Game Of Thrones: "Beyond The Wall"

Boy, that show has gone downhill fast. It's dawdled along, often at a snail's pace, for six seasons...and now it's suddenly just cramming shit in hand over fist. This is a stupid thing to worry about, but I can't help complaining about it.
[spoiler alert]
First...this mission makes no sense whatsoever. There's virtually no reason to think that showing Cersei one alleged white walker has any chance at all to completely change her mind. It's just idiotic to undertake this extraordinarily risky mission aiming at an entirely speculative outcome. Second, the banter among the missionaries was pretty good in some cases...but, again, everything is rushed. What might have taken an entire season previously is now crammed into a single episode. Third...ah, screw it. Look, they conveniently come upon the small band of walkers...defeat them easily...then it turns out that they all have some kind of scream power to summon all the other walkers instantly. Somehow Gendry out of the blue becomes "the fastest one" of them...when did that become clear? So he's sent for help.... and the rest of them make for a frozen lake with a rock in the middle of it...aaaand it was basically clear what was going to happen from there on out. Oh and: somehow they make it to the big rock with the tied up walker...though they're running for their lives the whole time. Who was carrying the extra 100-or-so pounds, we don't know. The whole rock-in-the-frozen-lake thing is like a bad D&D session. It's a transparent, shitty set-up for a heroic last stand and last-minute rescue. Oh and...where did all the 0-level human cannon-fodder come from? Every time somebody died, it turned out to be somebody I didn't even know was in the group. And the worst part was the bullshit time dilation. Gendry runs to the wall, they send a raven to the southernmost point on the continent, and the dragons all fly back in...like...12 hours? A day? What? It makes no sense whatsoever. The death and resurrection of a dragon or two was pretty likely at some point...but...where the hell did they get those chains? And Benjen coming out of the blue, just to get eaten...shiiiiii.... Also...the Jon and Dany thing...eh...not really feelin' it, though everybody had to know it was coming.