Warning: Strong content in this article.
I hate Game of Thrones, I really do. And I know that by writing these words some of you will get your angry keyboards ready, just to tell me how wrong I am about that, and wonder how I could even dislike Game of Thrones, but I do. I used to love it, I really did but now I can’t stand to watch even a single episode. I gave up on it by the end of last year’s season.
I had enough.
The reason for my dislike is that Game of Thrones’ writers made me lose all interest in the plot and most importantly, the characters. Good writers know that if you’re going to have bad moments, you also need to supply good ones in a decent measure so that the audience doesn’t become desensitised to what’s happening on-screen. These joyous or lighthearted moments help us connect with the better sides of the characters and show us that not everything is doom and gloom. That way, when things really go south, we’ll feel it. It’ll have an impact on us and keep us hooked.
As much as I dislike Final Fantasy IX, the writers knew how to balance the joy and misery perfectly in that game.
By now, Game of Thrones audiences are gluttons for punishment, because the writers behind this show don’t know how to do anything different from piling on the misery. Everything is certainly doom and gloom, all grim and dark and incredibly violent. Every episode has more violence, death and sexual assault than the ones before it…and it’s tiresome. Even the ‘lighthearted’ moments don’t feel joyous or funny, as the characters crack a joke in the middle of a very serious conversation or situation.
And some of you might say, “It’s a medieval world. Medieval times sucked.” And I tell you that even the worst of lives have pockets of joy that make the bad times hurt worse but also give us something to cling onto for strength to make it through the darkness.
So of course, as it tends to happen with writing such as this, I found myself losing interest in the fates of the characters and with such a character-centric series, if you lose that, then there’s really no point in continuing to watch the damn thing. Game of Thrones made tired me out with its constant stream of bloody misery. The shock and awe they heavily rely on faded away and I found myself looking at a shallow spectacle, with little substance when I really studied it.
Game of Thrones is gratuitous in its content and very rarely does a scene with a nude or intercourse further the plot or the different character arcs. In fact, when it does have an effect, it feels forced, as if a certain scene had changed from one location to another just to accommodate the pretty naked people.
I appreciate a naked body as much as the next guy or gal, but much like the grim darkness, it all reaches a point where I see through it and realise it’s all to inflate, pad out the episodes and show the audience what the production team thinks they want to see. And who knows, maybe they’re right and people just come for the boobs and full frontal assaults.
There is a limit on what you can do with shock value, and I reached that limit with Game of Thrones. Now I don’t see the interesting world I used to see, but one devoid of joy and humanity, where I can’t care about anyone because there is no point. It doesn’t help that most are complete monsters when you really think about it.
Also, the priorities of people in Game of Thrones are sometimes ridiculous. People see evidence of the impending invasion of undead hordes and do nothing about them and focus their energies in conquering an ugly as hell throne, one that effectively kills anyone who sits upon it. Think about it, if they sit on the throne at some point, they’ll die a horrible death…not that there is any other way to go in Game of Thrones.
“Now I don’t see the interesting world I used to see, but one devoid of joy and humanity, where I can’t care about anyone because there is no point. It doesn’t help that most are complete monsters when you really think about it.”
My thoughts exactly! I made it through the first couple seasons, but I found it very difficult to care at all for any of the characters — most of them were (or remain) either horrific or warped. I never really understood the appeal of the show, and I probably never will. I’m sure HBO is quite disappointed. 😛
Terribly. I’m sure they fired a few writers when we stopped watching. Then they decided more boobs were the key and kept going as usual.
Yep sure that’s what happened!
I’m not a GOT evangelist so I’m not gonna point fingers on your opinion. Though I can’t deny you got a point with the excessiveness of Shock Value, I don’t think is a shallow product. Actually, I think the show is closer to what politics and human behavior in a war really are than any other thing on TV or movies right now. The world is dark and horrible and people die for the wrong reasons all the time. And that’s something I like and enjoy in fiction works: people are not heroes, they are struggling constantly against adversity, and That’s uplifting in certain way.
But I think you got a good point to be fed up with the show. Your review remind me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0
First couple of seasons I would have agreed with the statement on closeness to politics and behaviour in time of war, but at this stage it has gone into frankly ludicrous levels, and it feels like it’s all to pad out the conflicts because the writers don’t aptly know how else to move plots forward.
And also, I’ll repeat, as dark and horrible as the world is, there are pockets of joy, something I think you can agree with, and these pockets are largely missing from GoT’s narrative.
I am someone who, after watching the first season, bought the books right away; more specifically, I decided to do so after Ned died, which made me think “Now this must be an awesome book series”.
I was following the TV show religiously until two seasons ago, but then I dropped it altogether due to all the reasons you mentioned. I thought, most of all, that the show runners were murdering characters left and right because they either did not know what to do with them or because they wanted to create cheap shock and make fans go to the Internet and flood social networks with “Oh my! Did you see that?”.
With that being said, based on comments around the web from people who follow both the shows and books, things seem to have gotten better this season.
Never seen it, never want to! 🙂
You know, if you ever have the desperate need for HBO, violence and full frontal nudity, then this is the cocktail for you. If you can give or take HBO, then there are many shows and sites out there to satisfy that very specific craving!
The first season was the best, if only because you saw Sean Bean die…again.
Haha, my mum wouldn’t be happy to hear that, Sean Bean is her ultimate no.1 man crush lol.
To be honest it’s never really interested me and the more people tell me to watch something (or listen to something or read something!), the more it has an opposite effect and it just puts me off!
So not telling you to watch things, got it!
Haha! I didn’t mean it like that, promise 🙂 you know when the whole world is going mad for something though? And you just think….leave me alone! Hahaha.
In those cases I tend to give the things 1-3 episodes chance to hook me.
But I do know what you mean. As I don’t like GoT anymore that happens to me now every year
It happened to me with The Walking Dead, True Blood, Glee – probably loads more too! I loved them for a few seasons then dynamics changed and just wasn’t for me anymore. To be honest the only season of The Walking Dead I TRULY loved was the first one!
Don’t remind me of the trainwreck that the last few seasons of True Blood were…sheesh, those were bad! Billith was the bottom of the barrel!
I don’t think I even watched it that far, but it definitely lost its thread. Best thing I can remember is the theme song!
“I wanna do bad things with you!” If there was ever a suggestive song haha
Look it up on both YouTube, “Billith”