I’m not really sure how to feel about Game of Thrones anymore. I really liked the premiere episode for this season, for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with getting to see it early thanks to a screener. It was good enough to watch on a muddy, watermarked DVD 3 times, and every time I watched it I felt like new depths to the story and the craft were revealing themselves. But Season 4 closing out on two weeks of spectacle and climax has dulled the remaining excitement I had for the show that had been slowly being whittled away over the course of the season.
Before this gets too negative: I still really like the show for a lot of reasons. The production values and designs are some of the most visually engaging I’ve ever seen, TV or otherwise. The scope is consistently awe-inspiring, and that the show can juggle all its various balls as well as it does is a real feat. But it’s gotten to a point where I recognize that what the show wants to be good at, and what I want it to be good at, are separate things entirely.
One of the big climactic scenes from last night’s finale had two sets of characters that never overlap in the books crossing paths with one another. The change makes sense: it adds weight to both of the show’s versions of these threads, and the motivations behind what happens during the meeting are sound. What we get is a fantastically choreographed and brutal fight scene, which is great and exciting on its own terms. But that’s not really what I look for from this property; while the show was teasing us with hands on hilts, just waiting to draw blood, all I wanted to shout at the screen was “Put the weapons down and have a conversation, dummies! You’re all too interesting to just be used as grist on the murder mill!”
Game of Thrones is about as good an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s books as could ever reasonably be expected, but its malignant case of adaptation-itis is only getting worse with each season. Scenes that work within the ephemera of Martin’s text fall flat when actually filmed, as is the case of Bran and the episode’s little Harryhausen tribute. As has been said elsewhere, the show is often at its best during monologues, particularly when it’s one character telling another a story. I’d be lying if I said last week’s free-for-all at The Wall didn’t have me making noises unbecoming of a person my size, age, or gender, but the thrill was fleeting. The characters, their challenges, and the choices they have to make: that’s what makes Game of Thrones tick.
For as little as her plot actually moved forward this season, the scenes with Daenerys were among my favorite in the finale for the quiet manner in which they capped off the theme of her story for the season, condensed as it may have been. Similarly, the big fight scene of the episode I alluded to got the blood pumping, but it didn’t engage my brain the way a painful and drawn-out goodbye that followed did. I wish the show could find more time to just settle down with these characters and just get to know them. It sometimes feels like Game of Thrones's reputation is so caught up in shock-value and spectacle that it becomes a disservice to the work the show achieves artistically. Ignoring that big-dumb-stupid-inexcusable thing that happened between Jamie and Cersei earlier this season? Big mistake, and one that overshadows any scene shared between Lena Heady and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who are really just terrific. Ditto for the night’s scene between Peter Dinklage and Charles Dance, who do some of their best work in service of another #OMG plot twist that we’ve barely had time to process the setup for.
The fact is, I’ve never liked the show more than during the first 9 episodes of season 1, back when I hadn’t read any of the books. Deciding to read the books and having an outline for what to expect is on me. The book’s the book, the show’s the show: I have no problem with that. They are separate and unequal entities. That doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge that the strengths of Game of Thrones as a story are better served by a literary medium than a TV one. Each can have their respective strengths and weaknesses, but I’d rather see each medium work with material naturally suited to the format, not just grafted onto its bones.