That goodbye scene is an insult to my intelligence
I can’t get over how much that scene is incongruous and dissonant with pretty much anything we have ever known about Jaime and Brienne as individuals, as a pairing, and as storylines.
I’ve criticized a lot of things about the show, but one thing I kept saying all along and I firmly believed was that Jaime and Brienne’s dynamic was one of the very few consistent parts of the show. All their interactions, from their first meeting until the moment they consummated their relationship, made perfect sense.
They all followed the same, consistent pattern of strong, mutual feelings of respect, admiration, trust, longing, love and attraction simmering under the surface and kept in check due to their political and personal conflicts. Once they finally ended up on the same side of the fight, Jaime’s behaviour was a perfectly logical and consistent consequence of that change of context: he was free and safe to openly admire her, serve under her and, yes, court her. Brienne’s initial weariness, eventually giving way to acceptance that his intentions were genuine and the lowering of her walls, was also a perfectly believable evolution of her perspective on things.
Sure, the fact that Cersei was still pregnant, and Jaime’s baggage regarding that relationship, was always going to be a complication of some sort, but it wasn’t one that couldn’t organically fit within their new context to provide some level of conflict and drama to what would have otherwise been a relatively idyllic situation for these two. It wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle, especially for two people who had gone through the traumas they experienced together and knew each other this deeply.
They fought the dead, side by side, saved each other countless times and survived. The happiness of the celebration was a natural consequence of surviving the greatest of wars, and that fuelled an inevitable consummation that had been brewing for years.
Everything made perfect sense for the characters and their relationship and the contexts they found themselves in year after year.
And then… they morphed into something unrecognizable, both in terms of individual characters and dynamic.
I don’t know who the people in that goodbye scene were, but they were not the Jaime and Brienne I watched on my screen, with my own eyes, for so many years. NOTHING in that scene was consistent with anything they ever were to each other or their dynamic:
1) I am meant to buy that Jaime, the man who held Brienne in the highest regard, who would only “humble himself” to serve under her and “would never do that for anybody else”, who who time and time again chose Brienne’s way over Cersei’s, would try to sneak out in the middle of the night without so much of a goodbye so he could crawl back to his sister.
2) I am meant to buy that Brienne, the one person who always had a stronger influence on Jaime than Cersei in literally every. single. instance in the past, suddenly would lose such influence in the name of some “addiction”, after Cersei reached her absolute worse, insulted him, betrayed him and tried to have him killed twice.
3) I am meant to buy that Jaime, the man who couldn’t even stand the sight of Brienne being embarrassed by Tyrion or her chin fucking wobbling in previous seasons, the one who could be affected by the smallest word coming out of her mouth to make monumental decisions, would somehow be completely cold and indifferent to her tears the one time she finally truly opens her heart to him.
4) I am meant to buy that Brienne, the woman who stood in front of a room full of people ready to chop his head off to defend him by listing his honourable deeds, would simply meekly surrender to a mere 3 examples of dishonourable deeds (one of which he didn’t even commit), instead of knocking some sense into him like she has time and time again through the years.
5) I am meant to buy that Jaime, the man who has defied Cersei or tried to contain her far more than he ever enabled her, somehow has just accepted, after years, that Brienne was wrong, all those people who do not know him and never have (Edmure, Olenna) were right, and he was all along just as bad as his sister and so they only belong to each other.
So not only my rage comes from the assassination of the characters and their dynamic, but also from the insult to my own intelligence and ability to follow what is shown on screen. You might as well tell me that Dany never really cared for her dragons and the throne, that Cersei only drinks wine because she’s forced to, that Jon actually secretly loves being in command, that Jorah only had mild respect for his Khaleesi, that Sam spent most of his free time in brothels, that Tywin would have actually preferred having Cersei as his heir than Jaime, that Melisandre was agnostic… should I go on?
I just cannot get any feeling of closure over something so dumb.
