Ok ok something something something new game plus dialogue is stilly cause carried over items yada yada yada…

…ok so here’s what I’m going to talk about, Game of Thrones, finished it on Wednesday.

Since I would like to avoid posting spoilers of any kind, I can’t really get into detail over my thoughts, but here’s what I’m going to say.

Q:  Was the ending as bad as I thought it was going to be?

A:  No, not even a little.  The prime example of “Show that Started Good and then Got Really Bad” for me is House of Cards.  That show gives an absolute masterclass in falling off a cliff and remains the most mind-bogglingly stupid thing I’ve ever seen ever.

Q:  …but the ending was bad, right?

A:  Yes, but not in the way I thought it was going to be.  This is where I’m going to have to avoid saying too much, but ultimately Game of Thrones’ biggest issue was that I believe the show missed its own point.  There was a heavily suggested and shown thesis statement that the show had been building towards that not only gets ignored, but is proven to be incorrect.  I’m not really sure how that’s possible.  I’m not sure how you can more or less have half the cast literally spurt out the show’s mission statement out loud and then not follow through on it.  There were also a lot of plot points that like… never get used or mentioned again.  Like, characters develop abilities that are super duper handy, but like an item in a Zelda dungeon are for just one specific thing only and you’ll never equip it again.  It’s like the writers see every obstacle as completely independent of everything else in the world, or they just straight up forgot that they introduced stuff.

Q:  Well at least the production value was good, right?

A:  Mostly.  I was certainly getting the sense that things were getting more lax in the final two seasons.  I’m aware that upon release there was literally a Starbucks cup in a shot, but that’s not the kind of lax that I’m talking about.  There was a shot at one point of a wintry landscape and like a river or something that gets held for a bit, and then right before cutting to the next shot the fucking camera gets bumped.  Like, I’m watching this for the first time years later on HBO Max… they edited out the Starbucks cup, so they clearly want to fix mistakes… why didn’t this nudge of the camera get the same treatment?  Was the extra quarter second of footage of sliiiiightly bumped landscape important?  What the heck?

Again, I want to go on, but at the risk of writing out spoilers I’ll hold off for now.  I haven’t streamed in a good long hot while, so maybe the next time I do I’ll complain about the show there.

When Game of Thrones was good, it was really good, when Game of Thrones was bad, it wasn’t horrendous… but it was like… I don’t know, it was like they didn’t understand what they were writing.