{"id":1303,"date":"2016-03-30T16:49:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T16:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2016-03-30T16:49:29","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T16:49:29","slug":"game-of-thrones-eastwatch-review-confederate-george-rr-martin-jon-snow-daenerys-targaryen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1303","title":{"rendered":"Why Game of Thrones Did Not Deserve the Emmy for Best Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\u00a0\n

S<\/span>even years ago, a TV show came along and parked itself smack dab in our popular consciousness. The reasons why <\/p>Game of Thrones<\/span><\/i> became a landmark are manifold. The show was operating at a visual scale unlike anything else in the world, let alone TV. It created a multiverse of charming, interesting, and incestuous characters like Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, fricking Littlefinger, etc in a span of time shorter than Marvel execs could utter the world, \u201csequels.\u201d <\/span>\n\nThrones<\/span><\/i> had magic and mystique, but its characters seemed oddly believable because the world they inhabited, helmed by George RR Martin, was rooted in conflict, strategy, and ideological differences, much like ours. Back then, <\/span>Game of Thrones<\/span><\/i> was a show for <\/span>people <\/span><\/a>who loved playing in the logistical minefield of Monopoly, but with the added thrill of unexpected death and the majesty of dragons.<\/span>\n\nUntil now.<\/span>\n\nThe seventh season of GoT<\/em> saw many fans, this writer included, get turned off as the show barrelled toward its final conclusion. But even as longtime fans switched off, it seemed like the Television Academy were tuning in and at the 2018 Emmy Awards, GoT<\/em> picked up two awards for Best Drama Series and Best Supporting Actor. It’s hard to find fault with Peter Dinklage, but the show winning Best Drama Series was a disappointment, especially considering the competition in its category.<\/span>\n\nThe Handmaid’s Tale<\/em> has redefined the dystopian TV show with its portrayal of Gilead in the post-#MeToo world. The Americans<\/em>, a criminally underrated show, that earned Matthew Rhys his first Best Actor (Drama) award, capped off a terrific fifth season. This Is Us<\/em> tugged on heartstrings, and even Westworld<\/em> featured riveting performances that orbit a philosophical quandary that is central to the plot. These shows push the envelope and feel important, like GoT<\/em> did when it premiered. Today, while its contemporaries continue to innovate, GoT<\/em> is falling into a state of entropy.<\/span>\n\nThe show\u2019s penultimate and seventh season, easily it\u2019s most epic yet in terms of scale with sprawling set-pieces and CGI-fuelled dragon fire has <\/span>failed <\/span><\/a>on three fronts that originally made the show what it is: superlative writing, suspense over your emotional investment in its characters, and logic.<\/span>\n\nThe show\u2019s logistics had been swaying between not-that-believable and wait-what-how, with Euron\u2019s fast ship-building and Christopher Columbus-esque understanding of the seas, but we saw those fallacies taken to their illogical extremes over eight episodes.<\/span>\n\nJaime and Brienne took a full season to reach King\u2019s Landing, but Davos goes from Dragonstone to King\u2019s Landing, back to Dragonstone, and then to Eastwatch in one episode. Ravens are flying everywhere as if Reliance 5G suddenly acquired ownership of communications networks in Westeros, destroying one of Thrones<\/em>\u2019 core plot devices: flow of information. Who captured Tyrion? Who knows where Arya is? Who killed Ned? These are questions which fuelled episode after episode, and were the very source of power for characters who held the answers. Now all information is flowing freely, except for the most crucial bit: Jon\u2019s parentage. It\u2019s being kept from us, probably for the season finale since it\u2019s such a big reveal, because the altered motion of flow of information is serving as a cheap plot device to manipulate the audience.<\/span>\n

The direct victim of the weird pacing has been this character exposition, and when we don\u2019t have time to get to know people, they inevitably can\u2019t be painted in the grey.<\/blockquote>\nGame of Thrones<\/span><\/i> though, as stated above, wasn\u2019t always like this. It was always plot-driven but it was slow, plodding, and it probed at every emotion of every <\/span>character<\/span><\/a>. We had side quests which were illuminating and showed us different facets of all characters; Jaime and Brienne, Tyrion and Bronn, Jon and Sam, taking long walks, talking life, and being human; the equivalent of us taking a long walk in the rains with our best friend after a drink too many.<\/span>\n\nThe direct victim of the weird pacing has been this character exposition, and when we don\u2019t have time to get to know people, they inevitably can\u2019t be painted in the grey. So to create rooting interests, Season 7 has committed a sin <\/span>Thrones<\/span><\/i> <\/a>always always fought against \u2013 depicting simple black and white, good and evil characters. Everyone is good, heck even Cersei is good now, because we have to fight the Night King, and to convince everyone that he exists, we will send the show\u2019s favourite characters on a supposed suicide mission even though half of them are protected by plot armour. Jon is the hero, The Prince That Was Promised, the Hound has to fight The Mountain, and Gendry couldn\u2019t have been rowing for three seasons to come back and die in one episode.<\/span>\n\nWhy is a show so masterful suddenly showing signs of regular TV trope fatigue?<\/span>\n\nProbably because the makers, David Benioff and DB Weiss aren\u2019t into it anymore. The Double D\u2019s recently announced their new show <\/span>Confederate<\/span><\/i>, which will, in the bare minimum, release in 2020. They have completely distanced themselves from the upcoming <\/span>Thrones<\/span><\/i> spin-offs and are doing minimal press. <\/span>\n\nThese dudes seem <\/span>bored<\/span><\/a>, and have written the last two seasons as just checking points off a plot list. Jon\u2019s parentage? Check. Jon and Dany will fuck? Check. Arya will kill Littlefinger? Check. No matter how contrived and inauthentic the Jon and Dany romance or the Arya and <\/span>Sansa <\/span><\/a>infighting might seem, it doesn’t really matter as the janta is happy cheering for loads of CGI fire.<\/span>\n\nGeorge RR Martin, who many thought would be miffed that the TV show went past his books must be chuckling somewhere, as there is obviously much work to be done to flesh out characters and basic logistics properly. The downward spiral that we\u2019ve been witness to this season is the best argument in favour of the superiority of the books to the series. When the show began, its best moments were crafted from the wealth of source material the books offered. Dialogue seemed more authentic, motivations were clearer, and the show had a ring of authenticity that it lacks today. Now that there\u2019s no source material to draw from, <\/span>Game of Thrones<\/span><\/i> has gone from being a superb literary adaptation to a generic parody of itself.<\/span>\n\nThe only hope the fans have is that Martin finishes the book series in our lifetime. Dear <\/span>George<\/span><\/a>, we need a less bastardised version of a story which will end up as the definitive cultural equaliser for a decade. Please help.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite sprawling set-pieces and CGI-fuelled dragon fire, GoT has failed on three fronts that made the show a success: writing, suspense, and logic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":1304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[2082,2209,2210,309,2211,2212,2213,2214,2215,2216,2217],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-arya-stark","tag-cersei","tag-daenerys-targaryen","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-jamie","tag-john-snow","tag-khaleesi","tag-lannister","tag-rr-martin","tag-tyrion","tag-westeros"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Game of Thrones Did Not Deserve the Emmy for Best Drama<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Despite sprawling set-pieces and CGI-fuelled dragon fire, GoT has failed on three fronts that made the show a success: writing, suspense, and logic.\" 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