable groove of hiring half the amount of directors as episodes and then assigning each two back to back. With four directors and seven episodes, that means three directors will be most likely doing two each–and one director will be concentrating all their efforts on a single hour of TV. To recap, those four gentlemen are:

• Mark Mylod,
• Jeremy Podeswa,
• Matt Shakman,
• Alan Taylor.

Mylod is a serviceable director who last year was saddled with episodes 7 and 8. Seven came off pretty well, with the mini-episode “A Hounds’s Life” tucked in between our regularly scheduled Game of Thrones episode. But these were also the episodes with the most problems, mostly due to the cutting through of Arya’s storyline (and her belly) by the Waif, in order to get her back over to Westeros in a timely manner. Podeswa was villianized in Season 5 for overseeing “Unbowed Unbent Unbroken,” which fans of the show hated. (Though it got lots of Emmy love.) This past season, he oversaw the opening two episodes “The Red Woman” and “Home,” and Jon’s resurrection.

These directors are now coming into their third year running on the production, and will probably once again find themselves doing the meat and potatoes type episodes. One can assume that episode 1, after such a long break, will be even “resetting the scene-ier” than usual, as fans will have not been back to Westeros for a year since it last aired. We can guess that Mylod or Podeswa will probably be tapped to cover that. We also are facing several “on the road” type episodes, with Dany slowly marching Northward, though we can always hope that Littlefinger lends her his teleporter. Meanwhile whatever disaster that Cersei’s reign will cause will most likely take several episodes to build, making fans groan and slap their foreheads, and might even cause a few “Stupid Cersei Lannister” memes along the way. And that’s not taking into account the reports the show is filming in Iceland, which has stood in for “Beyond the Wall.” Road trips galore! Again, that sort of “middle” episodes are these guy’s bread and butter. I would not be surprised when the episodes assignment leak (or are released via Entertainment Weekly) these guys are assigned to Episodes 1 and 2 and episodes….let’s say 4 and 5? Or maybe 5 and 6?

The question really is where the stand alone episode will fall. Episode 3 is one logical place, if one takes into account the pacing structure we’ve seen in the last couple of seasons. The finale would be the other, especially if we’re looking at a season where the finale includes a major battle. With no “Episode 9” this season, it stands to reason that the major happenings would move the finale (as they have slowly been doing since Season 4.)

Putting a stand alone episode around Episode 3 would leave the final two episodes as a set, the way that Episodes 9 and 10 were in Season 6. If we have several different dramatic events to close out our shortened season–and logic dictates we would–having the last two hours function as a unit to play them out would make a lot of sense. The question is, do they go to Alan Taylor, who is a veteran of such early shock episodes that put the show on the map, like Season 1, episode 9, “Baelor”? Or is he in for the single episode, where something major, yet stand alone occurs? (Like, saying the Wall falling?)

The wild card is Matt Shankman, who comes to the show via It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Unlike say, bringing in Jack Bender from Lost last season (which should have been a giveaway that wibbly wobbly timey wimey plot points were afoot), Shankman is known more for the type of show that mixes drama with dark comedy, like House, or Six Feet Under. With this being his first time working on Game of Thrones, was he brought in to do a stand alone episode, perhaps one that needs a serious comedic vein running through it? Or is he getting the full Thrones experience of two episodes back to back that swallow six months of your life?

The one thing everyone noted is the lack of directors that the show normally brings in to do big battles. Neither Neil Marshall, who directed “Blackwater” in Season 2 and “The Watchers on The Wall” in Season 4, nor Miguel Sapochnik, who directed the more recent “Hardhome” and “The Battle of the Bastards” are on the list. It seems strange to think there might not be any major battle set pieces so close to the end of the series. Could that be why Taylor, or Shankman, are here? Or are we in fact going to have a season like one of the earlier ones–say Season 1 or 3, where major events happen–like “Baelor” or “The Rains of Castamere–but we hold the the big fire power for Season 8 and the Last Battle?

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/07/19/game-of-thrones-seven-episode-summer-surprise/