And the worst moment from Game of Thrones Season 6 was…

Look, we all love Game of Thrones. It’s why we’re here. But the show isn’t perfect. Last week, we asked you to name your picks for the worst moment from Game of Thrones Season 6, and to vote in a poll to that effect. You voted and you commented. These are your stories…

According to y’all, the worst moment of the season came near the beginning, when Ellaria Sand and her Sand Snakes murdered the remaining members of the Martell family and took over Dorne. This was my pick for Worst Moment, too. I didn’t think the logic of events held up under even light scrutiny (just how in the hell did Nymeria and Obara get on that boat with Trystane?), I didn’t like how Ellaria and the Sand Snakes continued to be written as paper-thin caricatures, and I hated what the show did with Doran Martell. In the books, he’s an intelligent player of the game, but here he can’t see a coup coming from several miles away.

Not everybody was down on the scene, however. Young Dragon came to its defense:

"As someone who never cared for the Dorne storyline in the books, I’m glad they seriously reduced it on the show. I liked every Dorne scene in season 6 better than any Dorne scene from season 5. And I actually liked Doran more in the show than in the books. It’s refreshing to have a lord who is willing to give up on revenge for the safety of his people, unlike in the books, where Doran is just like every other lord who is willing to sacrifice his people to avenge his family. To make it worse, the plan Book Doran had been working on for more than a decade literally goes up in flames. I know Martin was trying to portray him as a master strategist, but I certainly don’t see it."

I’m not yet convinced, but kudos on an interesting take, Young Dragon.

Another big offender was the resolution of Arya’s plotline in Braavos, which involved everyone’s favorite little assassin sustaining a massive gut wound courtesy of the Waif only to bounce back miraculously after Lady Crane attends to her using all the medical knowledge she picked up during her career in the theater. (I feel compelled to quote Jonathan Van Ness of Gay of Thrones fame here: “We had [Arya], who was very injured, so she did the right thing and went straight to a professional…actress.” Guest: “Which makes sense. Like, when I broke my ankle, I went directly to Debra Messing.”)

Then Arya hops around the city like a spider monkey. David Gorski laid down some knowledge on why that’s so bonkers:

"Such a brutal stabbing would certainly have punctured colon, intestine, or other internal organs—or a major blood vessel, like the aorta or inferior vena cava. If she was lucky enough that the knife didn’t hit a major blood vessel, so that she didn’t bleed to death within minutes or a couple hours, she almost certainly would have had perforated bowel. Without surgery such wounds lead to a slow, painful death from peritonitis over the next few days, thanks to the leakage of bowel content into where it shouldn’t be in the abdomen. (Even with prompt surgery, without modern antibiotics Arya would have had at least a 50% chance of dying.) So to see her up and about (even if in pain) after a day or two broke the willing suspension of disbelief necessary for me to enjoy that episode."

Speaking as a non-medical professional, that sequence shattered my suspension of disbelief as well—you don’t need a medical degree to know that what Arya did is impossible, or damn near it. I gotta agree with Gypsydanger Lux that it “insulted the intelligence of the audience.”

Oh, come on!

Also, regarding the matter of off-screen deaths, I laughed out loud at Priscilla’s idea for why we didn’t see the Waif’s final moments:

"Maybe it was something very anticlimatic, like the Waif was surprised by the darkness, she bumped into a table, fell and bumped her head, dying from her injuries and Arya just got her face off and pretended to Jaqen just to get her degree!"

Other contenders included a duo of scenes featuring Tyrion, Grey Worm and Missandei. Remember that weird scene where they tried to make conversation in “Oathbreaker?” Jillyfish does.

"Tyrion’s filler scenes get my vote. It seems to me that his character suffers the most by not having GRRM dialogue. And it’s a shame as Peter Dinklage is great and Tyrian is too."

And I?lemoncakes weighed in on the scene in “No One” where the three of them told jokes:

"The Greyworm/Missandie joke scene was awkward. It felt like the writers ran out of material said, “roll camera” and just do something."

The odd thing is that I think the writers came up with some quality original dialogue for Tyrion in Season 6—I enjoyed his negotiations with the Masters in “Book of the Stranger,” for instance. But those scenes…something else happened in those scenes.

Not everyone agreed with our pics for Worst Moment, though. For instance, David (Razor) Harris didn’t like that Jon Snow charged Ramsay Bolton’s lines after Rickon died, thinking it displayed a lack of forethought. Commenters like a57se saw it differently:

"Jon was still in the mode of thinking he should be dead so to him, charging the enemy was ‘logical’…it isn’t til he is enveloped and struggling to breathe that he decides to embrace his second chance. I had no problem with his actions."

I tend to agree, by the way. Jon didn’t make the brightest decision there, but it was a decision I believed he’d make.

Incidentally, a57se’s pic for Worst Moment was one we forgot to include on our poll, perhaps because we were trying to forget it happened.

"The worst scene was clearly the one where Clegane comes across the first group of men and the one guy is sticking his finger in the others ass crack and then smelling it. That was about as juvenile and stupid as anything I have ever seen on TV. Then Clegane just hacks them up. Totally unnecessary…"

Weirdly, I didn’t mind the hacking up. But yeah, what was with that first part?

Finally, Madrambler had an interesting critique of the scene where Daenerys rallies her new Dothraki followers from atop Drogon:

"[I]t wasn’t the fact that she was giving a speech or what she was saying in it but how the these thousands of people standing a hundreds feet beneath her are supposed to hear her. I doubt a person standing right beneath her would be able to hear a word of what she was saying…I know realism is too much to ask for in a scene involving dragons but hey at least make it believable."

Okay, now that we’ve gotten all that negativity out of our system, here’s a video full of cute golden retriever puppies to help you regain your equilibrium.