Game of Thrones (HBO) TV Show • Page 634

The books are good, that's what sucks.

At least the first 3 are...

 

The fifth book is also good.

I'm okay enough with the last season because I largely like what happens on paper. I still have more issues with season five.

 

This show is definitely not one of the best, but for a time felt like it could’ve been. Then again, in hindsight even the “good” seasons are loaded with issues and those issues are exacerbated to the nth degree as the show approaches a godawful conclusion which destroyed even the casts’ faith in the legacy it was trying to build. I honestly feel fine saying it blows.

 

Eh I think saying it blows is some pretty big revisionist history. It was appointment TV (really good TV at that) for nearly a decade. The last 2 seasons are extremely rushed and misguided. Does that betray everything that came before it? Yes and no, as someone said, on paper what happens is what I expected. The plotting of that course is a mess after they were out of books to crib. But I’d be lying if I said the first 4 seasons and season 6 weren’t pretty much uniformly excellent.

 

Endings can ruin a series.

see How I Met Your Mother for the ultimate example.

for some people this ending ruined the series. It kind of did for me.

 

TIL the series finale of How I Met Your Mother lasted for almost its entire run

 

Show definitely does not blow. The ending beats make enough sense that it doesn’t ruin what was excellent TV and story telling for the first 6 seasons (minus two specific storylines in season 5). What ruins the last two is the rush to get to those beats, basically abandoning the great storytelling for summer blockbuster cinema. Which was a very entertaining spectacle! But that’s at least a rung below, if not more, the quality that preceded it. I didn’t watch GOT for popcorn spectacle, I watched it for the rich storylines and complex world building and etc.

Even some of the reunions and first meetings of cast members that happened over the last two seasons just didn’t get enough time to breathe and develop and etc.

 

I mean it’s not like The Wire or Sopranos level golden television, there are reasons to think it blows. Particularly if you don’t like these fantasy style macho stories, and the early seasons definitely had excess rape stuff that almost turned me off from it even though I had read the books. If you do like that genre of television and story though yeah it was great high quality entertainment up until the end.

 

Reading my post back I make very little sense. Why would you be watching it in the first place if you weren’t into that genre.

 

tbf, but also to your point…24/25 year old me only knew about it through my wife then gf at the time. And I told her I’d never watch it because I wasn’t into that stuff. But being 24 and flipping through channels and catching the scene where Dany and Doreah were “training” each other, I stopped flipping channels to see what that was lol. Ended up keeping it on for like 30 minutes then later asking my gf about it and as she talked to me about the other scenes I saw I realized I wanted to know more so I began my season 1 binge and got hooked.

 

I assume some people merely watched it because it was popular.

 

I feel like my biggest issues with the last two seasons is that it hit story beats that didn't feel earned, and felt so rushed that some became out of character because it didn't take the time to let the story get there naturally.

One that bothered me that I don't think a lot of people bring up is Littlefinger's end. For something that felt so satisfying, it also felt a little hollow. It felt like something that shouldn't have worked as well as it did but it was just so good to see him get what he deserved that I overlooked how it was executed.

 

Yeah the whole "omg there's tension between Sansa and Arya now!" stuff felt so rushed and ham fisted at times.

 

Having no source did present a challenge plus the compressed time frame to write and make a show under the pressure of deadlines and expectations.

That said, I’m glad they didn’t just didn’t give fans what they wanted. It would have been too predictable and that not what that show was all about all along to me. After the show was completed I saw an interesting fan outline for how the series could of ended, but it’s better they ended it and didn’t try and drag it out for another two seasons.

 

And even after they revealed they were playing Littlefinger, it's like... so all they had to do to get rid of his ass was rattle off everything he's ever done? "It's just that easy!"

But... it shouldn't have been. It felt like all the subtle intrigue in the book-based seasons was thrown out for quick and easy solutions to what were previously huge problems, making everyone retroactively look stupid.

 

The final episodes were made in two or three years and "adapted" from a treatment in the notepad of a writer who has all the time they need, even over a decade, to weave a complex plot for each book in their series. A treatment that'll be expanded and possibly changed exponentially during the writing process. Those last two seasons were never gonna live up to the hype.

 

It's true that if anything this just shows how bad the writers got without having Martin's work to work from, but it also reminds me of how I felt about Lost.

Not to invoke another divisive show or anything, but it felt like in both cases, the makers negotiated an exit strategy and were determined to commit to it, even as it slowly became clear they couldn't do everything they wanted to do in that negotiated time.

So rather than make a new deal to give themselves more time to do things properly, they decided to just half ass it so they could commit to their plan.

 

The writers were not even that bad imo. I think the creative choice of focusing on climactic battles instead of trying to emulate the dense narrative or early seasons might've been the smartest one possible. It's one thing to write a new story in the same world, but the only writer who can finish ASOIAF properly for better or worse is GRRM.

Giving fans a satisfying conclusion is made more challenging by the fact that he's a slow writer and unlike JRRT, the lore, character development and backstory are still being figured out (as explained in his "gardener vs architect" analogy in interviews) instead of setting the stage at the beginning. So he's not to blame - you can't rush a story as ambitious as that - and also this is why I don't shift much blame on the show writers - they had an impossible task ahead of them. As far as I know they made the most out of what they had to work with.

 

Goddamn tho the highs of this show were exhilarating. Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, the Purple Wedding, basically anything involving Liam Cunningham

 

Some really good points.

I was personally underwhelmed by the whole White Walkers ending, but there wasn’t really a lot of dynamics there to work with.

I was fine with the rest. Could have been better and could have been worse. The show was a tragic tale of the fall of those who want power and the destruction they cause trying to get it.

By the end it was mostly characters who didn’t seek power who survived (even if they took power in the end).

The show set the table of any character could die at anytime (except maybe Jon Snow who’s story didn’t feel over when it happened).

 

I think the main thing that still upsets me is we were always building to a final showdown with the white walkers. That was the threat that loomed over everything, they repeatedly showed us the grab for the throne was ultimately pointless. Then in the final season there really isn’t any build up to the white walker battle , expect for easily the best ep of that season where characters are just interacting with one another before the fight.

That battle was so dark, and hard to see at times. Not in a good way imo. Then it felt so rushed. Really it should have been 2-3 episodes long just the battle. The white walkers are supposed to be the main bad we’ve been building to.

Then to have Cersei be the final bad. Along with the Dany switch. Which made sense, but again we needed more time to see her make that switch.

 

The worst part is is that I guarantee the backlash to how the show ended backed GRRM even further into a corner as to how he intended to wrap the series up. He'll either have to finish it the way he intended it to end but somehow pull it off in a way that doesn't suck like the show, or change everything to a different ending because he feels the need to distance himself from the show.

Neither will happen tho and he'll die a multimillionaire

 

they turned the night king into a fucking dork

 

Oh you mean Ice Darth Maul