Sorry, I Was Watching All Of Game Of Thrones!

I’d like to blame a delightful Thanksgiving break for my recent lack of writing. But a week of non-stop quality time with the kiddo is just that: a week. Along with seasonal, social and spiritual ennui, the greater, and certainly less dignified, timesuck this November was watching the entirety of Game Of Thrones. While I abstained from the binge when the innocent were in earshot, the days bracketing turkey week often found my living room filled with royal court intrigue, the clang of swords, the roars of dragons, wavering accents and, most atypically, a barrage of boobs & butts. With all respect to the exhibitionist freaks who regret a lack of eroticism at the movies, HBO was there for them circa Dream On and is there for them now. 

Or, rather, HBO was there for them a decade ago. I didn’t watch a minute of Game Of Thrones when it aired from 2011 to 2019. Firstly, I didn’t care about medieval fantasy. I only watched the first of those many Tolkien adaptations, and it felt like a long Creed video. Eventually, word bubbled online that Thrones was rife with gratuitous sexual violence and "sexposition" (where dialogue moving the plot forward is shared pre-coitus). Finally, I heard the final season was embarrassing as hell, with fans posting anachronistic coffee cups and other details that betrayed a lack of consideration on the part of the showmakers. I know this because, even when I avoid popular television, I find the drama in the discourse deeply enjoyable.

Oh, how I laughed upon my throne as my royal tasters fell over themselves on social media, finally confirming that this meal was inedible. All these fools, professional and amateur, so concerned with watercooler conversation that they’ll drink paper cups of piss not to miss out. Why you’d be want to be the first on your block to waste your time on unsatisfying mediocrity and popular hype is beyond me. I may not be the most virtuous of pop culture consumers, but I have learned the value of patience. The value of waiting until a dramatic journey over dozens of hours has proven rewarding for others. They fooled me with X-Files in my teens, and they fooled me with Heroes in my twenties. But I never started Lost. When my friends recoiled online from that show’s ensemble hugging in heaven, it was all the positive reinforcement I’ve needed to abstain from appointment viewing since. 

Still, in the years since people screamed “fucking Bran?!” like they’d been drugged by Post, I’ve debated checking out Thrones anyway. I’ve liked Peter Dinklage ever since he took a screaming shit on David Lynch in Living In Oblivion, and really wanted to watch him double-cross people with a haughty accent. Gwendolyn Christie knocked my socks off in The Sandman and I soon learned Game Of Thrones was the number one source of that tall drink of water. But sexposition? A plot that required family trees? Assault sequences so extreme George R.R. Martin distanced himself from the adaptation? Even after my belated acceptance of and into Dungeons & Dragons as social activity warmed me to the world of magic and myth and whatnot, I couldn’t quite make myself pull the trigger. Until last month, where I was so sick of thinking about it, I made myself watch the pilot. Just the damn pilot. Then the first season. And onward, into the breach.

At first, the show was merely an enjoyable soap, benefiting from a charismatic ensemble and a willingness to sacrifice the innocent and valorous. Legendary shocks I’d learned of years earlier still made me gasp, and - as for the boobs & butts - I wasn’t mad at them, even if I giggled at how much this apparently mainstream fare (they parodied it on Sesame Street!) resembled The Erotic Adventures Of Hercules. The nature of a multi-season binge also meant I didn’t have the same hand-wringing anguish felt by recappers when the sex became less whimsical and more punishing. Darker sequences moved past as part of a longer yarn, rather than dwelled upon over many months in small doses. I was experiencing the show more like a series of novels than comfort TV.

Maybe that’s why I was less aggrieved by the majority of the final season than many (watch out, even-latercomers! Spoilers ahead!). While Daenerys Targaryen’s transformation from canny girlboss to lipsmacking villain could have been better paced, there was still a clear logic to her fragile, untested narcissism. Facing off against instutionally-backed tyrants and promising freedom, her pride and brutality seemed sympathetic and necessary. When the cruel irony of Jon Snow’s birthright was revealed, psychotically leaning into her quest was the only option that wouldn’t require ego death, and accepting the staggering traumas she experienced along her journey would never be validated on a global scale. Viewers who’d spent years venerating “Khaleesi” may have felt the rug was pulled out from under them (especially in the middle of the first Trump administration), but I found the show’s climactic battles suitably and impressively tragic for long-running soap opera. Vanity and nobility only blur in underdogs, and - if you live long enough to gain power - you’ll eventually be made to choose one or the other. For a minute, it looked like the show would end with the survivors either demoralized (like the emotionally codependent Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister) or joylessly proven right that survival is the only victory the game affords (Sansa Stark, yo).

Only the show didn’t end with Snow slumping defeatedly into the throne, or peacing out as King’s Landing fell into anarchy. Instead...Bran. Fucking Bran. Somehow, Bran Stark, that vain human periscope, whose zen indifference to the lives of others (even those sacrificing themselves for his survival) was only dignified by the idea he would basically spend his days as The Exposition Tree, is deemed worthy of the throne by a council of supporting cast members. Tyrion Lannister, who had minimal to zero interaction with Bran on screen, is suddenly swinging on his nuts, and reading aloud his allegedly impressive CV. The all-seeing, all-knowing Three-Eyed Raven indifferently accepted the crown after indifferently denying he wanted it for years. What an asshole.

Television is riddled with Main Characters with minimal detail and minor emotional journeys compared to the ensembles around them, from Jerry Seinfeld to Brandon Walsh. For most of Game Of Thrones, I was tickled by how Bran took the cliche to metaphysical levels. A literally motionless guy who apparently existed just for the world to have something to revolve around: Dawson’s Cosmos. He learned nothing, but knew everything. He stood in the center of the most gruesome battles, did nothing, won the most and said “as it should be.” What an asshole. 

The only way I can dignify this is if Tyrion - my dude Tyrion - knew he himself was the most worthy of being king on a practical level, but could never claim the throne. So he realized Bran, this mystical jackass who could see through the eyes of animals and claim credit for anything good that happened, would be the perfect puppet to provide information and validation. A magical rubber stamp who’d let Tyrion handle the details. It was a big swing, and not a sure thing that Bran would feel indebted enough to make him The Hand. But it was the smartest play available, and it worked out. Go Tyrion!

Nothing about how showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss treated Bran suggests they have any critical perspective on the character, though, and George R.R. Martin is taking his sweet time revealing how his final product will compare to the beta test they did on HBO. But even with this asinine epilogue, I’m surprisingly happy with the experience of watching Thrones. Without question, male characters got off easy compared to women. Jamie Lannister gets a nice chapter in the Big Book Of Knights because he did all his crimes against humanity for the nookie, but sister Cersei, that mad Medea, has to settle for a hug as the world collapses around her. Bran’s sense of divine glory is okay, but Daenerys’ isn’t, because he lets people die protecting him and she kills those who threaten her. There’s also the matter of how Benioff and Weiss waffled on whether nudity was fun (I've heard Martin didn't write that BOING about Podrick being so good at sex whores did it for free) or had to be justified by pain and plot, which truly must have been a chore of a weekly experience. “Hey, we have men being sexually tortured too.” Oh, well then, ok.

But there are so many characters and story arcs that you can have these egregious examples of cringe and also brave Brienne, sniveling Littlefinger, stealth VIP Sansa and the adorable, bloody journey of Arya and The Hound. Where most soaps introduce new characters out of boredom or necessity when stars leave the show, having so much source material helped Game Of Thrones avoid the pitfalls of serial drama while offering the delights. And while I don’t want to overstate the visual artistry, there was some fun with steadicams in the undeniably epic battles, and - in an episode directed by Neil “Doomsday” Marshall - we see a regular-sized dude dispatched by a giant arrow. And I mean dispatched.

Shit really was popping off throughout. I haven’t even talked about the hissable sadists like Joffrey and Ramsey, or that bon vivant Pedro Pascal played who apparently thought Inigo Montoya should have twirled more. There are three very different eunuchs. And Jason Momoa as a one-man Wrestlemania! Diana Rigg, playing an elderly matron so merciless she’d have taken Maggie Smith out by the second cup of tea. A few cameos near the end aren’t that rewarding, like Max Von Sydow as The Ghost Of Westeros Past, somehow getting an Emmy nomination for telling Bran “we have to go now” during flashbacks. And the MCU did better by Richard E. Grant. But, I'll tell you, adapting a book series is a great way to keep the padding from seeming as aimless as it usually does on TV.

So yeah, Game Of Thrones! If you find yourself with too much time on your hands, or at least the freedom to waste many hours of it, you could do a lot worse this holiday season. Assuming you didn’t already finish the thing five years ago. Sucker.