No Right Answer: Is Game of Thrones Overrated?

[Yojoo]

Nice show idea, guys. It's sad that so many posters seem all butthurt over it. I'm a die-hard Thrones fan, as well as a huge fan of the books the show is based on, and I take no offense to your points. In fact, I agree with some of them.

Some rebuttals to what Chris said:

-Sex. Yeah, there's a lot of it, and yeah, there could be less. However, most of the sex scenes are in fact inspired expository moments. They basically enable one or more participants to essentially break the fourth wall and deliver lines that inform the viewer of character motivations and viewpoints. For example, Theon's encounter with the captain's daughter near the beginning of Season 2 gave us a valuable view inside his mind regarding his place in the world and his expectations of the coming months, not to mention his opinion of women. This informs on his actions when he is reunited with his sister and father.

-Plot. I agree with you to an extent. The plot is all over the place. I think it works, though. I see three major plot points converging as the basis for the overarching story: The War of Five Kings in Westeros, the reemergence of White Walkers in the North, and the resurrection of Dragons (and apparently, all stuff magic) in the East. While any of the three could work as its own story, the three stories told in parallel allow the viewer a fascinating sight of how all three plotlines will eventually converge. We understand far more than Tyrion how ultimately pointless the war for King's Landing is, we know more than Dany what challenges she will face when she returns to Westeros, and Jon... well, Jon knows nothing.

-The Red Wedding. This would never have worked for you, because you never liked the show. The reason why TRW was so hyped up and is still a hot topic almost a year after it happened is because people that actually like the show were heavily invested in the characters. See, even though we knew from the end of season 1/book 1 that no character's life is sacred and this wasn't your average Hero's Journey fairy tale, we still expected a happy ending on familiar territory. The Starks fit into the good guy role, so we're rooting for them, and their hopes hinged on Robb's war. Every book or movie in this setting that the average GoT viewer had ever read or watched would lead us to believe that Robb was going to shove his sword down Joffrey's throat some day. We believed in justice. And the Red Wedding shattered that belief.

I view Game of Thrones as a defiance of conventional writing. It is an ambitious project, with way more characters, settings, and plotlines than any sane writer would ever consider workable. Yet, for the scores of rabid fans that the show and books have, it works. Sorry that you don't enjoy it the way we do. I hope Kyle crushes you into a fine paste and then feeds it to a bear.

 

[Adventurer2626]

SPOILERWARNING----SPOILERWARNING----SPOILERWARNING Still reading? You asked for it.

Okeydoke *knuckle crack*

Unnecessary sex: ...Huh? Oh yea. Ehem. I can't really defend this one. At the least I can't defend our inundation with them. The theme of this series (or one of them) is people doing things real people might do in a medieval lightcore fantasy setting. One of them is having sex. A lot. But they don't need it to be every other scene, I agree. I think the purpose is to not pull punches or keep it clean/tasteful like most fantasy stories do. Life is very NSFW and Georgie and the Producers are trying to get that across. Lots of violence, cursing, sex, betrayal, let downs, dirt, grime, selfishness, greed, contradictory natures and so on and so on. It makes sense to me for them to show SOME sex. Jaime <3 Cersei 4evs. Okay. One scene to establish Baelish runs a brothel? Okay. The Renly + Loras + Margaery scene I feel helps further enforce Margaery's principles of principles/morals don't matter so long as I get what I want. Even though she probably could have just explained it with her clothes on so nevermind. Tyrion is a playa. One scene and the incessant "mad props dude" comments/references would be enough. More than enough. So probably 3-4 scenes out of the three seasons so far. I agree that there's too much unnecessary content but some of it does make sense.

5 minute POV jumps: This is an unfortunate necessity born out of George writing in so any damn characters, wanting to remind the audience of who everyone is and what they're doing (it's a tv drama, they do this, just usually with 1/10th the roster), establish time tables, plots, counterplots, allegiences, character development et cetera ad nauseum. Because TV basically.

Winter is Coming *crickets*: This one is on Georgie for the slow build. The Starks/Night's Watch/Wildlings are the only one's who care. The rest of the nobles acknowledge it but don't fear it, just thinking they'll lose a few peasants and have one less feast every day. No one knows, no one cares about the White Walkers. Except for a handful of characters and us. This isn't that uncommon of a theme. It's the lurking danger beyond the walls, safety zone, whatever that because of generational changes has been forgotten and dismissed by everyone but the really old and those closest to it. It usually doesn't become "a thing" until late in the story.

Hype machine overload / feral and rabid fanboys/girls: Internet.

Over-emphasized-not-actually-important-character killed off everyone goes batshit: TV drama audience. Robb WAS actually important they just didn't show us that much. They told us this, this and this happened but couldn't afford to show it because of the very broad focus of the show, not just Lannister vs Stark. There's much more going on here.

 

[balladbird]

If you watch the show and have not read the books.... your doing it wrong.

If reading the books is a requirement to understanding the show, the show is badly written.

This is a rationalization I've never understood. And I've heard it far too often whenever criticisms are brought up about the show.

"The show is good and well written! But you need to read the books before you can understand it."

Does the contradiction elude them? Seriously?

You don't have to read the books to understand the series. I think the reason that gets thrown out so often is because fans of the books like to raise awareness of their existence to show watchers, plus sentiments like "if you watch the show before you read the books/don't read the books/like the show better than the books, you're doing it wrong" reek of the type of medium elitism you encounter with any franchise that's adapted from one format to another.

I watched the first two season before I ever started the book series, and didn't want for any understanding as a result. Indeed, the show takes its own unique perspective on certain characters and plot elements (sometimes for the sake of brevity, and other times just for the sake trying something new, and since GRRM is overseeing the project, I got no problem with either), so in some ways familiarity with the books doesn't accomplish much.

 

[Darmani]

Yes. but its still a decent book and series, even as it is overpraised at the expense of its fellows and some of the text. some of this is intentional and works to play to the audience. Others a sign on just where, often, the audience is coming from that had no validity in the first place.

 

[tzimize]

1st things 1st. Very interesting premise, arguing with the viewers, looking very much forward to the follow-up

Then, my 2?.

I understand why some people wont like this show, because it really isnt structured like a "regular" show. There are no real main characters and there are a bazillion small plotlines. The big one however, is that winter is coming. The thing is, there is a lot of detail that is missing from the series that are apparrent in the books. This is a weakness of the show I guess but there really isnt much to be done about it. The winter thing is not there to be resolved in the first season though, even if you want it to be. If I remember correctly from the books, seasons dont work as they do in our world. Winters can last for years at a time, as well as summers. I think this is explained/hinted at in the show as well.

Saying that characters in this show is not interesting or well-rounded or that you cant care about them or whatever, is however pretty dumb. The show has a HUGE cast of EXCELLENT characters. Most of them are despicable and very few are likable, but most of them are interesting. Some, more interesting than others.

The thing is, this is not a show about characters, even if there are more characters than most shows. It is a show about people, about civilizations, about survival and about...in the end...the harsh reality of life (death), that nothing matters much I guess, and that the struggle is for naught in the end

I like the show because the production values are great, the stories are interesting, the characters are juicy and well rounded with their own motivations and ambitions in the calamity of war and chaos, and its all so very...human.

It is not as well written and well presented as say, Dexter or Six feet under, but the source material it is based on is so vast, and such a different medium that the end result is a very good effort.

Is it a bad show even if its not a perfect one? No. Not at all. A show doesnt have to present its story in the order/way you are used to, to be good. Pulp fiction is not standard story-telling, it is also one of the best movies ever.

 

[RandV80]

If you watch the show and have not read the books.... your doing it wrong.

If reading the books is a requirement to understanding the show, the show is badly written.

This is a rationalization I've never understood. And I've heard it far too often whenever criticisms are brought up about the show.

"The show is good and well written! But you need to read the books before you can understand it."

Does the contradiction elude them? Seriously?

Yeah it's kind of misleading when people say something like that. If you enjoy the show and enjoy reading, then you'd probably love the books. That's about it.

What's really going on however, is that the complexity of the story isn't hard to follow along with while you're reading. Each chapter puts you into a different characters POV, and seeing it from their eyes in writing it's easy to pick up on who's the Starks/Lannisters/Baratheon's/etc etc. The show on the other hand, everything is still there but considering your POV is zoomed out and you have to visually separate numerous actors on screen, the degree of difficulty in following along is waaay higher. On a TV show no amount of good writing can fix this when you have so many different characters on screen.

Personally I got started on the books back in 2006 and it became my favourite series. So when the HBO show was announced you can bet I was pretty damned excited, and once it started I immediately knew who everyone was and where they were going. I also know that I have brutal facial recognition, and if I didn't have this knowledge before hand I can't imagine how badly I'd be forgetting names & characters, and what that may do to my understanding of the plot.

 

[daibakuha]

So you're implying that anyone that dislikes the show/novels, or thinks they're flawed in some way, are just "wrong" and that's the end of it?

Probably not, but the stance you seem to be taking certainly comes off that way.

You're being intentionally dense. Not my stance at all. If he'd actually taken the time and made some points that were whiny nitpicking or based on some form of actual criticism then I might have taken this seriously. This is just rambling nonsense, he doesn't know what tone or theme or even what the show is supposed to be about.

Didn't seem incoherent at all. I understood perfectly what his criticisms were. Not that I necessarily agree with all of them.

He rambles throughout the whole video, at one point he makes a huge run-on sentence that makes no sense. There's not writing here, it's all off-the-cuff BS. No actual thought went into making it and it shows.

And, given that he's admitted to watching the seasons in their entirety I'm not entirely sure how you can claim he's being "lazy" in his critique.

Just because he did the bare minimum for the discussion of the topic, does not make it any less lazy. If he wanted to actually criticize the show, he would have take the time to fully explain his point of view and cite examples from the work itself. Instead he makes a rambling half-assed video that makes little sense and comes off like he has no idea what he's talking about.

Besides, even if his criticisms were "illegitimate", that doesn't negate the possibility of there being flaws within the material; nor the desire to discuss them.

Putting words in my mouth. I never said you couldn't criticize the show, the show has it's faults, but this guy didn't touch on any of them.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I agree that it is a bit overrated. Not as much as you're saying but it definitely doesn't deserve all the accolades people are giving it about "best show eva!"

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

I didn't say that it was the case. I was just pointing out that one of the more common rationalizations I hear is of the "if you didn't read the books first you're doing it wrong, but the show is well written" kind.

That's the bit that baffles me.

 

[NicolasKnight]

Because I'm a bit pedantic I actually checked the rating (Rotten tomatoes) of this show first and yes, 100% is definitely over what it should be rated.
I agree with your from a technical point of view. Heroes being the lowest common denominator of schizophrenic shows this one is worse.
From an emotional point of view it is worse then that:
It is a story without a point.
It has nothing to say.
The entire show carries you from murder scene to betrayal to porn with a thinly spread story.
The only emotional impact it has is the misery felt when the audience avatar dies.
The cast is so large and diverse specifically for that and it only gets worse.

"Oh but you are wrong the political intrigue is so much more then that. It has a lot of important messages and blah blah blah ...."

Sure, now tell me 3 of them that can't be resumed by "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And yes revenge counts.

I don't care how much he was bullied as a child and hom much he "wuved his poor dada and miffef him vewy vewy much."

The best way to put it I think (Entirely opinion here):

It's 50 shades of grey made to appeal to both genders.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I guess I should actually comment on some of the individual things you said.

Tone: I'm not sure what's so confusing about the tone. It's a dark fantasy. That's pretty much it with a general trend of magic being introduced more and more into the series as it goes on.

Not Keeping Track of Characters: I won't lie, I can see some people having more trouble with this than others. Some people are just better at keeping track of lots of names and places. Not a knock against your intelligence, some people are just better at this kind of stuff than others. I personally didn't have any issues but one of my friends keeps forgetting names, places, and deeds all the time.

Sex: You're 100% right about this. Okay, there's probably a point to some of it but I think for the most part, it's just HBO being HBO.

As far as it jumping around too much and not giving some characters enough screen time, I partially agree with you. It can be very disjointed but for the most part, I don't think they leave characters in the dark for too long. Honestly, if each episode was a half hour longer, it would go a long way in making this show even better.

Red Wedding: Your complaint here kind of ties into two of your other points so not really anything to address.

PS. Sorry about all the assholes who flame you for not liking a show. It's petty and stupid. I get the same thing when I tell people that I didn't like Firefly...

 

[Vigormortis]

You're being intentionally dense.

Classy start. At least you're not being hostile about any of this...

Not my stance at all. If he'd actually taken the time and made some points that were whiny nitpicking or based on some form of actual criticism then I might have taken this seriously. This is just rambling nonsense, he doesn't know what tone or theme or even what the show is supposed to be about.

So why not explain it then? If his "nitpicks" would be so easy to refute then why not do so?

He rambles throughout the whole video, at one point he makes a huge run-on sentence that makes no sense. There's not writing here, it's all off-the-cuff BS. No actual thought went into making it and it shows.

"Off the cuff" does not automatically equate to "incoherent". Clearly some thought did go into it as he brings up things he saw throughout his viewing of the seasons.

His rant may have been ad-libbed but that doesn't mean he didn't think about the criticisms he brought up.

Just because he did the bare minimum for the discussion of the topic, does not make it any less lazy. If he wanted to actually criticize the show, he would have take the time to fully explain his point of view and cite examples from the work itself. Instead he makes a rambling half-assed video that makes little sense and comes off like he has no idea what he's talking about.

He does cite examples from the material. What video were you watching?

Bare minimum? He watched all three seasons in preparation for his "rant". Please enlighten me as to what else he needed to do to prep for reviewing the show?

Putting words in my mouth. I never said you couldn't criticize the show, the show has it's faults, but this guy didn't touch on any of them.

So instead of refuting his points and bringing to light the "real faults" for discussion, you resorted to; and continue to resort to; insults and pettiness?

Yes. That's very constructive...

To be honest your posts are just coming off as..

Spoiler

You really need not be so hostile.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

You were not quite understandible at the latter half, when you started ranting really fast in a weird tone.
So I couldn't make that out. I like the show, but I never have bothered convincing people to also like stuff I like except for the friends I want to enjoy it with.

Why 2 months? Then we're at the very end but not quite of S4...

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

Oh, I know this.

My point was that I don't understand why so many fans resort to this rationale. That, in defense of the shows writing, they resort to something so completely contradictory.

There are many ways they could legitimately defend the writing. Resorting to something so irrational baffles me.

 

[Vareoth]

Oh dear god, this is going horribly wrong, horribly fast. I'm just going to state that I like the show and am perfectly able to remember all the names of places and people and I understand the plot behind each and every character. He doesn't like the show and that is perfectly fine and absolutely inconsequential to me. As long as I enjoy the media I consume I couldn't care less about what anyone else thinks. No point to explode with rage I reckon (though you did ask for it if I'm honest).

I do think that a lot of the sex scenes are somewhat unnecessary and take away valuable screen time that could have been used elsewhere.

 

[FPLOON]

Hey, Chris... If it makes you feel better, there's always the show Vikings on the History channel... My aunt keeps telling me it's like a more realistic Game of Thrones, only with less [gratuitous] sex and more violence, kinda...

OT: I hate to say this... but, I'm with Kyle on this one... I can't watch GoT because I don't have enough money to have HBO, let alone enough to keep up with the show whenever each episode does come out... Granted, my satellite provider always has one of those "Free Preview" weekends whenever the new season of GoT premieres, but I know damn well that's not enough for me to keep up with the show adaptation...

Also, if you want to get technical, I'm more familiar with the ASOIAF books than with the show itself, despite kinda knowing some of the "key changes" between both sources as well as the notion that I should probably get back to reading this particular book series due to how long it has been since I even remember borrowing the books from a fellow upperclassman during my first year in high school...

 

[Estelindis]

You are entitled not to like Game of Thrones. I won't tell you you're wrong not to like it, because you have the right to personal taste. However, for the sake of debate, here are some responses to some of your points.

You are mistaken in thinking that there's nothing about the white walkers between the opening of season one and the end of season two. Jon fights a wight towards the end of season one and saves Lord Commander Mormont's life. Then, a few episodes into season two, he sees a walker take one of Craster's children. However, the general sense that these creatures are a slowly gathering threat is correct and, in my opinion, not a bad thing. Fantastical elements (white walkers, dragons, magic, prophecy, etc.) are drawn into the story little by little. This serves a few purposes.
[*] One is to not alarm the casual, non-geek viewer who might be put off by "fantasy"; hopefully, by the time fantastical elements become more prominent, they will have come to enjoy the show and thus not want to relegate it to the fantasy ghetto.
[*] Another is to give the setting a sense of gritty foundation, of a world mostly like our own in the sense that very few things can violate the natural order. We can connect better with the world and characters when we don't constantly wonder if magic is going to break all the rules at any given moment - instead, we are surprised on the rare occasions when it does.
[*] Finally, this way of presenting things should make us wonder *why* the setting is like this. There is a sense that magic used to be a greater part of the world, but has been gone for a long time (e.g. no one believes in the white walkers anymore, dragons are extinct, Thoros the red priest doesn't believe in the power of his own god, etc.). Now, for reasons that no one fully understands, magic is slowly coming back. Why? We only have the space to slowly notice and begin to question these re-emerging elements because it takes time for the changes to happen.

In terms of the themes clashing, and you not feeling sure what the story is "really" about, I think this is also representative of a strength of the show. In reality, people have different views on what life is really about. This is reflected in the differing priorities of the show's various characters. Also, it's very human that many characters are scrabbling after power and *ruining* Westeros to get it (for however long they hold onto it), unaware of several much more serious threats - threats that Westeros would be better prepared to face if these shortsighted nobles weren't so busy with their game of thrones. In my opinion, that's just the kind of thing that happens in the real world.

If you can't remember what a character's called, that's okay, and maybe it just means that this isn't the show for you. There are plenty of viewers' guides to help with this if you have particular trouble. However, I don't have a problem with this. In my opinion, the locations, props and costume crews of the show do an *excellent* job of differentiating between places and people. I do not think that everyone just looks like another white person.

Finally, for the record, I find some of the sex scenes to be in poor taste, so I'm not particularly interested in defending those. They're certainly not why I watch the show. But that's because I find them to be poorly executed, not just because they're sex scenes. Sometimes they tell you valuable things about characters and situations, but on other occasions they seem cheap.

I have probably missed some of your points, so I may come back to this, but that's enough for now.

 

[xrogaan]

Well like you said, you don't seem to understand anything, recognize any character nor follow the story. You don't seem to be able to grasp the story as a whole and instead you are focusing on each episode separately. So, why did you watch all 3 seasons? You must be masochistic. I had issues to follow too, but after a while I said to myself: "Wait a second, this is not about the people. I don't know what this is about actually, but those guys do not seems important for the plot. What plot? Is there a plot?!"

The story is difficult to grasp because it's the story of everybody living in a continent and the consequences of their choices. So, tell me, how would you put that story so that it would be more comprehensible? Remember to include every Kingdom, their politics and goals.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Lol okay, I got this:

Short answer: Show sucks, books are better. Tyrion's pretty spot on, though, and the show at least looks like the books put into the mind how they look, so it's not irredeemable.

Medial answer: The show abused and demolished the ever living hell out of some really well written characters and situations in favor of boring stock bullshit that vaguely resembles the way the characters acted in the books. It's like they just made a single notecard of the important points and who did them, then someone spilled something on it and half of the names became blurry and unreadable, so they just mapped the actions to whoever happened to be standing adjacent. Travesties were done to the characterization of Katelyn, Rob, and Littlefinger, and I really don't understand how that all happened. Gods forbid there exists complex characters with nuance and varied reasons and motives, instead of the boring, bland, single-note characters we got in the show (at least, ones who aren't Tyrion.) I'm not even sure how they managed to completely reverse the way everyone responds to Danerys, it's like they didn't even read how everyone was losing they mind trying to flatter and love the Mother Of Dragons (you know, until she started sacking cities because TARGARYEN BLOOD FOR LIFE and all that).

The show's a mess, yeah. The pacing is godsawful because they're trying to mirror the way the books told the stories, but it turns out that having a story with an increasing number of POV characters makes for an increasingly choppy and convoluted setup to a show trying to fit it all into ten episodes. And that doesn't even cover the issue of character disparity, where in one section we get three times as much Tyrion or Arya as we get Danny, or the way that some characters just drop out of the story for two books, which wouldn't work for a piece that needs these actors to stick around. And even if you could magically settle all of that, you still have the craptastic issue of there being hundreds of semi-important characters to keep track of.

Honestly...that's a lot to stack against a show. Especially a show whose major cast is composed mostly of generically average white dudes with weird beards or samey-looking women whose key distinguishing features are their dresses (or Cersei's ever present look as if she's not sure why you exist, which would be amazing if she only pulled it out occasionally, instead of all the damn time.)

As for addressing the issue with the white walkers and winter kind of still being on the way...well, it takes awhile. It's an epic. An actual epic, you know, like the Enouma Elish, or The Odyssey, or Homestuck, or Journey to the West, something that spans what's probably going to be about a decade's worth of time when it's all done, and that's just for the biggest things happening in that particular region. It's a big story, and starts with a good amount of lead-up and stage-setting. I'm not actually sure the show is big enough to get it all in, ironically, since this is one of the biggest shows there is in terms of budget, locations, and effects.

But hey, at least we should be getting Joffrey's wedding soon, and that should be an absolute blast.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I've never even watched the show so I don't have anything invested in this debate. I will say however that this is not going to end well.