1 - Everyone and his brother has an opinion about Game of Thrones. Most of these opinions can be found online somewhere. Buzzfeed seems to churn them out at a rate of one per hour, and even more in the immediate aftermath of an episode. The market is over-saturated. It's probably not advisable for me to add to the white noise. And yet...
2 - I love this show and I have a lot to say about it. At the risk of sounding like an insufferable hipster, I was into it before it got big. I binge-watched the first season over the course of a week at the end of the summer of 2011. And then - partly because I wanted to keep all of the characters straight in my mind - I re-watched the season with Maya.
When I was little, I used to love the medieval fantasy genre. My He-Man figures were some of my most prized possession, and trips to Medieval Times were among my fondest memories. But as an adult, I generally haven't been that interested. It took me until 2014 to finally watch the first installment of Lord of the Rings, and I still haven't seen the others. I wouldn't even call myself a big tv guy. I've watched most of the important shows of the past ten to fifteen years (The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, etc.) but I almost never tune in to any show to watch it as it airs. And it tends to take me a while to get through a full show.
So it's a testament to quality of Game of Thrones that it hooked me so completely. It captured my imagination in a way I didn't know it could be captured any more. The show even compelled to read the first two books in the series, in spite of my generally snobbish literary tastes. (I quit after those first two, when it dawned on me that I probably knew more of the history of Westeros than I did of my own non-fictional country.)
3 - At this point, complaining about Game of Thrones is pointless, not to mention boring and kind of pretentious. Griping about the world's most popular tv show just seems kind of snobby - the underlying assumption being that the complainer can't deign to enjoy a show enjoyed by the rest of the masses. It also seems kind of ungrateful to complain too much about a show that has essentially offered me a decade's worth of enjoyment. I feel like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
----------------------
But ok - let's address the elephant in the room. Game of Thrones clearly isn't what it used to be. That's not to say it's not entertaining, or that I'm done with it. I'll still keep watching to the end. But if I had entered at the beginning of this season, or even last season,aside from being very confused, I wouldn't have seen what all the fuss was about.
To be fair, the show is more visually stunning than ever. The battles are bigger and more epic in scale. The CGI feels lifelike (to me, anyway. Some chronic malcontents will still complain). Nothing's wrong in the visual department - notorious Starbucks cup notwithstanding. But at the end of the day, the quality of any show is always determined by its writing. Lately, GOT's writing has felt stale and uninspired both on the micro level of dialogue and the macro level of plot. It feels like fanfiction, like the work of a writer other than the original author trying to pick up the pieces and guide a massive, sweeping story to its conclusion. And of course, that's exactly what's happening. It's tempting to blame the writers/showrunners, Dan Weiss and David Benioff, and plenty of fans have done just that, but blaming them seems kind of lazy to me. These guys are talented writers. I read David Benioff's novel City of Thieves a few years ago and couldn't put it down. But they're essentially faced with an impossible task: to finish George R.R. Martin's epic work, and to do it quickly and neatly, in a way that will satisfy both hardcore fans and dilettantes. Martin himself has been famously slow to finish his series, leading some to suggest that he's been distracted with other projects. But my theory is this: this story is nearly impossible to finish writing. At least, it's impossible to finish writing it in a satisfying way. Part of the appeal of GOT - both the novels and the show - is that, time and time again, it dashes its audience's expectations, which is exactly what keeps us coming back for more. Of course we want a happy ending, but not at the cost of the story's integrity. Then again, a devestrating ending (Cersei and the Night King jointly rule Westeros?) just seems nihilistic and needlessly abusive to the audience. And then there's this question: how can the writers unite all of the audience's favorite characters in a way that doesn't feel contrived? The answer, I think, is that they can't. There is no good way to end this thing. The author himself can't do it, and to expect it from Weiss and Benioff just seems brutally unfair.
The show worked best when it withheld satisfaction from us. We in the audience all knew what wanted. We wanted Ned to remain capitated and to take down Cersei in glorious fashion. When we couldn't have that, we wanted Robb and Catelyn to avenge his death.We wanted the Red Viper to kill the Mountain. We wanted that inbred coward Joffrey to die miserably. And in the early going, we wanted Dany to fly across the Narrow Sea and kick some butt. Basically, we wanted good to be rewarded and evil to be punished. Again, the show made a name for itself by dashing our expectations. It almost never gave us what we wanted - and we loved it for that. The execution of Ned, as brutal and heartbreaking as it was, helped launch the show to legend status. Who was going to give up after that? And on the rare occasion that our prayers were answered, as they were with Joffrey, they immediately created some sort of complication (in case, a false accusation directed towards Tyrion).
So now we're getting what we wanted all along. Tearful reunions between all of the remaining Stark children. The long-awaited consummation of relationships between beloved characters (Arya and Gendry, Jaime and Brienne). Epic fights between dragons and white walkers. So why doesn't it feel more satisfying?
One of the morals, I think, is that we, the audience, shouldn't be trusted when we say what we'd like to happen in a story. We're like the toddler who thinks he wants ice cream for three square meals a day. A good author, like a good parents, knows better than to provide it.
A major reason for GOT's decline is that Weiss and Benioff are giving us a lot of ice cream - along with an occasional sad moment (Missandei) as if to remind us, "Hey, this is still the heartbreaking show you fell in love with!" Even before Melisandre took off her necklace last week, the show had lost its magic.
That being said, I'm looking forward to Sunday. I've invested a lot of time and brain space to this show, and dammit, I want to know what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment