The Game of Thrones Season 6 DVD and Blu-Ray box sets land in stores today, and everyone’s buzzing about the special features and deleted scenes. The bulk of the deleted material takes place in Braavos—there’s a lot more to the play Arya watched than we saw. And by the looks of it, the producers used the play-within-a-playTV show conceit to throw shade at critics who have accused them of indulging in gratuitous violence and nudity. Too bad the scene ended up on the cutting room floor.
There’s just shy of seven minutes worth of unused play footage, as the acting troupe in Braavos reenacts warped versions of scenes from the first five seasons—Joffrey’s the good guy in this version. Check out the scene below (at least for the time being).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPbSNQnkwS4&t=4m18s
As two unnamed women watch the violence unfold onstage, one turns to the other and remarks, “Violence and profanity. How original.” Sounds a bit like the criticism leveled at the show, no? It gets better. When Bianca, who plays Sansa Stark, has her breasts exposed, the women again voice their displeasure, remarking that the nudity is “disgusting and unacceptable” and “utterly gratuitous.”
The producers got in their rejoinder, though. After the pair of women express their disgust, everyone’s favorite teenage assassin chimes in. “Why don’t you just leave then?” Arya asks them, which sounds an awful lot like “If you don’t like it, change the channel.”
So what say you? Was the show hitting back at its critics? Or are we just reading into something that’s not there?
h/t Radio Times